Lewan has been selected as one of only 10 go to partners in North America for Dell’s Cloud Client Computing Partner Program. Lewan’s capabilities in the applications delivery and client computing space has been recognized one again by our customers and vendor community as we continue to invest in this fast growing technology area. Lewan is a Dell Premier Partner, Citrix Platinum Partner and a VMware Premier Partner with a breadth of capabilities and specializes in delivering solutions in this space.
Category Archives: Dell
Join us in Boulder next week for our 40th celebration
Lewan has grown from calculator sales into a comprehensive lineup of IT and printing solutions, but our commitment to local service and support has never wavered since 1972. Stop by for an afternoon of celebration at the Dairy Center for the Arts. Our vendor sponsors will have booths setup and we’ll have music, refreshments, giveaways, prizes and more.
Lewan & Associates 40th Anniversary Celebration – Boulder
Wednesday October 3 | 3:30-6 pm | Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder
RSVP at www.lewan40th.com
Lewan is Dell’s Partner of the Year!
The annual awards honor Dell partners for delivering exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year, and guess what? Lewan is Dell’s Partner of the Year! We often tell customers and prospects of our expertise with Dell hardware and software solutions but I’m guessing most of them just think that’s a sales pitch, it’s not, it’s a fact.
I’m excited to have received this recognition directly from Dell…more confirmation of what we already know…we’re really good at this stuff!
The full story is here; http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites/channel/en_us/Pages/PartneroftheYear.aspx
First few hours on the Motorola Xoom
Just spend my first few hours on the Motorola Xoom that we have acquired for our Desktop Virtualization showroom!
http://danbrinkmann.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/my-first-few-hours-with-the-motorola-xoom/
The list of hardware and software continues to climb. Any vendors want to get on the list?
- Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop
- VMware View
- VMware vSphere
- AppSense
- Wyse Xenith
- HP Thin Clients (various)
- HP 8440p laptop (Citrix XenClient capable)
- Streamed VHD delivery to HP All-in-one PC
- Motorola Xoom
- iPad 2
- Dell Equallogic storage
- HP P4000 (older Lefthand units running latest SANiQ)
- NetApp
- Dell m600 and m610 blades (thank you VERY much Dell for the additional memory!!!!
Soon to be added… Fusion-io card…wurd!
How-To : Dell MD3000i – Defragmenting the Disk Group (Merging Free Capacity within a Disk Group)
This lesson will show how to defragment the disk group on a Dell MD3000i storage array. Defragementing the disk group will merge and free up capacity within the disk group.
Why the need to Defragment the Disk Group?
We can see the issue that is caused when we have deleted virtual disks inside a disk group by clicking on the "Disk Groups & Virtual Disks" link under the Summary tab on the Dell Storage Manager application.
As shown above, you will see areas of "Free Capacity" which are stranded from each other, as they are not contiguous.
Performing the Disk Group Defragment
To perform the disk group defragment, you will need to have installed the Dell MD Storage Manager CLI/Utilities onto a host (usually the same host that has the Dell Storage Manager installed will have the Storage Manager CLI installed as well).
You will use the "SMcli" utility to issue commands to the Dell MD3000i storage array, which is located under the following path depending on your operating system type:
C:Program Files (x86)DellMD Storage Managerclient = 64bit Operating System
C:Program FilesDellMD Storage Managerclient = 32bit Operating System
Type the following command in order to start the disk group defragment:
smcli -n hostname -p password -c "start diskgroup [1] defragment;"
The "hostname" field above should be replaced with the actual hostname of the storage array.
The "password" field above should be replaced with the configuration password for the array.
The diskGroup # is actually the identifier of the disk group. Ours happens to be the number "1".
Next you should receive a screen like the above which shows the command completing successfully.
Verifying and Monitoring the Disk Group Defragment
You can verify that the disk group defragment worked by looking at the Disk Groups and Virtual Disks summary again. It should now no longer show multiple "Free Capacity" entries! (1)
Notice the icon has changed for the virtual disk (2) which shows it is defragmenting the data.
To monitor the process of the defrag, you have to look at a virtual disk that is being defragmented. Use the following command:
SMcli -n hostname -p mypassword -c "show virtualDisk [vdiskname] actionProgress;"
The "hostname" field above should be replaced with the actual hostname of the storage array.
The "password" field above should be replaced with the configuration password for the array.
The "vdiskname" field above should be replaced with the virtual disk name.
Once the command executes, you should see the Defragment operation running as well as the percentage complete. Defragmenting the virtual disk will usually take awhile, so be patient during this process.
Changing the Virtual Disk Rebuild Priority
In order to speed up the defragment operation or any other RAID rebuild process, you can run the following command:
smcli -n hostname -p mypassword -c "set virtualDisk [virtualDiskName] modificationPriority=highest;"
The "hostname" field above should be replaced with the actual hostname of the storage array.
The "password" field above should be replaced with the configuration password for the array.
The "vdiskname" field above should be replaced with the virtual disk name.
Once the command executes, you should see a screen like the above.
You can confirm the rebuild priority was changed by using the command listed above for monitoring the virtual disk. This will also show the rebuild priority, as circled in our screenshot above.
EqualLogic October 2010 User Conference Slides Available
The slides from the EqualLogic User Conference in San Diego are now available on the EqualLogic Support Site:
https://www.equallogic.com/support/october_presentations.aspx?id=9903
(You’ll need a Support Login to access the presentations)
There are a ton of awesome presentations from there detailing some very useful info. I would highly suggest taking a look through the presentations to see if anything might be useful in your environment.
Dell EqualLogic Firmware Alert – v5.0.0 and v5.0.1
I received the following information from Dell-EqualLogic regarding their v5.0.0 and v5.0.1 array firmware.
August 13th Update
Dell has identified the root cause of all the issues listed below for PS Series Firmware V5.0.0 and 5.0.1, which were previously communicated to you. Dell is planning to release an updated firmware version (v5.0.2) addressing these issues on or around 08/30/2010. Dell will contact you again as soon as the update is available for download and installation.
Do Not Install Dell EqualLogic PS Series Firmware Versions 5.0.0 or 5.0.1
According to Dell’s records, you have recently downloaded v5.0.0 or v5.0.1 of the Dell EqualLogicTM firmware. Dell has become aware of potential issues with the installation and operation of these versions of the firmware. Under certain conditions, any or all of the following might occur:
• Volumes might not come online properly immediately after the install.
• Replication might not occur properly.
• VMware V4.1 Zero offload performance might be affected.
If you have not yet installed the V5.0.0 or V5.0.1 firmware updates, Dell recommends that you do not install at this time. Dell is working to resolve these issues in future releases.
If you have either of these firmware updates installed and are experiencing any issues with your array(s), please contact your local Dell EqualLogicTM technical support team for assistance.
Email: Eqlx-customer-service@dell.com
Phone: 1-800-945-3355 (U.S. and Canada)
Dell EqualLogic launches automated tiering Alert Print vStorage API integration in new firmware
New Generation Nehalem Processors in a VMware Cluster
If you purchase new Nehalem processors in the newest HP and Dell servers (HP G6 or Dell r610,710, etc) for use in an existing VMware cluster, you will need to make sure to enable a feature called VMware EVC to enable compatibility between previous generation processors and the latest Intel processors. Here are some links that have some very useful information about this. If you need any assistance or have questions, just ask!
http://download.intel.com/it/pdf/VirtualizationXeon5500_final.pdf
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/06/10/xeon-5500-cpus-and-evc-in-vsphere/
iSCSI and VMware Reference Article
A great post from VirtualGeek over at:
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-iscsi-customers-using-vmware.html
It is a well written article regarding speeds of multi-vendor iSCSI storage in a VMware ESX environment.
