My VCP5 experience and a Workstation 9 giveaway!

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VMW_10Q3_LGO_CERTIFIED_PRO_4For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Google+, you may have noticed that I recently passed my VCP5.  This exam was a long time in the making, but every time I would go to take it, something would come up.  Originally, I was scheduled to start the new year with my VCP5 exam, but a last minute trip to Seattle forced me to reschedule my exam for February.  When I rescheduled my exam for February, I had no idea I would be starting my new job, but as luck would have it, I scheduled it for the same week.  So once again, I rescheduled for March.  Hopefully this explains why I had been so quiet with my blog lately as I had spent a lot of my available time leading up to the exam studying.  Even though I switched into a marketing role, I’m still keeping my technical side.  I committed to passing this exam and even made it part of my goals with EMC.

 

The good news is that my studying paid off.  I passed my VCP5 with a better score than I got on the VCP4!  A few of my biggest takeaways from the exam were as follows:

  • Gone are the majority of the questions about minimums and maximums (I think I had only 1)
  • Even more questions were about real world examples
  • There was a heavy focus on performance troubleshooting and identification
  • Several questions focused on HA, DRS, and FT
  • Only a handful had images, so be sure to paint a mental picture from the descriptions

 

My exam prep consisted of many different resources.  I started off by reviewing the material found in 3 books:

I also reviewed the study guide and exam prep questions put together by Mike Preston.  This guide is very comprehensive and full of great information.  Simon Long also has practice exam questions on the VCP5 as well and was one of my primary resources when studying for my VCP4.

 

The final resource I used in my preparation was the recordings of the vBrownBag.  They went through every section of the VCP5 exam blueprint and is great to listen to.  I only wish that they did it again so that I could have asked my questions live.

 

So on to the giveaway.  One of the rewards for passing the VCP5 is a free VMware Workstation 9 license.  I want to give back to the community that has helped me so much, so I’m giving this key away to someone who needs it.  Wining this license key is simple:

  • Make sure you are following me on twitter
  • Leave a comment here telling me something about your VCP5 exam experience (or study plans if you haven’t taken the exam).  A helpful tip, a gotcha, anything will do and there is no wrong answer here!
  • Make sure that you also put your twitter handle in your comment (I will need this to DM you if you win)

The winner will be selected at random and you will earn an extra entry if you tweet about this blog post and mention my twitter handle in the tweet.  I’m going to to do this quick, so the contest will close at 12:01 AM Eastern on April 1st, 2013 and I will contact the winner shortly after that.

VNX INYO MR1–The Future is Now

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EMC World 2012 - Day 1 150With a new year, comes a HUGE update to the VNX family.  As Chad Sakac reveled earlier in the year, INYO was the code name for the VNX FILE OE 7.1 and BLOCK OE 05.32 code release that surfaced last year.  Now, the time has come for a major update to the code, and with it some exciting new features.

 

VNX OE for FILE

On the FILE side, the biggest (and what I think is the most exciting) feature coming is support for SMB 3.0 and the VNX is the first array to support this.  Back in October of 2012, Microsoft released it’s latest versions of the Windows Operating system (Windows 8 and Server 2012).  With that came the latest enhancements to the SMB protocol (for more information, click here to read a great blog post by Microsoft).  With this upgrade (and the use of the SMB 3.0 protocol) you get a much less disruptive failover which includes keeping the open state of a file and file lock.  You will also notice enhanced throughput by being able to take advantage of the Multi Path IO over SMB 3.0 without the need to configure LACP or EtherChannel.

 

VNX OE for BLOCK

On the BLOCK side, the VNX gains support for ODX support and the ability to Offloaded copies to the array.  This cuts down on host CPU as well as SAN bandwidth as the transfers don’t leave the array.  This is done by breaking down the copy into a series of tokens and passing them between the hosts while the data is passed between luns (as demonstrated in the chart below)

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A couple of things to note.  This does require an enabler, but you do not need to reboot the SP for that.  You will have to reboot the host for that (it’s a limitation of Microsoft, not EMC).  You will have to use Microsoft MPIO or the latest versions of PowerPath as well as an NTFS file system (with an allocation size of 8k or larger for better performance).

 

Also included with this release was several enhancements revolving around VAAI support on the VNX.  Most this included the XCOPY fix as described in solution emc313487 as well as a big performance improvement to VAAI Fastclones.  Chad has more on that subject here.

 

Unisphere Service Manager

Finally, there was also another enhancement that I wish I had when I was in tech support.  Starting with the new version of Unisphere Service Manager (1.2.26.1.0068) you will now find a 1-click health check available after the main login.  You may remember a previous blog post I did on how to run health checks on the VNX.  Now you can run a single check to verify the health of your array (BLOCK, FILE, or Unified).  Just click the health check link on the right hand side.  I have attached a screen shot below to show what the output of a healthy array looks like.

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So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and enjoy these new enhancements.  Remember, you don’t have to wait for EMC to upgrade your array, you can do it yourself using USM.

Moving on towards the big picture

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thebigpictureRecently I celebrated my 3 year mark with working at EMC.  In that time I went through the GSAP program (more info on my blog post of my 2 year anniversary), assisted customers in USD tech support, and most recently helped cultivate a proactive social support model for our team.  Over that time, I’ve only had to change desks once but changed managers 9 times.

 

Well I am proud to announce that as of Monday, February 11th, 2013, I will be changing desks and managers again.  I have accepted an opportunity to join EMC’s Social Media Marketing team!  This is the same great team that my friend Matt Brender joined a year ago and I am extremely excited to be working together again at EMC.

 

I’m not exactly sure what the future will hold with this job, and that is what attracted me to it.  I have been working with the team ad-hoc style for the past year already participating in brainstorming sessions for R.A.M.P and EMC Elect.  I can only imagine what projects and ideas will come in 2013 as a good amount of this job will be brainstorming and creating them.

 

While I am moving away from being dedicated to VNX, I plan to still stay heavily involved with the storage and virtualization communities and blog about new and exciting technologies as well as things I interact with as part of my new role.

Please Welcome Isilon Remote Support to EMC

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416First, I want to apologize for only having 1 blog post in January.  In an earlier blog post, I stated that I was kicking off 2013 with a trip to Seattle, WA.  Seattle is home to the headquarters of Isilon, one of EMC’s more recent acquisitions.  While the initial purchase and sale went through a while ago, it was only recently that the installation, sales contracts, and support system was converted over to what EMC has been using for years.  For 2 and a half weeks, I went on site to help the Isilon Remote Support staff understand the inner workings of the new ticket system known as “Service Center” and how it related to their existing system based on SalesForce.

 

Decisions were made as to what would be converted over and what wouldn’t be.  The existing SalesForce database would still be available to support, but in a read only instance.  This would be because only cases that were still open on Saturday January 12th were going to be converted over.  Older closed cases would still remain in the old system for reference, and new cases would be created in EMC’s system only.

 

I’ve been in support long enough to know that not every migration goes according to plan.  As far as this one went, there weren’t too many major issues.  The minor ones were remedied quickly and it seems like everything is finished.  Existing EMC customers should be familiar with the online support interface.  Your Isilon arrays would show up under existing sites if the address on file matched, otherwise you may need to search for new site IDs to follow.

 

The culture over at Isilon is still very much like a startup and I loved it.  Moral is high and it seams people really enjoy their job and care about the customers they help.  It’s no surprise that it was voted one of the best places to work in Seattle.  With any major change to a business process, it is going to take some time for those involved to get used to it.  It seems like everyone was able to adjust quickly and by the end of my stay, the support engineers seemed well adjusted to the new system and processes.

 

All in all I think the conversion was a huge success and I hope you will join me in welcoming the Isilon Remote Support team to EMC.

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On a side note: I had some free time to see the sights of Seattle.  I posted a large collection of photos from my trip (broken down by day) and I hope you enjoy them.

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary112013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary172013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary192013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary202013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary262013

EMC Elect 2013 – Thank you!

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imageAround 2 months ago I wrote about EMC Elect.  This new recognition program is similar to Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert.  When I wrote about the subject initially, I had just received word that I was nominated from a reader.  Fast forward to now, and I received word that I have been accepted as one of the 75 EMC Elect 2013.

 

I want to thank everyone who reads my blog, talks with me on twitter, or interacts with me on ECN or in person.  I am honored that you find my posts and insight so great and I want to keep that going through 2013 and beyond.

 

I ask that everyone please join me in congratulating the other members of EMC Elect 2013.  We have an amazing group of individuals this year and every one of them deserves this recognition.

 

Again, thank you all for making this happen and look forward to more great EMC posts!

My 2012 in review (and a look towards 2013)

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2012I find myself on this new years eve (after digging out from 10 inches of snow) reflecting back on all that has happened this year.  Checking in with the old Google analytics website, this year I ranked in over 18,000 visits to my website.  That might not seem like much, but that’s a 3x growth over last year and I want to thank all of my readers for being a part of it!

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I think I’ve really started to find my voice for Thulin’ Around and have started to make it my own.  I’ve been leveraging the blog as I can in my role in EMC’s VNX support lab.  This would probably explain why my #1 post is still my LDAP post from 2011 (which was revisited in 2012 with a new post for the latest VNX software).

 

My employer also recognized what I do for the VNX community with my blog and listed me as part of their social media blogging core and I am honored to be in such great company as Chad Sakac and Jeramiah Dooley.

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Towards the end of the year, EMC launched a brand advocacy rewards program called EMC Elect and I was very happy to be nominated by my readers.  Having a great friend like Matthew Brender, I was able to see all that goes in to building out a project of this magnitude and I have a new found respect for the effort that is required behind the scenes.  The founding members that were selected are a great group of individuals and I believe they represent the principles and values that should be recognized as part of EMC Elect.

 

2012 was also a great year for shows and user groups for me.  I was able to travel to EMC World 2012 as part of the Ask the Expert program.  At these events, I was able to demonstrate another passion of mine, Photography.  I published 170 photos from EMC World 2012 and as more events rolled through, I continued to refine my technique and you can see a real difference in my photos from the EMC Forum Boston 2012.

 

Looking forward to 2013

So what does 2013 have in store for me?  Well I’m starting the year off with a long trip to Seattle, Washington.  There I will be assisting the Isilon support team transition over to the EMC Support tools and processes.  If you are in the Seattle area, lets meet up!  Just check my twitter feed to reach out to me.

 

I also expect to use social media more and more in my job role.  Without going into to much detail, I want to say that there is plenty going on behind the scenes to help develop and flesh out a proactive support model as well as a reactive support model.  Stay tuned to the @EMCSupport twitter account for more information and feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns about EMC products or your support experience.

 

I’m also looking forward to the results of EMC Elect nominations to see who was selected for 2013.  Fingers crossed that I am chosen, but if not, I know that those who will be chosen are well deserving of the title.

 

I also hope to be attending more conferences and user group meetings.  I am disappointed that I will miss the NEVMUG Winter Warmer, but there will be plenty more events in 2013 for me to join in on.  I’ve already started planning some ideas EMC World 2013.

 

As always, I like to hear from my readers and followers.  What did you like about 2012?  Was there anything on my blog that you really liked / disliked?  What are you looking forward to in 2013?  Let me know in the comments and have a happy new year!

VNX iSCSI and TCP Delayed Acknowledgement

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vnx-5500I recently sat in on an internal VNX (and CLARiiON) performance crash course that was put together to help our new hires get up to speed.  Once of the things that stuck out to me was the subject of iSCSI and how it works with host TCP delayed acknowledgement (Delayed ACK).

 

Background Information

So what is delayed ACK?  As part of TCP, for every packet that is sent to a destination server, that server must send some sort of acknowledgement back to the source server.  This way the source server knows the information was successfully transmitted.  This adds a good amount of overhead, so in an effort to improve performance, TCP Delayed Acknowledgement (RFC 1122) was created which allows a destination server to respond to every 2nd packet instead.  This has become so popular, that support for delayed ACK is enabled by default in many popular client operating systems including Microsoft Windows and VMware ESX/i.

 

The problem with this is that many storage arrays do not support delayed ACK for one reason or another (usualy has to do with chipset drivers).  What happens in this case is that the array will send a packet, it will then wait for an acknowledgement before sending a 2nd packet.  Meanwhile, the host is waiting for a 2nd packet before sending an acknowledgement.  This standoff between the array and the host will last until the acknowledgement timeout (usually around 200ms) before continuing on.  This wreaks havoc on performance if every packet has to wait 200 milliseconds before sending another.  So if you’ve setup iSCSI and you are immediately seeing a performance issue, check your hosts to see if Delayed ACK is enabled, and turn it off to see if performance improves.

 

Disabling Delayed ACK in Microsoft Windows

 

In Microsoft Windows operating systems, you can simply set the TcpAckFrequency registry value to 1.  More information can be found Microsoft kb 328890.  On a side note, I found that if the registry value is missing, you can create it in the path specified in the kb and reboot the host.

 

Disabling Delayed ACK in VMware ESX and ESXiimage

VMware has created KB 1002598 to address this as well.  This adjustment is made per adapter instance and you can change this setting on a discovery address, a target, or (in my case) globally.  Once you’ve made your change, reboot the host and enjoy the performance boost.

 

I hope you’ve found this information useful.  It may not solve your iSCSI performance problem, but it is a good place to start.

Introducing EMC Elect: Nominate your peer today!

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50131_192_198_cacheLast week EMC announced their new community driven brand recognition program called EMC Elect.  This nomination based title is bestowed upon members who bring added value to the community and is open to customers, partners, and employees alike.  This new brand advocacy program comes on the heels over other successful endeavors such as the Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert programs.

 

You may be asking yourself, “I’m familiar with this program from other companies.  What does EMC offer to those who are voted EMC Elect?”.  Well I’m glad you asked.  EMC Elect members are receive benefits with 3 core values: Access, Exclusivity, and Status.  This translates into all sorts of possibilities such as VIP status at events like EMC World, Access to a private community on ECN, a logo to display on your web page (or resume).

 

With the kickoff of this program, EMC selected 10 founding members who exemplify EMC Elect and offer so much to the community both online and offline.  These founders (in no particular order) are:

 

This also launched the call for open nominations.  By clicking this link, you can nominate yourself or a peer to be a part of the initial 150 EMC Elect members for the year of 2013.  All that’s needed is the nominees name, email address and/or twitter handle (EMC needs a way of contacting the candidate ) as well as a short paragraph on why you think this person deserves to be nominated and what interaction was most influential to you.  You have the option to share or hide your information from the nominee if you want (my personal opinion would be to share it).

 

Once nominated, the nominee will receive a confirmation email from EMC indicating that they were nominated and asked to fill out an additional form.  This form is where you showcase all you have done so that the team of judges can get a full and accurate representation of all that you have to offer.  You’ll want to let them know what product divisions of EMC you offer expertise as well as just how technical you are (you don’t need to be an engineer, they just want to know your level).  Also indicate what forms of interaction you do (Social Media, Conferences, user groups, online forums, or other places).  If you want to highlight a few experiences that you think showcase you best, you have an open text box below.

 

I think this program is off to a great start.  EMC Elect has already received over 75 unique nominations just 24 hours after launch and I am honored to be nominated by readers such as yourself.  You can nominate more than one person, and while a receiving multiple nominations helps, this is not a popularity contest and it is all about what you bring to the community at large.  I urge everyone to please take some time to nominate yourself or one of your peers.  For more information on this program, please read these blog posts from the Matthew Brender and Mark Browne.  They are instrumental for the creation of and successful implementation of this new program.

Lesser known enhancements in the latest VNX code: Simplified Unisphere LDAP Integration

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EMC World 2012 - Day 1 150This is part two of my series on lesser known enhancements in the latest code for your VNX.  Today we are going to focus on LDAP.  You may remember my very popular post from last year on configuring LDAP for Unisphere.  One of the big things I stressed before is that even with a Unified system, you still had to configure both the BLOCK & FILE side.  Well, with the latest changes, that is a thing of the past.  Now all the settings are done on the block side, and the new Unisphere Network Service will push them into the control station for you, simplifying the entire process.

 

imageLets take a look at the configuration section.  Just like it has been for the BLOCK side, you will find all the settings inside the “Domains” menu.  You will notice right away that there is a new option to configure DNS.  This is crucial for you to configure so that both the SPs and the control station can do host name lookups.

 

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  1. DNS Domain Suffix
    • This is where you put in your domain suffix.  This will be your primary domain namespace for lookups.
  2. DNS Server IP Address
    • This is where you specify the IP addresses of your DNS servers.  I recommend using at least 2 here.
  3. Domain Search List
    • If you have multiple domains in your environment, this is where you would list them all in this area in order of search preference.  Make sure your primary domain is at the top of the list.

 

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Just as important (in my opinion) as DNS, is configuring NTP.  You can specify up to 4 NTP servers to keep your SP and Control Station times in sync.  This really helps with comparing event logs against other sources.  One thing to note, NTP server Keys support is unique to the SPs.  It will not be copied over to the control station as it does not support it.

 

 

  1. Host Name or IP Addressimage
    • This is where you put in the FQDN or IP of the domain controller.  It is recommended to use the FQDN here, especially if you are using Secure LDAP.
  2. Port
    • 389 for LDAP, 636 for LDAPS
  3. Server Type
    • There are two options: LDAP Server and Active Directory. Make sure to choose “Active Directory” if you’re using an AD environment (most of you will be doing this)
  4. Protocol
    • LDAP or LDAPS
  5. Domain Name
    • Here you will specify the domain name being used
  6. BindDN
    • This is where you put the distinguished name of the service account. For this example I just used the administrator account
  7. Bind Password
    • Password for the service account
  8. Confirm Bind Password
    • Make sure it matches
  9. User Search Path
    • Just like with File, this is where you would set the search scope to find your users
  10. Group Search Path
    • Just like with File, This is where you set the search scope to find your groups
  11. Add certificate
    • This is where you would upload a root CA certificate for LDAPS. Make sure it’s in base64 encoding.  You will need the entire certificate chain, so if you have multiple CAs in your chain, cut and paste them into the “cut and paste” section.   The system will attempt to validate the certificate and let you know if there were problems during validation.  Make sure you have DNS configured if you are going to do this.

 

imageAfter you have put in all this information, click on the “Role Mapping” tab so we can map an AD group. In this updated version, individual LDAP user mapping has been removed, so make sure your AD groups contain only the users you want to give access.  Put in the name of the AD group (in this example I used “Domain Admins”), then select the Role from the second pull down (in this case I selected Administrator), and finally click “Add” to add the mapping. Once you have all your mappings, click ok and wait for the confirmation message.  The final addition is the ability to configure the level of nested group support in the advanced tab.  By default, it is set to zero.

 

 

Once you have finished all this configuration, you will want to do this all over again for the second domain controller. Once you have this all set, click “Synchronize”. And that is it!

 

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Now it is time to test your LDAP login. Logout of Unisphere by clicking the door icon in the upper right. Open Unisphere again and this time put in your AD username and password. Be sure to select “Use LDAP” and click on “Login”. If all your configuration is correct, you will be brought back in to Unisphere. If you get an access denied message, check you username, password, as well as your user and group search paths.

 

 

I hope you find this post useful.  Let me know your own experiences with Unisphere LDAP Integration in the comments below.

Lesser known enhancements in the latest VNX code: Pool luns for FILE

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emc%20vnx%205300You may remember my posts on the latest VNX OE code that brought with it some highly publicized enhancements, but I wanted to take this time to speak about some of the lesser known enhancements.  In this post, I’m going to talk about provisioning BLOCK luns for the FILE side.

 

Historically, from DART 5.x, 6.x, and even VNX OE for FILE 7.0, if you wanted to provision luns to the FILE side, they had to be part of a raid group.  This meant that you couldn’t take advantage of any of the major block enhancements like Tiering and FAST VP.  Well starting with VNX OE for FILE 7.1, you create luns from your pool and provision them to the FILE front end.

 

For those of you who are not familiar with this process, let me walk you through it.  We’ll start with a pool.  In this example, I created 1 large pool made up of FLASH, SAS, & NL-SAS drives.

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imageimageNow I will create some luns.  When creating luns for FILE, it is best to create them in sets of 10 and provision them as thick luns.  You can always do thin filesystems on the FILE side later.  In this example, I want to make sure to set the default owner to auto so that I get an even number of luns on SPA & SPB.  And of course, to take advantage of the new tiering policy, I have that set to “High then auto-tier”.

 

imageWhen this finishes, you’ll get 10 luns split between SPA & SPB and we are ready to assign them to a host.  The storage group for VNX FILE is called “~filestorage”.  Make sure when adding your luns to this storage group, that you start with Host LUN ID of 16 or greater.  If you set it to anything less, it will not be detected on the rescan.  Speaking of rescan, once you have assigned the luns, select the “Rescan Storage Systems” on the right hand side of the Storage section of Unisphere.  Alternatively, you can also run “server_devconfig server_2 –create –scsi –all” to rescan for disks.  You will then need to rerun the command for your other datamovers as well.

 

imageNow that we have our new luns scanned into VNX FILE side of things, lets go see what we have.  You will notice that the new FILE pool shares the same name as the BLOCK pool, the drive types are “mixed”, and the tiering policy is specified under advanced services.  That’s pretty much all there is to it.  At this point you would go ahead and provision file systems as normal.

 

I hope you have enjoyed this look at a new enhancement cooked into the latest VNX code.  Expect more posts on this as I continue the series.  As always, I love to receive feedback, so feel free to leave a comment below.