Featured Posts

Setup Guide for Multiple NetApp ONTAP 8.1 Simulators
December 1, 2011 by mike · 4 Comments
I have written previously on deploying the ONTAP simulator on a vSphere host, and they seem to be some of my more popular posts. Now that the ONTAP 8.1 simulator has been released, I thought I would do an updated post that is a little more comprehensive than my previous posts. In my most recent [...]

NetApp Introduces New Controllers
November 8, 2011 by mike · 3 Comments
One of the more popular controllers (at least, in my experience) that NetApp offered was the FAS250/FAS270. From the front it looked like a standard DS14 disk shelf, but in the back it contained controller module(s). You could deploy it as a single controller, or in a HA pair and it made a great option [...]
NetApp

Installing and Configuring NetApp VASA Provider for vSphere
February 27, 2012 by mike · 5 Comments
NetApp VASA Provider Installation and Configuration Whoa, how did I miss this? Here is the Beta access for our VASA plugin for all you vSphere 5 folks out there! http://t.co/uDLVHkiM @keith_aasen As @keith_aasen pointed out on Twitter recently, the NetApp VASA Provider is currently in beta. I configured it in my lab over the weekend [...]

Setup Guide for Multiple NetApp ONTAP 8.1 Simulators
December 1, 2011 by mike · 4 Comments
I have written previously on deploying the ONTAP simulator on a vSphere host, and they seem to be some of my more popular posts. Now that the ONTAP 8.1 simulator has been released, I thought I would do an updated post that is a little more comprehensive than my previous posts. In my most recent [...]

NetApp Introduces New Controllers
November 8, 2011 by mike · 3 Comments
One of the more popular controllers (at least, in my experience) that NetApp offered was the FAS250/FAS270. From the front it looked like a standard DS14 disk shelf, but in the back it contained controller module(s). You could deploy it as a single controller, or in a HA pair and it made a great option [...]
CommVault

Removing VM snapshots left by CommVault or NetApp
May 31, 2011 by mike · Leave a Comment
Since I tend to focus on CommVault and NetApp this post is mentioning those two products in particular, but if you’ve used any VM level backup product that quiesces the VM prior to taking the backup – you have likely seen that these VMware snapshots aren’t always removed by the application. I’ve seen a few [...]

CommVault SnapProtect with NetApp NFS Volumes
April 30, 2011 by mike · 5 Comments
Introduction One of the newer features of CommVault Simpana is the ability to perform SnapProtect backups for various applications such as Exchange, SQL or VMware. This post will focus on VMware and specifically on virtual machines that are on a NFS datastore hosted on a NetApp storage array. If you aren’t familiar with SnapProtect it [...]
VMware

Installing and Configuring NetApp VASA Provider for vSphere
February 27, 2012 by mike · 5 Comments
NetApp VASA Provider Installation and Configuration Whoa, how did I miss this? Here is the Beta access for our VASA plugin for all you vSphere 5 folks out there! http://t.co/uDLVHkiM @keith_aasen As @keith_aasen pointed out on Twitter recently, the NetApp VASA Provider is currently in beta. I configured it in my lab over the weekend [...]

VMWVCaaS: VMworld Video Converting as a Service
September 21, 2011 by mike · Leave a Comment
Stupid title aside, one of the things I’ve done in the past is downloaded all of the VMworld sessions and convert them so I can play them on my iPad/Apple TV devices. Based on some Twitter conversations last year it seemed like a number of people do the same thing – rather than everything spending [...]

VMworld 2011 Day 3 Wrap Up
August 31, 2011 by mike · Leave a Comment
Today was a little lighter on new content as most of the big announcements were made yesterday during the keynote. I’ve written in the past about using an iPad more and more during my workday, and I took the opportunity today to visit the end user computing booth in the solutions exchange and talk with [...]
Apple

Home Lab Tip: TextExpander
November 22, 2011 by mike · Leave a Comment
TextExpander is a tool I’ve had installed on my Macbook Pro for awhile now, but never really utilized it all that often (other than the built-in spelling corrections I only had 1 or two custom expansions configured). Recently I started using it more and I think it can be very helpful in home lab environments [...]

Deploying Apple OS X virtual machines in vSphere 5
August 8, 2011 by mike · Leave a Comment
When I saw the announcement that OSX would be an officially supported guest OS for vSphere 5, I was pretty excited. Being an Apple fan and a home lab guy, my first thought was I could run Snow Leopard as a VM and treat it as a centralized iTunes server. It was announced that it [...]

Replacing Optical Drive with Second Hard Drive on MacBook Pro
August 12, 2010 by mike · 4 Comments
Previously I had blogged about replacing my 7200 RPM SATA drive in my MBP with an Intel X25M-G2 80GB SSD. So far it’s been great and I have no doubt it’s extended the lifespan of my laptop (MacBook Pro 2,2). Being a digital pack-rat the hardest thing has been going from a 500GB drive to [...]





