Brain and Wendel are on The Air!

Hi Friends,

I wanted to share some exciting news!  The first episode of the Brain and Wendel show is now available as an Apple Podcast!  In this first episode we discuss storage basics like RAID, why enterprise storage, cache and a bit of virtualization.  You can download the Podcast by going to the Apple Podcast app and searching for Nimble Storage.  5 star reviews are VERY much appreciated!  Wen and I hope you enjoy it!  Be on the lookout for episode two, where we dive head first into cache, flash and SSD's.

Until Next Time
-Brain

The Night Before VMworld

Hi All,

Another Friday, another treat!  With VMworld right around the corner, I thought I'd write a poem for all the hard working folks that make these shows great!

Enjoy!

Twas the night before VMworld and all through Nimble Storage,
Not a TME was freaking, only positive words to encourage.
The hardware was stacked in a rack with care,
In the hopes to impress attendees that showed up there.

Attendees had read all the blogs, Twitter feeds and all sorts of threads,
Now visions of free swag occupied their heads.
The hotels all booked accept the ones that are crap,
where the heck am I?  I better get a map!

Brochures neatly stacked to avoid any clutter,
Hopefully they take all this stuff, thinking of carrying it again makes me shutter.
Demos and presentations all skillfully recorded,
What do you mean the resolution of the demo isn't supported?

The booth looks great, it's got people talking,
People stop to take a look before they start walking.
Thank goodness for comfortable shoes this is going to be painful.
So I'm wearing black tennis shoes, how shameful!

The doors are open, the rush begins,
Feet don't fail me now, hold out limbs!
Where's the schedule, where am I supposed to be?
My back is sore, my feet hurt, please set me free!

My throat is sore, my voice raspy.
Shirt is un-tucked my hair's a mess, I look ghastly!
It's been hours since this things started, I'm beat.
Can you believe it, even I forgot to eat!

It's the last day and I try to stay composed.
Hearing those magical words, "The Show Floor is now closed!"
Another year, another great show!
Congratulations to all, may your profits grow!

SNAFU 2 - XenDesktop on Hyper-V - SCVMM and XenDesktop Torment

Ugh...

Okay, so I finished installing the SCVMM Console, reboot like it tells me to so everything should be good now right?  RIGHT?!

 no...

Well, the good thing is I got past that window from yesterday, but then I get to a new window.

Okay, no problem, everything here makes sense right?  Click Next and...

WHAT?!  The SCVMM address was not formatted correctly?  What the heck does that mean?

The address is just fine, it resolves just fine, it's the fully qualified domain name, it pings.  So I try a few things.  I use the IP, no good, I use the short name, no good, check firewall settings, they're fine.  I search Google and nothing!

So what the heck do you want from me XenDesktop?!

For giggles I try putting my domain in front of my administrator account.  And....

It worked!  Wait...  Why the heck did it work when the error message mentioned a badly formatted address for SCVMM?

Hey, who am I to question positive results?!

Hurray!

Off to install PVS!

Until Next Time
-Brain

SNAFU 1 - XenDesktop 7 on Hyper-V - SCVMM

Hi Friends,

Well, I hit my first SNAFU with my XenDesktop 7 on Hyper-V 2012 project.  The install went great as you can see.

I began to create my site, and no problems, but then I got to the Hypervisor connection.
You can see here I selected Hyper-V, put in my IP, username and password and all is good right?

WRONG!  Apparently I need to install SCVMM on my XenDesktop Delivery Controller.  Ugh....

So just an FYI, before you create your connection, install SCVMM console.  Well, off to install the console!

Until Next Time!
-Brain

Stranger in a Strange Land - XenDesktop on Hyper-V

Hi Friends,

I'm embarking on a new journey, installing XenDesktop on Hyper-V.  If you've been reading my blogs you've noticed when it comes to the hypervisor I'm pretty much a VMware guy with sprinkles of XenServer.  I'm now in uncharted waters as I sail into the Hyper-V ocean.  Like it or not, you're coming with me!!  :-)

I'm using Hyper-V on Windows 2012.  The first thing I noticed is there's NO start button!!  How am I supposed to stop the server when there's no start button?  And where's the start menu?  If you cruise the mouse over to the lower right hand corner a little menu will pop up that will give you start menu type of stuff and if you click on the gear you can power off the machine.

I've got two Hyper-V machines clustered together and I'm using Microsoft's SCVMM to administer them.  It's kinda like vCenter, kinda.

Take a look at the image.  At the top you can see my two hosts.  If you click on VMs and Services you'll get to see all the VMs currently in your environment.  The Library is interesting.  You put your ISO's in there and then can mount them up on the virtual DVD drives.

Let's take a closer look at my SQL Server machine that I've just created.  If we check out the properties on the machine you'll see there's lots of helpful stuff including where the virtual machine's parent I cloned it from lives on your storage.

My SQL Server installation just finished and everything succeeded, so I'm pretty happy!

So as I continue exploring XenDesktop on Hyper-V you'll get front row seats!  Off to install XenDesktop!

Until Next Time!
-Brain

An Ode to InfoSight

Hi Friends,

For Friday I have a special treat for you.

I give you An Ode to InfoSight.

<harp playing>

InfoSight oh InfoSight an informational site you are,
just a click away, not very far.

With information and tabs a'plenty,
all that information, how do you keep track of so many?!

The Assets tab tells me where my arrays live,
plus support agreement shows me what support Nimble will give.

Wellness; we all know about that,
it shows us what condition our arrays are at!

Capacity shows us our space history and forcast,
with such great information, we'll know how long our space will last!

Volumes, so much information about compression, space used it's mind blowing,
it will help you keep track of data that just keeps growing.

Performance you show us recommended cache and CPU size,
with charts like these, how could there be lies?!

Data Protection the area many companies are caught in a nap,
with information on coverage and planning you make something difficult, a snap!

And dashboard, I didn't forget about you!
When the boss comes knocking for information, you might even get that pay raise, long overdo!

</harp playing>

I hope you enjoyed my Ode to InfoSight,

Have a great weekend!
-Brain

The Brain & Wendel Show! Coming Soon!

Coming soon to a Podcast near you!!

Thanks to South Park Studios, for without their avatar builder there would be no cool avatars of Brain, Wendel or Ambient Mike! 

Get a Cool NimbleConnect Shirt!

Hi There Friends,

I was on NimbleConnect today and saw that you can win a T-Shirt simply by posting 2 or more pieces of useful content!  Useful content is anything that a Nimble Storage employee has Liked.  Check out NimbleConnect for all the rules and stuff.

I don't know about you, but I want one of these shirts!!

Have a good weekend!
-Brain

The Brain & Wendel Show!

Hi Friends,

I have exciting news!  Glick's Gray Matter is teaming up with Super Sonic Dog!  Coming to you from a small conference room in San Jose....

Everything you wanted to know about Storage, Virtualization and Technology, but were afraid to ask!

Be on the lookout for our Podcast in July.  Details to follow.



Thanks to South Park Studios, for without their avatar builder there would be no cool avatars of Brain and Wendel!

Neil in Your Email!

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Do You Like Glick's Gray Matter!?

 

 

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Follow These Easy Instructions My Friend!

Just Enter Your Email Address and Click Subscribe!

 

Cisco UCS 101 - Part II - UUID Suffix Pools

Hi Friends,

Here's an interesting one I ran into and couldn't find much out on the web about, so I hope it helps you out!  Last time I talked to you about creating policies and associating them physical hardware.  Well, I was doing that one time and my policy wouldn't associate!  It kept trying and trying, but no luck.  In the logs I saw an error that said something like this:  "There are not enough resources overall
UUID address assignment failed, possibly illegal UUID or no available UUID in the pool"

What?

So I talked to my boss and he told me that when you create a policy it is assigned a UUID Suffix, basically a unique identifier, and those suffixes can run out. (Thanks Mike!)

Today I'm going to show you where these suffixes are, see how many are used, and how to add more.

Let's go to our UCS Manager and click on the Servers tab.  Once there find the Pools tree.  From there you'll see a default "Pool default" or you might have other trees if they've been created.  I'm going to work on the default pool.

Right click on the Pool default and select Show Navigator.  You should see something like this:

As you can see I have a total of 32 UUID suffixes and I have 31 assigned.  That means I can assign one more policy to a blade, but after that I'm going to start getting error messages.  Let's add some more UUID suffixes so we won't get any errors.

While you have that Show Navigator screen open, click on the UUID Blocks tab.  You can see I currently have two ranges.  I'm going to add another.  Click on the "+" sign.

I'm going to create 16 more UUID suffixes, but follow whatever plan your company has decided on.

I now have another block of 16 UUID suffixes I can create and assign to blades.  Let's check out the General tab again to make sure everything looks good.

As you can see the size has now gone from 32 to 48, so I should be good for awhile.

Pretty cool huh?  Have a good week!

Until Next Time!
-Brain

Cisco UCS 101

Hi All,

I've started to use a Cisco UCS for compute and while it is a VERY cool platform it's like I'm having to re-learn what it means to administer servers.  When I first started using it I thought, "Who was the crazy person who came up with this?!", but the more I use it the more I'm really starting to like the flexibility it gives you!

This is going to be a REALLY entry 101, more like a 1, but I felt as I learn the UCS more I'd continue blogging about it.  My UCS is currently being used, so I won't be able to show you everything, but I'll do my best to explain.

Once you're inside UCS Manager you'll see a bunch of tabs in the upper left hand corner.  Click on the Equipment tab.

Here you'll see all of the hardware currently being administered by your fabric interconnects.  Now here's where things get a little different.  I thought, "Cool, just highlight one of these servers and I can pop in a CD or direct it to an ISO image."  Well, it doesn't quite work that way.  Click on one of your servers and take a look at the right hand of the screen.

Holy Macaroni!  When I first saw this I was majorly overwhelmed and this is just the Equipment tab!  Let's break it down to the basics.

1.  Associate Service Profile.  Sorry, mine is grayed out cause it already has one, but if you have hardware that's either new or not in use it probably won't be grayed out.

2.  Service Profile.  I'll go into this a bit more in a minute.

3.  KVM Console.  Awwwww, finally something I understand!  This will give you console access to your machine.  If you don't have a service profile attached, this will be grayed out for you.  HUH?  So how the heck do I log onto this thing to install ESXi, Windows, Linux or whatever?!

4.  Configured Boot Order.  This is very handy.  This tells the equipment how you'd like to boot it.  So here my first boot device would be a CD-ROM, and then iSCSI.  If you have local disks in your system you can boot from local disk, or SAN, or whatever!  The UCS is super flexible this way.  Remember if you don't have a service profile attached, this won't be there.

So now that we have a bit of information about the server itself, what the heck is a service profile and what does it have to do with anything?  The way you give a personality to individual blades is by creating a service profile.  Think of it this way.  The equipment is the android body.  It has all of the capability to walk and talk, but without a brain or connections to that brain it's just a lifeless shell.  Think of the service profile as all of the connections from the brain to the body.  Here you create the mapping of connections, network, storage, etc.  Once you have it all mapped out, you assign it to one of the blades.  So remember arrow number 2 in the image above?  Let's click on the Servers tab and then click on policy ESX5.1-3.

Take a look at the left hand side.  You can create all of the service profiles you want, they don't have to map one to one with a piece of hardware.  You can see a bunch of service profiles that have been created.  When I click on ESX5.1-3, I get a ton of information about the profile.  If I click on the Boot Order tab I can see how this profile will boot.  If you take a look this profile will first boot off the CD-ROM and then iSCSI disks, but that is completely up to you when you're building the profile.  The neat thing is you can map an ISO image to the CD-ROM, so you don't have to use physical media.

The great thing about this is you can create a bunch of profiles, associate them to iSCSI LUNs, a blade and install whatever OS you want on that LUN.  Next you can disassociate that profile move it around to other blades or just have it ready when you want to use that OS.  So for example, you create 3 profiles:  Windows 2008R2, ESXi 5.1, Linux.  I can associate or dissociate at will, which makes this SUPER cool in a testing environment.

So that's my Cisco UCS 101 for now.  There are a TON of things you can do here and I've barely scratched the surface, so be on the look out for a lot more UCS blogs.

Until Next Time!
-Brain

Replication Made Easy with Nimble Storage - Part II - Planning with InfoSight

Hi All,

A collegue of mine gave me a great idea to follow up my Replication Made Easy with Nimble Storage blog with a planning replication using Nimble InfoSight. (Thanks Rick!)

Setting up replication is just part of the equation, but probably a more difficult question is, how much bandwidth do you need?  You know pipes aren't cheap!  There's a really cool feature built into InfoSight that helps with data protection planning.  WHAT?!  You're still not using InfoSight?  Okay, here's the link again...  InfoSight

Hey, I'm just trying to make your life easier here!  :-)  Once you get your account, log in and you'll see a plethora of data! I'll follow this blog up with others regarding the coolness of InfoSight, but today I'm focusing on replication.

Click on the Data Protection tab.  Here you'll see all kinds of great metrics regarding your replication, but for today, click on the Planning tab.

Where was this when I was setting up replication as a system administrator?!!  Let's go through each number here. 

1.  The average weekly change rate.  This information is AWESOME!  Back when I was doing this, we had to make an educated guess.  Too much bandwidth and we'd being be paying too much, too little and replication would be horribly slow and you might not even meet your SLAs.

2 -7 allows you to drill further down into the Mbps and get REALLY specific on what is changing.

2.  Allows you to choose what the replication role is.  Do you want to see source, target, or take out unreplicated data.

3.  If you have volume collections, you can add or remove them from here.

4.  Volumes themselves can be added or removed.  Remember, not everything needs replicating, it will depend heavily on the application and how your disaster recover program is set up.

5.  The performance policies can be chosen.  Say you want to see how much data is changing in your Linux environment, but not with Exchange.

6.  With approximate interval you can further zoom in on what kind of times you want.  Does the data only change seldom or all the time?

7.  And finally the array.  If you have a dev/test array and aren't replicating it, you can deselect, etc.

When I saw this functionality I said, "Wow!"  Honestly, this really helps take out the guess work; saving you time AND money.

Until Next Time Friends,

-Brain

Let’s Talk About CASL - Why Hybrid Storage

Hi Friends,

Today I’d like to talk to you about CASL.

Nope, not CASTLE, CASL.   

I’m referring to Nimble’s Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout.  If storage was a burger, CASL would be the secret sauce!  It looks like Thousand Island dressing, but man it’s NOT Thousand Island dressing!

In today’s market everyone is SSD happy.  I’m waiting to hear SSD’s cured world hunger and war!  Don’t get me wrong SSD’s are cool, but I don’t think they are the panacea everyone has labeled them to be.  If I were an SSD I’d be STRESSED with all the pressure people put on me!  They’re expensive, they have a finite life, and oh did I mention they’re expensive?

If you have more money to spend then you know what to do with, well then I guess you should just buy what you want!   And if you have that much money, you should retire and go have fun, what are you doing working?!  Anyway, I digress…  If you’re like the rest of us, on a budget, and you’re looking for the best solution for the money, how about a hybrid option?

Nimble Storage has done something very clever; they’ve taken spinning media and complemented it with SSD’s giving a killer synergistic effect.  It’s really quite cool.  Nimble coalesces random or sequential inbound data blocks and writes them sequentially to the spinning disks to optimize write time while compressing the data at the same time to save space.  Nimble doesn’t over write an existing changed block, which speeds up write time since that block is marked for cleanup at a later time.  While the coalesced sequential writes are happening a cleanup or sweep is running in other parts of the disk to cleanup those old blocks.

Think of it as a conveyor belt moving around.  As old blocks are cleaned up, disk space moves back to the front of the line waiting for more new blocks.  In the middle we have stored data that can be at rest, but at any moment can be retrieved for a user request.

So what about reads?  When they’re accessed from disk, they’re put into cache so the next time a request for those blocks is called upon they’re don’t have to come from spinning media.  Giving smoking fast response time.

With Nimble you get the best of both worlds!

Until Next Time!

-Brain