Nimble Storage InfoSight To The Rescue!

Hi Friends,

If you’ve followed my blog for some time now you might have read an article or two about a product Nimble Storage created called InfoSight.  Hey, if not, we’re all busy and I’ll forgive you this time…

Nimble Storage InfoSight - Empowering The Storage Administrator!
Replication Made Easy with Nimble Storage - Part II - Planning with InfoSight

If you’d like to learn more about InfoSight visit the Nimble Storage website, but here’s a small bit about the coolness of InfoSight, taken from the Nimble Storage website.

At the heart of InfoSight is a powerful engine comprised of deep data analytics applied to telemetry data gathered from Nimble arrays deployed across the globe. More than 30 million sensor values are collected per day per Nimble Storage array.The InfoSight Engine transforms the millions of gathered data points into actionable information that allows customers to realize significant operational efficiency through: 

• Maintaining optimal storage performance
• Projecting storage capacity needs
• Proactively monitoring storage health and getting granular alerts

One of the more difficult things as a Sys Admin is keeping an eye on all of your servers and storage.  It seems Sys Admins are always being told to do more with less and let’s face it; it can be a bit overwhelming trying to keep on top of every problem unless it’s something big and nasty.  And none of us want it to get to that point!  With Nimble Storage InfoSight, we’ve got your back!   
 
I was in a meeting today with one of the Nimble Storage Sales Engineers and he told me an InfoSight story that I thought was so cool that I asked him to be a guest blogger.  With that, I’d like to introduce Mark Antonaccio.  Take it away Mark!

Thanks Neil! This story starts back in May of this year. I had just started as an SE at Nimble, and right away I experienced the power of predictive analytics and the value it could bring to my customer. I’ll leave this customer unnamed, but I can say that they are a global leader in the payments industry. They have multiple Nimble storage arrays, and they use InfoSight to proactively manage the performance and capacity of each. Here’s the story:

Our customer received an email from Nimble support that notified them of a new software release. I met with them to discuss upgrading their arrays to the latest version, informing them that it would provide new functionality, including per-volume encryption and cache pinning. I also opened a ticket with Nimble support to determine if any additional steps would need to be taken as part of the upgrade. Here’s what we found out - the array was actually blacklisted and was currently not eligible to be upgraded. InfoSight showed that we needed to correct a latency issue due to cache underprovisioning and possible sequential I/O contention. So right away, InfoSight saved us from moving forward with the upgrade and possibly inducing performance problems in a production environment. Now, we needed to dig deeper and find the root cause. Our wonderful Nimble support folks were on the case, and they quickly found the cause of the cache issue. Log volumes were being placed into cache with no benefit, reducing the available cache space for DB volumes that could utilize it. These log volumes were misconfigured within the Nimble array. There was a straightforward, non-disruptive, and simple fix that could be performed by one of our capable Storage Architects. We wrote a script that automated the creation of a new performance policy that did not cache data, and applied it to all of the log volumes. We then saw the cache utilization drop, clearing the way for the upgrade to take place.

That is awesome Mark!  Thank you so much for sharing this story with my readers!  I can't say enough cool things about InfoSight.  Knowledge is power and InfoSight gives you the knowledge and power you need to keep your environment running in tip-top shape!

Until Next Time!

-Brain

Nimble Storage - So Easy Even I Can Do It - Part Deux - Introduction

Hi Friends,

It's been awhile since I wrote the "So Easy Even I Can Do It" series for Nimble Storage.  When I started we were on 1.x CASL code and lots has changed, but not how easy it is to setup a Nimble Array.  Yes, there are more features and yes there are a few more steps, but it's still super easy to do.

Be on the lookout for the NEW and improved Nimble Storage - So Easy Even I Can Do It series!

BrainWavez Episode 33: OpenStack – Everything You Wanted To Know, But Were Afraid To Ask

Hi Friends,

Got a great BrainWavez episode for you today!  I talk with Jay and Binh about OpenStack!  What it is, what are the components that make up OpenStack, what it means to the cloud market and how Nimble Storage is getting involved.  We had a great time recording this episode and it's filled with great OpenStack information!  Huge thanks to Jay and Binh!!

For iTunes users: [iTunes]
For everyone else: [mp3]

Microsoft Office Activation Error: 0x80072EE7

Hi Friends,

Got a good error for you today!  So I've changed the way I'm activating my Office 2010 VDI desktops to use my KMS instead of activating them directly from Microsoft.  The interesting thing about Office is that it's VERY perceptive.  If I change hardware in my VDI environment it knows it immediately and wants to re-activate Office...  I can understand why Microsoft is doing this, but what a pain when I'm just trying to introduce a new blade into my environment!

So I've been experimenting bringing in a new type of blade into my environment and from my past experience I knew Office was going to complain.  This time I was READY!

I opened up Word and sure enough, I get the activation screen.  Okay, so I go to the CLI so I can activate Office.

1.  cd Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
2.  cscript ospp.vbs /sethst:FQDNofYourKMSServer
3.  cscript ospp.vbs /act

What?!  Error!!

What the heck is error 0x80072EE7?

I ran the script to check the error and here's what I got.

What do you mean you can't resolve the server name?!?!

I pinged my KMS, did an NSLOOKUP, no problem....  Hmmmm....

Well I was outta ideas, so time to head over to my good buddy Google.

I typed in the error and almost nothing....

Ummmm....

I kept searching and I finally found an article on the Microsoft Technet of someone that got the same error message.

This is from the page:

"0x80072EE7:
The server name or address could not be resolved
Source: Winhttp
When you use MAK product keys, the machine must be able to contact MS webservers, to activate.
This error you are getting, suggests that the machine cannot resolve the host for the MS webservers.
If it cannot resolve the name, then it cannot connect, so it cannot activate."

What the heck?  Office needs to contact Microsoft?  Isn't that what my KMS is supposed to do?  In a normal VDI environment you're probably never going to hit this problem because each of the desktops will get it's own DHCP address that will be able to contact Microsoft.  But, since I'm running in an isolated environment my desktops can't contact the outside world.

Sooooo, I had to change my internal NIC to one that could reach the outside world.  Re-ran cscript ospp.vbs /act and everything worked.

D'oh!!

This is probably why I didn't find much information on it, because most people don't hit this error.  Well, if you happen to hit the error, it might be because your desktop can't contact Microsoft.

Until Next Time!
-Brain

Woo Hoo! BrainWavez on The Main Nimble Storage Website!

Hi Friends,

I'm very excited to let you know that BrainWavez is on the main Nimble Storage website again!  This time for BrainWavez Episode 32 - Meet Suresh Vasudevan - Nimble Storage CEO

How cool is that?!?!

If you haven't had a chance to check out this episode, I highly recommend listening when you get a chance.

Brain, Meet OpenStack - How to Quickstart OpenStack and Connect Up Nimble Storage!

Hi Friends,

Ready for something completely different?!

Yep, you read that right, OpenStack.  I know what you're thinking, "But Brain, you're the Windows VDI guy who loves GUI's!  What are you doing working on an open source cloud tool that runs on Linux?!"

Well, believe it or not, once upon a time I used to be a Unix admin and I've been hearing lots of cool stuff about OpenStack and wanted to try it for myself and see what all the excitement was about.

So bear with me here, I'm a COMPLETE novice!  Huge thanks to Jay for getting me started!! :-)

I thought I'd walk you through a quick start-up and how I connected Nimble Storage to my OpenStack environment.

1.  Go grab yourself a copy of Centos 7 and install it.  I'm using my VMware environment to host my OpenStack test environment since I'm limited on physical hardware.

2.  I'm using the RDO implementation for my test OpenStack environment.  What is RDO?  From the RDO page, "RDO is two things. It's a freely-available, community-supported distribution of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, and their derivatives. In addition to providing a set of software packages, it's also a community of users of cloud computing platform on Red Hat Linux operating systems to get help and compare notes on running OpenStack."

From the RDO page, "For a commercially-supported enterprise ready OpenStack solution, Red Hat provides Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, an enterprise-class cloud platform based on OpenStack Juno."

3.   Head over to the Quickstart page on the RDO site.  It's got all the per-requisites and how to get your instance running.  I'm going to put the steps in the blog because I'm going to forget how to do this if I don't!  All of the quickstart steps are taken from the RDO site.

4. We need to stop and disable NetworkManager

systemctl stop NetworkManager
systemctl disable NetworkManager
systemctl enable network

5. Make sure your networking is all good. Take a look at the steps on the Quickstart page for more information.

6. Update your current packages on your Linux distribution.

sudo yum update -y

7. Setup the RDO repositories.

sudo yum install -y https://rdoproject.org/repos/rdo-release.rpm

8. Now let's install the Packstack Installer.

sudo yum install -y openstack-packstack

9. Next we'll run Packstack to install OpenStack.  This step will take a bit of time, so be patient.  And if you're not patient, ummm, go do something else.

packstack --allinone

Alright, you've installed OpenStack!  You can now log into the OpenStack GUI!

10.  http://x.x.x.x/dashboard

Hmmm, username and password....

Oh! Hey, it's on the quickstart page!  Username is "admin" and password can be found in the file keystonerc_admin in the /root/ directory of the control node.

Okay, now that we have OpenStack installed, we need to let OpenStack know about our Nimble array.

11.  Head over to Nimble Storage InfoSight and from the Integration Kits tab select Nimble Cinder Volume Driver for OpenStack.  The cool thing is we don't need the driver, that's included in the OpenStack build now, but we do need to open up the User Guide and add some stuff to the cinder.conf file.

12. Open up the document and search for /etc/cider/cinder.conf.  It's in there a few times, so make sure you're at the part of the document that talks about configuring the Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Cinder Driver.

13. Within the [DEFAULT] section of your /etc/cinder/cinder.conf file we need to add the nimble information.  You might see lvm already there, so just put in a comma and add Nimble-Cinder.

14.  Go to the end of the cinder.conf file and add the [Nimble-Cinder] information.  This will be the IP, username and password of your Nimble Storage array that you want to connect up to OpenStack.

15.  Okay now we need to create the Nimble Storage backend type.  You can call it whatever you like, I chose Nimble-Cinder.
cinder type-create Nimble-Cinder

I got a weird error when I tried to run the command, so I needed to go to my /root directory and type 
source keystonerc_admin

I'm not sure if you'll run into the same thing, but if you do, that's how I was able to continue.

16.  Next associate the type label with the Nimble-Cinder driver.
cinder type-key Nimble-Cinder set volume_backend_name=Nimble-Cinder

17.  Now we need to restart OpenStack.
service openstack-cinder-scheduler restart
service openstack-cinder-api restart
service openstack-cinder-volume restart

18.  Head over to your OpenStack GUI and we're ready to add some Nimble Storage!!

19.  Once there click on Volumes.

20.  Now click on +Create Volume.

21.  Name the Volume, select Nimble-Cinder as the Type, select the size of the volume and then click Create Volume.

22.  When the volume has been created it will appear in the Volumes page in the OpenStack GUI.

23.  Let's head over to the Nimble Storage array and see if the volume is showing up there.

Alright!  There's our 100GB OpenStack1 volume!

Next time I'll show you some more coolness of OpenStack, as I learn it!  :-)

-Brain

BrainWavez Episode 32 - Meet Suresh Vasudevan - Nimble Storage CEO

Hi Friends,

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted anything.  I was at VMworld 2015, then vacation.  I know, excuses, excuses.  ;-)

Well this one is definitely worth the wait!  In this episode of BrainWavez, Marion and and I interview Suresh Vasudevan the CEO of Nimble Storage.  How freaking cool is that?!?!

In a million years if you told me that I'd be interviewing a CEO I would have told you that you were seriously delusional!

Just goes to show you how down to earth the executives are at Nimble.  First I interviewed the founders, Umesh and Varun, and now Suresh, the CEO.  I've got a bunch of episodes in the queue and I can't wait to share them with all of you!

Suresh was a super cool guest, very friendly, honest and open.  We discussed his background, how he came to Nimble Storage, where he sees the storage market going (converged, hyper-converged, cloud) and the Nimble Storage culture we're always talking so much about.

Definitely worth the download friends!  As always, you can download it in MP3 and from iTunes.

For iTunes users: [iTunes]
For everyone else: [mp3]

Huge thanks to Suresh for being our guest!

BrainWavez Episode 31 - SmartStack - What's it All About?

Hi Friends,

Got a great podcast for you today.  We talk about SmartStack, what it is and how the validated architectures can help you!  Thanks to my guests, Tony, Bill and Steve.  And thanks to my trusty side-kick Sean!!

For iTunes users: [iTunes]
For everyone else: [mp3]

This episode is not only incredibly informative, it's super funny!  Be sure to check out, "And now a word from our sponsors."

And Now a Fireside Chat With Bill Roth on Data Encryption

Hi Friends,

Recently Nimble Storage came out with it's Nimble OS 2.3 which has a TON of new features!  If you'd like to hear about the new features in a recent BrainWavez show follow the link here:
BrainWavez #29: The NEW Nimble Storage OS 2.3!

One of the new features in Nimble OS 2.3 is Data Encryption at Rest, also known as SmartSecure.  Bill Roth has written a fantastic paper about this new feature which is available here:

http://www.nimblestorage.com/resources/technical-papers/

For those that don't know Bill, he is a brilliant Technical Marketing Engineer that focuses on backup, archiving, Exchange, SQL and now encryption.

I recently had a chance to sit down with Bill to ask him a bit about the new SmartSecure feature.

======================================================================

Neil says, “Bill, do you view this feature, SmartSecure, as raising the bar?

Bill says, “No, it doesn’t raise the bar, I see it as setting the bar.” “One thing I like about it is that it doesn’t attempt to boil the ocean.”

Neil says, “In what respect?”

Bill says, “Well you can selectively decide to have a mix of encrypted and non-encrypted volumes.” “It’s not an all or none deployment, unless you want it to be.”

Neil says, “Do you consider this game changing technology?”

Bill says, “Not at all, users understand the importance of data security and this feature allows them to create a secure data at rest infrastructure.”

Neil says, “In what way does this feature redefine the landscape?”

Bill says, “I don’t think it’s about redefining, I think it’s about giving users the technology they require – plain and simple, easy to use, no tricks or gimmicks”

Neil says, “At the end of the day what does this feature bring to the table?”

Bill says, “Encryption of data at rest is more of a 24x7 entity, not something you only care about at the end of the day.” “But it may be easier to sit at the table during dinner knowing your data is secure.”

Neil says, “Well you don’t seem to be a big fan of industry buzzwords.” “Do you have anything else to say?”

Bill says, “Yes, users interested in learning more about the feature, and how to deploy it, can download the new white paper at:  http://www.nimblestorage.com/resources/technical-papers/”

Neil says, “Do you have any advice for users that lose their encryption passphrase?”

Bill says, “Yes, the advice is DON’T lose your passphrase!”

BrainWavez #30 - InfoSight - New and Improved!

Hi Friends,

I've got a great BrainWavez show for you this week!  Gim and Sean explain what Nimble InfoSight is, how it can help, and all the cool new features that have recently been added to the tool!

Yep you are correct, Episode 14 covered InfoSight, but you can never have enough of a good thing AND Gim explains all of the new features that have gone into InfoSight!

So what are you waiting for, go get the episode!  :-)

For iTunes users: [iTunes]
For everyone else: [mp3]

Product Demo: Nimble Storage OS 2.3 Searching, Sorting, and Filtering

Hi Friends,

The goodness of Nimble Storage OS 2.3 just keeps on giving!  When you've got a few volumes it's easy to keep track of who, what, where and why, but what happens when you have 100's of volumes? 

What if I want to find all of the volumes that are chowing up space but aren't even connected to an initiator?  Come on storage administrators, I know you've been in this situation before!

Want to see how easy it is to search, sort and filter your volumes?

Dr. Brain has got you covered and nothing says cool like a product demo!

Enjoy the demo and feel free to post a comment if you have any questions.