Tech Round Up 18th July 2012

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Today with stuff from Cisco, Citrix, Dell, HP, Microsoft, NetApp, Veeam, and VMware.

Astrophotography

First, completely unrelated to IT, a nice site if you like astrophotography http://billsnyderastrophotography.com/

Cisco


Fig. Cisco OTV = Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization
Note: This would still be an offline vMotion

Cisco


Citrix

Branch Repeater 6.1 is out – release notes here

Citrix

Bit of a funny issue found by www.vmwareinfo.com

Citrix

When using Streamed Outlook 2010, it will fail to launch with the above error. The cause is Windows Search.

DataCenter


Dell

Article by Mike Davis about Dell's FluidFS (Fluid File Storage) NAS range that includes three new models coming later this summer - the Compellent FS8600, the EqualLogic FS7600, and the PowerVault NX3600

Dell

Download a FREE trial of the DVS Simplified Appliance Software
Sounds a bit like Citrix VDI-in-a-Box – check it out!
Note: Dell DVS = Dell Desktop Virtualization Solution

Dell


Dell Customer Stories

Picked out a few interesting names of customers who use Compellent:

Playboy, The FBI, Heineken, Microsoft, Sunguard, Savvis, NASDAQ, RSA ...

Dell Customer Stories

Canal Insurance Company – Insurance – 240 Employees

Services:
Dell Compellent Copilot Support

Hardware:
Dell Compellent Storage Center SANs
Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with Intel Xeon 5500 series processors

Software:
Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay
Dell Compellent Data Progression
Dell Compellent Dynamic Capacity
Dell Compellent Enterprise manager
Dell Compellent Fast Track
Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay

Dell Customer Stories

Nash County Government – Government – 700 Employees

Services:
Dell ProSupport Mission Critical with four hour onsite response
Dell Compellent Copilot Support

Solutions:
Dell KACE K1000 System Management Appliance
Dell KACE K2000 System Deployment Appliance

Hardware:
Brocade FastIron SX 800 core switches
Brocade FCX624S-HPOE and FCX648S-HPOE edge switches
Dell Compellent Storage Center SANs

Software:
Dell Compellent Data Instant Replay
Dell Compellent Data Progression
Dell Compellent Dynamic Capacity
Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay

HP

From westcoastsolutions.blogspot.co.uk - HP 3PAR Starter Kit - Now even more affordable

What does the kit include?
"HP 3PAR F200/F400 Starter Kit (QW960A/QW961A)
">Two F-Class 3PAR controller nodes including the Thin Build In ASIC
"> Rack mount kits for racking into 3rd party and HP 19” racks
"> 4 embedded FC host ports, 4 embedded disk ports to connect disk chassis
"> 2 disk drive chassis (Total of 32 drive slots)
"> 16x 600GB 15k rpm FC disk drives (~ 9.6TB raw)
"> 4 host cables
"HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software Suite
"> 10 TB of Thin Suite
"HP 3PAR Service Processor for remote support and call home
"HP 3 years Support Plus 24 and HP Installation Services"

Microsoft

From myvirtualcloud.net by Andre Leibovici - DaaS Identity Management, Federation & Multi-Tenancy

Fig. Connector to the cloud for LDAP

Microsoft

Are strongly pushing Migrate from VMware !

Microsoft

Exchange Server 2013 Preview is out, and the pre-release documentation is available on technet

NetApp Customer Stories

Fig. Zuckerman Spaeder NetApp Storage Architecture
Fig. Zuckerman Spaeder NetApp Solution Components

Silicon Angle

Interesting article from servicesangle.com:

Veeam

A couple of tips from a Rick Vanover's Webinar of Jul 17:
Additional information on Windows Server 2012 – "Greatly improved NFS support!"
If you need take backup, buy a HP Tape Drive as it comes with a free copy of HP Data Protector Express that you can use to pick up the flat files.
For protecting the Veeam Backup server itself, recommend using the replication engine.

Veeam

From Gostev's Veeam Community Forums Digest (Jul 9 – Jul 15):
"One popular use case for the (Veeam Backup Free Edition) ... restoring existing backups in another site (where you do not have Veeam installed), or even by somebody else (e.g. your public cloud provider)....
... free edition can only restore from full backups (VBK files) ... because you can only make full backups with VeeamZIP .... (BUT!) ... to restore from an incremental backup ... go to main menu, and change the UI mode to Full functionality; this will make Import Backup button appear on the Home toolbar; click to import your whole backup files chain. Then, launch the Restore wizard just like you would in paid B&R edition ...."

PS Another cool use of Veeam is for DataCenter migrations!

Veeam


Veeam

Fig. Veeam replication from Production Site Proxy to DR Site Proxy

VMware

Excellent View VDI Calculator from Andre Leibovici

VMware

From blogs.vmware.com:

Fig. Storage I/O Queuing Flow

" ... if you are noticing that your device queues are constantly bumping up to their maximum limits (see Checking the queue depth of the storage adapter and the storage device using ESXTOP ), it would be recommended to increase the Device/LUN depth and use SIOC (Storage I/O Control) to help mitigate any potential noisy neighbor problem .... The reason for increasing the device queue is that a storage array is generally more efficient if it can see multiple I/O requests at one time ... "

VMware

"It is super easy to set up multi-NIC vMotion. It's all explained in KB: Multiple-NIC vMotion in vSphere 5 (2007467) . To briefly cover the set up:
1. You set up multiple vmkernel port groups, each with a different NIC as primary, any other NIC's as standby or unused, and a different IP address on the same subnet.
2. You then select the vMotion tick box on the vmkernel port."

VMware

Goes into Exchange, Oracle, SQL, SAP, SharePoint, Java, Hadoop.

VMware

"... Don’t forget to learn the vMA commands vifp and vifptarget, which will help you to point the vMA to a specified ESXi server in your datacenter ..."
And a script that "... will configure the syslog server and open the syslog firewall rule for each server mentioned in the for loop ..."

VMware


VMware

From virtual-vargi a nice Storage – Collection of Links

VMware

Gigaom VMware shakeup: Maritz is reportedly out (already confirmed.)
A couple of paragraphs I thought I'd highlight:
"... VMware has let its lead on virtualization — its core business — slide while pursuing enterprise applications and higher-level software ..."
"... The irony is that most large cloud computing vendors such as Amazon and Google don’t use VMware’s hypervisor, but use a customized version of the Xen hypervisor ..."

I'm thinking that VMware vSphere should not really be compared against Hyper-V. I've always thought that ESXi is a "proper" Type 1 hypervisor; it is lean and mean (the OS can even run in memory) and just does the job of being a hypervisor – and that single focus allows it to excel at what it does; whereas Hyper-V – an excellent product, don't get me wrong, especially with Hyper-V R3 coming – is much fatter and a part of the multi-purpose Windows Server OS. Perhaps VMware have missed a trick in not having a more capable free/open source version, that could have competed with the likes of the Xen hypervisor, to mop up the large Cloud Computing space.

VMware

To turn it on and check CDP Status = both
esxcli network vswitch standard set -c both -v vSwitch0
esxcli network vswitch standard list -v vSwitch0
LLDP only works with the vSphere distributed switch, and from the settings find 'Discovery Protocol'

Fig. Discovery Protocol - LLDP

VMware


VMware

"... To enable Uber Admin mode in VMware vCloud Director 1.5.x, click the Home tab under System Organization, click About from the Support Navigation menu, and press Ctrl + Shift + U ..."

VMware

"... vpxd -b ..."

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