Datacenter

Since I was not able to attend the VMworld Europe 2009 conference this year, I am obtaining information from a far.  Here are the bits and pieces of information I have been able to obtain so far, mostly blog’s from people at the conference.

Jason Boche has a Blog entry on Tuesday keynote.

VMworld Europe 2009 Tuesday keynote

“

The general session keynote was kicked off by Maurizio Carli, General Manager EMEA. Maurizio briefly talked about VMware EMEA growth:

• VMworld Europe 2008 4,500 attendees
• VMworld Europe 2009 4,700 attendees
• 100 sponsors this year

Paul Maritz President and CEO began his keynote discussing today’s IT problems and how they are not sustainable into the future. The solution is:

• Efficiency
• Control
• Choice

VMware addresses the above with the following initiatives:

1. VDC-OS – Foundation for the Cloud
2. vCloud – Choice and Cloud Federation
3. vClient – Desktop as a Service

”

He also over views the following

VDC-OS

vCloud

vClient

Please check out his full bog post. http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/02/24/vmworld-europe-2009-tuesday-keynote/

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http://www.thevirtualblackhole.com/ has a write titled : VMworld Announcements Day One

“

Today was the official start of VMworld 2009 in Cannes, France.  Yesterday was partner day but today was the official start of the event. Today’s big announcement is as follows…

vSphere, is the term to define the “next generation” virtualization platform.

VDC-OS will ship in 2009 and will help in the adoption of the cloud infrastructure.

vShield Zones in VMware Clusters which will help control security with a mix of security type virtual machines via a virtual appliance.

CVP is the name for VMware’s bare metal desktop hypervisor when working with VMware View

VMware and Neverfail working in collaboration have developed vCenter Server Heartbeat which will give VirtualCenter the ability to fail over to a standby cluster and remove the need to run VirtualCenter in a Microsoft Clustering configuration.

VMware working in collaboration with Fujitsu Siemens have developed Flexframe for SAP to allow the virtualization of SAP

“

Full source post http://www.thevirtualblackhole.com/virtual-tech/vmworld-announcements-day-one

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http://www.earthtimes.org posted about Vizioncore, in this article.

Vizioncore Pulls The Covers Off Virtualization Management Roadmap at VMworld Europe 2009

“

CANNES, France – (Business Wire)VMworld Europe 2009 – Vizioncore Inc., the market leader in server virtualization management, today provided visitors to VMworld Europe 2009 with a preview of its latest virtual machine (VM) automation console, vControl, and demonstrations of Vizioncore’s complete product set including a preview of the next generation of Vizioncore vRanger Pro, code-named project Woodstock. Also on show is the recently announced vFoglight Pro and further details around the brand new Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI), a community driven development program sponsored by Vizioncore. Visit Vizioncore at Booth 106, between February 24-26 to see its full range of products on display.

“

They outline each product in the article.

Full source post http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/vizioncore-pulls-the-covers-off,726555.shtml

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http://vmblog.com/ has a blog post titled :

Brocade Showcases Unified Management and End-to-End Data Center Virtualization Solutions at VMworld Europe 2009

“

Brocade today announced that it will be participating at VMworld Europe 2009 with a host of virtualization-related topics and technology innovations, including a Brocade customer speaking session on virtualization best practices, a preview demonstration of unified management capabilities for next-generation data centers and a reference architecture paper demonstrating the ease and scalability of mixed virtual workloads running on Brocade storage area networks (SANs).

Further showcasing virtualization innovations, Brocade will host a live in-booth preview of the Brocade Management Plugin for managing VMware virtualized environments. This demonstration will showcase the potential of a new level of unified management that offers expanded visibility and automated management of a virtualized infrastructure beyond the confines of server networks and into shared storage.

Finally, Brocade will unveil a reference architecture paper that will help system administrators better design and implement VMware ESX 3.5 virtual servers on high-performance Brocade Fibre Channel SANs. This reference architecture can be used as a “toolkit” by providing additional tuning and setup guides for administrators installing VMware for the first time or optimizing an existing VMware environment.

“

They follow up with more on the subject.

Full Source Post http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/02/24/brocade-showcases-unified-management-and-end-to-end-data-center-virtualization-solutions-at-vmworld-europe-2009.aspx

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http://vmetc.com/ has a blog post titled : VMworld Europe 2009 Day 1 News: VDC-OS Private Clouds, CVP Client Hypervisor, vCenter Heartbeat, vShield Zones, and Virtualized SAP

Here is their take on what has been announced.

“

• VMware has confirmed that the VDC-OS initiative will ship in 2009 and foster the adoption of internal, private cloud infrastructure. VMware envisions this shift in infrastructure to include the desktop with technologies that provide the vClient initiative. I am hoping to hear a clearer message about the VDC-OS / vSphere / ESX naming of initiatives / technology layers / products, but news provided today does not seem to offer any additional clarity.
• VMware has a bare metal desktop hypervisor and it’s name is CVP. Working with VMware View, CVP will allow users to work offline and be managed centrally by VDI administrators.
• VMware and Neverfail have developed a high availability solution for VirtualCenter (VC) in the form of an active / passive host based cluster named VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat. This solution appears to be primarily designed for VC to fail over to a standby server on the LAN, but apparently a WAN configuration is also available. Previously, virtual administrators would have to rely on MSCS Clustering solutions to provide high availability for physical instances of VC.
• The introduction of VMware vShield Zones in ESX Clusters will allow for a more efficient mix of virtual machines without compromising security. VI design in the past has presented challenges when considering how to isolate VMs in the DMZ from VMs in production for example, and this has lead to the creation of additional ESX hosts and Clusters to insure isolation and prevent system compromise. Now with the vShield Zones virtual appliance, different security policies can be created and enforced even as guests migrate between ESX hosts thus allowing the consolidation of ESX hosts and VMs.
• Fujitsu Siemens Computers and VMware have announced Flexframe for SAP which allows companies to virtualize SAP. Flexframe is a solution that provides guaranteed resources for the best end user experience under dynamically changing conditions.

“

Full source post : http://vmetc.com/2009/02/24/vmworld-europe-2009-day-1-news-vdc-os-private-clouds-cvp-client-hypervisor-vcenter-heartbeat-vshield-zones-and-virtualized-sap/

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Vmworld has released the following

Expand Networks press kit

and Novell Announces Broad Collaboration with VMware to Build SUSE Linux Enterprise Appliances on VMware ESX

Keynote Tuesday, February 24 Paul Maritz, President and CEO of VMware

all from VMworld.com

That is all for now, I will keep you updated as I find more information.

Dave Graham has posted a blog titled : Refreshing Celerra: New Models + New Features

“

EMC has refreshed the Celerra line a bit. With today’s announcement, we’ve added the following hardware models to the fold:

• NS-480 with 2 or 4 datamovers
• NS-960 with support for up to 960 drives
• NS-G8 with support for up to 8 datamovers and connectivity to Symmetrix & CLARiiON systems

Now that that’s been covered, let’s cover some of the other details across the line…

Here’s what the Celerra line-up looks like today:

• The Celerra NS-G8 gateway platform supports up to eight X-Blades, connecting to both CLARiiON and Symmetrix storage arrays. The NS-G8 replaces the Celerra NS80G and the Celerra NSX. The NS-G8 provides both performance and capacity scaling—up to 128 TB of usable IP storage per X-Blade.
• The Celerra NS-960 unified storage platform incorporates up to eight X-Blades with a fully integrated back-end CLARiiON CX4-960 storage array. The NS-960 replaces the Celerra NS80 and provides the highest capacity scaling—up to 128 TB usable IP storage per X-Blade.
• The Celerra NS-480 unified storage platform integrates the CLARiiON CX4-480 array with two or four X-Blades and replaces the Celerra NS40. The Celerra NS-480 scales to 480 drives, and up to 64 TB of usable IP storage per X-Blade.
• The Celerra NS-120 unified storage platform integrates the CLARiiON CX4-120 array with one or two X-Blades and replaces the Celerra NS20. The Celerra NS-120 scales to 120 drives, and up to 32 TB of usable IP storage per X-Blade.

Yes, that’s straight from the press-release but I didn’t feel like coming up with another reinventing of the product lineup.  You’ll also be able to use EMC’s EFD (enterprise flash drives) with these Celerra products (sorry, not on the NX4) for even faster NFS/CIFS storage! (I’d point out that it’d be more beneficial on iSCSI or Fibre Channel but who doesn’t want a screamingly fast CIFS share? )

A couple of cool things to note, however, on the software side:

Compliance:

• Celerra File-Level Retention has a new Compliance option that fully meets SEC Rule 17a-4(f).

General DART features:

• Celerra data deduplication
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 iSCSI and CIFS (SMB2) support
• Windows Identity Management for UNIX (IdMU)

One thing that’s key is the addition of Celerra data deduplication.  With the maintenance release to DART 5.6, any customer on a Celerra NS-500/700, NS-20/40/80, and NX4 will be able to add file-level deduplication to their box provided they’re under current maintenance. Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE? (as in, no extra charge) Last I heard, another specific vendor still charged for that feature…oh, and if you’re using Avamar or EDL products from EMC, you can avoid the re-inflation process for backing your data up…Celerra can transfer that over with no penalty. Very cool stuff!

A couple of hooks that you’ll see coming down the road are a vCenter plug-in to help with VDI deployments on the Celerra.  While free, it’s important to note that this is supported by EMC Celerra Engineering, so, while it’s cool to play around with, it probably should be relegated to test/dev for now.  I’d honestly recommend using VMware’s View Composer to do your VDI deployments but, it’s nice to know that the capability exists elsewhere.

I’ll leave you with some more release information below. As always, hit me up for questions as you have them!!!

• Next-generation Celerra platforms with CLARiiON CX4 technology deliver up to twice the capacity of the previous generation (up to 960 disks).
• Low power SATA II drives give customers new levels of energy efficiency.
• Enterprise Flash drives deliver Tier 0 storage, with 30 times more IOPS than 15K drives.
• Celerra file system deduplication with compression, included at no additional cost, delivers maximum storage efficiency for primary and archived file systems.
• Celerra unified storage connectivity includes low-cost NAS and iSCSI connectivity, plus high-throughput Fibre Channel and Multi-Path File System (MPFS) access.
• Celerra File-Level Retention now includes a compliance option for file system archiving.
• Celerra Startup Assistant’s Celerra Provisioning Wizard extends the easy Celerra setup to include storage provisioning.

“

I thought this was good to know, and I wanted to share his post.

Please view the full post Here http://flickerdown.com/2009/02/refreshing-celerra-new-models-new-features/

Most IT Admin’s at some point deal with Vendor’s directly. No matter if they are the ones to write the check, there is quite the negotiation involved when it comes to getting the product you want, for the price you want. And even after the fact, sometimes you forget what required components you needed, and end up buying other services for a higher price.

http://storagebod.typepad.com/storagebods_blog has a article titled: Deal or No Deal? This post by Stephen generated this blog post.

“

1) Single vendor relationships are not good to drive value. Competition is key, this does not mean that every bid should be competitive, there aren’t enough hours in the day and everyone gets tired. But every eighteen months, pick a technology area and review it. Do both a technology review and a commercial review. Your review cycles may be shorter, it depends on your work load.

2) Review street prices regularly; there are a variety of sources for this, some formal, some informal. Vendors do not like it but they know it happens. But it is important to understand why prices differ; it could be size of organisation or it could be a prestige thing. Let your sales-man know that you are paying above street price and that you are reviewing things.

3) New requirements need to go competitive. A sign that things have got too comfortable is that you simply default giving new business to the incumbent.

4) Be aware of the market, talk to the incumbent about competitive products; let them know that you are aware of the competition. Attend trade-shows; talk to other vendors, I know sales-guys are irritating but when the incumbent phones up and finds you are in a meeting with their rivals, there will be a moment of doubt.

And when you are doing the deal, here’s a few tips and thoughts. I am not a procurement expert but I have spent a few million here and there on storage.

1) List price is meaningless; discount levels are meaningless. Vendors should produce a cost of manufacturer and then try to negotiate a premium on this. Vendors also hate breaking things down by line-item as it reveals that you are paying massive amounts for commodity items. Do not let a vendor flannel you with a cost for a solution, get it broken down and understand what you are paying for.

2) Maintenance; you should always be able to negotiate improved maintenance terms. Hardware maintenance is pretty easy to get extended gratis, software is often harder. Review maintenance regularly; if a piece of software is at or close to it’s terminal release, consider dropping the maintenance. If you really need it at a latter point, you can often re-instate, you’ll have to pay the back maintenance but you’ll likely not need it anyway. Make sure this is contractually agreed.

3) Technical refresh/take-out; if you are refreshing with the current vendor, only pay maintenance on one lot of kit whilst the refresh is happening. If you are refreshing with a new vendor, agree that the new maintenance/warranty period only starts when the migration is complete. Always try to negotiate a trade-in.

4) Software licensing; try to negotiate a pay for the amount you use as opposed to the pay for the whole frame!  And always try to agree that software licenses are transferable between frames.

5) A vendor TCO model is worthless unless they are willing to guarantee it without caveats. If they think their kit will save you money, skin in the game is key!

6) Training; I have had teams which have had more training than any other team in a department because I ensure that any deal is sweetened by the provision of training for ‘free’. Big deals should come with free training and I am amazed at the number of people who do not leverage this.

7) One-off-deals; one-off-deals, you know the end of quarter/year specials? We all do them, we all regret them at times. Plan your one-off-deals, you know they’re coming but treat them like a normal deal. You know when the vendor quarters/year-ends are; so try and align your procurement cycles if you can. And I’ve never had the pricing on a one-off-deal pulled because I have missed the cut-off.

8) Guaranteed price decline, the cost of kit goes down all the time; ensure that you’ve got a guaranteed price deflator on a quarter-by-quarter basis to reflect this

“

I think these are great things to think about, and 7. has relevance, as I know a few Admin’s that have taken that path.

Please read his full post, as I didn’t quote then entire article.

Thanks to Storagebod.

Full Source http://storagebod.typepad.com/storagebods_blog/2009/02/deal-or-no-deal.html

Dave Graham, at Dave Graham’s Weblog posted the following post titled : VMware ESX alignment document for EMC Clariion & Symmetrix

“

For folks that were on today’s VMware Communities Roundtable live podcast, mention was made of partition alignment under VMFS & the storage array being used. To that end, here is EMC’s document on VMware ESX connectivity to EMC Symmetrix and CLARiiON storage which covers partition alignment.

Document is here & Powerlink Location.

“

Thanks for Dave for providing this information for the public.

Source Post : http://flickerdown.com/2009/02/vmware-esx-alignment-document-for-emc-clariion-symmetrix/

VDI: VMware View 3 Premier vs. Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise 2.1

Jason B has a new post on VDI vs Citrix.

“by jason on Feb.09, 2009, under Virtualization

VDI was hot in 2008 and it’s predicted to be even hotter in 2009.  On the heels of this prediction, VMware commissioned The Tolly Group to compare two VDI solutions head to head:  VMware View 3 Premier and Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise 2.1.  The Tolly Group has published their findings in an eight page report which you can grab here.  The results are not at all surprising:

Executive Summary

The VMware View 3 VDI solution deploys more simply and more rapidly than Citrix XenDesktop 2.1.  VMware provides more comprehensive, efficient image and storage management of virtual desktops.  It provides end users with a quality of experience on the LAN that matches or exceeds that offered by the Citrix solution.

The Tolly Group used a standard virtual desktop configuration for both test environments:

• 1 CPU core
• 512MB RAM
• 8GB Hard disk drive storage
• Microsoft Windows Media Player 9
• Microsoft Office 2007 (full installation)
• Microsoft Windows XP SP2

In their report, they confirm the following five facts as the bottom line:

VMware View 3:

1. Installed more rapidly and with considerably fewer steps and less manual intervention
2. Provides simpler image management that makes more efficient use of disk
3. Requires no manual configuration of Microsoft Active Directory or DHCP
4. Allows management of all VDI functions through a single web-based GUI
5. Provides equivalent end-user experience on LAN as Citrix for Microsoft Office applications

Given the opportunity, Citrix declined to actively participate in the product comparisons.

“

I thought this was interesting, and I wanted to post it.

Thanks to Jason.

Source Post http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/02/09/vdi-vmware-view-3-premier-vs-citrix-xendesktop-enterprise-21/

A local vendor sent me these links, and I thought I would share.

“

http://www.xiotech.com/About_Press_Release.aspx?ID=NR-09-17-08 Virtual View, recognized in Storage Software for Virtualization category, dramatically simplifies storage monitoring, management and provisioning tasks in VMWare virtual environments

http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=2100  “Xiotech gets my nod for best technology initiative of 2008”

http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=169956&WT.svl=news2_1  Article featuring Dan Lewis of USC Marshall School of Business. Lewis declares that his Emprise 7000 system provides an 8x better performance than his old HP EVA3000. He also praises Virtual View, self-healing capabilities, and reduced energy consumption

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/28223-Five-hot-storage-technologies-for-2-9-and-five-flops- ISE among the top 5 technologies for 2009

http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=2085 Jon Toigo comments on the most important IT-related things that happened in 2008. Xiotech holds both the #1 and #2 spots – with ISE and Web Services based management.

http://www.crn.com/storage/212501502;jsessionid=4JXY4Y42KKETWQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?pgno=9 The 10 Biggest Storage Stories Of 2008

http://www.xiotech.com/About_Press_Release.aspx?ID=NR-12-15-08  Xiotech Selected as 2009 Hot Companies Finalist

http://www.xiotech.com/About_Press.aspx#  More, more, more

http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2009/ndc1/012609-storage-rethink.html?page=1 Article on Web Services and ISE

“

Source Xiotech and local Vendor.

Dave Graham @ http://flickerdown.com wrote a blog about going tapeless.

“

I was asked the other day about the potential for finally going tapeless in Commercial and Enterprise spaces. Truth be told, this is becoming a more common occurence as those mechanical beasts hit the tail-end of their maintenance windows. With that in mind, what are some (not all) of the business drivers that move enterprises from tape to disk (or other mediums)?

“Tape is Dead!” has echoed through the halls of storage IT for quite some time. It’s been an ideological pursuit of the “next generation backup” mantra hawked by the Tier Ones in the storage space. What has been noted is the continued price depreciation of disk as capacity has increased, the tighter compliance metrics from government agencies, as well as the legacy of natural disasters that have arrived on the scene since 2001. Let’s unpack these a bit.

“

He discusses the following topic’s.

Price Depreciations and Increased Capacity

Tighter Compliance

Natural Disasters

Remediating the Problem

Price Depreciation and Capacity Increase – Tapeless

Tighter Compliance – Tapeless

Natural Disasters – Tapeless

Please check out the full post

http://flickerdown.com/2009/01/going-tapeless-in-enterprise/