Jon Owings | CrashLoopBackoff

The VMWorld 2012 Voting Post

I decided to wait a couple of days after the posturing/begging/campaigning died down. So that I could start it up again!

Shameless plugs are not usually my thing. I have been learning from @vTexan so here goes.

Make sure you sign in here to vote http://www.vmworld.com/www.vmworld.com/cfp.jspa

There are literally 9 Billion entries this year. So here are a few I like:

By the way I am stoked for a joint EMC / NetApp Session that doesn’t have Chad and Vaughn (no offense guys).

Finally, my title didn’t make the cut (View 5.1 and Storage so Awesome you’ll slap yo Mama OR Things only Ninjas know, behind the scenes with View 5.1 Storage Architectures) but here is my session on View 5.1 and Storage Deep Dive with EUC Ninja Mark Ewert.

Title:		View 5.1 Storage Features Deep Dive

Subtracks:		Desktop Virtualization
Tracks		End-User Computing
Technical Level		Advanced Technical
Area of Interest
Abstract:		Presented by VMware and EMC, this session will provide an in depth exploration of the new View 5.1 features related to storage optimization including the View Storage Accelerator (CBRC) and View Composer Array Integration (VCAI). The discussion will also provide detailed results of a joint VMware / EMC study quantifying the benefit of these new storage features and their resulting impact on virtual desktop density and the EMC VNX Storage Area Network used in the testing. To enable attendees to perform their own analysis, an overview of the LoginVSI virtual desktop benchmark system and test methodology used to obtain the results will also be provided.

So remember to Vote. Do it for the Children!

Lead the Transfomation

Speaking with customers everyday the most common thing I see the infrastructure teams struggle with is how do we get from X to Z. We are virtualizing first. Evaluating tier 1 apps as VM’s. Migrating non-essential services to the cloud. As an overall strategy how do I get from what I have, to where I want to go?
While there are many topics to get you going on this path, from management and orchestration to improved monitoring and security. One thing we as infrastructure guys often forget to ask is, “Are our applications ready for the future?” Many of the off the shelf applications are just fine for many of our use cases today will they still be viable in 5-10 years? Can we take a design that was created from a physical silo, virtualize it, and hope to be cloud ready? Maybe. How can we think in a new way about our applications?
Currently we take our application and think of it this way:

It consumes parts of these buckets. Physical or Virtual, the application is bound by the contraints of a general purpose OS accessing some sort of physical resources that are bound a physical RU in a datacenter.
So even as we look to build out like this:

We take the same solutions that we used in the physical world in order to provide scale and high availability. Mainly clustering. Does clustering provide actually cloud enabled applications? Most likely not. We look to the new bubble of dot com innovators for solutions to the boxes the old guard of application vendors have locked us in. I am not going negative on any current application but rather trying to challenge us to think beyond the way we have always done things.
So if we want to move towards a new model, public, private or hybrid cloud. It would be in the best interest of the infrastructure teams to lead the charge and provide thought leadership when moving applications to a cloud. I would argue in the near future you do not want to be the one that is seemingly hugging your infrastructure. It is always better to be leading the change than
roadblocking it, especially when the change will drive the business to the next level of service capabilities.

So a few questions to start asking:

What does my data actually look like?

How does the business use the rows and columns to function?

Are all application decisions made in a room walled in by current capabilites?

How are we going to deliver applications with a new model? (think mobile)

At what point do we need to expand the foundation of what we are built on in order to increase our effectiveness in the market?

In 5 years do I want to be working on plumbing of the datacenter or have enough agility and scalability built in where I can drive innovation rather than daily maintenance?

View Client on iPad with Bluetooth Keyboard

I was very excited to try out my View desktop using my new ZaggFolio Keyboard case. I did not have a chance to try out the View Client with the keyboard until today. I was sad to find out the keyboard does not work very smoothly. So I would like to point this out:

First you have to tap the keyboard icon in the top menu. Not sure why this exists, but it would be great if the keyboard fully worked. The keyboard fully working would be great because using the on screen keyboard it uses the half of the screen.

Anyone else think this is kind of weird?

Starting them Young – Learning the vSpecialist Message

My 7 month old and I are learning the vSpecialist message… VDI, App Dev woo woo! She loves the Post-PC era.

Yes, I am not above using my blog to brag on my cute kids.

Someone at VMware…

Someone at VMware is very funny or searching for “more” in life.

From the dialog to reboot a server.

Some Reality for us Infrastructure Peeps or Apps are cool too

Don’t’ you just love double titles?

For many years I have been an infrastructure guy. I really liked how the cables, and processors and Memory and blinking lights worked. Applications were often the necessary evil tolerated so that I can play with cool technology. During my own journey toward learning about the cloud it becomes increasingly important to consider the function of the application. Six years ago me would totally punch me in the face right now. Traitor. J

1 – Don’t get your App messed up in my resource buckets of awesomeness

So the reality check to the Infrastructure geek in me is this: The application teams really think of what you do as the network. That is why when anything is ever wrong it is always “the network’s” fault. What we love to do is getting abstracted more and more. I will still contend that is very important and very hard to do. Whether you are building reference architectures or deploying a converged infrastructure appliance almost no one but us cares. They just want the data to do their jobs. So while we have really great discussions about speeds and feeds, the guy in the picture below just wants the app. From the hypervisor down we need to design with the application in mind or we will risk becoming like that goth dude locked in the server room on IT Crowd.

2 Honey badger don’t care about FCoE

My next post will get into what I have been researching regarding what is out there and hopefully help us (infra. peeps) understand our App/Dev brothers better.

You are probably an Infrastructure person if:

You read this blog.
You work mainly with Virtualization
Storage Admin
Network Admin
You like to make fun of DBA’s

Atlanta vBeers – March 12, 2012

Next week besides the already large numbers of Virtualization and Storage experts in the Atlanta metro there are a few more people coming to town. Don’t really need a better excuse, and with all the people based in Atlanta (we should do this more). Monday March 12, 2012 a #vBeers will be occur at the Taco Mac near the Perimeter mall. Five to 8 or later if you prefer.

Steps to Enjoying vBeers

Leave your sales pitch in the parking lot.
Get a beer or a Coke (in Atlanta it’s Coke)
Come meet new people
Come excited about some tech, Virtualization, Storage, Networking, App/Dev, Cloudy Cloud Cloud.
Share what you know, but also listen. There is so much to learn.

Taco Mac Perimeter
1211 Ashford Crossing, Atlanta, GA 30346
(678) 336-1381 (404) 378-4140 (Mobile)

Extents vs Storage DRS

I was meeting with a customer today and had to stop for a second when they said they were using 10 TB datastores in vSphere 4.1.

At first I was going through my head of maybe NFS? No they are an all block shop. Oh wait yeah, extents. They were using 2 TB -512 byte luns to create a giant Datastore. I asked, why? The answer was simple, “so we only manage one datastore.”

I responded with well check out Storage DRS in vSphere 5! It gives you that one point to manage and automatic placement across multiple datastores. Additionally you actually can find which VM lives where, and use Storage Maintenance mode to do storage related maintenance. Right now they are locked into using extents. If they change their datastores into a Cluster the gain flexibility while not losing the ease of management.

I wanted to use the opportunity to list some information I think about Extents with VMware.

Extents do not equal bad. Just have the right reason to use them, and running out of space is not one.
If you lose one extent you don’t lose everything, unless that one is the first extent.
VMware places blocks on extents in some sort of even fashion. It is not spill and fill. While not really load balancing you don’t kill just one lun at a time.

An extent with a datastore is like a stack of luns. Don’t knock out the bottom block!

Some points about Storage DRS.

Storage DRS places VMDK’s based on IO and Space metrics.
Storage DRS and SRM 5 don’t play nice, last time I checked (2/13/12).
Combine Storage DRS with Storage Policy and you have a really easy way to place and manage VM’s on the storage. Just set the policy and check if it is compliant.

A Storage DRS cluster is multiple datastores appearing as one.

Some links on the topics:

Some more information from VMware on Extents
More on Storage DRS (SDRS)

In conclusion, SDRS may be removing some of the last reasons to use an extent (getting multiple lun performance with single point of management). Add that to being able to have up to 64 TB Datastores with VMFS and using extents will become even rarer than before. Unless you have another reason? Post it in the comments!

CCNA Exam Experience and Happy New Year

IF you have been paying attention to me on twitter the last few days I was whining about studying for the CCNA. Even though I work with switching on a regular basis for the past 5 years there is still lots of little details you forget about when it comes to the intricacies of how a network works. That being said, I don’t normally work on border routers ever anymore. It has probably been 3 years since I configured a router to route, I mostly play with Layer 3 switches for Inter-VLAN activity. I was surprised by how much has changed since I last passed the CCNA in 2006. Some quick non-test question disclosing thoughts.

No Subnetting or Binary math conversions! What? You Say. Yes I was disappointed too.
Normal questions on VTP, VLANs, routing, IP.
Know ACL and EIGRP, no OSPF this time around and almost zero about RIP
Upset by there still being Frame relay questions, I mean come on really? DLCI and Inverse ARP?
Extra IPv6 questions and wireless LAN too. I did not really like prepare for WIFI and IPv6 so I am very glad that didn’t cost me.

I used some online practice tests to fine tune what will be tested. I can’t just memorize answers I need to actually practice the SIMs and Labs. So practice tests for me are perfect for this.

Best of all I can relax over the New Year holiday and not worry about VLANS and network masks and all of that… Have a great 2012 everyone.