Tag: UCS

Cisco, UCS, Uncategorized

Shorts: How to reboot a Cisco UCS 6100 series fabric interconnect

Bas Raayman

I actually had this written down in my notes somewhere, and today a colleague of mine called me because he was having some issues. Since it’s not necessarily obvious, and others might be having the same problem, I thought I’d post a quick note 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 10th:

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

General, Networking, Storage, Virtualization

My “Follow, even if it’s not Friday” list

Bas Raayman

There’s a meme on Twitter that can be witnessed each Friday. It’s called “Follow Friday” and can be found by searching for the #FollowFriday hash tag, or sometimes just simply abbreviated to #FF to save on space in a tweet.

Problem with a lot of those follow Friday tweets is that most of the time you have no idea why you are being given the advice to follow these people. If you are lucky you will see a remark in the tweet saying why you want to follow someone, or why I should follow all of these people, but in most cases it’s a matter of clicking on a person, going to their time line and hope that you can find a common denominator that gives you an indication of why you want to follow someone.

In an attempt to do some things differently, I decided to create this post and list some of the folks that I think are worth following. And I’ll try and add a description of what someone (or a list of people) do that make them worth following in my opinion. And if you are not on this list please don’t be offended, I will try to update it every now and then, but it would be impossible for me to pick out every single one of you on the first attempt.

So here goes nothing! I’m starting off this post with people that offer a great deal of info on things related to VMware, and I will try to follow up with other topics as time goes buy. Check back every now and then to see some new people to follow.

Focus on VMware:

  • @sakacc – Besides being the VP for the VMware Technology Alliance at EMC, Chad is still a true geek and is a great source of knowledge when it comes to things VMware and EMC. Also, very helpful in regards to try and help people who have questions in those areas. Be sure to check out his blog as it is a great source of information!
  • @Kiwi_Si – Simon is a great guy, and can tell you a lot about VMware and home labs. Because of the home labs he is also very strong when it comes to finding out more about HP’s x86 platform, and once again I highly recommend reading his TechHead blog.
  • @alanrenouf – This French sounding guy is actually hiding in the UK and is considered by many to be a PowerCLI demi-god. Follow his tweets and you will find out why people think of him that way.
  • @stevie_chambers – You want to find out more about Cisco UCS? Steve is the man to follow on Twitter, also for finding out more about UCS combined with VMware.
  • @DuncanYB – Duncan started the Yellow Bricks blog, which emphasizes on all things VMware, and also is a great source of info on VMware HA.
  • @scott_lowe – Scott is an ace when it comes to VMware.
  • @jtroyer – John is the online evangelist and enterprise community builder at VMware. For anything new regarding VMware and it’s community you should follow John.
  • @lynxbat – I would call it something else, but Nick is a genius. He started tweaking the EMC Celerra VSA and has worked wonders with it. I highly recommend following him!
  • @jasonboche – Virtualization evangelist extraordinaire. Jason has the biggest home lab setup that I know of, I’d like to see someone trump that setup.
  • @gabvirtualworld – Gabrie is a virtualization architect and has a great blog with lot’s of resources on VMware.
  • @daniel_eason – Daniel is an architect for a large British airline and knows his way around VMware quite well, but is also quite knowledgeable in other areas.
  • @SimonLong_ – With a load of certifications and an excellent blog, Simon is definitely someone to follow on Twitter.

Focus on storage:

  • @StorageNerve – Devang is the go-to-guy on all things EMC Symmetrix.
  • @storageanarchy – Our friendly neighborhood storage anarchist is known to have an opinion, but Barry is also great when it comes to finding out more about EMC’s storage technology.
  • @valb00 – Val is a great source of info on things NetApp, and you can find a lot of good retweets with useful information from him.
  • @storagebod – If you want someone to tell it to you like it is, you should follow Martin.
  • @Storagezilla – Mark is an EMC guy with great storage knowledge. Also, if you find any videos of him cursing, tell me about it because I could just listen to him go on and on for hours with that accent he has.
  • @nigelpoulton – Nigel is the guy to talk to when you want to know more about data centre, storage and I/O virtualisation. He’s also great on all areas Hitachi/HDS.
  • @esignoretti – If you are (planning on) using Compellent storage, be sure to add Enrico to your list.
  • @chrismevans – The storage architect, or just Chris, knows his way around most storage platforms, and I highly recommend you read his blog for all things storage, virtualization and cloud computing.
  • @HPStorageGuy – For all things related to HP and their storage products you should follow Calvin.
  • @ianhf – “Don’t trust any of the vendors” is almost how I would sum up Ian’s tweets. Known to be grumpy at times, but a great source when it comes to asking the storage vendors the right questions.
  • @rootwyrm – As with Ian, rootwyrm also knows how to ask hard questions. Also, he isn’t afraid to fire up big Bertha to put the numbers to the test that were given by a vendor.
  • @sfoskett – Stephen is an original blogger and can probably be placed under any of the categories here. Lot’s of good information and founder of Gestalt IT
  • @Alextangent – The office of the CTO is where Alex is located inside of NetApp. As such you can expect deep technical knowledge on all things NetApp when you follow him.
  • @StorageMojo – I was lucky to have met Robin in person. A great guy working as an analyst, and you will find refreshing takes and articles by following his tweets. A definite recommendation!
  • @mpyeager – Since Matthew is working for IT service provider Computacenter, he has a lot of experience with different environments and has great insight on various storage solutions as well as a concern about getting customers more bang for their buck.

Focus on cloud computing:

  • @Beaker – Christofer Hoff is the director of Cloud & Virtualization Solutions at Cisco and has a strong focus on all things cloud related. His tweets can be a bit noisy, but I would consider his tweets worth the noise in exchange for the good info you get by following him. Oh, and by the way… Squirrel!!
  • @ruv – Reuven is one of the people behind CloudCamp and is a good source of information on cloud and on CloudCamp.
  • @ShlomoSwidler – Good cloud stuff is being (re)tweeted and commented on by Shlomo.

So, this is my list for now, but be sure to check back every once in a while to see what new people have been added!

Created: May 27th 2010
Updated: May 28th 2010 – Added storage focused bloggers
Updated: July 23rd 2010 – Added some storage focused bloggers and some folks that center on cloud computing
Updated:

General, GestaltIT, Stack

This vendor is locking me in!

Bas Raayman

Or so I’m told. Not just once or twice, but it’s something that is written down at least once each time a vendor introduces something new or when a revision of an existing product is rolled out.

Now, you could say that this is the pot calling the kettle black and I would agree with you. It’s a thing I mentioned in my UCS post, and also in my recent post on the stack wars. And today a tweet from @Zaxstor got me thinking about it some more. I asked the following on Twitter:

I hear this argument about vendor lock in all of the time. Open question: How do I avoid a vendor lock in? By going heterogeneous?

Because, when you think about it, we all are subject to vendor lock-in all of the time. As soon as I decide to purchase my new mobile phone, I am usually tied to either the phone manufacturer or the carrier that is use. Sometimes I am even tied to both, you just need to think about the iPhone as an example for this kind of lock-in.

The same goes for the car I drive. When I buy it from the dealer, I get an excellent package that is guaranteed to work. Until I take it to an inspection with a garage that is not part of the authorized network. My car will still drive, and will probably work great, but I no longer have a large part of the guarantees that came with it when I bought it, and would have been intact if I had taken it to an authorized dealer.

Now, I know my analogy is slightly flawed here since we are talking about things that work on a different scale and use entirely different technologies, but what I am trying to say is that we make decisions that lock us in with a certain vendor on an almost daily basis. Apparently the guys in and around the data center just like to talk about that problem a bit more.

One remark was made however by fellow blogger Dimitris Krekoukias and confirmed by several others:

“It’s not how you get in to the lock, but how you get out of it.”

And I do think that this is probably the key, but fortunately we have some help there from the competition. But it’s not all down to the others! All vendors are guilty with trying to sell something. It’s not their fault, it’s just something that “comes with the territory”. They will try to pitch you their product and make your head dizzy with what this new product can do. It’s all good, and it’s all grand according to them.

And yes, it is truly grand what this shiny new toy can do, but the question is if you really need it? Try to ask what kind of value a feature will offer in your specific setup. Try to judge if you really need this feature, and ask yourself the question what you are going to do if the feature proves to be less useful then expected.

Remember that not all is lost if you do lock yourself in with that vendor. Usually others will be quick to follow with new features and this is where the help from the competition comes in. Take the example with the mobile phone. Even if you will not receive any help from your current provider, you can bet that the provider that now also offers the same package will try to help you to become his customer. If NetApp is not providing you with an option to migrate out of that storage array, you can bet your pants that Hitachi will try and help you migrate to their arrays.

Now, I’m not saying that this is the best solution. Usually exchanging solutions is also accompanied with a loss of knowledge and investments that were made. But it’s all on you to factor that in before you take the plunge, and in the end that lock that you have with your current vendor might be hard and expensive to break, but usually it’s never a mission impossible.

P.S. Just as a side note, I’m not saying NetApp will not allow or help you to migrate out of an array, I’m just using these names as an example. Replace them with any vendor you like.

P.P.S. Being part of the discussion fellow blogger Storagebod posted something quite similar, be sure to read it here

Cisco, GestaltIT, Tech Field Day, UCS, Virtualization

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – On Cisco and UCS

Bas Raayman

There are a couple of words that are high on my list as being the buzzwords for 2010. The previous year brought us things like “green computing”, but the new hip seems to be “federation”, “unification”. And let’s not forget the one that seems to last longer then just one year, it’s the problem solving term “cloud”.

Last Friday (April 9th), I and the rest of the Gestalt IT tech field day delegates were invited by Cisco to get a briefing on Cisco’s Unified Computing System or in short “UCS”. Basically this is Cisco’s view that builds on the notion that we are currently viewing a server as being tied to the application, instead of seeing the server as a resource that allows us to run that application.

Anyone in marketing will know that the next question being asked is “What is your suggestion to change all that?”, and Cisco’s marketing department didn’t disappoint us and tried to answer that question for us. The key, in their opinion, is using a system consisting of building blocks that allow me to to give customers a solution stack.

As the trend can be spotted to go towards commodity hardware, Cisco is following suit by using industry standard servers that are equipped with Intel Xeon processors. Other key elements are a virtualization of services, a focus on automated provisioning and unification of the fabric by means of FCoE.

What this basically means is that you order building blocks from Cisco in the form of blade servers, blade chassis, fabric interconnects and virtual adapters. But instead of connecting this stuff up and expanding my connectivity like I do in a standard scenario, I instead wire my hardware depending on the bandwidth requirements and that’s pretty much it. Once I am done with that, I can assign virtual interfaces as I need them on a per blade basis, which in term removes the hassle of plugging in physical adapters and cabling all that stuff up. In a sense it reminded me of the take that Xsigo offered with their I/O director, but with the difference that Cisco uses FCoE instead of Infiniband, and with Cisco you add the I/O virtualization to a more complete management stack.

The management stack

This is in my opinion the key difference. I can bolt together my own pieces of hardware and use the Xsigo I/O director in combination with VMware and have a similar set-up, but I will be missing out on one important element. A central management utility.

This UCS unified management offers me some advantages that I have not seen from other vendors. I can now tie the properties to the resources that I want, meaning that I can set up properties tied to a blade, but can also tie them to the VM or application running on that blade in form of service profiles. Things like MAC, WWN or QoS profiles are defined inside of these service profiles in an XML format and then applied to my resources as I see fit.

Sounds good, but…..?

There is always a but, that’s something that is almost impossible to avoid. Even though Cisco offers a solution that seems to offer some technical advantages, there are some potential drawbacks.

  • Vendor lock in:
    This is something that is quite easy to see. The benefit of getting everything from one vendor also means that my experience is only as good as the vendors support is in case of trouble. Same thing applies when ordering new hardware and there are unexpected problems somewhere in the ordering/delivery chain
  • The price tag:
    Cisco is not know to be cheap. Some would even say that Cisco is very expensive, and it will all boil down to one thing. Is the investment that I need to make for a UCS solution going to give me the return on invest? And is it going to do that anytime soon? Sure it can reduce my management overhead and complexity, sure it can lower my operational expense, but I want to see something in return for the money I gave Cisco and preferably today, not tomorrow.
  • Interoperability with my existing environment:
    This sort of stuff works great when you are lucky enough to create something new. A new landscape, a new data center or something along those lines. Truth is that usually we will end up adding something new to our existing environment. It’s great that I can manage all of my UCS stack with one management interface. But what about the other stuff? What if I already have other Cisco switches that are not connected to this new UCS landscape? Can I manage those using the built in UCS features? Or is this another thing that my admins have to learn?
  • The fact that UCS is unified does not mean that my company is:
    In smaller companies, you have a couple of sysadmins that do everything. They install hardware, configure the operating system, upload firewall policies to their routers and zone some new storage. So far so good, I’ll give them my new UCS gear and they usually know what goes where and will get going. Now I end up in the enterprise segment where I talk to one department to change my kernel parameters, a different to configure my switch port to auto-negotiate and the third one will check on the WWN of my fibre-channel HBA to see if this is matching to the one configured on the storage side. Now I need to get all of them together to work on creating the service profiles, although not all will be able to work outside of their knowledge silo. The other alternative would be to create a completely new team that just does UCS, but do I want that?

Besides the things that are fairly obvious and not necessarily Cisco’s fault, I think that Cisco was actually one of the first companies to go this way and one of the first to show an actual example of a federated and consolidated solution. Because that is what this is all about, it’s not about offering a piece of hardware, it’s about offering a solution. Initiatives like VCE and VCN only show us that Cisco is moving forward and is actually pushing towards offering complete solution stacks.

My opinion? I like it. I think Cisco have delivered something that is a usable showcase, and although unfortunately I have not been able to actually test it so far, I do really like the potential it offers and the way it was designed. If I ever get the chance to do some testing on a complete UCS stack, I’ll be sure to let you know more, but until then I at least hope that this post has made things a bit clearer and removed some of the questions you might have. And if that’s not the case, leave a comment and I will be sure to ask some more questions on your behalf.

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.