Leggo My Craiggo

New week. New Role. Great Times.

2011-11-21T09:18:00.000-05:00

As of today I start my new position with EMC. I will be one of the Sr. vSpecialist for the southeast.

All little happy, a bit scared, and a bunch excited. Here we go.

Now I might actually have time to blog ... YAY!

Success. Passed the VCAP-DCD.

2011-08-06T16:09:00.002-04:00

So this past Tuesday I took the VMware VCAP-DCD exam. I wanted to just share my experience as so many others have done in the past few months. I will also toss some tips out that may seem like common sense but when you focus on the goal I have found that it is possible that common sense gets "fuzzy".

So let's first talk about the exam. It was a great experience. The questions had a good mix of difficulty and persistence. Lots of good design scenario based questions.

A few items that should help:

READ. - Read every word and understand the complete scenario. Many of the questions look the same and it is easy to read a portion and miss the import of the questions.

PREPARE. - Preparation for this is not easy but if you read Scott Lowe's book on Design it helps a bunch. Then go over the blueprint and understand the concepts.

TOPICS. - There are some Diagram items that are based on the VMware design tool. It's not great but ... it works. Understand what VMware expects to see in Diagrammed scenarios. Kendrick Coleman and Sean Crooks have a bunch of great information on the DCD. There are a ton of resources on this topic so I won't recreate the wheel. But here are a list of the ones I thought helpful.

Helpful Links:
1st - vSphere Design Course was helpful on a number of fronts. Truly helping you to understand what VMware is looking for on this. Is it preparation for the test? Yes. Is it a guide that once you take the course you can hit DCD with no issues? Nope. The course is a nice guide for concepts and helps in terminology.

2nd - Blueprint. Hit up the blueprint if you want to take the test. It is a nice step by step that when coupled with the vSphere design course outlines the knowledge segments you can bone up on and know where you are weak. Linky to the blueprint is here - Click Here :) - Registration / login required. Do this as you'll need an account to request authorization to take the test with this account. If you don't want to make one you can get it here : Ver 1.5 blueprint (Download PDF).

3rd - Study Resources. I hear Train Signal has some for this. I haven't seen it but all their other stuff is usually good quality. P.S. - If anyone at Train Signal wants me to check out prep stuff for the VCAP-DCD or the VCAP-DCA please feel free to send me a copy! ;) lol.

Seans DCD page in progress - Sean's Link!
Kendrick's Experience - You can find his site here - Kenny's Link - At the time of this writing the blog is offline to me ... don't know why. I have sent out a tweet to Kenny to see what the deal is.
Phil the virtualizer - Phil's Link!
A bunch of others out there. These are the one's that helped me out.

You might want to know you HA options. This link may help - Duncan's HA DeepDive

Also do everyone a favor and know your DRS/HA, Roles, and Advanced Troubleshooting commands.

Without a minimal knowledge of these your going to stare at the screen for way too much time. You have 113 questions and 240 minutes. The diagrams and simulations are good, with the tool it is easy to waste time here. Don't do it!! Know what you need to know and if you don't mark it for review and come back to it! I ended the test with 26 mins left and then went into review mode ... I ended the review with 1 minute and 2 seconds left. I have yet to see an experience where one of my vBrosefs :) (New Term Chappy copyrighted! lol) has had more than 3 or so minutes on the clock when they end review.

So I think that pretty much puts a wrap on it.

One thing left though someone heard that I passed the DCD and then said isn't vSphere 4 out of date? I thought about this a bunch and have the following response.

For early adopters the DCD doesn't provide specific vSphere 5 stuff, true. With all the licensing stuff going on, I hear a number of different stands on upgrading to vSphere 5. What the DCD does prove is that your underlying knowledge is indeed sound and you have some design skills.

So is it based on vSphere 4? Yes.
Does it still show that your knowledge is valid? Yes.
Because it is based on vSphere 4, does it mean that your not an architect? Nope! Since you are a person that passed the DCD you just need to understand the changes in vSphere 5 and BOOM you're good to go.

Finally if anyone vPosers (vPosers are just what they sound like, posers who think that they know vSphere better than everyone just because they are old school.) pester you about your score and you don't feel the need to share. Tell them "My Design brings all the GEAR to yard. Darn right it's better than yours. I could teach you but I'd have to charge." LOL. [ insert "In Living Color" aww snap here! :) ]

Yeah it's like that. You know who you are! :)

Feel free to drop me a line if I should add links to this compilation! virtual chappy at gmail dot you know and no spaces.

Major Down Time :). Sorry about that.

2011-07-23T21:25:00.000-04:00

So near the end of December the partner I work for, got in the vSphere 5 beta program and began working with it. I was insanely hyped about some of the new features that were introduced in this version. Not everything that I saw at that time made it into the final release that happened when I was at Cisco Live. Although enough did get in that I was very impressed.

SRM 5 is mad sweet. (Host based 4T{cheap}W) ;)
vSphere 5 is sweet and so is the VSA.

I will be posting a bit more in the near future but I need to pass the VCAP-DCD first. I take that on the 2nd of August. Once I have that down I should have some more time to handle some blogging.

Also in case you didn't know I hooked up a twitter account - @virtualchappy .

As Katy Perry would say "You just got ignite the light and let is shine. You gotta just own the night." corny I know but in all honesty that did it and I think that things are going to take off in the next couple of weeks.

AVG Free update kill your PC?

2010-12-01T21:52:00.000-05:00

Yeah me too :).

I have liked AVG Free as a way to protect my personal stuff for a while now. But last night I was informed by the latest edition of the client that I needed to reboot due to an update.

So I was putting that off until today. But alas, when I did do a reboot my PC was stuck in a reboot loop due to a BSOD related to a AVG component. Reboot happens when trying to go into Safe Mode as well.

How do you fix this?

Well I don't know about what you personally would do. But here is what I did to restore my system.

Instead of trying safe mode let it try and launch start-up repair.

It won't be able to fix it. When that is done you click "finish" and then the Advanced Options link.

From there choose the command line option.

Then go to the root of your OS drive usually C:\. Once there cd to program files (x86)\AVG, then rd AVG10 /s. answer y and then proceed. That will forcefully remove ALL AVG files and you can then restart your PC.

How to build a team. - Part 1 -

2010-11-30T11:21:00.000-05:00

In my recent adventures, many people have asked me how I would build a team. Due to the current marketplace trend in moving fast in trying to create a Data Center practice this has become more and more common.

Some of the questions that I would ask if I was going to build a team are below:

So how would you properly build a team that was geared to thrive instead of just survive?

How do you plan to keep talent?

How can IT leaders avoid boring talent?

To that end the below points can assist anyone trying to build any team. Especially the human aspects of making that team be cohesive, well respected, intelligent and bonded together like concrete.

Goals and Mind-share -

For this team Goals and Mind-share must be aligned. Team members must understand the import of the team direction and goals. Team members might not always agree with the route taken to achieve the goals but, when the team understands the goals and direction a team member can usually forgive a perceived error in the chosen route.

Allowing team members to gain mind-share is important. As a leader of that team you must be ready to listen and hear them at the same time. More times than not your team will surprise you with the levelheadedness and intelligence they can bring to bear on a specific matter. Make sure that everyone knows who everyone else is, in a team like this there isn't really a spot for EGO. Make that known and deflate the need for EGO and some amazing things will happen. As a team builder/IT leader you need to keep that going.

One key need in being able to build a team that you can do this with is finding the "SPARK", or the X-factor, or passion. Whatever you call it that is the key to keep this team burning hot with talent.

Group Mentality -

Make sure that the team and you as a leader foster the attitude that the group is more important than the one. Once that is complete make sure that you and the team show the following chain: Client is more important than the group, Group is more important than one person, and as a team member I can help make that impact on the group and client positive. I as a team member can indeed contribute.

--That is it for now more tomorrow--

West Michigan VMUG, and recap! Great Stuff!

2010-11-05T16:47:00.001-04:00

It's about time.

So originally the West Michigan vmware User's Group started with John Peck (from Herman Miller) and Joe Harnish (I think Joe is with Metro now). For reasons I am not privy to the VMUG had died off in the last 14 months or so. Finally it has been revived. Russ Shearer (Meijer), Gary Coburn (Vmware SE), and some other good guys that I have not yet had the chance to meet have got it back up and going. Thursday was the first official meeting.

The agenda was the normal User Group Flow. (Sponsor, Vendor, Customer)

Sponsor presentation on the "cloud". **

**(Just so that everyone knows, I want to be perfectly clear. Virtualization is NOT the cloud. Virtualization is a cloud enabling technology. The presenter mis-stated that Virtualization IS the cloud. That is not correct. According to the NIST definition the cloud is a model for delivering resources that have specific service models and rapid "low-touch" provisioning. So, while Virtualization is a big help to the could, it is not in itself the cloud. I think that the presenter knew that and just mis-spoke.)

vmware VDI stuff.

A really good customer presentation on VDI 101 basics. (Less slides brosef. Less slides.) ;)

Spectrum did a great job on both the documentation and presentation of the journey from current to future state. vBlock insights and configuration models that lend themselves to the workload that spectrum runs was neat to see. Knowing where Spectrum sees the benefits and issues with the vblock approach is cool. I really thought that it was great that Mark West knew that vBlock is not a panacea but a solution pathway. Mark really illustrated well why certain standards would be taken care of in First, Second, and Third steps. Understanding the financial, business process, along with the workflow issues that this solution will solve really cemented again what we must do as IT professionals. By using business acumen and understanding the requirements involved not only can IT become less of a "vacuum", but IT can be a better contributor to the success of the business.

All things considered it was a good start.

Things that need to happen. More interaction, bigger attendance, and topics people will get excited about.

VMware if you are reading this ... invite some of the bloggers in the industry! Chad, Vaughn, Duncan, Mike, Frank .... any of these guys.

Final bit of Advice? ... If you are in the West Michigan Area . . . BE AT THE NEXT VMUG!!!!

See you all there next time.

3.0 ... then 3.1 ... now v3.2 :).

2010-10-08T09:19:00.000-04:00

Nick has fixed a couple more things in the Celerra VSA.

Pick them up over at Re-Roll for Initiative :) .

Looking at one of Cisco's newer acquisitions Tidal and getting back into Exchange with SP1 roll-up 1 coming out for Exchange 2010 Here.

Chappy.

Celerra VSA v3.1

2010-10-01T16:05:00.000-04:00

If you have ever used Nick Weaver's Uber VSA for EMC Celerra, you might think that this is a great way to get your own personal Celerra to start playing around with. You know what I would agree with you :). Nick released version 3 a little while ago ... I had some issues with adding disks to the OVA and then I check his blog today and guess what. Nick found the issue and fixed it. Also there was an SRM bug that was fixed. The 'discoverluns' command seems to have had an issue with iSCSI replicated sessions.

Grab it over here at NICK's blog.

This version also includes DART 6 with Unisphere ... cool stuff.

Long time :).

2010-09-28T15:08:00.000-04:00

So updates have been sparse at best!!

I'll be working on fixing that in the next few weeks. Things have changed for me as far as the job and a bunch of other stuff.

I just took the nerd test V2 ....

Awesome!!! I <3 my geekdom.

VCAP-DCD and vSphere4 training.

2010-07-15T23:29:00.001-04:00

I got a pleasant email today from my company asking me to schedule my vSphere4 : Design workshop and to prep for my VCAP-DCD.

Since the test hasn't been released just yet (expected soon). I will have to take it probably in Sept. Either way I will let you know what both the training and the test is like.

Talk to you guys soon.

Not aware ESX was going the way of the dodo?

2010-07-13T16:36:00.001-04:00

Check out Phil's Mental leftovers HERE.

VMware has been trying to make the move to COSless for a bit now. As Phil points out VMware made it official.

Interesting stuff for sure.

vSphere 4.1 ... You know.

2010-07-13T14:40:00.001-04:00

vSphere 4.1 is out and in the wild now.

No need to regurgitate the new features. When I get it up in the lab I'll let you guys know.

RTFM ...

2010-07-12T15:21:00.001-04:00

If you came here from RTFM or if you think I am mad at Mike L. Please be assured that I was not trying to berate him. Mike is an AWESOME guy and I have used RTFM and it has pulled me out of jams a couple of times. So I am appreciative of his contributions to the VMware community.

tldr ; Mike is a good dude. I will not send ninjas to his house. If that's not clear enough ... sorry :).

More vLAB stuff.

2010-07-12T15:16:00.001-04:00

So it has been slow going for the moment due to some personal challenges that I have had. So it is my fault and my fault only for not following up as fast or pushing this harder.

Darryl and I have been working over the weekend to make sure that we have a working web presence that can handle the outward facing collaboration and stuff.

This vLAB would be free for people to use and since one of the goals is to encourage community involvement, we are working on a points-based system that rewards individuals for contribution of both content and solutions for real world scenarios.

Another exciting feature is that vThought would provide high-quality "no-cost" consulting to clients provided that the clients donate to the vLAB in order for us to keep this moving forward.

I have finished some of the last DNS changes and we should be live here in the next 24 hours.

Community Virtualization Lab and stuff.

2010-06-21T10:55:00.000-04:00

I know that this idea is in beta for some folks right now. But I would like to see this happen since I know not everyone can afford a nice hardware set for a LAB.

Below is a snippet from my Linkedin discussion post.

Would any of you fellow VCP'ers be interested in a community Lab that is managed by certified VCPs that is provided at no cost?

This lab would be partially funded by clients obtaining VMware, Storage, and general IT advice at no charge to them. The "payment" would be a contribution to the vLAB. It could be storage/servers/network etc. Please let me know your thoughts. I am in the process of setting up the website for it.

www.vthoughtinc.com <- If you are UBAR with HTML and/or Flash let me know if you can help with the page since I am junk at it :).

At this time the gear I am planning for installation into the lab is below:

Newer Stuff:
2TB iSCSI RAID array on the vSphere 4 HCL. (Qnap 839-pro)
Whitebox Dual opteron dual-core with Ultra 320 SCSI local storage.
3Com 5500G - EI 48 port gigabit switch
ASA 5505

Older stuff: :[ older single core XEON's MEH...
Dell Poweredge 2850 - Dual proc 6GB Ram and
IBM x442 - 32GB ... Quad Xeon Box

Want to donate or assist in the project? Let me know here by commenting.

I will get a page and an email set for the community vLab stuff soon.

A Note to management when dealing with High-End talent or the "SPARK".

2010-06-19T22:24:00.000-04:00

Ok. A little background on this.

First, I have always been a big proponent of the upper layers of management being able to recognize talent and retain it by giving both the challenge and reward programs. Many SPARKs want and need the challenge of complex work to be happy with the occupation that they perform. Also there is a need to reward SPARKs for the work that they perform.

Example:

If a SPARK works over 35 hours in 2 days and provides a solution to a client under budget and on-time or close to on-time. What do you do? Do you say "thanks" and then give the SPARK the "wink" and and a pat on the back? If so you probably just lost one of your best employees!

WHY? I said "thanks". Then I gave the person a small gift. Isn't that enough?

Probably no!

That SPARK that delivered that Item to the customer in good time and working massive hours isn't interested in a $25 Barnes-and-Noble gift card. Come on this person just made you look like ATLAS to your customer. As a manager or owner you are going to retain that customer and the relationship just got stronger. As an owner yeah this person put a ton of hours in ... but as an owner you didn't have to draw the project out and your overall profit is higher. Any SPARK worth their respective salt knows what they did, how it impacts the client, and how the benefits are gained by owners and managers. Most SPARKs want a piece of that action. The challenge was to perform the work and provide the value. The reward should be input into the business model and how people are treated in order to properly retain and benefit them.

So many times I hear that when a SPARK (or very talented and intelligent person) leaves an organization the owners and managers do some of the MOST STUPID and IDIOTIC things to that person. It's insane.

I have one thing to say on it : LOSE GRACEFULLY!!!! It's nuts to think that you can maintain SPARKs forever! SPARKS need new challenges and rewards to continue to thrive and grow. So many "old-style" thinkers get so little of what motivates people and SPARKs it's crazy. These same "old-school" thinkers believe that grinding someone into the ground and smashing them when they leave gets you something.

The only thing that you get is a BAD name! A VERY BAD name!

Involve a SPARK in planning, in business direction, and in the rewards you give them. If as a manager/owner you pulled a SPARK in and said that you wanted some help on determining what to reward them with you'll get a BIG answer ... possibly one that is WAY more than your planned spend. Don't be afraid tell them the limitation and then give them a path to get the reward. Just don't make the path impossible.

Either way this is too long already. Let me know if you have any questions. Let's have an open discussion about management! :) Then we can let them read it and see if they get it yet.

PIECE!

vSphere 4 Update 2.

2010-06-14T10:07:00.001-04:00

This has been released and it fixes some nice items.

It also makes sticky the pervasive NMP RR IOPs = 1 setting if you are using that at the moment. So that means the setting will stay persistent between ESX Host reboots. Which is nice so that you don't have to remember.

You can grab vSphere 4 Update 2 Here : LINKZORED

Also please be aware that there is a issue with the .NET patch (KB908773) which could cause some issues if you are running any Sphere Client prior to vSphere 4 Update 1.

Here is a link to the KB Article : ZOMG Fix my Client :)

VM Teleportation. (Beam me up Scotty for VM's)

2010-05-10T11:45:00.001-04:00

Take a look at what Chad Sakac introduced ....

Cool stuff for sure.

BEAM ME UP!

vSphere 4.1 features.

2010-05-07T10:22:00.000-04:00

Some of the new features for vsphere 4.1.

*Note ... iSCSI Boot from SAN.

Expect to see more iSCSI SANs :) !!!

Linky - AWESOME : )

May the 4th Be With You!

2010-05-04T10:24:00.001-04:00

May the 4th be with you!

Advanced VMware Certifications.

2010-04-21T17:12:00.001-04:00

The new VMware certs have names and paths. The official announcement from VMware is forthcoming. To all the VCP3's out there ... you have to upgrade in order to get these.

Cool Stuff. Be sure to plan ahead as you progress.

Link to Stuff here :).

Network World. SWEET!

2010-04-16T10:03:00.000-04:00

So NW just published an article on iSCSI & Fibre ... it's not a comparison article, but a why not? type argument.

Check it out here:

LINKY

Shout out to Jim Duffy. A great dude to speak with and a nice guy to boot. I really respect Jim for the attitude he had when we discussed this subject.

Going to have some time this weekend to do more UCS and iSCSI stuff. I hope to have some more information for you guys soon.

UCS & iSCSI.

2010-04-14T10:11:00.001-04:00

Lab is almost there ... just a couple of config changes and then we plug the UCS FI's into it and see if we can get it to work :).

Probably won't make any progess until the weekend on this. But I'll keep you up-to-date on all the progress.

UCS & iSCSI

2010-04-05T16:18:00.001-04:00

Can you boot UCS from an iSCSI SAN, without local disk?

Interesting question. In the next few days some guys and I are going to see if we can make a stateless UCS environment with iSCSI.

-Stay Tuned-

VMware Workstation 7 Key.

2010-03-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

If you are like me then at times you may have misplaced your VMware workstation key. I am running ver 7.0.1 on Windows 7 64-bit.

Due to this you might have to do a touch more digging. It's true you can search the registry but come on we all know that is a HUGE pain in the bum.

Here is the shortcut: The tricky part on 64bit versions of windows is the 3rd tree.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Wow6432Node/VMware, Inc./VMware Workstation/License.ws.(your version here)

Then in the right-hand pane the Serial key is the one your after.

Hope that this helps.

Talk to you again soon.

Cloud Storage.

2010-03-17T10:25:00.001-04:00

With the latency and need of faster storage in the Data Center, Nicole brings up a good point in the post below.

Can you provision high-performance storage in a Cloud that will provide storage to a separate Cloud infrastructure? I was thinking about this and with the network guys having a love affair with iSCSI and it's associated technological topologies. Could you have a low-latency storage system on-demand in the Cloud (Public Cloud NOT Private Cloud). Currently it's not quite there to provide FC-like low latency storage to compute nodes. If you have a server that uses iSCSI you could potentially have that speedy enough to house it in a Public Cloud. Your design would require some good DR.

I can see a SATA based array hooking up to an Ethernet drop. At that point you could use some of Cisco's MDS line to provide FCIP WAN acceleration and provide storage to a completely different Cloud .... reliability would be an issue.

The Cloud in a Cloud in a Cloud

2010-03-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

I was meeting with some IS Directors a month or so ago and they asked:

How do I better understand how all these "cloud" offerings interact with each other?

So, assuming that you use the cloud for storage, but you use another cloud service for a specific application and have all this served to a VDI client....That's alot of movement in the cloud. I understand his concern for the security of this data, but also the importance that these partners work together.

I would think that strengthens the cloud vision that host all cloud services out of the same DC. I believe you can clearly have different clouds for unrelated things like conferencing with Webex where you host the service and it clearly does not interact with many other parts/pieces, but what about the clouds within a large cloud. All this has my head in the clouds.

A plea for MOAR content :) !!

2010-03-05T10:06:00.001-05:00

Njo, Milton, and Pete.

Please post some cool content. I would like to have some more stuf other than just my ramblings :).

Storage Question.

2010-03-05T09:58:00.001-05:00

So the last question put the following constraints on a virtualization design and implementation problem.

Let's Review:

The constraints were that you have performance issues due to storage latency.

You have no budget the ONLY things that you can leverage is the extra hardware from the virtualization project.

So the only solution that makes sense whether it's the best is not a question.

One (I stress) one of the workable solutions is to acutally put the latency sensitive application back on physical hardware until you can ensure the storage state. Now what I mean is you can still keep it a VM but you toss it on a dedicated box with ESXi (no cost). Then using the local storage options that you have open to you create the least latency and fastest sub-system that you can.

Do you agree? Is there a solution that you think might work just as well?

Let me know. That is what the comment section is for :).

Talk to you guys soon.

Some UCS/Virtualization/Storage items.

2010-03-02T18:01:00.001-05:00

So in general UCS is gathering some great traction. Along with Virtualization it's pulling storage pretty hard as well. One of the things that I continue to see is the underestimation of resourcing for storage in a virtual environment.

Let's now take a look at the eco-system of storage in a virtualization context with Cisco's UCS providing the vCompute platform. In this specific scenario it is entirely possible to achieve a very nice consolidation number.

But your storage doesn't need to be sweet ... right ? Wrong! Let's take an example. You consolidate 10 servers onto 1. One of the servers was VERY storage intensive but CPU cycles remained very low. This was due to a specific application that didn't like Storage latency.

But the decision that was made was to deploy these VM's onto an iSCSI connected RAID 5 array. This is a S/W iSCSI initiator connected storage device. You have 10 VM's and your storage sensitive VM is having massive issues. So what do you do? Where did it all go wrong. The planned storage implementation has enough disk space but the IOPS profile and connection choice is all wrong for the intended purpose. So how can it be fixed the budget is spent and the storage doesn't support online RAID level migration along with the fact that even if you could migrate the RAID level you would be completely out of storage. What can be done and how do we do it?

Well that's a case for another post. But if you ever end up in a position like this it's going to be a tough spot and it is possible that there might not be a good answer.

Talk to you tomorrow and I'll post about this again.

Why Tiggers DO NOT like Safari :).

2010-02-09T09:45:00.001-05:00

So I finally got some gear for the lab at work and it's really taking shape. I then used safari to download the latest Celerra VSA from Sakac's blog and it comes down in a .ova.tar extension. No problem I have winrar and I can bust it out into a new format. So I do that and attempt an import but no go. Work with the un-tarballed ovf file thinking that was a problem. Spent a couple of hours on it and then went home frustrated as all heck. I get home and think myabe both work downloads were corrupt. So I pull it down through my favortie browser Chrome. It comes down as a straight OVA and I just was like "No WAY". After a big forehead slap I came into the office and renamed the file. DOH!

That is why Tiggers DO NOT like Safari :).

It's Magic, It's wonderous . . . It's an iPhone that can't make calls.

2010-01-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the iPad:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Looks nice and it's cool but it's just missing some key things.

Nope not going to get one. Now add bluetooth and the option to make calls. Along with a touch more ooomph in the processor department, then we'll talk.

-OUT

Nice reasonable laptop workstation w/o the unreasonable cost.

2010-01-20T23:35:00.001-05:00

This Asus G73JH laptop comes with 4 DIMM slots and a core i7 proc. Connect it to some iSCSI storage and BAM! Nice VM homelab.

Details via Engadget! - Link is here - http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/05/asus-rog-g73jh-launches-with-core-i7-radeon-hd-5870-bragging-r/

It's gotta a new cooling design so that your reproductive parts don't need to be iced down during heavy usage. Don't lie you know what I'm talking about.

Thinking that something this nice must cost the same as a DELL M6500? I checked and it's going to retail for less than $2000. AWESOME!!!

VMware Player creates VM's ... WHAT?!!

2010-01-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

So I admit it I have been out of the loop on VMware player for the good bit of 2 years. I have been using workstation for all my VM creation and testing stuff. Then I check out the www.yellow-bricks.com post on creating an ESXi thumbdrive install with VM player and I was like "hold, on, wait a minute.". So it's not new to all you smart people but I guess that you can now create VM's with VMware player. So here is to all you people smarter than myself :).

Here is the link to the post : http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/1/10/vsphere-esxi-4-0-on-a-usb-memory-stick/!

Cool Stuff to know no doubt. :)

Talk to you guys again soon.

OH - P.S. Check out Sakac's post at virtual geek if you want to work at EMC! :P

edit ... spelling errors. Fast typing 4tl.

Dell Certs.

2009-12-30T23:03:00.001-05:00

My employer needed me to tag some certs from Dell so that we can get better discounts ... etc. Not a problem you know anything that I can do. Fine ... Fine.

I was going through the VMware and PS series storage information and the test that they had posted is WRONG.

They have the answers for HA and DRS flipped.

Dell please inform your training people that VMware HA is NOT a global resource scheduler.

Also please let them know that VMware DRS does not provide automatic rehosting of VM's from a failed server.

Had to guess what Dell thought the answer was through trial and error. Goodness.

Please feel free to contact me for the links to the VMware documentation.

K' thanks.

Desktop Virtualization.

2009-12-30T22:57:00.001-05:00

OK. So I know that we should avoid being protocol passionistas, but DEAR GOD. I loaded Sun's Virtual Box to provide an XP vm instead of my stand-by of many years VMware Workstation. I have configured everything per the instructions and made multipe tweaks but the VM just hogs every resoure and it shouldn't ... this never happened with Virtual Server 1.0, 2.0 or even workstation 6.0-7.0. Going to head back to my old stand-by as I bid adieu to an obviously inferior product.

I can only imagine how bad Sun's enterprise hypervisor would be if their desktop porduct is this poor.

Craiggo out.

VCP 4.

2009-12-28T10:27:00.001-05:00

So I had Pneumonia for the last 2 weeks or so. UGH NOT FUN!

On Saturday the 19th, I had a fever of 102 and had to go in and take my VCP 4 Exam. Thinking that I TOTALLY flubbed it, I was pleasantly suprised when I got a score high enough to be a VCI.

Just in case you didn't know the upgrade period for VI3 VCPs has been extended until Jan. 31st.

Now before you get all flamey on me check the certification portion of VMware's web site as this was updated to reflect the change recently.

Where did all my SPARK posts go? I'll try to find those talk to you soon.

The SPARKs, types and abilities.

2009-10-28T09:49:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I have talked about "SPARK"s and their impact on IT and the lack of HR professionals to realize what they might have, all BEFORE they interview with the hiring manager. It's been almost a year in fact. Please feel free to read my multipart posting frenzy on this topic HERE. In this next series of articles I wanted to address the different types of "SPARK"s and how they will impact any environment that they are dropped into.

The different "SPARK"s that I can think of are listed below:

SPARK

IGNITION SPECIALIST

DEMOLITION SPECIALIST

CONFLAGRATION EXPERT

M.O.F. - MASTER OF FIRE

There may be more in the coming days or weeks as I add content specific to these categories. But this is a good starting point.

Talk to you all soon.

Piece :P

Already Been Said ... BUT ..

2009-10-28T09:43:00.001-04:00

So many of you who follow the VMware and virtualization industry closely, know that VMware Workstation 7.0 was released a couple of days ago. If you haven't used it or it's been a while ... pop over to www.vmware.com to pick up a copy. If you use it all the time, update your copy nice new features listed here it's now supported to run vSphere4 in a VM ... NICE :).

Exchange 2010 RTM.

2009-10-09T23:19:00.001-04:00

W00T!

Exchange 2010 is RTM.

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/10/08/452775.aspx

Time to tighten up your understanding since much was changed.

Also if you plan to do co-existence with 2007 and 2010 you need to make sure that 2007 is at SP2.

Vacation.

2009-09-14T22:54:00.001-04:00

Over the last couple of weeks the wife and I went down and visited the capital of heat and humidity .... OK it's possible it's not the capital, but it's gotta be an honorable mention.

Florida. We hit Magic kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios.

Animal Kingdom Safari Ride = CRAP! Good Lord. I had the WORST experience on this thing. The ride never stopped or slowed down ... we went about 20-25mph through this whole thing ... insane hurt my back and threw out my wife's.

One of the best rides was the Tower of Terror. AWESOME!

Quick Update. UCS Oversubscription? Not a big deal ....if considered?

2009-09-14T22:49:00.001-04:00

Hello All,

I am compiling content for UCS and vSphere. Some interesting things that I am trying to reconcile in my own understanding. In all my reading and looking at the system it seems that there might be a possible oversubscription issue right at the chassis. I know that we all love oversubscription from a datacenter perspective since most links rarely stick at 100% usage for long periods of time. But shouldn't that be designed in from the core level? But UCS has a 2:1 over sub rate before it leaves the chassis. So as Technologists we need to keep that in mind. Since the usual ratio is 4:1 or 6:1 then it's possible to get that rate and hit the golden ratio as long as you consider that UCS hits 2:1 as soon as you plug it in.

Not a bad deal.

See you guys soon.

SO my bad. :)

2009-08-19T11:51:00.000-04:00

All,

I know that updates have been totally non-existent. I am working on that ... massive upheaval in my job life has caused this. Stay tuned.

You’ll eventually be promoted to your highest level of incompetency.

2009-06-12T21:35:00.000-04:00

Tom Peters, a leader in IT vision, strategy, statistical analysis, and management, is quoted saying “In a Hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his highest level of incompetence.” This is also more commonly known as one of the Peters Principles, which most IT professionals are familiar with today. This saying comes from a famous case study performed by Mr. Tom Peters in the 1970s and is based on a majority of the fortune 500 company IT shops of that time. What his analysis revealed was a tendency for our field to promote technically competent employees to positions of management. So what’s the problem you ask? Very simple; just because you are technically inclined does not mean you have leadership skills. Management skills can be easily taught, but leadership skills are much more difficult to teach. Some would argue that people are born a leader or a follower. I personally think both genetics and upbringing have a great deal to do with one’s leadership ability.

What happens is an IT manager (we’ll say John Doe) will notice Billy Bob who has been a great programmer for the last 3 years. John figures, he is technically capable, and everyone likes him, so he must be management material. We’ll after all, this is how John Doe got noticed, so John Doe thinks to himself, I’ll just promote Billy Bob, after all that‘s how I got my job…now we are starting to shed some light on the origin of the problem. What John Doe has just done is promote an employee that may have no management experience, no vision, and limited or no leadership skill set and promoted him to a position that requires these skills. The reason this continues is because it is part of a historic and subconscious mentality that has been taking place since the late 1960s. Let’s face it; if you have been told all your life that you should hold your nose when jumping into a pool and everyone else around you holds their nose when jumping in, what are you going to do? I bet you’ll hold your nose. Ok, bad analogy but you get the picture. If you don’t think this is true ask yourself how many IT Managers, deputy directors, CTOs, or CIOs have you worked for that you would consider being truly competent leaders. Notice, I did not ask about competent managers, as managers are simply individuals that assign and track staff work flow and activities. I asked about competent leaders, which every manager should be, unless an organization is simply looking for a person to track and measure, and never to improve a team’s performance, vision, or strategy.

So how do we break this pattern of creating managers with no, or limited leadership skills? It has to start at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Once organizational leaders (or high level employees…grin) understand the importance of leadership over management and have insight into the time honored, yet flawed, IT promotional path that typically takes place, the cycle can be broken.

So where should one look to find a competent leader within IT? My first suggestion is to look outside of your organization. You can certainly consider internal staff, but don’t close the door on a nation or global search, as I have found the answer to seldom sitting in a cubical outside my office door. The search may take some time, but in the end you’ll be glad you did it.
What should one look for in a leader? How would you define a leader? As an IT professional with over 20 years of experience in IT and over 15 years of experience in IT management and leadership, I have always done my best to follow the following practices:

Model the way. Your talk, actions, and reactions should model both your personal and professional beliefs as well as the organizational belief structure. If you find the two conflicts, look for another job. After all you found this job when you were looking…right?
Inspire a shared vision. This is a quality that is much less common in leaders. In the IT world, it combines an understanding of technical concepts, business deliverables, presentation, delivery/execution, and embracing change. And let’s be honest, any leader that can do this, will probably need to meet most of the leadership attributes in this list. If you find a leader with this one quality, grab him. He is one in a million!
Challenge the process. This starts with two questions: ‘Why do we do it this way?’ and ‘What can I do to make it better?’ Don’t be satisfied with status quo. After all, do you think productive advancement comes from leaving all processes as they are? Not at all, this is certain job suicide. Embrace change, and don’t be afraid to be a catalyst for change.
Empower others to act. Simply put, if you are in a leadership position one of your primary roles is to provide staff with resources, authority and to remove road blocks that will ultimately make them successful at performing their job responsibilities.
Encourage the heart. This can be done by awarding staff with supportive words, recognition awards, time off, assignment of the new cool technology project for a job well done, etc. You don’t have to be a bleeding heart, but you must maintain a balance between the harmony of your employees and the tasks at hand. Also, treat your staff as professionals. I have often said; if you treat employees like they are professionals, they will act like professionals. Treat your staff like children, and you will soon find yourself managing a daycare center.

If you ever find a job candidate with 3 or more of these skills, hire him/her as fast as possible, for they are most certainly a rare commodity.

-EDIT: His name is Mr. Tom Peters :) -

STO (S.T.O.). |-Status Online-|

2009-06-12T18:21:00.000-04:00

Evening All,

STO members please report. :)

You know who you are. Please send your contact information to my home email addy.

Thanks!

Hola Mexico!

2009-06-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

So some of you that know me personally might already know that my mother and father moved to Mexico.

I have gotten the news that all is well.

I have volunteered with the fam. to bring down my biggest pup to protect their house :).

We'll see what happens and I'll keep updates out here just in case.

I plan on posting a TON of content ... even though HTML doesn't have any mass. Looking forward to this month you should see a ton of vsphere4 stuff up here as I have permission to begin installing it in the lab.

-OUT

SAN Haiku.

2009-04-24T14:48:00.000-04:00

In speaking with some of my co-workers I said something that has been turned into a storage Haiku. It is below.

Just like a forest
Storage is an Eco-system
having many parts!

This helped us to concentrate on the full "holistic" design of a project and not focus on a speeds and feeds discussion. To have a fully functional Eco-system is tough. Everything has to be working properly or things get all mucked up. In storage design this includes Disk, Frame, Connection method, Connection topology, Host configuration, Frame configuration, and many more.

In essence don't just take it a face value that this one component or "TREE" performs well. It might be good but if all the other "TREES" are Douglas Firs that Giant Sequoia is going to be so out of place. It will also topple due to the differences in it's root system, because nothing will be there to support it. Tap Roots vs Interlocking Roots.

vSphere 4 ... ESX4 is tight.

2009-04-21T10:08:00.000-04:00

So I finally got a copy of vSphere 4 loaded into my test environment. It's nice stuff.

If only I knew some Cisco contacts that could get me a nexus1000v jey or a 5000 to play with....

More coming up soon on this exciting and recent release by VMware. This is sure going to shake things up.

CC

TEAM AWESOME ... Re-united and it feels so good!

2009-03-31T16:07:00.000-04:00

In my geographical area there are a few network and IT professionals that make up "TEAM AWESOME". In my complete oddness I thought that I had invited the last outstanding member. I found out recently that I had not invited her to post on the blog.

Please welcome Nicole Johnson!

Have fun Njo and we look forward to hearing from you.

Generational Differences Thought.

2009-03-26T22:58:00.000-04:00

So I was discussing the generational differences in regards to technological advancement.

While we were talking the following statement was uttered.

"Generation Y doesn't create anything, they only modify." (TM)

Though it's possible you could argue creation of a modified item is still creation ... it gets metaphysical.

Import-Mailbox ... Still no love.

2009-03-19T20:27:00.000-04:00

So as any of you who read this blog know a client of ours has been having Import-Mailbox cmdlet issues. We opened a case with Microsoft only to find out we knew more about the error than the tech assigned to us. Below are the steps that we went through.

PSS Call.

Checked permissions and verified error.

Installed support tools on S6 and added "transition" account to have send-as and receive-as.

replicated information and logged off.

Logged back on and tried again. Same error.

Created new account and granted most of the same rights except for Exchange View only Admin.

Proceeded to test Import-Mailbox cmdlet with the same parameters.

Ran BOTH Import and Export cmdlets and got the same error. PSS asked for more time to research the issue.

Attempted to re-run process with a different user. Result was the same.

Opened ADSIEDIT and manually forced permissions on the config,services,exchange, ORG container.

Logged off and then back on.

Tried an import and then an export GUESS WHAT....SAME Error DUH!

PSS then asked Technician to run Export-Mailbox on the exchange server itself. This again did not work.

Create Test user and try export SAME error.

Mail-Enable new user and try to open OWA.

This process repeated itself a number of times ...all of them resulted in the SAME MAPI error.

But the below manual process works fine. It's just manual and takes forever.

****Able to successfully move mail via profile migration steps:

Add transition user to full access on the mailbox.

Create a new profile for transition that uses migrating user's mailbox.

Open PST and manually DRAG in the old messages.

Contact User and verify that old content has been properly migrated into the Mailbox.

This is a manual process and will take SOME time to complete.

Manual Process is as follows:

For the manual migration process exmerge must take place first.

To perform this EXmerge.

Use powershell to grant access with Add-MailboxPermission -Identity -User -AccessRights Fullaccess

Create a new outlook profile while logged into your machine with the migration account.

Copy PST file to your local drive.

Open outlook.

Open the PST drag and drop all items from the PST into the Mailbox according to where they go.

Verify with user that process is successful.

Move on to the next mailbox in the list.

Going to speak with the client tomorrow to see if they got resolution.

Talk to you next time,

C-SQD

Import-Mailbox cmdlet Error.

2009-03-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

So in working for a client they had a need to import Exchange 2003 mailboxes cross-forest. This seemed pretty straight-forward according to Microsoft's articles on TechNet and so forth. However as we are all aware things rarely go as planned.

According to MS the process is as follows:
1) Exmerge out the mailbox to a PST.
2) Copy the PST over to a client machine since you cannot Import on an Exchange Server.
3) Open the Exchange Management Shell and run Import-Mailbox ...
4) Be happy since it worked.

Well steps 3 and 4 are kind of a no go for me.

I have verified that the account that I am using has Full Access to the mailbox. Also the account is an Exchange Org Admin and an Exchange Server Admin. This account is a local admin on the client and server as well.

According to all the documentation this should be relatively easy and work once all these are set. But alas I have now had to call PSS. Let's see what they can come up with and where we go from here.

The error that I continuously get is here:
because: Error occurred in the step: Moving messages. Failed to copy messages to the destination mailbox store with error:MAPI or an unspecified service provider.ID no: 00000000-0000-00000000, error code: -1056749164

C-SQD

Question?

2009-03-07T23:11:00.000-05:00

Do you think that cloud computing and distributed computing resource solutions that are federated are new thoughts?

Haven't these ideas been kicking around for decades?

Post a comment.

SQL Cluster configuration and moving the MSDTC.

2009-02-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

So over the last 5 or 6 days we have been dealing with a mess of a SQL cluster here at the office. After speaking at length with MS on the issue we needed to perform the following actions.

Move the entire SQL Cluster group along with the MSDTC resource to the cluster group.

Fix the dependencies on the MSDTC resource.

Add a new clustered instance of SQL that can fail-over between all 3 nodes.

According to MS having the MSDTC resource depending on the SQL drive is NOT a supported configuration. MS SQL Team and the MS Windows Cluster Team both had to be involved in case things went bad during the move. MS wouldn't allow me to perform these cluster changes myself due to some possibility of the whole thing going south.

So we moved the MSDTC and SQL group. Then deleted the MSDTC and created a new one. Then we deleted the folder on the SQL data drive that had been there. We made the MSDTC dependent on the Quorum drive. So at this point MSDTC was all set. From there we moved all the SQL stuff to the right place in the SQL cluster first instance.

Then we installed the second instance and then upgraded it to fail over between all 3 nodes of the cluster.

Now that all the cluster stuff was fixed we had to move TEMPDB and the SQL DB and Tlogs and Backups. From there we were good. Since we were on an EMC array PowerPath FULL was then installed on all 3 nodes to ensure that connectivity via fibre-channel was as reliable as it could be.

Since it was 5am at this point and I had been working all night I calmed down and wrapped everything up. Then as quickly as it started it was all over and I could get some sleep :). LOL

Be BOLD!

2009-02-04T05:24:00.000-05:00

In my employment history I have run into a number of situations that I wanted to discuss with other professionals. Mainly because true SPARKs or TALENTs understand and appreciate being in similiar types of situations.

I started asking myself the following questions:

If I could go back in time and speak to myself 10 years ago, what would I tell myself?
Would I discuss world-views and big picture corporate understanding?
What tidbits that I know now would I tell myself?

These are all good questions. If you are a young person or really ANY person that wants a deeper understanding on how to circumvent the "Old Garde" then keep your eyes peeled.

Go to : The Corporate Bold Homepage.

There you will read about a book that could help many people. I have been selected as a co-author. The book is slated to come out this summer. It is a collection of 100 short experiences. I can't give you anymore information, but realize that it's 100 experiences and pieces of truth from 100 Top Performers.

If you have questions visit the site and ask them.

More SQL Cluster stuff to come soon. :)

SQL Cluster Storage Changes.

2009-02-02T14:18:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we had a client environment that needed to move from Microsoft iSCSI to Fibre for SAN connectivity. The reasons for this are numerous.

Fibre connectivity has greater throughput.
The Microsoft iSCSI initiator is junk for a clustered environment. ( when installing 2.07 the cluster nodes would intermittently lock up and lose resources, this is a known issue with 2.07. We updated to 2.08 and still had issues.)
PowerPath on Fiber has proven to be solid numerous times.
Less complexity.
Greater reliability.

We ran into some issues though and since I didn't see any direct posts on the web or on TechNet. So I will detail the issue and the solution here.

Specs:

Servers HP DL380G5; Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise 32-bit, SQL Enterprise 32-bit. Current cluster configuration is Active/Passive. Initial storage configuration is iSCSI. Moving to Fibre HBAs.

Issue:

After installing a Fibre HBA Dual port card and zoning it to the storage. We uninstalled the MS iSCSI initiator and disabled the iSCSI NIC ports on the server. Upon rebooting we attempted a full failover. The cluster group would fail over with the Quorum but the SQL instance would fail over the IP resources and the T log drive then hang. The result is a full failover is not possible, which in an environment that HAS to be online is not a good thing. The event ID would reference not being able to flush the transaction log.

Solution:

After reboots and trying to see if we missed anything these are the steps that we followed to resolve the issue:

Uninstall from windows the NICs used for iSCSI.
Remove the physical adaptor used for iSCSI from the server.
Reboot.

Once these steps were completed a full failover was again possible.

If you have any questions/concerns or if you are having this issue yourself please feel free to comment. We will do our best to assist you.

1TB 2.5" SSDs and 4TB 3.5" SSDs? SWEET Here we go!

2009-01-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html

In the link above Pure Silicon has announced something TRULY usable in an SSD. Size and Speed. Size and Speed larger then the current drives. As prices come down the death of the rotating magnetic plate is inbound.

2 of these in a blade server running ESX has enough storage and performance to go up against small SAN installs.

-OUT

VMware without a Console. COS-Less and it's effect on you.

2008-12-17T08:59:00.000-05:00

So in talking with some of the other professionals in the field we have discussed what needs to happen to make COS-less ESX the next big thing. ESXi is the first attempt and it's a good start. But there is a way to get the console in ESXi. In order to move this forward, all the console functionality will need to put in vCenter or something.

I was just thinking how Sweet it would be if when they move completely COS-less if you came up to the ESXi splash and entered in all the information and then put in the address of the vCenter server if you had one.

Once COS-less ESXi connects to the vCenter server you could have the options to roll-out a specified config (ala answer files for custom roll-outs) or push down a base config to use later. The only information you would need is the IP information on the hosts.

I can see a number of situations where this type of controlled roll-out would be beneficial. The other issue running through your head right now is "What if I don't have a vCenter server?". It's a good one. Maybe a limited functionality config database could reside on a server called "basic vCenter" some type of free version. By the time that this would happen clustered vCenter servers would have become the norm so up time would be slightly less of a concern.

I don't know if this is the way that VMware is heading towards but it would be cool nonetheless.

Let me know your thoughts. Then we can run through pro's and con's on the next blog article.

Building an Enterprise Class VMware Infrastructure. Take your time, blowing it here could cost you.

2008-12-05T14:59:00.001-05:00

Designing an Enterprise class VMware VI3 environment is not an incredibly difficult task. It is though one that takes good planning and a full understanding of the network in both your data center and how your internal processes work. You also need a fair amount of VI3 understanding. You'll need to do your homework. A bunch of homework. So be ready. Remember that Enterprise means production, so treat it that way.

In the next few paragraphs I'll go through some of the items that I find it critical to look at when beginning a design.

So let's go through some of the basics.

1) Back-End Storage.

-You might be thinking "Why is storage given such a prominent place in design?". Here's your answer - Everything rides on your storage. Therefore it has to be more than adequate. You have to know your Read/Write ratio the number of IOPS you need to have available for the hosts, rough growth estimates, and don't forget adequate space.

So how do you know what to do?

Take valid measurements from physical hosts and plan your design around them. Example : Most VMFS volumes have a Read/Write ratio of 75/25. That makes them perfect for RAID 5. If your Read/Write moves more towards 50/50 or higher RAID 10 becomes a need instead of a desire.

Let's not discuss the "pooled storage" concept and what needs to be done to rid the market of it's presence. This is going to be long-term production and critical, treat it that way. Dedicated RAID sets for VMFS volumes. Let's remember the configuration maxims for VMware 64VM's per LUN is the MAX but you want to keep it to 20 or so as a sweet spot. Size your VMFS properly, if you plan to use a total of 800 GB remember that VMware needs some space to play just like Windows and Linux. That means your VMFS should be about 1TB in size.

Now about performance, you do know how much IO your going to push at these volumes if you did your homework. Please do yourself a favor and use at least SAS or FC-AL disks instead of SATA. We spoke earlier about VMware's intended purpose. It is production so please don't cheap it out with SATA. If you want to absorb 1200 IOPS you can't just use the RAW numbers of Disk performance. You have to calculate out your needs. Let's use a 75/25 Read/Write ratio and see what kind and how many disks we need to meet 1200 IOPS of performance on the front-end. To calculate the back-end storage we can use this formula for RAID 5 = (Disk IOPS * Read Ratio)+((Disk IOPS*Write Ratio)*4) ... this would give us a total of 2100 RAID adjusted IOPS. Therefore we will need at least 13 Disks in a RAID 5 array that spin at 15K (assuming we get 170 IOPS out of a 15K disk). So in the EMC world the best option would probably be 3 raid sets using a 4+1 Raid 5 layout and doing a metaLun across all of those. You would get some space and a touch of extra performance due to the metaLun. So do all that work for every VMFS or LUN that you need, don't forget to account for growth. In doing this you will properly size your storage environment and not have to go right back to the "well" in order to get more storage because performance sucks.

2) Network Infrastructure.

Networking in ESX is going to be more robust with the Nexus1000V but since we don't have that option yet, let's plan on the real networking horsepower to be in your core. I.E. - Cisco 6500, Foundry "JunkIron" ;P or your other various flavors of the "Core". If you need to span a bunch of VLAN's make sure that you have the vSwitches set for your needs. My personal preference is Tagging the frames at the vSwitch level. Then sending the frames over to the "Core" on Trunked links. Make sure you account for the amount of network usage you need. Don't under size this as NIC's are not overly expensive. Don't forget vMotion and redundant Service Console NIC's as they will play into your total NIC count.

Also make sure that you and your network guy have gone over this closely. If you are the "everything guy" double and triple check yourself. Make sure that you can account for all the bandwidth you need plus growth and the inevitable traffic spikes.

Also make sure that you connect ESX into the "Core" properly. If you are planning on EtherChannel then make sure that you have IP hash set on the NIC teaming for the vSwitch and portchannels properly configured on the switch.

If you have an internal vSwitch to vSwitch implementation. Please remember to account to everything on the inside of it so that you are not overwhelmed.

3) Server OS.

Next thing that I like to check, the Server Guest OS mix that I am going to run. If this is a production environment and you are planning on doing P2V's for most of your VM's then this is not a big deal. I like to verify that .ISO's for all the OS flavors I need are in a dedicated VMFS store that has been provisioned and has good performance. This keeps anyone from spending time locating OS media which is a waste of time that you can avoid.

4) Policies.

Policies are more of a "Who can screw up what." discussion with the Admin team. Locking people who don't understand VMware OUT of the system might be a good idea. After all, how many times have you seen the "IT Manager" think he understands all the technology log in and junk a VM because he didn't know what was going on? (I have. It happened more than once.) Don't lock management completely out. Just don't give them the creds to "help" you. Always make sure that no ONE person has UBER power. Always have a check and balance.

5) VI Host Hardware.

Host hardware is one of the places where you can demonstrate strategic ROI-based thinking. Looking to have the company spend just enough and then when the time comes to expand all the quantities are known and you don't need to perform the ENTIRE design process all over again. Buying 4 huge 16 proc boxes might not be the best use of funds. But if you got a number of Dual and a few Quad proc boxes it gives you a certain flexibility that cannot be underestimated. Being strategic here will demonstrate to your boss and those around you that your worry is the whole road map and not just a single point on a single solution. You gain credibility in a number of ways.

Some Bullet Points for Host Hardware:

Choose Either All AMD or ALL Intel don't mix/match.
Choose ONLY hardware on the HCL.
Forward thinking pays off here so do some.
Blades or Pizza Boxes. Mixing the two is just plain dumb. *cough* CoGR *cough* (In the end you get saddled with not being able to benefit 100% from either technology).
Build around total "Pools of resources" instead of being worried about individual specs.
Use EVC so that you can have forward mobility in your deployment.

4) Goals for implementing VMware.

Make sure that these Goals are documented.
Don't document the Goal without documenting the metrics that apply to them.
Verify that you are on track with the deployment.
Provide actual numbers for management to see and contrast the differences.
Make sure that you have planned to exceed your targets. (I know it seems elementary but it helps to have it in the back of your mind.)

**Do you have feedback or would you like an area of this article expanded? Please let me know.**

VI Too Easy? Too Easy To Screw-UP! YES.

2008-12-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

So people have begun to see the value proposition in VMware and virtualization in general. But goodness. It is so easy to screw up the config and have it still perform! That speaks to the strength of the platform though. So how do we as VCP's and IT professionals change the CIO's and CTO's from ordering the "underlings" to deploy this great new technology when they don't even have a clue? We provide "Thought Leadership". We can give the concepts. Phil over at Joe the Consultant brings up a number of good points in one of his early blog posts titled "Why, Whatever shall we do?". In these tough economic times it's tough to see the value in bringing in a consultant to "just install ESX". But that is the problem. As consultants CTO's and CIO's need to recognize that we bring a whole HOST of services. Understanding both the technology and it's management so that the "corner stone" of your computing infrastructure can be managed and maintained in a proper manner. Is it too costly to spend 3-5000$ in the early stages to build it properly or 4 times that once it's running and the internal staff has hit a brick wall?

Front-loading time into design and understanding ALWAYS pays off during implementation.

So if you as a CIO or CTO are thinking about moving "Full-Speed" into virtualization, then please consider bringing in a consultant and tapping into their experience before starting out. They can guide you in your needs for Network Connectivity, Storage, and overall build practices. That money you spend up front will be easily recovered in NOT making common mistakes. This consultant can then work with you to determine a training path for your internal staff in order maintain the vision. Build a road mapped solution. Point solutions will only last for a short time and in the end will not provide either your internal clients OR your external clients the needed service that you can deliver.

Game Changing and IT Maturation.

2008-12-03T19:24:00.000-05:00

So Phil over at http://joeconsultant.blogspot.com/ has been chiding me that this blog is more about short snippets than real content. I disagree, but lately he is right in the fact that I have been real busy. My early posts about "The Spark" is mainly about the lack of true Fire in the industry.

Technology that is new ... First off I'd say that NAND Flash may not be "NEW". But it's use as a SSD (Solid State Disk) is a newer development. The throughput on this technology is pretty good. The IOPS you can get are about 10000 random read and about 600 write (SPECS). SLC has a much faster write but reads are still really good. I have a MLC SSD on my laptop it's not bad at all. Once the inital disk buffer gets full you can really tell where MLC fails vs SLC technology. I don't have an SLC drive to test against like a drive from http://www.rocketdisk.com/ the Mtron's are fast and expensive but the throughput is excellent. The Intel X25-E's and the new Samsung 256GB SSD are putting up good numbers as well. **In case anyone from Intel or Samsung or Rocketdisk are reading. Toss me an SLC to test against and I'll get it done :)**

So what is so important about this and why is the a game changer? Up until now to get the kind of IOPS 4 of these drives in RAID 10 can provide you would be looking at about 2 or so trays of 15K FC-AL disks in an EMC array. No worries about rotational latency anymore with NAND Flash. That's not bad but of course these small 2.5" SATA drives are not enterprise NOR dual connected (Like the FC-AL controllers). EMC has announced that NAND Flash drives are coming to the new CX4 Line and soon the NS120 and NS480. My EMC people tell me that NAND Flash drives have to be bought by the tray, that's 15 at a time. Cost? A cool 150K roughly! Goodness. This is a game changer due to the fact that now you don't have to buy a huge SAN array in order to get smoking performance for Enterprise SQL/Oracle installations anymore. Also the type of performance on these drives allows enterprise virtualization consultants to run some pretty nice VM teams in Workstation to simulate some small-scale environments to demo to customers. No more are you sitting there with your laptop and watching that 7200 RPM SATA drive churn to run both windows and VM's in order to demo to a client and win the sale. With many of the newer laptops you can run 2 2.5" SATA drives in them. The capacity on these types of drives isn't up to the 500GB yet ... but it's getting there. Samsung is going to release it's 256GB soon, so we are close enough to consider 2 of these in a laptop running RAID 1. Since Most VM's have a 75/25 read/write ratio the IOPS are there to run the VM's that you need to and your host. Having the responsiveness and the simulation ready might just be the thing to get that sale.

Phil and Tom's little discussion on Maturing IT is interesting. Phil points out HERE that such HOT technologies as virtualization have been around for years. I agree for servers and Operating Systems, but the next game changer that I am going to speak about is the virtualization of the network switching layer in the Data Center network.

Imagine that you have a vCloud level virtualization practice and you need to have the following routing protocols in a virtual environment : EIGRP, OSFP, BGPv4 and other advanced switching and routing concepts including unified I/O and FCoE. Is this truly new? It's debatable on some of the stuff. FCoE is indeed newer concetp-wise. If you leverage the Nexus1000V which is going to be built into the ESX hypervisor, the possibilities are almost endless. the complexities of the internal infrastructure become limited ONLY by your imagination. You could have multiple complete routed infrastructures that have complete separation and stateful fail-over. It's coming. Microsoft has been touting that 97% of the server market is still physical. If that is truly the case properly implementing VMware ESX 4.0 and Nexus1000V will be of MAJOR importance. So if you are a virtualization consultant and you only know OS, VMware, and Storage you might be in need of up-skilling. True high-end virtualization consultants are going to need to understand more and more as this accelerates forward. So spinning forward into 2009, we can expect to see all these services tied into the Virtual DataCenter OS. Augment these base DataCenter OS services with the new VMware View, ThinApp, and the LifeCycle control set and your DataCenter becomes easily manageable and controlled. You have everything covered and just need to worry about your supply pools : Storage, CPU, Memory, Network, and how to manage your growth. At last a DataCenter that you can live with and meet your SLA's with less effort.

You can then:

-Retire the employees that don't meet your needs be that Vision and/or skillset.
-Focus on the TRUE nature of IT, the elimination of itself.
-Proving ROI by greening the DataCeter and focusing on proven value.
-Prove value by responding to Client requests both Internal and External faster than ever before.

- All this and MORE.

Next time I promise I'll post more, PHIL :P.

Solid State Storage.

2008-12-02T10:08:00.001-05:00

The changes that we need to make are huge.

How will this influence SAN/NAS and other technology?

STAY TUNED!

Cisco 2975 Switches, a new stackable for the Data Center!

2008-11-19T14:28:00.000-05:00

Looking for a lower cost option for Layer 2 connectivity in the Data Center or anywhere else?

Check out the new Cisco 2975 stackables. POE, Gig-e, Qos, and Security features make this a good fit for your managed layer 2 adjacencies for multiple host vMotion in the Data Center.

LINKY

Back-End Fabric differences between DELL and HP.

2008-11-18T16:32:00.000-05:00

Today we are just going to address the back-end capabilities of DELL and HP Blade chassis'.

Dell has gone for a more traditional Fixed design. You have 3 pairs of slots, the mezzanine cards in the blade can only be mapped to the fabric that is matched to the board.

Hp allows you to connect to other fabric modules regardless of server mapping. In the C7000 chassis you have a larger number of fabrics as well.

So if you are looking for scalable versatility HP is a better choice. If you know what modules you'll need and don't want to upgrade then ... dude you're getting a Dell.

Have a great weekend everyone.

iSCSI vs Fibre-Channel

2008-11-17T16:27:00.000-05:00

Say that you have the infrastructure for BOTH iSCSI and FC-AL built and connected to your SAN. What is the cost for iSCSI vs FC-AL? Say that you have HP servers.

The comparison is above: Have Fun. In the end iSCSI cost more per MB/sec of transport, this is usable transport. Since the whole TCP/IP windowing comes into play 60MB/sec is the best recommended speed you'll get out of a 1Gig pipe.

ESX 4 Feature Listing and Demo's.

2008-11-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

Just a little something that I ran across a few days back. I hope that you like it.

This dicusses the VI 4.0 release and features. Some of the demos are really nice.

Continuous Availability:
Here

VMware Distributed Switch:
Here

Host Profile
Here

ESX4 Feature List so far:

64bit kernel and console operating system (COS)

Clustered VirtualCenter Servers - YAY .. Can't wait for this.

ESX hosts profile management

Cross-hosts virtual networking - Stateful network NICE.

8-way virtual SMP - SQL will like this a whole bunch.

Virtual machines fault tolerance across multiple hosts (the famous Continuous Availability presented last year) - This is GOING TO BE HUGE.

VMs and media library - Nice .... Been looking to dump my ISO folder in the data store :).

Alarms on physical hardware faults

Access control on storage resources - About time for this one.

Configuration change tracking - This will be hugely useful.

Full support for SATA local storage - I know a bunch of folks that have been waiting for this.

Dell Blade Chassis vs HP Blade Chassis. FIGHT!

2008-11-14T11:12:00.000-05:00

Here at HQ we have multiple DELL and HP Blade chassis and servers. If you looking for connectivity HP is KING. No Doubt.

But they each have strengths and weaknesses. We'll be going over this during the next couple weeks.

STAY TUNED!

Virtual Center. Physical or VM?

2008-11-13T15:18:00.000-05:00

Make VC a VM in your VI Environment.

Doing this frees you from finding a physical host that has a P4 2.0Ghz or better proc, 2GB of RAM and more.

Worried what would happen if VC crashes while being virtual?

Don't be that's why you have HA!!

It'll be fine ...

Data Center Consolidation and Build-out.

2008-11-12T13:11:00.000-05:00

ThoughtOut Consulting offers Data Center Consolidation and Build-Out services Specializing in VMware.

Have a Datacenter that you want to scale down but retain performance?

Have a Need to build a new Datacenter with "Green Technologies"?

Please consider them and post a comment. They'll get back to you ASAP.

Hey Milton! :P lol.

2008-11-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

Maybe you could let us know how Jumbo Frames affect the network, when they are enabled on a VM. Just a thought.

C-SQUARED.

ESX/ESXi and Jumbo Frames.

2008-11-12T10:18:00.000-05:00

There has been some confusion regarding this over the last few months.

In ESX/ESXi 3.5 U2 Jumbo Frames were announced as supported. But the caveat here is that Jumbos are only supported on Virtual Machine networking, NOT storage networking. So tossing Jumbo Frames into the iSCSI adapter either hardware or software puts you into a non-supported configuration. People are going to email me all sorts of things proving it's "supported" but it's not.

http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/whatsnew_esx35_vc25.html

(Jumbo frames are not supported for NAS and iSCSI traffic. They are limited to data networking only.)

Even when Jumbo Frames are turned on. I haven't noticed a huge performance increase mainly due to the nature of iSCSI. But let's keep this topic on the books, and see what happens when ESX 4.0 comes out.

IT's war against the HR process - Part #5.

2008-11-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

Final reason to have a SPARK - Succession Planning.

Not many people like to think about it, but the odds are that you will not be with your present employer for your entire career. So what kind of shape are you going to leave your department in?

Many people are of the mind that "It's now the "Company's" problem." But that isn't a cooperative attitude NOR a productive one. Think of the extra leverage you could have during an exit interview or entering a salary negotiation by having someone at 60% readiness for the role you vacate. The wisdom of foresight is greatly under appreciated. The value though is immense, if you had revolutionary and profitable ideas to transform the IT department when you got the job 3-5 years ago. Then I'm willing to bet if you have SPARKs on staff there is one that has the same amount of ideas and energy in your staff. Plan to move on and then create immense goodwill with the company that you're leaving by placing a resource at the top of the chain. This will both build your network and build your personal relationships. Who knows it might benefit you to have someone in that spot.

Repeat this process and teach it to your staff, the result?

Your network of contacts and respect will grow.
You can always call on old co-workers if you find out later your jump is a bad fit.
Other benefits are obvious.

ESX Technical Topics start Wednesday.

More Talent Brought to Leggo Craiggo !

2008-11-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

Milton Moore has been added to the list of highly skilled professionals posting at this blog. Milton Moore is a SPARK with MAJOR Cisco knowledge.

Milton's certifications include : CCNP/CCDP/CCVP/CCSP and he holds a CCIE in BOTH Voice and Route/Switch.

Milton is a great trainer as well. If you are looking to learn something on Cisco Unified Communications, check out his website at HTTP://WWW.VOIP-TUTOR.COM.

Welcome Milton, we look forward to your unique and talented insights :)!

IT's war against the HR process - Part #4.

2008-11-07T09:20:00.000-05:00

Third reason to have a SPARK - Energizing the culture!

Too often you walk into an IT department or a cube farm and the people you see cringe as if you only serve to intrude upon their consciousness. This distances people from IT and always makes IT out to be the enemy.

SPARKs on the other hand are gregarious employees they require interaction with others. A SPARK tends to engage rather than avoid. SPARKs will charge and bring FIRE to an environment. In order to make sure that a SPARK is not extinguished you must have the SPARK empowered and aware of the environment that he/she is going into.

What is the impact of energizing your culture?

Employees become people again. People talk to people they won't speak with someone that just stares at them.
Employees start to become energized about the work they do and the field they are in.
Generally if you are energized about your work you take pride in it and care about it. Possibly more work and higher quality.
Your team now starts to function like one.

Last post on this topic hits Monday - Stay Tuned!

IT's war against the HR process - Part #3.

2008-11-06T11:08:00.000-05:00

Second reason to have a SPARK - UPGRADES that cost less!

-Hire for Attitude, Train for skills!-

SPARKs learn fast, REALLY fast. Ususally SPARKs are the first people tasked to learn about and understand new technology. They love doing this so it's not a big deal. They then become an expert within a short time. A short time later this process repeats itself. As you can see the value is immense.
Do you know of a SPARK that doesn't have the skill you need? Ask them if that skill is one they wish to posess. If so you're in for a treat. Spend the time and money to train the SPARK in the selected skill, then ask the SPARK to provide suggestions that could bring positive impact to both the Client's business and yours.

The overall result?

1)As an employer you can pay less than obtaining skilled professionals by upgrading current staff. Increasing pay by 6,000$ is always less than hiring new talent and increasing headcount.

2)The Client sees investment into the people of the company and since the current SPARKs know the environment you can provide "Aligned Value" to the Client.

Team Awesome is GO!

2008-11-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

To help double-check my grammar :) with some of the larger articles, I am enlisting the help of Pete Sneathen. Pete is the CEO/Owner of Milestone Productions as well as a seasoned IT professional, with over 13 years of IT management experience. Pete is also a fellow SPARK with a great deal of vision.

Milestone's website is located here -> LINKY.

IT's war against the HR process - Part #2.

2008-11-05T08:50:00.000-05:00

First Reason to have a SPARK - It's all about the Client dummy!

SPARKs can understand and identify the "real" client and then serve to benefit them. In IT your employer is rarely also your Client, the "True Client" is the group of people that use IT resources. Discerning the true Client is essential. Most people that read this will think ... DUH! ... that is child's play and common sense. But it's often said that common sense is in short supply, almost as short as clues are to the general public. A SPARK will, by his/her actions let the Client know that "Yes I am working to bring you into a better state." The Client will see this and assign part of the value to the SPARK and the rest of the value and credit to the company that employs them.

This has 2 benefits.

First that the Client thinks you and/or your management team hire the "Best" people.

Secondly you can elevate the services sold or enhance your offering, think about this question when posed to the Client. "You like "SPARK so-and-so"? If I could deliver a team of them would you be interested? It might cost more but I could re-align the team so it's smaller and more productive. Thus the overall cost will be less." At this point the Client might get giddy. (This isn't something that can only be done in consulting. Imagine the CEO wants more people like SPARK X. You can run this by him/her also.)

The overall result?

1) You can charge more and increase profit by providing less people. (Yes, even internally for cost accounting purposes.)

2) The Client sees a more effective team that contains less people. The price ... per person might be high but the "extra" perception that SPARKs provide justify it in the Client's mind. (Which in turn adds to yourself and the management team looking very smart. Which is always good.)

Tomorrow - "Hire for Attitude and TRAIN for skills!"

The Talent Pool and The Spark. IT's war for intelligence against the HR process.

2008-11-03T11:41:00.001-05:00

During my day yesterday I did some musings on the "Talent Pool", and how as Senior IT Leaders we need to adapt.

Lately I have been on a number of interviews across the nation. Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland ... and so on. The common thing that I tend to notice is that more often than not the HR people that control wave #1 of screening care less about "The Spark" and want to bring forward a candidate that meets only the technical needs and written job description of the hiring manager. These would be college degree, certifications, experience, and all the other ancillary items. But no love for the technology or fire for the work is needed?

I qualify this by saying that I have "IT", call it "The Bug", "The Knack", "The Spark" or whatever you want. You know it when you see it. It's that unspoken love for technology and your field that goes beyond the seen and into the unseen. It supersedes the known. It's a feeling you get from a person. Those rare alien-like people, that given an unreasonable deadline and a crazy time-line can make things happen in IT that can only be explained as "Monumental". These are the "Out-of-the-Box" professionals, these people have put together solutions that make you step back and think ... That works?! ... It's frickin' genius. Well Done. From now on in this post and subsequent ones, I will refer to these people as SPARKs.

I have always thought that given the proper training and empowerment SPARKs are unstoppable. In my opinion any person that has "The SPARK" is worth more than one without it. WHY? I will evaluate 4 reasons in the following days. Feel free to let me know your feedback.

STAY TUNED!!

Oi what happened to my last one? :)

2008-11-03T09:43:00.000-05:00

Starting the blog up again. The last one got deleted due to "lack of use". Oh well it could be worse right :).

A little about me, I am a IT professional in Michigan (the only state with a perma-recession :) ). I have worked for small companies and large companies. I hold a number of industry certifications. My focus is on Technologies from Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, and EMC.

I enjoy building computers and servers. You know the true uber-geek of long ago. I have 25 years of public speaking experience and truly enjoy speaking with an audience. I was one of the original leaders that brought the West Michigan Cisco Users Group into existence. (www.wmcug.org)

My plan is to use this space to show people what I have learned and obtain feedback on how to better initiate change in an organization. The change that I will focus on is the type that benefits a company in either cost, productivity, or another percieved value.

Are you an IT professional that thinks about the same thing or shares similiar ideals? Please feel free to hit me up on www.linkedin.com/craiglchapman .

Talk to you soon.

CC