Virtual Geek

Q3 “Chad’s Choice” Webcast – Topic Announced…..

So – we’ve been doing an insanely popular EMC/VMware webcast series (every week, 11am eastern time, register here).  The content is delivered by field vSpecialists, or key product experts.   My guiding principle is make it useful, make it technical (feedback always welcome).

Once a quarter, I pop on and get to have fun with one with no pre-defined topic, which marketing has started to call “Chad’s Choice”.

I try to capture the “zeitgeist” of the common threads I see at customers and partners.   I post a blog asking people what’s on their mind (this one was here).  I try to focus on something that I think is cool (heck, why not! :-)

So, with out further ado…

This week, the topic will be “Top 5”.   By that I mean:

• Top 5 New Best Practices based on vSphere 4.1 (VAAI, SIOC, etc) and New Storage Tech (thin, dedupe, auto-tiering, megacaches, 10GbE, FCoE, etc).
• Top 5 Exceptions to said Best Practice (for every rule, there is an exception)
• Top 5 Secret things we’re working on at EMC and VMware

The first two originate from questions from customers (“how does all this new stuff change best practices?”, “how do we reconcile ‘keep things easy for customers’ with ‘deploying mission critical SAP workloads on VMware’ and app-replatforming stuff that’s on AIX right now?’”).

The last bullet I have no idea how I’m going to fit into 15 minutes – it could be a train wreck :-)

And who doesn’t like a train wreck?  :-)  Register by clicking below…..

A couple of View (WinXP and Win7) docs to read…

Was with a large customer today (thank you for being an EMC and VMware customer!) discussing their client virtualization project.  They are relatively large scale with several thousand clients deployed.   It hasn’t been perfect, like a lot of client virtualization projects I see – there are bumps.

These fall into common categories:

1. Miss-set expectations about graphics protocol behavior over very high latency, low bandwidth links
2. Like all customers, start with focus on storage GB efficiency ($$ per GB) and as they get going, realizing that it’s much more about IO efficiency ($$ per IO).
3. Struggles with the hard-dollar TCO
4. Impacts of infrastructure outages that were profound and affected their business
5. Struggles – both technical and organizational – with the “the infrastructure is all related… it’s a system, not ‘clients, servers, networks, and storage’ and we’re organized around the silos” problem.  
6. When they have an issue – they have a hard time pinpointing it, and determining what the end-user client experience REALLY is.

None of these have simple, blog-ish answers (though I think I’m going to be doing more and more on this topic) – heck, it was a 3 hour meeting.

BUT – one thing that we discussed is “what sort of IO profile would you expect for a call center?”  My comment was that without any further info (real answer, is “it depends, let’s measure”), it’ was “likely to be in the 10-12 IOps/client range”.   FYI, I typically see kiosk type apps in the 4-8 band, and knowledge workers in the 20-30 band. 

Their comment?   They see 20, and are wondering why there is 10 IOps per client even when no one is logged in….

In general, people underestimate the IO workload that a VDI deployment (using any of the technologies) represents at moderate to large scale.  

But, they also underestimate the positive impact of a few small things, that cost nothing to do….

There are two technical docs I want to draw people’s attention to…  These are on top of (and aligned with) VMware’s excellent documents on this topic here (XP, Win 7)…   These EMC docs cover detail on configuring Win XP and Win 7 clients for Virtual Desktop Use cases with EMC storage.   While focused on View (including data comparing client virtualization and server virtualization workloads) similar best practices apply to Xen/VMware combinations. 

These little things make a big difference – measured minimally in the 5-10% improvement range, but in some cases much, much more (particularly true with the Win 7 case)  

As is often the case, a little bit of know how is worth more than a lot of vendor “you’ve got have feature ____”.   That know-how can save you a lot of $$ and grief.   Note that they refer to VMFS and NTFS alignment – make sure you build that into your template to save yourself pain of re-alignment later.   If you want more on alignment, Vaughn and I covered that in this VMworld 2010 session (content here).

 

Read them, use them.   They are very useful.  Comments welcome!!!

VMworld 2010 Copenhagen – what EMC is doing…

With VMworld 2010 - Copenhagen rapidly approaching (Oct 12th-14th), people are asking what should I expect to see from EMC?

Here’s the high level:

There are 13 EMC led or joint VMware/EMC or VCE sessions.   There’s a table with more detail later, or you can download and print this handy guide:

What else?   Glad you asked!

1. EMC is a Global Diamond Sponsor, and we will have a large booth in the exhibitor hall #28
1. Theater (customers sharing their experiences, minimzing vendor commercials)
2. 8 workstations where people can learn more about specific use cases/technologiess.
2. There will be a EMC Partner Pavilion, Booth #28A where some of our EMEA partners will be showing how they bring solutions to bear for our customers.
3. We are replicating the incredibly popular EMC/VMware HoL we did for the first time at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco (read up on that here).  It will be Booth #28B.   This is a “nerd only” (in a good way) zone :-)  No sales, no marketing.   It’s where customers can play with the stuff all live, see how the vCenter plugins work, try our our virtual appliances, see VPLEX works, see VAAI in action, try our RSA integration, play with every EMC platform, including Data Domain.
4. Glass video booth up front where customers can share their stories.

This is how it is laid out at the event:

 

 

Interested in more detail?  Read on!!

vSphere 4.1 and support across EMC products updated

Have been tracking/pushing the stragglers re: EMC products that needed to support vSphere 4.1 (both ESX and ESXi), and all the major all over the line.

You can see the detailed status (and versions needed) here.

What do you want to hear about?

Every few months, in the VMware/EMC webcast series (every Thursday, 11am-noon ET) I pop on for a “Chad’s Choice” – these are fun for me, as it can be any topic that’s front and center on partner’s/customer’s minds.  There’s so much going on the challenge is what to pick, rather than what to say.

We’ve got one coming up on Sept 30th (you can register here).

Topic that I hear about people wanting to know more about

• VMware/EMC plans around embedded encryption
• That “geo tagging thing” we showed at VMworld (physical locations of VMs globally) – what’s the scoop and could I do it now?
• DRS for storage – if SIOC/FAST are the early implementations, what’s the longer term plan?
• Changes in core best practices based on latest VMware/EMC stuff (aka, how do VAAI and the FLARE 30/DART 6.0 features change traditional best practices)
• UIM – plans, what’s next, how are we integrating with with vCloud Director today and tomorrow.
• The enigmatic slide used in SP9820 (below for reference) what EXACTLY are we talking about (interesting one to me)

I want to hear from YOU!  Please comment on what you would like to see discussed!

More than 200 open positions at EMC, EMC partners and VCE

UPDATE – Spet 16th, 2010 – I had mistyped the EMEA vSpecialist email, if you sent one and got a bounce

Ok – folks, the recruiting drive is once again open full bore. 

1. EMC Partners like VARROW and INX are hiring.  This is ideal for people who want to play with everything, mix it up freely, and operate in a smaller more dynamic environment.
2. The EMC vSpecialist team is hiring 97 people.  The right people for this role love technology.   It is ideal if you are technical customer-facing type or a freakishly technical sales type, and want to work at a great Fortune 500 company that is at the center of the virtualization and cloud wave (that being EMC).  The team has a crazy work ethic - you’ll work your buns off, but will be part of something fun.  You will play with EMC, VMware and Cisco technologies, and be exposed right on the bleeding edge wave of a lot of stuff.  
3. The EMC Consulting org is hiring 14 people.  The right people for this role have a world view where you think that it’s less about technology and products, and more about services, people, and transformative projects (oh, and you love technology too).   There are Cloud roles, Virtual Datacenter roles, and Risk and Security roles.
4. The EMC SI/Al team is hiring 9 people.  These are people who are blends of the vSpecialist Sales/Technical type (roll them into one :-), and are focused on EMC partners like Deloitte, Accenture, Wipro, TCS, HCL.
5. VCE is hiring 100 field people and 17 solutions people.   These people are part of Acadia (the EMC/Cisco Joint Venture).   The Acadia mandate is both expanding, but also becoming more focused under Michael Capellas.   VCE has done much well, but people are recognizing certain things (single SKU, single order, ship as a unit) need to happen faster. 
   1. The field folks would support the vSpecialists and the Cisco Datacenter field folks, as well as VCE partners.    The profile of these field folks (both Sales and Technical) are the same core profile as vSpecialists.   In fact, they are planning to call the Technical roles “vArchitects” a nice homage to some of the success we’ve had :-)
   2. The solutions folks would be more happy in the lab than out in the field, but still customer focused.   They will be churning out more solutions on Vblocks, but then a subset of them would be taking the results out into the market via the vArchitects and vSpecialists.

Here they come – if you think you might be a fit, please read on…

Time to vote for your favorite VMware-related blogs!

It’s that time of year again…  Eric Siebert at vSphere-Land runs what has become the authoritative list of VMware-related blogs.

In late 2008 I popped on the list for the first time in the number 10 spot, and in 2010 when he expanded it to the “Top 25” I climbed into the 2nd spot, something I was insanely humbled by, but also insanely proud of.

There are some incredible bloggers out there.   Of course there’s always the vets – Duncan Epping (Yellow Bricks), Scott Lowe, Simon Seagrave, Alan Renouf and so many others it’s impossible to list.   2010 had some relative unknowns just absolutely elevate their blogging game – the standouts to me were Frank Denneman (killer posts on NUMA, and numerous posts on DRS/VM HA/FT) and Nick Weaver (just look at the wordpress plugin, the UBER work!)

For those of you that don’t do it – it’s completely a labor of love.  I expect that none of us do it because we’re paid to do it.   VMware in a significant way is supported by a massive community, and a group of passionate fans.

If you’re wondering if it’s a lot of work – it’s more than you can possibly imagine :-) 

But – on the other hand, it has huge payoffs.

• In 2010, I passed 1,000,000 page views (am now at around 1,300,000) – I can’t believe that many people read what I write.
• I regularly visit a customer or partner and am meeting them for the first time – but find out they read the blog, and in a weird way, we have a pre-existing relationship.   For those of you that do know me, my “blog voice” is actually just me – so if you read Virtual Geek, in a sense you do know me.   Yes, I’m ALWAYS this boring and long-winded :-)
• It helps me with my own learning.   While I am a senior executive at a FT500 company (EMC is #166), my secret deep dark fear is that I lose touch with the core technology, and stop learning.   I use the blog as a forcing function for me to stay sharp.
• It enables me to bypass the normal corporate communications baloney – both about problems (publicly posting bugs/workarounds), and also about good things (where sometimes I think something cool is getting overlooked).
• It helps me push the whole company in strange ways – the whole movement to make all our Virtual Appliances publicly available in “non neutered” format, as an example, is fueled by the power that derives directly from YOU as the reader.

Eric suggests that “length of post” is a factor, so I should win handily :-)  Seriously, while my posts are legendary for their long-winded, circuitous, “heavy slog reading”, “filled with charts and demos” nature, I think “quality of post” matters more than length.

For your consideration, the 5 posts in 2010 I think did the most to help or the community (not EMC centric):

1. vSphere 4.1 - What do the “vStorage APIs for Array Integration” mean to you? (for sharing raw content, for being IMO one of the best VAAI posts, and very cross-linked and cross-leveraged)
2. Official Virtualgeek 2010 Survey results (for fascinating direct customer feedback)
3. Solving a weird “slow performance” cloning issue… (for exposing a wart, and using it to explain a broader topic on IO size and VMware operations)
4. Oracle, x86, VMware and update on support (for putting my money where my mouth is on something people need to be up in arms over)
5. An important vSphere 4 storage bug and workaround (for exposing a wart, suggesting workarounds – While technically posted in Dec 2009, throughout 2010, this topic was painful for many VMware shops)

For VMware/EMC customers/employees/partners, here were some of the ones that I think helped the most (that were more EMC centric).

1. Your Virtual Machine Teleporter is ready Are you (for making the “federation” part of the joint VMware/EMC picture more clear – back in May, then through to VMworld we continue to flesh this out)
2. ITaaS Future Tech from EMC and VMware (visually demonstrating UIMv2 and vCloud Director to the world back in May)
3. EMC Unified Storage – Next Generation Efficiency Details (for making all the coolness in Zeus/Barossa, aka FLARE 30/DART 6.0 clear)
4. VMworld 2010 – Hands-on-Labs = 7,640,306,790 IOs served (for exposing some of the crazy madness behind the madness that was the VMworld 2010 HoL)
5. Mega Caches, Automated Tiering – or both? (aka applying a “marketing decoder”) (for discussing an important topic in next-gen storage design models)

Please take the 5 minutes to vote at vSphere-land whether it’s for me, or for any of the folks who are working hard (Eric’s site – Eric, I nicked the vote button as it was perfect, hope you’re cool with that) here:

EMC MirrorView Insight for VMware & vSphere 4.1

Many of you have commented on how much you like MirrorView Insight (if you don’t know about it, file it under “one of those nice little things for EMC + VMware customers provided for free”).   But some of you have noted that the MVIV fails under vSphere 4.1.

The good news is that it is supported in vSphere 4.1, you just need to do a little workaround until the next rev ships.  Instructions are in the EMC primus article emc247587

As always, thanks Giri for making MirrorView Insight!

If you don’t have access to primus, read on for the content of the article….

EMC PowerPath/VE 5.4 SP2 + vSphere Enterprise

It’s here… Power/VE 5.4 SP2.

What’s new:

• No more RPQs, and no ESXi 4.1 gap - support for VMware ESX and ESXi 4.1 on PowerPath/VE 5.4 SP2.
• Support for VMware Update Manager (VUM) installation using both offline bundle and online depot format for importing updates.
• Support for Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 as guests
• Support for latest EMC stuff (FLARE 30, DART 6.0, Invista 2.3/2.4, Enginuity 5874) and more third-party arrays (Hitachi AMS 2300 storage array, IBM DS8x00 storage array were added)

As always, simplicity built in, along with enterprise-grade multipathing - important.   All reasons why PowerPath/VE is selling like hotcakes.

Couple of other things I want to make sure people know:

1. **NEW** PowerPath/VE is supported on vSphere Enterprise Edition as of vSphere 4.1 (not limited to vSphere Enterprise Plus only)
2. EMC absolutely supports vSphere NMP (Native Multipathing), and NMP Round Robin is our recommended default on all modern EMC storage environments (as shown here, we will even be automating the setup of this).   Consider PowerPath/VE “a more than” (and isn’t free) not “in substitution for”.   As an example that we’re not the only ones doing this – note that Dell/EqualLogic has introduced their own MPP (Multipathing Plugin).
3. There is a new “unlimited vSphere cluster” licensing model.
4. PowerPath/VE technically supports (as in is on the EMC Support Matrix) MSCS/WSFC in the Guest OS as of 5.4 SP1.  This is important as vSphere NMP doesn’t support Round Robin in MSCS/WSFC configs. 
5. Very important IF YOU ARE USING A SYMMETRIX AND SRDF:

ETA emc236463: Symmetrix DMX-3, DMX-4 and VMAX: Enginuity 5773 and 5874 while using PowerPath/VE: Virtual machines periodically hang, become unresponsive and disappear from the VI Client after installing PowerPath/VE

EMC Technical Advisory

ETA Title: ETA emc236463: Symmetrix DMX-3, DMX-4 and V-Max: Enginuity 5773 and 5874 while using PowerPath/VE: Virtual machines periodically hang, become unresponsive and disappear from the VI Client after installing PowerPath/VE

Comment:   This ETA is being redistributed because the Enginuity fixes have been tested and are now available. This ETA is also now being distributed to customers.

Web Link: http://csexplorer.isus.emc.com/eservice/iviewcs/ui/eserver.asp?id=emc236463

BTW – I know that the licensing model leaves something to be desired.  Am working this with the PowerPath team – IMO, ideally would just use vSphere’s new licensing model.

Here’s a quick demo of how simple it is to install:

Enjoy!

EMC Celerra VSA UBERv3 (DART 6.0) now available!!!

EMC Unified Engineering and vSpecialists Nick Weaver have done it again!  

The new Celerra VSA is immediately available.  Like always, it is functionally equivalent to a EMC Celerra of the same DART rev, it never times out, and you can add as much storage to it as you want.  

This is the easiest a way for anyone to get real hands on on the fastest growing commercial unified (NAS+Block) platform out there, and build the baseline of a “homebrew” vSphere environment with something that matches a real production environment.  

Like always – there is best-effort support (http://forums.emc.com and www.emc.com/vmwarecommunity ), and it is not supported in production environments.

It’s a huge release, and there’s been further automation and simplification.

Again, thanks to the EMC Engineering teams and Nick Weaver.   As always, I continue to push for more EMC tech to be made public in virtual appliance format.

Read on for download links, and for what’s new.