Our Blog – 2010 in Review

Posted on January 4, 2011 by djlaube

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:

Healthy blog!

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.

Release : VMware vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1 July 2010

VMware vSphere – Using VMware Converter to Import VM’s or VMDK’s From Other VMware Products December 2009
2 comments

Sharing an External Drive Between a PC and a Mac, exFAT Discussion, Results October 2009
13 comments

SAS vs. SATA Differences, Technology and Cost September 2009
2 comments

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

Posted on September 30, 2010 by scottpelletier

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.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1589996

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c02481155&dimid=1004743424&dicid=alr_sep10&jumpid=em_alerts/us/sep10/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category/alerts

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028091

Enterprise SSD market to soar

Posted on May 18, 2010 by danbrinkmann

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!

VMware Backups using NetBackup 7

Posted on March 26, 2010 by dougoakes

Configuring 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.

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

VMware Acquiring Zimbra

Posted on January 13, 2010 by djlaube

I thought this was interesting.. VMware announced Tuesday that they are acquiring Zimbra, makers of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite that is well known for a Linux and Mac OS email server, shared calendar and collaboration software (think Microsoft Exchange but for the Linux & Mac)..

A good write up can be seen over at the Tuaw Blog, here:
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/13/zimbra-and-vmware-get-married-cloud-shaped-kids-expected/

VMware Press Release:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/zimbra.html

Using the Fastest DNS Servers Possible

Posted on December 11, 2009 by djlaube

It probably doesn’t apply to most of our readers/customers at work, but at home it sure might.

I saw an article saying that Google released some public DNS servers that are supposed to be super fast, which will speed up your web browsing experience.

Now, here’s an article that mentions a tool called “Namebench” which will search for the fastest DNS servers based on your network and location and will list them for you (if that be Google’s or someone else’s’).

http://lifehacker.com/5420931/namebench-helps-you-find-the-fastest-dns-server-for-your-computer

I ran it at home and it showed my fastest DNS servers were one from Level 3 and one from Comodo Secure DNS (faster than Comcasts’ DNS servers). So I changed my Linksys router at home to use these 2 DNS servers on the WAN link and also setup my DHCP scope to use my router plus these DNS servers. The results are noticeable– browsing is way faster and I’d recommend checking it out!

Upgrading from vSpehere 4.0 to 4.0U1 on HP Proliant

Posted on November 29, 2009 by kfingerlos

I just stumbled across something which I thought might be more than helpful to a few of us. VMware has a documented issue when upgrading vSphere 4.0 when the HP Insight Manager agents are installed on the host. The short version is that the Insight Manager services must be disabled before attempting to upgrade the host, or the host can be left in an unstable partially upgraded state.

The full article can be found here: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016070

Setting Up FCOE on a Nexus 5000

Posted on October 26, 2009 by djlaube

Scott Lowe posted yesterday on how to setup Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE) on a Cisco Nexus 5000. He made a very easy to follow How-To guide, which is located here:

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/10/25/setting-up-fcoe-on-a-nexus-5000/

So what will the impact of Exchange 2010 have on the archiving industry?

Posted on October 23, 2009 by djlaube

I’ve heard several “rumblings” from Microsoft as well as other “Archiving Solution” vendors regarding their take on Exchange 2010′s built-in archiving features.

I thought Martin over at Archiving101.com has posted a great write-up about this topic. If you are considering on waiting for Exchange 2010′s archiving capability to do your corporate archiving and E-Discovery, I’d recommend you take a look at his post.

http://www.archiving101.com/?p=178

Take care!

Provisioning with iSCSI and Solaris ZFS in 10 Minutes

Posted on October 21, 2009 by djlaube

Here is a great Wiki article from Sun explaining how to work with iSCSI on Solaris as well as working with the ZFS filesystem on iSCSI devices:

http://wikis.sun.com/display/BluePrints/Provisioning+with+iSCSI+and+Solaris+ZFS+in+10+Minutes

Here is also a link for a HP Lefthand document which describes how to expand a Solaris UFS File System on the fly.
HP Lefthand How To – Expand a Solaris UFS File System on the Fly

Here’s a great Sun article on using Multipath (MPIO) on Solaris with iSCSI:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-2723/fncpc?l=en&a=view

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