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RE: Login / Logout / Update Profile

johnswb — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:03:21 GMT

Thank you for the link... I do have one question about my Communities link. I will send you an email. Thanks again.

RE: Friday Morning Experiments

stonemj — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:35:01 GMT

Yea. I did have a small domain on the current hardware (Serv 2008 running Vmware Server). It work well for the general concept of the upgrade/transition. There will be some things that can not be replicated or are not thought of; making sure you accept relays from all domains, and little things like that. I ran into an issue that our current infrastructure uses BIND on HP-UX for our DNS server. I couldn't obviously replicate that so a Microsoft DNS/DC was put in its place. I haven't run across a major issue with that yet, but I am waiting to find one.

Thanks for the link.

RE: Friday Morning Experiments

rlund — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:37:44 GMT

I am testing Exchange 2007 also, but only in a isolated domain so far.

What I did was create a VM, make it a DC, then made a new domain, in my main DNS i setup the test domain zone, and then made another vm for exchange, and so forth.

I mirror your frustration when trying to test, thanks for the blog post. I linked it on my blog.

Roger Lund

My Blog:

http://rogerlunditblog.blogspot.com/

RE: Login / Logout / Update Profile

Badsah — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:24:47 GMT

Hi, unlike in the past, we no longer allow self-service updates to your login email address. To modify that, you have to contact Customer Service: http://vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=customer_service&ref=http%3A//vmware.com/

You can update everything else in your account profile. If you have any questions about your Communities Username and/or its relationship to your login email, you can send me an email at community_mgr@vmware.com .

Thanks.

---
Badsah Mukherji
VMware Web Communities Team

RE: Login / Logout / Update Profile

johnswb — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:17:51 GMT

I just want to update my profile by clicking on "Edit Communities Profile", but I keep getting an error message saying "Sorry, that email is already taken. Please try something else." I don't want to change my email address, I just want to edit my profile. What am I doing wrong?

RE: Webcast: "Virtualize Your SAP Environment with NetApp and VMware" - Recorded Version Available on 11/14

Bernd — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:37:47 GMT

Hi Joachim,

is there a link to the recording yet?

Many thanks
Bernd

RE: Storage Transport Performance

Virtual_JTW — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:10:41 GMT

I read about Z-SAN a year or two ago. Interesting technology but not exactly a tier 1 (or even 2?) vendor.
The other thing I would say is that in general the solution should be design around the problem, in this case, workload. Exchange's workload is not like a streaming media application but is more like a database server. Our current SAN can handle that fine.
I do like the fact that they keep the storage transport on IP/ethernet, I think it's the general direction the industry is going.
For future SAN purchases I'm recommending staying on ethernet via 10GbE iSCSI or FCoE.

RE: Storage Transport Performance

Virtual_JTW — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:03:07 GMT

To answer your questions:
My storage networking is not dedicated, but it shares few ports with other hosts. I'm assured by my network team that the dual 3750(?) switches can more than handle the traffice these systems are genterating.
I'm running a Celerra NS350 with 2x1GbE connections dedicated to iSCSI.
We're bonding NICs on the ESX hosts.

I breifly reviewed the Microsoft/EMC doc - very interesting. Thanks for the link. I'm told there are others in Powerlink, I just need to spend some time finding/reading them.

RE: Storage Transport Performance

Anthony James — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:35:04 GMT

In the past, I had run into some similar issues as you. After a lot of digging I came across some good information that made a lot of sense. 1. iSCSI is not a good technology to use in certain area's. Using iSCSI for you virtual exchange servers is a risky thing. Even though on paper many "better grade" iSCSI storage platforms have pretty good throughput numbers (I consider anything above 350 Megabytes pretty good). They typically are not able to sustain those numbers. From my experience they any time you try to send large packets they either choke, or the latency goes way up slowing down the whole transfer of packets. This is due to iSCSI utilizing the TCP/IP transport protocol. TCP/IP needs an average of somewhere in the vicinity of 30 to 40 percent of the line's bandwidth for its overhead. It is also plagued by the technology originally being developed to work on the old 10 BaseT copper lines. It was designed to break packets down to fit through a much smaller pipe. It has been updated since those days, but it still seems to break packets down further than needed. This causes slow downs!

My suggestion to you would be to look at what companies are using for high definition video and or video rendering. These are probably the most difficult things to store. They need huge bandwidth to transfer the data efficiently. For this reason they typically use technology that works on the UDP/IP protocol instead of TCP/IP. UDP does not have nearly the overhead of TCP. In fact UDP is capable of utilizing about 90 to 95 percent of the lines total bandwidth. However, you will need to make sure the technology you use has some kind of error checking. TCP has it built in (which is one of the biggest reasons its overhead is so large). So if a storage product/technology works for HD video/rendering, then it should be more than adequate for virtual exchange servers. The one we use in our data center for our virtual machines, and our IP surveillance (we don't use the highest HD available, but higher than most companies would probably use, we use 1080) is a Z-SAN unit. They are relatively cheap (we spent $6000.00 for two model 410's with 4 Terabytes of disk in each unit) and the performance is unbelievable (from what we have seen thus far, and what others have told us). It has been able to take everything we have been able to through at it and not even hiccup a bit! They work on UDP and have error checking built into the software itself. So my opinion is it would be a great fit for you. I don't remember the website off hand, but if you Google Z-SAN, you should be able to find some info on it. I believe the company we purchase through is called MarketStor. But don't quote me on that, because I'm not 100% sure.

RE: Storage Transport Performance

Andrew Cooke — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:48:36 GMT

I have just quickly read your blog post.

IOPS absolutely are the key things to consider when you have exchange on a SAN. This is true of the physical world and virtual.
Latency is unlikely or secondary.

There are some excellent docs on the Internet from the likes of EMC and others. A good start is from MS
http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/exchange/bb412165.aspx

My company has been to see many customers who sometimes fall into this problem. I would offer the following as a place to start

1. Figure out what IOPS you would plan for assuming a green field
2. Monitor the transfers/sec over a period of time to establish what you are really using
3. Consider all of the factors that reduce IOPs available for use namely.
- SAN replication
- Small SAN cache/wrong size matched to workload type 4Kb for ex2003 and 8Kb for 2007
- NTFS format mis-alignment
4. Is your SAN virtaulized (ie mixed server workload)

Other environmental questions for you
1. Do you have dedicated network switch fabric or shared?
2. What make/model?
3. Do you use bonding/etherchannel at the ESX end?

RE: Successful Physical to Virtual P2V conversion of Linux boxes with VMware Converter

daniel345 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:57:40 GMT

In theory, it should be possible to do the follwing BEFORE converting.
1. Edit modprobe.conf or modules.conf and add/adjust the scsi alias section with the following lines:
alias scsi_hostadapter mptbase
alias scsi_hostadapter1 mptscsi
alias scsi_hostadapter2 mptfc
alias scsi_hostadapter3 mptspi
alias scsi_hostadapter4 mptsas
alias scsi_hostadapter5 mptscsih
alias scsi_hostadapter6 ata_piix

2. Make a backup of your current initrd in /boot
3. Run the mkinitrd command (mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.x.y-zz.img 2.x.y-zz), TIP: the kernel version can be discovered by issuing "uname -v".
4. Boot from the VMware Converter Enterprise CD and make a cold clone to ESX
5. Make sure the guest storage setting is LSI Logic before starting the guest.

/Daniel

RE: Online Communities and Company Policies

mike — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:53:44 GMT

Hi,
The general opinion is that internal communities should be covered by existing company policies. They should be written to address behavior and not the method. The same behavior should generate the same response whether I use email, telephone, blog, etc. As part of joining a company, you agree to the policies.

It would be interesting to find out if the discussion around policies is really about the fear of what people will say and do given. The fact that the policy folks overlook is the power of the community to self regulate.

RE: RHEL4 U3, RHEL4 U4, SLES9 SP3, and SLES10 File Systems Might Become Read-Only

dswillem — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:21:26 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to download the driver for RHEL U4 64-bit, which should be located at http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/newMPTscsi/mptscsi-gosd-3.02.62-2vmw.i386.rpm.
Unfortunately I get a webpage cannot be found error on this link.

Is there any other way I could download this driver?

Thanks in advance,

Danny.

RE: Site Recovery Manager is a Hit!

Virtual_JTW — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:02:17 GMT

I don't use netapp but I'm always curious how different storage vendors have implemented the SRM integration part.
I'll take a look - thanks.

RE: Why is everyone talking about virtualization

manishisarda — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:01:51 GMT

If you are agree on doing virtualization on a point that it can run multiple OS on single machine then you need to answer on followings
1. Which virtualization vendor to choose?
2. Need extra expertise in field of virtualization ?
3. Vendor will tell you the addtional feature. you agree on it. he will give you long list of what new hardware you need, what kind of licencing you need, the cost associated with each features, maintenance and lots of ect stuffs.

at the end you find yourself in forest of virtualization where there is no way out !!!!

RE: Why is everyone talking about virtualization

arpit.pune — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:57:37 GMT

I think everyone should use Virtualization as because of its advantages are much more compare to its disadvantageswhich will be solved in coming days within short time.

RE: Why is everyone talking about virtualization

prasadaphale — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:57:35 GMT

Please let others comment and then if required you can reply them...

RE: Why is everyone talking about virtualization

prasadaphale — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:55:34 GMT

The idea is really good.... But you should cite references and sources of inspiration while posting it.. Anyways.. You are inviting everyone for a brainstorming session may be..
Nice one..
Lets start..
I think we should do it.. cos .. umm .. may be we cant afford many physical machines.. e.g. i need to use linux (many flavours), windows on a single machine.. as i cant afford n machines to run n OS.. i think virtualization is good option..

RE: Why is everyone talking about virtualization

manishisarda — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:47:44 GMT

May be no one understands its power.

RE: Site Recovery Manager is a Hit!

tomas — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:45:08 GMT

you can see the results at www.tendam.info