It was a great event in Colorado Springs at the CIMA conference. Lewan was a Diamond Sponsor and had the opportunity to present some information related to data classification, relating this information to the impacts of primary storage, data protection and archival tiers and how to squeeze more efficiency out of your storage platforms.
Category Archives: General
Denver VMware User Group VMUG presentation
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Thank you to everyone who braved the snow and attended the VMUG today. Special thanks to Cale Fogel from VMware for the all of the assistance demo’ing and discussing vSphere 5 today.
Denver VMUG nov 2011
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Synergy of The Rockies
Standing room only at Lewan’s Synergy of the Rockies event!
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Following patches must be applied to VMware ESXi and ESX3.5 before June 1st 2011
If you are still using ESXi/ESX 3.5 and have not applied the appropriate patch listed below for your environment, we recommend that you install this patch:
· ESXi ESXe350-201012401-I-BG
· ESX ESX350-201012410-BG
This patch MUST be installed to continue patching hosts after June 1st. The patch updates the secure key.
You can find more information about the patch, and how to apply it, in these article:
· For ESXi, see 1030002.
· For ESX, see 1030001.
Which metric to use for monitoring VMware memory?
Performance Troubleshooting for vSphere 4.1
Chethan Kumar has recently updated the Performance Troubleshooting for vSphere 4.1 guide. This is a great asset I use regularly for any client or partner that asks about vSphere performance – especially those working with Tier 1 applications. It is very educational and addresses the most common scenarios clients experience.
Abstract:
“The hugely popular Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 guide is now updated for vSphere 4.1 . This document provides step-by-step approach for troubleshooting most common performance problems in vSphere-based virtual environments. The steps discussed in the document use performance data and charts readily available in the vSphere Client and esxtop to aid the troubleshooting flows. Each performance troubleshooting flow has two parts:
1. How to identify the problem using specific performance counters.
2. Possible causes of the problem and solutions to solve it.”
It is located here: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14905
Seagate 500GB Hybrid 7200rpm and 4GB SSD Harddrive – Thoughts and Speed Results
My MacBook Pro came with a 500GB 5400 rpm drive stock. I was looking at upgrading to a faster drive. I looked at traditional 7200 rpm drives as well as SSD drives, which are still quite expensive for $/GB.
So not wanting to drop like $450 for a relatively decent size SSD drive, NewEgg recently had a 500GB “Hybrid” drive on sale for $99 so I took the leap. It is a Seagate drive which is a 500GB 7200 rpm drive but it also has a 4GB SSD/Flash component. It then has the ability to “learn” what you use the most, which it moves that data to the SSD area. In theory, this should give you an awesome performance enhancement while still keeping the $/GB price down.
Initially just working with the new drive “seems” faster. Knowing I wanted to compare the results, I noted the time it took to do different things that are normally drive intensive. So here’s my test results for both drives:
| Cold Boot to Login | Login to Usable | Win 7 VM Power up to usable | |
| Old 5400rpm Stock Drive | 1m 19s | 1m 14s | 2m 15s |
| New Hybrid Drive | 1m 13s | 1m 5s (1st time)
43s (2nd time) |
1m 50s (1st time)
49s (2nd time) 42s (3rd time) |
Note – The data on the old drive and the new drive is exactly the same. I cloned the old drive onto the new drive. And overall, it’s getting snappier, it seems, as I continue using it. The above numbers also show that it’s “learning” as well. So for me, it’s been awesome and I’d definitely recommend taking a look at this drive if you’re in the same situation.
Here’s the links to the drive that I got. I did get mine for $99 so perhaps they’ll go back on sale sometime soon.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=ST95005620AS&cid=13025157019588466692#p
Hope it’s helpful!
Our Blog – 2010 in Review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 100,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 260 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 366 posts. There were 172 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 35mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was October 27th with 612 views. The most popular post that day was Release : VMware vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were communities.vmware.com, google.com, en.wordpress.com, equallogicversuslefthand.blogspot.com, and xenappblog.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for sas vs sata, exfat mac, vcenter 4.1, netbackup 7, and sparsever2backinginfo.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Release : VMware vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1 July 2010
2
VMware vSphere – Using VMware Converter to Import VM’s or VMDK’s From Other VMware Products December 2009
2 comments
3
Sharing an External Drive Between a PC and a Mac, exFAT Discussion, Results October 2009
13 comments
4
SAS vs. SATA Differences, Technology and Cost September 2009
2 comments
5
How-To: Setup SNMP on ESX 3.5 Servers February 2009
4 comments
Be careful before upgrading to VMware Vsphere 4.1 if using HP Flex-10
We’ve had two customers impacted by this problem, so please take notice prior to upgrading or installing Vsphere 4.1 with Flex-10. Read links below for more specifics.
Enterprise SSD market to soar
We’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!
