Tag Archives: analytics

I’m heading to Tech Field Day 13!

By | | ,
1 Comment

We’re just a little over a week away from Tech Field Day 13 and I’m proud to say I’ll be there as a delegate!  For those of you who don’t know, the Tech Field Day series (a GestaltIT production) is a chance for vendors and members of the tech community to come together and discus their latest product innovations.  These sessions are broadcast live and are joined by the greater community on twitter.  Now for those of you familiar with the process, you might be saying “Sean, that was an over simplified explanation” and you’re right, it was.  Delegates are highly technical and won’t pull any punches when asking questions, so presenters need to be on top of their game and knowledgeable about all aspects of the products.  Nothing is really off limits, the only rule is no throwing things.

 

What companies will be presenting?

Traditionally with most Field Day events, ~7-8 companies will present to the delegates.  They range from large established companies down to those coming out of stealth (this is a great type of event for coming out of stealth btw).  So lets look at the list of presenters:

As you can see, we have some well established vendors, some new ones, and 1 blank space (that company will be revealed later).  I expect we’ll see some updates on existing product lines as well as some new announcements

So what’s next?

A few of these companies i’m pretty familiar with, but some of them i’m hearing from for the first time.  While Field Day events are not new to me (I attended my first one as a delegate for Storage Field Day 11 and you’ll also see me in the background of the EMC presentation at SFD5), I’m still pretty new to the experience.  I’m looking forward to being on the other side of this and learning a lot.  So be sure to tune in next week and join in the conversation on twitter using the #TFD13 hashtag!

Introducing EMC’s VNX Storage Analytics Suite (and Early Access Program)

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

imageWith VMworld in full swing, today EMC finalized the announcement of the new VNX Storage Analytics Suite (and you can try it out on the show floor).  You may remember that this was demoed first at EMC World.  As development was nearing completion, you may remember my call for beta testers (I hope you got in and got a chance to try out the technology).  Now we can start getting as excited as the software will be available for general consumption in Q4 of 2012.

 

imageThe VNX Storage Analytics Suite will offer you a an extensive platform to proactively identify bottlenecks, balance workloads and pinpoint the root cause of potential problems around health and performance.  The software is available as a stand alone product as well as integration for VMware’s vCOps Enterprise platform.  Pairing the two together allows you to have a full end-to-end visibility of your entire infrastructure from virtual machine to lun and every point in between.

 

imageFor those of you who are already familiar with vCOps, you will be presented with same interface just with extra options for looking at metrics.  The charts and display is the same.  Green is still good and Red is still bad.  This allows you to quickly visualize the health of your arrays (both block and file) using a simple “Performance-at-a-glance” tab.  Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to attach the problem directly instead of waiting for someone to tell you there is a slowdown in the environment.

 

imageBesides general health information, you can dig down into the specifics of utilization on the array.  In the picture to the right, you’ll be able to see the results (both historically and in real time) of enabling fast cache on your array and what it did to the overall health of your environment.  By focusing on the performance of the array and the pool disks, Fast Cache was able to increase the throughput of the SP while decreasing the strain on the spinning disk storage.

 

By this point you might be saying “Sean, this is so cool, I can’t wait until Q4!  How can I get my hands on this now?”.  Well for those of you who did not participate in the beta (and those of you who did and want to see the results of your feedback) there is good news.   EMC is going to be doing an Early Access program, it won’t cost you a penny, and I’ve got all the details right here!  The bad news is that it’s limited to 100 customers and it’s filling up fast.

 

If you may remember during the beta program I was asking people to email me if they wanted in.  This time I have no control over the process and you must go through your TC.  Before I tell you just how to get in, I need to make sure you have what is required in your environment.  You will need to meet the following prerequisites:

  • vCenter Operations Manager 5.0.1 Enterprise or higher (vApp distribution)
  • EMC VNX series system (Block: R31 OE version 05.31.000.5.720 and higher and VNX OE R32 version 05.32.000.5.006 and higher; File: VNX OE 7.0.35 and higher).

Seems simple enough, right?  Now on how to get in, as I said before you will need to contact your TC or Account Representative.  Have him or her place a Sales Evaluation order in Direct Express using Model # SASCONN-T90 and complete an RPQ.  Again, this is a no cost evaluation period and if you are selected, you will receive further instructions.  At the end of the preview period (which I believe is somewhere in Q4), you will be given the opportunity to purchase a license or uninstall the software.

 

If you are attending the show, please let me know your thoughts about the software in the comments section below.

Got a VNX and vCOps? We need your help!

By | | , ,
1 Comment

imageIf you remember during EMC World 2012, the USD team showed off a preview of our new storage analytics package that would come as either a stand alone application or as a plugin for VMware vCOps.  As we move ever closer to a final product, we have entered the private beta phase.  This is where we need your help.

 

USD Engineering will be running a private beta between August 8th and August 29th and the test plan should take about 2 days to complete.  What you need is the following (UPDATED):

 

  • A VNX running recent code.  Both File 7.0 & 7.1 and Block 5.31 & 5.32 should be acceptable (this can be production or non production)
  • vCOps running the Enterprise or Enterprise+ (this must be a non production / test instance)
  • The name of your EMC contact (preferably a TC)
  • Please also indicate if you are a customer or a partner

You may need to sign an NDA, I’m not 100% on that but the team running the beta will be able to confirm.  Space is limited and we only have a few slots left so there is no guarantee that you will be accepted into the program.  If you are interested, please send an email to “sean.dot.thulin.at.emc.dot.com” with your contact information and what you have available as equipment (make / model of VNX and software version installed) and I will forward it on to the team.  Act fast as we are almost ready to start!

One Year Later…

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

A little over a year ago I launched www.thulinaround.com.  I had never had a blog before.  The closest I had come were some very lengthy forum posts and a cardomain page (the original facebook for carguys!).  It was a new experience and I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do with it.  I started off with my first post, a basic “Hello World” piece that introduced myself.  Trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with, I wrote about what was going on right then and there.  I explained what a #nerdherd was, I did a video game review, and several posts on my involvement with EMC World 2011.

Analytics_early

Over the course of the first 3 months I had a little less than 500 visits.  That is not bad for a site that relied mostly on word of mouth and twitter traffic and no clear follower base.  It was around this time I decided I wanted to write about technology and my interactions with EMC.  As fate would have it, I was in the right place at the right time for one of my most historic posts.  With the new MAC OS LION beta going out to testers, an incompatibility was discovered between that and the VNX.  With the amount of calls I was getting at work, I was trying everything I could to get the word out asking for people to upgrade.  I worked with Drew Schlussel on a post and I’m told I’ve set a speed record for getting something like this approved by marketing.  This post gave my blog the shot in the arm I needed.  My traffic increased 500% and I was finally on the map as a tech blogger.

 

Analytics_Total

Fast forward to today and I’m very proud with the number of visitors.  I’ve gathered a little over 10,000 visitors and I’m averaging about 50 a day.  My blog does seem to be a real Monday – Friday reader as I get single digit visits on the weekends.  While I still blog on a variety of subjects, my biggest ones seem to be related to the VNX.  Of the 36 blog posts I’ve made, here are my top 4 blog posts so far:

 

  1. configuring-ldap-authentication-for-unisphere-on-the-vnx (2,500 hits – 25% of my total traffic)
  2. are-you-running-mac-os-x-10-7-and-have-a-celerra-it-may-be-time-for-an-upgrade (15% of my total traffic)
  3. understanding-the-emc-vnxcelerra-antivirus-agent-cava-part-1-server_viruschk
  4. understanding-the-emc-vnxcelerra-antivirus-agent-cava-part-2-common-errors

 

Again I want to thank everyone who comes to visit my blog and look forward to my great posts!