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VMware employee Hany Michael has started an incredibly useful series of design posts and diagrams titled VMware vSphere On Blade Servers. His first post VMware vSphere on IBM BladeCenter H delivers a multi layer .PDF that provides a template design of 4 common vSphere deployments with HS22 and the HS22V Blades. 

I’m just highlighting the iSCSI design in this post, but be sure to get a copy of Hany’s full PDF for diagrams of FC and 10GE designs as well.

Here’s an image of the BladeCenter H iSCSI design taken from the Configuration 2 layer. Click the image for a larger view.

Some things to point out why I think this diagram is so useful:

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Here’s some links, thoughts, and general information surrounding some of the announcements that caught my attention during the VMware Partner Exchange 2010 conference. This is by no means and inclusive list of every press release and announcement made during the conference. To be honest, I wouldn’t doubt that I missed something more significant than the handful of news listed here. Let me know if I did!

The VMware Express

I personally toured the 18 wheeler on Monday evening before the Conference Kickoff Reception. I would recommend VM /ETC readers catch this VMware View demo center on wheels when it rolls through your town.

• VMware View Hits The Road

“The VMware Express  is a datacenter and demo environment on wheels and it will be crossing the U.S. and Canada over the next year letting you, our customers get hands on with the latest and greatest technologies in your own back yard.”

NetApp’s Vaughn Stewart has a nice post about the VMware Express with great photos from inside the truck. There is also another half dozen blog posts in the form of

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Who Dat? Who Dat? Who Dat virtualizin’ on BladeCenter S ?

I posted last year about the NFL’s use of virtualization at the Super Bowl, and I wrote my beloved Atlanta Falcons in case they needed help when the NFL made it’s  decision to standardize on IBM Blades for all 32 teams. This year, Kevin Houston, a fellow Softchoice employee and author of the increasingly popular bladesmadesimple.com blog, has posted on how the ‘09 NFC Champion New Orleans Saints have capitalized on these very technologies during the season.

Houston writes:

“Other than the obvious threat of having to relocate or evacuate due to the weather, the Saints’ constant travel required them to search for a portable IT solution that would make it easier to quickly set up operations in another city.  The Saints were a long-time IBM customer, so they looked at the IBM BladeCenter S for this solution, and it worked great.  (I’m going to review the BladeCenter S below, so keep reading.)  The Saints consolidated 20 physical servers onto the BladeCenter S, virtualizing the environment with VMware.   Although the specific configuration of their blade environment is not disclosed, IBM reports that the Saints are using 1 terabyte of built-in storage, which enables the Saints to go on the road with the essential files (scouting reports, financial apps, player stats, etc) and tools the coaches and the staff need.  In fact, in the IBM Case Study video, the Assistant Director of IT for the New Orleans Saints, Jody Barbier, says, “The Blade Center S definitely can make the trip with us if we go to the Super Bowl.”  I guess we’ll see.  Be looking for the IBM Marketing engine to jump on this bandwagon in the next few days.”

Be sure to read Houston’s entire post for more about the many features of IBM BladeCenter S

Maybe the S model of IBM BladeCenter stood for “Saints” all along!?

VMware, IBM BladeCenter S and N-series storage to be used by all 32 NFL Teams

Not only did the National Football League (NFL) rely on IBM and VMware for the server infrastructure at it’s biggest game of the year, Super Bowl XLIII, but a CRN.com article by Joseph Kovar reveals that IBM VAR Vicom “provided 34 SANs based on IBM’s N-series storage products, as well as a server virtualization solution based on VMware to consolidate the league’s offices.”

“IBM’s sponsorship of the Super Bowl and its direct deal with the NFL for the Super Bowl infrastructure was key to signing that larger deal, which includes one chassis to be installed in each of the 32 team’s IT infrastructures, said Vic Verola, vice president of sales for Vicom Computer Services, a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based solution provider and long-time IBM partner.”

Dear Arthur Blank,

If the Falcons need local support of your new VMware Virtual Infrastructure and IBM hardware let me know. Read the rest of this entry »

The Computerworld.com article NFL’s Super Bowl IT team gets ready for game day explains how the NFL has assigned a 17 person IT staff the responsibility for Super Bowl XLIII IT operations at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL on Sunday Feb 1, 2009. Computerworld explains that the team is using four IBM BladeCenter S chassis located across multiple locations. The article also mentions that virtualization software is in use.

Read the entire article, but here’s some interesting excerpts revealing more about the IT team and how they are taking advantage of server consolidation with IBM blades and virtualization.

“That team was tasked with creating a complete IT operation for Super Bowl XLIII in a matter of weeks. Its coaches are Joe Manto, the NFL’s vice president of IT, and Jon Kelly, the league’s director of infrastructure computing. Their opponent is the same one that IT managers face everywhere: anything that can threaten system availability and uptime.

It doesn’t help matters that one of the four IBM BladeCenter S systems being used in Tampa is located on a wood floor in a tent that lacks any climate control capabilities. But so far, so good — and with the four BladeCenter boxes at different locations, and virtualization software ready to provide redundancy, neither Manto nor Kelly seems all that worried.”

Unfortunately the type of virtualization software is not revealed, and though the author only mentions virtualization in the context of redundancy, later in the article there is evidence that there has also been a significant reduction in hardware from past Super Bowls.
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Anyone who runs their Virtual Infrastructure on an IBM BladeCenter has wondered if there is a key stroke combination to switch the keyboard, video and mouse (KVM) focus between Blades. For that matter, if you run any applications or services on IBM Blades you’ve either walked into the data center and pushed the buttons directly on the Blades or you’ve struggled with the remote Java web interface via the Management Module (MM or AMM) when you need direct KVM access to your servers. For those that don’t already know, there is a keyboard shortcut.

Credit goes to Aaron Delp’s post IBM BladeCenter Keyboard Lock Up for informing me on the key strokes, and now I am making sure I have a post to reference here at VM /ETC too. I have searched for this information for years, and for some reason have never found an answer.

Aaron’s post links to an IBM article about a resolution for the BladeCenter keyboard locking up – which really explains the keyboard shortcut process. The rest of this post is a cut and paste from the IBM article. Read the rest of this entry »

I received notice today about a project implementing ESX on IBM Blades and using System i for shared storage. After first doing a double take to make sure I read the email right, I did some quick research and found the following from the VMTN Communities:

VMware Communities: ESX on the IBM System i

“So how does VMware fit in with the System i? Well in a nut shell – The System i (which a lot of big companies have) can act as an iSCSI SAN, and you can boot IBM BladeServers and IBM System x Servers from this SAN, and have your shared storage too! Why is that so great? Because the IBM System i is one of the most reliable pieces of hardware on the planet! Because your company probably already has one! Because you can have a great backup and recovery platform!”

In case you are wondering what IBM System i is exactly, Read the rest of this entry »