Uncategorized | CrashLoopBackoff

If you changed your IP in Puppet Razor

If you happen to build your puppet server using VMware Workstation then export the OVF so you can import it into an vSphere environment later. I had a bit of weirdness after the IP address changed. After setting my static IP I had to restart puppet. It seemed like it was going to work BUT the microkernel image was downloading from the old IP from my Workstation.

To Fix:

#vi /opt/razor/conf/razor_server.conf

Change the line:

image_svc_host: <old IP>

And

mk_uri: http://<old-ip>:8026

To have your new static IP.

Then run

#/opt/razor/bin/razor_daemon.rb restart

Everything should work better now.

You down with VDP? Yeah you know me!

I had to be the first one to make a really bad joke.

Everyone will admit, how to efficiently back up your VM’s is a hot topic. Remember VDP is VMware’s product, but a lot of EMC technical people should be able to let you know right away how it works. VDP will be an excellent fit for a lot of customers with environments where they can’t spend extra on “virtual” backups.

Here are some of my favorite things in the new VDP.

First it is built right into the new vSphere Web Client

A simple wizard guides you through making the jobs.
VDP uses Change block tracking to accelerate full restores.
Integrated Self-service File level restore. What is better than file level restore? No one opening a ticket to ask you to do it!

The other stuff

Someone will eventually ask what is the difference between VDP and Avamar?

VDP

Max # VMs: 100
Storage Pool: up to 2TB
Replication (DR): None
Image-Level backup only

Avamar

Max # VMs: Unlimited
Storage Pool: up to 124TB *
Replication (DR): Included
Image-Level backup
Guest-Level backup
Extensive application support
Physical & Virtual backup
NAS/NDMP support
Desktop/Laptop backup
Extended retention to VTL/tape
Enterprise management
Purpose-Built Backup Appliances
- Avamar Data Store
- Data Domain integration *

In-n-Out trip VMworld 2012

Time for the 4th annual trip to In-n-out at VMworld. This year we are in San Francisco. The calendar during dinner tim is getting packed with all kinds of things. SO as an attempt to get more people. The in-n-out trip will be a post EMC party deal level out any adult beverages trip. On Tuesday the 28th post 10pm give or take 15 minutes I will try to caravan to the In-n-out. They are open until 1am.
See you there!

Get Ready for the vHunt at VMworld with some bonus prizes

I am very excited this year for VMworld. As is tradition there will be an In-n-Out run. More details on this as my calendar is more packed in previous years. It might need to be a late night run.

One other thing I am excited about is this years vHunt twitter game. In addition to all of the fun prizes EMC will be providing (a new iPad for one). I will be carrying out at the show some very special prizes thanks to VMware Press.

Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator by Cody Bunch

The Official VCP 5 Certification Guide by Bill Ferguson

VMware vSphere 5 Building a Virtual Datacenter by Eric Maille and Rene-Francois Mennecier

Managing and Optimizing VMware vSphere Deployment by Sean Crookston and Harley Stagner

Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.0 by Mike Laverick

While supplies last and if you find will need to find me OUTSIDE of the EMC Booth to get the prize. Once you find me tweet a picture with me and your new book with the #vHunt hastag and copy @VMwarepress.

Cisco – EMC Webcast: … An Optimized End User Experience

No matter what you do to accelerate, optimize and transform your desktop environment (physical or virtual) if the presentation is sub-par, no one cares. The common message from any vSpecialist when it comes to EUC (End User Computing, VDI is so 2011) is focus on the end user experience. Make it easy to access my data and applications from anywhere at any time and I am a happy user.

This is something I really believe in. Having delivered VDI (or TS) solutions in the past, starting as a Citrix Metaframe XP administrator. So when I noticed this webcast I wanted to be sure share it with everyone. EMC is a huge place and there is ALWAYS something going on, but I wanted to take special notice when Cisco, EMC, VCE and VMware team up with a focus on getting the end user experience done right.

Save the date and sign up! August 22, 2012 11:00 AM EDT / 8:00 AM PDT.

So sign up now here: http://bit.ly/vdia22

What to expect?

When it comes to EUC there are so many “best” practices out there many times you just need someone to tell you what works. I will take a few seconds to detail the high level bullets I always share with customers when speaking about EUC.

From the EMC perspective it often relates to putting the right data in the right place. When using Flash drives to lower cost and footprint knowing how VDI I/O works is very important.

Also from the EMC realm is the amazing impact FAST Cache can have on these deployments vs. trying to account for all unexpected I/O with spinning media. This additionally lowers your cost and spindle count. That is right, someone at EMC saying buy less drives.
Use the money you save to put more RAM in your Cisco UCS B – series blades. Memory being the second bottle neck after storage when it comes to your VDI role out.
Speaking of memory make sure you use the best hypervisor for consolidation and memory management. vSphere 5 is still years ahead of even the promised products from the other guys. The TCO picture for hardware is ONLY part of the story, so make sure you get every last drop out of those Cisco UCS blades.
Lastly, if you want to deliver this in a tested and proven manner AND you realize your time to market is critical, EMC VSPEX and VCE Vblock take the world’s best components and software and make it work for you. No more testing for 9 months before pushing the go button.

Get to the WEBCAST Already

Once again, if you are exploring, testing, POC’ing, or running in production VDI in any way shape or form. Join the webcast on August 22 and see when EMC and Cisco have in store.

Save the date and sign up! August 22, 2012.

So sign up now here: http://bit.ly/vdia22

Book Review: Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator

So to be 100% honest I have had this book on my desk for several months. Just staring at me. Calling my name. VMware press provided this copy to me along with Mike Laverick’s SRM book and so I am finally going to review the first one.

Cody Bunch does an amazing job of breaking down one of the most mystifying yet powerful products hidden in the VMware portfolio. VMware vCenter Orchestrator is almost mythical in the promises of automation of typical tasks of a vSphere administrator. While you can bang your head against the wall for weeks trying to figure out how to properly setup the vOrchestrator server and client I was able to use Cody’s guidance to have to operational and running test workflows in just a few hours (I am a slow reader).

I can’t stress enough the need for automation and orchestration in today’s virtual machine environment. The business is demanding more and more from the Virtualization team and in order to deliver vCenter Orchestrator is a good start since you probably already OWN it.

Hopefully soon there will be an update with information on the vApp version of Orchestrator. Check it out here on Amazon or your favorite book reseller.

Thanks again

Leadership in the Cloud (And everywhere else)

This is really a post about leadership in general, but I like to apply it to our industry. I am totally cool if you take these concepts and apply them elsewhere.

In any work environment there is constant posturing, politicing, conflicting, that has nothing to do with the actual cause of the workplace. I am going to offer a few leadership tips for everyone, not just for managers, vp’s and directors. Tips that we can all put to use.

1. It is not all about you. We all know that “guy” (or girl). Using every oppurtunity to push others down and himself up. Using others backs to climb on never lasts. Being the MVP of a losing team is never my goal, make everyone around you better. The skills involved in doing that will take you further than your daily task knowledge. No one ever says, “Wow, Jon sure can deploy a sweet VM.” If you are known for adding value, contributing and making everyone better that is how what you do will last. Valuing your team as something more than tools to make you look good is a good start.

2. Have a Purpose/Mission. I am here to change the world. Personally and Professionally. I have done jobs and have volunteered with people and organizations where no one knows why they do what they do. If you are making Pizza, make life changing pizza. If you are building next-gen datacenters, do it in a way that will alter life for someone.

3. Lead, Even if you aren’t supposed to. Don’t sit around and wait to be asked to do something leadershippy.

4. Have a Strategy. If you don’t know why you do what you do get that first. Then decide how the world will look when you are done. Impact (well good impact) on people will not happen on accident.

5. If you see a problem be part of the Solution. Stop complaining. There is only so much time in the day. Personally, it is natural for me to complain. I am very good at pointing out faults in everything. I have to consciously make the decision to work on the solutions for things I can change and shut up about the other stuff (for now). Some things just need the proper timing.

6. Community. Jump into the deep end of the pool of community. Make this a core tenant of everything you participate in. You can not do it all by yourself. Community substitues like Twitter and Facebook are a start but go meet in person with some real people. Just an idea.

The most cynical of my readers never started reading this. If you got this far, I hope in your mind you see how this applies to you. Of course any comments are welcome.

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?