If 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!
Its here! It’s finally here! Today marks the general availability of the first release in a new line of VNX code. Many of you may remember my preview posts on what can be found in this latest version (found here and here). Now you can take it for a spin and try out these new features and changes.
As of today, you can browse to the VNX Product Support Page or use the Unisphere Service Manager (USM) tool (which has been upgraded to version 1.2.0.1.0554) to download VNX FILE OE 7.1.47.5 and VNX BLOCK OE 05.32.000.5.006. Again to highlight some of the changes you will see:
New “Flash First” data aging policy for tiering
Mixed raid levels for storage pools
Enhanced block snapshots
Windows Branch Cache support for CIFS
Simplified Unisphere LDAP configuration (see my note here)
FLR upgrades and enhancements
There are more changes under the hood than I could possibly list here, but a full set of release notes and documentation can be found on the VNX Product Support Page as well as the GA announcement that I posted on ECN.
Well what are you waiting for? Go out and upgrade (remember that this is an out of family upgrade) and start enjoying the latest and greatest in unified storage and let me know what you think of it in the comments below!
It has been a busy week in the tech industry. There were several major conferences including Dell Storage Forum, Cisco Live, and Microsoft TechEd to name a few. Apple also had their annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). While the iOS 6 announcement may have stole the show, Apple also announced MAC OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion).
Now you may remember my post around this time last year when MAC OS 10.7 came out and I was asking everyone to please upgrade. Well I have some good news on this regarding 10.8. I received an email the other day from Drew Schlussel that said that the latest beta had completed it’s testing and things were looking good. This is great news to me and should be encouraging to everyone. Apple can still change things between now and when MAC OS 10.8 goes GA later this summer, and engineering will continue to test against the latest build when it becomes available.
Looking back at last year, the MAC OS changes present a unique challenge to vendors. The low price of adoption for customers make widespread implementation a lot more common. Combine that with the ever increasing movement of Bring-Your-Own-Device in the workplace, and IT departments are losing control over what versions of software and operating systems are in their environment.
With the amount of time it takes for an engineering department to discover a bug, create a fix, perform testing, and publish the new code, we ended up being one of the few that had fixes before the final version of MAC OS 10.7 was available. Once new code is available, it takes time to do an upgrade. Last year, the majority of our upgrades were still being performed by EMC’s Customer Engineers. This additional scheduling time was also compounded by the change control in place at many organizations which are often on a 6 month upgrade cycle at best. This perfect storm can spell disaster when a major issue is discovered.
So what is being done in the future to prevent a repeat problem? Well this year, upgrades on the VNX are pretty much a self-service option at this point. When new code is available, customers can use the Unisphere Service Manager to upgrade their boxes that day. You no longer need to open a ticket and schedule an on-site visit as it can all be done from the comfort of your computer in the office (LAN connection is preferred).
All that is left is your own internal change control process. VNX is currently on a roughly 6 – 8 week service pack release cycle. Armed with this knowledge, you can start filing for your next upgrade just as soon as you apply your current one and you’ll stay right in line with all the enhancements and fixes that come with every upgrade. I am a big proponent of shorter upgrade cycles and I encourage everyone to upgrade their VNX as close as you can to when new code is released.
To state it right off the bat, this code does not include the features I talked about here and here but this is still a very important update. Yesterday marked the release of the latest update to the VNX with the general availability of VNX OE File 7.0.53.1 and OE Block 05.31.000.5.720 (both of which are available on the VNX product support page or by using the Unisphere Service Manager (USM) tool.
So you may be asking yourself, if this doesn’t come with all those cool features Sean talked about last week, why should I bother upgrading? Well I’m glad you asked that question. In addition to the many bug fixes incorporated in this service pack, this release contains 3 very important updates.
The first is support for the latest VMAX Enginuity code version 5876.82.57 that was released recently as well. The 2nd enhancement covers those using iSCSI. Anyone actively using iSCSI on their VNX should read ETA emc291837. The 3rd and final fix eliminate the erroneous over temperature alerts that were reporting on some power supplies that was previously covered in Primus emc278973.
As with all new code releases, I encourage everyone to upgrade as soon as possible and to not fall too far behind the latest code levels. I have started a discussion here on ECN incase you have questions about this release and the fixes contained within.
Another great EMC World has come and gone. I’m sorry I didn’t do a daily post like last year, but I was a lot more involved this year and had less time in Las Vegas. When I landed, I immediately hit the ground running. I picked up my badge, put out a tweet to my followers, and headed off for the pool party.
After informing a couple of customers in bathing suites that it wasn’t that kind of pool party, I met up with a lot of my friends who I hadn’t seen in ages. The opening mixer is a great place to introduce yourself, enjoy some good food and music, and network with colleagues and customers alike.
Day 1
The first day I woke up early (in part because I was still on east coast time). I grabbed my iPad, my camera bag, and my conference badge as I made my way right to the bloggers lounge. There I was greeted by EMC’s best in social media.
After a quick tour around the main areas that were open (the solutions pavilion didn’t open until that evening), it was time for the first keynote by CEO Joe Tucci. I’m not one to take a seat away from a customer, and luckily EMC TV had me covered. With a massive TV screen in the main area, I pulled up a private cloud and took in the speech.
After the keynote, it was a great time to take in a hands-on lab. If you remember from my most recent podcast, my two guests were heavily involved with the creation of the hands-on labs this year. And let me tell you they did not disappoint this year. With over 200 stations available, the hands-on labs this year were packed and I’m told customers performed over 3000 labs this year.
With a couple of labs under my belt, it was just about time to check out the solutions pavilion. Apparently, a lot of other people had the same idea as the entrance was PACKED! The food was great, and the booths were even better. There was a lot of creative themes this year which you can see in my full list of photos.
Day 2
The next started with Matt Brender and Tyler Altrup having a Buzz Session about Project R.A.M.P. Matt spoke to us about Project R.A.M.P in the most recent podcast we did. The buzz session was great (except when Tyler butchered my last name). You can watch it below (and yes you’ll see me in the video too).
I had completed the special mission for EMC world and received my extra ramp badges, so I was in good standing. Actually, I may have cheated a little and got my badge scanned at a required booth that wasn’t open the night before
The afternoon was spent going to sessions. One of the better sessions I attended was hosted by J Metz of Cisco. He presented on the Evolution of Data Center Architecture. One of the key takeaways for me was when he talked about Cisco’s Unified Ports technology. What’s great about this is it doesn’t matter what you use the ports for. You can use it for FCoE, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and you can still use the same switch. This speaks to me because of my work with the VNX. We have all these network protocols on the VNX, and we can just use this one type of switch to handle it all.
With the day over, it was time for a customer appreciation party for all the members of the EMC Community Network. We had a great turn out and lots of laughs. There was even a female magician doing card tricks that even I couldn’t figure out.
Day 3
The third and final day started with my Buzz Session. I joined Mark Browne and the other Legends of ECN (I got to meet dynamox!!!!). The session was great and we got both the customer and the employee perspective of the support forum. You can watch the full session bellow:
With my session over it was time for me to study for my upcoming proven exam. Followers of my twitter account will know that I spent weeks studying for my Virtualized Infrastructure Specialist exam (E20-018). I’m glad to say I passed and once I get a few things cleared up, I can call myself a Cloud Architect!
After it was all said and done, it was time for the closing events. Chad’s World Live 2 rocked! The customer demos were great as well as those who were on stage. Chad had no idea that the Gorilla was going to goose him. Speaking of Chad and his army, the vSpecialists released a new video called “Cloud Freaky”. You can watch it below (and make sure you watch the ending!):
With the evening fast approaching it was time for the final event. The customer appreciation party with Maroon 5. Adam Levine did not disappoint and the best quote I’ve heard from him was “I’ve never played a show where there were more men than women, but we’ll make it work”.
All in all it was an amazing show. There were so many great things to do and great people to meet. My only regret was that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do it all! I can’t wait for EMC World 2013. Be sure to check out my album on Picasa to see all the photos i took (150+ photos)
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.
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.
What you have here is the ability to sync with VMware, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange with SLA driven protection.
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
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.
Today 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.
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.
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!
The 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
With 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.
Ok, 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!
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.
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.
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:
As 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:
Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to HKLM\SystemCurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters.
Right-click Parameters and select New > DWORD Value.
For the new REG_DWORD entry, type a name of DirectoryCacheLifetime.
Set the value to 0 to disable DirectoryCacheLifetime.
Click OK.
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.
The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here may not have been read or approved in advance by my employer and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of my employer. This is my blog, it is not a corporate blog.
If 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.
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