Posts Tagged ‘3rd Party Apps’

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Unable to Remove Stubborn Hosts from Unisphere (and the solution)

November 14th, 2011

Last weekend I was working in the home lab and needed to remove a few fibre channel connected hosts from the EMC Celerra NS-120.  This is the procedure I followed:

  1. Open Unisphere
  2. Drill down to the CLARiiON side of the Celerra (APM000…)
  3. From the menu on the left, choose Storage System Connectivity Status
  4. Drill down on the host to remove, highlight each HBA one by one and click the Deregister button
  5. Click OK

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Unfortunately, I ran into an issue.  The problem which occurred was that the host I was attempting to remove remained in the host list instead of being deleted once the final HBA was deregistered.  This was a problem because I needed to add a new host with the same name.  At this point, there was no clear way to remove the host:

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Logging in to Engineering mode (I found this on the public facing/Google cached EMC Community Network forums searching for help… CTRL + SHIFT + F12 password messner) did not provide me with additional options to remove the host.

Thanks to the help from Jase McCarty who had a watchful eye on Twitter, I was able to follow a procedure to resolve the situation:

  1. Access each of the Storage Processor Management Servers (http://w.x.y.z/setup)
  2. Scroll down and click the Restart Management Server button (each can be performed in parallel; doesn’t impact storage connectivity)
  3. Wait 5 minutes for the reboot of the Management Servers
  4. Close and Re-open Unisphere
  5. The host is now gone from all host lists.  Problem solved.

This was an isolated incident.  I wasn’t able to repeat this problem but if it happens in the future, I’m ready.  All I have to do is search Google and end up at my own blog.

Thanks Jase!

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vSphere 5 Configuration Maximums Updated For The Cloud

November 11th, 2011

A few nights ago, Chris Colotti and Dave Hill presented a vCloud Architecture Deep Dive brown bag session.  Among the tips I picked up in that session was a comment from Chris that my most favorite VMware document of all time had been updated within the last 6 weeks – vSphere 5 Configuration Maximums.  Basically what was added was the inclusion of vCloud Director configuration maximums:

Item Maximum
Virtual machine count 20,000
Powered‐On virtual machine count 10,000
Organizations 10,000
Virtual machines per vApp 64
vApps per organization 500
Number of networks 7,500
Hosts 2,000
vCenter Servers 25
Virtual Data Centers 10,000
Datastores 1,024
Catalogs 1,000
Media 1,000
Users 10,000

If you’ve been following the progression of this document, you will have noticed that VMware has been adding more application layer components to it.  That is because VMware has broadened its cloud platform portfolio which is fundamentally dependent on vSphere.  Chris mentioned this in his lecture and I began noticing it a few years ago, vCenter now extends beyond just a tier 2 management application.  It has become a tier 1 cornerstone for other VMware and partner ecosystem cloud applications and infrastructure tools.  Be mindful of this during the design phase and do not neglect its resource and redundancy requirements as your scale your vCloud environment.

Enjoy.  And by the way, Chris has a Dell T310 Server with 20GB RAM for sale.  Check it out.

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Add ESXi to an Active Directory OU

November 10th, 2011

While working with vSphere 5 and vCloud Director, I stumbled onto a piece in the vSphere Client Help files that I haven’t seen in previous versions of vSphere (or maybe it existed and I wasn’t aware).  That is, the ability to add an ESXi host to a specific Organizational Unit above and beyond adding it to Active Directory.  VMware ESXi Active Directory integration has gotten much easier once they partnered with Likewise.  In vSphere 4 if I wanted an ESXi computer account to drop into a specific OU, I pre-created the computer account before the ESXi host to the domain.  In vSphere 5, the ESXi host can be joined to the domain and placed into an explicit OU all in the same step.

Say for example I wanted my esxi5 computer account to be placed into the boche.mcse domain in an OU path of /Lab/Servers as shown below:

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I can accomplish this now by providing the full path in the Domain field as shown below:

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The result is that the esxi5 computer account is now placed in the desired OU hierarchy:

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Virtual Bridges Pengroid Contest

November 8th, 2011

I came across a fun contest over at Virtual Bridges (Enterprise Desktop Management & VDI Solutions partner) which is running through the end of November.  The basic goal is to disguise Pengroid, a penguin on steroids.

Flex your Photoshop skills and submit your Pengroid where it will be uploaded to and judged on Facebook. The winning Pengroid will be printed on t-shirts which will be distributed to the first 25 people who submit an eligible entry. Top 3 winners will be featured on the Virtual Bridges Website, Blog, Twitter and Facebook. Most importantly, bragging rights for the year.

The contest landing page and instructions can be found here and here.

Good luck!

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VMware View Client for iPad 1.2 Released

October 23rd, 2011

Back in September during the VMworld 2011 US time frame, I wrote New View Client for iPad Sneak Peak at VMworld 2011 which talked about an upcoming release and some of the new features to be expected for VMware’s tablet based View client.  I saw a tweet from Tedd Fox tonight that the new client has been released.  In checking the Apple App Store, indeed it has.

The new version is 1.2 and it boasts the following features and updates:

  • Optimized for VMware View 5 with improved performance
  • Support for iOS 5 including AirPlay
  • Presentation Mode for use with external display and AirPlay
  • Embedded RSA soft token simplifies login to desktop
  • Background tasking to move between Windows and iOS apps
  • Updated look and feel
  • Integrated online help
  • Buffered text input for multibyte text entry
  • Now in French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese
  • Bug Fixes

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Requirements: Requires iPad iOS 4.2 or later.

I just upgraded and right away I noticed the new interface as well as some advanced finger gestures I hadn’t seen before (these may or may not be new).

The next thing that I noticed was that I could multitask!  This is the feature I’ve wanted the most personally.  I can now stop in the middle of a session, switch to another application or exit out to the iPad desktop and the View desktop connection remains established when I go back to it.

If you have in iPad, go grab your free copy.  I don’t have an Android but I’m hearing a version was released for that platform as well.

Thank you VMware and Thank you Tedd!

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VMTurbo Q4 Release Assures Quality of Service for Apps in the Cloud

October 4th, 2011

Press Release:

VMTurbo Q4 Release Assures Quality of Service for Apps in the Cloud

Streamlines management of large, dynamically changing, shared environments

 

Snagit CaptureWaltham, MA, October 4, 2011 — VMTurbo, the leading provider of intelligent workload management software, today announced new features in its fourth quarter appliance release.  The new version enables enterprises and cloud service providers to guarantee application quality of service (QoS) and to improve policy control in dynamically changing shared infrastructures.

To manage virtualized workloads in large environments, infrastructure operations teams can now group and prioritize applications in order to assure QoS for mission critical workloads.  New business dashboards provide visibility across all layers of the IT stack, and recommend resolutions of the issues impacting application performance in the shared infrastructure.

The new VMTurbo release also adds features to help hosting and cloud providers better manage and support customers in shared, multi-tenant environments:

  • More customizable workload placement policies support a broad range of service level agreements, security policies and compliance requirements;
  • Flexible management of roles and permissions allows assigning a specific scope to a user account;
  • Rebranding support enables cloud service providers to transparently private-label VMTurbo as part of their overall IT offering.

“Our new release is a major step forward for enterprises and cloud service providers looking to guarantee application performance for their business units and customers,” said N. Louis Shipley, President and CEO of VMTurbo. “As more workloads get virtualized, guaranteeing application performance and guaranteeing application quality of service becomes critical.”

Pricing and Availability

For a free, 30-day VMTurbo trial download, go to: http://www.vmturbo.com/vmturbo-management-suite-download/

For more information on and screenshots of the Q4 2011VMTurbo appliance release, read the VMTurbo blog at: http://www.vmturbo.com/blog/

About VMTurbo

VMTurbo delivers an Intelligent Workload Management solution for Cloud and virtualized environments.  VMTurbo uses an economic scheduling engine to dynamically adjust resource allocation to meet business goals.  Using VMTurbo our customers ensure that applications get the resources they need to operate reliably, while utilizing infrastructure and human resources in the most efficient way.

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StarWind Software Inc. Announces Opening of German Office

October 4th, 2011

Press Release:

StarWind Software Inc. Announces Opening of German Office

StarWind Software Inc. Opens a New Office in Germany to Drive Local Channel Growth

Snagit CaptureBurlington, MA – October 1, 2011 – StarWind Software Inc., a global leader and pioneer in SAN software for building iSCSI storage servers, announced today that it has opened a new office in Sankt Augustin, Germany to service the growing demand for StarWind’s iSCSI SAN solutions. The German office expands StarWind’s ability to offer local sales and support services to its fast growing base of customers and prospects in the region.

“We have seen substantial growth in our customer base and level of interest in our solutions in Europe,” said Artem Berman, Chief Executive Officer of StarWind Software. “Since the market potential for our products is significant, we have opened a new office in Germany to strengthen our presence there. We shall use our best efforts to complete the localization of resources.”

“Our local presence in Germany will help us to work closely with our partners and customers, to better meet their needs as well as sweepingly develop their distribution networks,” said Roman Shovkun, Chief Sales Officer of StarWind Software. “The new office permits us to deliver superior sales, support to our customers, and to the growing prospect base in the region.”

The new office is located at:
Monikastr. 13
53757 Sankt Augustin
Germany
Primary contact: Veronica Schmidberger
+49-171-5109103

About StarWind Software Inc.
StarWind Software is a global leader in storage management and SAN software for small and midsize companies. StarWind’s flagship product is SAN software that turns any industry-standard Windows Server into a fault-tolerant, fail-safe iSCSI SAN. StarWind iSCSI SAN is qualified for use with VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer and Linux and Unix environments. StarWind Software focuses on providing small and midsize companies with affordable, highly availability storage technology which previously was only available in high-end storage hardware. Advanced enterprise-class features in StarWind include Automated Storage Node Failover and Failback, Replication across a WAN, CDP and Snapshots, Thin Provisioning and Virtual Tape management.

StarWind is a pioneer, since 2003, in the iSCSI SAN software industry and is the solution of choice for over 30,000 customers worldwide in more than 100 countries and from small and midsize companies to governments and Fortune 1000 companies.

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