Comments (6)

By admin, March 9, 2011 10:29 pm

Originally I thought we are going to have a small footprint and easy managed software finally arrived from Dell, but I was wrong totally.

After spending hours and hours of trying to install DMC 2.0 on Physical and VM, both failed multiple times, I finally gave up. It was a buggy software and not to mention the size of it (over 1GB) and the bunch of crap modules it’s trying to load to your server (there are more than 80 stages during the installation).

I would strongly recommend everyone with a common sense to avoid using this product even it’s free of charge. Simply because it’s way over complicated and the pre-requirement can make anyone big headache, took over 1 hour to install on latest hardware server and finally failed during installation!

I would rather use PRTG as the tool for my monitoring purpose and I was hoping DMC can do me only one thing (hardware failure alert), now I will skip it forever and never look back, I will depend on vCenter’s hardware monitoring and iDRAC’s alert to help me to achieve the same goal.

Bye Bye DMC 2.0, the crappiest software I’ve ever encountered since MS Commerce Server back then.

Comments (0)

By admin, March 5, 2011 5:15 pm

It’s a common question: “Are there any BIOS settings Dell recommends for VMware ESX/vSphere?” Primarily, Dell recommends reading and following VMware’s best practices. The latest revision (as of this posting) can be found in their article “Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere™ 4.1”. Here are a list of additional points of interest specifically regarding Dell PowerEdge servers:

• Hardware-Assisted Virtualization: As the VMware best practices state, this technology provides hardware-assisted CPU and MMU virtualization.
  In the Dell PowerEdge BIOS, this is known as “Virtualization Technology” under the “Processor Settings” screen. Depending upon server model, this may be Disabled by default. In order to utilize these technologies, Dell recommends setting this to Enabled.
• Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and Hyper-Threading Technology: These technologies, known as “Turbo Mode” and “Logical Processor” respectively in the Dell BIOS under the “Processor Settings” screen, are recommended by VMware to be Enabled for applicable processors; this is the Dell factory default setting.
• Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA): VMware states that in most cases, disabling “Node Interleaving” (which enables NUMA) provides the best performance, as the VMware kernel scheduler is NUMA-aware and optimizes memory accesses to the processor it belongs to. This is the Dell factory default.
• Power Management: VMware states “For the highest performance, potentially at the expense of higher power consumption, set any BIOS power-saving options to high-performance mode.” In the Dell BIOS, this is accomplished by setting “Power Management” to Maximum Performance.
• Integrated Devices: VMware states “Disable from within the BIOS any unneeded devices, such as serial and USB ports.” These devices can be turned off under the “Integrated Devices” screen within the Dell BIOS.
• C1E: VMware recommends disabling the C1E halt state for multi-threaded, I/O latency sensitive workloads. This option is Enabled by default, and may be set to Disabled under the “Processor Settings” screen of the Dell BIOS. (I will keep the default to Enabled as I want to save more power in my data center and be enviornmental friendly)
• Processor Prefetchers: Certain processor architectures may have additional options under the “Processor Settings” screen, such as Hardware Prefetcher, Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch, DCU Streamer Prefetcher, Data Reuse, DRAM Prefetcher, etc. The default settings for these options is Enabled, and in general, Dell does not recommend disabling them, as they typically improve performance. However, for very random, memory-intensive workloads, you can try disabling these settings to evaluate whether that may increase performance of your virtualized workloads.

Finally, in order to take the advantage of ESX 4.1 Power Management feature in vCenter to show up, you need to change the setting in BIOS Power Management to “OS Control”.

Comments (0)

By admin, March 2, 2011 12:36 pm

As usual, I would suggest to wait another 1-2 months before upgrading your EQL firmware since the latest firmware may always contain bugs.

Since none of the followings applies to my enviornment, so I will just skip this update completely.

Issues Corrected in this version (v5.0.4) are described below:

• Contention for internal resources could cause a controller failover to occur.

• In rare circumstances, after a communication problem between group members, a PS6000, PS6500, PS6010, or PS6510 member may become unresponsive or experience a controller failover.

• In some cases, a controller failover may occur during a drive firmware update that takes place while the array is in a period of low activity.

• Drives may be incorrectly marked as failed. (happened mostly in PS4000 series)

• An invalid authentication failure may occur when using a RADIUS

• A hardware failure on the primary controller during a firmware update may inhibit failover to the secondary controller. server for CHAP authentication.

• Out-of-order network packets received by the array may cause retransmits.

• The array may not be able to clone a snapshot if the following scenario occurs: the parent volume was replicated to another group, the remote copy was promoted, and the changes were subsequently copied back to the original group using the Fast Failback process.

• Cannot clone snapshots of volumes with replicas that were promoted and subsequently failed back.

• Replication sometimes cannot be completed due to a problem with communication between the replication partners.

• In some cases, replication of a large amount of data may cause a shortage of internal resources, causing the GUI to become unresponsive.

• A network error may cause a failback operation to be unable to complete successfully, with the system issuing a “Replication partner cannot be reached” error.

• Exhausting the delegated space during replication may require that the in-process replica be cancelled in order to permit the volume to continue replicating as expected.

• A group running V5.0 firmware might be unable to perform management functions due to a lack of resources if a group running V3.3 firmware is replicating data to it.

• A restart of an internal management process could result in drives temporarily going offline in PS6010 and PS6510 systems.

Comments (0)

By admin, February 26, 2011 9:35 pm

I’ve encountered a problem when installing Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 today and found the reason and solution pretty easy. It was due to Veeam B&R v5.0 automatically Disabled automount for SAN mode and W2K8 R2 SP1 requires automount to be enabled.

Solution:

1. Disconnect all active iSCSI connections and REMOVE the Target Portal from iSCSI favourite tab. 

2. From command prompt, issue the followings:
> diskpart
> automount enable

3. Reboot the server then go ahead and upgrade your W2K8 R2 with SP1, it will take about 50 minutes to complete, yes, it did take that long even on latest powerful server.

4. Then issue the following AFTER reboot:
> diskpart
> automount disable

5. Reboot the last time and then re-establish all previous iSCSI connections as usual.

Comments (0)

By admin, February 23, 2011 6:23 pm

規則1:跟人決定前途

民初名妓小鳳仙，要是找個民工，掃黃就被掃走了；
她找蔡鍔，就流芳千古；
要是跟孫中山，那就是國母。
所以不在于你干什么，而在于你跟誰干。

規則2：時間決定性質

趙四小姐16歲去大帥府，去1年，是奸情；
去3年，是偷情； 一去30年，那就是千古愛情。
很多事情不是不做，而是要看做多久。

規則3：關鍵崗位要有自己人

男子去提親，女方家長：請自我介紹。
A說：我有1000万；
B說：我有一棟豪宅，价值2000万；
家長很滿意。就問C，你家有什么？
C答：我什么都沒有，只有一個孩子，在你女儿肚子里。
AB無語，走了。
這個案例告訴我們一個淺顯的道理，
核心競爭力不是錢和房子，是在關鍵的崗位有自已的人。

規則4:做人要有屏功

女秘書神色凝重地說：王總,我怀孕了。
王繼續低頭看文件,然后淡淡一笑:我早結扎了。
女秘書楞了一會媚笑道:我是和您開玩笑呢!
王抬起頭看了她一眼，喝了口茶說:我也是。
這個案例告訴我們, 在江湖上晃的人,遇事不要慌,先讓子彈飛一會!

Comments (0)

By admin, February 22, 2011 10:03 pm

Today I finally got a chance to hit with the latest racket from Yonex, VCore 100 S, S specifies for Spin. It’s also the choice from current world #1 Caroline Wozniacki who just switched from Babolat recently.

I found indeed I can hit much better quality top spin with confidence ever than before, thanks to VCore’s technology “Spin to win with 3D Control”.

In fact, there isn’t much to compare with my 25 years old POG, I must admit the technology is definitely there this time and it did help me to improve my baseline style game, not to mention VCore 100 S also helped me to serve with more spin and angle, it’s simply amazing and I start to love it!

I am pretty sure now this is the one to go when it’s available in local store later.

Comments (0)

By admin, February 19, 2011 12:29 pm

馮小剛曾這樣形容姜文。「有一位導演曾對我說過這樣一番話，讓我出了一身冷汗。他說：電影應該是酒，哪怕只有一口，但它得是酒。你拍的東西是葡萄，很新鮮的葡萄，甚至還掛着霜，但你沒有把它釀成酒，開始時是葡萄，到了還是葡萄。另外一些導演明白這個道理，他們知道電影得是酒，但沒有釀造的過程。上來就是一口酒，結束時還是一口酒。更可怕的是，這酒既不是葡萄釀造的，也不是糧食釀成的，是化學兌出來的。他還說：小剛，你應該把葡萄釀成酒，不能僅僅滿足於做一杯又一杯的鮮榨葡萄汁……這位導演名叫：姜文。」
 

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By admin, February 14, 2011 10:12 pm

一間小的幾乎讓人忽略的小店竟然充滿了驚人的法式甜品浪漫﹐有機會你一定要試試看。

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By admin, February 5, 2011 10:05 pm

I just came across this GREAT PowerPoint presentation today, I wish I had it 6 months ago, it really helps you to clear the sky and understand many things before making the design and purchase decision.