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Stick to the recipe to keep ESXi on HP hardware cooking

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Back in September, I blogged about a potential problem between HP’s September software bundle for ESXi and ProLiant Gen8 blade servers with Emulex CNA’s.  Long story short, the issue was caused by a mismatch of firmware between Virtual Connect and the Emulex CNA’s.  The mismatch was induced by me, as the administrator, not keeping all my components on a tested firmware ‘recipe’ from HP.

A couple years ago, HP made a shift in the BladeSystem firmware that unified the individual components into a tested configuration and began publishing the firmware together as release sets.  This meant that if you installed a recipe of Onboard Administrator, Virtual Connect and iLO firmwares, they would be more stable since they had been tested together for interoperability.  About a year later, HP unified software drivers and firmware on all ProLiant systems in a similiar way with the release of the Service Pack for Proliant (SPP).  The Service Pack for ProLiant did the same thing for OS level drivers and hardware firmware that the earlier release sets did for BladeSystem firmware.  All components were tested together at specific levels and the SPP’s unified release made it easy for administrators to apply a blessed recipe of software across components.

HP also does a similar thing with its OEM version of ESXi, which includes additional software components that allow a Common Information Model (CIM) implementation within the OS to display hardware status among other things.  Because of the add-in software, HP maintains a recipe between this software and the SPP bundle and firmware levels required and tested on their hardware platforms.

The moral of the story is to stay with HP’s recipes and SPP releases.  When you deviate from these, having firmware older than recommended along with newer drivers or agents, problems can occur.  In my own experiences, when I have stayed with the recipe, I haven’t experienced major malfunctions.  As with any software, new releases fix different bugs and there are times when you want to move outside of a recipe, if a newer version fixes a specific issue you’re experiencing, but in general, the rule is stay in recipe.

The other great benefit that you receive as a customer is a guarantee of support.  Traditionally, HP support pointed to older firmware as the first course of action for many support calls.  Following the SPP and ESXi recipe models, you now get a year of support from the release date of a bundle.  With this, you can push back on support and say “I’m in a supported configuration, now support me.” if you’re ever asked to update firmware without troubleshooting first.  This is a great position for the customer.  Support can also point to specific resolutions in release notes if there is a problem resolved that requires you to move to newer release, but following HP’s guidelines ensures that all the separate components have been tested together for the best possible operational environment that you can have.

And that advice is based on years of struggle in the pre-release set world of HP hardware, experience with HP support and my own personal lapses in following my own advice…  Hope this helps you avoid my struggles…

Service Pack for ProLiant – http://www.hp.com/go/spp

VIBS Depot from HP – http://vibsdepot.hp.com

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DatacenterPrintingStorage

Is there such a thing as an Enterprise InkJet? HP’s OfficeJet Pro X thinks so…

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Laser printers and enterprise seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But a little over a year ago, I was introduced to an enterprise inkjet printer line – the HP OfficeJet Pro X.   In many ways, it resembles an HP LaserJet printer in size and design.  It looks like an office printer – something substantial that could handle the demands of an office printing thousands of pages per month.  It looks like it belongs in an enterprise.  But everything I knew about inkjet said, there is no way this could work for enterprise.  Inkjets print slowly, I thought, one line at a time.  Inkjets are more expensive than laser, I thought, and ink smears.  But, the OfficeJet Pro X is not a traditional inkjet and what makes it enterprise ready is a long list of differences from what normally defines ink printing.  HP has rethought core inkjet technology in a way that makes it a viable enterprise solution for printing.

OfficjetProX

The OfficeJet Pro X Differences

A Whole Lot of Pigment and Less Water in the Ink

Sad Water DropletOne of the key differentiators of the OfficeJet Pro X line is the ink used for the printer.  According to Larry Tracy, a product manager for the Pro X, the inks have a heavier pigment load and less water than traditional inks.  Less water means the print dries faster as its moving through the device.  Unlike laser printers that use heat and a fuser to transfer the image to the page, the ink printers have no drying mechanism in them – no fans or heaters.  In addition, the durability of the print is much better, according to Tracy.  The print on the pages doesn’t smear or run.  You may use a highlighter over the print without smudging it and it has superior life versus other inkjet printers.  In fact, Tracy says that in their testing the paper will begin to degrade long before the print itself begins the break down.

The PageWide Print Bar

The OfficeJet Pro X features a stationary print bar that is the same width as the sheet of paper, something HP calls PageWide technology.   The PageWide print head features over 420,000 nozzles.  Unlike traditional inkjets where the ink well and nozzels are integrated into the print cartridge, the OfficeJet Pro X print head is not changed with every ink replacement.  This print head has monitoring built in to detect a misfiring nozzle and can allow surrounding nozzles to increase their volume to fill in.  In addition, there are spare nozzles that can be used in the event of a blockage or failure.

OfficejetProX_Printhead

 

Heavy Pigment Ink + Pagewide = Speed

An inkjet that prints up to 70 pages per minute is remarkable.  Demos that I have seen of the OfficeJet Pro X576dm during HP Discover and on a demo unit that HP has provided hold true to that speed.  70 pages per minute is available in what HP calls General Office mode, but don’t make the mistake of calling it draft mode like other printers offer.  Draft mode is a degraded quality print with less precision and crispness.  The OfficeJet Pro X’s General Office mode doesn’t significantly compromise the quality of the print.  The print is still very crisp and clean on the page.

LaserJet Cross-Pollenation

For enterprise, there is a second, higher-end line printers known as the OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line that integrates HP Flow scanning and routing with other enterprise features.  Similiar the HP Flow models of LaserJet printers, these machines are meant to replace traditional copies and scanners with multi-function printers.  In addition, the HP Universal Print driver that allows businesses to use the same driver for many HP printer models also works with the OfficeJet Pro X line.

When talking with Larry Tracy, I also found out why the OfficeJet Pro X looks like a very close cousin to the HP LaserJet printers.  This printer was developed in Boise, ID, in the birthplace of the HP LaserJet.  A lot of enterprise features created in the LaserJet line are also in this OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line of printers, including software for pin based secure printing, integration with HP’s Flow workflow and scanning software, and badge readers.

Lots of Traditional HP Printing Goodness

In many ways, the OfficeJet Pro X line is a departure from its ink predecessors.  But its not a complete departure from its heritage.  The OfficeJet Pro X includes many of the expected features like HP ePrint and AirPrint support, both wired and wireless connectivity, USB storage and print from USB thumb drive support, and a multi-page document fed and flatbed scanner integrated.  The OfficeJet Pro X also has faxing and copying capabilities from a touch-screen display and with a bit of configuration, the touch screen can be used to scan documents directly to a file share or HP software on a networked computer.  According to Tracy, a software update earlier this year allows for one of the two onboard USB ports on an OfficeJet Pro X to be used for persistent storage so that secure documents can be stored until accessed and printed by PIN code.  The OfficeJet Pro X printers will also duplex prints and copies automatically, which is a required business feature.

The OfficeJet Pro X Cost Advantage

As a consultant years ago, I performed printing studies for companies and comparing the cost of buying a personal or workgroup laser printer versus the cheap inkjet printers (think $50 big-box variety printers) I often found in their offices.  For a normal office workload, the inexpensive inkjet costs the company more in ink than an laser would cost per page.  Plus, buying the printer-du-jour from a big-box store means stocking multiple different ink refills, increasing costs and frustration.  Calculating the cost per page over the course of a year or several years, I would surprise each customer I worked with at how much they could reduce their printing costs by switching to workgroup or personal laser printers.  And while its been ten years since I was a consultant, many of the things I found then are still true today.  But the OfficeJet Pro X seems to be a very different animal.

When Buyers Lab, an independent testing institution, reviewed the OfficeJet Pro X printer, they found that the cost per page is about 1.1 cents per page for black and white and about 6.5 cents per full color page.  Those prices per page beat out all small laser multifunction printers Buyers Lab had tested.  Buyers Lab reported the average small workgroup laser MFP costs 2.4 cents per page in black and white and 11.5 center per page in full color.  But, the OfficeJet Pro X beat even the lowest cost per page laser multi-functions cost 1.5 cents per page black and white and 7.8 cents per page for color.   Buyers Lab defined the small laser multifunction printer as printers with duty cycle less than 5,000 pages per month.  When you move into a mid-size workgroup MFP, the results change a little with some higher-priced laser multifunction printers able to beat the OfficeJet Pro X’s cost per page, but the OfficeJet Pro X still slightly better than the average cost per page for this class of printers.

Printing and the Environmental Impact

When you think of printing, you think of paper and you may think of trees.  Boldly saying that a printer is eco-friendly may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but the fact remains that some documents must be printed, so when given a choice, choose a printer that uses less resources.

OfficeJetProXinkOne of the lesser talked about stories with the OfficeJet Pro X line is the eco-friendliness of this printer compared to lasers and other inkjets.  The OfficeJet Pro X printers produce less waste than other printers, both laser and inkjet.  Ink cartridges for the printer yield 9,200 pages from the black cartridge and 6,000 pages for each of the three color cartridges.  As a comparison, most laser printers in the same class yield 4,000 – 7,000 pages.  The Buyers Lab performed a study and pitted the OfficeJet Pro X against a Lexmark and found that the Lexmark required almost twice as many ink replacements to produce 150,000 pages.  HP has also worked hard to reduce the amount of waste associated with each ink replacement in terms of packaging and precious metals included with the ink wells.

The second major aspect of environmental friendliness for this printer is its power consumption.  Compared to Laser printers, the OfficeJet Pro X consumes about 8 to 10 times less power – which equates to using less power when printing than a Laser printer when sitting idle.  Many Laser printers do not completely power down the fuser because it would require extra time to before the first page is printed.  Keeping the fuser warm pulls more power than the OfficeJet Pro X when it is in full print mode.  The printer is Energy Star qualified.

But its not just HP’s word.  Marlene Orr, a senior analyst for printers and MFP’s for Buyers Lab, was quoted as saying “From an environmental perspective, these units also use significantly less energy and create less consumables waste than comparable small workgroup laser printers and MFPs recently tested.”

Any of these environmental features will benefit its owners from a total cost of ownership – aka “in the wallet.”  With less power consumption and cheaper cost per page in printing, these printers will save long-term for their owners.  Plus, from my perspective, I despise the throw-away printer mentality, with the uber-cheap printers whose ink refill costs more than the printer.  These are designed to be cheap and not last, which isn’t a good use of natural resources.  The OfficeJet Pro X is a system that’s built for a business level workload, with a duty cycle of up to 75,000 pages.

Next Steps…

My demo HP OfficeJet Pro X 576dw arrived a week ago and I’ve just started setting it up for evaluation.  My initial reaction is really positive.  To be completely transparent, I’m a big HP printing fan.  I made the choice a long time ago to stick with HP printers in my home office and advocate for the same at work.   I’ve attempted to help my former customers with printers of all makes and models, but when I came to my picks for my home, its always been an HP.  So, I will be the first to admit my bias, but it does come from years of experience dealing with issues from other printer brands – Epson, Lexmark (Dell) and Canon.

So, in a couple weeks, I’ll be posting a personal review from my experiences with the OfficeJet Pro X576dw.  And, look for an announcement for your chance to win an OfficeJet Pro X for your own environment.

Disclosure:  HP provided the Officejet Pro X576dw to me free of charge for review and testing.  All views and opinions in this blog post are my own, gathered from research and first hand information.  The views expressed were not dictated by HP.  

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ComputeDatacenterSoftwareStorageVirtualization

HP announces Hyper-Converged Systems based on StoreVirtual VSA

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

HP unveiled the HP Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual based on HP ProLiant SL2500 series of scalable computing servers and the HP StoreVirtual VSA today at VMworld in Barcelona.  The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual features VMware vSphere 5, the HP StoreVirtual VSA, and HP OneView for management.  The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual line comes in two different models – one with all SAS for higher capacity and one with a mix of SSD and SAS drives for better performance.

Four nodes of compute fit into just 2U of rack space, with shared redundant power for the unit.  From a physical size standpoint, these nodes fit somewhere between a Moonshot card and a BladeSystem blade in terms of sizing.  While they more closely resemble a blade, there is no shared interconnect back-plane.  Each node comes with dedicated 10Gb Ethernet and 1Gb Ethernet network ports and has 6 dedicated disks.

A new addition to the software mix for the Converged System 200-HC line is HP OneView InstantOn  – a streamlined deployment utility that lets customers spin up vSphere with StoreVirtual VSA in a matter of minutes.  According to HP, all that a customer needs to provide is IP addresses and basic license information in order to have a fully working system delivered directly from the factory.

CS 200-HC

A comparison of the hardware configuration shows just a few differences between the two initial StoreVirtual models:

CS 240-HC StoreVirtual System

  • 4 nodes, each with
  • 2 sockets, 8 cores each socket at 2.0Ghz
  • 128GB of RAM each node
  • 2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
  • 6 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node

CS 242-HC StoreVirtual System

  • 4 nodes, each with
  • 2 sockets, 10 cores each socket at 2.8GHz
  • 256GB of RAM each node
  • 2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
  • 4 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node
  • 2 x 400GB SSDs per node

In terms of scale, up to 8 of the CS 240-HC line units can be coupled together to form up to 32-node clusters and not all of those nodes need to be in a single site because of StoreVirtual’s native replication and multi-site capabilities.

StoreVirtual VSA features Autonomic Optimization, a fancy name for storage sub-lun tiering that the CS 242-HC StoreVirtual is using.  This allows for more often accessed blocks of data to be moved from SAS onto SSD and less used to be moved from SSD down to SAS yeilding greater performance from the storage subsystem.  StoreVirtual also provides a wide range of interoperability options for customers who have already invested in dedicated StoreVirtual 4000 hardware solutions or who have existing StoreVirtual VSA deployments.  In addition, native replication is available to any other StoreVirtual, regardless of form factor, and StoreVirtual offers support for vSphere Metro Storage Clusters, offering the ability to create multi-datacenter replication solutions around the technology.  Beyond native replication, HP StoreVirtual also includes Peer Motion capabilities to allow movement of data from one StoreVirtual environment to another for easy migration.

The advantage to moving to a Converged System solution, according to HP, is easier management and a better support experience for the solution.  The solution is tested and supported together as a package, offering customers a single point of contact for their support.  The firmware, drivers and software are all tested together and the will receive recipe updates so that known good combinations of the software can be run on the platform.

Choice is always at the forefront of HP’s strategy for customers and the hyper-converged system announcement is no different.  The HP Converged System 200-HC models are available in both a StoreVirtual VSA and EVO:RAIL configuration.  The primary difference between the two configuration is the virtual storage appliance, with the EVO:RAIL configuration coming with VMware’s vSAN, though I cannot find any specifics of the EVO:RAIL hardware configuration at this time.

When I was in Houston, TX, for a Converged Systems Tech Day last month, HP staff talked with me about the overall Converged System strategy and there were several key points to the overall strategy.  With all Converged Systems, there is an accelerated deployment timeline with the solution.  Since it has been tested and integrated, the product should deploy quickly so that customers realize faster time to value.  The second point is easy procurement, with a single SKU for the entire solution.  The single SKU also provides single solution support, with a specialized team that supports the entire solution rather than the individual components.  Customers who have built their own solutions from ProLiant and HP Storage have probably experienced the piece-meal support experience, even while in a single vendor. HP’s Converged Systems eliminates that problem by sending all support to a dedicated support team to team to troubleshoot problems and that team understands the entire solution, not just an individual component.

The new Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual models will be available for purchase in December.  The Converged System 200-HC EVO:RAIL configuration will be available first quarter of 2015.

For more information, check out Around the Storage Block post and video on the CS 200-HC StoreVirtual solution and go to www.hp.com/go/hyper-converge.

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ComputeDatacenterStorageVirtualization

HP’s Sept VMware driver bundle may cause issues with Eumlex CNA’s

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Final Update (11/1/14):  The drivers and bundle in question work with newer Flex-10 interconnect firmware.  My configuration was out of the blessed recipe of firmware and driver versions and I had problems as a result.  According to HP and independent community feedback on Twitter and by email, I can safely say that if you are running within an HP recipe, you should not experience this issue.  Also, for anyone out of recipe compliance, running Virtual Connect Flex-10 4.10 firmware and Onboard Administrator 4.12 firmware with the September ESXi HP bundle, expect problems with ESXi 5.1, but ESX 5.5 will run without issues.  Downgrading to June seems to solve ESXi 5.1.

As a rule, stay within HP’s published recipes from vibsdepot.hp.com and you will avoid most problems.  

 

HP released a new set of vibs with drivers and HP software to run inside of ESXi last week.  As part of a support case due to a hardware issue, the updated drivers bundle was installed on two BL460c Gen8 blades with Emulex converged network adapters and caused the system to experience issues with the NIC.  Working with VMware support, I downgraded to the driver to the previous version I was running the problem disappeared.  This occurred with VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 2 as the operating system and I am not clear if it effects 5.5 versions or not.  The affected hardware are HP FlexFabric Emulex 10Gb 554FLB adapters.

Symptoms

After successfully installing the Device Drivers for HP Custom ESXi 5.1.0 Update 2 Image 5.68, the system comes back online and appears to be fine.  The first symptoms appear while trying to vMotion virtual machines onto the host.  The host goes offline from vCenter and the virtual machines that had successfully moved are also unreachable over the network.  No network traffic is passing into the host for management, virtual machines or vMotion.  Using the ESXi Shell for troubleshooting, the system appears very sluggish and unresponsive.  When examining the vmkernel.log, VMware noted NIC disconnects that were seen by ESXi.

Attempting to recreate the issue after reboot, leaving the system stays in maintenance mode with no virtual machines, it stays online.  Soon after one or more virtual machines is relocated to the host, the system will go unresponsive in vCenter and the virtual machines will be offline.  This was repeated several times on the two affected hosts.

One ESXi 5.1, the Emluex NIC driver that appears to be causing the issue is be2net version 10.2.293.0.  This version was released with the 5.68 Device Drivers for HP Custom ESXi on September 9, 2014.  Prior to loading this device driver bundle, I was running the next latest bundle from June 2014 on the system with no issues.  The be2net driver listed as current on the vibsdept.hp.com site for June 2014 is version 4.9.288.0, first included in the February 2014 bundle.

device_bundle

Workaround

The workaround that I implemented with VMware was to downgrade to the version of be2net driver available in the June 2014 bundle.  You can locate this at the HP VibsDepot website, http://vibsdepot.hp.com/hpq/jun2014/esxi-510-devicedrivers/ or http://vibsdepot.hp.com/hpq/jun2014/esxi-510-drv-vibs/be2net/, and it is installed from ESXi command line either in ESXi Shell or over SSH using esxcli.  If you SFTP the vib file into /tmp on the host, you can install with the following command line.

[code]esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/Emulex_bootbank_net-be2net_4.9.288.0-1OEM.510.0.0.802205.vib[/code]

Followup

I tweeted about the potential problem last week and waited to hear back from HP Support before putting something out, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.  If you use the HP Custom ESXi and stay up to date, this is something to pay attention to.  It seems pretty specific to the Emulex converged network adapters and affects at least ESXi 5.1 Update 2.

I have an ongoing case with HP and as I find out more or see an advisory, I will update this post with new information.

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ComputeDatacenter

HP unwraps ProLiant Gen9 hardware, strategy for 25 more years of compute

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

This morning, HP CEO Meg Whitman unwrapped a new generation of HP’s ProLiant servers and unpacked the company’s compute strategy the years ahead. HP first introduced the server to the world 25 years ago and in celebration of that milestone, HP is looking forward to the 25 years to come.  The strategy is wrapped around a focus on customer outcomes rather than the incremental tick and tock of hardware.

HP is responding to the increasing pressure being put onto IT shops due to the increase of data, data devices, apps and connections.   In its research, the growth curve of incremental change in server hardware and the curve of requirements for IT shops simply don’t match.  Incremental change won’t allow business to keep up with the increasing needs based on time, power or space.  So the focus for the future from HP is to orchestrate and reduce the manual steps required for administrators to accomplish their work.

HP ProLiant Gen9 Family

HP see the future of compute as an increasing amount of pooling for resources, dynamically re-alloacting and re-tasking resources based on changing needs throughout the day.  HP Helion and OpenStack will play a major role in the transformation of the future of compute.  Traditional applications just can’t meet business needs.

I had the chance to talk with Peter Evans, vice president of HP Servers Global Marketing, this morning and he told me that the ProLiant Gen9 hardware has a strong focus on increasing the performance per dollar, kilowatt and square foot.   HP has spent a lot of time working to reduce the number of manual processes and clicks that are required to perform the tasks that consume a lot of practitioner’s time.

While HP is talking about their vision for the next 25 years of compute, they’ve been delivering on this vision for the past 2 year with ProLiant Gen8.  A lot of the innovation that went into Gen8 aligns with the focus that HP has with this strategy.  HP has collected and aggregated data that it gleaned from the Insight Online data and diagnostics information, information provided back by their partners and based on the experiences of their professional services organization and system engineers.  All of this feedback and data has gone into the prioritization and decision making of what features get the precious attention of HP development cycles.  The focus is more focused customer outcomes and not just on the technology.

Evans unpacked 3 metrics of focus that HP is delivering with the Gen9 announcement.  The first is economics of the datacenter.  ProLiant Gen9 offers customers a 3x improvement in performance.  HP has performed comparative studies against its own G6, G7 and Gen8 systems as well as competitor’s servers.  The second area is time to service. It is all about optimizing the number of clicks and amount of time before customer are able to begin using a solution on the ProLiant server.  In some cases, Evans says that HP has reduced the number of clicks required from 480 to just 4 using iLO, OneView, Intelligent Provisioning and other methods.  The last is value of service.  In that, HP is focused on providing the best possible experiences for running particular applications, enabling better density and more productivity for its customers.

ProLiant Gen9 Enhancements

Among the new features are enhancements to the iLO including iLO Federation, UEFI BIOS, updates to the Intelligent Provisioning and improvements to SmartCache, array controllers and drives supported.

iLO gets an upgrade by adding a redesigned API interface with OneView integration in mind.  iLO will have a fully compliant RESTful API that OneView can use for orchestration.  OneView will also make use of the new iLO Federation feature that debuts with the Gen9 systems.  Althought new with Gen9  servers, iLO Federation is also available to Gen8 systems.

iLO Federation takes the standard iLO4 and allows it to multicast at boot and join other iLO on the network.  From there, administrators can form groups of servers to aid in management from the iLO.  The iLO Federation enables a new cascading firmware deployment method rather than sequentially and the ability to change and push settings across multiple systems easily versus making the changes 1 system at a time.

UEFI BIOS is another new feature for the Gen9 hardware. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is the extension of EFI firmware that Intel originally developed for Itanium processors back in the 90’s.  UEFI replace EFI and is a standard for low-level software between the OS and the hardware. It is meant to replace BIOS, which has limitations.  UEFI is programmable, allowing OEM’s like HP to put additional software in this low-level operating system.  UEFI allows HP to implement a new Secure Boot technology, though the specifics weren’t fully disclosed.

Intelligent Provisioning 2.0 will debut in the Gen9 hardware and will feature acceleration features aimed to get the server deployed and running a workload in less time and with less clicks.  One of the tidbits I heard from the StoreVirtual team is that the new Intelligent Provisioning 2.0 will include the ability to deploy a StoreVirtual VSA easily.  Intelligent Provisioning will go out and retrieve the latest version of the StoreVirtual VSA and deploy it onto the hardware with minimal interaction required.  In addition, HP has been giving away free 1TB StoreVirtual VSA licenses with new server purchases all throughout the Gen8 line and is likely to continue [I did not confirm], making this a free and easy SAN to deploy.

In terms of workload acceleration, HP has extended support for 12 Gb/s SAS Expander cards and 12 Gb/s Smart Array Controllers and 12 GB/s SSD Drives.  PCIe Workload Accelerators and HP SmartCache deliver additional performance bumps.  HP says that the 12Gb/s SSDs and SmartCache will deliver 4x performance improvement.

The ProLiant Gen9 systems continue the same industrial design as the Gen8 servers, according to the systems that were shown during the webcast, with the silver and black metal bezels.

Although a lot of discussion about compute, there was absolutely no word on the processors inside of the Gen9 servers.  HP did not disclose a time frame for the ProLiant Gen9 hardware to ship, either, but it did mention that the following systems would be the first to ship:

HP BladeSystem

  • HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9

Rack and tower servers

  • HP ProLiant DL160 Gen9
  • HP ProLiant DL180 Gen9
  • HP ProLiant ML350 Gen9
  • HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9
  • HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9

Solid Heritage

The ProLiant Gen9 builds on a solid platform of the ProLiant Gen8.  The last new ProLiant was introduced earlier this year, the DL580 Gen8, which brought the Gen8 features to the biggest x86 rack-mount server that HP offers.  The DL580 Gen8 also features the UEFI BIOS.

ProLiant Gen8 was announced back in March of 2012 and brought a lot of features directly aimed at easing administrator’s problems.  The Gen8 models introduced the iLO4 management processor, HP SmartMemory and SmartDrives.  iLO4 was a big step forward, moving monitoring capabilities that had been running inside of the system’s operating system into the management processor and removing the needs for hardware monitoring agents inside of the OS.  iLO4 also improved on the KVM and IP management experience for administrators.  At the same time, HP announced Insight Online, a system health portal that the iLO4 could report into that was hosted with HP.  In addition to automatically creating cases for hardware issues, the portal also collected system information and would allow HP to identify common problems across customers and address those based on the analytics from data submitted.

SmartMemory and SmartDrives were both innovations that were direct responses to customer requests.  SmartMemory provided proactive failure reporting for RAM and attempted to alleviate common memory failures.  SmartDrives added an indicator to the drive to show whether it was safe to pull the drive or not.  It had an illuminated warning light if the drive was in use and unsafe to remove.  From an administrator’s standpoint, that was a great innovation because pulling a mirrored drive is a common fail-back mechanism in the datacenter, but pulling the wrong drive or the right drive at the wrong time can lead to a system crash.

ProLiant Gen8 also brought location awareness to the platform.  Combined with smart racks, the server could identify back to HP management software where it was positioned in the datacenter and through the combination of the Sea of Sensors, HP’s software could help to identify hot spots and problems in the datacenter environment.  The new blue power adapters, indicated the Location Discovery Services capability of the hardware.   The feature was rolled out incrementally across the rack and blade servers in the Gen8 line.

Good Timing

The new generation of ProLiant is positioned at a great time in the industry.  An IDC report this week indicates that server sales may have turned the corner and showed 2.5 percent growth versus the previous year.  HP was still on top with over 25% of the revenue share.

Of all the servers that I have ever administered, HP ProLiant is my first choice.  iLO adds tremendous value to me as an administrator.  The Gen8 additions of drive indicators, pre-fail warnings, agentless hardware management have been time saving and welcome addtions as my server farms and responsibilities have grown.  The Support Pack for ProLiant and integrated testing of OS agents, drivers and firmware has brought a higher level of stability to the hardware platforms.  The addition of Intelligent Provisioning and on-the-board deployment services saved the time of having to download and burn and ISO for SmartStart to ease system deployment.  And ProLiant Gen9 extends upon that with easier Intelligent Provisioning features, iLO Federation and general performance improvements.  I’ll be excited when our first model rolls in…

More information is available at hp.com/go/compute and inside the official Press Kit at hp.com.

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DatacenterStorage

HP readies 3PAR StoreServ with vVol support ahead of vSphere 6

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

3par_array

HP says that they are ready and waiting with Virtual Volume (vVol) support on the 3PAR StoreServ platform when VMware releases vSphere 6.  One of the most discussed topics in storage at VMworld is vVol support and HP says that they have been working with VMware since the pre-acquisition days of 3PAR to implement and support vVols on the platform.  The HP 3PAR StoreServ has also the test architecture for fiber channel with vVols for VMware.

I was able to get a demo of the support at the HP booth during VMworld this week.  The vVol objects look a lot like standard 3PAR Virtual Volumes (VV’s) on the platform.  The two technologies share the same name, which could lead to some confusion, but they do act differently.  vVols create the individual VM objects against the 3PAR system utilizing the Common Provisioning Group (CPG) as the object that they create into.  3PAR VV’s are the traditional LUNs that get provisioned from the pool of disks and are also carved out of a CPG.

From 3PAR CLI, the vVol support on 3PAR looks a lot like standard 3PAR VV’s on the platform.  The thing that becomes clear is that vVols will create exponentially more objects on the 3PAR for the storage administrator to manage against.  Today, within a single 3PAR VV (LUN), you may have 10 or 12 virtual machines.  The storage administrator’s view is a single object, the VV.

This pivots with vVols where the VM provisioning in vSphere creates 2 objects on the 3PAR, a Config- and a Data- object.  In addition, at least 5 objects for a running VM are active on the 3PAR, potentially increasing the number of objects in the storage admin’s view 50x or more. Adding an additional problem, the naming is generated with the Config- and Data- prefix along with a identifier string which may make correlation difficult.   HP is working to ease the management headaches that a potential 50x increase in objects to manage.

3PAR has implemented separate commands in the 3PAR CLI to handle vVols, using things like showvvol instead of showvv administrators currently use.  What’s more, its not an all or nothing choice.  vVols and normal 3PAR VV’s can coexist on the same array and in the same vSphere hosts. Even while the object count increases in the 3PAR console, the usable information also increases.  Since the objects correspond to an individual VM, its easier to use 3PAR’s reporting and CLI to pinpoint performance issues and address them.  vVols also unlock native array capabilities at the VM level, like performing array based snapshots on an individual VM instead of an entire LUN all from the normal workflow and interface of the vSphere client.

vVols support relies on VMware API’s for Storage Awareness (VASA) providers to communicate between vSphere and the storage arrays.  According to a presentation by Ivan Iannaccone (@IvanIannaccone), HP has put their VASA providers directly onto the 3PAR controllers, meaning that customers will not need an additional layer of software located outside of the array to enable vVol support.

I asked a couple HP folks about replication and vVols and at this point, it is not present in the vSphere implementation.  HP says 3PAR is ready to handle replication with vVols since they are basically the same as LUN virtual volumes on the platform, but it will need VMware to deliver support in vSphere first.  That also means users with Peer Persistence configurations cannot benefit from vVols until a later time.

To find out more and see vVols on 3PAR in action, check out this older video that Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy, posted back in 2012 showing of vVol on 3PAR.  In the video, Calvin focuses on the 3PAR InServ Management Console (IMC) to show the virtual volumes.  The demo I saw focused on the 3PAR CLI, but you will get the idea.

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DatacenterPowerCLISoftwareStorageVirtualization

Book Review: Learning PowerCLI

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Whether you’re a new user or an advanced user, Learning PowerCLI by Robert van den Nieuwendijk is a fantastic reference to VMware PowerCLI. van den Nieuwendijk covers all the basics to get PowerCLI installed and running – getting you connected to ESXi hosts and vCenter. He also covers all of the basic and advanced PowerCLI cmdlets exposed to users as of vSphere 5.5. But, van den Nieuwendijk doesn’t stop there. He also delves deeper into utilizing esxcli within PowerCLI to accomplish administrative tasks that PowerCLI cmdlets don’t natively expose.

The book progresses users through a series of topics and groups tasks and administrative areas of vSphere together to logically cover a full range of administration.  The book begins at the beginning, helping to get PowerCLI installed and operational and then moves into some of the basic PowerShell concepts that you will need to know before getting into more specific PowerCLI code.  The book steps through the management of ESXi hosts, virtual machines, networking and storage.  It also covers clustering and vCenter administration.  It is a solid guide to the language and how to get things done using PowerCLI.

I had the pleasure of meeting Robert and talking with him about the book briefly at VMworld.  He poured a lot of time and effort into making it a great book and resource for PowerCLI and it shows in the final form.   I was able to read the book while in draft form as a technical reviewer and then again when published.

If you’re at VMworld, its available at the VMworld book store onsite.  It’s also available at Amazon.com and booksellers around the world.

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DatacenterStorageVirtualization

vSphere users get just the beta this year at VMworld

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

VMworld has a bit disappointing for core vSphere users this year.  Its the first VMworld since at least 2008 where a major release of vSphere wasn’t made during the show.  This year, we all have to settle for the vSphere 6 beta which was already publicly available.  No news on timelines or release datas for vSphere 6.  That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of news on other horizons (pun intended) and initiatives from the company, but for core virtualization, not a lot has been discussed.

VMware did publicly discuss some of the features of the upcoming vSphere 6 release, something everyone who has participated in the beta was unable to do because of non-disclosure agreements.  Here is a quick run-down of the features that were publicly discussed:

  • Compute > Multi-vCPU Fault Tolerance support
  • Network > vMotion Enhancements across virtual switches and vCenter instances & support for routed vMotion
  • Storage > Virtual Volumes (vVols) support for storage

vSphere 6 will be bringing a number of improvements in terms of scale and sizing that customers will appreciate. The specifics weren’t covered in the keynote and I have not seen them publicly discussed.

Compute > SMP-FT

vSphere 6 adds multi-vCPU support for Fault Tolerance (SMP-FT), extending this technology to a wider range of uses.  Most mission critical apps where Fault Tolerance would likely be adopted were more than 1 vCPU, so this is welcome news for administrators.  There are still some limits to the technology, SMP-FT will support up to 4 vCPU and 64GB of RAM.  Users will be limited to 4 VM running SMP-FT or 8 total vCPU running SMP-FT.   Your FT logging network is required to be 10Gig to support SMP-FT.  Julian Wood has some additional details in his blog post on the topic.

Network > vMotion

vMotion gets a number of enhancements, all of which should allow for easier administration. The critical one from an administrator’s point of view is the cross-vSwitch and cross-vCenter vMotion.  Much like the shared nothing Storage vMotion that was added in vSphere 5.5, the cross-vCenter vMotion will allow a Virtual Machine to hop port groups between virtual switches, changing assignments.  Previously, administrators were limited to either Standard vSwitches with the same port group name in order to cross clusters with vMotion or they needed to extend their Distributed vSwitch across clusters.  But crossing a vCenter server is an entirely new capability and this is clearly targeted at multi-site scenarios allowing administrators to move workloads without the requirements of stretching a distributed switch and vCenter across sites.  Chris Wahl has an excellent blog post about the new vMotion capabilities.

Storage > vVols

The big, well-discussed feature being added is Virtual Volumes (vVols) support.  vVols allows vSphere to talk directly against the storage and provision virtual machines natively, without the need for LUNs.  Each virtual machine, natively provisions several files on the storage – one for config, one or more for data and then at boot, the expected RAM files and log files required.  This allows the storage administrator to have a native, VMware object level view of the data and using native storage tools, better identify problems and bottlenecks by identifying individual VMs or VM disks instead of a noisy LUN.

If you are familiar with NFS storage vendor Tintri, the whole concept will sound really familiar.  With a Tintri, you present one large NFS datastore and then provision VMs inside of it.  The storage is VM aware and has a lot of additional performance metrics and management.  It allows for things like quality of service at a VM level.

In the vSphere side, the vSphere Administrator is presented with a storage system and they provision against it rather than being presented a LUN and having to format and manage capacity with VMFS datastores and datastore clusters.   From the storage administrators view point, instead of having 10 LUNs, they may now have 5 times as many objects within their views.  This is where the storage vendor’s implementation becomes a critical point.  The views and management consoles will have to adapt and change.

vVols also allows the vSphere administrator to wrap tagging and policy controls around storage.  The concept that VMware introduced with the VSAN in vSphere 5.5, policy based storage allows for an abstraction from the array and LUN constructs to a needs-based construct for deploying VMs. What does that mean?  Well, to deploy a virtual machine, the user had to make a choice of which datastore to deploy onto.  With vSphere 5.5, policies and tagging could allow administrators to define a service profile or level of service abstraction from the physical storage devices and let the user choose options like a Platinum storage location for mission critical applications or a Bronze storage location for dev/test.  Those tags and policies allow for the decisions where to place a VM in storage without having to know that Array X is the one the user should use.

In the meantime, all vSphere users will be waiting for the new release and finalization of capabilities.  With SMP-FT and vVols, users have been waiting for VMware to deliver these features for a long time and their discussion during the keynote on Tuesday drew lots of applause.

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DatacenterStorage

HP shows off 3PAR 7200 All Flash starter kit, $35K price

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

photo (2)

On Friday, HP announced the new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All Flash array Starter Kit. HP is it off this week at VMworld in San Francisco.  The new package is the dual-controller 3PAR StoreServ 7200 equipped with eight 480GB solid state drives, sports 75,000 IOPS of performance and has a street price of just $35,000.

The array has 3.5TB of raw storage and HP estimates that customers will see at least a 2:1 dedupe and thin provisioning savings on the array, yielding 7TB of usable storage.  The Starter Kit uses the same 3PAR OS that is used across all of the HP 3PAR storage products.  The drives are the same drives that HP introduced with the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all flash array back in June at HP Discover, offering a price of $2 per GB for all flash.  From a software standpoint, the Starter Kit offers the Reporting Suite, Virtual Copy, and three-year Proactive Care Support.  Customers may optionally license additional software features including the Online Import feature which allows easy transition from HP EVA or from EMC VNX or CX arrays.

In its all-flash form, the array can scale up to 230TB of raw storage and HP estimates users will see around 690TB of usable storage out of the array.  At full scale, it offers over 250,000 IOPS of performance.

It seems to be yet another step in mainstreaming solid state for primary storage, with HP lowering the barrier to entry even further with this all-flash offering.  [As a side note, I did notice the configuration being show in San Francisco has 12 drives and not 8, but I didn’t ask about that.]

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DatacenterNewsStorage

See the data, not just the storage with DataGravity

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

DataGravity @DataGravityInc has revealed what the announced secret gravity sauce is all about. Be sure to check out the press release ” DataGravity Unveils Industry’s First Data-Aware Storage Platform”

“NASHUA, N.H., August 19, 2014 – DataGravity today announced the launch of the DataGravity Discovery Series, the first ever data-aware storage platform that tracks data access and analyzes data as it is stored to provide greater visibility, insight and value from a company’s information assets. The DataGravity Discovery Series delivers storage, protection, data governance, search and discovery powered by an enterprise-grade hardware platform and patent-pending software architecture, enabling midmarket companies to glean new insights and make better business decisions.”

We often see new storage Array’s, with a impressive list of new features. Lets see how this stacks up.

From http://datagravity.com/sites/default/files/resource-files/DataGravity-DiscoverySeries-Datasheet-081714.pdf copyright Datagravity

Looks fairly standard, a nice sharp looking box. But what makes this unique?

Why the fuss? why do we care what is on our storage? With the increasing costs of data, many are looking to what what is taking the space, and using the disk.

“The unstructured data dilemma is growing, and IDC has been predicting technology would catch up to provide an answer to the market demand,” said Laura Dubois, program vice president of storage at IDC. “The DataGravity approach is transformational in an industry where innovation has been mostly incremental. DataGravity data-aware storage can tell you about the data it’s holding, making the embedded value of stored information accessible to customers who cannot otherwise support the cost and complexity of solutions available today.”

Source http://datagravity.com/datagravity-unveils-first-data-aware-storage

“The Digital Universe in 2020″ report, IDC estimates that the overall volume of digital bits created, replicated, and consumed across the United States will hit 6.6 zettabytes by 2020. That represents a doubling of volume about every three years. For those not up on their Greek numerical prefixes, a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes, or just over 25 billion 4-TB drives.” Source http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/2014-state-of-storage-cost-worries-grow/a/d-id/1113476

Today companies often lavage things like Hadoop, EMC ESA or new offerings like CloudPhysics to learn what people are using storage for in their environment, or to get data out of the system.

This becomes more complex with Big Data

That’s all great, but how does DataGravity change things?

From http://datagravity.com/sites/default/files/resource-files/DataGravity-DiscoverySeries-Datasheet-081714.pdf copyright DataGravity

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: End user role-based access

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Analyze your file shares

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Find Experts and Collaborators

Great, I See some neat features. But what about standard storage features, like data protection? And Data Protection?

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Preview, download and restore files

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Provision and protect your storage

I’m excited to see this at VMworld. VMworld attendees can see it in action at the DataGravity booth, #1647, August 24 through 28 in San Francisco.

I will be attending VMworld, and Tech Field Day. Make sure to check back to the DataGravity page. http://techfieldday.com/appearance/datagravity-presents-at-tech-field-day-extra-at-vmworld-us-2014/

Lets check out what others are saying about DataGravity

DataGravity – First Look

“Perhaps you’ve heard of DataGravity (@DataGravityInc), or perhaps you haven’t. They’ve been staying pretty quiet about what they’ve been working on. Today, however, they’re dropping the veil. Read on for a look into what you can expect from this exciting announcement!”

by James Green

Why is DataGravity Such a Big Deal?

“DataGravity just released their embargo and my little techie corner of the Internet is on fire. There’s a very good reason for that, but it might not be obvious at a glance. Read on to learn why DataGravity is a Big Deal even though it might not work out.”

by Stephen Foskett

Make sure to check the full articles out.

I hope you enjoyed the write up.

Roger Lund

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