February 5, 2012

You are here: Home / Featured

Nexus VDI Kung Fu 2012

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you are in the Minneapolis, MN area – please come and join us on February 29th for our VDI Kung Fu event.  There will be free food, free training, and a great opportunity for networking.  We have a number of VDI rockstars that will be presenting including:

We will also have some Nexus resources including:

Jim and Jeff will be doing a repeat of their VMworld session, if you missed it – it was one of the top rated sessions of all of VMworld 2011.  The event runs from 8:00am until 3:30pm and breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Nexus Information Systems VDI Showcase

We will also have tours of the Nexus VDI Showcase, we have a number of different VDI endpoints on display with various display configurations to allow you to see different solutions in action.  Click here to see more info on the showcase.

Click here for more info and to register for the event, hope to see you there!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, Work

Setup Guide for Multiple NetApp ONTAP 8.1 Simulators

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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 post on this topic, I ran through the configuration I use to optimize usable space and getting necessary license keys installed.  I wanted to build on that for the 8.1 simulator, and specifically about getting multiple simulators to work with OnCommand.  If you install multiple copies of the simulator and then try to add them into the NetApp Management Console, you will get an error similar to this:

Even though they are separate virtual machines and have different IP addresses and hostnames, their simulator system id’s are identical so the NMC thinks it’s a duplicate host you are trying to add.  Luckily it is possible to change the serial number and system id so we can get multiple simulators added in and be able to utilize things like Protection Manager and Provisioning Manager.  The easiest way to do this is to change these values before you run the setup so you don’t have to reassign the disks.

To begin, I still utilize VMware converter to bring it into my vSphere environment.  There are other methods out there but this one has worked well for me.  I won’t screenshot the entire process as it’s mostly just taking the defaults and deciding what name you want to use etc, but here is the summary screen:

Summary screen for VMware Converter

I change the disk type to be thin provisioned instead of thick, I change the NICs to be the relevant networks for my lab, and finally I didn’t set it to power on just because I wanted to make sure I boot it into maintenance mode to change the serial number as soon as it boots up.  When it boots press a key other than enter to break the boot, then run the following commands to make this simulator unique (screenshot below):

set bootarg.nvram.sysid=1111111101
set SYS_SERIAL_NUM=1111111101
boot

Interrupt boot process to change serial number

These commands were documented in this post on the NetApp Communities, and I’ve followed the same pattern – 8 1′s with a unique two character string at the end that matches the hostname (e.g. STO-FAS1 is 01 STO-FAS2 is 02 etc)

After you hit enter to boot the simulator, you need to go into maintenance mode to wipe the config and setup the simulator, you need to hit control-C to bring up the boot menu and then option 4 for wiping the configuration:

Boot menu options

Once you run through the wizard, this is the config I apply (I usually use a text snippet to insert the following into  my SSH session):

options security.passwd.rules.enable off
snap reserve -A aggr0 0
snap sched -A aggr0 0
options autosupport.enable off
aggr options aggr0 raidsize 28
disk assign all
license add DZDACHD
license add PZKEAZL
yes
license add NAZOMKC
license add ANLEAZL
license add BSLRLTG
license add NQBYFJJ
license add ELNRLTG
license add MTVVGAF
license add BQOEAZL
license add RKBAFSN
license add HNGEAZL
license add BCJEAZL
license add DFVXFJJ
license add XJQIVFK
license add DNDCBQH
license add JQAACHD
license add ZYICXLC
license add PVOIVFK
license add PDXMQMI
license add RQAYBFE
license add ZOFNMID
license add ZOPRKAM
license add RIQTKCL
ndmpd on
options nfs.export.auto-update off

I turn off the password rules since this is just my lab and I typically use a very easy password (yep, you probably already guessed it) for most of the lab stuff that can only be accessed from inside.

Next step is to add some more disks in the simulator, this info was found on this thread over on the NetApp Communities.  Not all of the commands worked for me, in part 2 step 3 I wasn’t able to successfully enter those commands.  It mentions that was a glitch in the way the program was complied so I’m just guessing that it may now be resolved and not necessary now as without it I still was able to add disks without issue.

priv set advanced
useradmin diaguser unlock
useradmin diaguser password

Enter a password to use for the diaguser (again, it’s my lab so I use a relaxed password)

systemshell

Login with the user diag and the password you just created

setenv PATH "${PATH}:/sim/bin"
cd /sim/dev
sudo makedisks.main -n 14 -t 23 -a 2
sudo makedisks.main -n 14 -t 23 -a 3
exit
useradmin diaguser lock
priv set admin
reboot

After the system comes back up, login and we can assign the new disks

disk assign all

If you run into an error where you get a bad disk label, that can be easily fixed by:

aggr status -f

This output will give you the list of the failed disks, make note of the disk ids – they should be similar to v6.32

priv set advanced
disk unfail -s v6.32

At this point you should have a total of 56 disks on the simulator, with an aggregate raid group size of 28. I added 52 of the disks into my aggregate to leave 1 as a spare so I don’t constantly get errors about low spare count (you can disable the option to warn you about low spares but unfortunately that only works on systems with 16 disks or less).

aggr add aggr0 52

Now you should have the first simulator completed, I took a VM snapshot at this point to be able to revert to after I do my testing.  Next up is configuring the second simulator, obviously the VMware Converter steps are basically identical except for the VM name so I won’t repeat that part.  The only thing to be aware of is when you first power on the VM, press a key other than enter just like you did previously so we can set a different serial number:

 

Configuring unique serial number and system id on second simulator instance

Run through the rest of the configuration steps above and now you should be able to add both simulators into the NetApp Management Console:

Both simulators showing within the NetApp Management Console. Click for larger image.

Hopefully that helps you get started with the ONTAP 8.1 simulator, I’ll have some more posts coming up that will build off of this.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, Home Lab, Simulator

NetApp Introduces New Controllers

November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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 for SMBs – it didn’t consume a lot of space since the controller was built into the shelf and the price was entry level.  These models went away in favor of the 2000 series controllers which still offered internal drives (12 in the FAS2020/2040 and 20 in the FAS2050) but they used their own form factor and were a dedicated storage appliance.  A problem with these controllers was that when you upgraded the system, the internal drives could not be taken out and put into a disk shelf (such as the DS4243).  There were ways around this limitation, most notably just not ordering internal drives in the controllers and only using external storage to ease any concerns over future upgrades, but it still was a limitation in my opinion.

Today NetApp is announcing two new controller models that are reminiscent of the FAS200 line.  They are the FAS2240-2 and the FAS2240-4, they are 2u and 4u in size respectively.  Early performance numbers indicate between a 2-3x performance improvement over the FAS2040 depending on workload type. The FAS2040 will stick around to complete the FAS2000 lineup.  This means all current controllers will be able to run the latest ONTAP software from NetApp (the FAS2020 and FAS2050 did not support ONTAP 8.x).  As I alluded to previously, the FAS2240 is a storage shelf with the controllers inserted into the back.  The 2240-2 is a 2u system and based on the current FAS2246 SAS shelf, while the 2240-4 is a 4u system and based on the current FAS4243 shelf.  The FAS2240-2 utilizes 2.5″ SAS drives and supports either 450 or 600GB drives as of today.  The FAS2240-4 utilizes 3.5″ SATA drives and supports 1, 2 or 3TB SATA drives as of today.  Both systems can be ordered with either 12 or 24 drives.

Some quick notes on the new models:

  • Will require ONTAP 8.1+
  • Supports a mezzanine card, which can be either a 2 port FC card or 2 port 10 GbE card
    • If you put a FC card in the mezzanine slot, they can be either target or initiator ports much like onboard FC ports on other controllers today
  • Will support cluster mode, but you have to use the 10 GbE mezzanine card for cluster communication so only iSCSI/CIFS/NFS will work and must be served out of the GbE ports
  • Will come with ONTAP Essentials, which means all storage protocols are included (as well as things like Operations Manager, Protection & Provisioning Manager, DSM/MPIO)
  • Ability to convert from a controller into a disk shelf (much like the FAS200 line)
  • Will not have support for the FlashCache card or FCoE

Front view of the FAS2240-2 controller

Rear view of the FAS2240-2 controller

Front view of the FAS2240-4 controller

Rear view of the FAS2240-4 controller

Also, and in my opinion this is a big one, the maximum volume size is 54TB on the FAS2240 and the maximum volume size with dedupe and/or compression enabled is ALSO 54TB!  This is one of the best features of 8.1, 64 bit aggregates in 8.x allowed us to grow beyond a 16TB aggregate limit but we were still limited (at least in some environments) on the volume size to a maximum of 16 TB (depending on the controller model) when using compression and/or dedupe.  To reiterate, as of ONTAP 8.1 the maximum volume size for dedupe/compression is now equal to the maximum volume size for the controller – which means it could be anywhere from 30 TB on the (now) entry level FAS2040 to 100 TB on the highest end FAS6280.  To determine what the maximum volume size is for your controller, check the System Configuration Guide.

Anyone out there looking at these new controllers from NetApp?

Popularity: 12% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, Hardware, NetApp Tagged With: , ,

Touring the NetApp RTP Datacenter

October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

About a year ago at one of the local Tech OnTap events NetApp did a presentation about their new datacenter and I had been wanting to tour the facility since then.   I was out in the RTP area a few weeks ago for some NetApp training, and luckily I had an extra day where I could finally see the datacenter NetApp calls the Global Dynamic Lab.

The datacenter is impressive, not only in terms of its looks and attention to detail – but also with the amount of equipment they can support at just a fraction of the cost of a typical datacenter.  NetApp was able to reduce construction costs on this datacenter by more than 2/3 and also reduce operating costs by about 60%, and in doing so was still able to deliver more power and cooling per rack than the industry average.  My first thought after hearing this from our tour guide was that it really matches NetApp’s current tag line: Do more with less.

Once we walked into the datacenter floor one of the first screens you see gives some environmental info.

At a glance you can see todays PUE, as well as the months average among other things.  It also shows the outside air info, being from Minnesota my first thought when I landed in Raleigh was how amazing the weather is – and this datacenter takes advantage of it.  Since approximately 60% of the time the weather is 70 degrees or cooler, it has the ability to automatically pull in outside air as much as possible to help in cooling the datacenter.  The average PUE for this datacenter is around 1.2 – one of the lowest in the industry, having a PUE of 1.2 gives an estimated savings of $7 million in operating expenses annually versus a PUE of 2.0.

After reviewing the screen I was ready to head in and see the rest of the place, looking down the main aisle gives you this view:

There are 36 cold rooms, and each cold room is based on a max of 720 kW, each rack can go up to 42kW as long as the total cooling load per cold room does not exceed 720 kW.  There were rows and rows of various NetApp controllers and storage (both demo and a subset of production are run from this location), all different kinds of server vendors and primarily Cisco for the switching (if there were other vendors, I didn’t seem them in the aisles I walked through).  This was definitely a more easy-going tour than the SwitchNAP datacenter tour I had gone on just a month ago at VMworld, I kept expecting security guards to be following our every step.  Joking aside, I’d have to say these are without a doubt two of the most impressive data centers I’ve seen.

There is also a video tour on Youtube as well that gives a little more detail:

All in all it was a great tour and I’d like to thank @chrisgeb and @that1guynick and other (gasp) non-Twitter users for helping to facilitate.  The only downside was I wasn’t able to take a spare FAS3210 home for my own lab, at one point I did hear “if you can get it on the plane you can take it home” though I didn’t take the challenge.

There is a really good whitepaper that NetApp as published on the GDL called: Breaking Down the Glass House: NetApp Global Dynamic Lab Delivers Higher Power Density, Greater Efficiency, and Lower Capital and Operating Costs which may also set a record for the longest name for a whitepaper.  If you are interested in more info on it I’d highly recommend checking it out.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, NetApp

VMworld 2011 Day 3 Wrap Up

August 31, 2011 By 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 Tedd Fox, the product manager for end user computing.  I use the view client on my iPad often – it’s not quite “there” for making it a standard use today in my opinion – but it’s a very functional application that works great in a pinch or for quick tasks.  The View client utilizes only PCoIP (no option for RDP) and one of the minor annoyances I had with the product that Wyse PocketCloud didn’t suffer from (PocketCloud is an RDP connection to View) was that if I switch to another app and then switch back to View – I have to re-login to my session again.  The next version of the View client will support being able to multi task.  It was also mentioned that the next version will have an embedded RSA soft token.  Another new feature I was very impressed with was this:

Just having a big keyboard and trackpad probably doesn’t look like much of a feature, but what you don’t see is that it’s connected to an external display via the iPad display adapter so you get your full View desktop display on the external monitor and a large keyboard and large trackpad above the keyboard on the iPad screen.  I know Apple won’t allow this, but I’d love it if I could pair a bluetooth mouse with the iPad, as well as my bluetooth keyboard (which I already can pair) and then when I’m in the office I could have a very functional and portable thin client device.

My afternoon was a tour of the SwitchNAP datacenter.  SwitchNAP was one of the locations for housing the servers used by the VMware Labs team.  There have been a lot of blog posts about SwitchNAP so I don’t want to duplicate too much of the work that is already out there, but their datacenter sits in the old Enron Broadband building.  Around the early 2000′s Enron was planning on arbitraging bandwidth much like they were doing with power.  Right before they were set to open they declared bankruptcy.  SwitchNAP was across the street at this point and spent the next 9 months pulling that facility out of Enron’s bankruptcy.  As you would imagine I jumped at the chance to tour the facility – especially after finding out it was completely free.  I knew this place was secure, and unlike any other datacenter – when we pulled up this was the view by the security door.

Unfortunately that was the only picture I was able to get, we were informed that pictures of any kind are not allowed once inside the doors and considering we always had a minimum of two security guards with us with arms bigger than my thigh – I didn’t try and sneak any pics…  They did mention we can use the pictures from their website however, this picture is of the main entrance:

And this picture is a close up of the gate we had to go through to get out of the lobby and into the building:

Once through the gate, we walked down a hallway and about halfway down you could see into their NOC(gotta say, the cubes are a little nicer than mine…):

Inside the datacenter there were a number of these(of note is the enclosed hot aisles, our tour guide also mentioned that they currently have the lowest PUE of any datacenter):

And the last picture showing the 3 different feeds, none of which are ever over 66% utilization:

A few stats on the campus:

  • 2,200,000 sq ft of space
  • 500 MVA power capacity
  • 567 MVA of generator capacity
  • 294 MVA UPS suply
  • 202,000 tons of cooling
  • Armed 24/7/365 by military trained security staff

As I mentioned the VMworld Labs were hosted here with 2 x 1Gb point to point links, we also heard they have customers like eBay with around 36PB of storage (soon to double that) with a large Hadoop cluster cranking away on the data, Mozy has resources in the building as well as certain government agencies they weren’t able to share details on.

One thing that struck me was everything is done for a reason there, and one example of that is they custom make their racks and paint the front of the rack blue (picture below) and the back of the rack red.  The tour guide told us that a number of their customers would accidentally rack things backwards so they did this so that blue indicates the cold aisle and red indicates that contained hot aisle.

Leaving the facility the only word I could think of that sums up everything about SwitchNAP is ‘overkill’.  And I mean that in a good way, it’s unbelievably secure and everything is designed to support any type of failure you could think of.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, VMworld 2011

VMworld 2011 Day 2 Wrap Up

August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Day two started out with a keynote from Steve Herrod, which was one of the best VMware keynotes I have seen.  I thought he did a great job not only on the simplicity of the presentation (whiteboard style pictures and not text heavy PowerPoint slides) but also on the content and delivery.  He talked about some of the futures of VMware but blended in just the right about of technical information and screenshots/demos to keep the audience engaged in the presentation.  There were a number of new announcements made and it really tied in well with the keynote given yesterday by Paul Maritz about moving to a post-PC era.  The idea moving forward is that we need to be able to assign policies based on the person, and not based on the device.  It shouldn’t matter matter if I’m using my mobile phone, my tablet device or my laptop – I should have access to the same set of applications, I should have access to the same data – and perhaps most importantly, IT should be able to be manage those applications and data.

One of the demos that was shown was for ThinApp Factory, the idea here is that we can automate the extraction of the app out of our Windows OS.  While there have been comments recently about VMware’s enhancements to View (or lack thereof), this was the first item among many mentioned today that really showed some of the amazing features VMware will have to solidify their post PC era solutions.

Horizon mobile touches on what I covered yesterday in my post about the Day 1 keynote from Paul Maritz, the idea is the user gives their phone number to IT and they can push out a “work phone” down to the users phone and have separation between their personal phone and their work phone.  They mentioned LG and Samsung will soon be coming out with compatible Android based phones in the near future.

AppBlast screenshot courtesy of VMware

I touched on this briefly towards the end of our VDI Kung Fu session on VMware Community TV, but I’m a heavy tablet user – and more specifically, a heavy iPad user.  Going from meeting to meeting all day I’ve stopped bringing my heavy laptop with me all the time and only bring my iPad and a case to hold a stylus, business cards, and VGA Adapter.  I use it for presentations, whiteboarding, light Office work etc.  One of the challenges in using it to work on a Word or Excel file is that you have multiple steps to first get the data into the application but then to get the data back to the original location after you edit it.  It’s far from a simple, seamless process.  The demo today of AppBlast showed an iPad user who was able to access Excel 2010 via the native Safari web browser and edit their spreadsheet.  AppBlast is a service that can deliver any application to any device supporting HTML 5.  Windows vSphere Client?  Microsoft Office?  Putty? Absolutely.  I can’t wait to get my hands on this and I think delivering it via HTML 5 is perfect, with an App you need to worry about the politics of the App Store you are living in – but with HTML 5 any device that supports it can be off and running.  Below was the screenshot VMware used that displays a list of applications the user is entitled to that they can then launch via the Safari browser on their iPad.

Getting access to my corporate applications is great, but what about my documents?  Next Steve asked the crowd who was all using Dropbox and the overwhelming response was “Yes”, however the next question was who should be using Dropbox in their environment and the vast majority did not.  Enter Project Octopus – a Dropbox style alternative (it even has hooks into Windows Explorer to put a green check mark on files/folders ala Dropbox) but more important – IT still can remain in control of the data.  This is something I’m really excited for, at Nexus we (like many companies out there) are having challenges sharing documents between our team especially when we aren’t in the office regularly.  There are some solutions out there like Dropbox or Box.net, but do you want your corporate data sitting on Amazon S3?  Probably not.It almost seems like “old news” already(it’s funny how thanks to Twitter we can feel like other things that just happened hours ago might be considered old news), but there are amazing performance improvements in vSphere 5:

  • 32 vCPUs per virtual machine
  • 1TB RAM per virtual machine
  • 1,000,000 IOPS per ESX host
  • Say hello to the monster VMs

Performance improvements are great, but noisy neighbor issues can cause performance problems in any environment.  We can better handle this problem now with some of the enhancements around storage and network IO control.  Also announced was VXLAN, which isn’t yet an IETF standard but they are working on it.  It allows you to encapsulate a layer 2 packet inside of a layer 3 packet (along the lines of Cisco OTV), imagine failing over your datacenter and not having to worry about re-assigning IP addresses to your servers to match the network info at the other location.

There was also a demo of “Navigator” which has the ability to discover services running on an ESX host.  Services like SQL among others are discovered automatically, and without the need for installing an agent.  It also requires no changes to the operating system or the application.  It has the ability to discover how applications relate to each other and we were even able to see the protection level of the VM right from this dashboard (protection level meaning if it was part of a Site Recovery Manager plan).

I mentioned yesterday I would post some pictures of the #CXIparty, well – I forgot… However, Steven Foskett has some pictures on his Flickr page here and trust me, they are much better than anything my iPhone would have taken.

Today was pretty light on sessions for me, with the keynote in the morning and VDI Kung Fu just after lunch – I ended up spending some time in the solutions exchange after that.  One session that I was interested in was BCO2874 – vSphere High Availability 5.0 and SMP Fault Tolerance.  One of the barriers to adoption of FT has been it’s only supported on single vCPU machines.  Otherwise it’s an amazing feature: a VM running in lockstep on another ESX host that can survive a host failure (not with HA – but an instant take over by the shadow virtual machine).  One of the things I like about it is the ease of use, it’s not something that needs to be configured when the VM is created and has to stay running all the time.  Instead, you can enable it only when necessary – turn on FT when you have the need for it, and disable it later if you want to.  This session covered multi vCPUs in FT protected virtual machines and actually showed a demo of a 4 vCPU Oracle database server being protected by FT.  As you might expect, this generates quite a bit of network traffic – the demo given used about 20% of a 10GbE link for FT traffic.

That’s it for today – tonight is a number of great vendor parties!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, VMworld 2011

VMworld 2011 Day 1 Wrap Up

August 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Image courtesy of Tony Dunn from Flickr

Day 1 is is just about in the books for VMworld 2011, with events all day yesterday and a non stop flow of information today, my body was trying to convince myself it’s Friday rather than only Monday.  My day started out with one of my most anticipated sessions, VSP1682: VMware vSphere Clustering Q&A with @DuncanYB @FrankDenneman and @ccolotti.  I was a little worried about making this session due to some Sunday night activities but luckily I made it and I always have the weekend to catch up on sleep…

One session I really enjoyed was ESXi Quiz Show, this was without a doubt the most entertaining session I have ever attended.  It was a game show setup with @johntroyer as the host.  I really hope future VMworld’s will have similar sessions and I’d love it if they could include audience participation via Twitter.

The keynote this year was on the afternoon of Day 1, and a few of the highlights from it were:

  • Labs were 100% public cloud this year (last year it was a hybrid cloud model)
  • Over 200,000 VMs are expected to be deployed in the labs
  • There are over 60,000 VMUG members
  • There are more VMs created every second than “physical babies” born per second (as opposed to virtual babies?)
  • There are more vMotions per second than planes taking off per second globally
  • Touched briefly on View 5 features: Bandwidth improvements, client ubiquity, and improvements around VoIP/Unified Communications.  Personally I can’t wait for View 5 to get released now that there is better bandwidth controls for PCoIP.

A session I didn’t get into today was VSP3205: Tech Preview for vStorage APIs.  This was a futures session with the general idea of being able to store a VMDK as its own entity on a storage array natively.  I’d highly recommend checking out this post by @scott_lowe for his recap on the session.

The solutions exchange/lounge area is very cool this year, with a park theme and games like volleyball, basketball etc.  Check out this pool on Flickr from HP to get an idea.

Tonight isn’t quite over yet, there is still the #CXIparty with my employer, @NexusMN being one of the sponsors.  I will likely have some camera phone pictures of the event to post tomorrow.

If you aren’t out here, follow me on Twitter and catch some of my updates throughout the conference.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, VMworld 2011

vExpert 2011

July 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Excited to announce I was selected as a VMware vExpert for 2011.  The email from @jtroyer came in on Saturday which made an already great holiday weekend that much better.  If you aren’t familiar with the vExpert program, the summary is:

The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book authors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts have gone above and beyond their day jobs to share their technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to their colleagues and community.

More details are available at this link.

I’m extremely honored to be named alongside so many great people.  Here is a list of the current vExperts with the website and Twitter accounts: http://www.van-lieshout.com/vexpert/ and here is a Twitter list for them as well.

Congrats to all the vExperts!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, VMware Tagged With: ,

A New Year, and New Upgrades to Home Lab

January 1, 2011 By 6 Comments

HP ProCurve 1810G-24

Now that 2011 is upon us, I’ve been focusing on updating my home lab so that I can prepare for the VMware VCAP exams as well as the Cisco CCNP exams, my goal is to finish both of these by the end of 2011.  To accomplish this I needed to make some upgrades in my home lab.  The first upgrade I needed to make was switching, about 2 weeks ago the only gigabit switch I had in my lab (a Linksys SRW2024) decided to take a permanent vacation and I set out to find a replacement.  Since there is a switching exam for the CCNP my first thought was to replace it with something that would also help me on that exam, however I quickly found that a 24 port GbE switch just wasn’t going to happen given my lab budget. I did some research and found that a lot of people with home labs are using the HP ProCurve 1810g, so I ordered a 24 port model.  I haven’t used HP switches much but I liked that it is fan less (noise is a concern for my lab, I can hear it running upstairs if I turn on all the equipment) and also that it comes with a lifetime warranty.

Synology DS1511+

Next on my list was storage, right now I have a NetApp DS14 shelf with 14x72Gb FC disks.  Remember how I said I can hear my lab upstairs?  Well this guy is the main reason, not to mention the fact that it is getting too expensive to run – especially when you consider how much usable space I’m getting out of it and that this particular system cannot run dedupe.  I had already been looking to upgrade my storage as I have a Drobo that I use with my Mac that has been giving me a lot of problems, I looked into most of the SMB offerings out there like the Iomega, QNAP, and Synology and in the end I picked the Synology DS1511+ I also picked up 5 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT drives to go in it, this should give me enough space to move everything from my Drobo as well as give me storage for my lab virtual machines.  The Synology can do both NFS and iSCSI for my VMware environment, and for the moment I am planning on keeping my NetApp/Brocade equipment for the times I want to mock something up with FC.

Image courtesy of anthonyimages via Flickr

After my wallet heals a little, I still need to buy a few more things, a couple of whitebox servers to use for ESXi hosts (I’m going with whitebox servers over something like a HP ML110 or a Dell T110 due to noise).  I’m hoping to build one that supports 16Gb RAM, but may need to settle for 8Gb depending on cost, 2 of the virtual machines I will be running are the NetApp ONTAP 8.0.1 simulator as well as the EMC Celerra Uber VSA, together those two consume a good chunk of RAM by themselves – not to mention all the additional VMs I’m planning on running.

I also will need a couple of Cisco 3550 switches to use for L3 switching, and an additional 2950 switch to use for an access switch. I have a few Cisco 2600 routers (although none that are XM version) but I’m not sure if I have enough to properly do a routing lab, right now I’ve been using GNS3/Dynamips for my studying.  I plan on making another (or multiple) posts on training material/equipment for the various CCNP exams as I go through my studies.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, Home Lab Tagged With: , , , ,

VM Alignment for NFS datastores with ESXi using the vMA

December 28, 2010 By 6 Comments

It’s been pretty well documented that using the NetApp mbrscan/mbralign tools aren’t currently supported in ESXi, the main two ways around this that I am aware of are:

  • Keep an ESX host around so you can still use the alignment tools from the Service Console
  • Mount the datastore (if using NFS) to a Linux host and run the alignment tools from there

Since I had already deployed the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) I figured I would use that as my Linux VM.  In order to make this happen there are a couple of things we have to enable, first login via SSH to the vMA using the vi-admin user and run the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/portmap start
sudo /etc/init.d/nfslock start

Next I created a folder for mounting my NFS datastore (named na2_test_500g_sata)

sudo mkdir /mnt/na2_test_500g_sata

Note: You need to update your /etc/exports file on the NetApp to allow the vMA to mount the volume

sudo mount prd-na2:/vol/esx_test_500g_sata /mnt/na2_test_500g_sata

Now we need to copy the NetApp mbralign/mbrscan utility onto the vMA, I used a SFTP client to copy it onto my vMA appliance and then moved it to the /usr/bin directory

I won’t go into too much detail on mbrscan/mbralign as it’s use has been well documented, but the basics are:

To scan a VM for alignment:

sudo mbrscan /mnt/na2_test_500g_sata/delete_me/delete_me-flat.vmdk

And to fix alignment if necessary:

sudo mbralign /mnt/na2_test_500g_sata/delete_me/delete_me.vmdk

Note that once this process is done your VM will now be aligned, but it also left behind the original VMDK as a backup, once you confirmed the alignment was successful you will want to go back into the VM directory and remove the two -backup files.

Hopefully that can help for shops that are most Windows-based, I know NetApp (and I’m sure others) are working on tools to make this process even easier – and Windows Vista/7 and Server 2008 do not suffer from this misalignment issue by default.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Filed Under: Featured, NetApp, VMware, vSphere
« Older Posts