Brain and Sport Show LIVE!

Hi Friends,

I'm very excited to share my new podcast with you!!  The Brain and Sport Show!  Have questions about technology, storage, virtualization, databases, VDI or how cool a new smart watch is?  So do we!

The first show is now available:

Non-itunes

itunes

If you have suggestions about what you'd like us to discuss, add a comment!

The Brain and Sport Show - Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!!!

Finding and Fixing Noisy Neighbors - The Tintri Way!

Hi Friends,

Happy Friday!  Noisy neighbors got you down?  Tired of trying to get them to turn the loud music down?!

Well, that noisy neighbor problem is a little tough, but if you've got virtual machines causing havoc in your production environment, Tintri storage can find and FIX it!

Take a look at a video I just posted onto Youtube that demonstrates how to find and throttle those naughty VMs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKFlduZSac

Until Next Time!
-Brain

IOPS, BlockSize, Latency - How To Make Sense Of It All

Hi Friends,

For today's blog I thought I'd talk about something really SEXY....

Performance!  Yep, you read my mind, virtual machine performance.

If you've read my blog in the past I usually ramble on about IOPS this, BlockSize that, Latency blah

blah blah.  Here's your limited time chance to learn what it means and I'm going to show you a super cool way to get those metrics.  So when your boss asks you, "Hey, how many IOPS is that virtual machine using?  Customer XYZ is complaining again!"  You can say, "Well, this is the IOPS, but here's what's REALLY going on!"

Do you want that knowledge?

Do you REALLY want that knowledge?!?!

I can't hear you!!!!

Say it with me, "I WANT IT!"

So let's talk about IOPS.  My buddy Rob uses a great analogy that I really like.  IOPS are like RPM (revolutions per minute) in your car.  My car is running at 3000 RPM!  Umm, okay....  3000 RPM of what?  RPM is a measurement of how fast the engine is turning, not a measurement of speed of the car.  Now if you said, your car is at 3000 RPM at 65MPH while in 6th gear, that means a lot more to me!

So let's take our car analogy and transition it to computer performance.  When someone tells you their computer runs at 100 IOPS, my response is usually, 100 IOPS of what?  IOPS are a measurement of Input/Output Operations per Second, which is a lot like RPM in your car.  Yeah, the computer is thinking hard, but is it doing any work?

Let's add our speed and gear; block size and latency.  Okay those don't line up exactly to the car analogy, but I'm the one writing this and you will listen to me!  :-)  Block size is the size or weight of the item you want to move and latency is anything that's going to slow you down.  So imagine I'm rolling down the street in my car and I'm carrying 4 anvils in the trunk while driving on a really crappy road.  Why am I carrying 4 anvils in the car?  Ummmm....

So with me and 4 anvils in the car, that's a lot of weight!  With all of this extra weight the car is going to have to work a lot harder to keep moving.  And how about the crappy road?  With poor road conditions, I won't be able to drive as fast.

Still with me?  Now lets move our anvil filled car over to the computer world.

A computer is a wonderful device, I tell it what to do and it does it!  But a computer can only do so much work, just like our car.  Imagine I have to deliver all 4 anvils to 4 different friends.  Each friend lives a different distance from me and the road to each friends is in various stages of disarray.

Scenario 1:
Friend 1 lives 2 miles from me, the road is REALLY crappy and I have the weight of 4 anvils in the car.

Scenario 2:
Friend 2 lives 8 miles away from Friend 1, the road is in pretty good shape and now I have the weight of 3 anvils in the car.

Scenario 3:
Friend 3 lives 20 miles away from Friend 2, the road is in sorta crappy condition and I have the weight of 2 anvils.

Scenario 4:
Friend 4 lives 1 mile from Friend 3, the road is in really good condition and I only have the weight of 1 anvil left.

Let's take scenario 1.  My friend lives pretty close to me, but I have a lot of weight in the car AND the road is in really bad condition.  The car has to work pretty hard because it has a lot of weight in the car and I can't drive very fast because of the road condition.

If this delivery was a computer, the trip to my friends house is the program I want to run.  The weight in the car is the blocksize, the road condition is latency and my RPMs having to sustain a certain speed with the amount of weight in the car are my IOPS.  And don't forget gas!!

Make sense?

How about another analogy?

Imagine I have a pie and every time I tell the computer to do something a piece of pie gets taken out of the whole.  Once the pie is gone, no more work.  Unfortunately not every piece of pie is exactly the same size.  Some get more filling, some get more crust, and that first piece is really a pain to get out of the pie tin.  I just like pies and wanted to get a dessert in there some where.

Back to cars...  So you see, without having all of the details, figuring out how long it's going to get to my friend's homes or even if my car will make it there would be a total guess.  So how would you size a computer without all of these same details?

Now friends I'd like to introduce you to part of the Tintri GUI.

In the picture below I'm running a workload.  I have one graph displaying, IOPS.  According to my IOPS graph I'm running about 2,000 Read IOPS and 21,000 Write IOPS.  But you'll notice something called normalized,  and the IOPS are 58,000.

Heeeeeeeey wait a second, I'm pretty bad at math, but I'm pretty sure 21,000 + 2000 is NOT 58,000.  What the heck?  Remember our anvils?  Tintri is optimized for an 8K block and if the workload being run on my array was 8K the normalized and non-normalized IOPS would be the same, but since the blocks are NOT 8K and are larger I'm doing a lot more work.  This is VERY handy because if I didn't have this metric I'd have to calculate out how heavy my workload was.  And as my friends know I'm HORRIBLE at math.

So what IS the blocksize?  From this view I know it's not 8K, but what is it?  Well, I could calculate that out by hand, but I'm lazy and Tintri does it for me!  :-)

Here's just a single view.  I can customize this in TONS of different ways, but you can see I've added the Block size KiB metric.  Each of these desktops are running a bunch of different applications to simulate users running their desktops, but each are at different points in the workload.  As you can see the block size is fairly different for each of the desktops depending on what the computer is running at that specific point in time.

So why would I choose a 4 cylinder car to deliver anvils?  If I know I've got a really heavy workload I'm going to choose a big truck with a big diesel engine because it was designed for that purpose, just like computers.  Before I can standardize on a computer I need to know what it is I'm going to run on it and Tintri makes find out what I'm running very easy.

Or if I already have an environment, Tintri can tell me how hard that environment is working, when I'm going to run out of resources and where my problems are.  Pretty cool eh??

Well, that's all for today, I've got lots and lots to tell you about performance and the goodness of Tintri, but that'll need to wait for another day.  Let me know what you thought of the article!

Until Next Time!
-Brain

Backup and Restoring Files With Tintri - Could It Be Any Easier?!?!

Hi Friends,

I'd like to dedicate this post to all the backup and recovery administrators out there, for without them, we would be in big trouble!  It's not the topic that usually gets tons of attention, but when a super important file(s) gets deleted, they're your best friends!

Today I want to show you how super simple it is to backup a virtual machine and then how easy it is to get a deleted file(s) back if the virtual machine is on a Tintri VMstore.

Here we have a virtual machine named NG-Server3.  In a folder called "Stuff" on the desktop I have a file called "Super Important File - Don't Delete!!!!"  Well, naming it that was a mistake....

Let's head over to the Tintri GUI and make a backup of the virtual machine before somebody deletes our super important file.

Right click on the virtual machine, take a snapshot and you're done!  Here I'm taking a manual snapshot, but this can be a snapshot taken on a schedule too.  You'll notice there's a choice, Crash-consistent or VM-consistent.  This choice is completely up to you and I won't get into why you'd choose one over the other, but the cool thing is you can.

Oh NO!  Some jerk has just deleted our file.  Guess they didn't read the file name...

Well...  What to do now?  No need to stress, you've got Tintri!  You DO have Tintri RIGHT?!?!

Of course you do!  I knew I liked you!!

Let's head back to our VMstore GUI and restore that file.

Right click on the virtual machine, select Restore VM/files... and PRESTO!

Here are some cool options.  We can restore the whole machine OR we can select if we just want to restore certain files.  Choose your snapshot and if you'd like to detach the disks after 48 hours.

Let's dive into this a little deeper.  What's going to happen is Tintri is going to clone the VMDKs that are on the virtual machine, mount the clones on the machine, you go into disk management and select which disk you want to mount.

I know what you're thinking....  "But Brain, won't Windows be confused that two disks with the same disk signature will be on the same machine?"  Yes my friends, this would normally be the case, but Tintri changes those disk signatures so they can exist on the same machine.  Pretty awesome huh?

And the 48 hour deal.  Let's face it, humans hate cleaning up after themselves.  If you select this, you don't have to!  :-)  Tintri will remove those cloned disks after 2 days.  This is a super cool feature if you're providing self service restore to a user.  They have 2 days to get to the file and don't have to worry about removing those cloned disks.  Or if you're just lazy and don't want to have to clean up!

We're back on NG-Server3 and I've opened up Disk Management.  Notice Disk 8 is the same size as my C: drive.  Yep, that's a clone of my OS drive, which has the super special file!

Right click on the disk, Online it and.............

We've got a new disk I: and you'll notice it looks a lot like C:.

Getting our super important file is now as easy as browsing the I: drive, finding our file and copying it to our original Stuff folder.

Notice the drive letter is I: from the source.

Now that you've got your file back you can either un-mount the disk(s) or you can just let Tintri remove them after 48 hours if you selected that option.

Who's the coolest Backup and Recovery Administrator?

This Guy!!

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