VAAI was already available in vSphere 4.1, and with the switch to vSphere 5 some new features were introduced, which means that as of this release, we now have the following situation:

Some folks will say that I left out Thin Provision Stun, which is true. And while it does help to resolve some issues, I left it out because I don’t really view it as a hardware offload, which is what I’m trying to focus on.

I took the hardware in our lab, – a EMC VNX 5300 -, for a spin in our vSphere 5 setup to show the same thing as Erik showed in his blog, but instead showing off some of the File / NFS accelerations.

To get the VNX to actually support NAS VAAI offloading and get the result you expected, you need to meet the following prerequisites:

• vSphere 5 – You need vSphere 5 installed with an Enterprise or Enterprise Plus license
• VNX OE for File 7.0.35.x – You need your VNX Operating Environment for File to be at least at version VNX OE 7.0.35.x or newer
• NFSv3 – The offloads only work on NFSv3-based datastores

If all those prerequisites are met, you should normally be able to go in to your vSphere Client and see Hardware Acceleration as Supported:

You could also enable SSH for your ESXi host, – do this by going to the individual host, click on the “Configuration” tab, select “Security Profile” and start the SSH service -, and check the support from the command line. For block devices you could enter the following command:

esxcli storage core device vaai status getand get back a result that shows you the NAAID, the VAAI plugin name, and the primitives with their support state. By using the following command:
esxcli storage core device list you get a similar output, but again this only works for block devices, and won’t really help you when checking the support for NFS. I haven’t found any way so far to get a reliable statement back via SSH, but I’ll try to continue looking and update this post if I find something.

In case of the VNX, we can actually check on the array itself to see if we are using the primitives, so I’m actually showing you the output from the array itself, using the following command on the VNX:

server_stats server_2 -monitor nfs.v3.vstorage -type accu -i 1
First off, I went back in to my ESXi host and went in to the NFSv3 datastore that was hosting my virtual machine. In this case, a Windows 2008 server, running an SAP Enterprise Portal, and I used the vmkfstools to create a clone:

vmkfstools -i GI-C-SAP-EPBW.vmdk CLONE-GI-C-SAP-EPBW.vmdkand I set off a snap using a similar command:
vmkfstools -i GI-C-SAP-EPBW.vmdk CLONE-GI-C-SAP-EPBW.vmdk. All the while, I had the VNX command that I posted before running in a different window. The output from the VNX was showing that we are actually using the VAAI NFS offloading functions:

server_2 NFS VAAI op VAAI Op Calls VAAI Op Total uSecs VAAI VAAI Op
Timestamp Op Max Average
uSecs uSec/Op
09:07:14
09:07:15
09:07:16
09:07:17
09:07:18 vaaiFastClone 1 0 0 0
vaaiVxAttrs 3 0 1 0
vaaiRegister 5 0 0 0
09:07:19
.......
09:08:27 vaaiOffloadStatus 1 0 0 0
vaaiVxAttrs 7 1 1 0
vaaiRegister 10 0 0 0
09:08:28
09:08:29
09:08:30
09:08:31
09:08:32 vaaiOffloadStatus 2 0 0 0
server_2 NFS VAAI op VAAI Op Calls VAAI Op Total uSecs VAAI VAAI Op
Summary Op Max Average
uSecs uSec/Op
Minimum vaaiFullClone 0 0 83308 -
vaaiFastClone 0 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadStatus 0 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadAbort 0 0 0 -
vaaiVxAttrs 0 0 1 0
vaaiReserveSpace 0 0 0 -
vaaiRegister 0 0 0 0
Average vaaiFullClone 0 0 83308 -
vaaiFastClone 1 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadStatus 0 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadAbort 0 0 0 -
vaaiVxAttrs 3 0 1 0
vaaiReserveSpace 0 0 0 -
vaaiRegister 5 0 0 0
Maximum vaaiFullClone 0 0 83308 -
vaaiFastClone 1 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadStatus 2 0 0 0
vaaiOffloadAbort 0 0 0 -
vaaiVxAttrs 7 1 1 0
vaaiReserveSpace 0 0 0 -
vaaiRegister 10 0 0 0
(sorry for the formatting, I couldn’t get it to show the way it should).

Once the files are created, use a:
vmkfstools --extendedstat GI-C-SAP-EPBW.vmdk on the source file, or on the snap or clone to actually display the extended statistics. The “Capacity bytes” show the allocated space for the virtual disk, the “Used bytes” displays the blocks used for the virtual disk which in case of our snapshot is the fast clone and it’s parent. The “Unshared bytes” displays the usage of the actual fast clone itself without the parent.

I should point out that the offload did speed up my full clone operation, but it was “only” in the range of 20%. That isn’t a great deal, but using both esxtop and the vSphere Client performance graphs showed that the ESXi server was busy doing what it is supposed to do: virtualizing my resources! And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?

Besides having a button to click to fail over (parts of) your environment to a different site, it has one benefit: It forces you to think about your systems. You need to consider which systems are vital to your infrastructure, and you need to be aware of dependencies that you may have in your environment. There are numerous other things that SRM can help with, but that’s not what I wanted to highlight here.

A couple of days ago, I was at the VMware office in Munich, and was helping setting up a SRM 5.0 demo that would serve as a hands-on lab for people interested in SRM. The base of this SRM installation is a virtualized Isilon cluster, that offers the ability to easily provision storage, and offers replication between sites (a quick video overview by my colleague Nick Weaver can be found ).

While setting up the Isilon SRA which you can download from the VMware website, I ran in to a problem. When you download and extract the actual SRA, you’ll get a bunch of PDF files, and two executables. One is the installer for the actual storage replication adapter. It’s called “EMCIsilonSRASetup_1_0.exe”, and you need a current Java development kit to get that one running, but it should install correctly.

The second file is called “IsilonReplicationHelperSetup.exe”, and this is used to configure the SRA before using it in SRM. Now, when starting this helper, both me and Jase McCarty have seen errors that refer to a missing Java class (com.izforge.izpack.installer.Installer), for a program called IzPack which was used to create the installer. After extracting the actual executable, it seemed like some classes/libraries were missing from it.

I’ve been in touch with Isilon support after running in to the error, and after checking with them, they gave me an MD5 hash of a working copy of the IsilonReplicationHelperSetup.exe, which is:
416535bc1c7d7f133037af04b5502e3b However, MD5 for the executable that I got was:
4342E880A99EE2ED6DA1205F1018233DWhich obviously is different. The MD5 of the downloaded file, and the MD5 that VMware shows for the actual zip that contains the SRA matched up though.

So, I’m putting this post out there as a word of warning. It seems like one of the Isilon SRA files on the VMware website is non-functional. Should anybody out there see this, make sure to contact Isilon support and reference case 00169080, which is my case number.

I’m still working with the Isilon support to see what the next steps are going to be, and I’m sure this is going to be resolved soon enough, but I wanted to put this information out there for you in the meantime, to avoid people having to go through the same process as I did. It might save some folks a bit of time. And I’ll make sure I update this post when I get a solution from the Isilon support team.

Update – January 16^th 2012:

While I’m still working with the Isilon support group to get everything sorted out, I did get a version of the IsilonReplicationHelperSetup Java archive that seems to be working. Now, I’m sharing this with you all while we try to get things resolved, and to get the working download on the VMware site, but I need to add a large disclaimer:

Now, to help you verify this file, the MD5 for the Java archive is:
FFAC907E70FD0BFC73076793B9D5FCB4and you can get the file here.

I see examples every day. I’ve created a service offering, and it goes by the name “Platinum”. You get 4 of the fastest servers out there, 512GB of RAM per server, and we’ll throw in some SSD’s.

So, what do I do next year?

Since platinum is still platinum, what happens when the servers that I ordered don’t have the same CPU frequency? Or people would expect double the amount of RAM for the server? Maybe the price for the Solid State Disks went down, and I can now get double or triple the capacity for the same amount of money (well, maybe not next year, but what about the year after)?

When you actually offer an internal service, it’s key to think about what you are actually offering. Are you describing your service? If so, a general name might not be bad. Car manufacturers have been doing this for ages, – Get the new XYZ executive edition! -, and while the model name rarely changes when a revision came, they’ve added a year, or an internal version number to distinguish between revisions. And you ordered your car just prior to the new launch? Well, you’re out of luck, but we’ll gladly sell you the newer version.

Now change places, and take on the role of the car manufacturer. Would you still call your currently fastest model “Platinum”? When you know that in two weeks time, you’ll be working on an even faster engine?

No you wouldn’t!

You would pick something that describes the product (or service) you are going to offer. If you want to offer that server class I mentioned before, pick something sensible. Describe what the service does, perhaps add a revision number or a time stamp. Instead of calling it “Jumbo-servers Platinum”, call it “Jumbo-servers Q1 2012, 4x XYZ virtualization server, quad core, 512GB RAM, 1 SSD 120GB”.

And if you can’t make the name that long, think of useful shorter codes. Spread the word and show people that you aren’t starting off well with new projects by using gold, silver and bronze as your service levels, and tell them that gold isn’t going to be gold in one year.

Oh, and before someone on Twitter says something. Unobtanium is cool, but I wouldn’t want it as a name. Nor would I prefer Yuan Renminbi, atomic weights or Apple specs. Although those gave me a good chuckle!

 

As the title suggests there is indeed a Symmetrix VMAX VSA. I have been working on this project since shortly after EMC World. As I look back through my emails, I received the code on 6/3/11 and I have been working on it in almost all of my free time since then.

Now finally it will make its public debut this week at VMworld 2011 as part of the EMC Interactive Demo booth on the show floor. As part of its grand unveiling I thought I would tell you a little about what makes it work.

Now to make a few things clear up front, this is a science project, I cannot distribute it, it does “work”. As part of the lab (I will publish the guide) the student actually provisions an iSCSI disk from the VSA to a ESXi 5.0 host.

One of the first things I noticed with the code when trying to virtualize it. It’s HUGE. There are 2 parts to the VSA.

1. The Service Processor (SP). In a physical VMAX this is the 1U server that is racked in the system bay. It has a special image of Windows XP and contains all of the proprietary software used to manage a VMAX. If you own a VMAX this is what you will see EMC field service personnel using when they come to work on your system. This is NOT accessible by a end-user as it requires special RSA credentials that change weekly. (one reason we can’t distribute it). Its specs are 2vCPU and 2GB of RAM and about 10GB of disk space.

2. Enginuity. This is the Operating Environment of the Symmetrix. For the purposes of this VSA it runs in a SuSE Enterprise Linux 11VM. One of the big deals with the VMAX was that Enginuity was ported from a PowerPC CPU to a Intel x86 based architecture. Without this change this VSA would never exist. Now this VM is big, so big as a matter of fact i had to use a RC build of vSphere 5 in order to even get it to work. I was finally able to scale it down a bit, but at one point it was using 32 vCPU’s 92GB of RAM and about 250GB of disk space.

Obviously one of the challenges for using this in a lab is that I needed it to use fewer resources. In the beginning this VMAX was a Single Engine model, which means it had 16 “slices” running. Each director has 4 DA (backend) directors, and 4 FA (front end) directors. I quickly found this was the biggest reason i needed so much memory and CPU. After working with one developer Chakib, who totally rocks by the way. We were able to scale this down to 1 FA and 1 DA per director. One interesting side note, when I was going down this path I asked Chakib what kind of VM he was using to test this. His reply was, “I am not using this in a VM, I have a physical Linux box with 200GB of RAM”. So I clearly had some work to do. But in its current state it uses 8 vCPU and “ONLY” 48GB of RAM. Which is still pretty darn big, but a lot better than it was when we started.

The networking requirements are pretty simple, the SP needs 1 Public NIC so that we can use its management tools. 2 Internal NICs which is used for internal communication to the directors. In our case that’s the Linux VM. The Linux VM needed the 2 internal NICs and 1 NIC to present an iSCSI target to. Then we put out ESXi host’s VMkernel NIC on the same vSwitch so it can use the iSCSI target provided by the VSA.

So that’s all great you say, but what actually works? That’s a good question.

What works is using Standard Devices, and very small ones today. One of the things I was told when I was given the code was that this WON’T and CAN’T do any I/O. Which obviously proved to be a bit of an issue. Chakib really worked his butt of to get me something that does I/O. So this is not like the Celerra UBER VSA by @lynxbat, where you can run a VM off of it. We hope we can do that one day. Thin Pools work to the extent you can create them, and put devices in a pool, but when you present it to a host it will not work. This kept me from using the VSI SPM plugin for vSphere as part of my lab, hey we always have next year! The really neat part to me is that the internal tools (SymmWin) that run on the SP fully work. It’s like having an actually VMAX, but without all the fuss of getting a few 50A power drops. As an ex-customer this to me is the coolest part, I got to put on my own BIN files, use Inlines (internal tool used to directly talk to the hardware). As a total nerd this thing is a dream come true.

So what’s next?

Well a lot of that depends on YOU! Since this is a total science project we need to show those in Symmetrix Engineering this is worth putting their time and money into. I need everyone here at VMworld this week to come try this thing, give me feedback, leave comments here, and if you aren’t at the show, express your desire for us to continue working on it. If no one is interested this will ultimately die on the vine. Please fill out this form so we can show how many of you all would like to see this project continue.

I have to give special thanks to Chad Sakac (@sakacc), Chris Horn (@horn_Chris) for getting me involved in this project and letting me run with it. Also all of the support they gave me during this process.

Here is a link to the lab guide being used this week at VMworld. Take a look and let me know what you think!

VMAX Lab Guide

Big thanks to Matt Cowger (@mcowger), Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe), and Tee Glasgow (@teeglasgow) for their help with the lab guide. Also to Rick Scherer (@rick_vmwaretips) for the blog help

If you know what conventions like VMworld and EMC world are like, you also know that it’s usually tough to find people there. And it’s even harder when the person you are looking for is on the move at a convention.

Luckily, you are going to have it somewhat easier, since you’ll receive some hints on where folks are at via Twitter. They’ll also be changing their outfit ever so slightly to allow you to find them (think of caps, hats and the likes). As for myself, I’ll probably be wearing some sort of cap or hat, but you probably won’t be seeing that many folks in a Nascar shirt /bowling shirt that says “vSpecialist” and is sitting in a wheelchair.

Now, why would you want to find me or one of the others? Easy, we’re nice guys and can tell you a thing or two about virtualization integration on EMC. But besides that, you’ll also get the chance to win some cool prizes like iPads, PS3′s or some Iomega gear, sponsored by EMC, Intel, VCE ,Cisco, CSC and Brocade.

So, what’s the deal? Simple, follow these steps and see if you win:

1. Me and a some others on the vSpecialist team will be tweeting various tasks and challenges throughout VMworld. Day and Night, on the floor, in the labs, in the sessions, at the parties, etc. You can identify those tasks and challenges by looking for the vHunt hashtag “#vHunt” in our tweets. You will find all kinds of things there, facts, trivia or fun challenges.
2. Every time you respond to one of those challenges or tasks, tag it with “#vHunt. Someone from our team will be watching those responses.
3. During the convention (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 3x a day, our marketing folks pick winners based on the criteria above, and hand the winners their prize.

That’s all there is to it, we’ll try to not flood you with tweets and make this a fun contest.

The folks to watch out for are:

• Matt Cowger – @mcowger
• Tommy Trogden – @vTexan
• Scott Lowe – @scott_lowe
• Rick Scherer – @rick_vmwaretips
• Nick Weaver – @lynxbat
• Fred Nix – @VCEMonk
• Bas Raayman – @basraayman
• Chad Sakac – @sakacc
• Dave Henry – @davemhenry
• Chris Horn – @Horn_Chris
• Mark Twomey – @storagezilla
• Aaron Delp – @aarondelp

You can also follow this list that Matt put together, or just search for the “#vHunt” hashtag.

So, happy hunting and good luck!

since there is a lot going on surrounding the VMware launch of vSphere 5 today, I thought I’d just start a little page with links to the various blog posts and press announcements around this event.

So, here goes:

• The official VMware press release: http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-cloud-infrastructure-071211.html
• The Console Blog: http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2011/07/vmware-unveils-vsphere-5-and-the-cloud-infrastructure-suite.html
• My own post (obviously): http://basraayman.com/2011/07/12/vsphere-5-its-here-whats-new/
• yellow-bricks.com (liveblogging the event): http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/07/12/live-blog-raising-the-bar-part-v/
• The virtualization pratice: http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/?p=11491
• UP2V: http://up2v.nl/2011/07/12/whats-new-in-vmware-vsphere-5/
• vTexan: http://vtexan.com/2011/07/12/really-cool-things-in-vsphere5/
• VMdamentals: http://www.vmdamentals.com/?p=2343
• TechHead.co.uk: www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-vsphere-5-0-whats-new-exciting
• VirtualByte (Italian): http://virtualbyte.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/vsphere-5-e-arrivato/
• Infosmack podcast: http://infosmackpodcasts.com/vsphere-5-0-up-close-and-virtual/
• Joe Adams: http://vjoeadams.com/2011/07/vsphere-5-%E2%80%93-whats-new-to-you/
• vNinja.net: http://vninja.net/news/vsphere-5-and-new-licensing-good-or-bad/
• blog.scottlowe.org: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2011/07/12/vmwares-launch-event/
• ESXmag: http://www.vladan.fr/vsphere-5-and-cloud-infrastructure-suite-introduced/
• Itzikr’s Blog: http://itzikr.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/from-nasa-to-vasa-the-circle-is-now-complete/
• Hu Yoshida and Heff: http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2011/07/life-just-got-easier-for-the-vsphere-admin.html
• ntpro.nl (various blogs): http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/categories/34-vSphere-5
• vmwaretips.com: http://vmwaretips.com/wp/2011/07/12/vmware-2011-mega-launch/
• Jason Boche: http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2011/07/12/virtualization-wars-episode-v-vmware-strikes-back/
• vmguru.nl (licensing): http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/2011/07/new-vmware-licensing-explained/
• vmguru.nl: http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/2011/07/vmware-announces-vsphere-5/
• Chad Sakac: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/07/vsphere-5-apd-gets-a-new-friend-pdl.html
• Chad Sakac once more: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/07/raising-the-bar-v-vsphere-5.html
• Rickatron Blog: http://rickvanover.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/vmware-vsphere-5-announced/
• The virtualization practice: http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/?p=11491&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vsphere-5-virtualize-business-critical-applications-with-confidence
• vmackem: http://vmackem.co.uk/?p=611
• Sean Crookston: http://www.seancrookston.com/2011/07/12/vsphere-5-for-the-smb/
• VM’s are free, right?: http://blog.cowger.us/?p=71
• ivobeerens.nl: http://www.ivobeerens.nl/?p=934
• Wahl Network: http://wahlnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/vsphere-5-licensing-model-friend-or-foe/
• $blogname: http://cartershanklin.com/blog3/2011/07/13/vsphere-5-licensing-a-few-things-to-consider/
• Kendrick Coleman: http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/favorite-new-vsphere-5-feature-all-paths-down.html
• Roger Lund: http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2011/07/introducing-next-step-in-cloud.html
• Virtualization Arcade: http://blogs.netapp.com/varcade/2011/07/vmware-cloud-infrastructure-management-launch.html
• vadmin.ru (in Russian): http://blog.vadmin.ru/2011/07/vsphere-5.html
• Kevin Houston’s post on the new licensing model: http://corus360.com/company/blog/vmware-announces-vsphere-5-and-a-new-licensing-model/
• CRN: http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/231001373/vmware-adds-virtual-machine-based-licensing-in-vsphere-5.htm?itc=refresh
• myvirtualcloud.net: http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=1979
• mikes.eu: http://www.mikes.eu/index.php/home/item/vmware-vsphere-5
• Calvin Zito with a podcast: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/VMware-Cloud-Infrastructure-announcement/ba-p/95335

VMware just announced their new version of vSphere 5, and as you have probably found out, general availability is targeted toward August this year. There is a whole bunch, and I mean a whole bunch, of new stuff coming out, and everyone knows what we can expect at VMworld this year.

Let me be clear that this post is in no way trying to sum up all the new things that are introduced with vSphere 5, but this is mean to give you a quick and easy to consume overview of some of the major new features.

Key stuff that is new or has changed in vSphere 5:

• Virtual hardware limits. We can now address 32 virtual CPUs and a maximum of 1TB of RAM (note that virtual machine hardware type 8 is required). We see people running larger and larger workloads, and are seeing more and more people moving their tier 1 applications to a virtualized environent. Anyone who has tried to virtualize a large database or business warehouse system will know what I mean.

  One word of caution though. Even though we can now create very large installations, be careful. This is not a sensible size for all applications, and you should check on an application specific basis if you really need something this big, and are able to leverage all of the resources it offers.

• VMFS version 5. With the updated version of the VMFS there are some modifications being made. For one, you no longer need to use extents to create volumes over 2TB in size, and they have added support for physical RDMs that are over 2TB.
• The service console is missing. Well, it's not really missing, but there is no more service console, due to the fact that you will now only find ESXi as the hypervisor. Although some people might be missing some things without the traditional ESX service console, this does offer some advantages like having only a single vSphere package, hardened security and less patches. But this should probably be one of the changes that almost everyone has seen coming, so I'm not going to go in to the depths on the pros and cons of this choice.
• VAAI has again been enhanced. With vSphere 5, there are enhancements for both block and file based storage:
  • for block:
    • Thin provision stun has been added, which is basically an option to get feedback when a thinly provisioned LUN is full. You will now get a message back from the array, and the affected guests are “stunned”. This allows the admin to add some more free space to the LUN, after which the guests can resume normal operation.
    • Space reclaim is the second feature that has been added. Now, one caveat is that this hardware offload is dependent of VMFS version 5. Anything prior to that won’t do the job. If that prerequisite is in place, any blocks that are freed up by VMFS operations, things like VM deletion or snapshot deletion, will now return their blocks to the pool of free blocks.
  • For file:
    • You can now use NFS full copy. Somewhat similar to the block version, copying of files can now be offloaded to the array, which of course should speed up things like clone creation.
    • Extended stats adds the ability to get the extended information from files. Information about actual space allocation or the fact if the file is deduplicated can now be retrieved.
    • We can now use space reservation, to actually pre-initialize a disk and allocate all of the required space right off the bat.
• VMware has redesigned HA. The new architecture should help people who want to work with streched clusters.

  Basically, VMware has moved away from underlying EMC Autostart based construct to an entirely new model. The HA agent is now called the FDM, and one of the nodes in the cluster will now take on the role of master. All of the remaining nodes in the cluster are slaves to this master, which means that we are no longer using the primary/secondary concept that was common with the previous version of HA. During normal operation, we should only see one master node per cluster.

  Benefits of the new construct are that we are no longer that susceptible to DNS issues. Also, VMware has added additional communication paths, -we can now also leverage so called “Heartbeat datastores”-, that will aid us in the detection of failures. And, as a bonus VMware has also added support for IPv6.

  Since the entire HA stack has been rewritten, there are a lot of changes coming, and I’m planning on getting down to the nitty gritty in a future post, and I’m sure that my friend Duncan will also be explaining this in great detail on his blog.

• VASA, or “vSphere Storage API for Storage Awareness” is basically a way for the storage array to actually tell vSphere what it can do, or what it is currently doing. Imagine getting feedback if your storage is cable of VAAI. Or something more simple like telling vSphere what RAID level a datastore has. Sounds sensible right? Now combine that with the new Storage DRS in vSphere 5, and you get a pretty good picture of what VASA can help you with.
• Storage DRS. The DRS feature in vSphere is already pretty well known, and it’s something that I see in use a lot at customer sites.

  Well, now you can also use DRS for your storage. To enable this feature, you create a so called “datastore cluster”, which is in essence nothing more than several datastores combined. Now, when you create a new VM, it is placed inside of a datastore cluster, and storage DRS balances everything out based on some key criteria like space utilization and I/O latencies. More to follow in a different post.

Now, this is by no means a complete overview, and I’ll be going in to these an other new features in upcoming posts. And I don’t want to flood you with information that can also be found on plenty of other blogs out there, but this should give you a good start. Look back for the things mentioned up here, but also for things like the added support for software based FCoE initiators, APD / PDL, the vSphere storage appliance, the new SRM 5 or vCloud Director 1.5.

Tomorrow, July 12^th, VMware is having an online event called “Raising the Bar, Part V”, where VMware is going to be “presenting on the next generation of cloud infrastructure”, or as VMware has put it:

Register now for this online event

July 12, 2011
9am-Noon Pacific Time

VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod will be presenting on the next generation of cloud infrastructure. Join us and experience how the virtualization journey is helping transform IT and ushering in the era of Cloud Computing. 

9:00-9:45 Paul and Steve present – live online streaming
10:00-12:00 five tracks of deep dive breakout sessions
10:00-12:00 live Q&A with VMware cloud and virtualization experts

The event is free — if you sign up today you'll get an email reminder. This is a not-to-miss event!

These vExperts will be on-site at the event in San Francisco and will be covering the event live! (Also watch for live-tweeting from @VMwareEvents and @jtroyer with the #vmwarecloud hashtag)

• Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert, vSphere-land)
• David Davis (@davidmdavis, VMware Videos)
• Bob Plankers (@plankers, The Lone Sysadmin)
• Bill Hill (@virtual_bill, Virtual Bill) 

After the event, you'll still be able to ask questions on Twitter. And on Wednesday, we'll be recapping the event on our VMware Community Roundtable — join us for an hour of live Q&A.

See you there!
John 

Some people say they already know what’s coming. For me, that would be all the more reason to register and see what kind of cool stuff VMware is showing during the event. And, if you register for the event, you’ll automatically be entered in to the free drawing for a ticket to VMworld. More info about the drawing can be found here

To reset the fabric interconnect on a Cisco UCS 6100 series, connect via your serial cable or use putty to ssh in to your fabric, and use the following commands:

connect local-mgmt [enter]
reboot [enter]

Obviously you leave out the space after the command, and the [enter] should be replaced by you actually pressing the enter key. Not sure if this is of help to folks out there, but I figured it’s more useful out here than in my private notes.

Update – July 10^th:

Dan gave a good hint in the comments, that you might want check if the fabric interconnect you are trying to reboot is the primary or the subordinate, so here goes.

Connect to your fabric interconnect just like you did in the top example, and enter the local management:

connect local-mgmt
Now, check to see the state of the fabric interconnect you have attached to:
show cluster extended-state

This will give you a bunch of output, but there is one part that you are interested in more than anything else:
B: UP, SUBORDINATE
A: UP, PRIMARY

B: memb state UP, lead state SUBORDINATE, mgmt services state: UP
A: memb state UP, lead state PRIMARY, mgmt services state: UP
heartbeat state PRIMARY_OK
At the prompt, you can see (and hopefully you already knew to begin with) to what node or member you are connecting to. If you are at the node that is in a subordinate state, use the following command to change the state of the node you are rebooting to subordinate:
cluster lead a
or
cluster lead b
Where a or b is the node that you want to become subordinate. After that you can reboot the respective member

Dear Bas Raayman,

We’re pleased to designate you as a vExpert 2011 as recognition of your contributions to the VMware, virtualization, and cloud computing communities. You’ve done work above and beyond, and we’re delighted to communicate more closely, to share resources, and to offer other opportunities for greater interaction throughout the year as we continue to grow knowledge and success in the community of IT professionals. Welcome to the vExpert 2011 Program!

[more stuff]

Now, first of all, it’s great to receive such a mail! I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with VMware as a part of my job, but I spend quite a bit of time outside of my job trying to share information related to VMware and virtualization in one way or the other. Being awarded with the title of vExpert is quite cool, and I would like to thank John Troyer and his accomplices who were busy trying to select the the people, reviewing what must have been hundreds of submissions.

But there’s one more thing to this package. Creating good content that people are actually willing to read and feel is valuable to them. After all, you are taking the time to read my posts, and I also need to thank you for that!

So, I’ve decided to do one thing. I’m going to act as if it didn’t happen, and as if I needed to take it up two notches to get the vExpert title. After all, it’s the effort that got me here in the first place, and me working even harder to create some good content can only benefit you as a reader, and myself by learning even more in the process of content creation.

So here’s to receiving the title, and at the same time to acting as if it didn’t happen.