Tech Round Up 31st January 2013

Interesting tech stuff happened upon since the 31^st December Tech Round Up! With stuff from: Actiflo, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, DataCenterKnowledge, FalconStor, Microsoft, NetApp, Veeam, VKernel, and VMware.

Actiflo

Actifio Copy Data Storage Products

http://www.actifio.com/products/

Brocade

Build Your Own Ethernet Fabric (BYOEF):

http://community.brocade.com/community/brocadeblogs/data_center/blog/2012/12/20/build-your-own-vcs-fabric-byof

Cisco

Cisco MDS SAN Zoning Best Practices

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-24281

Citrix

Secrets of the Citrix Support Ninjas

http://www.citrix.com/static/services/support-ninja-secrets.pdf?aliId=128188761

DataCenterKnowledge

There’s nothing quite like a bit of datacenter p@#n!

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-top-10-data-center-images-of-2012/

FalconStor

Free iSCSI SAN Software:

http://www.falconstor.com/download-iscsi-san-for-free

Microsoft

VMware vSphere 5.x supports Windows Server 2012 cloning and snapshot

http://up2v.nl/2013/01/27/vmware-vsphere-5-x-supports-windows-server-2012-cloning-and-snapshot/

Windows Server 2012 VM-Generation ID Support in vSphere

Cloning Windows Server 2012 Domain Controller on vSphere 5

Safely Cloning an Active Directory Domain Controller with Windows Server 2012 - Step-by-Step

The Pros and Cons of Using Database Availability Groups

http://powerwindows.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/the-pros-and-cons-of-using-database-availability-groups/

The Hydration Kit for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 (with Windows Server 2012 / SQL Server 2012) is available for download!

http://www.deploymentresearch.com/Research/tabid/62/EntryId/82/The-Hydration-Kit-for-ConfigMgr-2012-SP1-with-Windows-Server-2012-SQL-Server-2012-is-available-for-download.aspx

NetApp

Clustered Data ONTAP Benefits (excellent NetApp TV video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVpS2ERNSJM

How NetApp Deduplication Works - A Primer

https://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/about-data-storage/blog/2013/01/18/how-netapp-deduplication-works--a-primer

NetApp Flash Pool and Flash Cache: A Deep Dive

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/NetApp-Flash-Pool-and-Flash-Cache-A-Deep-Dive

How to Configure Your NetApp Systems for 100% Efficiency

https://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/about-data-storage/blog/2013/01/28/how-to-configure-your-netapp-systems-for-100-efficiency

C-Mode Visio Generator PowerShell Script Module

https://communities.netapp.com/community/products_and_solutions/microsoft/powershell/samples/blog/2013/01/20/c-mode-visio-generator-powershell-script-module

OnCommand Insight v6.4 Beta Program:

https://communities.netapp.com/groups/oncommand-insight-v64-beta-program

Walkthrough on Deploying the NetApp Edge VSA:

http://www.virtuallanger.com/2012/12/31/deploying-the-netapp-edge-vsa-part-i/

http://www.virtuallanger.com/2013/01/05/deploying-the-netapp-edge-vsa-part-ii/

SPC-2 performance results MBPS/drive – chart of the month

http://silvertonconsulting.com/blog/2013/01/07/spc-2-performance-results-mbpsdrive-chart-of-the-month/

“It turns out that the SGI system is actually a NetApp E5460 (from their LSI acquisition) with 60-146GB disk drives in a RAID 6 configuration.”

NetApp Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Workflow: Device attached to the system is not functioning

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2017262

Troubleshooting Workflow: NDMP backup performance

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2017314

Troubleshooting NDMP issues

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2017316

Veeam

The Hands-on Guide: Understanding Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012

http://go.veeam.com/wpg-backup-posey-henley-zerger-understanding-hyper-v-in-windows-server-2012.html

VKernel

vOPS Server Explorer – TOP FREE VMWARE VSPHERE TOOL OF 2012!

http://www.vkernel.com/pages/server-explorer

VMware

Monitoring vCenter SSO User Account Expiration

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/01/monitoring-vcenter-sso-user-account.html

“Did you know that user accounts created in the vCenter SSO Server automatically expire by default after 365 days?”

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vCloud-Director51-Perf.pdf

The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-CPU-Sched-Perf.pdf

Download VMware vCenter Support Assistant

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VCSA510&productId=285

Retrieving a screenshot of VM console through any browser directly from the host:

https://myESXi/screen?id=vm-111

Looking up Managed Object Reference (MoRef) in vCenter Server

Uniquely Identifying Virtual Machines in vSphere and vCloud Part 2: Technical

Configuring syslog on ESXi 5.0

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2003322

Something to watch out for when upgrading your vCloud:

http://stretch-cloud.info/2013/01/upgrading-your-vcloud-from-1-5-to-5-1-watch-out-for-the-any-storage-profile-caveat/

vSphere 5.1 – VMDK versus RDM

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/01/vsphere-5-1-vmdk-versus-rdm.html

Automating ESXi host level changes without opening SSH

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2013/01/08/automating-esxi-host-level-changes-without-opening-ssh/

Get VMware vCenter Scheduled Tasks with PowerCLI

http://rvdnieuwendijk.com/2013/01/19/get-vmware-vcenter-scheduled-tasks-with-powercli/

How to write your own esxcli plugin

http://www.v-front.de/2013/01/how-to-write-your-own-esxcli-plugin.html