Just like Jason Boche I thought it was time to renew my Blog theme. I had the old one for over 8 months already and it was time to renew it. I tried to keep it simple again and actually downsized the banners. Also removed some of the Google Adsense blocks as it was too much. Hopefully you guys like the result and of course I appreciate feedback!
Archives for 2009
EMC Powerpath/VE
My colleague Lee Dilworth, SRM/BC-DR Specialist, pointed me out to an excellent whitepaper by EMC. This whitepaper describes the difference between Powerpath/VE and MRU, Fixed and Round Robin.
Key results:
- Powerpath/VE provides superior load-balancing performance across multiple paths using FC or iSCSI.
- Powerpath/VE seamlessly integrates and takes control of all device I/O, path selection, and failover without the need for additional configuration.
- VMware NMP requires that certain configuration parameters be specified to achieve improved performance.
I recommend reading the whitepaper to get a good understanding of where a customer would benefit from using EMC Powerpath/VE. The whitepaper gives a clear picture of the load balancing capabilities of Powerpath/VE compared to MRU, Fixed and Round Robin. It also shows that there’s less manual configuration to be done when using Powerpath/VE, and as just revealed by Chad Sakac on twitter an integrated patching solution will be introduced with ESX/vCenter 4.0 Update 1!
VMTN Podcast number 70, Storage…
As John Troyer is extremely busy and has a huge backlog of Podcast notes to publish and I don’t have a life I thought I would throw all links in a blog post so that you have something to read. The Topic of Podcast Number 70 was Storage and to be more specific Thin Provisioning. If you missed the episode you can download it here or subscribe to the podcast with iTunes here!
- vSphere Blog – Details on blogging contest
- vSphere Blog – Winning Blogging Contest Cycle 1
- vSphere Blog – Winning Blogging Contest Cycle 2
- vSphere Blog – Winning Blogging Contest Cycle 3
- VMware.com – What’s new in VMware vSphere Storage
- Vroom Blog – Storage performance improvements
- Virtual Geek – Thin on Thin?
- NetApp on YouTube – The finer points of dedupe
- Yellow-Bricks – 8MB Block size
- vCritical – PowerShell Prevents Datastore Emergencies
- Virtu-Al – VI Toolkit One-Liner: VM Guest Disk Sizes
- VirtualInsanity – Get Thin Provisioning working for you in vSphere
- Yellow-Bricks – Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk
- NetApp on Youtube – vStorage APIs for Array integration
SRM 4.0; where is my SRA?
I received the following question a couple of times already; where is my <random vendor+array> SRA?
The answer is simple, if it is not on the VMware it has not been certified yet. Every SRA needs to go through a quality assurance process to validate/certify it. If this hasn’t been completed the SRA will not be available for download on the VMware website.
Most of the questions I received where about the EMC SRDF SRA by the way. I have been told that it should be available really soon, I am not allowed to disclose any details though but who knows Chad might chip in and give a hint…
vSphere v4.? Beta coming up…
VMware employee Michael Adams just revealed that there’s a beta program for new features or a new release of vSphere.
We are looking for beta participants to test out some new vSphere features currently in development. Interested? If so, contact your VMware account team for further details.
Unfortunately there are no details disclosed at this point in time and of course I can’t comment… I suggest everyone to contact their local account team and try to be part of this beta program! There are some great new features being developed at the moment and participating in this beta is definitely worth it!