Category: Hardware

Bought a Netbook – Samsung N150

I’m doing a lot of presentations lately that are just PowerPoint.  There’s no need to carry a laptop for demonstrations all of the time.  For example, I’m squeezing in a tonne of information into 3 hours at PubForum 2010 and I’m speaking at Epicenter in Dublin in a few weeks.  I also sometimes think that a smaller computer would be a great replacement for my Epson image tank – it’s a device photographers use in the field to store photos on when the requirements for memory cards are too much.  My Epson’s battery only lasts a very short while and additional ones cost a staggering and unjustifiable €90 or so.

My requirements for a netbook were simple:  VGA port, USB slots, decent sized hard drive and longer battery life than I’ll get from a laptop.  Check, check, check and 9 hours.  OK, it’s listed as 9 hours but I reckon it’ll give me 6.5.  There were machines that claim 12 hours life but they cost another €100 to €150.

Last night I ventured out and purchased a Samsung N150.  No, it’s not the latest, doesn’t do touch screen, doesn’t start with an “i”, and isn’t going to make nerds go “ooooooh!”.  But, it won’t overheat on a warm day, can run flash, and can run the OS I want: Windows 7.  That’ll make it great to replicate content from my laptop and PC via Mesh.

It came with an OEM build of Windows 7 Starter.  That wasn’t ever going to last too long on there but I decided to let it configure so I could see what was on there.  An hour later and the Samsung configurations were still running.  I quickly prepared a USB stick with a Windows 7 installer and wiped the netbook.  20 minutes later I was installing software and patching the OS.  I’ve no idea what Samsung were thinking but that was a great way to make their customer think they’d made a bad purchase.

As usual, the machine came with 1GB RAM.  I really don’t get that.  It’s got one slot but it’ll take up to 2GB so an upgrade will be done at some point.  All the usual good stuff will go on there: Office (I still have to use 2007 to use my publisher’s Word extensions), Live Essentials, MS Security Essentials, Faststone Image Viewer, etc.

Irish Tax Breaks on Energy Efficient Dell Servers

IrishDev reports that the Irish government has added 5 Dell servers to the Accelerated Capital Allowance (ACA) scheme.  This allows the purchaser to write off 100% of the purchase price of energy efficient servers against the profits of that year.  The models in question (there are limited specifications) are:

  • PowerEdge R210 with Intel X3470
  • PowerEdge T310 with Intel X3470
  • PowerEdge R410 with Intel X5570
  • PowerEdge R610 with Intel X5570
  • PowerEdge R710 with Intel X5570

You might know that I prefer Dell and HP (my personal favourite) servers to everyone else purely because of the level of System Center integration that is available.  If you’re a Dell house and you are considering a virtualization project (Hyper-V, Xen, VMware) then these are the models to consider to make the most of your energy, minimise your carbon footprint, and maximise consolidation.

You can search for approved products on the SEI site.  It appears the only approved storage systems are from EMC and only 2 HP servers (HP DL360 G6 5570 and HP DL380 G6 5520).

HP G7 Servers

HP has announced the G7 generation of servers.  There seems to be 3 models to start with, all Opteron based.  I’m looking at a video for the DL 385 G7.  Wow!  It takes up to 2 * 12 Core Opteron processors, 12MB L3 cache, with 4 channels of DDR3 memory.  You get double the RAM capacity and 66% throughput compared to the same G6 machine.  24 Dimms with 256GB total capacity.  You have the choice of the usual ECC RAM, cheaper unbuffered RAM and low power RAM.  There are 4 NIC’s built into it – aimed squarely at, but hardly limited to, virtualisation.

The cheaper RAM might be an option for clustered virtualisation were power reduction isn’t the primary goal.  Board fails?  OK – the VM fails over to another host.

New storage controllers with battery and flash backed caches are included.  There is an extra PCIx slot giving you 6 generation 2 slots.

An SD card reader is built in, handy for OEM provided ESXi or Hyper-V Server installations that boot from a card.  Interesting – HP always used to use Compact Flash.

ILO3 promises much better (3 times faster) remote administration.  The big flaw in ILO2 was remote media.  That’s improved now.  You can script power usage for low power (UPS) scenarios.  There is also a power measurement feature now.

There are 8 built in SFF slots.  You can add another cage to have a total of 16.  Instead of 8 SFF, you can use 6 LFF disks (larger capacities).

That’s a very impressive 2U server!

A DL165 G7 (1U) and SL165z G7 were also announced.  The DL165 G7 has 4 NIC’s and 24 DIMM slots for traditional and virtualization server computing.  Some of the other metrics are the same as above.  The SL165z G7 is for extreme scale out computing and constrained spaces.  It’s a cross between rack and blade servers.  It appears to be of a similar spec to the DL165 G7.

Microsoft and the New AMD 8 Core and 12 Core CPU’s

Microsoft has said that they are seeing good results with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V.  12 cores – I’m not surprised!!!!  Jeez, I’ve trouble making use of dual quad core CPU’s with the typical hosting virtual machine on our cluster.  I can’t imagine us needing 8 or 12 core CPU’s without some mad (and I mean laughing cuckoo smacking itself in the head with a frying pan mad) amounts of RAM.  But I guess that we are not the typical corporation.  The chips are also providing some new power efficiencies that sound like core parking.

HP Ireland Event at Redstone: Data Protector in The Virtualised Environment

Redstone is one of Ireland’s leading enterprise hardware providers in Ireland – I’ll be open and admit that I’m a (happy) blade and storage customer.  They are running this event today in cooperation with HP Ireland.  The goodie bag will in no way influence me 🙂

Today’s event will focus on Data Protector, HP’s backup solution, and how it can be used in a virtualised environment.  The majority of the attendees are using EVA/VMware.  About 1/4 are using Hyper-V.  A couple are using Xen and a couple are using XP SAN.  No one here is using Lefthand.  About 1/5 are using Data Protector for their backups.

  • Virtualisation solves some problems but complicates backups.
  • We need to reduce backup costs – storage amounts.
  • We need to be able to reliably restore business critical data and secure sensitive data.

A common problem is that people rush head first into virtualisation without considering the strategy for backup.

Strategies

  • VM level backup: The argument by the HP speaker is that this is resource intensive.
  • Host level backup: This “doesn’t” impact the performance of the host. Hmm.  There is an issue with recovered data consistency, e.g. is there Volume Shadow Copy integration to Windows VM’s?  SQL and Exchange don’t support this.

The speakers says Data Protector allows you to take both approaches to meet suitable requirements for each VM.

Data Protector 6.11 has VMware VCB and Hyper-V support.  The core product has a license.  It has the traditional bolt-on license approach.  Virtualisation requires an “Online Backup” license.  The Zero Downtime Backup allows integration into the snapshot features of your HP storage array.

Note: that’s probably the approach you’d go with for backup of a Hyper-V CSV due to the CSV coordinator/redirected I/O issue with host level backups – assuming this is supported by Data Protector.

For storage I/O intensive applications, Data Protector can take advantage of the ability to snapshot the targeted LUN’s.  You identify a LUN to backup, the SAN creates a copy, Data Protector backups up the copy while the primary continues to be used by the application/users.  This can be a partial copy for normal backup/recovery to save storage space/costs on the SAN.  You can do a full copy of the LUN for “instant recovery”, i.e. Data Protector restores file(s) from the copy of the LUN.  This requires additional per TB licensing.  The partial copy cannot do “instant recovery” because it links back to the original storage and isn’t completely independent.  There’s a cost for these two solutions so you save it for the mission critical, storage performance sensitive data/applications.  You can do this on a replicated partner SAN to do backups in your DR site instead of in the production site.  These solutions require the VSS integrations for the storage arrays.  Note that this isn’t for VM snapshots.

Zero Time Backup and Instant Recovery can be done in VMware if the VM uses raw device mapping (pass through disks).

Hyper-V Backup Methods

  • In VM agent
  • VSS system  provider snapshots
  • VSS hardware provider snapshots
  • Full restore of VM
  • Partial restore of files
  • Offline backups for VM’s
  • Zero downtime backup
  • Instant recovery

I would guess the last two require passthrough disks.  Might be a solution for SQL/Exchange VM’s.

Really, you will end up with a combination of backup methods across the data centre, depending on VM’s, applications, and backup/recovery times/impacts.

After coffee, we had some demos of VMware backups that didn’t go so well for the HP speaker.

In summary, Data Protector gives you some HP storage integrated backup options.  Be careful and ensure that servers, OS’s, and applications support the backup type being used.

Although HP and Microsoft have announced their “Forefront” virtualisation alliance, there’s still a lot of catch up going on with regards to Hyper-V knowledge and sharing.  Thanks to Redstone for organising this up in their scenic office in the Wicklow mountains – not exactly a bad place to be just after sunrise.

Technorati Tags: ,,,

HP StorageWorks VDS & VSS Hardware Providers

You can find this here on the HP site.  The EVA download for VDS and VSS is here.

HP StorageWorks Arrays support Microsoft Virtual Disk Services (VDS) and Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) for Windows Server 2003Services (VSS) for Windows Server 2003 / 2008 / 2008 R2 Enterprise and Data Center Editions.

VDS hardware providers enable volume and logical unit management of HP StorageWorks arrays from a central Windows Server Microsoft Management Console. Administrators can discover, configure and monitor supported HP storage devices from Windows Server operating environments.

VSS hardware providers enable point-in-time copies with nearly instant recovery of a single volume or multiple volumes. VSS providers are typically used in combination with a requestor application such as backup and recovery. Microsoft VSS services enable business applications to interface seamlessly with HP StorageWorks Arrays to perform point-in-time copies with nearly instant recovery.

Technorati Tags:

Planning HP EVA SAN Firmware Update

HP have contacted us requesting that we do a firmware update on our HP EVA SAN.  They seem pretty eager; they’re going to send in an engineer for free to do the update.  We’ll be responsible for the blade HBA mezzanine cards and virtual connect updates.  There’s compatibility lists for the entire set of firmwares in the blade enclosure and the SAN.  So I’m expecting precise instructions and schedules on this stuff.

Technorati Tags:

Additional Hardware For My Hyper-V Laptop

Today I received my additional 4GB RAM and an eSATA hard drive caddy.  The Dell Latitude 6500 takes 2 memory boards.  The original in mine had 4GB RAM.  I added an additional 4GB board this morning.  I’m running Windows 7 x64 on my smaller hard disk so I’ll be able to use all that memory when booted up in the desktop OS.

There’s an eSATA socket which gives me great performance for external storage.  I had installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on the Dell supplied 250GB SATA disk.  I don’t want to be “opening” up the laptop and using a screwdriver every time I want to change OS.  Plus I didn’t want to do native VHD because it would eat up disk space on a single laptop disk.

I put the Server disk into the caddy.  Plugging in it’s two cables into the laptop (USB power and eSATA) gives me that disk.  When I hit F12 to see my boot options the disk caddy appears – as the next boot device after the internal disk.  I can select it and go into my Hyper-V demo environment.  How sweet is that?  The caddy was around €25 including courier delivery, is not much bigger than a 2.5” SATA drive and comes with a little wallet to protect it.  This is a seriously cool and flexible demo lab now.

New Hyper-V Laptop

I got a new laptop yesterday.  It’s primary role will be to run Hyper-V and VMM so I can use it for user group events, various speaking engagements, writing work, etc.  It’s a pretty powerful machine:

  • Dell Latitude 6500
  • Intel Centrino dual core 2.8GHz
  • 1 * 4GB RAM
  • 7.6K 250GB SATA drive
  • Long life battery

The first thing I did last night was order an additional 4GB of RAM to max it out at 8GB.  That’ll allow me to run lots of VM’s.  I had a few options on how I would build the OS on this machine.  It will be running Windows Server 2008 R2 but I also want to use it for normal stuff, i.e. Windows 7.

I considered setting up a boot-from-VHD option:

  • Windows 7 native with Server in a VHD.  The problem here is that I’d like to run demo machines on the internal disk where possible in smaller demos.
  • Server native with Windows 7 in a VHD.  The problem here is that the VHD would really have to be quite big and eat up disk.

That’s when I remembered I had another 160GB 7.6K SATA drive.  I’ve installed Windows 7 on the 160GB drive and Windows Server 2008 R2 on the 250GB drive.  That gives me two isolated environments.

First thing I did was check the BIOS was up to date (A16).  Then I enabled CPU assisted virtualisation and DEP in the BIOS.  Windows 7, Live Essentials, Microsoft Security Essentials, Office, Visio, Adobe Reader, Faststone Image Viewer all went onto the Windows 7 x64 build.  I went x64 so the machine could use all 8GB RAM instead of 3.4 GB.  Dell had the Windows 7 x64 drivers which I installed. 

Next went Windows Server 2008 R2.  Again, I used the Windows 7 x64 drivers.  I set up the machine as a DC with DNS (not to be done on Hyper-V in production).  I enabled the Windows Desktop Experience.  I then enabled Hyper-V.  Perfect – no issues.  I set up an internal virtual network.  I’ve given it a static IP that is not used anywhere else.  That’ll be the IP of that LAN.  I set up the Wifi NIC on the laptop and then installed RRAS and configured it to be a router.  The three “NIC’s” the wifi , wired and the internal network all route to each other.  In theory this means my VM’s can now talk over wifi (not natively possible in Hyper-V).

Why do this?  When doing user group events at the MS offices I plug my laptop into the wired guest network so I can run LiveMeeting for webcasts.  My laptop will get a DHCP address on the wired (or wifi elsewhere) NIC.  My VM’s can always run on the same IP range with RRAS will then route to the DHCP network.  I’ve not tested it yet – that’s tonight.

Next up I want to set up VMM on the parent partition and then get some stuff into the library, e.g. some ISO’s and some VHD’s.  That means building some Windows Server 2008 R2 VM’s.  My primary focus is on the deployment side: WAIK, WDS and MDT 2010 for our next user group event.  Odds are I will set up a small Windows 7 boot-from-VHD image for those emergency scenarios.  I also need to install office on the server for running things like PowerPoint and LiveMeeting for the webcasts.  So far, the parent is only using just about 1.1 – 1.2GB of RAM.  Not bad.

I stopped at about 1am this morning.  To be honest, I think I could have gone all night with it but I have a day long meeting today – oh the joy!