Tech Round Up 27th October 2012

It’s been a good six weeks since the last Tech Round Up due to holidays and work commitments; here are a few notes and bookmarks to things found as new, useful, or interesting in October! With stuff from: Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Google, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NetApp, Veeam, VMware, and Ultimate Storage

## Cisco ##

Cisco have announced a free (Essential Edition) version of their Nexus 1000V 2.1 (currently in beta). Features include: VLAN, ACL, QoS, VXLAN, vPath, LACP, Multicast, Netflow, ERSPAN, Management, vTacker, vCenter Plug-in

## Citrix ##

A very good blog post describing the hard to understand way PVS uses memory for caching disk operations!

Might be handy if you need to do a health check of a Citrix XenApp environment!
“In 4 easy steps you can analyze your log files, profile your XenApp environment and scan for hundreds of known issues. It takes only minutes to deliver clear, actionable advice customized to you.
1. Download and Run Citrix Scout - generates diagnostic log files from your XenApp environment.
2. Upload the log file to Citrix Auto Support – See here for how to generate diagnostic data for other supported products.
3. Wait a few minutes – the file will be parsed and measured against hundreds of parameters.
4. Review the results

XenServer 6.1 is out! Check out the release notes for new features and enhancements.

How NetScaler can help you with your IPv4 to IPv6 transitioning!

## EMC ##

Reminds me that I need to get some EMC certs!

## Google ##


## Juniper Networks ##

An interesting design with:
2x Juniper Networks EX4550 switches = 2u
4x Dell D820 PowerEdge™ Server = 8u
2x Dell PowerVault™ MD3600i 10GbE iSCSI Array & 12 600GB 15K SAS = 4u

And vGW Kernel Interaction:

## Microsoft ##

1. Storage Spaces
2. Hyper-V 3
3. PowerShell 3.0
4. Failover clusters
5. Data deduplication
6. SMB 3.0
7. Scale-out file server

> Can convert and deploy VMs from VMware hosts running either vSphere 4.1 or 5.0 to Hyper-V hosts on Windows Server 2012, by migrating configuration such as memory, virtual processor and by adding virtual network interface cards.
> Converts VMware virtual disks to Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs)
> Uninstalls VMware tools prior to conversion and installs Integration Services if the guest OS is Windows Server 2003 SP2 and above
> Supports Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 guest Operating Systems.
> Scriptable command-line interface and wizard-driver GUI

PowerShell scripts to help you build your 2012 IaaS clouds.

A nice review from The Register of System Center 2012 and its components!

Perhaps a bit old now with Exchange 2013 imminent, but a useful interactive tool for planning your upgrade to Exchange 2010 on-premises or in the cloud!

“As I understand it there is no longer a need to split off the various networking duties but finding the references (I heard them in person) is a bit difficult at this time.”

## NetApp ##

Excellent videos on using the NetApp VSC 4.1 (Virtual Storage Console plugin for vSphere and XenCenter)!

## Veeam ##

Veeam Backup & Replication 6.5 is out now!
Including:
> Free e-discovery and item recovery for Microsoft Exchange
> Easy VM recovery from SAN snapshots
> New hypervisor support: vSphere 5.1 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

Veeam Community Forums Digest October 1 – October 7, 2012
“Veeam is building network traffic verification right into the product's engine. With this in place, you can be always sure that the remote backup or replica receives the exact same data as source proxy has sent. And, should the in-transmit data corruption be detected, bad data blocks will be resent automatically without any impact on the job (in the end, no one wants 1TB full backup over WAN to fail at 99%). We will be squeezing this feature right into the upcoming B&R 6.5 release!”

An interesting debate from the Veeam forums!


## VMware ##


“VMware recommends that ESXi has a persistent scratch location available for storing temporary data including logs, diagnostic information, and system swap. (This is not a requirement, however.)”
Which can be configured for the vSphere Client > Advanced Settings > ScratchConfig : ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation

Interesting walkthrough to show how it’s done!

Great article for those interested in vCloud Design!

Using the vSphere Web Client 5.1!

Came across this pdf from VMware Professional Services which serves as an interesting template for a professional services engagement! The vCheck health report from here is a very handy tool for this purpose.

Phases of Virtualization:


## Ultimate Storage ##

Interesting if you’re looking for prices for certain (value) storage vendors, including – QNAP, Synology, Quantum, QSAN, Overland Storage …

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