Hello,
if you want to check is the virtual machines time is synced with the vSphere host, you can use this powershell/powercli code:
Get-VM | Select Name, @{N="SyncTimeWithHost";E={$_.ExtensionData.Config.Tools.SyncTimeWithHost}}
(As usual, remember to use the Connect-VIServer cmdlet before!)
Best regards,
Pablo
CloudCred congratulates two top players who, on October 15, 2014, won the site's top 180-Day Prize
A MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer
Both winners are great leaders in our community and can be followed on Twitter or at his Blog:
Ravi Venkatasubbaiah - "Ravi" topped both the 180-Day VSAN and Log Insight World Leaderboards
@Ravi_Venk - The Daily Caffeine
Allan Trambouze - "VirtualQuebec" scored first on the CloudCred overall 180-Day Leaderboard, as well as the NSX World Leaderboard.
@VirtualQuebec - Virtual Quebec
Is the party over? No.
There are plenty of ways to jump in and benefit from the resources provided at CloudCredibility.com.
Simply visit CloudCredibility.com and create an account. In less than five minutes, you can Play, Learn, and Win with Ravi, VirtualQuebec, and hundreds of others. See you there!
Hi All 
..
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is the core of our IT Infrastructure nowadays. It's the authentication and authorization center of any IT Infrastructure. Being here since 1990's, AD DS has been through a great development till reached this version on Windows 2012 with many new features. Luckily, some of these are only for helping virtualizing Domain Controllers (DC's) with min. effort and to leverage all of Virtualization advantages and features. These features are:
1-) VM Generation ID (Virtualization Safeguard): An ID that's generated and add to any Windows 2012 VM when being deployed on a supported hypervisor (vSphere 5.0 U2) .vmx file. It's used to trace VM life-cycle. When it's power on for first time, a new ID is generated using a special generator driver on Windows 2012 by default. It changes only when the VM is either imported, deployed from a template or a copy, hot/cold cloned, hot/cold snapshot-ed, restored from a backup or replicated to another VM. This ID is saved in AD Computer Object attributes of the VM as "msDS-GenerationId Attribute" and that helps the AD to keep track of the VM version and if the VM is restored or reverted from different version. This allowed us to use the next features: AD DC Snapshot and AD DC Cloning.
2-) AD DC Snapshot: Before Windows 2012, any try to use a snapshot with DC would lead to a corruption in DC database. That's because of a known issue called "USN Rollback" which leads to creating different objects on different DC's with the same SID. Long story short, each DC has to maintain a version number of its DB called "Update Sequence Number - USN". When creating an object on a DC for example, the USN will be incremented by 1 and hence, the DB -on this DC- will have a higher version number and that's why any other DC will accept a replication from that DC. When reverted from snapshot, USN will be reverted to old state. When the admin create new objects, the USN on the creator DC will increment till reach -or even pass- the same USN on any other DC, but with different objects and will not either initiate or accept any replication because it maintains the same USN -till it passes the USN of other DC's-, but with different objects. With using VM Generation ID, AD DC's now have a VM version which is used with USN to validate that each DC maintain its DB version and VM version. If a DC is reverted from snapshot, its VM Generation ID will change and hence, its DB will have a new combination of USN and VM Generation ID. This alerts other DC's to initiate a two-way replication to acquire any objects created on the reverted DC and push any missing objects to it.
3-) AD DC Cloning: In Windows 2012, Cloning of a DC is a new feature which facilitates the scaling of AD Infrastructure when needed. It also uses the VM Generation ID to maintain the version of the DC's DB and hence, prevents the corruption due to USN Rollback Issue. Using Windows PowerShell, a XML file will be created to save the configuration needs to be deployed when the DC machine is cloned. Then, after cloning and configuration, a new DC is created with a new VM Generation ID in the same point of time of the source DC. This feeds the need for replication of AD objects and extremely useful in large environments or in case of DR process. For the cloning process step-by-step guide, check thispaper.
When virtualizing AD DC using vSphere, it's recommended to follow Microsoft Best Practices in sizing as well as leverage any feature provided by vSphere to provide the needed level of performance and availability. AD DC isn't a performance-intensive application and its availability is easy to maintain at the required level. The following are a collection of MS and VMware best practices when virtualizing an AD DC based on Windows 2012. I divided these best practices into six categories that align with the known Design Qualifiers: Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability and Security in addition to another qualifier: Scalability.
Availability:
1-) Try to separate FSMO roles between many AD DC VMs and separate these VMs on different host using VMs Anti-Affinity Roles.
2-) Try to separate all DC VMs on separate back-end Storage Arrays. If not available, try to host one DC VM on a local datastore as a protection in case of back-end shared storage failure. Keep in mind that, DC VM on local datastore won’t use features like: HA or vMotion.
3-) Try to separate your DC VMs on many clusters on many physical racks or blade chassis using Soft (Should) VM-Host Anti-affinity rule. At least, dedicate a management cluster separated from production cluster.
4-) Make sure to set HA Restart Priority for all DC VMs in your HA Cluster(s) to High in order to be restarted first before any other VMs in case of host failure.
5-) Try to use VM Monitor to monitor activity of the AD DC VMs and restart them in case of OS failure.
Manageability:
1-) Time Sync:
Time Synchronization is one of the most important things in AD DS environments. As stated by VMware Best Practices to Virtualize AD DS on Windows 2012here, it’s recommended to follow a hierarchical time sync as follows:
- Sync the PDC in Forest Root Domain to an external Startum 1 NTP servers.
- Sync all other PDCs in other child domains in the forest to the Root PDC or any other DC in the Root Domain.
- Sync all ESXi Hosts in the VI to the same Startum 1 NTP Server.
- Sync all workstations in every domain to the nearest DC in their domains respectively.
To configure the PDC to time-sync with an external NTP server using GPO, check thislink.
Also, it’s recommended to disable time-sync between VMs and Hosts using VMware Tools totally (Even after uncheck the box from VM settings page, VM can sync with the Host using VMware Tools in case of startup, resume, snapshotting, etc.) according to the followingKB.
This will make the PDC VM only sync its time with the configured time source using GPO.
2-) Use Best Practices Analyzer (BPA):
It’s recommended to use BPA for AD DCs to make sure that your configuration is coherent with Microsoft recommended configuration. In some cases and for valid reasons, you can drift from Microsoft recommendations. For more information, refer to thislink.
3-) Use AD DS Replication Tool:
This tool, offered by Microsoft for free, can help detect any issue in replication between all DCs in your environment and show them and the related KB articles to solve these issues. It’s the next generation from REPADMIN CLI tool. Download it from thislink.
4-) Snapshots:
As mentioned above, using AD DC on Windows 2012, you can use snapshots without worrying about reverting to old snapshot and the related USN Rollback issue. AD DC on Windows 2012 leverages the new VM-Generation ID feature that makes the AD DC Virtualization aware and hence, any hot/cold snapshot can be used to revert to it safely. Check VMware Best Practices to Virtualize AD DS on Windows 2012herefor more information about VM-Generation ID and related Virtualization Safeguards.
Performance:
1-) vCPU Sizing:
Site Size | No. of vCPUs |
<500 Users per Site | Single vCPU |
<10,000 Users per Site | 2 vCPUs |
>10,000 Users per Site | 3+ vCPUs |
This assumes that the primary work of the directory is user authentication. For any additional workload, like Exchange Server, additional vCPUs may be required. Capacity Monitoring is helpful to determine the correct vCPUs required.
2-) Memory Sizing:
Memory of AD DC can help in boosting the performance by caching AD DB in the RAM, like any other DB application. Ideal case is to cache all AD DB in the RAM for max. performance. This is preferred in environments that have AD integrated with other solutions, like Exchange servers. The following guide line is a start:
Site Size | Min. RAM Size |
<500 Users per domain per Site | 512 MB |
500-1,000 Users per domain per Site | 1GB |
>1,000 Users per domain per Site | 2 GB |
For the correct sizing of RAM, start with min. required and use Windows Performance Monitor to monitor “Database/DB Cache Hit%” for lsass service after extended period after deploying this DC. Add RAM if required using vSphere Hot Add feature (Keep in mind that you have to enable it before starting up the DC VM). When the RAM is sized correctly enough to cache proper portion of DB, this ratio should be near 100%.
Keep in mind that, this is only for AD Domain Services, i.e. additional RAM is required for the Guest OS.
3-) Storage Sizing:
The following equations are general for sizing the required storage size for a DC:
“Storage required= OS Storage+ AD DB Storage+ AD DB Logs Storage+ SYSVOL Folder Storage+ Global Catalogue Storage+ Any data stored in Application Partition+ Any 3rd Part Storage”
“AD DB Storage= 0.4GB for any 1,000 users≈ 0.4MB*Total No. of Users”
“AD DB Logs Storage= 25% of AD DB Storage”
“SYSVOL Folder≈ 500MB+” May increase in case of high no. of GPOs.
“Global Catalogue Storage= 50% of AD DB for any additional Domain”
“Any data stored in Application Partition": is to be estimated.
“Any 3rd Part Storage": includes any installed OS patches, paging file, backup agent or anti-virus agent.
The following table shows the Read/Write behavior of each of AD DC components:
AD DC Component | Read/Write | RAID Recommended |
AD DB | Read Intensive | RAID 5 |
AD DB Logs | Write Intensive | RAID 1/10 |
OS | Read/Write | RAID 1 |
Keep in mind that for large environments with many integrated solutions with AD, separation of OS, AD DB and AD DB Logs on many disks is recommended for IO separation on many disks and vSCSI adapters. In such environments, caching most of AD DB on RAM will give a performance boost.
4-) Network Sizing:
AD DC VM should have a VMXNET3 vNIC which gives the max. network performance with least CPU load and this should be sufficient on 1GB physical network. The port group to which AD DC VM is connected should have a teamed physical NICs for redundancy.
Recoverability:
1-) Try to use a backup software that is VSS-aware to safely backup your AD DB. AD DC on Windows 2012 can be backed up with a backup software that uses VSS to backup and restore entire DC VM, because AD DC on Windows 2012 leverages the new VM-Generation ID feature that makes the AD DC Virtualization aware and hence, any restore process of entire DC VM can be done safely. Check VMware Best Practices to Virtualize AD DS on Windows 2012herefor more information about VM-Generation ID and related Virtualization Safeguards.
2-) Make sure to backup any DC System State. System State contains AD DB, AD DB Logs, SYSVOL Folder and any other OS critical component like registry files.
3-) For DR, you can use native AD DCs replication to replicate the AD DB between the main site and the DR site. This approach requires min. management overhead and good DR capability. This approach only lacks the ability to protect the five FSMO role holders.
4-) Another approach for DR is to leverage VMware SRM with VM-Generation ID capability on Windows 2012. This approach helps to continuously replicate AD DC VMs using SRM Replication or Array-based Replication and failover in case of disaster. This allows to protect FSMO roles holders as well as provide AD infrastructure to failed-over VMs in the DR site.
Security:
1-) All security procedures done for securing physical DCs should be done in DC VMs, like: Role-based Access Policy and hard drive encryption.
2-) Follow VMware Hardening Guide (v5.1/v5.5) for more security procedures to secure both of your VMs and vCenter Server.
Scalability:
1-) For greater scalability, try to upgrade your AD DCs to Windows Server 2012. AD DC on Windows 2012 leverages the new VM-Generation ID feature that makes the AD DC Virtualization-aware and hence, it can be cloned easily and any cloning process can be done safely. Check VMware Best Practices to Virtualize AD DS on Windows 2012herefor more information and cloning process step-by-step guide. Cloning can help in case of urgently needed expansion in AD DC infrastructure, DR process or testing. It also cuts down heavy network utilization by AD DCs in replication of entire DB to the new promoted-from-scratch DCs. Keep in mind that Cold Cloning is the only one supported by both VMware and Microsoft. Hot Cloning isn’t supported in production by either VMware or Microsoft.
I wish that this comprehensive -long unintentionally- guide helps you in virtualizing this simple but important application and providing the required level of availability and performance. For more information or detailed explanation of any item, check the References section.
Share the knowledge ...
References:
-- Virtualizing MS Business Critical Applicationby Matt Liebowitz and Alex Fontana.
-- MS Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide (IPD).
-- Virtualizing AD Domain Services on vSphere
-- vSphere Design Sybex 2nd Editionby Scott Lowe, Kendrick Coleman and Forbes Guthrie.
Hi all ...
During my journey towards VCAP-DCD (All pray for me ), I found a nice topic on the exam blueprint. It's about "Gathering and Analysis Business Application Requirements". When I began to examine it, I found that it was not only about as stated by its headline, but about also the best practices to deploy some Business Critical Applications (BCAs) in your vSphere environment. It included all of "Microsoft Exchange, SQL and Sharepoint, Enterprise Jave Applications, SAP HANA & Oracle". These applications are considered -in most of environments if not all- Tier 1 applications that require wide eyes and careful attention when dealing with and sepcially when migrating to virtual world on vSphere Infrastructure.
I tried to summarize all I could found during my readings in this topic,as I know it's a critical topic and mastering it requires some deep knowledge about vSphere capabilities and how to leverage them to serve these applications. In addition, this topic is a point of VCAP-DCD exam blueprint and one of its most tricky points if not the most at all.
First, let's define what a Business Critical Application (BCA) is:
"Business Critical Application is the one without which the business is either stopped or suffers great losses in its revenue. It's critical to lose that application and business requires always the highest levels of performance, availability and recoverability -in case of a disaster- for this application"
Now, someone will ask about the reason for taking the difficult road of virtualizing BCAs as long as they're running physically without any problems. The answer is plain simple: Better availability, same performance and may be better in case of scaling out, easier recovery and all for lower cost. vSphere Platform is capable of delivering the requirements of these applications of performance. In addition, VMware has its own HA capabilities that can be used solely or with another clustering solutions for highest levels of availability. HA isn't only the clustering feature available, VMware offers another clustering feature: DRS, which helps to load balance and distribute the load on many ESXi Hosts to maintain the required performance for BCAs while not affecting other lower-tiers applications. Last but not least, VMware offers its own DR solution: Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which automates the process of DR as well as allowing the responsible personnel to test their DR plan whenever they want.
After defining these two points, now we will discuss the best practices to deploy Business Critical Applications in your vSphere environment and will include all of:
Microsoft AD DS, Microsoft Cluster Services, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Microsft Sharepoint, Oracle DB, SAP HANA & Enterprise Java Applications
I tried as much as possible to make it related to the main Design Qualifiers (Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability and Security - AMPRS). I also added another aspect: Scalability, as I felt that this aspect is important to consider when designing for such applications. When applicable, Cost also is considered against all of these qualifiers.
Now, let's start:
1- Virtualizing Microsoft AD DS Best Practices.
2- Virtualizing Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) Best Practices.
3- Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Best Practices.
4- Virtualizing Microsoft SQL Best Practices.
5- Virtualizing Microsoft Sharepoint Best Practices.
6- Virtualizing Oracle DB Best Practices.
7- Virtualizing SAP HANA Best Practices.
8- Virtualizing Enterprise Java Applications Best Practices.
Share the knowledge ...
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From the editors virtual desk
Hi everyone, well I I had a really cool opportunity this week to meet with one of our extremely important analysts at our Palo Alto campus. The session was to discuss the metrics that a VMware Technical Account Manager collects every quarter with their customer.
Some background on this service. Every quarter we (TAMs) run a utility on our customers systems that allows us to deliver to them a very detailed report of their current environment. This information is also provided back to the internal data warehouse where it is analysed and provided back to all the TAMs as a dashboard summary of the many metrics that we collect but across the TAM world. This provides us with amazing insight into the world of virtualization for our customers and allows us to compare our customers environment using a variety of metrics with industry averages that have been analysed and collected.
If you are a TAM customer or thinking of becoming a TAM customer I suggest that this is a really valuable exercise that is performed by TAMs for their customers.
VMworld Europe is about to begin. I hope that those of you that are attending or participating have a wonderful time and I look forward to all of the announcements from the event and will try and bring you all of the news in the newsletter.
I hope you have a great week and look forward to chatting to you again next week. Thank you for reading the newsletter and of course please get in touch with anything that you might have on your mind.
Virtually Yours
Neil Isserow
Staff Technical Account Manager
VMware Inc - San Francisco, CA
nisserow @ vmware . com
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Educause 2014, the IT education conference, wrapped up last week in Orlando, Fla., where education IT professionals and technology organizations gathered for several days to discuss new and continuing trends in education technology. According to Preston Winn, it was evident at the conference that mobile security is a growing concern and need for schools. Winn, […]
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AirWatch Connect Local is coming to a city near you! These one-day events include group sessions and one-on-one discussions with AirWatch technology experts, as well as an opportunity to network with other mobility administrators in your area. Sessions will cover current and upcoming release highlights, such as AirWatch Chat and AirWatch Video, as well as […]
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As part of a strategic, global effort to drive focus, profitability, and value for our partners, we’ve synchronized enablement, marketing programs, sales resources, end-user promotions and most importantly increased partner incentives across key VMware Solution Power Plays. Hear from Brandon Sweeney, VP Of US Commercial Segment, as he shares how we are making it easier […]
The Q4 Partner Briefing features product launch news and update videos around vRealize Suite, vRealize Operations 6.0, Horizon FLEX, App Volumes, Horizon Air Desktop DR, vCloud Government Service, and our Power Plays. It’s important that you stay current. You can access the Quarterly Partner Briefing Portal today to get your preview.
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VMworld – Partner Solutions Exchange (http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/?p=1347)
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EXTERNAL BLOGGERS
I really haven’t thought about this much (and have no more info that what is publicly available) – so this isn’t even my “2 cents”, but rather only worth 1 cent :-) I’m increasingly am aware of how hard it...
Nothing beats free and many companies offer scaled down versions of their full products or purpose built mini tools as free tools. SolarWinds is one company which specializes in all sorts of tools that has many different free tools available for just about everything in the data center. VMware has been developing free tools that they … Continue reading »
In our official kick off to the DevOps series, John Willis explains just what this DevOps thing is. John provides excellent insights and helps you understand how to apply the concepts and culture that define DevOps. Keep track of our entire DevOps schedule which will include links to recordings and homework or join our Google+ community to […]
Paul McSharry covers objective 4 of the VMware Certified Professional – Network Virtualization (VCP-NV) certification blueprint. Objective 4.1 – Configure Environment for Network Virtualization Objective 4.2 – Deploy VMware NSX Components Objective 4.3 – Upgrade Existing vCNS/NSX Implementation Objective 4.4 – Expand Transport Zone to Include New Cluster(s) Video More information of the exam and […]
From the editors virtual desk
Hi everyone, I hope your week was as good as mine. I got to spend the day at Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce convention in San Francisco. It was absolutely awesome. I attended a number of excellent presentations and took a look around the exhibition areas as well. It was really a great event to attend and for me it was my first introduction to San Francisco events since I arrived.
Of course there was another notable event on this past week, VMworld Europe, an event I would love to attend one day. I have received much feedback on this event and that it was a huge success, if you attended I hope you enjoyed it, watch for many of the announcements from the week in the newsletter.
A number of items worth noting this week. There was a new VMware KB article with guidance on Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) and the upcoming changes that are taking place so please take a look at that, the article can be found here https://blogs.vmware.com/security/2014/10/transparent-page-sharing-additional-management-capabilities-new-default-settings.html.
Have a fantastic week, enjoy the newsletter and please don't forget to check the latest KB articles each week to ensure they do not affect your environment.
Virtually Yours
Neil Isserow
Staff Technical Account Manager
VMware Inc - San Francisco, CA
nisserow @ vmware . com
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VMWARE BLOGGERS
There are various reasons a user might experience a blank (black) screen when using the PCoIP protocol with Horizon View and our Support Engineers get calls on this every day. These include, but are not limited to: Misconfiguration of connection server settings. vRAM shortage on the View virtual machine. Incorrect video driver version installed on […]
By Mornay Van Der Walt, vice president, Emerging Solutions Group, SDDC Division It seems that the time between VMworld 2014 San Francisco and this week’s VMworld 2014 Barcelona has flown by. In reality, the VMware EVO: RAIL team has remained hard at work during the last seven weeks. In that time, we launched EVO: RAIL, […]
By Tony Scott, CIO, VMware Just like many of our customers, we’re on a journey to transform our business by transforming how we approach people, process and technology. We’re redefining the role, expectations, and capabilities of IT. After implementing our own internal SDDC in 2013, we have built upon it with VMware cloud infrastructure, hybrid […]
Folks, today at VMworld Barcelona, we announced VMware vRealize Operations 6.0 (formerly vCenter Operations Management Suite). You can read more about today’s announcements in this press release, as well as in this blog post by Ramin Sayar. In this post, I’d like to give you an overview of what’s new and exciting in vRealize Operations 6.0. For complete details on […]
VMware vSphere provides an ideal platform for customers to virtualize their business-critical applications, including databases, ERP systems, email servers, and even newly emerging technologies such as Hadoop. I’ve been focusing on the first one (databases), specifically Microsoft SQL Server, one of the most widely deployed database platforms in the world. Many organizations have dozens or […]
We saw big reveals from Apple and Android this week, VMworld Europe came to a close, and conversations at Cisco’s IoT World Forum and DreamForce focused on mobile. VMWorld Europe took place this week in Barcelona, where VMware made several end user-computing announcements, such as a new partnership with IoT services provider Jasper and additional VMWare […]
Register to access resources and pre-schedule phone appointments for your prospecting day. Gift card awards can be earned throughout November as you build pipeline and drive revenue for the Power Plays. Register and review the details along with new tools.
At VMworld 2014 in Barcelona, we announced our partnership with HP to simplify and accelerate the delivery of software-defined infrastructure services with EVO:RAIL. This partnership with provide midmarket and enterprises a more simplified approach to purchasing, deploying, scaling, and securing support for their software-defined IT infrastructure. Customers will now be able to enjoy quick deployments […]
Register now to watch the live stream replay of today’s (Oct. 14th) keynotes from VMworld 2014 in Barcelona. You registration will get you access to tomorrow’s (Oct. 15th) keynotes as well – live stream or replay (posted a few hours after each session). Discover how software is already making IT more capable, more accessible, […]
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EXTERNAL BLOGGERS
A frequent question I get is related to Nutanix capacity sizing. Sizing Nutanix is not complicated and Steven Poitras did an excellent job explaining the process at The Nutanix Bible (here). However, as the Nutanix cluster grows overtime and different HDD/SSD capacities are introduced, the calculation starts to get a little bit trickier; specially when … Continue reading »
I am here sitting here at the blogger table on Day-0 (Partner Day) of VMworld in Barcelona, and it is time to close some technical debt (well not really technical but it would be better to call it blogging debt). If there is one thing that VMware... This is a content summary only. Please visit my website for the full article, other content, and more...
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DISCLAIMER
While I do my best to publish unbiased information specifically related to VMware solutions there is always the possibility of blog posts that are unrelated, competitive or potentially conflicting that may creep into the newsletter. I apologise for this in advance if I offend anyone and do my best to ensure this does not happen. Please get in touch if you feel any inappropriate material has been published. All information in this newsletter is copyright of the original author. If you are an author and wish to no longer be used in this newsletter please get in touch.
Very interesting question in the Communities about vCO plug-in development and how to implement some background process within the plug-in to monitor plug-in objects:
Re: Launching asynchronous (background) processes from a plugin.
I answered based on what I've seen / I've done in some plug-ins... but I'd like to know if anyone else following this blog (if any) has by chance experience on implementing vCO triggers/monitoring tasks and wants to share it
Get ready for the VMware vForum Online, an interactive half-day event specifically designed for business and IT professionals that includes breakout sessions, expert chats, and Hands-On Labs Online.
CloudCredibility.com will be teaming up once again with vForum Online to bring the fun & prizes to CloudCred players. Every time you complete a vForum Online Contest task, you will be entered to win either an iPad mini or one of two Google Chromecasts.
Pre-event tasks will be available starting this Monday, November 3. A preview of other contest tasks will also be coming your way.
So, mark your calendar! You won't want to miss this valuable event.
Read in details by clicking on the direct link to my Personal Blog here: Why are my packets dropping?
Regards,
Rupam
I've been working on putting together Step-by-Step How-To's for installing and configuring NSX as well as vCAC. Below are links that have the Step-by-Step overview for both NSX and vCAC. Be sure to check back as additional use cases and more advanced configuration are being posted regularly.
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From the editors virtual desk
Hi everyone and welcome to this week's newsletter. A lot has been going on in VMware land this past week. With all of the many announcements now out from VMworld Europe we can look forward to many new solutions from VMware to learn about.
For those that have been following my relocation to San Francisco this week was a big week for me as I moved in to my permanent apartment rental now. I am very excited about this and hope it will allow me to become more productive with my customers now that I can get properly settled. San Francisco is amazing and I am loving everything it has to offer.
I won't take up any more of your time this week, please enjoy reading the newsletter and all of the weeks news and of course pay careful attention to this weeks KB articles in case they may affect you. If you are in any doubt contavt your VMware TAM or other VMware representative to check.
Virtually Yours
Neil Isserow
Staff Technical Account Manager
VMware Inc - San Francisco, CA
nisserow @ vmware . com
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http://tinyurl.com/m4wmen5 for full list
VMWARE BLOGGERS
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is the World’s Largest Gathering of Women Technologists and it took place on Oct. 8-9, 2014. A group of VMware employees attended the conference to contribute their unique perspectives on being a woman in the tech industry. Later in the month at #VMworld 2014 Europe, #VMware hosted the first ever #VMwomen event […]
VMworld 2014 Europe just wrapped up last week. Watch Joe Baguly, CTO, EMEA at VMware talk about his top three buzz-worthy news moments at the show.
Today VMware has released the following new security advisory: VMSA-2014-0011 The advisory documents a critical information disclosure vulnerability, CVE-2014-4624, which has been addressed in vSphere Data Protection 5.5.x last week. Customers should review the security advisory and direct any questions to VMware Support. Please sign up to the Security-Announce mailing list to receive new and […]
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Gavin Jackson, VMwareBy Gavin Jackson, Vice President & General Manager, … Read More
Sometimes, customers and partners frustrate me. There, I said it :-) I’m sure the reverse is also true – I bet I/we can be frustrating too :-) People… “Choice” is good. But “Choice” can also be the enemy of “Agility”....
If you haven’t heard of the very excellent Tech Field Day, head on over and check it out. They do all kinds of Field Days, including one for storage. Number 6 is happening in less than 2 weeks and, yes, I’ll be there this time. Wheee! Look, you can see my picture on the internet […]
So, this has been quite a journey for me. If any of you are like me, you’ve avoided anything related to Networking, & especially Networking certifications like the plague. At work, if any issue networking related surfaced, I gladly pawned it off to the “networking guy”. With the boundaries between layers of the infrastructure stack […]
The definition of Converged Infrastructure (CI) can be categorised into different ‘flavours’. In summary, the term defines an approach where storage and compute are tightly coupled, and managed within a software-defined paradigm that offers policy driven provision of resources. Different vendors provide their own ‘flavour’ of CI, ranging from an infrastructure package that is optimised […] The post What is Converged Infrastructure? appeared first on Virtual Wiki .
In our effort to provide our viewers with up to the minute information on VMware related news and topics, we’re posting the following list of new KB Entries for this week, direct from VMware Support.
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Intanto una prima bozza.
This is the first post of a two part series, read the second post here.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to test drive some Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD's as a follow-up to some earlier activity trying their Enterprise TurboBoost Drives. Disclosure: Seagate has been a StorageIO client and was also the sponsor of this white paper and associated proof-points mentioned in this post.
The question to ask yourself is not if flash Solid State Device (SSD) technologies are in your future, Instead the questions are when, where, using what, how to configure and related themes. SSD including traditional DRAM and NAND flash-based technologies are like real estate where location matters; however, there are different types of properties to meet various needs. This means leveraging different types of NAND flash SSD technologies in different locations in a complementary and cooperative aka hybrid way. For example nand flash SSD as part of an enterprise tiered storage strategy can be implemented server-side using PCIe cards, SAS and SATA drives as targets or as cache along with software, as well as leveraging SSD devices in storage systems or appliances.
Seagate 1200 Enterprise SAS 12Gbs SSD Image via Seagate.com
Another place where nand flash can be found and compliments SSD devices are so-called Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) or Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) including a new generation that accelerate writes as well as reads such as those Seagate refers to as with Enterprise TurboBoost. The Enterprise TurboBoost drives (view the companion StorageIO Lab review TurboBoost white paper here) were previously known as the Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) or Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD). Read more about TurboBoost here and here.
Keep in mind that the best server or storage I/O is that one that you do not have to do, with the second best being the one with the least overhead resolved as close to the processor (compute) as possible or practical. The following figure shows that the best place to resolve server and storage I/O is as close to the compute processor as possible however only a finite amount of storage memory located there. This is where the server memory and storage I/O hierarchy comes into play which is also often thought of in the context of tiered storage balancing performance and availability with cost and architectural limits.
Also shown is locality of reference which refers to how close data is to where it is being used and includes cache effectiveness or buffering. Hence a small amount of cache of flash and DRAM in the right location can have a large benefit. Now if you can afford it, install as much DRAM along with flash storage as possible, however if you are like most organizations with finite budgets yet server and storage I/O challenges, then deploy a tiered flash storage strategy.
Server memory storage I/O hierarchy, locality of reference
Back to the Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD which is covered in this StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper. The focus of the white paper is to look at how the Seagate 1200 Enterprise class SSD's and 12Gbps SAS address current and next generation tiered storage for virtual, cloud, traditional Little and Big Data infrastructure environments.
This includes providing proof points running various workloads including Database TPC-B, TPC-E and Microsoft Exchange in the StorageIO Labs along with cache software comparing SSD, SSHD and different HDD's including 12Gbs SAS 6TB near-line high-capacity drives.
The proof points in this white paper are from an applications focus perspective representing more of an end-to-end real-world situation. While they are not included in this white paper, StorageIO has run traditional storage building-block focus workloads, which can be found at StorageIOblog (Part II: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware?). These include tools such as Iometer, iorate, vdbench among others for various IO sizes, mixed, random, sequential, reads, writes along with “hot-band" across different number of threads (concurrent users). “Hot-Band” is part of the SNIA Emerald energy effectiveness metrics for looking at sustained storage performance using tools such as vdbench. Read more about other various server and storage I/O benchmarking tools and techniques here.
For the following series of proof-points (TPC-B, TPC-E and Exchange) a system under test (SUT) consisted of a physical server (described with the proof-points) configured with VMware ESXi along with guests virtual machines (VMs) configured to do the storage I/O workload. Other servers were used in the case of TPC workloads as application transactional requester to drive the SQL Server database and resulting server storage I/O workload. VMware was used in the proof-points to reflect a common industry trend of using virtual server infrastructures (VSI) supporting applications including database, email among others. For the proof-point scenarios, the SUT along with storage system device under test were dedicated to that scenario (e.g. no other workload running) unless otherwise noted.
Server Storage I/O configuration for proof-points
For this proof-point, Microsoft Jet Stress Exchange performance workloads were placed (e.g. Exchange Database - EDB file) on each of the different devices under test with various metrics shown including activity rates and response time for reads as well as writes. For the Exchange testing, the EDB was placed on the device being tested while its log files were placed on a separate Seagate 400GB Enterprise 12Gbps SAS SSD.
Test configuration: Seagate 400GB 12000 2.5” SSD (ST400FM0073) 12Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise 15K with TurboBoost™ (ST600MX) 6 Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise Enhanced 15K V4 (15K RPM) HDD (ST600MP) with 6 Gbps SAS, Seagate Enterprise Capacity Nearline (ST6000NM0014) 6TB 3.5” 7.2K RPM HDD 12 Gbps SAS and 3TB 7.2K SATA HDD. Email server hosted as guest on VMware vSphere/ESXi V5.5, Microsoft SBS2011 Service Pack 1 64 bit. Guest VM (VMware vSphere 5.5) was on a SSD based datastore, had a physical machine (host), with 14 GB DRAM, quad CPU (4 x 3.192GHz) Intel E3-1225 v300, with LSI 9300 series 12Gbps SAS adapters in a PCIe Gen 3 slot with Jet Stress 2010. All devices being tested were Raw Device Mapped (RDM) where EDB resided. VM on a SSD based separate data store than devices being tested. Log file IOPs were handled via a separate SSD device also persistent (no delayed writes). EDB was 300GB and workload ran for 8 hours.
Microsoft Exchange proof-points comparing various storage devices
SSD's are a good fit for both transaction database activity with reads and write as well as query-based decision support systems (DSS), data warehouse and big data analytics. The following are proof points of SSD capabilities for database activity. In addition to supporting database table files and objects, along with transaction journal logs, other uses include for meta-data, import/export or other high-IO and write intensive scenarios. Two database workload profiles were tested including batch update (write-intensive) and transactional. Activity involved running Transaction Performance Council (TPC) workloads TPC-B (batch update) and TPC-E (transaction/OLTP simulate financial trading system) against Microsoft SQL Server 2012 databases. Each test simulation had the SQL Server database (MDF) on a different device with transaction log file (LDF) on a separate SSD. TPC-B for a single device results shown below.
TPC-B (write intensive) results below show how TPS work being done (blue) increases from left to right (more is better) for various numbers of simulated users. Also shown on the same line for each amount of TPS work being done is the average latency in seconds (right to left) where lower is better. Results are shown from top to bottom for each group of users (100, 50, 20 and 1) for the different drives being tested (top to bottom). Note how the SSD device does more work at a lower response time vs. traditional HDD's
Test configuration: Seagate 400GB 12000 2.5” SSD (ST400FM0073) 12Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise 15K with TurboBoost™ (ST600MX) 6 Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise Enhanced 15K V4 (15K RPM) HDD (ST600MP) with 6 Gbps SAS, Seagate Enterprise Capacity Nearline (ST6000NM0014) 6TB 3.5” 7.2K RPM HDD 12 Gbps SAS and 3TB Seagate 7.2K SATA HDD Workload generator and virtual clients Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database was on Windows 7 guest. Guest VM (VMware vSphere 5.5) had a dedicated 14 GB DRAM, quad CPU (4 x 3.192GHz) Intel E3-1225 v300, with LSI 9300 series 12Gbps SAS adapters in a PCIe Gen 3 slot along with TPC-B (www.tpc.org) workloads.
VM with guest OS along with SQL tempdb and masterdb resided on separate SSD based data store from devices being tested (e.g., where MDF (main database tables) and LDF (log file) resided). All devices being tested were Raw Device Mapped (RDM) independent persistent with database log file on a separate SSD device also persistent (no delayed writes) using VMware PVSCSI driver. MDF and LDF file sizes were 142GB and 26GB with scale factor of 10000, with each step running for one hour (10-minute preamble). Note that these proof-points DO NOT use VMware or any other third-party cache software or I/O acceleration tool technologies as those are covered later in a separate proof-point.
TPC-B SQL Server database proof-points comparing various storage devices
The following shows results from TPC-E test (OLTP/transactional workload) simulating a financial trading system. TPC-E is an industry standard workload that performs a mix of reads and writes database queries. Proof-points were performed with various numbers of users from 10, 20, 50 and 100 to determine (TPS) Transaction per Second (aka I/O rate) and response time in seconds. The TPC-E transactional results are shown for each device being tested across different user workloads. The results show how TPC-E TPS work (blue) increases from left to right (more is better) for larger numbers of users along with corresponding latency (green) that goes from right to left (less is better). The Seagate Enterprise 1200 SSD is shown on the top in the figure below with a red box around its results. Note how the SSD as a lower latency while doing more work compared to the other traditional HDD's
Test configuration: Seagate 400GB 12000 2.5” SSD (ST400FM0073) 12Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise 15K with TurboBoost™ (ST600MX) 6 Gbps SAS, 600GB 2.5” Enterprise Enhanced 15K V4 (15K RPM) HDD (ST600MP) with 6 Gbps SAS, Seagate Enterprise Capacity Nearline (ST6000NM0014) 6TB 3.5” 7.2K RPM HDD 12 Gbps SAS and 3TB Seagate 7.2K SATA HDD Workload generator and virtual clients Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database was on Windows 7 guest. Guest VM (VMware vSphere 5.5) had a dedicated 14 GB DRAM, quad CPU (4 x 3.192GHz) Intel E3-1225 v300, with LSI 9300 series 12Gbps SAS adapters in a PCIe Gen 3 slot along with TPC-B (www.tpc.org) workloads.
VM with guest OS along with SQL tempdb and masterdb resided on separate SSD based data store from devices being tested (e.g., where MDF (main database tables) and LDF (log file) resided). All devices being tested were Raw Device Mapped (RDM) independent persistent with database log file on a separate SSD device also persistent (no delayed writes) using VMware PVSCSI driver. MDF and LDF file sizes were 142GB and 26GB with scale factor of 10000, with each step running for one hour (10-minute preamble). Note that these proof-points DO NOT use VMware or any other third-party cache software or I/O acceleration tool technologies as those are covered later in a separate proof-point.
TPC-E (Financial trading) SQL Server database proof-points comparing various storage devices
Continue reading part-two of this two-part series here including the virtual server storage I/O blender effect and solution.
Ok, nuff said (for now).
Cheers gs
This is the second post of a two part series, read the first post here.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to test drive some Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD's as a follow-up to some earlier activity trying their Enterprise TurboBoost Drives. Disclosure: Seagate has been a StorageIO client and was also the sponsor of this white paper and associated proof-points mentioned in this post.
The earlier proof-points focused on SSD as a target or storage device. In the following proof-points, the Seagate Enterprise 1200 SSD is used as a shared read cache (write-through). Using a write-through cache enables a given amount of SSD to give a performance benefit to other local and networked storage devices.
Non-virtualized servers with dedicated storage and I/O paths.
Aggregation causes aggravation with I/O bottlenecks because of consolidation using server virtualization. The following figure shows non-virtualized servers with their own dedicated physical machine (PM) and I/O resources. When various servers are virtualized and hosted by a common host (physical machine), their various workloads compete for I/O and other resources. In addition to competing for I/O performance resources, these different servers also tend to have diverse workloads.
Virtual server storage I/O blender bottleneck (aggregation causes aggravation)
The figure above shows aggregation causing aggravation with the result being I/O bottlenecks as various applications performance needs converge and compete with each other. The aggregation and consolidation result is a blend of random, sequential, large, small, read and write characteristics. These different storage I/O characteristics are mixed up and need to be handled by the underlying I/O capabilities of the physical machine and hypervisor. As a result, a common deployment for SSD in addition to as a target device for storing data is as a cache to cut bottlenecks for traditional spinning HDD.
In the following figure a solution is shown introducing I/O caching with SSD to help mitigate or cut the effects of server consolation causing performance aggravations.
Addressing the VMware Server Storage I/O blender with cache
For these proof-points, the goal was to create an I/O bottleneck resulting from multiple VMs in a virtual server environment performing application work. In this proof-point, multiple competing VMs including a SQL Server 2012 database and an Exchange server shared the same underlying storage I/O infrastructure including HDD's The 6TB (Enterprise Capacity) HDD was configured as a VMware datastore and allocated as virtual disks to the VMs. Workloads were then run concurrently to create an I/O bottleneck for both cached and non-cached results.
Server storage I/O with virtualization roof-point configuration topology
The following figure shows two sets of proof points, cached (top) and non-cached (bottom) with three workloads. The workloads consisted of concurrent Exchange and SQL Server 2012 (TPC-B and TPC-E) running on separate virtual machine (VM) all on the same physical machine host (SUT) with database transactions being driven by two separate servers. In these proof-points, the applications data were placed onto the 6TB SAS HDD to create a bottleneck, and a portion of the SSD used as a cache. Note that the Virtunet cache software allows you to use a part of a SSD device for cache with the balance used as a regular storage target should you want to do so.
If you have paid attention to the earlier proof-points, you might notice that some of the results below are not as good as those seen in the Exchange, TPC-B and TPC-E results about. The reason is simply that the earlier proof-points were run without competing workloads, and database along with log or journal files were placed on separate drives for performance. In the following proof-point as part of creating a server storage I/O blender bottleneck the Exchange, TPC-B as well as TPC-E workloads were all running concurrently with all data on the 6TB drive (something you normally would not want to do).
Solving the VMware Server Storage I/O blender with cache
The cache and non-cached mixed workloads shown above prove how an SSD based read-cache can help to reduce I/O bottlenecks. This is an example of addressing the aggravation caused by aggregation of different competing workloads that are consolidated with server virtualization. For the workloads shown above, all data (database tables and logs) were placed on VMware virtual disks created from a datastore using a single 7.2K 6TB 12Gbps SAS HDD (e.g. Seagate Enterprise Capacity).
The guest VM system disks which included paging, applications and other data files were virtual disks using a separate datastore mapped to a single 7.2K 1TB HDD. Each workload ran for eight hours with the TPC-B and TPC-E having 50 simulated users. For the TPC-B and TPC-E workloads, two separate servers were used to drive the transaction requests to the SQL Server 2012 database. For the cached tests, a Seagate Enterprise 1200 400GB 12Gbps SAS SSD was used as the backing store for the cache software (Virtunet Systems Virtucache) that was installed and configured on the VMware host.
During the cached tests, the physical HDD for the data files (e.g. 6TB HDD) and system volumes (1TB HDD) were read cache enabled. All caching was disabled for the non-cached workloads. Note that this was only a read cache, which has the side benefit of off-loading those activities enabling the HDD to focus on writes, or read-ahead. Also note that the combined TPC-E, TPC-B and Exchange databases, logs and associated files represented over 600GB of data, there was also the combined space and thus cache impact of the two system volumes and their data. This simple workload and configuration is representative of how SSD caching can complement high-capacity HDD's
While the star and focus of these series of proof-points is the Seagate 1200 Enterprise 12Gbs SAS SSD, the caching software (virtunet) and Enterprise TurboBoost drives also play key supporting and favorable roles. However the 6TB 12Gbs SAS high-capacity drive caught my attention from a couple of different perspectives. Certainly the space capacity was interesting along with a 12Gbs SAS interface well suited for near-line, high-capacity and dense tiered storage environments. However for a high-capacity drive its performance is what really caught my attention both in the standard exchange, TPC-B and TPC-E workloads, as well as when combined with SSD and cache software.
This opens the door for a great combination of leveraging some amount of high-performance flash-based SSD (or TurboBoost drives) combined with cache software and high-capacity drives such as the 6TB device (Seagate now has larger versions available). Something else to mention is that the 6TB HDD in addition to being available in either 12Gbs SAS, 6Gbs SAS or 6Gbs SATA also has enhanced durability with a Read Bit Error Rate of 10 ^15 (e.g. 1 second read error per 10^15 average attempts) and an AFR (annual failure rate) of 0.63% (See more speeds and feeds here). Hence if you are concerned about using large capacity HDD's and them failing, make sure you go with those that have a high Read Bit Error Rate and a low AFR which are more common with enterprise class vs. lower cost commodity or workstation drives. Note that these high-capacity enterprise HDD's are also available with Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) options.
Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of Seagate 1200 12Gbs SAS SSD's and visit the Seagate Enterprise 1200 12Gbs SAS SSD page here. Moving forward there is the notion that flash SSD will be everywhere. There is a difference between all data on flash SSD vs. having some amount of SSD involved in preserving, serving and protecting (storing) information.
Key themes to keep in mind include:
Flash and SSD are in your future, this comes back to the questions of how much flash SSD do you need, along with where to put it, how to use it and when.
Ok, nuff said (for now).
Cheers gs
I often get asked, or, told that computer data storage is complex with so many options to choose from, apples to oranges comparison among other things.
On a recent trip to Europe while being interviewed by a Dutch journalist in Nijkerk Holland at a Brouwer Storage Consultancy event I was presenting at, the question came up again about storage complexity. Btw, you can read the article on data storage industry trends here (its in dutch).
I hesitated and thought for a moment and responded that in some ways it's not as complex as some make it seem, although there is more to data storage than just cost per capacity. As I usually do when asked or told how complex data storage is my response is a mixed yes it (storage, data and information infrastructure) are complex, however lets put it in perspective which is storage any more complex than other things?
Our conversation then evolved with an example that I find shopping for an automobile complex unless I know exactly what I'm looking for. After all there are cars trucks SUV's used new buy lease different manufacturers makes and models speeds cargo capacity management tools and interfaces not to mention metrics and fuel.
This is where I usually mention how IMHO buying a new car or vehicle is with all the different options, that is unless you know what you want, or know your selection criteria and options. Same with selecting a new laptop computer, tablet or smart phone, not to mention a long list of other things that to the outsiders can also seem complex, intimidating or overwhelming. However lets take a step back to look at storage then return to compare some other things that may be confusing to those who are not focused on them.
Similar to other technologies, there are different types of data storage to meet various needs from performance to space capacity as well as support various forms of scaling.
Server and storage I/O fundamentals
Various types of storage devices including HDD's, SSHD/HHDD's and SSD's
Various types of storage devices
Storage options, block, file, object, ssd, hdd, primary, secondary, local and cloud
During my return trip to the US from the Dutch event, I had a layover at London Heathrow (LHR) and walking the concourse it occurred to me that while there are complexities involved with different technologies including storage, data and information infrastructures, there were other complexities.
Same thing with shoes so any differ options not to mention cell phones or laptops and tablets, or how about tv's?
I wan to go on a trip do I book based on lowest cost for air fare then hotel and car rental, or do I purchase a package? For the air fare is it the cheapest yet that takes all day to get from point a to b via plane changes at points c d and e not to mention paying extra fees vs paying a higher price for a direct flight with extra amenities?
Getting hungry so what to do for dinner, what type of cuisine or food?
How about a new handbag or perhaps shoes?
How about a new backpack, brief case or luggage?
What to drink for a beverage, so many options unless you know what you want.
Complexity of choosing what cell phone, PDA or other electronics
How about what to read including print vs. online accessible content?
Once I got home from my European trip I had some mechanical things to tend to including replacing some spark plugs.
How about automobile parts from tires, to windshield wiper blades to spark plugs?
Sure if you know the exact part number and assuming that part number has not changed, then you can start shopping for the part. However recently I had a part number based on a vehicle serial number (e.g. make, model, year, etc) only to receive the wrong part. Sure the part numbers were correct, however along the line somewhere the manufacture made a change and not all downstream vendors knew about the part change, granted I eventually received the correct part.
Ok, hopefully you got the point from the above examples among many others in that we live in world full of options and those options can bring complexity.
What type of network or server? How about operating system, browser, database, programming or development language as there are different needs and options?
Sure there are many storage options as not everything is the same.
Likewise while there can be simple answer with a trend of what to use before the question is understood (perhaps due to a preference) or explained, the best or applicable answer may be it depends. However saying it depends may seem complex to those who just want a simple answer.
So is storage more complex than other technologies, tools, products or services?
What say you?
Ok, nuff said, for now...
Cheers
Gs
Scaling means different things to various people depending on the context or what it is referring to.
For example, scaling can me having or doing more of something, or less as well as referring to how more, or less of something is implemented.
Scaling occurs in a couple of different dimensions and ways:
Often I hear people talk about scaling only in the context of space capacity. However there are aspects including performance, availability as well as scaling-up or scaling-out. Scaling from application workloads perspectives include four main group themes which are performance, availability, capacity and economics (as well as energy).
The latter of the above items should be thought of more in terms of a by-product, result or goal for implementing scaling. Scaling should not result in a compromise of some other attribute such as increasing performance and loss of capacity or increased complexity. Scaling with stability also means that as you scale in some direction, or across some attribute (e.g. PACE), there should not be a corresponding increase in complexity of management, or loss of performance and availability. To use a popular buzz-term scaling with stability means performance, availability, capacity, economics should scale linear with their capabilities or perhaps cost less.
Some examples of scaling in different directions include:
Of course you can combine the above in various combinations such as the example of scaling up and out, as well as apply different names and nomenclature to see your needs or preferences. The following are a closer look at the above with some simple examples.
Example of scaling up (vertically)
Example of scaling-down (e.g. for smaller scenarios)
Example of scaling-out (horizontally)
Example of scaling-out and up(horizontally and vertical)
There are many aspects to scaling, as well as side-effects or impacts as a result of scaling.
Scaling can refer to different workload attributes as well as how to support those applications.
Regardless of what you view scaling as meaning, keep in mind the context of where and when it is used and that others might have another scale view of scale.
Ok, nuff said (for now)...
Cheers gs
Earlier this year I did a review of the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 in the StorageIO Labs (see the review here), in fact I ended up buying a TS140 after the review, and a few months back picked up another one. This StorageIOlab review looks at the Lenovo ThinkServer TD340 Tower Server which besides having a larger model number than the TS140, it also has a lot more capabilities (server compute, memory, I/O slots and internal hot-swap storage bays. Pricing varies depending on specific configuration options, however at the time of this post Lenovo was advertising a starting price of $1,509 USD for a specific configuration here. You will need to select different options to decide your specific cost.
The TD340 is one of the servers that Lenovo has had prior to its acquisition of IBM x86 server business that you can read about here. Note that the Lenovo acquisition of the IBM xSeries business group has begun as of early October 2014 and is expected to be completed across different countries in early 2015. Read more about the IBM xSeries business unit here, here and here.
Lets start with the overall experience which was very easy other than deciding what make and model to try. This includes going from first answering some questions to get the process moving, agreeing to keep the equipment safe, secure, insured as well as not damaging anything. Part of the process also involved answering some configuration related questions and shortly there after a large box from Lenovo arrived.
TD340 with Keyboard and Mouse (Monitor and keyboard not included)
One of the reasons I have a photo of the TD340 on a desk is that I initially put it in an office environment similar to what I did with the TS140 as Lenovo claimed it would be quiet enough to do so. I was not surprised and indeed the TD340 is quiet enough to be used where you would normally find a workstation or mini-tower. By being so quiet the TD340 is a good fit for environments that need a server that has to go into an office environment as opposed to a server or networking room.
Lenovo ThinkServer Setup
Lenovo TD340 as tested in BIOS setup, note the dual Intel Xeon E5-2420 v2 processors
TD340 "Selfie" with 4 x 8GB DDR3 DIMM (32GB) and PCIe slots (empty)
TD340 internal drive hot-swap bays
The TD340 that I tested was a Machine type 7087 model 002RUX which included 4 x 16GB DIMMs and both processor sockets occupied.
You can view the Lenovo TD340 data sheet with more speeds and feeds here, however the following is a summary.
After initial check out in an office type environment, I moved the TD340 into the lab area where it joined other servers to be used for various things.
Some of those activities included using the Windows Server 2012 Essentials along with associated admin activities as well as installing VMware ESXi 5.5.
TD340 with Keyboard and Mouse (Monitor and keyboard not included)
Unbelievably quiet which may not seem like a big deal, however if you are looking to deploy a server or system into a small office workspace, this becomes an important considerations. Otoh, if you are a power user and want a robust server that can be installed into a home media entertainment system, well, this might be a nice to have consideration ;). Speaking of IO slots, naturally I'm interested in Server Storage I/O so having multiple slots is a must have, along with the processor that is multi-core (pretty much standard these days) along with VT and EP for supporting VMware (these were disabled in the BIOS however that was an easy fix).
The only thing I did not like was that I ran into a compatibility issue trying to use a LSI 9300 series 12Gb SAS HBA which Lenovo is aware of, and perhaps has even addressed by now. What I ran into is that the adapters work however I was not able to get the full performance out of the adapters as compared to on other systems including my slower Lenovo TS140s.
Overall I give Lenovo and the TD340 an "B+" which would have been an "A" had I not gotten myself into a BIOS situation or been able to run the 12Gbps SAS PCIe Gen 3 cards at full speed. Likewise the Lenovo service and support also helped to improve on the experience. Otoh, if you are simply going to use the TD340 in a normal out of the box mode without customizing to add your own adapters or install your own operating system or Hypervisors (beyond those that are supplied as part of the install setup tool kit), you may have an "A" or "A+" experience with the TD340.
Would I recommend the TD340 to others? Yes for those who need this type and class of server for Windows, *nix, Hyper-V or VMware environments.
Would I buy a TD340 for myself? Maybe if that is the size and type of system I need, however I have my eye on something bigger. On the other hand for those who need a good value server for a SMB or ROBO environment with room to grow, the TD340 should be on your shopping list to compare with other solutions.
Disclosure: Thanks to the folks at Lenovo for sending and making the TD340 available for review and a hands on test experience including covering the cost of shipping both ways (the unit should now be back in your possession). Thus this is not a sponsored post as Lenovo is not paying for this (they did loan the server and covered two-way shipping), nor am I paying them, however I have bought some of their servers in the past for the StorageIOLab environment that are companions to some Dell and HP servers that I have also purchased.
Ok, nuff said
Cheers
Gs
This year I havent had much opportunity to blog due to the type of work I have been involved in. However, as soon as I find the opportunity I grab it and this one happens to be about P2V. I recently had to use P2V after a long time for a POC I cant share details about at this time. Having not done a P2V in ages, it will be safe to say that my confidence was sort of crushed from some of my initial tests. Here are some of the things I learned. Read more...
VDI導入のハードルを上げている原因の一つがライセンスです。特にVDAは悩ましいものです。
元々シンクライアントやゼロクライアントのようにnon-Windows OSでバイスから仮想デスクトップに接続するために必要なものでデバイス単位でのみ購入が可能、利用可能なデバイスは最大4台といった制限があったからです。
この制限が次のように変更されました。
・VDAをユーザー単位でも購入可能となりました。
・VDAの接続デバイス制限数が廃止されました。
マイクロソフト社としては思い切った決定だと思いますが、あともう一歩、クラウド上からもクライアントOSを自由に利用できるようにボリュームライセンスポリシーが変更して欲しいですね。
詳しい内容はここをご参照ください。
Here is a quick video montage or mash-up if you prefer that Cory Peden (aka the Server and StorageIO Intern @Studentof_IT) put together using some video that recorded while at VMworld 2014 in San Francisco. In this YouTube video we take a quick tour around the expo hall to see who as well as what we run into while out and about.
For those of you who were at VMworld 2014 this will give you a quick Dejavu memory of the sites and sounds while for those who were not there, see what you missed to plan for next year. Watch for appearances from Gina Minks (@Gminks) aka Gina Rosenthal (of BackupU)and Michael (not Dell) of Dell Data Protection, Luigi Danakos (@Nerdblurt) of HP Data Protection who lost his voice (tweet Luigi if you can help him find his voice). With Luigi we were able to get in a quick game of buzzword bingo before catching up with Marc Farley (@Gofarley) and John Howarth of Quaddra Software. Mark and John talk about their new solution from Quaddra which will enable searching and discovering data across different storage systems and technologies.
Other visits include a quick look at an EVO:Rail from Dell, along with Docker for Smarties overview with Nathan LeClaire (@upthecyberpunks) of Docker (click here to watch the extended interview with Nathan).
Check out the conversation with Max Kolomyeytsev of StarWind Software (@starwindsan) before we get interrupted by a sales person. During our walk about, we also bump into Mark Peters (@englishmdp) of ESG facing off video camera to video camera.
Watch for other things including rack cabinets that look like compute servers yet that have a large video screen so they can be software defined for different demo purposes.
Watch for more Server and StorageIO Industry Trend Perspective podcasts, videos as well as out and about updates soon, meanwhile check out others here.
Ok, nuff said (for now)
Cheers gs