Jun 13

CloudCred Videos

Yes I’m giving into gamification. I’m participating in VMware’s Cloud Cred program, err game. And I am shamelessly plugging their videos on my blog for a chance to win an Xbox. That said I will say these are pretty good videos filled with several Microsoft jokes.

If you get a chance to watch them do. Chances are you will enjoy them.

Cloud Cred Task 529:

Built for the Future from Polygraph Test on Vimeo.

 

Cloud Cred Task 530:

Total Cost of Ownership from Polygraph Test on Vimeo.

Cloud Cred Task 531:

Maximum Uptime from Polygraph Test on Vimeo.

Cloud Cred Task 532:

Virtualize Everything from Polygraph Test on Vimeo.

 

Hope you enjoy the videos.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/cloudcred_videos/

Jun 11

VMware SRM 5.1 Delay the rescan…

While working on a demo of VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) I kept getting the following error when I would try to test my recovery plan.

 

[error]

Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.
Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.
Failed to update embedded paths in virtual machine file ‘/vmfs/volumes/<Datastore Identifier>/<Virtual Disk Name>.vmdk’. A general system error occurred: No such device

AND

Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<Name>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<Name>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.

[/error]

 

I was using the EMC RecoverPoint SRA in this instance.

Having seen something similar to this before I figured that I must be rescanning too soon. So I probably needed to rescan twice which was typical for versions of SRM prior to 5.1. In fact you can find several different links that talk about how to do this. Here are a couple I found while troubleshooting and looking for the correct way to do this in SRM 5.1

The links above deal with older versions of SRM and you can’t find the settings mentioned in 5.1 or newer versions of SRM. So whats the answer? Well I went right to the source. Its listed in the SRM 5.1 release notes. You don’t add an additional rescan anymore. All you do is set a delay.

Here is the snipit from the release notes:

[important]

SRAs can send responses to SRM before a promoted storage device on the recovery site has become available to the ESXi hosts. When SRM receives a response from an SRA, it performs a rescan of the storage devices. If the storage devices are not fully available yet, ESXi Server does not detect them and SRM does not find the replicated devices when it performs rescans. Datastores are not created and recovered virtual machines cannot be found.

Workaround: If you experience problems with unavailable datastores, SRM 5.1.1 provides a new setting to allow you to delay the start of rescans after an SRA promotes a storage device.

  1. Right-click an SRM site and select Advanced Settings.
  2. Click storageProvider.
  3. Set the storageProvider.hostRescanDelaySec parameter to delay the start of storage rescans by a number of seconds. A value from 20 to 180 is reasonable.
  4. Restart the SRM service.

NOTE: In previous releases, you might have used the storageProvider.hostRescanRepeatCnt parameter to introduce a delay in recoveries. Use the new storageProvider.hostRescanDelaySec parameter instead.

http://www.vmware.com/support/srm/srm-releasenotes-5-1-1.html

[/important]

For the environment I was working on I added a 60 second delay and that was plenty. After doing that the tests came back with no errors.

I hope this helps you as you test your SRM environment. Remember with SRM test early and test often!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/vmware-srm-5-1-delay-the-rescan/

Apr 24

VMware Horizon Workspace Initial Setup

While building a demo environment of VMware Horizon Workspace for EMC World 2013 I found that if you want to use a domain administrative or service account for connecting Workspace to the vCenter (this is needed so that workspace can monitor its own VM’s health) you will need to negate the ‘\’ for the domain. To negate the slash make it a double slash like this”\\”.  This will allow the Workspace Configurator to connect to the vCenter using a domain level account.

Here’s an example:

Enter the vCenter admin username [root]: domain\\ServiceAdminAccount

If you don’t put the double slash in all you will wind up with is a bunch of log messages about a user trying to login on the local machine and maybe some locked out accounts.

You can find information about running the Configurator’s Virtual Appliance Interface here: http://pubs.vmware.com/horizon-workspace-10/topic/com.vmware.hs-install.doc_10/GUID-6EF14E22-3B13-4163-9B3E-25E19A2E192B.html

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/vmware-horizon-workspace-initial-setup/

Feb 18

4 Months & Going Strong

I can’t believe its been a little over 4 months since I started at VCE as a Solution Engineer in VCE’s Corporate Engineering branch.  Now that I have my bearings with my new job I figure that my readers might like an update about what I’m doing.

I know I’ve been pretty quite on my blog during those 4 months. Starting with this post I hope to get back into the swing of blogging. Especially now that I think I’ve figured out some of my job responsibilities. In this post I hope to share some of those job roles with you.

During the past 4 month’s I’ve been bringing my Virtualization skills to VCE. I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of people and apply my own flare to my job! Its been a wonderful period of growth that I’ve really enjoyed. I also feel that it has really benefited both myself and the company I work for.

Something I’ve been working on for several months is a public speaking program called Speak America. The whole point of Speak America is to help people be better business presenters. (http://www.speakamerica.com/) I took the Speak America training class before Thanksgiving. To complete the whole course you have to do a certification presentation. It has to consist of a bunch of different elements. In essence a sales pitch. You have to motivate someone to do something.

In the middle of January I gave my certification presentation on Converged Infrastructure and how converged infrastructure is like Lego’s (seems to be a VCE thing 😉 ). My target audience was a VMUG group. I didn’t pass the presentation exam. I’m still waiting on all the feedback to come in, only I’m pretty sure its because I didn’t put a sales pitch in the presentation. There is nothing like having Bart Queen say (paraphrasing), “I’ve listened to hundreds of presentations on this stuff.  I never understood what all these engineers were talking about till I heard your presentation.”  Tempered with (paraphrasing again),  “there are thousands of ways to ask someone to merry you. You don’t have to make it sound like a sales pitch.” Needless to say, since I didn’t pass the certification and I have to do it again. I wonder what I’ll choose for my next topic.

I’ve also fallen in to the End User Computing (EUC) space. As some of you may know I have split opinions of VDI solutions and their place in the market space. (Post coming soon.) I’ve been working on updating and creating sizing tools to allow our team to size EUC solutions. As well as developing  other EUC based solutions.

As part of the Corporate Engineering Team we’ve been asked to pick a “VMware specialty” that we would like to “major” in. I have most of the VMware certifications and this was a tough one for me. I finally decided on two. I decided to go with the Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) specialty (if you are a partner you probably know about this specialty) and I chose the EUC as a secondary specialty. BC/DR because its something I’ve done for a long time and understand extremely well.  EUC, because I sort of fell into it when I started at VCE.

I’ve also been asked to become familiar with VMware’s Management suite. This means I will get a lot of experience with VMware management tools such as vCenter Operations Manager, Charge Back, etc. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to work with these technologies and how they can improve the virtualization experience.

I really enjoy working with all the different customers and the different locations. In the morning I might be talking to a client in Russia about the components of a Vblock and how they help their organization achieve a better IT infrastructure. In the afternoon I may be talking with my co-workers about EUC. Its such a wide breadth of topics that makes for a really enjoyable day.

I’ve also been working on a lot of other cool projects. Someday I hope I get the opportunity to tell you about those. I hope you would enjoy learning about them as much as I have.

Until later,

Tony

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/4-months-going-strong/

Nov 11

Veterans Day Flag Retirement Ceremony

Every year for the last 15 years I’ve returned to my home town on Veterans Day to celebrate the Veterans in my home town and everywhere throughout the world. For the last 12 years part of the ceremonies in my home town have included a flag retirement program that I wrote. This is a merging together of several other programs that I have researched. We traditionally involve the ROTC’s from the surrounding high schools as the readers, color guard, and honor guards for this. I provide it now so others may use it.

 

MC:    (Master of Ceremonies)                           First:      (First Reader)

 

Second:      (Second Reader)                            Third:      (Third Reader)

 

Fourth:   (Forth Reader)                                

 

MC:

Tom Paine Wrote: “Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.”

 

The United States Flag Code states: “The Flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem of display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferable by burning.”

 

MC:

“Color Guard, present the flag’s to be retired!”

 

(    The Color Guard, will proceed forward with the “Old Flag” attached to staff.  The color guard is to come from the rear of the of the audience (exact location is up to the color guard) towards the main podium, then turn left, slightly dipping the colors to be retired when passing under the trees.

 

MC:

“Present arms”  (This command is directed to anyone in uniform.)

 

MC:

“Post the Colors”

 

(    At this time the Flag Bearer will insert the flag into the flag stand.   )

 

MC:

“Color Guards return to ranks”.

 

(     Then the color guard will step back and to the side of the flag followed by a salute.   )

 

MC:

“We are here today to honor veterans and retire flags which have served their useful life as symbols of freedom and our country.”

 

First Speaker:

“I am your Flag. I was born on June 14, 1777. I am more than just a piece of cloth shaped into a colorful design, I am the silent sentinel of freedom for the greatest sovereign nation on earth. I am the inspiration for which America patriots gave their lives and fortunes, I am the emblem of America.

 

 

Second Speaker:

I have led your sons into battle from Valley Forge to Vietnam. I have been there though the Civil War, Two World wars, at Gettysburg, Flanders, Korea, the Gulf War, all of them. I was there with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and I am here with you now.

 

Third Speaker:

I have flown through Peace and War. Through strife and Prosperity, and amidst it all, I have always been respected. My red stripes symbolize the blood spilled in defense of this glorious nation. My white stripes, the burning tears shed by Americans who lost their sons in battle. My blue field represents God’s Heaven under which I fly, and my stars, clustered together, unify the fifty states as one for God and Country.

 

Fourth Speaker:

I am “Old Glory” and I proudly wave on high. Honor me, respect me, and defend me with your lives. Never let our enemies tear me down from my lofty position, lest I never return. Keep alight the fires of patriotism, strive earnestly for the spirit of democracy, and keep me always as a symbol of freedom, liberty, and peace in our country.

When comes the time I am old and faded, do not let me fly in disrepair, rather retire me from my duties only to replace me with a new flag so that I may continue to symbolize our country.

 

MC:

Please join me in renewing your commitment to the flag and what it stands for as we prepare to replace these worn symbols of American Freedom.

 

ALL: (Pledge of Allegiance)

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all.”

 

First Speaker:

As you can see, this banner of Freedom before you is worn, tattered, and soiled from use and age. Her broad stripes are no longer a fiery red & pure white, but faded and worn out. The stars and blue background are no longer vivid reminders of our blue skies and great land, of the purity, vigilance, and justice she should represent. She has flown proudly over the years and has done her job well, but now she must be replaced with a new flag to properly represent this great Nation of ours.

 

MC:

“Color Guard, Prepare to remove colors” [PAUSE] ” Remove Colors” [PAUSE]

To this fire we add …

(     At this time the Color Guard is to step forward and remove the flag and staff from the stand. Then they should remove the flag and replace the staff. They will then step back and fold the flag in the customary manner. They are to then step back and stand at attention with the Flag Bearer holding the flag in front of him, palms up.    )

 

First Speaker:

REDWOOD: to remind us of the red-blooded Americans who fought and died to build our nation under this flag.

 

Second Speaker:

OAK: for rugged strength that carried the flag across this nation and today reaches for the stars.

 

Third Speaker:

CEDAR: to protect us from pestilence and corruption and preserve our American way of life.

 

Fourth Speaker:

WALNUT: to remind us of the rich soil, the beautiful countryside and the fruitful brotherhood founded by our ancestors.

 

MC:

“Color Guard, advance”

 

Second Speaker:

The flag of our Nation should always be a strong, vivid symbol of our land and fly brightly in our minds. Our flag is a symbol of our people, our freedom, and our strength. So it is now that I commit these flags, which no longer can fulfill these duties to the fire so that we may replace it with a new flag to properly symbolize our Nation. May the spirit of these flags be born again in the new flag we will now fly”

 

Music:  SOME GAVE ALL – Billy Ray Cyrus (Time: 04:06), or Arlington – Trace Adkins,  Or other appropriate song

 

MC:

“Color Guard, Retire The Colors”

(     At this time the Color Guard will place the flag into the fire.  After which 5 of the remaining flags are added to the fire. They will then step back from the fire and stand at attention, and salute the flags. All of the remaining flags should not be on the table and will be retired at a later time.    )

 

MC:

Color Guards… Prepare Colors”

(     At this time, the Color Guard will advance to where the “new” flag is. The New Flag Bearer will hand the new flag to the Color Guard and step back.      )

 

MC:

“Color Guard… Prepare Colors”

(      The Color Guard will then unfold the new flag, remove the staff from the stand and attach the flag to the staff. They will then stand at attention, pole “at ready” to post.     )

 

MC:

“Color Guard… Post Colors”

 

(       The Color Guard will then “Post the Colors” and step back and salute the Flag.     )

 

MC:

“Please join in welcoming this new flag by once again pledging our allegiance to it:”

 

 

SOMEONE STAYS WITH THE FLAG UNTIL ALL Remnants OF FLAGS ARE GONE

 

 

 

MC {Optional Portion added 11-12-2008}:

John McCain told the story once of a man named Mike Christian who enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17, became an A6 bombardier navigator, and was shot down during the Vietnam War. John and Mike shared a prison cell together. The uniform both he and Mike wore in the prison camps were blue short sleeved shirts and pants with shoes made from tires.  As the treatment of prisoners improved some care packages from home were allowed to reach them which contained small items such as a handkerchief or scarf. “[Mike] took his blue shirt, fashioned himself a bamboo needle, got a piece of white cloth, [a] piece of red cloth, and sewed the American flag on the inside of his shirt. Every evening before [the prisoners] would have [their] bowl of soup, [they] would put his flag — his shirt on the wall of the cell and pledge [] allegiance to [this] country. It was an important part of [their] day. One day the Vietnamese came, searched the cell, found his shirt, removed it, came back that night [] opened the door of the cell, called for him to come out, closed the door of the cell, and beat him very badly for a couple hours. Then they threw him back into the cell. [His fellow prisoners] cleaned Mike up as well as [they] could. [John] happened to look over in the corner of the cell, and underneath the light bulb, with a piece of white cloth and a piece of red cloth and his bamboo needle, was Mike, with his eyes almost shut from the beating that he had received, sewing another American flag. He wasn’t doing that for us. He was doing it for his country. He wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for his country and our ability to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.” (http://www.mlive.com/us-politics/index.ssf/2008/11/transcript_of_mccain_on_the_to.html )

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/veterans-day-flag-retirement-ceremony/

Sep 28

So Long and Thanks For All The Fish

For those who are familiar with the movie Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy you will know that “So Long & Thanks For All the Fish” is the opening song for the movie. This line also has a significant role in the books by Douglas Adams.

In the movie the dolphins tried to communicate the impending destruction of Earth. The destruction of Earth was for an intergalactic bypass. The dolphins could not communicate this because there was a communication barrier. The last message the dolphins sent was miss interpreted by humans. It was assumed to be a complex attempt to do a double backwards summersault through a hoop while whistling the Star Spangled Banner. In actuality the dolphins message was “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.”

That said on Monday, September 17th, 2012 I tenured my resignation at Eagle Software. For those that follow me on Twitter you probably have seen my tweet of “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish” and some other cryptic tweets. This tweet was sort of my theme for my departure. Why because like the dolphins I was departing a known world heading to who knows where.

Today I’m publicly announcing a change in positions and a change in companies.

For the last 7+ years I’ve had the pleasure to work at Eagle Software. While there I helped to create and develop Eagle’s VMware presence as well as having the opportunity to work with many excellent people ranging from customers and partners to co-workers. I was also involved in many projects at Eagle.

These projects have helped Eagle, Eagle’s Customers, & myself grow and excel in the virtualization industry. During my tenure at Eagle we (Eagle & I) accomplished the following and much much more:

  • Virtualization of many environments including:
  • Participation in several projects at the beta level that are now actively used in production by IT teams all over the world.
    • My VMware
    • vSphere Data Protector (VDP)
    • Spectra Logic Blue Scale firmware version 12
    • Many Dell/EqualLogic programs
  • Mobile demo systems that are fully functioning examples of many VMware technologies.

At this time both Eagle and I feel that my departure will provide great growth for both of us.  For me I will have the opportunity to expand my horizons in my new position. For Eagle this will provide the opportunity for some of the highly skilled up and coming virtualization engineers to grow and expand into new areas. A majority of these up and coming engineers have spent years under my supervision and are well prepared to take on the new virtualization challenges as I depart.

I will always think back fondly of Eagle and my co-workers and wish them all the best. To the Eagle team, thanks for allowing me to grow and influence the organization for all these years.

So whats this nerd going to do?

I will start my new role as a VCE Solution Architect on October, 1st 2012. In that role I’ll be spending some time traveling, I’ll be working on some fun vCenter Ops things, you may even get to see me at some of the shows such as VMworld, EMC World, and VMware PEX. There are probably many other things I’ll be doing but either don’t know enough about them or can’t discuss them yet. One thing I intend on continuing is my blogging (I know its not that much now) and my tweeting.

I’ll be working from my house in Salina as its fairly centralized and will give us (VCE and myself) greater agility and flexibility in responding to our client’s needs.

I’m looking forward to new growth and experiences in this role. I am also looking forward to meeting many new folks in my travels and maintaining contact with those I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting.

Cheers,

Tony

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/

Sep 09

Redacted Presentation

Here are the slides for my VMworld Community Presentation powered by vBrownbag on VDP. The reason its called redacted is because until VMworld came out I was not able to publicly talk about VDP and so all of the posts on twitter and other social media sites always used redacted as my reference to this new technology.

If you would like to watch the video you can click here and watch it: http://livestre.am/46Mr0

Here are the slides in PDF format: Slide Deck PDF

If you would like the slide deck for your VMUG or user group presentation please contact me.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/redacted-presentation/

Aug 08

VMworld Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

If you have attend VMworld in the past you have no doubt seen all the contests and opportunities to win this or that if they let you scan your name badge. If you haven’t attended please let the previous statement serve as warning or an invitation for you.

[notice]These tips are not guaranteed to help you win. They are just tricks I’ve picked up along the way.[/notice]

So how do you win the prizes in these events. Here is a short blog post on how you can put the odds in your favor so you can walk home with a cool piece of swag.

First tip of contest wining at VMworld is… you can’t win if you don’t play. If you are not willing to give up some of your work place information for a chance to win, you probably won’t find to many contests that you can participate in.

Tip two: make sure you can actually win prizes, some organizations and lots of government entities have rules about winning prizes from vendors. Check your job contract to make sure its not an issue.

Tip three: Have fun, if you treat these contests as serious work chances are you won’t enjoy it when you win it.

Tip four: Don’t be afraid to tell the booth babes (have an opinion on this but that another blog post some other time) that you are primary interested in the prize. As someone who spends time with a sales team you’ve got to dig though a lot of dirt to find a diamond, the booth babes get paid regardless of if you buy something.

Tip five part 1: contests where you drop your business card in a bowl or fill out a form have better odds. Why because it takes longer for you. When it requires a longer time investment fewer people are willing to participate.

Tip five part 2: anytime its a drawing from a paper (form, business card, etc.) crumple the paper up then straighten it out before putting it in the bowl, stack, etc. What this does is create a different texture of your card and who ever is drawing will be more likely to gravitate towards your crumpled up piece of paper and make you the winner.

Rule six: Get on twitter for  the conference and follow the vendors who have the prizes you want to win. For example last year EMC held a #vHunt. If you completed the days tasks you were entered in a drawing for some very cool stuff.

Tip seven: look around for contest details prior to the event. Some have already started talking about what they are giving away this year along with additional ways to get your name in the drawing.

Tip eight: Get scanned in large groups. If you find something you really want you can get scanned once by just talking with the sales people at the booth. If you are there in a large group though most of the time the people scanning don’t pay attention to if they’ve scanned you before or not. That means you get in the drawings more.

Tip nine: The more work that goes into a drawing the fewer people will enter. Last year at VMworld SunGuard had a contest to take their stuffed animals (Olivia was the only one I got) around Vegas, show them a good time, and post the pictures to facebook. There were about 14 people who entered the contest, those are pretty good odds for a very nice apple product.

Tip ten: some drawings don’t end when the exchange closes. SunGuard’s drawing didn’t end till midnight of the next day following VMworld. That means you have plenty of time to get your entries in.

Tip eleven: you won that wonderful new toy you wanted. Take the time to thank them and take some pictures. Last year when I won a #vHunt drawing from EMC I spent 5 minutes to take some pictures with the sales team and tweeted them. I didn’t endorse the product or anything else but it gave them warm fuzzy’s that it was appreciated and it got their name out there, which is the two things they want. Five minutes for a gaming system seems pretty reasonable.

I hope these tips help you win that new piece of technology you wanted. Cheers

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/vmworld-winner-winner/

Jul 27

Funny ways to explain things… Part II (VMware)

My first blog post on how to explain technical things to non-technical people I talked about how I explain storage concepts surrounding EqualLogic and VMware. (https://www.wondernerd.net/funny-ways-to-explain-things/) In today’s post I’m going to share some on how I explain Virtualization concepts to non-techies.

Before we get started I hope this series of posts doesn’t qualify me as a Sales Person, I’d be happy with a nerd who accepts that not everyone’s mind works like mine so instead of making them think like me (which for anyone who has been around me knows thats almost impossible). So instead I’ll change my thinking to work for them. As always: They may help you they may not. You may even find them funny. If they’re helpful feel free to reuse them. If they aren’t helpful or funny please blame congress. >:)

 

Once I killed a six-pack just to watch it die:

My wife had a hard time grasping what I did when I went out and installed VMware a customers sites. So I explained Virtualization in the following manner.

Lets start with a bottle of beer. This bottle is my ESXi host, its a big computer, that’s all it is. We will use this as a container to put stuff in sort of like we use a beer bottle to put beer in. What about the beer in the bottle you may ask? Well the beer is my virtual machines or VM’s. Really liquidy and sloshes around in the bottle. The beer like our VM’s have no real shape, they are hard to hold, and can be poured from container to container really quickly. (They also happen to be what everyone wants to consume.)

During my installs I help my clients become brew masters. I show them how to bring together all the ingredients they need to make the sort of beer they want to drink. Every site has different things they want in their beer. The same is true for their virtual environment. They take different things that are physical assets and we turn them into something fluid. IE a virtual machine or a VM.

So we’ve got all these bottles of beer or physical servers with VM’s now what? It doesn’t seem like we’ve accomplished much. All we did was take several systems and combine them into one? That’s not helpful if we drop the bottle all we’ve got is a big mess!

You’re absolutely right. We need something to keep all of our bottles together and protect them from falling. Well we have this. Its the vCenter for the virtual environment its call a six-pack to most beer drinkers. Like the six-pack sleeve the vCenter holds all our bottles (errr umm ESXi hosts) together in a single package which makes it easy to carry them.  It also helps to protect them. If for some reason we break a bottle and all of our VM’s spill on the floor, our vCenter six-pack has a built-in mop called High Availability or HA.  Our mop will just soak up all the beer and pour it into a different bottle. We’re then back in business! We may be one less bottle in our 6 pack but we still have all our beer… I mean VM’s.

Well that’s great, we don’t have to worry about breaking bottles. But what if the brew master puts too much beer in a bottle or to many VM’s on a single host?

We have that taken care of with our six pack too. We have a distributed resource scheduler (DRS) that watches the bottles and keeps them from getting to full. If one bottle starts filling up with beer the tap shuts off and redirects the beer to a different bottle.

And there you have it a six-pack of virtualization goodness. Drink up!

 

and I-
I took the road less traveled by…

Explaining how multi-pathing works is hard to explain. Now try explaining it to someone who is of the old guard (someone who is stuck thinking networking is still done like it was in 1997) or is non-technical. I used the following example to explain the benefits of multi-pathing.

We’re going to start by building a standard vSwitch with 2 network connections into it.
Why two network connections?
So we get better speed.
How does that work, aren’t they just for fail over and redundancy?
Not quite.
Well then don’t we need to make them a pair of LAG ports?
Nope.
I just don’t get it!

Lets back up a little and start with a story from my child hood. (Really its not that bad!) I grew up in a small town on a gravel road. You’d be lucky if you could fit a car going each direction down the road. At the end of the road it turned into a two lane street with a speed limit of 30 miles per hour. I could take that two lane street to the edge of town and hop on a two lane state highway, it had a speed limit of 60 miles per hour. If I took the highway I’d wind up on Interstate 70 which is 4 lanes and has a speed limit of 75 miles per hour. From there I could go anywhere and get there fast!

See it was dull but it wasn’t that bad now was it?
So whats that story have to do with multi-pathing?
I just described your network. That slow gravel road in front of my house, well that’s like the 10base2 network you have running to that old box with the 5 1/4 floppy you use to run that application that they stopped making 15 years ago. And that paved road, that’s the 10/100 network that goes out to all the desktops. Its fast enough to do what the end user need to do. And of course that state highway. Its a gigabit link from those switches back to the data center.

Now let me guess your data center only has gigabit in it? So that interstate can’t be 10 gig can it?
Yeup, you loose!
You’re right! The interstate isn’t going to let me go much faster than I could on the two lane state highway. But the interstate lets me move more efficiently. 
How?
That’s simple, the highway is nice and flat, with long curves, and relatively few on ramps which means I can just drive and don’t need to speed up or slow down.
Now what if I run into the little old lady who can barely see over the steering wheel?

This is where we can utilize multi-pathing, I just move over to the other lane and go around. I can do the same thing here with your virtual environment. We’ll take this iSCSI network and set it up so that when one of your VM’s requests something from storage it can see which lane is the slowest and hop in the other one that has fewer cars in it. This is actually the idea of least queue depth.

Well that makes sense but what about all that jumbo frame stuff you setup? That doesn’t seem like it would help all that much?
Well it actually does. You’ve seen the big rigs rolling down the interstate with all the cars stacked on them right?
Of course I have!
Why do you think the automakers load all those cars on the trailers?
Well its easier to move them from one place to the other. You use less fuel and put less wear and tear on the cars. Plus it only takes one person to drive all of them across the country instead of one for each car.
So its more efficient is what you’re saying?
Yes, of course its more efficient!
You just described jumbo frames. They make it more efficient by moving more data from one place to another.

This explanation generally works, and customers seem to be happy when they start explaining how it works.

As always more to come.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/funny-ways-to-explain-things-part2/

Jul 23

Funny ways to explain things…

Since I do tech support, installation, and some pre-sales where I currently work I have to come up with interesting ways to explain different aspects of technology in non-technical terms. Most of these revolve around Dell/EqualLogic storage. They may help you they may not. You may even find them funny. If they’re helpful feel free to reuse them. If they aren’t helpful or funny please blame congress. 🙂

Storage Wars:

I was installing an EqualLogic array into an existing VMware environment. The client I was working with noticed that the guest OS reported 50GB in use and had a 100GB drive. VMware reported that the datastore was 90% used and was 120GB in size. And that the EqualLogic array was reporting that 60GB was in use on the volume. The client wanted to know why there was a discrepancy between each of them.

Here is how I explained it:

Think of the volume as the land one of those storage rental sites sits on. A datastore from VMware is like the building the storage units, it uses some space for the walls and floors and doors but the rest is nothing but empty space. Lets say the site has 120 storage units, and anyone can rent those. A VM using that datastore is like a tenet who can rent as many units as they want. Neither the Land owner or the manger of a storage rental site care if you store one box in your storage unit or fill it up to the brim, you just can’t spill into anyone else’s unit. So The guest VM only has 50GB of stuff in its storage locker. The ESXi host says the unit is 100GB because its can’t use any of the leftover space in the unit. And the EqualLogic array only knows that the total amount of stuff is 60GB (You have to count the walls and floors plus all the rest of the stuff the VM stored).

That’s how I explain the space differences using non-technical terms. I just rent them a storage unit. 🙂

 

Yay! I peed in the pool:

I was working on a technical problem with an EqualLogic group. We had been discussing splitting the pool so that each array was in its own pool. Someone said that splitting the pool would not impact performance of the volumes that were spanned across three arrays. Here is how I explained it:

Lets say I have a 60 Gallon fish tank that has a bunch of water and fish in it. How much of the water can the fish swim in currently. Answer is of course 60 gallons. Now lets say I split the tank up in thirds how much water can the fish swim in now? Only about 20 gallons. If you split up the EqualLogic Pool the volumes will only have a third of the resources to use instead of everything in the pool.

That’s a simple way to explain how pools work to bring resources together.

I’ll add some more to this post later on.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.wondernerd.net/funny-ways-to-explain-things/