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

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.

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

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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? :)

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