VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘dell’

I guess I have a face for Internet radio as I was invited back as a guest for another episode of Greg Knieriemen’s (@knieriemen of Chi Corporation ) and Marc Farley’s (@3parfarley of 3Par and StorageRap.com) popular Infosmack podcast.

Along with the famous StorageIO.com’s Greg Schulz (@StorageIO – making the exact same guest lineup as my previous appearance on Episode 34), on Episode 38 we wonder about the privacy concerns surrounding Google Buzz, provide a little more coverage of VMware Partner Exchange 2010, discuss new processors from Intel and IBM and their potential use in storage devices, and, among other things, generally wonder why the great technology from IBM doesn’t make a bigger splash in the community. We also discuss Dell buying Exanet and Exar buying Neterion.

Here’s a quick list of links if you are interested in a little more information on the topics.

Episode 38 Topic Links

Google Buzz Privacy Changes

Google Buzz Recast as Auto-suggest to Quell Privacy Fears

Dell buying Exanet for rumored $12M
http://storageio.com/blog/?p=1104
Exar buying Neterion
http://www.neterion.com/how/product.html
IBM announced SONAS

IBM rolls out SONAS clustered NAS based on GPFS

IBM announced Power7:
http://storageio.com/blog/?p=1098

VMware Partner Exchange 2010 – plenty of coverage here on VMETC.com!

http://vmetc.com/tag/vmwarepex/

Download/subscribe the episode/podcast on StorageMonkeys.com. I’ve also embedded a player to listen to it right from this post if you prefer. Enjoy!

Future HP Blade Tech Day Infosmack Episode?

At the end of the month I will be at a HP Blade Tech Day Event in Houston, TX along with Greg Knieriemen.

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vSphere has introduced several new features for storage performance enhancement. Most of the new features build on already accepted vSwitch standards and designs. An important example is the new Round Robin MPIO path policy for VMFS LUNs. However, based on what is the common vSwitch design today, the new iSCSI configuration needed for Round Robin multi-pathing may cause some admins to look twice.

I was motivated to write this post by 2 recently published storage vendor documents that both recommend the same basic iSCSI vSwitch with Round Robin MPIO configuration: create a single iSCSI vSwitch, assign 2 physical NICs, and then create as many as 8 VMKernel Portgroups each with their own ip address. The documents I am referring to are:

• NetApp TR-3749 – NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3749.pdf
• Dell Equallogic CONFIGURING VMWARE VSPHERE SOFTWARE ISCSI WITH DELL EQUALLOGIC PS SERIES STORAGE – http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=8453

To give a visual of the recommended configuration (in case you are still doing a double take) here are screen shots of the configured vSwitch from: Read the rest of this entry »

There are several whitepapers, posts and articles already available to help you determine what processor models are compatible for VMotion between ESX hosts. I will provide some of those links at the end of this post. However, I stumbled across a new matrix published by Dell that, in my opinion, offers the easiest reference by processor model for preventing VMotion boundaries. Dell’s paper titled VMware VMotion and 64-bit VM Compatibility Matrix for VMware Infrastructure 3 and Dell PowerEdge Systems contains a VMotion and 32/64-Bit VM Compatibility Across Processor Models matrix that is easy to decipher. Of course, the .pdf provides a compatibility matrix by Dell server model number too.

Download the full paper at the link above, but the following image shows the CPU compatibility matrix for quick reference. Click on the image for a larger version. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s post about Dell’s embedded hypervisor options and the Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page sparked some reader discussion about whether XenServer can be used with shared storage. The answer to that question is that it depends on which version of XenServer you order. Dell is offering either XenServer Express or XenServer Enterprise versions as embedded options. Express is a limited version and can not use shared storage while Enterprise is fully featured and capable of using a SAN.

Citrix also offers a XenServer Standard edition, but apparently that version is not an option as an embedded hypervisor when ordering Dell hardware.

updated 05.17.08 – image updated to reflect changes to Citrix’s product comparison page after this post was publihsed and to show the 4 versions of XenServer. The table below has not been updated and does not show the Premium Edition. Click on the image for a larger version.

The image in this post and the following table were copied from the Citrix XenServer v4 web page. They offer a quick overview of the differences between the 3 versions.

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VMware announced officially today that Site Recovery Manager will be available for order next week and then generally available within 30 days. As I mentioned in my Site Recovery Manager Overview post last week, a requirement to using SRM will be a Site Recovery Agent (SRA) from the various storage vendors. VMware’s announcement reveals what vendors will provide SRAs initially:

“VMware Site Recovery Manager leverages customers’ investment in storage replication software from VMware’s leading storage partners including 3PAR, Dell, EMC, FalconStor, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks and NetApp. VMware is working with partners across its storage partner ecosystem to ensure that customers can use Site Recovery Manager with their storage system and software platform of choice.”

As expected, several reports surfaced on the Internet today Read the rest of this entry »

I was researching Dell’s latest announcement, Dell Unveils Virtualization Blockbuster – From Servers and Storage to Software and Services and trying to find definitive proof of the $99 price for embedded ESXi or the $299 price for embedded Citrix XenServer Express as reported by virtualization.info. Although I did not find the pricing in the announcement, I was able to find it by going through the process of using the Dell Online Store to build a R805 server. By clicking the green “customize it” button I was eventually able to see the Optional Virtualization Offerings section with the pricing for the embedded hypervisors. See the screenshot to the right. (click for larger view)What surprised me during this process was the “Help me Choose” link in this section. Clicking that link took me to a Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page from Dell that is basically accurate and helpful for comparing high level features of ESX 3.5, ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Here is a screenshot of the comparison table from Dell’s page. Read the rest of this entry »

Like all bloggers, I have accumulated a bunch of links in my drafts that are sitting there collecting dust. In an effort to clean some of those drafts out I have combined several online calculators into this post. Each of these calculators can help administrators and IT departments understand and budget for a virtualization project. Enjoy!

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