Virtual Geek

Cisco’s Own Megalaunch – Details and Perspectives

Cisco today launched a wide-ranging set of updates to their Datacenter Business Advantage portfolio.   To me – this is like EMC’s own Mega-Launch in January.   Like us (in January, we refreshed/launched 41 products all at once), they have updated not one product, but a whole portfolio at once.

For what it’s worth (I’m just one voice) – color me impressed.

Like the January launch for EMC, the sheer fact Cisco can update so much in a single go, cover such a broad spectrum…   Well, it highlights the breadth of what Cisco has become, and is in the process of becoming.  On the note of “what they are in the process of becoming, see the NewScale acquistion as just one more example – strange in some ways, but to me makes a TON of sense (analagous to EMC’s Greenplum acquisition, or VMware’s Spring/vFabric – both reflecting possible answers to the question of “where is the puck going?”)

So – what’s the news?   Don’t consider this an exhaustive list – but here are the things that tickle my nerd funnybone.

• New Data Center Network Manager (that ties to broad NX-OS revs)
• Nexus 7K FCoE support.
• Multihop FCoE across the whole family (N7K, N5K, MDS 9K)
• A new Nexus 3K platform – interesting in the sense it seems to be designed for a very specific use case (very low-latency use cases).
• Crazy updates to the N5K – with more dense configs (5548P and 5596UP), but also “any port, any protocol” design (better than the “FC module” approach, IMO).
• New Cisco UCS servers – refreshes to Westmere-EX across the B-series family, addition of a new C-series (C260M2)
• Cisco Storage Media Encryption (Fabric Based Encyption)
• New Fabric Extender (FEX) modules – very interestingly including host adapters
• Location/ID Seperation Protocol (LISP) support on the N7K – this is a very interesting idea (more below)

The launch is so big that there are many other things that while interesting, are more “meh” (though I’m sure important to customers) – like Layer 3 MPLS support on NX-OS in the N7K.  This is important as Cisco works down their own convergence path.   It’s interesting to look at the evolution of both Cisco and EMC – we both are working to converge where it makes sense to converge, but simultaneously, accelerate expansion and diversity in other areas.

First of all – to my colleagues at Cisco… CONGRATS!   Trust me, I know what it takes to pull something like this off :-)

Will try to provide more details, perspectives (as well some performance testing, and EMC E-Lab support targets) in an even-handed way.   If you’re curious, read on – and as always, courteous comments welcome!

Chad’s Choice Webcast– “Perf Tools of the Trade”

Well – by popular vote – here it is.   This week’s webcast is on Thursday, March 31, 2011 (8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET / 15:00 GMT

Performance Troubleshooting: My personal toolbox and techniques

Abstract:

“Storage performance is one of VMware’s root cause of support and performance issues.   This webcast will cover the tools and techniques I personally use with my own environment and with customers to help diagnose and resolve performance issues in the storage stack in vSphere environments.”

Please join me – looking forward to the discussion!   You can register NOW by clicking on the below!

While I TRY to avoid excessive linkage–this is too good.

Real world.  Real Customer.  Real Data.   And there you go.

http://storagesavvy.com/2011/03/26/real-world-emc-fastvp-and-fastcache-results/

Heads up–VAAI and VMAX issue/fix

We’re gotten some small scale reports of customers who are finding that after running after some time with VAAI on their VMAX arrays are finding performance degradation.   Usually this correlates with excessive back-end load and high read cache misses.

This is covered in primus article emc261696 (http://knowledgebase.emc.com).

Don’t jump to a conclusion – if you think you might be experiencing an issue – always open an SR.  You can always call 1-800-SVC-4-EMC, and better yet – the e-support is getting really, really good (http://support.emc.com).  Interestingly, online chat support is now covering a lot of support cases, and gets some of the best customer feedback.

A workaround (covered in the Primus article) is to disable VAAI on your hosts.   You can disable VAAI across your vSphere clusters using this powershell script (thank you Nick).   This requires rebooting the ESX host, but of course using vSphere’s maintenance mode, you can do this non-disruptively

Good news is there is already a fix.  It is in a Enginuity epack that is available now.   You get this via support.

Also good news is that the fix is in the Enginuity service release scheduled for 3/30.

EMC and Primary Storage Dedupe/Compression=50%+ saved.

I’ve gone on in the past (see here) on the topic on my personal way of looking at storage efficiency as “3 dimensions” ($/W/sqft per GB, $/W/sq.ft. per IO, $/W/sq.ft. per unplanned change).

Down the dimension of storage efficiency per GB, compression and deduplication capabilities will become more and more pervasive across the industry. 

EMC has an incredible deduplication portfolio – from the industry leading target and source based dedupe technologies, and a killer primary storage dedupe technology.

The exciting news is we’re not stopping here.   You can expect compression and data deduplication technologies to appear across the EMC family, and continuously expand to being more and more efficient across more and more datasets.   Next up to plate for us is the addition of fixed-block level dedupe (particularly useful in the VMware set of use cases).

I love hearing from customers how these technologies are helping them – today.    An email came in on Tuesday this week raving about the savings they were seeing in their environment – on some NAS use cases 57% of their storage was reclaimed – totally transparently.   Simple, easy, efficient.  

I’ve removed the names of the customer – suffice it to say they are a FT500 customer that everyone knows and interacts with in some way every day.  

I’ve also blanked out other stuff that would be negative against EMC competitors – as I don’t want this to be construed in a negative way, but rather how this capability can help customers, but otherwise – is the direct email from the customer.  

To the customer – thank you for choosing EMC.   We are dedicated to continuing to serve you well!  

If you’re interested in the voice of a customer – read on past the break.

Chad’s World–Episode 3 is up!

Yes, it’s another episode of “Chad’s World” – a chance to see Wade and I make fools out of ourselves :-)

This time – Pat Gelsinger makes a guest appearance, we have another great customer (Jay from the Boston Celtics), and as always we have some killer demos – “demo time, excellent!”   Click below to watch…

Enjoy, and yes, we are intentionally trying to be idiots – at least only marginally more than normal :-)

Some awesome open positions at Isilon….

Isilon (like much of EMC) continues to hire and expand.  There are some sweet job postings, and Isilon tech is very cool.

So – a heads up on a couple of my favorites for people in the community.  One is Virtualization centric, the others are also very cool.

Read on if you’re interested.

Good to see people seeing what we’re talking about….

Was nice to see Goldman Sachs issue a “Buy” recommendation on EMC this week (on March 20th).  Disclosure, not only am I an EMC employee – but as you’d imagine as such, I hold EMC stock.  I love the category they put the recommendation in:

“Americas’s Conviction Buy”

LOL – that sounds like it could be a bad thing :-)   What it means is that their conviction is very high on the recommendation.    I was reading through the actual analysis doc, a couple things jumped out at me.

I particularly like this… Exhibit 1:

We are pretty proud of our strengths, but we aren’t perfect, and man, I know it.   We work hard ever day to get better for our customers.  

There was lots of other things (a rich portfolio of cloud assets – we call that our “cloud credentials”; leveraging the high-growth areas of tomorrow; product launches and channel push should enhance top-line growth and opex leverage).

I’m just a nerd – not a business guy fundamentally, but hey – those are good from both a nerd business and a business perspective :-)

Glad someone is noticing the hard work of the company :-)

3 Big Ideas… and a low-level VNX discussion

Varrow knows how to hold a great event.  Their inaugural “Varrow Madness” happened on thursday last week at the majestic Grandover resort in Greensboro, NC.   It was attended by about 100 230 customers, and the pantheon of Varrow technology partners, including VMware, EMC, and Cisco.

I broke out two new pieces of content – since I was lucky enough to be presenting the morning keynote, and then a second session on EMC VNX.

I’ve attached video of both below, along with the powerpoint content for and EMCers, EMC partners, or EMC customers that are interested.  Read on!

To get a sense of the event, here’s a quick walkaround the back of the room where EMC had it’s area – booth, hands-on-lab (I talked to two people actually doing the labs) and other cool stuff.

THANK YOU VARROW – you are a great EMC partner!

Read on for the videoes and raw ppt content…

Upcoming VMware/EMC Webcasts–including Chad’s Choice

The VMware/EMC webcast calendar continues to cook along… For those that haven’t figured out the pattern, we do them every thursday, starting at 8am PT, 11am ET, 3pm GMT.

For march there are 3 left – including a “Chad’s Choice” (March 31st).

• Optimize Your Data Paths with PowerPath/VE
  • Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 15:00 GMT
    Discover the advantages of EMC PowerPath/VE with its comprehensive load balancing policies, path failover, path recovery, and path management capabilities.
• Top 5 Reasons to Virtualize Oracle Databases
  • Thursday, March 24, 2011 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 15:00 GMT
    Examine the top reasons to optimize Oracle database performance and maximize IT efficiency through tightly integrated EMC and VMware solutions.
• Chad’s Choice - Virtually Any Virtualization Topic!
  • Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 15:00 GMT
  • Find out the latest virtualization topics from Chad Sakac, VP VMware Technology Alliance, EMC. Get key updates on new technologies, hear honest answers to your most demanding questions, and see intriguing technical demos.

For “Chad’s Choice” – as always there’s more topics than there is time.   Here are 3 topics, vote and let me know your preference…

 

April is shaping up to be a doozy!  I’ve asked to make it “EMC/VMware Best Practices” month – where you’ll hear from the engineering/product experts on security, backup, and EMC’s mid-range and enterprise storage platforms (VNX and VMAX).

These presenters (Erin, Sharon, Ed, Mike, Itzik, Dave, Tarik, and Alex) are really fantastic resources – ones who have a great deal of respect from me.  They are engaged with customers of every shape and size.  I’ll personally guarantee that you’ll get a lot of value of out them – and they will be deep, technical, and marketing-free zones.   They will have opinions, and will happily debate with you.

To register for any or all of the April sessions, click on the graphic below: