Author: Bas Raayman

Clariion, FLARE

Shorts: How to check the FLARE version of your CLARiiON?

Bas Raayman

I decided to introduce something new on my blog. It’s something I’ve decided to call “shorts”. In these shorts I will try to pick some fairly simple and common questions that come up from the searches to my blog and try to give a short descriptive answer to help you out.

So, in this short:

How to check the FLARE version of your CLARiiON?

There are two simple ways to check the release of your FLARE operating environment.

  1. Use the NaviSphere GUI and right click on the array icon inside NaviSphere. Select Properties from the menu and go to the “software” tab. This will give you an overview of all licensed software that is enabled on your array. Should you be in engineering mode, you will find all the software that was pre-loaded on the array, but only those items that have a dash/minus sign in front of them are enabled. In that list of items you should find something like this: 
    FLARE-Operating-Environment 03.26.010.5.016
  2. You can also use the navicli or naviseccli to enter the command “navicli ndu -list -isactive” and get a list of all active software on your array. The entry for your FLARE version would look similar to this: 
    Name of the software package:        FLARE-Operating-Environment
Revision of the software package:    03.26.010.5.016
Commit Required:                     NO
Revert Possible:                     NO
Active State:                        YES
Required packages:                   FA_MIB 260, AnalyzerProvider 260, RPSplitterEngine 260, MVAEngine 260, OpenSANCopy 260, MirrorView 260, SnapView 260, EMCRemoteNG 260, SANCopyProvider 260, SnapViewProvider 260, SnapCloneProvider 260, MirrorProvider 260, CLIProvider 260, APMProvider 260, APMUI 260, AnalyzerUI 260, MirrorViewUI 260, SANCopyUI 260, SnapViewUI 260, ManagementUI 260, ManagementServer 260, Navisphere 260, Base 263
Is installation completed:           YES
Is this System Software:             NO

As you can see, finding out which version of FLARE you have is actually quite simple. Good luck, and let me know if this works for you.

GestaltIT, Tech Field Day

Getting ready for the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day 2010 – Boston

Bas Raayman

Last year in November I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day which took place in San Jose. A recap of what happened there can be found here.

Some of you might not be aware of the concept of the tech field days, so let me give you an overview.

The origin might be found in an event that is called “Tech Day” and was initiated by HP. Basically HP invited several bloggers from around the globe and offered them a technical discussion and a more in depth view of several of their products.

Gestalt IT’s Stephen Foskett was one of the bloggers invited to this event who felt that this might be a good basis for that which now makes up the tech field days.

So, in a nutshell the tech field days brings together a group of independent people that are present in the various social media (think of Twitter, blogs, podcasts, the works) and have a technical background. These good folks then are packed with two days of presentations, discussions and hands on from the sponsors of this event.

You might want to think of this as vendor love, but you wouldn’t be quite right. First of all there is no obligation to communicate about any of the things that are presented to you. What is even more important, when you decide to actually report on what happened, you can give your honest opinion, be it good or bad. Secondly, since the group of people that are invited have a very broad background, the service or products presented will usually get a very broad array of questions fired at them. These will range from very detailed questions that could be about the choice of an algorithm to something more general like for example the value of deduplication in a virtualized environment.

Because we are talking about people with backgrounds in (among others) backgrounds in storage, virtualization, operating systems, hardware, networking and analysts you will find that the questions asked are usually tough on the presenters. These are people that know their stuff and this is also why presenters get the recommendation to not make this in to a marketing show.

This is an event for the community and as such the people who attend are very aware of this fact and looking at the first event, you will see a lot of feedback coming from the people who attend. This is not just limited to the on-site discussions. We had discussions put on video in the pub, there were dynamic conversations in the hotel lobby where the delegates discussed ideas or even took the time to explain concepts to the other delegates who were not experts in the same area.

So, here’s a list of the delegates that will be attending the event:

Jason Boche Boche.net JasonBoche
Carlo Costanzo VMware Info CCostan
David Davis VMwareVideos DavidMDavis
Greg Ferro EtherealMind
Gestalt IT		 EtherealMind
Edward Haletky The Virtualization Practice Texiwill
Robin Harris Storage Mojo
ZDNet Storage Bits		 StorageMojo
Greg Knieriemen Storage Monkeys
iKnerd		 Knieriemen
Simon Long The SLOG
Gestalt IT		 SimonLong_
Scott D. Lowe Tech Republic
SearchCIO		 ScottDLowe
John Obeto Absolutely Windows JohnObeto
Devang Panchigar StorageNerve
Gestalt IT		 StorageNerve
Bas Raayman Technical Diatribe BasRaayman
Simon Seagrave TechHead Kiwi_Si
Matt Simmons Standalone Sysadmin StandaloneSA
Gabrie van Zanten Gabe’s Virtual World GabVirtualWorld

If you check out the profiles of the attendees, you will see that these people should make for an interesting mix. What’s more, I am certain that these folks are able to ask questions that are not always easy to answer.

Cisco Systems
Data Robotics
EMC Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
VKernel

So, look for some interesting posts coming from the delegates and on Gestalt IT. You can follow what happens online on Twitter by using the hashtag #TechFieldDay, and be on the lookout for lot’s of interesting things to be coming on April 8th and 9th.

One final thing that should be said.

Disclaimer:
The sponsors are each paying their share for this non-profit event. We, the delegates, are not paid to attend. Most of us will take some days off from our regular job to attend. What is paid for us is the flight, something to eat and the stay at a hotel. However as stated in the above post, we are not forced to write about anything that happens during the event, or to only write positive things.

Security

Is it really secure?

Bas Raayman

I’ve been away on vacation and was on a road trip of sorts through the USA. I’ve been to New York city and visited the west coast after that. Final stop during our trip was a visit to Las Vegas.

Now, everyone has probably heard of Vegas, and those people that haven’t actually been there probably have an image in their minds of what Vegas looks like. For me that image was what most people know from movies like Oceans Eleven or series like Las Vegas. You will think about good looking men and woman, loads of money, warm winds, large casinos and security everywhere that will probably try to tackle you for even looking the wrong way.

Those that have actually been there will probably agree with me in saying that this image is only partially true.

Sleeping security guardThe simplest explanation is probably that something is not secure by simply putting a “Security” label on it.

I mean, what good is it if your security guard is actually sleeping? Or an example I’ve seen for myself was a security guard on a Segway. Sure, it seemed quite funny, but what good will a Segway actually be when the hotel or casino is actually full of people and you can’t use the speed of a Segway any way?

This question is valid in Las Vegas, but it is also valid elsewhere, or in a different area as a matter of fact. Software engineering, solution providers, industry standards and much more is being sold as “secure” these days. And you will see a lot of people reading the headlines and not even asking a simple question. A question that is absolutely critical if you want to talk about security.

How secure is it?

Ask yourself this question each time you see someone talking about their security or the security of their product/service. Ask yourself questions like:

  • How secure is it?
  • What makes it secure?
  • What would make it inscure?
  • What scope is actually secure?
  • Would it still be secure in my environment?

Questions like this are key in trying to understand something that is being sold as “secure”. EMC’s Chuck Hollis wrote a blog post on security and multi-tenancy and shows some of these questions being asked when he’s looking at a new product that is introduced by a competitor. But this should also be done by you.

If you are looking for a new solution. If you are implementing a new internal development. If you talk to your security officers. If someone mentions it’s secure. Go ahead, ask yourself and ask the other these kind of questions.

The worst thing what you can do when it comes to security is just seeing the word and taking it for granted, or even just trusting it is actually secure just because they say so. Most people seem to have a different opinion on what security starts with, but for me security starts with asking questions. The trick is (as always) about asking the right questions, and when you do ask your questions use an old principle and keep your questions as simple as possible.

General

Staying in touch while traveling to the USA

Bas Raayman

Devang Panchigar over at storagenerve.com posted an article about traveling abroad from the USA and how you can stay in touch. I found it to be good, but it lacks some points for people who are visiting the US and originate from a different country, so I decided to write my own post and share some experiences.

One thing I want to share is something that my dad has taught me. He has been in shipping and forwarding almost his entire life and was on the road a lot. He always said that when you are travelling it boils down to the three main things, and I think that is good enough to share even though it’s not that relevant for staying in touch.

Three things that are most important:

  1. Passport / ID
  2. Medication
  3. Wallet

In Dutch and in German I always refer to them as the “three P’s” which would stand for “Pas, Pillen, Portemonnaie”. Even if you forget your cellphone, lose your bags, forget your tickets or something else happens. These are the main things to always look after, all else is a piece of luxury.

Making & receiving calls in the US

Most of the people I know have a cellphone of sorts, but aren’t necessarily aware of mobile networks that are used throughout the globe. Basically there are two main standards out there, one is called “Global System for Mobile Communications” (GSM), the other is called “Code Division Multiple Access” (CDMA). GSM seems to have a more dense coverage outside of North America (a couple of areas Asia are an exception), whereas CDMA is the common standard in the US.

Unfortunately both systems are not really compatible, and a lot of the folks from the US are wondering why the people using a GSM are going through the trouble of inserting and swapping out SIM cards. In this part I will just assume that you are currently using a GSM cellphone and are looking for an alternative.

Basically you have two options. One is getting a CDMA cellphone in the US. Since it’s uncommon to have the equivalent of a SIM-card, called a R-UIM card, for CDMA networks in the USA, you would need to get a phone that is linked to one carrier. If you want to use this option, it is important to check which carrier offers the best cellphone signal in the area that you will be visiting. Remember that signing up for a contract will be quite hard without a permanent address in the US, but perhaps you are able to work something out with friends/colleagues/family that you may know stateside. The other option is to just get a prepaid phone and use that.

If you plan on using your GSM cellphone while in the US, make sure that you have a phone that is able to use the appropriate frequencies. The GSM-850 and GSM-1900 bands are commonly used in America and in Canada, while the GSM-900 and GSM-1800 bands are usually used outside of those countries. Simply check on the website of your phone manufacturer to see which bands your mobile phone supports. If you are lucky it will actually be all four bands (commonly referred to as a quad-band cellphone) and you should be set to go. Since GSM is not a very common standard in the US, you will have a good chance of finding yourself using either Cingular, AT&T Wireless or T-Mobile USA.

Also, as a last tip, you could consider registering for a Google voice number and have it forward your calls to the prepaid number while you are in the USA, and forward calls to your regular cellphone number while you are back home. Just know that to change the settings while outside of the United States means using a proxy. This due to the fact that Google voice is only available in the US, and currently requires an invite. It’s slightly tricky to set up, but it could be a useful alternative.

Roaming charges

One thing to be extremely aware of when using your cellphone in the US is that you will be faced with roaming charges. Roaming is basically something that will allow you to use your phone on a network that is different from your own provider, or use your own provider in for example a different company. As you will probably already have guessed, this doesn’t come for free. Actually, it usually comes for quite the price. I would highly recommend checking the exact details with your carrier, but it is quite common that you will pay to receive calls. Basically the person making the call will pay for the cost up to the border of the country the caller is in, and you will pay for the call from that country up to the US. Check if it might make sense to upgrade your plan to include a flatrate to call to the US.

Another “feature” about roaming charges was introduced by using smartphones. These usually tend to rely heavily on a data connection, and most people find themselves having a flatrate for data connections. But be warned, this is usually not a flatrate outside of your own country! Things can get quite expensive really fast when you check your e-mails on your phone from a different country. Data is usually charged in chunks of 10 Kb and bills over €1.000,- can accumulate really fast. Turn data roaming off to prevent this, get a different plan, or another alternative could be to get a prepaid SIM in the US and use that to use a data connection. SIM cards from the US can for example be found on Ebay and will set you back around €5,- which might be a good alternative.

Charge it!

Having a lot of gadgets with you like your laptop, digital camera, cellphone means that you usually need to charge them on a regular basis. Easiest thing to do is check if they are able to automatically switch to the correct voltage. You will normally find something like 100v-240v written on the adapter or the device itself. If that is the case, you are in luck. You would just need a simple plug or socket converter and you can plug the device directly in the the socket once you are stateside.

If the device or adapter is not able to switch to the correct voltage, you might want to consider a so called “step up voltage converter”. I’ve had one with me on all my trips and it has been of great use to me. Just make sure that the output wattage is suitable for the device you are connecting to it.

Additionally having an extension cable and a USB cable can be of use. Lot’s of things can be charged via USB these days and it’s just handy to have one of those cables in your luggage. If you do happen to forget something, you can usually find an electronics store like Fry’s or BestBuy and get what you need there.

Being online

This topic has been covered in part by the roaming piece above. However, when using things like EDGE/UMTS/EVDO you are highly dependent on the reception of your cellphone. Having a Wi-Fi connection is a good way to reduce any roaming charges you might have and will get you a more stable connection. Besides that it’s usually also the faster option if you want to for example send over some pictures.

Usually hotels and motels will either offer you the option of using their Wi-Fi connection (for a surcharge) or have something like an internet PC. A laptop can be of use, and thankfully a fair amount of the hotels you will encounter will be able to offer you free Wi-Fi. If you are in doubt assume the worst and be prepared to pay for the connection or to be confronted with a screen that will have you enter your credit card or room details to charge you for the connection. One useful site to check out is wififreespot.com that will give you a rough overview of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the US. Pack an ethernet cable if you want to be on the safe side.

So in short?

Realize you are visiting the US and not a war zone. Usually you will be able to find everything you need when it comes to being online and staying in touch. Some advance planning will help you make your stay a bit easier. Things like a foreign SIM card or the voltage converter are a good help but not a necessity. Inform yourself about the roaming charges to avoid bad surprises. Oh, and most importantly, have some fun while you are there, be it a private or a business trip.

Update – March 30th 2010

Well, I am now back from a vacation in the US, where it was possible for me to use my own advice. And what do you know, one of the things that seemed to work so well isn’t actually working at all, but this was not a real problem.

I got the AT&T SIM card, filled it up and I could be reached by phone without a problem. The Google voice trick worked like a charm for me. The part that didn’t work was using the data part of the prepaid card. I tried it with an iPhone 3G and a BlackBerry Bold 9000 and both were unable to go online, both with the EDGE and 3G network that both phones found. The problem? According to an AT&T representative, AT&T uses proprietary cellular frequencies for their prepaid data plans in the US, which is why non-US phones simply aren’t able to get online with their prepaid cards. The only good thing? I was able to use the AT&T WiFi hotspots without any additional charge. I will be trying out the same trick with a T-Mobile prepaid card when I visit the US again next week and updating once more with my results.

As pointed out by Matt Simmons, you will have it easy when you visit one of the fast food chains and diners while you are there. A lot of chains like Denny’s, Mc Donalds, Burger King, Starbucks and the likes will offer you complimentary WiFi. I found that adding some of those hotspots to the wireless profiles in my BlackBerry to be quite useful. When driving through the cities my phone would suddenly start to vibrate because it automatically connected to the hotspots and was downloading my e-mails automatically.

Update – July 28th 2010

One more update. The T-Mobile card worked in the same manner as the AT&T card did. Unfortunately this didn’t really work, which might force me to change my strategy the next time I visit. If I do so I will be sure to update with a new post to see what might be the easiest solution.

On a different note, I just noticed via one of the comments that Fabio Rapposelli linked back to this article with some tips of his own on this subject. It includes a good list of tips that will help you in getting some decent food, how to pack and other stuff. Be sure to check out his post on this topic.

GestaltIT, Performance, Storage, Tiering

“Storage tiering is dying.” But purple unicorns exist.

Bas Raayman

Chris Mellor over at the Register put an interview online with NetApp CEO Tom Georgens.

To quote from the Register piece:

He is dismissive of multi-level tiering, saying: “The simple fact of the matter is, tiering is a way to manage migration of data between Fibre Channel-based systems and serial ATA based systems.”

He goes further: “Frankly I think the entire concept of tiering is dying.”

Now, for those who are not familiar with the concept of tiering, it’s basically moving data between faster and slower media in the background. Clasically tiering is something that every organization is already doing. You consider the value of the information, and based on that you decide if this data should be accessible instantly from your more expensive hardware, and even at home you will see that as the value decreases you will archive that data to a media that has a different type of performance like your USB archiving disk or for example by burning it to a DVD.

For companies the more interesting part in tiering comes with automation. To put it simply, you want your data to be available on a fast drive when you need it, and it can remain on slower drives if you don’t require it at that moment. Several vendors each have their own specific implementation of how they tier their storage, but you find this kind of technology coming from almost any vendor.

Aparrantly, NetApp has a different definition of tiering, since according to their CTO tiering is limited to the “migration of data between Fibre Channel-based systems and serial ATA based systems”. And this is where I heartily disagree with him. I purposely picked the example of home users who are also using different tiers, and it’s no different for all storage vendors.

The major difference? They remove the layer of fibre channel drives in between of the flash and SATA drives. They still tier their data to the medium that is most fitting. They will try to do that automatically (and hopefully succeed in doing so), but just don’t call it tiering anymore.

As with all vendors, NetApp is also trying to remove the fibre channel drive layer, and I am convinced that this will be possible as soon as the prices of flash drives can be compared to those of regular fibre channel drives, and the automated tiering is automated to a point that any actions performed are transparent to the connected system.

But, if NetApp doesn’t want to call it tiering, that’s fine by me but I hope they don’t honestly expect customers to fall for it. The rest of the world will continue to call it tiering, and they will try to sell you a purple unicorn that moves data around disk types as if by magic.

as a Service, General, GestaltIT

Jack of all trades, master of… the solution stack?

Bas Raayman

Stevie Chambers wrote something in a tweet last night. He stated the following:

The problem with an IT specialist is that he only gets to do the things he’s already good at, like building a coffin from the inside.

And my first thought was that he’s absolutely right. A lot of the people I know are absolute cracks or specialists in their own area. I’ll talk to the colleagues over in the Windows team, and they can tell you everything about the latest version of Windows and know each nook and cranny of their system. I’ll talk to the developers and they can write impossible stuff for their ABAP Web Dynpro installations.

But then I ask my developers what effect a certain OS parameter will have on their installation. Or perhaps how the read and write response times from the storage array in the back-end might influence the overall time an end user spends while he’s waiting for his batch job to complete. And you know what answer you get a lot of times? Just a blank stare, or if you are lucky some shoulders being shrugged. They’ll tell you that you need to talk to the experts in that area. It’s not their thing, and they don’t have the time, knowledge, interest or just simply aren’t allowed to help you in other areas.

So what about our changing environment? In environments where multiple tenants are common? Where we virtualize, thin provision and dedupe our installations and create pointer based copies of our systems? Where oversubscription might affect performance levels? Fact is that we are moving away from isolated solutions and moving toward a solution stack. We no longer care about the single installation of Linux on a piece of hardware, but need to troubleshoot how the database in our Linux VM interacts with our ESX installation and the connected thin provisioned disks.

In order to be an effective administrator I will need to change. I can’t be the absolute expert in all areas. The amount of information would just be overwhelming, and I wouldn’t have the time to master all of this. But being an expert in only one area will definitely not make my job easier in the future. We will see great value in generalists that have the ability to comprehend the interactions of the various components that make up a stack, and are able to do a deep dive when needed or can gather expertise for specific problems or scenarios when they need to.

Virtualization and the whole “* as a Service” model isn’t changing the way any of the individual components work, but they change the interconnect behavior. Since we are delivering new solutions as a stack, we also need to focus on troubleshooting the stack, and this can’t always be done in the classical approach. In a way this is a bigger change for the people supporting the systems than it is for the people actually using those systems.

Clariion, CX3, EMC, GestaltIT, Storage

The Asymmetrical Logical Unit Access (ALUA) mode on CLARiiON

Bas Raayman

I’ve noticed that I have been getting a lot of search engine hits relating to the various features, specifications and problems on the EMC CLARiiON array. One of the searches was related to a feature that has been around for a bit. It was actually introduced in 2001, but in order to give a full explanation I’m just going to start at the beginning.

DetourThe beginning is actually somewhere in 1979 when the founder of Seagate Technology, Alan Shugart, created the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI). This was the early predecessor of SCSI and had a very rudimentary set of capabilities. Only few commands were supported and speeds were limited to 1.5 Mb/s. In 1981, Shugart Associates was able to convince the NCR corporation to team up and thereby convincing ANSI to set up a technical committee to standardize the interface. This was realized in1982 and known as the “X3T9.2 technical committee” and resulted in the name being changed to SCSI.

The committee published their first interface standard in 1986, but would grow on to become the group known now as “International Committee for Information Technology Standards” or INCITS and that is actually responsible for many of the standards used by storage devices such as T10 (SCSI), T11 (Fibre Channel) and T13 (ATA).

Now, in July 2001 the second revision of the SCSI Primary Commands (SPC-2) was published, and this included a feature called Asymmetrical Logical Unit Access mode or in short ALUA mode, and some changes were made in the newer revisions of the primary command set.

Are you with me so far? Good.

On Logical Unit Numbers

Since you came here to read this article I will just assume that I don’t have to explain the concept of a LUN. But what I might need to explain is that it’s common to have multiple connections to a LUN in environments that are concerned with the availability of their disks. Depending on the fabric and the amount of fibre channel cards you have connected you can have multiple paths to the same lun. And if you have multiple paths you might as well use them, right? It’s no good having the additional bandwidth lying around and then not using it.

Since you have multiple paths to the same disk, you need a tool that will somehow merge these paths and tell your operating system that this is the same disk. This tool might even help you achieve a higher throughput since it can balance the reads and writes over all of the paths.

As you might already have guessed there are multiple implementations of this, usually called Multipathing I/O, MPIO or just plainly Multipath, and you will be able to find a solution natively or as an additional piece of software for most modern operating systems.

What might be less obvious is that the connection to these LUNs don’t have to behave in the same way. Depending on what you are connecting to, you have several states for that connection. Or to draw the analogy to the CX4, some paths are active and some paths are passive.

Normally a path to a CLARiiON is considered active when we are connected to the service processor that is currently serving you the LUN. CLARiiON arrays are so called “active/passive” arrays, meaning that only one service processor is in charge of a LUN, and the secondary service processor is just waiting for a signal to take over the ownership in case of a failure. The array will normally receive a signal that tells it to switch from one service processor to the other one. This routine is called a “trespass” and happens so fast that you usually don’t really notice such a failover.

When we go back to the host, the connection state will be shown as active for that connection that is routed to the active service processor, and something like “standby” or “passive” for the connection that goes to the service processor that is not serving you that LUN. Also, since you have multiple connections, it’s not unlikely that the different paths can also have other properties that are different. Things like bandwith (you may have added a faster HBA later) or latency can be different. Due to the characteristics, the target ports might need to indicate how efficient a path is. And if a failure should occur, the link status might change, causing a path to go offline.

You can check the the status of a path to a LUN by asking the port on the storage array, the so called “target port”. For example, you can check the access characteristics of a path by sending the following SCSI command:

  • REPORT TARGET PORT GROUPS (RTPG)

Similar commands exist to actually set the state of a target port.

So where does ALUA come in?

What the ALUA interface does is allow an initiator (your server or the HBA in your server) to discover target port groups. Simply put, a group of ports that provide a common failover behavior for your LUN(s). By using the SCSI INQUIRY response, we find out to what standard the LUN adheres, if the LUN provides symmetric or asymmetric access, and if the LUN uses explicit or implicit failover.

To put it more simply, ALUA allows me to reach my LUN via the active and the inactive service processor. Oversimplified this just means that all traffic that is directed to the non-active service processor will be routed internally to the active service processor.

On a CLARiiON that is using ALUA mode this will result in the host seeing paths that are in an optimal state, and paths that are in an non-optimal state. The optimal path is the path to the active storage processor and is ready to perform I/O and will give you the best performance, and the non-optimal path is also ready to perform I/O but won’t give you the best performance since you are taking a detour.

The ALUA mode is available on CX-3 and CX-4, but the results you get can vary between both arrays. For example if you want to use ALUA with your vSphere installation you will need to use the CX-4 with FLARE 26 or newer and change the failover mode to “4”. Once you have changed the failover mode you will see a slightly different trespass behavior since you can now either manually initiate a trespass (explicit) or the array itself can perform a trespass once it’s noticed that the non-optimal path has received 128,000 or more I/Os than the optimal path (implicit).

Depending on which software you use – PowerPath or for example the native solution – you will find that ALUA is supported or not. You can take a look at Primus ID: emc187614 in Powerlink to get more details on supported configurations. Please note that you need a valid Powerlink account to access that Primus entry.

GestaltIT, Virtualization, VMware

Virtualization and the challenge of knowing what your customer understands

Bas Raayman

Customers only hear what is useful to them. There, I’ve said it out loud and now I’ll just wait for my lapidation to begin. Or perhaps you will bear with me while I try to explain?

As I wrote in previous blog posts we deliver a lot of our systems virtualized. You could call our VM implementation level a big hit, but we keep running in to the same problem, and it’s something that comes close to selective hearing. We have dozens of presentations, slides and info sessions that explain the benefits of a virtual server. And there are several benefits. Things like vMotion or the Site Recovery Manager can help you achieve a certain service level and add value by automating failovers or minimizing downtime due to planned maintenance.

The problem is the translation that is made by the customer. In our case the various internal teams are our customer, and the amount of knowledge around the operating system or the features that a virtualized landscape offers them are not always fully comprehended. You can tell a customer what these features do and how virtualization adds redundancy to the hardware stack. Usually all that arrives is “Less downtime because I can vMotion the virtual machine to a different piece of hardware.”, and the customer will automatically link this to a higher availability of the application that is running on this host.

The problem is this higher availability will not cascade through the entire stack. Sure, a vMotion might save you from a downtime due to hardware maintenance, but it won’t save you from the proverbial blue screen or kernel panic due to a defunct driver. You can write down everything in an SLA, but the thing that stuck in the customers head was the thing that he deduced from the presentation.

Fellow Blogger Storagebod already wrote a piece on “Asking the right questions“, and I fully agree with him that we as a service provider need to start asking the right questions to our customers. We have no other way to find out and offer the service he wants.

But, we also need to find out if the customer is certain that he understands the services we are offering. It’s not about leaning back in your chair and saying “we only offered a 99.5% uptime, it was there black on white”. It’s about going the extra mile and making it clear that “We offer an infrastructure that can give you 99.999% uptime, but your application isn’t laid out for that same uptime”. It’s about asking the right questions, but it’s also making sure that your customer heard the entire message, not just the parts he wanted to hear.

Virtualization is a tool or a way you can help your customer obtain higher uptimes. It can enable, but won’t guarantee availability of the entire stack.

Apple, iPhone

So what is this new Apple iPad? It’s not everything it could have been.

Bas Raayman

For those still having a hard time seeing the forest through the trees, Apple announced a new device yesterday. It’s called the “iPad” and is on sale now, although the first deliveries will not take place until the end of March or early April. Apple describes it as a product that fills the gap between the smartphone and laptop market.

Now, Steve Jobs clearly stated in his keynote that Apple thought his company would need product that would be easier to use and better to use for the following things:

  • Browsing
  • Email
  • Photos
  • Video
  • Music
  • Games
  • eBooks

And you know what? You can argue over one or two categories, but I think he is actually right for the biggest part of it.

Your iPhone is great to make calls and to give it a little extra you can do a lot of the things mentioned above. But is it comfortable to do those things on the iPhone? Perhaps. Showing your pictures to your grandparents on the iPhone? Yeah, it’s possible, but unless they brought their glasses they will probably have a harder time to see the full detail in pictures. So you get out your laptop and boot it and log on. Now you’ve got a big screen, but flicking through the pictures is not quite as easy as on the iphone. And just handing over the laptop to someone else is possible. It will keep their laps warm, that’s a sure thing.

Most of the people I heard commenting on the iPad were not that enthusiastic, and I can tell you why. “It’s not everything it could have been.”

Most of the people I talked to had some bigger or smaller problems with the device. One argument was that it will probably lack the option to synchronize to a Microsoft Exchange mailserver. And yes, that feature would have been great. But that would also mean that they would have needed to implement a whole lot of other features, encryption being an example. Or would you like to see your corporate e-mails accessible to people who might steal the device? And since you want to connect to your Exchange server, you might also want to add the option of setting up VPN connections since my mail server is on the corporate network. And how about that remote wipe feature for all the sensitive data on my new iPad? The list goes on and on.

In my opinion, this device is great for home users, and that is exactly where it is marketed at. It’s big enough to show those pictures to grandpa and grandma without them having big problems seeing what’s in front of them. It’s also portable enough when you compare it to a laptop. And easier to use than a laptop. The same can be said for most of the other core features that were listed above.

The problem will be the technically savvy people, because they will be exactly those people that will say “It’s not everything it could have been.”. I could have used it to take notes during meetings and sync those online. It would be great to have had a screen that had different proportions than that damn 4:3 aspect ratio. And perhaps they shouldn’t have used that IPS back-lit LED screen, and what about that missing “non glossy” option for the display! As I already said previously, the list goes on and on.

On the other hand, the technically savvy people are a group that just can’t be satisfied. Why? Because we know what new technologies are out there, and we have exact ideas on what those new technologies would have allowed us to do: “If they would have just added feature X, imagine how much easier and better the whole device would have been”. The problem there? The list just won’t stop because every one of those people will have different ideas on what would have made the product better.

As for myself? I’ll probably be picking one up, but I’m not sure yet. I had some personal thoughts on what would have made the iPad better for me, but I’m intent on trying the iPad and giving it a fair chance within the context that Steve outlined. Maybe I’ll be surprised, or maybe I’ll just wait for the next version that will have some of the features that I was thinking of. Until I actually held one myself I’ll just continue to read what it is, and even more on what it isn’t. It’s a fun pro/contra discussion either way.

Clariion, EMC, Storage

Downloading the EMC CLARiiON CX / Navisphere simulator

Bas Raayman

I just wanted to write a really short post to share this tip with you. A lot of people seem to stumble on this site while they are looking to do some tests. Now, as always you will most likely not have full on storage array sitting around that is just waiting to be a guinea pig while serving your production environment.

A partial solution is to test things in a simulator. For people who want to test things on their Cisco switches there is an open source “Internetwork Operating System” or IOS simulator that gives you a taste of the real thing. Admittedly it’s not the same as having a full environment, but it might just help you in testing a scenario or routine that you have in mind.

Now, you will find that there is also a simulator for the CLARiiON environment that is called the “Navisphere simulator” and a CX simulator. Problem is that the simulator can’t be downloaded with any old Powerlink account. Partners and employees can use a simple download in Powerlink ( Home => Products => Software E-O => Navisphere Management Suite => Demos) , but if you don’t fall under that category you will have a hard time actually finding a download.

Normally to get the simulator you would need to order some CLARiiON training. The Navisphere and CX simulators are actually packaged with the Foundations course and you can also find them in one of their video instructor led trainings. The problem is that you or your boss will pay quite a bit for said trainings, and this is not great if you just want to perform a quick test.

Now for my tip… Buy the “Information and Storage Management” book (ISBN-13: 978-0-470-29421-5 / ISBN-10: 0-470-29421-3) from your favorite book supplier. Beside it being a good read it also allows you to register on a special site created for the book where you can actually find some learning aids that also include the Navisphere simulator and the CX simulator. You can find the book starting around $40 and there’s also a version available for the Kindle if you are in to e-books. You don’t need any special information to register the book on the EMC site so it’s quite a quick way to get the simulators and check if you can actually simulate the scenario you have in mind.