Author Archives: Sean

Even MORE goodies coming to VNX

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So hopefully most of you read my earlier post about new features coming to VNX.  Well I wanted to write some more about new things coming to VNX.

Flash First!

You may have been reading else where about a change coming to tiering on the the VNX, and I’m here to confirm this rumor.  EMC VNX engineers have reversed the way we do tiering on the VNX.

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With traditional storage pool with FAST enabled, data would be loaded in and then promoted to the flash storage when it was deemed hot.  Now we are completely reversing that policy.  Since most of your data is only read within the first few days, all new data coming into the VNX will be considered hot.  After a few days of little to no access, the data is demoted down to cheaper & more abundant storage.  This change means that you no longer have to wait to see advantages of FAST as everything will be on your fastest storage right away.  Combining this with the new changes to pools that I talked about before, and you’ve got a 2 pronged approach to getting your data the fastest without breaking the bank.

 

A new approach to Data Protection

This next goodie isn’t as much a direct enhancement to the VNX as it is an overall solution.  EMC is introducing a new solution called AppSync.  AppSync offers a 1 click protection package for certain virtualized applications you already have stored on the VNX.

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What you have here is the ability to sync with VMware, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange with SLA driven protection.image

As you can see from the graphic above, you can have 3 protection packages:

  • GOLD: You get synchronous replication with no data loss
  • SILVER: You get asynchronous replication with minimal data loss.  You may only lose the last few minutes
  • BRONZE: Hourly Snapshots.  You may loose up to an hour of data

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The 2nd half of this application is the ability to share this out to other admins in your infrastructure.  Currently, if you want to restore something, you need to talk to the storage admin to tell them to roll back the lun.  With AppSync, you can give access to the to the application admins and let them handle the restore.  An exchange admin can now go in and restore a single mailbox without effecting the other users or bothering the storage admin.

 

This is just Win-Win in my book and I can’t wait to see this in action.  My sources tell me that this will be available as a separate package in the 2nd half of 2012, but that is still subject to change and you should talk to your EMC Sales rep to get a final date of availability.

Get a sneak peek at new VNX features

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imageToday marks the first full day of EMC World 2012.  While everyone is busy watching key notes and checking out the hands on labs, I thought I’d offer you a sneak peak at some new VNX features you can look forward to in the 2nd half of 2012.

 

New Raid Levels for Storage Pools

The first thing I want to talk about is storage pools.  As you are well aware, when you add disks in to storage pool, you need to use the same type of raid level in all storage tiers in the pool.

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As you can see from the picture above, when creating a typical pool from a RAID 6 configuration, you must use it for your FLASH, your SAS, and your NL-SAS drives.  This means that you must use extra flash drives to fill out your pool.  What is changing in the future is a shift towards towards tier specific raid levels.

 

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As you can see in the picture above, now you will be able to have different raid levels at different tiers in your pool.  By mixing a smaller amount of flash with a larger amount of spinning disks, you can put the majority of your unread / archived data on your cheaper storage while being able to afford flash drives as well for your performance data.  This translates into a cheaper initial cost for your storage and offers a more affordable option for customers looking to start out.

 

What the SNAP!

imageThe next big thing coming to VNX is enhanced block snapshots.  I think everyone is well aware of the limitations of SNAPS of luns on the VNX.  Well I’m proud to announce that those are a thing of the past!  With the new functionality, the VNX has increased the maximum amount of writable SNAPS to 256 per lun.  That also raises the limit to 32,768 per system.  Picture me in my best Boston Accent when I say that is a “wicked” high number of snaps.

 

Also introduced in this new enhancement is the ability to take SNAPS of a SNAP.  This opens up the possibility for all sorts of new use cases such as Testing and Development options as well as Point-In-Time backups.  This is functionality that has existed on the FILE side for quite some time now and I’m glad to see it’s making it’s way to the lun level as well.

 

Windows Branch Cache Support for CIFS

imageWith the release of Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, Microsoft added new functionality called Branch Cache.  This functionality allows remote computers to cache files and server them out locally to their pears, thus reducing bandwidth over the WAN.  This cached data can either be distributed from clients PCs or be held on a local server in the branch office.  Application performance will be increased by reducing the number of hops the data has to travel.

 

In the next big release for VNX, we will see added support for this functionality to CIFS shares on the VNX.  For more information on this, please read this Microsoft TechNet Article.

 

Well that about does it for now.  3 big new features to look forward to in the second half of 2012.  Please feel free to ask a question in the comments section and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.

Come see me at EMC World!

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5729684319_8614b56cd3_bOk, for starters, this is not a desperate cry for attention.  This is a information page for my schedule at EMC World.  I’m going to be all over the place at the show, and I’d love to meet readers of my blog.  So where will I be?  Well to start things off Sunday night, you’ll be able to find me at the Pool party and the Venetian resort.  If you don’t see me by the pool, I may have wondered into the Tao Day club area like last year.

 

During the day, you’ll find me all over the show floor.  I expect to spend a good amount of time hanging out in the bloggers lounge and meeting fellow bloggers.  If I’m not there I’m probably hanging out at the EMC Online booth, walking the show floor, or taking in a break out session or BUZZ Talk.

 

Speaking of Buzz sessions, I’ll be participating in one live on stage on Wednesday Morning @ 10:30 AM PST.  For those of you attending the show, please join me and my fellow support forum legends in the BUZZ area near the entrance to the show.  For those of you playing the home game, do not worry.  A live video  will be available as well as an interactive chat so you can ask us questions.  To add this event to your calendar, click here!

 

If after all this you still can’t find me, try sending me a tweet.  I’ll do my best to keep my phone up and running, but cellular data is spotty at best, so there may be a delay.  I look forward to seeing everyone at the show!

One Year Later…

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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.

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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.

 

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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!

Making CAVA work with SMB2 on your VNX

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vnx-promo-bannerAs more and more people start to deploy a new VNX and switch to an advanced windows server operating system, I am seeing a higher utilization of the SMB2 protocol for cifs.  With this increase, comes new problems.  Recently I had noticed a rather peculiar notification in the server logs in regards to CAVA.  CAVA was reporting the error “FILE_NOT_FOUND” on scans when the file existed.  It would present itself as something like this:

 

2012-04-29 08:49:47: 81878122528: VC: 3: 32: Server ‘192.168.1.156’ returned error ‘FILE_NOT_FOUND’ when checking file ‘\root_vdm_2\CIFS\Test\1234.exe’

 

The standard troubleshooting confirmed that the file did exist.  I even back traced it from the CAVA server through the “check$” share and did not have any problems with the file.  So why was CAVA reporting errors like this so often?  It turns out the problem was not with CAVA itself, but with an “enhancement” introduced as part of SMB2.

 

As part of the SMB2 protocol, the Microsoft Redirector uses a local cache for directory metadata.  This cache is usually cleared after 10 seconds.  What this does, in instances of file systems with a high rate of change, is cause an inconsistency with what the CAVA server sees when it goes to scan a file.  The CAVA server will actually read from the cache and error out when the file is not found in it.  This then causes the error that I pasted above.

 

Of course with a problem, comes a work around.  This was identified and placed into the latest VNX Event Enabler release notes, but I will provide it for you here:

 

  1. Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to HKLM\SystemCurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters.
  2. Right-click Parameters and select New > DWORD Value.
  3. For the new REG_DWORD entry, type a name of DirectoryCacheLifetime.
  4. Set the value to 0 to disable DirectoryCacheLifetime.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Restart the machine.

 

A simple registry change on each CAVA server and a reboot will allow you to set the cache lifetime value to 0 and thus there will be no more caching.  After this change you should not see any more problems caused by SMB2.

I Tech Therefore I Tool Around – Episode 04 – EMC World 2012

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EMCWorldIts been a while since Matt and I teamed up to do another installment of the I Tech Therefore I Tool Around Podcast.  With EMC World right around the corner, we decided to preview the upcoming event!  Being located near the EMC Headquarters has it’s benefits, and one of those is that many people were in town working on projects for the show.  We invited two vSpecialists Jase McCarty and Dave Robertson to join us in talking about the show.

 

In this podcast we talk about several different subjects revolving around EMC World.  We started off by talking about the vLabs, what went into them last year, and what we can look forward to this year.  Jase is going to be head of operations this year at the vLabs and will be the man to make sure things get done.  Dave has been up here working on a VMAX VSA that will be used as vLab demo this year.

 

Next we moved on to Project R.A.M.P.  Matt takes us through the first big public result of his new role at EMC.  For those of you who don’t know, Matt has transferred from Engineering to the Social Media team here at EMC.  As of this blog post, Project R.A.M.P has gone live on the EMC Community Network but there will be mission for those attending EMC World.

 

New this year are BUZZ sessions.  These short 20 – 30 minute gatherings are modeled after the TED Talks and will encompass a variety of subjects.  Matt, myself, and several of the support forum legends will be having a BUZZ session on Wednesday, May 23rd @ 10:30 AM PST.  Be sure to join us both in person and online (more on that later).  In addition to the buzz talk, you will find myself and several other ECN members at the EMC eServices / Social Media booth and around the show conducting interviews and reports.  And be sure to come check out the Bloggers Lounge and catch up with other bloggers.

 

While at this years show, be sure to visit the EMC Proven Professional area where they are offering 50% off the price of exams.  The show floor will always have some great swag to give away, so be sure to bring an extra bag to fill up.  Closing out the show this year will be another live episode of Chad’s World as well as a special concert by Maroon 5!!!!!!!  I look forward to seeing as many people there again this year.

 

Click HERE to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

Or click HERE (or on the icon) to download the MP3 directly!

Oxygen Cloud is bringing the private cloud to you!

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logo-oxygen-cloud-1004x408About 2 weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a private beta of a new platform Oxygen Cloud is releasing today.  This new product, called the Oxygen Storage Connector allows you to use your own local storage for your oxygen cloud account.

 

Installation of the Storage Connector was very simple and straight forward.  You just run the setup program on the windows server you want to use.  Once this is done, you login through the web interface and point the system to the folder you want to use for your storage.  You can install this inside a virtual machine, or do like I did and put it on my home NAS server that runs windows server 2008 R2.  Just remember that you can’t install this on a computer running the oxygen cloud client as well.  More information on the setup process (and a download link) can be found here.

 

OxygenCloudStorageConnector01Once the setup is all done, you can then connect to the Oxygen Cloud website and inspect your cloud storage.  I immediately provisioned out 250GB for oxygen cloud and then went back to check the used space on my windows server.  To my surprise, my usage was only a couple of megabytes.  This means that it is setup as thin provisioning and won’t eat up all your storage right away.  The files inside the storage appear to be broken up into 513k chunks and it is not discernable (to the naked eye) what is stored there.

 

Usage of the Storage Connector is simple too.  Inside my “O” drive, is a new folder in which anything placed there is will be put on my new private cloud.  If your windows server is up and running, you will be able to sync new files to this storage space.  It really is just that simple and Oxygen Cloud has now given you the ability to use your personal storage with the oxygen cloud interface.

 

A couple of reasons why I like this product:

  • OxyCloud 042_1This is the first I’ve seen of a company offering a solution to host your own cloud storage with their public product.
  • This will help ease the mind of people who have concerns with keeping their data out in public or hybrid cloud as now you can control the security of the data-at-rest.
  • This allows you to get more than 5gb from your cloud storage (at the expense of using your own bandwidth)

 

I’d also like to see a couple of things come from this in the future of this product:

  • Detect users that are on a LAN (or WAN) connection to the storage so that the traffic doesn’t need to go out to the internet to sync.  This will allow near instant syncing when a customer is using oxygen cloud at the workplace.
  • Allow multiple instances of the cloud connector setup under the same storage profile so that data is backed up to multiple sites for HA and DR solutions.
  • Offer setups for MACs and Linux machines or create a virtual appliance that can have storage provisioned directly to it.

 

All in all I see great work here and you can download the Oxygen Storage Connector for windows here.

I Tech Therefore I Tool Around – Episode 03 – Community

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Community pinned on noticeboardA new year, a new installment of #ITTITA!  This time we decided to take a new approach to the podcast.  Instead of picking a technical topic and doing a deep dive, we are going to review the past year.  One of the biggest influences of our year was this theme of “Community” it was everywhere and played a big part in our lives.

 

Community has been a big factor at some of the different conventions I’ve been to this year.  At EMC World we held a virtual #nerdherd and invited the community to interact with us at the convention as well as online via a live video and chat feed.  At the New England VMware User Group meeting a few weeks ago, community was also present with the great conversations as well as user presentations.

 

2012 is also going to be a great year of community.  We started the year by launching the “Ask the Expert” forum on the EMC Community Network.  In the first event of the year on there, Matt partnered up with Henri to tackle the tough questions about VNXe VMware integration.  There was some excellent conversation as well as a storage deep-dive and we had a record number of views on this single thread.

 

All in all I think that 2011 was a great year for me.  I launched my blog, I linked up with some great and knowledgeable people, and I even started a podcastwith one of my best friends.  2012 looks to be an even greater year!

 

Click HEREto subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

Or click HERE (or on the icon) to download the MP3 directly!

2 Years at EMC

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EMCToday marks my 2 year anniversary at EMC.  Back in January of 2010, I literally graduated from college on a Friday and started at EMC on a Monday.  I was enrolled in the Global Services Associate program (GSAP) which started off with a 10 week intensive training program known as “Bootcamp”.  During this great opportunity I learned a lot about all the different products and services EMC has to offer.

My first 3 weeks were dedicated to passing my first certification known as EMC Technology Foundations (Now replaced by Information Storage Management).  This was a tough challenge as I had no experience with enterprise storage being fresh out of college.  After this I began my deeper training in CLARiiON, SAN, and networking protocols.  This program was a great experience and gave me a good foundation for my job in the NAS support lab.

It was decided quickly that my focus within the NAS support lab would be with CIFS, Active Directory, and anti virus.  With roughly 90% of our install base using CIFS, this was going to be a an important part of the organization.  I quickly excelled in this area and have become a subject matter expert.

At EMC World 2011 in Las Vegas, I passed my NAS Specialist certification and then shortly after that I earned my VMware Certified Professional 4 during the summer.  I’ve been out to Utah to train our new employees and participate on the EMC Community Network as well.

So far these first two years have been great for me.  I’ve met a lot of great people and have participated in some great events.  I only see good things to come from the next 2 years.

The NEVMUG is only 2 days away!

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NEVMUG

The New England VMware User Group Winter Warmer is an event I’ve been looking forward to for a while.  I’ve heard a lot of good things from this and the one during the summer over the years.  Unfortunately I’ve never been able to attend one in the past, so this will be my first VMUG ever.

 

So since this is my first VMUG, I’m not quire sure what to expect.  Greg Stuart did an excellent post on what the VMUG is and what to expect from it.  Just like it says in his blog post, I expect to be bombarded with a wealth of knowledge from people who are very passionate about virtualization.  I’m also looking forward to tech demos and hands on labs from the sponsoring vendors that make this event possible.  The event schedule is as follows:

 

  • 08:00 a.m. Registration and Networking
  • 09:00 a.m. What Oracle DBAs need to know about Virtualization
    • Cloud: vCloud Director Deep Dive: Paul Lembo/Chris Colotti
    • Healthcare: ISV Case Study : Scott Carpenter
  • 10:00 a.m. Building Your Cloud Infrastructure with VMware
  • 11:00 a.m. Scott Davis; VMW End User Computing Innovations for 2012
  • 12:00 p.m. Lunch
  • 01:30 p.m. Breakout Session 1
  • 02:00 p.m. Breakout Session 2
  • 03:00 p.m. Breakout Session 3
  • 04:30 p.m. Happy Hour / Giveaways
    • Sponsor Expo is open all day.

 

This looks like a very full day and I expect it to be very busy.  You can register for the event here and keep and eye out for Matt Brender and myself as we may be recording interviews for an “I Tech Therefore I Tool Around” podcast.  See you there!