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Unitrends is offering free backup virtual appliance for up to 1TB

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

b1ccbf83-101b-475d-b124-8a7ac86acbe9So, I am a little late to the party, but I just found Unitrends new Free Backup offering.  Launched in May, the new backup offering is distributed as a virtual appliance and has a 1TB protected limit, but is otherwise free and clear for you to use.  This is a perfect backup for your home lab or even many small customers virtualization deployments.

Since the backup is metered by protected space, there are no limits the number of VM or CPU’s that can be protected.  Backups are incremental forever, there is cloud integration with Amazon and Google, automated scheduling and instant VM recovery.  As I’ve written before, the restore is what is most important in a backup strategy.  The free backup is virtualization focused with support for VMware and Hyper-V.

As for system requirements, the backup appliance needs:

  • A minimum of 2 virtual processors (CPUs)
  • A minimum of 4 GB of RAM
  • 90 GB of space for the VM’s initial disk
  • At least 128 GB of attached virtual disk backup storage

To find out more, head over to http://www.unitrends.com/products/unitrends-free-backup-software.

Unitrends is known for its appliance based backup technology, but with the merger with PHDVirtual a couple years ago, Unitrends has a complete lineup for virtualization to physical backup.  They’ve grown a lot since being founded here in Myrtle Beach.   Currently headquartered in Burlington, MA, the company has been a pioneer in disk to disk backup.

 

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Power disguised as command line – 10 reasons SysAdmins should learn PowerShell scripting

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I’m a big proponent of learning PowerShell as an administrator, engineer or any other practitioner role. And I think you should learn it.  It is the path to the future.

  1. The pipeline.  I’ve written a blog post in my head many times about the PowerShell pipeline.  I think it is the single feature that makes PowerShell powerful.  No, Microsoft didn’t invent the pipeline and I know I’ll be chastised by *nix admins (ooo we had it first), but the pipeline really does make PowerShell incredibly effective.  Once you have a data set, you can easily send it into another command where it accepts and makes changes based on that data.  Get-this | Do-that.  Its that simple!
  2. Data Objects.  Even non-developers have encountered object oriented programming at one time or another.  Objects exist to encapsulate, define and allow data to be easily manipulated.  Objects are well formed and defined.  You can explore them and find out more about your data.  Objects are mini packages and inside the package are many tools to manipulate the data.
  3. Time.  Doing things in PowerShell will save you lots of time.  If you are repeating a task, it is easy to find a command to retrieve a list of data – whether its mailboxes, accounts, computers, servers, etc. – that you need to change and then pipe it over to another command and make the change you need.  Why click 500 times when you can do it in 30 characters in PowerShell?
  4. Extensibility.  You can DIY til your heart desires.  You’re not constrained to a list of executable files and built in paramters in PowerShell.  If you find something lacking or missing, you can easily change the data in an object, scope it down, and change it to meet your needs.    And you’re not alone.  PowerShell has a thriving community of DIY-ers, many of whom freely contribute their scripts and ideas online.
  5. It is Friendly.  Learning scripting in VBscript, C#, or many other languages require you to really dig in and learn a language.  PowerShell isn’t that way.  You don’t have to learn a lot of complex syntax to begin using PowerShell.  From the first time you launch PowerShell,  For the most part things make a lot of sense and you can pickup the language quickly (but I won’t mention formatting numbers, for instance).
  6. Break the GUI glass. Sometimes you run up against a problem in the Windows management tools where you can’t export or get to the data you really want from the GUI.  PowerShell gives you access to many repositories of information you’d work much harder to access with other tools.  Not only this, PowerShell includes a wide range of formatting commands to take data objects and output them quickly, easily and simply in CSV, HTML, and plain text tables, lists and other views.  With simple SQL-like commands like Select, Where and Sort, you can also limit the output to exactly what you, or more like, what your manager wants to see.
  7. It is Microsoft’s future.  Microsoft has publicly stated that all future server products starting with Wave 15 (which included SharePoint 2013, Exchange 2013, etc.) would include PowerShell as the de-facto administration platform.  Any GUI environments would become secondary and may be missing some things that can be only done in PowerShell.  Don’t get left behind by not adopting PowerShell.  Not only is it Microsoft’s future, but automation is a big part of the future of IT.  PowerShell gives you an effective way to automate.
  8. Its what *nix geeks always wanted.  For years, Unix and Linux admins griped at all the things missing from Windows and how abysmal the command line was in Windows.  Microsoft took all those complaints off the table with PowerShell.  It is a very powerful and capable environment to perform lots of work quickly.  My *nix counterparts have always raved about having MAN pages for everything.  PowerShell also has its version of MAN pages using the Get-Help command to explore other commands and find out parameters and options for each one, including examples.  Going even further than *nix, PowerShell also includes tools like Get-Method to help you discover the functionality hidden in objects.
  9. You can join your Devs and commit your script to Git.  Ok, so I joke a bit, but many time Devs look down on administrators – aka server jockeys – because they are the ones who create the code.  Once you learn proficiency in scripting PowerShell, don’t be afraid to share with the community and start committing your scripts to Git and public repositories for others to use.  That’s how the community grows and learns from one another.  Don’t only be a taker – be a giver, too…  As a byproduct, you may understand your developers a little better, too.
  10. Its not just Microsoft…  Many other vendors have adopted PowerShell for scripting against their tools.  I’ve written a lot (including a book) about PowerCLI, which is VMware’s PowerShell environment.  What is great about third-party support is the ability to leverage everything you already know about the base PowerShell and combine it with specific commands for a particular product.  The same goes for Microsoft’s specific modules for its server products.  Once you adopt PowerShell for Active Directory and Exchange, it is a natural extension to use it for SharePoint and Lync (Skype for Business).

Now, how to you learn?

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HP offers a show-and-tell of OneView 2.0 features, release date unannounced

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Back in June, HP announced that OneView 2.0 would be coming soon.  There is not an exact ship date for the product, but HP did share the major new features of the new version.  From the list of features, some of the highlights are the introduction of templates to server profiles, enhanced firmware and device driver deployments, deeper storage integration, and an import feature for existing BladeSystem Virtual Connect Manager domains.

The introduction of templates allows you to define a configuration that can be replicated.  While HP OneView 1.x allowed you to clone a server profile, once the profile was cloned, there was no relationship between the original and clone.  With template, however, the server profiles continue to stay linked to the template and this allows you to make changes and push those automatically to all the linked servers.  The use case here, for me, is ESXi hosts and clusters.  I can easily define the configuration and when a change is required, like adding a network uplink or VLAN, I make this on a single template and push out to all the hosts.  That is a huge time saver and it keeps manual error to minimum.

Another big benefit of the templates is the ability to link HP’s Service Pack for Proliant to a template and then automatically apply the firmware and device driver updates to all the hosts built from that template.  This another huge automation step for many environments and a potential time savings for environments small to large.

I had a chance to talk with folks on the show floor and the fibre channel zoning management within OneView is particularly cool.  Once you attach HP OneView to your fibre channel switches and your 3PAR arrays, OneView gains visibility to the storage environment.  You configure a set of provisioning definitions that include how to name zones and how to zone systems to the storage.  OneView makes no changes to existing zones until you make configuration changes to the systems associated and when that occurs, HP OneView rebuilds the zoning per the definition you specified and removes the manually created zones at that time.  This provides a non-disruptive transition from manually created zones to HP OneView managed zoning.

Combining the storage management with the templated server profiles provides an automated method for ensuring that all systems within a cluster are zone properly and there are not manual errors or omissions in the zoning or presentation.

Another storage enhancement promised in OneView 2.0 is the ability to monitor SAN health from within the OneView console.  Instead of needing to correlate between two consoles, you are able to see a more holistic view of the entire system from inside of OneView.

Fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support has also been introduced in the new release.

For a list of all the new details on HP OneView 2.0, check out the frequently asked questions document from HP.

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HP sees Composable Infrastructure as the foundation of future IT

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

The company that created the converged infrastructure concept with its blades is at it again.  HP announced during HP Discover plans around a concept called Composable Infrastructure.  Now, let me be the first to say, much of what makes up Composable Infrastructure today isn’t new to HP.  But, the name is new for an overarching strategy for individual developments that have been building in the company for a while.

First, what is Composable Infrasturcture?  It is the idea of being able to control physical and virtual pools of resources with software through a single, consistent API with full lifecycle support for deployment, management, self-healing and decomissioning.

partnersThe idea is that through HP OneView and its available API’s, developers can define and call this API to compose, decompose or recompose the infrastructure into its desired specification.  Big names within the developer community including OpenStack, Docker, Ansible, Puppet and Chef have all signed on to be a part of HP’s partner program around Composable Infrastructure.

In addition to the API capabilities within OneView, HP also announced a new, multi-year strategy to move beyond software automation to fully automate the lifecycle of bi-modal infrastructure that can bridge companies between traditional IT and new cloud-native IT.  HP calls this strategy Project Synergy.

projectsynergy

For Project Synergy, the company plans to develop a full ecosystem which aims to allow for definition and instantiation on infrastructure – both physical and virtual – with integration into management and development platforms.  It accelerates application and infrastructure orchestration for both traditional and cloud applications.

Not all new territory

When I say this isn’t a net new thing within HP, the first thing to look at is HP OneView.  OneView 2.0 was announced during HP Discover and is the second major release of their infrastructure management product.  During the life of version 1, OneView has consistently added new functionality in each point release.  OneView has extended beyond blade servers and networking to include rack mount hardware and extended beyond servers to manage 3PAR storage, also, all during the version 1 release.

OneView brings the concept of a single management console to control and create servers, storage and networking.  It is the cornerstone of the HP ConvergedSystems solutions – enabling a centralized management for these purpose built solutions.  It has also become a monitoring and management platform for other HP infrastructure. HP realizes that all the goodness brought to ConvergedSystems by OneView can also be applied to larger pools of resources and this is where Composable Infrastructure comes in.

Another point in saying this isn’t new territory for HP is that RESTful API’s it has been working hard to develop in the HP ProLiant systems.  HP is been working to create a RESTful API on the iLO4 management chips.  Its another step in being able to take programatic definitions and instantiate those definitions on hardware.  HP 3PAR has similiar capabilities through SSMC, which shares a similar DNA to OneView.  And as a customer looking into HP, I fully expect (but have no confirmation) we will see similar interfaces develop in networking and for other storage platforms.

Bright Possibilities

Front and center in the Composable Infrastructure announcement is letting software call the shots.  In the future, this allows orchestration tools to reach into a pool of raw compute, storage and network in hardware form and create the infrastructure it requires based on its definition.  It would be very similar to the vision VMware has painted for cloud automation around the vSphere platform, only with physical hardware and lacking the VMware layers of software.  For solutions like OpenStack and container technologies, this allows you to bypass the VMware vTax and work directly on hardware.

But the vision extends beyond providing a programatic way to provision and deprovision hardware.  The vision is to integrate in a way that the full lifecycle is taken into account with automation, management and analytics to assist with the operation of the hardware for the entire life of the product it is supporting.  HP wants to take its analytics and be able to make decisions and create self-healing infrastructure that is able to react to changes in the environment and continue to operate without manual intervention.  Since all the definitions and all of the steps to create the hardware infrastructure are stored in software, the ability to recompose, as HP calls it, the infrastructure is viable in the future.

Again, the message sounds very similar to one the VMware has been talking about with vRealize products, but it is a vision that neither company has fully realized.  Both, I’d argue, have significant assets in the areas needed, but neither one has an fully integrated, end-to-end solution at this time.  The challenge is going to be how well these products integrate and how easily they can be deployed and configured for customers to realize the benefits of the vision.  I think simplicity of management and configuration will be the key factor.

Bimodal infrastructure was another big buzzword with the HP folks during HP Discover and its the concept of having a single set of infrastructure serve your needs for both the traditional applications your enterprise needs along with the cloud applications that your enterprise should be investing in for the future, according to HP.  The cloud native applications will allow the enterprise to be more agile, delivering innovation continually instead of in large, monolithic phases.  Continual delivery will allow the organization to adjust incrementally as the environment changes in a way that is impossible with monolithic applications.

Vision always paints a picture of the perfect world and those practitioners who work in IT know that vision and reality often have a gap in between.   The problem with orchestration and cloud automation packages to date have been the complexity required to configure and get these systems working.  As this develops, my hope is that its done in a way that keeps things clean and simple so that customers can gain the most benefit.  If HP OneView is a benchmark, there is hope that this can happen in HP.

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Deploying HP OneView 1.20 for monitoring & replacing HP SIM

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

oneviewheaderWith the 1.20 release of HP OneView, HP has opened up the ability to monitor hardware without controlling all configuration and deployments using the tool.  Along with the 1.20 release, HP introduced the OneView Standard license, which is a free license that allows HP customers to run OneView for monitoring only of hardware.  This license level lets users use the dashboard  and alerting features to view all of their ProLiant G6 and G7 hardware along with Gen8 and Gen9, including blade enclosures.   These changes allow OneView to be a drop-in replacement for system management and replace HP System Insight Manager in many deployments.

For comparison, with the full-featured OneView Advanced license, customers can manage deployments on ProLiant Gen8 and Gen9 hardware.  Customers can create server profiles and provision these onto blade and rackmount ProLiant hardware.  In addition to ProLiant, OneView is also able to control network configuration for blade hardware and storage configurations connected to blade and rackmount hardware.

Hands-On Impressions

For anyone reading who may be accustomed to HP System Insight Manager (SIM), HP OneView is a huge leap forward.  The UI is intuitive and easy to learn.  The Standard license level allows most people to replace HP SIM if they have current generations of ProLiant hardware.

Once I deployed HP OneView in my environment, all that was needed was connecting it to my blade enclosures and ProLiant rackmount servers.  The connection point is the iLO, so you fill in the iLO’s information, a username and password and then HP OneView configures its own user account on each server to connect and poll from the system.

After connecting the systems, you have a Dashboard view that shows you system health and problems.  Its a pie chart that will show you color coded sections for systems either incompatible (in grey), healthy (green) or with warning and problems (yellow and red).  You are able to click and drill down into each one of the slices to get filtered information about warnings or errors.  The inventory is great and has good controls for filtering by state.  In addition, you can look at servers by hardware type and see how many of each model you have plus, how many different configurations you have within a particular model – based on expansion cards and stats.

Admittedly, there is a lot of additional functionality that remains empty in a monitoring only configuration.  Server profiles and interconnects areas will be blank.

In comparison with HP SIM, I’ve had OneView running for monitoring for months and have had to do zero babysitting.  The alerts that come from OneView are superior to SIM.  The alerts correlate the system name and alert state correctly, where SIM often has difficulty identifying the system name and usually reports things under the system serial number instead.   We have them running in parallel currently and I get alerts from both systems, but I get more useful information from the HP OneView alerts.

I’m not sure I know anyone who would willingly choose HP SIM over HP OneView after giving a test drive.  SIM still has a place if you have a lot of legacy hardware, ProLiant G5 and below.  But, so far, this is a great step forward for system management as an HP customer.

FAQ for HP OneView 1.20 Release

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HP releases BIOS PowerShell cmdlets

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

PowerShellHP has introduced another batch of over 90 PowerShell cmdlets with a focus on BIOS management.  The new batch of cmdlets joins two previous batches of cmdlets that allow management of iLO, the onboard IP management interface on ProLiant servers,  and for Onboard Administrator, the primary management interface on HP’s BladeSystem hardware.

OneView introduced the ability to set BIOS settings during the provisioning of systems and these BIOS cmdlets put the same level of control into more system admins and engineer’s hands, even if the environment has not adopted HP OneView.

When I read this news, the first thing that popped into mind was using this to ensure that my Windows cluster hosts are set to the correct Power Management mode and easily enough, that is the example that is found in the HP documentation that shipped with the toolkit.   For my Windows clusters running things like Exchange or SQL, we follow the best practice to set the Power Management to Static High Performance mode and this toolkit gives me an easy way to write a script to collect this information from multiple hosts and send an email alert for hosts where this is set incorrectly.

Use Scenarios

The HP BIOS Cmdlets are compatible with both WinPE and standard Windows installations meaning that the BIOS cmdlets can be used during system deployment to adjust and set BIOS settings on a host.  This is useful if an enterprising admin wants to ensure the BIOS settings of the hardware during an System Center Config Management installation or with third party imaging systems like Altiris. Interestingly, there is a cmdlet that create an HP customized WinPE image that is deployed with the BIOS cmdlet distribution.

The bulk of the cmdlets are Get- and Set- verb cmdlets, as you would expect.  These cmdlets allow you to retrieve and set specific settings with each cmdlet.  All of the BIOS cmdlets are listed at the end of this post as an overview.

Getting Started

There are some pre-requisites, but anyone using PowerShell will likely already have the pre-requisites installed.  The pre-req’s are:

The installation for the HP BIOS PowerShell cmdlets is found at www.hp.com/go/powershell.  The download is an MSI and the installation is simple and straight forward.  The QuickSpecs are found here for easy reference.

Connecting & Disconnecting

Connecting to a host is simple.  According to the documentation, the syntax for a connection is very similar to connecting to vCenter Server using PowerCLI.

[code lang=”PowerShell”] $variable = Connect-HPBIOS 192.168.0.100 -Username "username" -Password "password"[/code]

All of the documentation and examples show using a connection variable with the Get- and Set- cmdlets, so that may be a best practice, but it is entirely possible to perform a connection in a single line if you only need to adjust a single setting.  Connecting takes a bit of time, so using an establish connection will save you a lot of time.

Storing the connection in a variable for reference also allows you the benefit of establishing multiple sessions to different hosts.  This could be useful for setting settings across multiple hosts with a simple For loop in PowerShell.

Disconnecting is just as simple.

[code lang=”PowerShell”]Disconnect-HPBIOS $variable[/code]

Receiving Updates

Like the previous version of HP cmdlets for iLO and Onboard Administrator, HP has packaged an Update-HPBIOSModuleVersion cmdlet that checks the HP website and automatically pulls down the newer versions of HP BIOS cmdlets when they are available.

What do you connect to?

So, it begs the question – when you do a Connect-HPBIOS cmdlet, what are you connecting to?  The answer is the Windows OS.  You are not connecting to the iLO, as I first thought.  So, this means, only targets running the Windows OS are going to be viable to you.  I had hoped that maybe the PowerShell toolkit was talking to iLO and its RESTful API, but this is not the case. Connected to the RESTful API would have meant you could use PowerShell to script against Linux and VMware hosts in addition to Windows hosts, but perhaps this will come in future versions.

Quick References of the BIOS Cmdlets

Cmdlet Description
Connect-HPBIOS Creates connections to one or multiple BIOS targets.
Disconnect-HPBIOS Closes the connection.
Get-HPBIOSACPI_SLIT Gets BIOS ACPI SLIT preferences information.
Get-HPBIOSAdminInfo Gets the reference information for the server administrator.
Get-HPBIOSAdvancedMemoryProtection Gets BIOS advanced memory protection options information.
Get-HPBIOSAdvancedSystemROMOptions Gets BIOS advanced system ROM options.
Get-HPBIOSBootControllerOrder Gets the current Boot Controller Order.
Get-HPBIOSBootMode Gets the current Boot Mode for the systems that support UEFI.
Get-HPBIOSBootOrderPolicy Gets the current Boot Order Policy in UEFI systems.
Get-HPBIOSCustomPostMessage Gets BIOS custom post message.
Get-HPBIOSDataDirectIO Gets BIOS Data Direct I/O information.
Get-HPBIOSEmbeddedNIC Gets BIOS Embedded NIC information.
Get-HPBIOSEmbeddedUEFIShell Gets BIOS embedded UEFI shell information.
Get-HPBIOSEMSConsole Gets the EMS console configuration.
Get-HPBIOSHyperTransport Gets the current HyperTransport Frequency.
Get-HPBIOSIntelNICDMAChannels Gets BIOS Intel DMA Channels information.
Get-HPBIOSIntelPCM Gets BIOS Intel Performance counter monitor information.
Get-HPBIOSIntelTurboBoost Gets BIOS Intel Turbo Boost information.
Get-HPBIOSInterfaceMode Gets the interface mode displayed for ROM-based utilities.
Get-HPBIOSIPLOrder Gets the current Standard Boot Order (IPL) configuration.
Get-HPBIOSMemoryChannel Gets BIOS memory channel mode information.
Get-HPBIOSMemoryPower Gets the current settings of memory related power management.
Get-HPBIOSMemoryProximityReportingForIO Gets BIOS Memory Proximity Reporting for I/O information.
Get-HPBIOSModuleVersion Gets the module details for the HPBIOSCmdlets.
Get-HPBIOSNodeInterleaving Gets BIOS Node Interleaving information.
Get-HPBIOSOneTerabyteMemoryLimit Gets BIOS One Terabyte Memory Limit information.
Get-HPBIOSPCIePower Gets the current PCIe related configuration, which may impact system power usage.
Get-HPBIOSPowerCapping Gets the current status of Memory Power Capping and Dynamic Power Capping Functionality.
Get-HPBIOSPowerProfile Gets the level of power versus performance for the system.
Get-HPBIOSPowerRegulator Gets the current HP Power Regulator.
Get-HPBIOSPrefetcher Gets BIOS HW prefetcher, Adjacent Sector prefetch, DCU prefetcher and DCUIP prefetcher information.
Get-HPBIOSProcessorOptions Gets the current settings of processor options.
Get-HPBIOSProcessorPower Gets the current settings of processor related power management.
Get-HPBIOSQPI Gets BIOS QPI snoop configuration, QPI bandwidth optimization information.
Get-HPBIOSQPILinkPower Gets the current Intel QPI Link Power Management and Frequency.
Get-HPBIOSRedundantPowerSupplyMode Gets the current redundant power supply configuration.
Get-HPBIOSSerialConsole Gets the serial console configuration.
Get-HPBIOSSerialPort Gets the serial port configuration.
Get-HPBIOSServerAvailability Gets BIOS server availability information.
Get-HPBIOSServerInfo Gets the reference information for the server administrator.
Get-HPBIOSServerSecurity Gets BIOS server security information.
Get-HPBIOSServiceContact Gets the reference information for the server service.
Get-HPBIOSUEFIBootOrder Gets the current advanced UEFI boot order list.
Get-HPBIOSUEFIOptimizedBoot Gets the current UEFI Optimized Boot configuration.
Get-HPBIOSUtilityLanguage Gets BIOS system utility language.
Get-HPBIOSVideoOptions Gets BIOS video options information.
Get-HPBIOSVirtualization Gets the hardware virtualization configuration.
New-HPBIOSCustomWinPEImage Creates HP WinPE image.
Set-HPBIOSACPI_SLIT Sets BIOS ACPI SLIT preferences.
Set-HPBIOSAdminInfo Sets the reference information for the server administrator.
Set-HPBIOSAdvancedMemoryProtection Sets the BIOS advanced memory protection method.
Set-HPBIOSAdvancedSystemROMOptions Sets BIOS system ROM options.
Set-HPBIOSBootControllerOrder Sets the Boot Controller Order.
Set-HPBIOSBootMode Sets the Boot Mode for the systems that support UEFI.
Set-HPBIOSBootOrderPolicy Sets the Boot Order Policy in UEFI systems.
Set-HPBIOSCustomPostMessage Sets a custom post message.
Set-HPBIOSDataDirectIO Sets BIOS Data Direct I/O.
Set-HPBIOSEmbeddedNIC Sets BIOS NIC setting.
Set-HPBIOSEmbeddedUEFIShell Sets BIOS embedded UEFI shell.
Set-HPBIOSEMSConsole Sets the EMS console configuration.
Set-HPBIOSHyperTransport Sets the HyperTransport Frequency.
Set-HPBIOSIntelNICDMAChannels Sets BIOS Intel DMA Channels.
Set-HPBIOSIntelPCM Sets BIOS Intel Performance Counter Monitor.
Set-HPBIOSIntelTurboBoost Sets Intel Turbo Boost.
Set-HPBIOSInterfaceMode Sets the interface mode displayed for ROM-based utilities.
Set-HPBIOSIPLOrder Sets the Standard Boot Order (IPL).
Set-HPBIOSMemoryChannel Sets BIOS memory channel mode.
Set-HPBIOSMemoryPower Sets the memory related power management.
Set-HPBIOSMemoryProximityReportingForIO Sets BIOS Memory Proximity Reporting for I/O information.
Set-HPBIOSNodeInterleaving Sets BIOS Node Interleaving.
Set-HPBIOSOneTerabyteMemoryLimit Sets BIOS one terabyte memory limit.
Set-HPBIOSPCIePower Sets the current PCIe related configuration, which may impact system power usage.
Set-HPBIOSPowerCapping Sets the status of Memory Power Capping and Dynamic Power Capping Functionality.
Set-HPBIOSPowerProfile Sets the level of power versus performance for the system.
Set-HPBIOSPowerRegulator Sets the HP Power Regulator.
Set-HPBIOSPrefetcher Sets BIOS HW, Adjacent Sector, DCU and DCUIP prefetcher.
Set-HPBIOSProcessorOptions Sets the current processor options settings.
Set-HPBIOSProcessorPower Sets the processor related power management.
Set-HPBIOSQPI Sets BIOS QPI snoop configuration and QPI bandwidth optimization.
Set-HPBIOSQPILinkPower Sets the Intel QPI Link Power Management and Frequency.
Set-HPBIOSRedundantPowerSupplyMode Sets the Redundant Power Supply Mode.
Set-HPBIOSSerialConsole Sets the serial console configuration.
Set-HPBIOSSerialPort Sets the serial port configuration.
Set-HPBIOSServerAvailability Sets BIOS server availability.
Set-HPBIOSServerInfo Sets the reference information for the server administrator.
Set-HPBIOSServerSecurity Sets BIOS server security options.
Set-HPBIOSServiceContact Sets the reference information for the server service.
Set-HPBIOSUEFIOptimizedBoot Sets the UEFI Optimized Boot state.
Set-HPBIOSUtilityLanguage Selects the language for the system.
Set-HPBIOSVideoOptions Sets BIOS video options.
Set-HPBIOSVirtualization Sets the hardware virtualization configuration.
Test-HPBIOSConnection Determines if the connection to the target is still valid.
Update-HPBIOSModuleVersion Determines if an updated version of the BIOS cmdlets is available and returns the link to download this new version.
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HP’s new Elitebook Folio 1020 is an attractive, powerful system for mobile enterprise

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

IMG_3686

For many people, their daily office isn’t in a traditional office building.  For them, a lightweight powerful mobile computer is the best way to get the job done.  I had the chance to evaluate an HP ultrabook, the Elitebook Folio 1020, during May and June and run it through the paces on a number of different environments.  I had several trips, my turn on-call, and a some ‘normal’ workdays to try this system in the real-world.  What I found was an incredibly capable system for mobile workers, with fewer concessions than other systems in the ultrabook category.

As I wrap up my evaluation, a few things really stuck out about the system.  First, its weight was superb.  I forgot I was carrying it at times in my backpack.  Touch is a big plus on the Elitebook Folio 1020.  It was my first enterprise experience with a touch-capable Windows system.  Touch makes Windows 8.1 much more functional and helps the OS make sense.  And the display was one of the biggest selling points for me on this system.  Let’s dive into each of those areas a little more.

Display & Resolution

The resolution of the 12.5″ screen is nothing short of incredible.  With resolution that approaches rivals like Apple’s Retina displays, the Elitebook Folio 1020 is capable of using up to 2560 x 1440 resolution.  The display is crisp and clear and provides you with tons of real-estate to operate.  With built-in HDMI and optional VGA with a dongle, the 1020 can connect up to external displays and projectors making it easy to use as a primary system, in addition to a mobile companion.  The Elitebook Folio 1020 changes my mind about 15″ laptops being a requirement for most advanced users.  The Elitebook Folio 1020 provides an display that rivals many 24″ desktop monitors.

From an enterprise perspective, as administrator’s displays have grown to keep pace with their monitoring and management interfaces, it is really helpful to have a mobile workstation that can display the same information and experience in a condensed form.  I tested the Elitebook Folio 1020 running some of my go-to monitoring suites – like Dell Foglight and HP Storage Operations Manager – and found the screen resolution great for displaying the complex environment maps that require enhanced resolution.

Touch

The Elitebook Folio 1020’s native touch display is a big asset.  Lack of touch was my primary complaint when I reviewed the Elitebook Folio 1040, but HP has corrected this in the newer 1020 model.  During testing, I found that selecting precise elements on screen can be a challenge.  It may take a couple taps to get exactly what you’re needing with a finger.  This isn’t due to hardware, instead, its a symptom of the high resolution screen and how small the the links are on screen.

Design

IMG_3684The Folio 1020 follows a normal laptop design.  The metal case on top of the display and around the keyboard exudes a sense of quality.  It looks sleek and professional.  The overall look got lots of questions and comments from people who saw me using the notebook.

The display does not fold back and the keyboard does not disconnect, but I’m not noting that as a problem.  After years of testing alternative designs as my company searches for the right form-factor for tablets and laptops, the traditional design is still the most functional way to create a full computer.  Compared to systems with removable keyboard, like the Microsoft Surface, the keyboard of the Elitebook Folio 1020 is much more usable to perform actual work.  Even as good as on-screen keyboards have gotten, most users can still type faster on a traditional keyboard and the keyboard design in the Folio 1020 is a great one.

From a hardware perspective, I wish there were some sort of Windows key somewhere other than on the keyboard.  I found myself having to move from the screen to the keyboard rather than having a Windows key somewhere to the left or right of the screen as part of the display – like a Microsoft Surface has.  Perhaps that can be integrated in a later version.

OS

After testing the Elitebook Folio 1040 last year, I made an assessment and it is the same with new Elitebook Folio 1020.  The primary weakness of the device is its operating system.  With the Elitebook Folio 1020, it comes pre-installed with Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 straddles somewhere between touch native and desktop interface and its a tough combination.

The benefit, of course, for Windows 8.1 is that you have full compatibility with all your legacy Windows applications and a mix of touch-native applications.  And that is reason enough to entice a lot of enterprises to focus on Windows as their touch OS of choice.  Windows 10 offers a lot of promise to fix some of the nagging issues of the default operating system.

While the touch screen makes Windows 8.1 a lot more functional than mouse alone, the biggest issue I have is sizing of the elements on screen – the only downside to the incredible screen resolution.  Windows 8 includes a number of display options.  On the Elitebook Folio 1020, the default display sizing is 150% for screen elements and this is really needed.  Screen elements at 100% sizing are WAY too small for even young (or younger) eyes.  My older coworkers found the default 150% sizing small to see.  You can optionally size things up to 200% and you have some custom settings within the Display settings.  At 200%, some dialog boxes and things begin to look a little odd – not completely off, but just something not quite normal with them.   But ultimately, 200% works the best for touch on the desktop.  With the resolution of the screen, the 200% zoom resembles what you’d normally see at a 1280 x 720 lower-resolution screen, but with higher clarity.

Hardware features

The notebook is light and easy to carry.  It is perfect for a road warrior but could easily be a primary desktop with some accessories.  It is compact and easy to slip into a carry-on or small backpack.  With an ultrabook, you sacrifice some things to get the portability, however, there seem to be less trade-offs with this laptop.

The main hardware feature that improved with the Elitebook Folio 1020 from the 1040 is the trackpad.  The trackpad is a forced-based trackpad.  While the Folio 1040 had a quirky new trackpad that took some learning, the Folio 1020 has a more intuitive trackpad that just works.  To click, you just press harder on the trackpad.  To right click or scroll, those are two-finger gestures.  Scrolling is just using two fingers to slide up or down.  Right click is pressing harder with two fingers instead of one.  Pinch and spread gestures also work on the touchpad.

IMG_3677The system has a better than expected number of ports for an ultrabook.  The system has 2 built-in USB ports, an HDMI port and an expansion port for a dongle or a docking station.  There is also a MicroSD port for adding additional storage.  The headphone jack is a single integrated port for both mic input and headphone output like you’d expect on a tablet or smartphone.

The fingerprint security is a welcome component on the system.  Just swipe your finger across the scanner and you are logged into the system and other software on the system.  HP’s Security software suite handles the biometric enrollment and your password store for things that are authorized to use your fingerprint for authentication.

The sound bar across the top of the keyboard is effective.  The sound at full blast is a little soft, but for an enterprise focused laptop, this is ok.  When I used sound, many times I used a headset while traveling.  The one time I used built-in sound extensively was during training and found it to work very well while attending a class hosted online.  It seems to be an improvement in terms of sound quality and output versus the Elitebook Folio 1040.

The keyboard is comfortable and the back-light helped particularly while I was traveling on a plane or using the system in a dimly lit room in the evenings.  It has a nice feel to it and even someone with big hands (me) can comfortably type on it for long periods without any problems.

Battery life was good.  You will find that its probably better than most laptops but less than most tablets.  The unit is rated for 9 hours and for general usage, I came close to those numbers, but as soon as you do any graphic intensive things like video, the battery drains faster.

The one hardware feature I was not able to test was near field communication.  The Elitebook Folio 1020 is equipped with NFC but I never encountered a time to use the hardware and test it in my field trials.

Conclusions

I work in IT full time as an administrator.  This laptop is perfect for my mobile workstation – perfect for taking on-call and on trips.  I can imagine it fits nicely for sales and field employees that generally work outside of the office. It is lightweight and very portable.  For desk workers, it makes a great mobile companion system.  It is perfect for on-call, whether you’re going to the beach, hiking, a theme park or anything in between, it is light enough to carry along.

continue to Part 2 – Field Testing the Elitebook Folio 1020

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DatacenterStorage

Tegile Systems Named Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays

by Shawn Cannon
written by Shawn Cannon

Here at vBrainstorm we enjoy reporting news about the vendors in the IT space.  Tegile Systems is one of the Solid State storage vendors that we follow.  A press release was published today naming Tegile as a visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays.  Kudos to you Tegile!  The press release is below.

Tegile Systems Positioned Among the ‘Visionaries’ of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays Acknowledgement from Gartner makes Tegile the only upstart storage company to be in all-flash and general-purpose Magic Quadrants

 

Newark, Calif., June 23, 2015 – Tegile Systems, the leading provider of flash-driven storage arrays for databases, virtualized server and virtual desktop environments, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays”* report (http://pages.tegile.com/Q3_2015_Report_Gartner_Quadrant_Gartner_Magic_Quadrant_Tegile.html).  Tegile is the only upstart storage company to be named among the Visionaries in this and Gartner’s 2014 “Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays” reports.

 

The Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays represents vendors that sell into the enterprise end-user market with specific branded SSAs.  Each vendor in the Magic Quadrant is evaluated based on its ability to execute (product/service, overall visibility, sales executive/pricing, market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience and operations) and its completeness of vision (market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering (product) strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation and geographic strategy).

 

Gartner recognized Tegile as a Visionary for the following reasons:

  • A comprehensive portfolio of Intelligent Flash Arrays, which leverages the same hardware, software and management GUIs for all its storage arrays
  • Broad block and file protocol, which makes Tegile one of the few unified SSA offerings
  • Selectable data reduction, and detailed instrumentation and data reduction reporting on a storage pool and LUN level

 

“We are pleased to once again be recognized by Gartner analysts among the ‘Visionaries’ in their well-respected Magic Quadrant reports,” said Rob Commins, vice president of marketing at Tegile.  “Whether it is an all-flash array for Tier-1 workloads or a hybrid array that provides the performance of flash at the price of disk, Tegile has shown time and time again its ability to deliver innovative products that address operationally or financially important end-user problems at a broad scale to warrant our inclusion on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.”

 

Tegile All-Flash Arrays make it easy and affordable to transition to a flash-centric data center. By delivering maximum performance, high density and compelling economics, the T-Series is ideal for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads such as online transaction processing, real-time analytics, decision support and data warehousing. The T-Series portfolio enables users to start small and scale in capacity as their business grows. Organizations can start with the T3600 or T3700 to deliver a turbo-boost to legacy storage while deferring equipment replacement before moving up to the T3800 when density and capacity requirements grow.

 

About Tegile Systems

Tegile Systems is pioneering a new generation of intelligent flash arrays that balance performance, capacity, features and price for virtual desktop and database applications. With Tegile’s line of all-flash and hybrid storage arrays, the company is redefining the traditional approach to storage by providing a family of arrays that accelerate business critical enterprise applications and allow customers to significantly consolidate mixed workloads in virtualized environments.

Tegile’s patented IntelliFlash™ technology accelerates performance and enables inline deduplication and compression of data so each array has a usable capacity far greater than its raw capacity. Tegile’s award-winning solutions enable customers to better address the requirements of virtualization, virtual desktop integration and database integration than any other offerings. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, Tegile arrays are easy-to-use, fully redundant and highly scalable. They come complete with built-in snapshot, remote-replication, near-instant recovery, onsite or offsite failover, and VM-aware features. Additional information is available at www.tegile.com. Follow Tegile on Twitter @tegile.

 

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DatacenterStorage

New HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 series array architecture make them easier to field upgrade

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

IMG_3385One of the interesting discussions I had during HP Discover was an HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 architecture discussion with folks on the show floor.  At first glance, you’ll notice a large enclosure in the 20800’s cabinet in the photo to the right from the event and also prominently shown in the marketing photos.  I was immediately curious what was inside of this enclosure.

Turns out, these 16U enclosures are actually the 8 controllers for a 20800 array.  The enclosure is a lot like a blade enclosure with modular controllers that can be added from the back of the enclosure.  On the front, there is a bank of fans and batteries for the individual controller nodes.  The 8 controllers are wired together through a mid-plane, very simliar to a blade enclosure, and this shared mid-plane eliminates the needs for many wires that would normally wire together these nodes in the “mesh active” architecture.  The first thought is that field upgrades should be much simpler due to decreasing the amount of complex wiring required.

In addition to the controller enclosure, another major change in architecture is SAS backend for the 20800 series arrays compared to the 10800 series arrays they replace.  The drive enclosures are all connected back to the controllers with SAS cables and the folks I spoke with said that in the field, it should not be necessary to have more than a couple chained SAS connections from the controller to the drive enclosures even in a fully populated array because the controllers have so many available SAS ports.  This again keeps things simple for field upgrades.

Not only did the drive enclosures switch to SAS connections, but HP is also introducing a fiber SAS connectivity between the controllers and the drive enclosures to allow the rack of drive enclosures to be locate further away from the controllers themselves in crowded data centers.  These connections can extend up to 100 meters according to the people I spoke with.  The gallery below shows a little more detail of these changes.

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DatacenterSoftwareStorage

Installation walkthrough of HP Storage Operations Manager

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

somheader

HP has released Storage Operations Manager, a new heterogeneous storage resource management package.  The software is customer installable and designed to be simple to get up and running so that you can discover and visualize your storage environment and gain new levels of control over it.  The installation takes about 40 minutes to complete, start to finish, most of which is after user input is complete.  The install does require a bit of pre-planning but if you have all the requirements in order, it is smooth sailing.

Requirements

Processor

  • Intel 64-bit (x86-64)
    • Recommended families:
      • Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or later for up to Medium tier
      • Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or later for Large tier
  • AMD 64-bit (AMD64)
  • Minimum of 8 cores

RAM & Disk Space

  • Minimum of 12GB of RAM for entry level installation
  • Minimum 10GB of available disk space for data and 3 GB of disk space for the application for entry level installation
  • Requirements increase depending on the number of hosts monitored, number of switch port and number of storage systems
  • See the SOM Support Matrix for more details

Operating System

  • Windows Server® 2008 R2 x64 with SP1
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 with Update 1
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.4 or 6.5
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3

Installation

The following is a gallery of the installation process as run in Microsoft Windows 2012 R2.

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