Who’s going to TechEd 2010 in the Big Easy? Email me if you are!
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Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Who’s going to Microsoft TechEd NA?
May 24, 2010Enterprise SSD market to soar
May 18, 2010We’ve definitely been noticing an uptick in SSD interest and I feel this is one of those transformational technologies…you know, the kind that are like shaking the etch-a-sketch. SSD not only is the cheapest $ per IO it also offers DRAMATICALLY faster response time. Imagine taking your “fast” 15,000 RPM SAS disk with a 3-5ms (or more in most cases) response time and knocking that down to something in the MICRO-second level…access that disk a few million times a day…yeah…that’s a big difference.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176075/Enterprise_SSDs_to_soar_through_2015?taxonomyId=19
If you want to dive deeper on this topic email me dan.brinkmann@lewan.com , this is a transformational technology!
Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d … you probably would be better off setting your money on fire
May 14, 2010I’ve been using this device since late last year and the problems are numerous…random lockups, never successfully restarts, data corruption out of the blue, network disconnects…
Now I might think that it was just me, just my network, some weird gremlin issue in my house but there are so many similar posts on their forum site with no resolution that I doubt it’s just me. I’ve even gone so far as to call their support to which I always get the same answer, pull the power and wait 20 hours for it to rebuild the disk…if you’re lucky.
So this post doesn’t represent the views of the company I work for but don’t waste your money on this product and I would seriously question any of their “business” solutions.
I’ve been asking these question for years, maybe HP is onto something in storage
May 11, 2010http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/27/hp_3_layer_storage/
They’ve had most of the components for years and recently acquired some of the missing pieces of the puzzle, but conceptually, this makes so much sense to me. I had harped on HP to buy DataDomain, LeftHand, PolyServe and others literally 5 years ago and it seemed obvious to me that you could bake all these pieces into a seamless strategy by providing access a variety of “access methods” to storage utilizing standard hardware and virtualization technology. I just read this post from the Register and I felt like I was reading an old article I left in the drawer from years ago. We’ll have to see if/how this will all work out, but they need to do something to rejuvenate their storage lineup.
Tuning HDX MediaStream for Server Rendered Delivery
March 28, 2010HDX MediaStream is our name for a set of Citrix technologies for delivering video and audio content from virtual desktops and hosted applications. The foundation of HDX MediaStream is the ability to deliver any media format from any media player over any network connection to any device. (Did I use the "any" word enough?) That’s what Server-Rendered Multimedia Delivery is all about. Then, on top of this solid foundation, we look for opportunities to achieve higher server scalability by offloading media processing to the user device when possible. For example, since Adobe Flash content is so prevalent and the Flash Player consumes quite a lot of CPU, last year we introduced HDX MediaStream Flash Redirection to complement our existing Windows Media Redirection.
Even for Flash and Windows Media, server-rendered multimedia delivery comes into play when network latency is too high for Flash redirection or effective bandwidth is too low for Windows media redirection. The SmartRendering feature of HDX Adaptive Orchestration selects the appropriate technology based on the dynamic network conditions at hand. Likewise, SmartRendering recognizes if the user device is not capable of client-side rendering.
Server-side multimedia delivery also supports alternative media formats and players such as QuickTime and Silverlight. The user experience for these media formats over a high bandwidth connection is very similar to client-side rendering, "just like local". XenDesktop 4 supports an out-of-the-box frame rate of 24 fps (just like at the cinema) and can be adjusted to deliver a full 30 fps if required for certain demanding use cases.
So, how do you get the best performance out of server-rendered multimedia delivery? Here are my top three tips:
1. Configure Progressive Display to compress images in motion.
2. Use Branch Repeater when delivering video to remote locations.
3. Use the new High Definition audio codec
VMware Backups using NetBackup 7
March 26, 2010Configuring NetBackup 7 for VMware backup (using vStorage API)
Configure VMware backup host in Netbackup
right-click on master server, select “Properties”
Add VMware Backup Host
Configure Credentials on vCenter
Create the backup policy for Virtual Machine Backup
The parameters shown are not the default but reflect a configuration that seems to be optimal for test environment. Your mileage may vary.
These specific parameters have been changed from the default
Client Name Selection determines how Virtual Machines are identified to Netbackup. VM Display name option matches the VM name as identified in vCenter
Transfer type determines how VM data is transfered to Netbackup host. The san option uses Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN (Note:, LUNs containing VMWare Data Stored must be presented to Netbackup host). The nbd option resorts to a network copy, should the san option fail.
Existing snapshot handling, when set to Remove NBU, will remove stray NetBackup snapshots from VMs if encountered but ignore all other snapshots.
Client Name Selection determines how Virtual Machines are identified to Netbackup. VM Display name option matches the VM name as identified in vCenter
Transfer type determines how VM data is transfered to Netbackup host. The san option uses Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN (Note:, LUNs containing VMWare Data Stored must be presented to Netbackup host). The nbd option resorts to a network copy, should the san option fail.
Existing snapshot handling, when set to Remove NBU, will remove stray NetBackup snapshots from VMs if encountered but ignore all other snapshots.
Configure remaining backup policy options based on backup windows etc.
If options need to be changed (‘cuz mine didn’t work in your environment 
) , change on the policy’s attributes window
Virtual Desktop Training slidedeck
March 16, 2010For those of you who have attended our Virtual Desktop training and are waiting for the slidedecks I told you I would post here I haven’t forgot, I’m just waiting for our 3rd and final event to complete before I post them…otherwise it won’t be a surprise for the last group. So keep checking and expect the slides after March 24.
The Mobile Hypervisor
March 11, 2010Wow, great article…it really makes you think. IT orgs spend so much time and money securing company data and all of our phones are the perfect place to pick off all sorts of confidential data….yikes!
Getting disk offset information with Powershell
March 7, 2010Disk partition alignment is important, let Lewan tell you why. Powershell rocks!
