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CloudComputeDatacenterSoftware

Finding the business case for cloud

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I went to New York two weeks ago with a single cloud question still lingering in my head. What is the real technical advantages that are driving people towards cloud. Why is this something I should be considering or advocating at work?

Cloud is both a marketing term and a technical term that I am hearing from every vendor, in lots of variation. But as I posted earlier, I can’t see the clear cost savings or footprint reduction associated with cloud that we saw with virtualization. If anything, cloud seems to create new work for IT departments. So, why is this something to move forward with?

I believe I may have found an answer in New York at HP’s Pathways to Cloud event, an annual road show event to take the cloud message to HP’s customers, partners and employees around the country. Unlike other changes to the datacenter, it is business and not technological advances that is driving the adoption of cloud. (I had heard this before and obviously forgotten it.) Cloud is more agile, to borrow from the HP dictionary, meaning that the turn around necessary to deploy new solutions on the cloud is measured in hours rather than weeks with traditional IT and procurement. Business is now dictating quick turn around of the supporting services that they need to meet customer needs faster.

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ComputeDatacenterStorageTrends

Looking into the future of hyperscale and ARM in the datacenter

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

It is undoubted that the next wave of computing appears to be based around low energy, high performance chips like ARM processors.  All of the current generation smart phones use these system on a chip designs which increasing powerful devices.  They are as capable and powerful as many of our desktop computers.

The datacenter today, however, is clearly based around the x86 and x64 architecture which has supplanted all other competitive chips from the market.  There are still some small markets for RISC chips, but clearly the largest part of the market is based around x86.

With all the advantages of ARM for mobile devices, it makes sense that large companies are experimenting with using these chipsets for datacenter applications.  This will certainly mean new software projects to make use of the ARM architecture, but long term, the low power and high density could invent massive new computing platforms in the future.

In October, I spent some time in Houston at the HP facility there learning about their newest innovations, such as hyperscale computing and EcoPOD datacenters – all innovations seeking to increase the density and efficiency of computing.  HP ‘RedStone’ development platform is a proof-of-concept hardware platform and is created to get HP’s partner ecosystem some hands-on time to run their applications and figure out what this new configuration can be potentially leveraged for.  The overall strategy moving forward for these ultra low power, high density computing is what HP is calling Project Moonshot, and ‘RedStone’ is just the first rocket on that trajectory.

‘RedStone’ boasts some impressive numbers in terms of density and power consumption.  A single rack unit can enclose over 3,000 system on a chip processors.  The equivalent of this in an x86 architecture would take an entire row of racks for that number of processors.

Lets be honest.  There aren’t many customers who can really harness a single rack with over 3,000 CPU’s.  Applications for such hardware are specialized and the customers are large or specialty organizations, initially I’m thinking super computing.  But, also, web farms and large scale cloud computing could be potential applications too.  For large scale websites like Amazon and Facebook, adapting their software to use ARM could yield large benefits in space and power consumption.  But also, cloud vendors, where we are already changing the underlying software to some degree may also make a practical place for this in the market.

Hyperscale and ‘Redstone’ are clearly plays to the largest players in the datacenter and enterprise – content farms and massive websites plus supercomputing applications.  But over time, I think that even 1U and 2U rack-mount enclosures for these could trickle into the traditional datacenter, further driving convergence and shrinking footprints of compute in similar ways that blade enclosures have.

I realize that much of this is old news, but it has taken a bit of time for me to process through what this actually means to my datacenter.  I initially thought these announcements had no bearing on my daily work, but in recent weeks, I have realized that any innovations made for the large players in computing would eventually trickle down to the smallest of datacenters as well.

I really began to think about how these ultra-small computers could really revolutionize small office servers and computing.  In my consulting years, I worked for a number of small law offices.  Most of these ran Microsoft Small Business Server for email and shared calendaring, as well as file storage and faxing.  These offices would have been able to help from virtualization and failover to eliminate their single point of failure, but the required infrastructure really placed these capabilities out of their reach.  But, packaging several ARM systems into a single enclosure with bundled flash storage available to all of them could easily take and extend virtualization and cloud towards this market.  Even more so, since the software will need to be rewritten, it can take into account a completely different architecture during deployment.

Both VMware and Microsoft are working on ports of their flagship OS towards ARM processors – VMware experimenting with dual-personality phones and a hypervisor to separate work and pleasure on a personal device and Microsoft is writing the next version of Windows for ARM in hopes of gaining the tablet market.  Once the core code is ported, its a matter of time before these can extend to datacenter specific versions.  Not to mention, Linux vendors are already quickly working towards porting their OSes to ARM for use in these applications.

I’ll admit, its pretty cool stuff to think about the what-ifs and possibilities that this could lead to.  I don’t have a crystal ball or any sort of insider knowledge, all the above is simply my wild imagination and speculation.

 

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CloudDatacenterStorageVirtualization

Crossing the great divide towards the cloud

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

In the past year, I have been fortunate to have many different views of cloud services – from SaaS, PaaS, ITaaS, to WuPaaS.  Ok, the last one is a Warm-up Party as a Service, but you get my drift.  It seems every vendor has a slightly different take on cloud. But, in effort to simplify, I believe that one thing hold true across all offerings today:  Cloud is a radically different way to handling computing for companies and there are complex concepts that must be understood in moving towards a cloud.

In my mind, and from checking with my peers, the cloud is almost a polar opposite of the established IT department.  Cloud today seems to be working best for new companies which don’t have the established IT infrastructure.  Cloud offers a major cost advantage compared with creating your own IT shop from scratch, with pay as you go and on-demand pricing and availability.  I’m not sure how much value cloud offers to a heavily virtualized, established IT shop with storage, compute and networking already in place.

For established IT groups, moving towards IT as a Service is the main goal – to replace and augment all the traditional IT functions performed by internal system administration and storage groups.  Testing cloud services with a Software as a Service offering is probably the easiest first step – because it involves a subset of users (sales, for instance).  But the nirvana goal would be paying for on-demand usage of computing and storage from a service provider and eliminating most or all of capital investment in IT equipment.

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DatacenterStorageTech Field DayVMwarevSphere

Pure Storage, Pure Performance.

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

 

image

While at Tech Field Day – Virtualization Field Day, I had a chance to sit through a Presentation by Pure Storage. Below are my thoughts.

Pure Storage is all about giving you and your VMware Server or View environment SSD performance, at a reduced cost.

Check out the message about the Products they have at the Pure Storage Web Site.

Here are a few slides from the Deck they gave us.

image

image

image

Below I have included some pictures provided while at Pure Storage with Tech Field Day – Virtualization Field Day http://techfieldday.com/2012/vfd2

controller front

controller no bezelController - back

 

Storage Shelf - Back

 

Some Spec’s.

image

 

Here are some Video’s they provided.

 

Other Tech Field Day Blogger’s, Blog Posts.

 

Pure Storage – Pure Genius (Brandon Riley)

Pure Storage Tackles Storage Shenanigans (Chris Wahl)

Pure Storage’s Impact on VDI – Tech Field Day (Dwayne Lessner)

Tech Field Day Video on Pure Storage.

All content provided by Pure Storage, CC Pure Storage.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this.

 

 

Roger Lund

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DatacenterNewsStorage

VMware vSphere 5.0 Update 1 : Released.

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

Great News! VMware vSphere 5.0 Update 1 has been released.

Download it now!

Whats new in update 1?

“

What’s New

The following information describes some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESXi:

  • Support for new processors – ESXi 5.0 Update 1 supports new AMD and Intel Processors. See the VMware Compatibility Guide for details.
  • Support for additional guest operating systems – ESXi 5.0 Update 1 adds support for Mac OS X Server Lion 10.7.2 and 10.7.3.
  • New or upgraded device drivers – ESXi 5.0 Update 1 adds support for Native Storage Drivers for Intel C600 series chipset and upgrades LSI MegaRAID SAS driver to version 5.34.

Resolved Issues – In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.” 

Full VMware ESXi 5.0 Update 1 Release Notes

Make sure to check out the Resolved Issues 

a ton interesting resolved issues….

 “

 “vCenter SRM failover fails due to virtual machine misconfiguration

If a virtual machine configured in the recovery plan of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) uses one or more Raw Device Mapping (RDM) files, and the pointer file is in a folder other than the home folder, VMware vCenter SRM failover process fails. SRM logs contains entries similar to:

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"][2011-05-05 09:26:35.756 22348 verbose 'RSVm-49592-Task'] Error set to (vim.fault.InvalidDeviceBacking)

This issue is resolved in this release.”

 “Using the bundled Emulex BE2/BE2 NICs (be2net driver) †
When using vSphere 5.0 with Emulex BE2/BE3 NICs (be2net driver) in a HP FlexFabric/Flex-10 or IBM Virtual Fabric Adapter (VFA) environment, connectivity may not work properly on Windows virtual machines or the server when VLANs are configured.

This issue is resolved in this release.”

“DHCP server runs out of IP addresses
An issue in the DHCP client might cause the DHCP client to send DHCPRELEASE messages using the broadcast MAC address of the server. However, the release messages might be dropped by an intermediate DHCP proxy router. Eventually the DHCP server runs out of IP addresses.

This issue is resolved in this release. Now the release messages are sent using unicast addresses.esxcfg-nics -l command displays the description of pseudo-device as “Unknown Unknown”

This issue is resolved in this release.–>  “

” ESXi host might fail with a purple screen when a virtual machine connected to VMXNET 2 vNIC is powered on
The purple diagnostic screen displays an error message similar to the following:

0x412261b07ef8:[0x41803b730cf4]Vmxnet2VMKDevTxCoalesceTimeout@vmkernel#nover+0x2b stack: 0x412261b0
0x412261b07f48:[0x41803b76669f]Net_HaltCheck@vmkernel#nover+0xf6 stack: 0x412261b07f98

An error message similar to the following is written to VMkernel.log:

WARNING: Vmxnet2: 5720: failed to enable port 0x2000069 on vSwitch1: Limit exceeded^[[0m

This issue is resolved in this release.”

“Hostd might stop responding during Network File Copies
In rare instances, hostd might stop responding during a Network File Copy operation. This is usually triggered by environmental networking issues. Hostd logs messages similar to the following to /var/log/vmware/hostd in rapid succession (several times per millisecond) resulting in high CPU usage (80-100%):

[2010-12-14 13:15:39.238 F5135B90 warning 'Libs'] [NFC ERROR] NfcFssrvrRecv: failed with code = 9
[2010-12-14 13:15:39.238 F5135B90 info 'Libs'] NfcNetTcpRead: timed out waiting for data

These messages are logged until you restart hostd.

This issue is resolved in this release.”

 “Corrupt VMFS volume causes VMFS heap memory exhaustion
When an ESXi host encounters a corrupt VMFS volume, VMFS driver might leak memory causing VMFS heap exhaustion. This stops all VMFS operations causing orphaned virtual machines and missing datastores. vMotion operations might not work and attempts to start new virtual machines might fail with errors about missing files and memory exhaustion. This issue might affect all ESXi hosts that share the corrupt LUN and have running virtual machines on that LUN. This issue is resolved in this release”

 “vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) sends XCOPY commands to the source device, in violation of VAAI specification
XCOPY commands that VAAI sends to the source storage device might fail. By default, XCOPY commands should be sent to the destination storage device in accordance with VAAI specification.

This issue is resolved in this release.”

 “Performance of Windows 2000 Terminal Servers degrade after upgrading from ESXi 4.x
After you upgrade to ESXi 5.0 from ESXi 4.x, Windows 2000 Terminal Servers might perform poorly. The consoles of these virtual machines might stop responding and their CPU usage shows a constant 100%.

This issue is resolved in this release.”

And those are just a few.

 All qotes taken from http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsp_esxi50_u1_rel_notes.html#whatsnew

With the fixes, I would think we would all want to rush out and upgrade.

Roger L..[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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DatacenterStorageTrends

Are certifications important to an IT career?

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything substantial on the blog.  The past couple months have been an incredibly busy season for me.  Week before last, I studied for and passed my VCP5 certification exam, updating my VMware certification to the latest revision just before the deadline for upgrading it without taking class.

I spent the last week working through classes to help 5 of my co-workers and myself meet the MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator certification.  During the course of the week, I tweeted out about my success in passing a required exam and I got a reply from the “most certified man” in the world, @IT_Certified_, asking “U think having certs is important to your career?”  His question got me thinking.

Up until this month, my only certification was the VCP.  I have had it for a few years and I have tried to keep it up to date with each iteration of the software.  My department does not highly value certifications, and that probably worked to my benefit when being hired, since I did not have any. However, after taking the VMware Install & Configure class, I decided to try for my VCP during the version 3 exams.  It took two goes, but I passed and got the certification.  I wanted this certification as a personal goal.  It was never required by my company.

So, why should people go for certifications?

In general, I think most certifications and exams are marketing heavy and centered around sales and sales engineering staff, not particularly towards the internal IT folks.  I also think that most certifications  are more useful to consultants and sales engineers than to internal IT staff.  The reason – because these certifications represent knowledge and when a customer is shopping for a partner to enhance or recommend solutions, they want a knowledgeable person to guide them.  That would be what I count as reason number one for certification – to represent your knowledge to a potential customer.

As an internal IT professional, you may only be exposed to certain feature sets or capabilities of a particular product or software within your environment.  For instance, an internal IT department is standardized on Fibre Channel storage and may not use any iSCSI, so when testing for a product that includes both, an internal IT professional will be at a disadvantage with any iSCSI functionality on the test.

I believe that certifications are a major plus for all IT professionals during a job search – so reason number two.  While a certification may open a doorway to a job or opportunity, I’m not always convinced that they prepare the person behind the certification can do the actual work required to execute the theory.  But like a masters or doctorate degree, certifications are distinguishing factors among your peers to help set you apart. During a job interview, having a certification on your resume will distinguish you and it will show that you have worked hard and put in your time to achieve the designation.  It also shows that you are not opposed to continuing your education to keep up a certification.  And continuing eduction is incredibly important within the IT field which is ever-changing.

But, as I said earlier, I just sat for a week long class to help achieve an MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator certification.  It was at the direction of my management to do so.  But if they don’t value certifications, then why?  It’s simple and its my reason number three.  Microsoft changed the rules in the past year for Gold Partners and raised the bar to include new requirements for certification.  Reason number three is to meet vendor requirements.   When your employer is a partner with other IT vendors, often it comes with certain requirements for the staff.  And this was my employer’s primary motivator, this time.

I like certifications and training for my own personal development.  As Sir Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power.”  As IT people, we must always keep learning.

And, as always, these are my personal views and opinions and not that of my employer.

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DatacenterStorageTech Field Day

Tech Field Day – Virtualization Field Day 2 – Silicon Valley

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

 

One thing that I have noticed is that the you pack in to your schedule , the fastest time fly’s.

The last couple months for me have been a blur. I am amazed that the time is upon us for Virtualization Field Day 2 – Silicon Valley

I jumped at the chance to be on a Tech Field Day with a Virtualzation Focus. Anyone who knows me, knows my passion for any the Technology. Well, if you don’t know, Virtualization is my favorite. Heck, I’ll all out rant about it.

For those of you that didn’t know, I hold a VMware vExpert Status. FAQ Of which, I am very proud.

I Also Co Host the Minneapolis MN, VMware User Group, (VMUG), With Rick Schlander, ( Virtualization with VMware Technology @VMRick )   and run the St. Cloud MN, VMware User Group, (VMUG).

“

The list of presenting Sponsors is impressive.

Thursday


Symantec
@Symantec


Zerto
@ZertoCorp


Xangati
@XangatiPress

Friday


PureStorage
@PureStorage


Truebit.tv
@TruthinIT

Pivot3
@Pivot3Inc

“

Taken from http://techfieldday.com/2012/vfd2/

 

Last time, I ended up with the following Blog Posts.

Dell EqualLogic PS6100 and PS4100 Series storage platforms : new storage for VMworld 2011 

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Day 1 Our first stop at SolarWinds 

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund Day 1 Overview at Dell 

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Day 1 Overview -The Symantec Backup Appliance Overload! 

I even have video that I have yet to put into a blog post!!!! Yes, this is unpublished video.

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 vStart

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 Social Command Center

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 Object Based Storage

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 Cloud

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 Compellent

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Veeam version 6, and Microsoft Hyper-v Support

Tech Field Day 7 — Austin : Roger Lund day 2 Overview Dell Round 2 – Veeam

Below are the other delegates, make sure to check them out. Follow them on twitter, and subscribe to the blogs they have.

 

“Delegate List

Delegates are selected by the Field Day Delegate community. For more information on our selection process, please see our page about becoming a Field Day Delegate.


Edward Haletky
The Virtualization Practice
@Texiwill


Rodney Haywood
Musings of Rodos
@Rodos


Bill Hill
Virtual Bill
@Virtual_Bill


Mike Laverick
RTFM Education
@Mike_Laverick


Dwayne Lessner
IT Blood Pressure
@Dlink7


Scott Lowe
TechRepublic
Virtualization Admin
@OtherScottLowe


Roger Lund
vRoger
vBrainstorm
@RogerLund


Robert Novak
RSTS11
@Gallifreyan


David Owen
VMackem
@VMackem


Brandon Riley
Virtual Insanity
@BrandonJRiley


Todd Scalzott
Don’t Call Me Scott
@TScalzott


Rick Schlander
Virtualization with VMware Technology
@VMRick


Chris Wahl
Wahl Network
@ChrisWahl

“

Taken form http://techfieldday.com/2012/vfd2/

 

Make sure you keep a eye on the Tech Field Day – Virtualization Field Day 2: The Links

 

The Blog posts so far:

 

“

PRE-EVENT BLOGS

I can’t wait for the event! Look forward to seeing up coming content!

 

 

Roger Lund

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AppleDatacenterHome TechStorage

LogMeIn Ignition surprises, impresses and it’s on sale

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I broke down.  I bought LogMeIn Ignition, the remote control software for iOS.  I resisted the purchase since the launch of the software in the App Store.  I simply couldn’t see spending $30 for a piece of software that I could not see translating into a touch interface.  But, this week, I found LogMeIn Ignition on sale, 50% off – for the price of $14.99.  I decided to take the plunge.

I was pleasantly surprised and impressed how the developers chose to translate a mouse and keyboard based remote device onto a touchscreen device.  The mouse simply stays stationary and the screen moves with touch behind the interface.  It may sound counter-intuitive, but its quite elegant and easy to use.  You can make use of all of the normal iOS controls such as pinch to zoom to increase the size of the remote screen.  The keyboard is shown and hidden by a key on the menu bar at the bottom of the remote screen.  The bar also has keys to switch between right and left clicks for the mouse, which are executed by taping or double-tapping.  There is a magnifying glass key to zoom in and out and a complete list of settings behind a settings key. 

In addition to remote control, the file management and transfer capabilities that exist in the desktop version of the LogMeIn products is also baked into the iOS version.  You can pull copies of files from local disks on the remote computer and open them in iOS programs, using Quick Look or other features to play common media types.  In addition to the ability to download, since iOS has no native file manager, LogMeIn Ignition includes file storage as a feature within the application.  But file management doesn’t end there, it also includes cloud file storage

To switch between tasks, Ignition uses a multi-window concept, like in Safari, to open windows for Remote Control, the list of available computers, and file transfer.  You can easily switch between your open tasks.  All in all, its a well rounded and complete remote management solution for your desktop from your iOS device.  I am very impressed.

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CloudDatacenterStorageVirtualization

Getting started with vCenter Orchestrator

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

When I travel for work, I strive to bring back as many good ideas as I can and implement them in our IT shop.  VMworld 2011 offered the opportunity to meet a lot of people, one of those being Cody Bunch who is authoring Automating vSphere: With Vmware vCenter Orchestrator for VMware Press.  In talking with Cody, he reminded me something I learned and had forgotten – that every vCenter license includes vCenter Orchestrator for free, bringing a great workflow and automation tool to the masses.  For the lesser versions of vCenter (Essential and Foundation), vCenter Orchestrator runs in a ‘player’ mode, allowing you to run workflows but not edit them, but for all vCenter Standard edition, it runs in ‘server’ mode with full functionality.  This week, I have been configuring, working in and learning vCenter Orchestrator.

vCenter Orchestrator is installed by default along side of vCenter Server Standard edition and can run on the same host, but in other environments, it may make more sense to deploy it as a vApp instead.  If you’re interested in deploying a vApp (which I did not do), see this post from Cody.  I’m going to detail my installation procedures as an example of the install, which is fairly simple.  These are by NO means the official procedures, just my experience and anything I learned along the way.  But first…

What does vCenter Orchestrator Do?

vCenter Orchestrator is, at heart, a workflow tool.  It is used to string together a series of tasks that can be kicked off repeatedly and performed on different objects within vCenter and with additional system, using additional plug-ins.  It is used to automate repeated tasks that are done in the environment, handle bulk operations and handle integration points.  It can be used to receive actions from help desk and monitoring systems and kick off actions based on tickets or alerts.

As I have written about before, I have come to define a cloud as an pool of compute, storage and networking resources with a self-service portal and lifecycle management to automate provisioning, management and decommissioning systems.  The key to this definition is in the automation and workflow of processes.  Although it is not as advanced, I think vCenter Orchestrator can represent a solid first step towards automation and workflowing deployments and management of datacenter assets.  Said another way, I think its a solid first step for many organizations towards the cloud.

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