A Tale of Two Neighbors - Tintri QoS ROCKS!!!

Hi Friends,

Got a really awesome blog for you today, but first, credit where credit is due!  Big thanks to Rob and Tomer for their ideas and help on this blog!!

Have you ever had a "noisy" neighbor?  You know the type, parties all hours, loud music, drunk people asleep on your lawn...  Hey, I'm all for having a good time, but just because you love your music, doesn't mean you have to share it with everybody else.  :-)

Have you ever wished you could just turn down the noise level while letting them party away?  This way, no one gets upset, no yelling, no police, everybody is happy!  Well, with Tintri QoS, you can do just that!

So let me back up a little bit.  I was doing some performance test work and I ummm, well, accidentally left my IOmeter blasts running at full volume.  Yep, I was the noisy neighbor...   Rob noticed a lot of network latency on Tintri Global Center on one of our VMstores and he was able to quickly and easily pin point which virtual machine(s) were going crazy and that I was the culprit!

If you're not familiar with Tintri Global Center, you MUST check it out!  You can monitor up to 32 Tintri VMstores through a single GUI.  Pretty cool!

Anywho, back to me being a bad neighbor...  Rob was nice enough to not throttle me, but he could have if he wanted to!  So not only can you find the miscreant, you can do something about it!!

I set up a quick test to show you how cool this feature is.  Now remember, this feature doesn't just have to be about noisy neighbors, you can also use it to put maximum and minimums on important VMs, or just VMs that don't need as much horse power as production.  (Development and Test perhaps???)

So here we have two servers running IOmeter.  NG-Server1 is the noisy guy and NG-Server4 is the innocent bystander that gets bottle necked by NG-Server1's intense partying.  NG-Server1 represents a dev/test machine that's pushing some big blocks down the pipe and it's affecting everyone else including NG-Server4 who represents my production box.  His response time is pretty terrible and the backup starts to build up!

Here's NG-Server4 who's running a respectable workload, but is getting majorly throttled due to NG-Server1's partying.

In the real world if I was a System Administrator, this is how things would play out...

<<RING RING>> (Neil's Cell Phone Goes Off at 3AM)

NG-Server4's Application Owner:  "Hey Neil, the performance of my application sucks!  This is affecting production and costing the company tons of money!  Fix it!!!"

Neil:  "Ummm, who is this?"

NG-Server4's Application Owner:  "Just fix it!!!"

In the past, a great hunt for the bottleneck would begin, which would normally wind up with me looking high and low for the culprit and usually hours of investigation and a sleepless night.

Let's head over to Tintri Global Center to see how easy it is to not only track down the offender, but resolve the issue!

This view is pretty cool, I can see all of my VMstores in a single glance and here's the VMstore that's having trouble, but what about the virtual machine(s) that are causing the headache?  Let's click on Virtual Machines to find out who's causing Neil to lose sleep!

Woo Hoo, there's our noisy neighbor!!  

Oh yeah, and check out the cool metrics on the side.  Sheesh, I'm so pre-occupied with finding the noisy guy, I didn't show you all the cool information you can get about your virtual machines and the environment they're living in.  More on that later!!

Okay, so we found our noisy guy, time to call the owner of NG-Server1.

Neil:  "Hey, application owner of NG-Server1, you're crushing production, can I shut down your VM or move you to another host?"

NG-Server1 Application Owner:  "What?!?!  NO!!!!  I'm running some really cool program that will find alien life!"

Neil:  "Ummm, okay...  Then is it okay for me to throttle you a bit so we can do business?"

NG-Server1 Application Owner:   "UGH!  I suppose..."

Let's head over to our VMstore and throttle this sucker!!  Remember we know which VMstore AND VM to focus on.  Right click on the VM, click Configure QoS and...

While finding alien life is pretty cool, keeping my job is even better!  So here I'm throttling this VM to 100 IOPS maximum.  I know, that's mean, but hey, it's 3AM!!!

Let's go take a look at IOmeter now.

Here's NG-Server1.  Notice the IOPS have dropped substantially AND the latency is WAY up.  Sorry, not going to find aliens tonight.

Let's take a peak at our production server NG-Server4.

Wow, what a difference!!!  From 4K IOPS to 50K IOPS!  And the latency has dropped substantially too.

Now remember, with all things in life, your mileage will vary, but pretty cool huh?!?!

Neil calls app owner of NG-Server4

<<Ring Ring>>

NG-Server 4 Application Owner:  "I don't know what you did Neil, but things are running GREAT!  You deserve a raise and a promotion!"

Neil:  "Wow, thanks!"

Okay all joking aside, finding bottlenecks is extremely difficult and I spent MANY hours in the past trying to find them.  Sometimes you can NEVER find them and they just disappear when the machine causing havoc finishes it's workload.  I WISH I had this capability when I was a System Administrator, it would have made my life a ton easier while helping the company that much faster.

The great thing is this technology exists NOW with Tintri!

Until Next Time

-Brain

I LOVE Tintri Clones! - Easy as 1 - 2 - 3

Hi Friends,

Still learning, still feel like a newb, but I'm learning about more Tintri goodness everyday!  One of my co-workers and I are setting up a new VDI environment and I've been getting to play with Tintri clones.  They're awesome!  They even make me look like a pro!!  Since Tintri is VMware aware it makes the clones super easy to create, customize and make available to VMware.

Today I thought I'd show you how easy it is to create one or multiple copies of your virtual machine using the Tintri VMstore.  Before you ask, yep, you can create clones using the Tintri vSphere Web Client Plugin directly from vCenter or you can use VAAI Copy Offload using the native vCenter clone but today I thought I'd start off with the Tintri GUI.

Step 1
Log into your Tintri VMstore.  Select the virtual machine you'd like to clone, right click it and select "Clone".

Step 2
Select if you want the snapshot to be Crash or VM consistent, give the clone a name, a Datastore, Host/Cluster, if you want a Customization Specification, how many clones and then click Clone.

For those of you not familiar with Customization Specifications, it's a feature in VMware vCenter that allows you to select customization steps for your new virtual machine so it will have it's own identity without running Sysprep.  Pretty cool huh?!?!

Yes and you read that right, I can create multiple machines at the same time!  OH YEAH!!!


Step 3
There's my new virtual machine and you can see towards the bottom of VMware vCenter all the creation, re-configuring, customizing and registering are happening automagically.

That's it!  See, I didn't sneak in any extra steps.  :-)  Easy as 1 - 2 - 3

This calls for a Flash Jump!

Until Next Time,
-Brain

I'm a Storage Administrator Genius! - Welcome to Tintri

Hi Friends,

It's your buddy Brain.  I've made the jump to Tintri.  I'm on day 3 and I feel like a complete newb again!  Check back regularly for updates in my learning process!

I started using Tintri storage and I can't believe how easy this product is!  Or you can just tell your boss you're a storage genius.

So instead of this:

You'll be this!

So here's how easy it is to add storage to VMware vCenter with Tintri.

1.  Grab the data IP from your Tintri.

 2.  Go to VMware vCenter and select Add Storage and select Network File System.

3.  Put in the data IP address of your Tintri, "/tintri" as your path and put in the name of your new datastore.

4.  That's it.  THAT'S IT?!?!?!  Yep, that's it.

Who's the greatest storage admin?

This guy!!

InfoSight Cloud-Connected Storage Management and Predictive Analytics Portal (Webinar) - January 14th

Oh my goodness, can you believe it?  Two, yes, TWO webinars with the Brain this week!  (HA HA HA!)

On Thursday January 14th, I'll be talking about the goodness of InfoSight and I might even be doing a demo...  But you'll have to tune in at 11:00AM Pacific time to find out!

Oh yeah, and you could win a $50 Amazon Gift Card, if that sorta thing matters to you.  ;-)

Click on the LINK or the picture below to register!

Building the Right VDI Solution - Testing Insights from the Trenches (Webinar)

Hi Friends,

Happy New Year!

Want to hear about some of the common pitfalls of a VDI implementation so you can avoid them in your implemenation?

Want to hear about how Nimble Storage can help you with your VDI implementation?

Just can't get enough of Brain's techno-babble???

Want a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card?!?!?

You're in luck friends!  Sign up for my upcoming webinar and hear about all this great stuff and MORE!

Just click on the link or the picture below to register today!

Dr. Brain's - Gadgets of The Year for 2015

Hi Friends,

As the year winds down it's been another awesome year for gadget nuts like myself.  I thought I would share my thoughts on what I thought was cool for 2015.

The Apple Watch

Love it, hate it, confused by it, you've got to admit it, Apple did an awesome job promoting, advertising and building a really slick watch.  I'm an oddity, I actually like wearing a watch and always have, but most folks now-a-days see a watch as antiquated tech from a long gone era.  Bravo Apple for bringing back the watch!  I'm still amazed how many folks I see wearing these.

The Sphero BB-8 App Enabled Droid

The latest Star Wars movie comes out on Friday and this little guy is already a star!  Anything BB-8 seems to touch turns to gold!  You've got to hand it to Sphero, they did an AWESOME job on this little guy.  You control him from an application on your smart phone, so no need for an extra controller to put batteries in, lose, etc.


The iPhone 6S

Come on, are you really surprised?  Apple makes some of the sexiest phones on the planet!  Remember phones were just, well phones before the the iPhone.  Like the iPod before it, Apple turned a phone into something everybody has to have.  Let's be honest, how many people do you see with their heads down at a stoplight these days?  They may not be all on iPhones, but I bet a lot of them are!


Nintendo New 3DS XL

It's true, this came out before 2015 for Asia/Pacific, but the folks in America didn't get it until this year and if you could even get it!  People bought them up and cranked up the prices on for sale sites.  Yes it's pretty similar to the original 3DS, but with a faster processor, more RAM and that awesome second control stick, Nintendo released a real winner!


The  Patek Philippe Supercomplication or the $24,000,000 Pocket Watch

No, that's not a typo, that's 24 Million Dollars!!!  Yes it was made in 1933, but it sold at a Sotheby's auction in November of 2014 and it's SO cool, it HAD to make the list!!  This is NOT your Grandfather's pocket watch!  I took this part from Wiki:  "The timepiece contains 920 individual parts, with 430 screws, 110 wheels, 120 removable parts, and 70 jewels, all of them handcrafted on a tiny scale."  920 parts!!!


Fitbit Surge

Yep, another electronic watch thingy.  I really love this watch, I even got one for myself!  It's got the time, heart rate, GPS, timer/stopwatch, pedometer, rechargeable battery just to name a few options.  Yep, I'm still wearing mine and I still love it!


Hendo Hoverboard

This thing is SOOOOOOOO freaking cool!  Ever since I saw Michael J. Fox riding a hoverboard in Back To The Future Part 2 I wanted one of these.  You can't tell me you didn't want one of these!!

This was a Kickstarter project that got it's funding in December of 2014.  One of these days maybe we'll get one like Marty had.



Disney Tsum-Tsum

You've got to hand it to Disney, they know how to market their products!  My wife and sister love the Tsum-Tsum game and now there are stuffed and plastic animals, and all kinds of merchandise.  You can download the app from the iTunes and Google store.



Baby Dancing Groot

We first got a glimpse of dancing baby Groot in the Guardians of The Galaxy film and shortly after Funko released this awesome version!  I know it's not an electronic gadget, but I still think it's cool and I'm the one writing this article.  :-)


$50 Amazon Fire

A $50 dollar color tablet?!?!?  Okay, so it's not an Apple iPad Pro, but $50!!  A 7'' display, rear and front facing cameras and a quad-core processor.  I don't know about you, but that is pretty darn amazing!  Way to go Amazon!

Telsa Model S P85D

Yes, it's a car, but what a car!!!   Elon Musk and Tesla have truly built a technical marvel!  0-60 in 2.8 seconds, in Ludicrous mode no less!!!  But that speed doesn't compromise comfort or technology.  A HUGE bravo Telsa!


Amazon Locker

Absolutely brilliant!  According to wiki these were introduced around 2011, but my wife and I just started using these and I think they are AWESOME!  We've had a package taken from outside of our house before and it totally sucks.  Why people have to be such jerks I have no idea.  If you select a locker and your package fits at the specific location, the delivery folks will put it in the locker for you to pick up.  You get an email telling you your package is ready to be picked up and where.  You go to that location, put in your information and POOF the door opens and there's your package!!  Another Way to go Amazon!!


Did I forget anything that you thought was a super cool gizmo for 2015?  Disagree with my choices?  Let me know!!

Until Next Time
-Dr. Brain

Episode 34: Nimble Storage SmartSecure Data Encryption - It's Not Pizza, but It's Close

Hi Friends,

Got a great BrainWavez episode for you!  In episode 29 we talked about what was new in Nimble OS 2.3, including encryption.  In episode 34, Bill Roth explains how Nimble Storage SmartSecure data encryption works!  Bill describes in depth the use cases, best practices and things to watch out for.  If you enjoyed And Now a Fireside Chat With Bill Roth on Data Encryption, you'll really enjoy this episode!  Huge thanks to Bill for being our guest!!

For even more awesome information, don't forget to download Bill's technical white paper.
SmartSecure Software-Based Encryption

iTunes users: [iTunes]
MP3 Version: [mp3]

Nimble Storage - So Easy Even I Can Do It - Part Deux - Volumes, Initiators and Performance Policies

Hi Friends,

So last we left our array it was setup and ready to login.  Okay, great, now what?  The great thing is creating a volume and getting it visible to your consumers is super simple!

After you log into your Nimble array you'll be at the Home screen.  Lots of cool stuff there, but let's focus on creating our volume first.  Click on Manage > Volumes.
 

Now that we're in the Volume area, let's click on New Volume.  Yep, there's cool stuff on the left side too, I'll talk about that later as well.

Lots of new goodies!!  First we name our volume, give it a performance policy, choose if the data is encrypted, what iSCSI Initiator Group can access the data and if we're going to use CHAP or not.

Let's start with Performance Policy.  Applications are interesting things.  They tend to vary a lot, not just in what they do, but how they read and write data to disk.  The cool thing about the Nimble is you can select from a pre-defined list of popular applications or you can create your own performance policy!

Here's a list of the pre-defined policies and if you don't see your application here, you can either select "default" or you can create a policy to best match the performance characteristics of your application.

Here I've clicked on the New Performance Policy button.  Fist you name your new policy, select the block size your application best utilizes and whether or not you want to use compression and caching.  Compression and caching are usually on by default to give you great space savings and performance, but there are times when you don't need or want those features enabled.  More on that in another blog post.

Here I've called my volume "vol-creation1", given it a Performance Policy of "VMware ESX", Data Encryption is "Disabled", my iSCSI Initiator Group is set to group I've already created and I'm not using CHAP.  More on Encryption later!

Next we tell our Nimble what size our volume is going to be.  Here I'm selecting 2TB.  How about SPACE?  This is all about volume reserves, quotas, warnings, etc.  I'm going to take the defaults because they are pretty good as is.  If there's something you want to change, you can.

Lot's of good stuff here, so I'm going to break this up into two images.  First of all we're going to choose how we protect the volume.  You've got a lot of choices, none, use a pre-existing collection, create a new volume collection or protect the volume as standalone.  So what is a volume collection?  Basically you're creating a protection template that tells Nimble how you're going to protect the volume.  And the cool thing is you can re-use the template after you create it for other volumes.

The next step is to choose your synchronization.  You can select None, Microsoft VSS or VMware vCenter.  This is really cool because with Microsoft VSS you can have Nimble talk to your Microsoft application that supports VSS to do application consistent snapshots.  If you're using VMware, you can have vCenter create a VM consistent snapshot before you create your Nimble snapshot.

Now we're going to create a schedule for our template.  We can choose how often, when to start, on what days, how many snapshots to keep and if we want to replicate to another Nimble array.  Pretty neat huh?  More on replication later.

Okay, something new for our seasoned Nimble admins.  Notice the Performance piece in the workflow?  And notice we can click Next or Finish?  If you don't want to mess with advanced performance just click Finish, but I'm adventurous, so let's click Next!

Now this is really cool!  If you want Nimble to make the caching decisions, just leave this at Normal(default), BUT, if you're daring like me, you can choose to pin this volume.  So what does pinning do?  Say you want a particular volume to behave like a flash array.  You can select Pinned and the volume will not be evicted from cache when the data gets cold.

Remember, you've got a finite amount of cache in your array, so the more volumes you pin, the less cache you have for "regular" volumes.  CASL does a fantastic job swapping data in and out of cache, but sometimes you just need a bigger hammer!

So when would you need this?  One scenario I've been working on is putting your VDI gold image and replica on a single volume and pinning that to cache.  Create a small volume ~50g and pin the sucker!  It's a small size so it won't use a lot of cache, plus when you do a refresh or recompose, you're reading the two images directly from cache!

After you decide whether to pin or not, click Finish and you're done!!

Until Next Time!

-Brain