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By admin, July 19, 2011 2:08 pm

A week ago, one of the latest derived products from vSphere 5 catches my attention, the vSphere Storage Appliance v1.0. Basically, it’s a software SAN solution for ESX Shared Storage requirement. VMware vSphere Storage Appliance provides virtual shared storage volumes without the hardware.

VSA enables Different Key Features according to different vSphere Editions:

Essentials Plus, Standard
•High Availability
•vMotion

Enterprise
•Fault Tolerance
•Distributed Resource Scheduler

Enterprise Plus
•Storage vMotion

And it offers Storage Protection
RAID 1 (mirroring) protection across nodes
RAID 10 protection within each node

Licensing
vSphere Storage Appliance is licensed on a per-instance basis (like vCenter Server)

Each VSA instance supports up to 3 nodes. (ie, maximum expandability is 3 ESX Hosts)
At least two nodes needs to be part of a VSA deployment

Pros: There is only ONE, it doesn’t require you to purchase an expensive SAN in order to use vMotion/DRS.

Cons: Too Many!!! Read on…

1. The license fee is USD5,995 per-instance but 40% off if with vSphere Essentials Plus, again VMware wants all of you to purchase E+, a $$$ driven price structure thing created by its fleet of “genius” MBAs. If your company have the money to purchase VSA, then I am pretty sure a proper SAN won’t cost you an arm.

2. “Run vCenter Separate from VSA Cluster for best protection” Why’s that?  These days the ultimate goal is to virtualized everything even for vCenter, it’s against the most fundamental rule of virtualization just like vRam asking you to purchase more servers with less ram installed on each host!

3. Have additional disk-space to enable RAID protection: VSA protects your data by mirroring data in multiple locations – this means your business data will require additional raw disk capacity. Good rule of thumb is to get 4x the server internal disk space you expect to use (You kidding me! RAID10, then split the rest for other node’s mirror, left you ONLY 1/4 of the original storage, this is again not enviornmental friendly); in VSA 1.0, disk capacity and nodes cannot be changed setup – feature is planned for future release.

3. Two VSA Hosts can support up to 25 VMs, Three VSA Hosts can support up to 35 VMs: This particularly renders VSA to Not Worth Spending the $$$, 3 nodes can only support 35 VMs max sounds unjustified for ROI.

4. Since it’s NFS based, you can’t use RDM or VAAI, this is bad news for those who run Exchange/SQL and looking for performance, but again, if you are after IOPS, then you got the $$$. Not to mention NFS is well known for its low performance over IP network comparing to block based such as FC or iSCSI and placing the same shared storage or SAN on ESX host will inevitably reduce the overall performance.

It seemed to me an immature rush to release product, use 400% more space is not a solution for Enterprise, it’s a big waste and a 2nd point against virtualization. It reminds me the software feature from NetApp’s Network Raid, it will use 2/3 of your storage for N+1 raid feature, well it worked, but it just doesn’t justify the cost after all.

Virtualization should save cost by fully utilizing Cpu/Ram/Space, but with the release of vSphere 5, it seemed to me the VMware is trying its best to discourage everyone by using vRam model as well as this VSA product. There is a hot debate on this topic on VMTN, 99.9% is against this “vmw screwed us“ new license change, and vmw’s official is hiding in the dark and afraid to response with a valid point.

No body want to purchase more servers with less ram on each host these days, these will use more power and absolutely non environmental friendly, now, we see VMware is becoming an anti-environmental friendly corporation.

Finally, VSA will use host CPU and local storage IOPS, and it’s not a model for future aggregate IOPS growth comparing to a real SAN, but after all, it’s just a temporary product for SMB, but why does VMware charge so much for it? In my own opinion, vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0 can be made obsolete and it’s uncessary as there are already Free Products from Microsoft iSCSI Target, Starwind and many similar products from Linux world for the purpose of Shared Storage for ESX.

PS. Just found out the free vSphere 5.0 ESXi version has the pathetic 8GB limit, now I finally understand why Monopoly is a bad thing, I shall start to look into Xen and Hyper-V seriously for my clients.

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By admin, July 19, 2011 1:50 pm

Last time I tried a Nested iSCSI VM thing, EQL>MS iSCSI Target>Starwind but today I found something even more crazy!

This is probably one of the best and most people responded blog page regarding Nested ESX and it’s unlimited possibilities.

The author even went so far by migrate a running VM with VMotion from the physical ESX host to the virtual ESX host, as well as running Hyper-V within ESX.

Wow, why don’t you install an additional ESX within that Hyper-V again to see what will happen when migrate a running VM back to the original mother ESX, that’s 2 layer’s back. 

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By admin, July 17, 2011 6:05 pm

南韓選手打的是削球，球拍向乒乓球的中下部削推，過來的球下旋，對手回球一定要根據下旋的程度來上提或平推，提得不夠球會下網，提得太多球會出台。下旋球的轉軸可以是平的，也可以是斜的， 給對手造成很大的困難。中國選手打的是上旋進攻球，擊球中上部，產生上旋球，除了來球快，球到對方台面會急遽前衝，對手要有快速反應的能力才行。

我做這解說，希望大家了解雙方攻防的難處，從而欣賞這場球賽。

希望大家已經領悟到了如何應付善于用下旋和側旋打法的球員。

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By admin, July 17, 2011 4:54 pm

It’s a Early Production Access. Originally, I thought we need VMware vSphere 5.0 in order to use these great features, but apparently, it also works for vSphere 4.1 (Wrong, see update below). In additional, Dell is finally moving into Fluid Data Solution with Equallogic and Compellent products. (ie, moving hot-data to SSD/15K SAS tiers automatically)

Two of the major improvements are:

Support for VMware Thin Provision Stunning

Version 5.1 of the PS Series Firmware supports VMware’s Thin Provision Stunning feature. When thinly-provisioned volumes containing VMware virtual machines approach their in-use warning threshold, the PS Series Group alerts vCenter that the volume is low on space. When the volume reaches the maximum in-use threshold, the PS Series Group does not take the volume offline, which would cause the virtual machines to crash. Instead, vCenter stuns (ie, suspend) the virtual machines on the volume to prevent them from crashing. When additional volume space is created, either by growing the volume or moving virtual machines to other volumes, the administrator can resume the virtual machines.

Performance Load BalancingIn Version 5.1

Improvements have been made to the load balancing capabilities in PS Series groups. This enhancement is designed to provide sub-volume performance load balancing and tiering in both heterogeneous and homogeneous storage pool configurations. The load balancer detects pool member arrays that are at, or near, overload, and shifts some of the workload to less-loaded arrays. To ensure that the load balancing responses to long-term trends rather than brief increases in activity, the operation takes place gradually, over a period of hours. The result is improved performance balancing in pools, especially in pools containing mixed drive or RAID configurations. Mixed pools experience the greatest benefit with workloads that show tiering and are regular in their operating behavior.

Fix List v5.1:

- A problem with an internal management process may disrupt in-progress management commands. This issue affects arrays running version 5.0.4 or 5.0.5 of the PS Series Firmware. In rare circumstances, on arrays running version 5.0.5 Firmware, this may also result in a control module becoming temporarily unresponsive.

- Unplanned control module failovers may occur in multi-member groups running in environments in which VMware ESX version 4.1 with VAAI, the Host Integration Tools for Microsoft v3.5, or Host Integration Tools for VMware 3.0 are used. (This is serious!)

- In some cases, a controller failover occurred because of a drive error during a RAID rebuild.

- In some cases, the background drive scanning process encountered an error during drive testing, and the drive was reported as “faulted” and left online when it should have been marked failed” and removed from use. AND In rare cases, a failing drive in an array could not be correctly marked as failed. When this occurred, the system was unable to complete other I/O operations on group volumes until the drive was removed. This error affected PS3000, PS4000, PS5000X, PS5000XV, PS5500, PS6000, PS6010, PS6500, and PS6510 arrays running Version 5.0 of the PS Series Firmware. (Still haven’t fixed this since v5.04! So the Predicative Feature doesn’t work in reality.)

- A failure in a hot spare drive being used as the target in a drive mirroring operation could have resulted in the group member becoming unresponsive to user I/O.

- Connection load balancing could result in volume disconnects in VMware environments using the EqualLogic Multipath Extension Module. (You KIDDING ME right?)

Update Oct 26, 2011

I got the wrong impression VMware Thin Provision Stun Option will also work with the existing ESX 4.1 version before, so this means vSphere version need to be version 5.

vSphere Storage APIs – Array Integration (VAAI) were first introduced with vSphere 4.1, enabling offload capabilities support for three primitives:

1. Full copy, enabling the storage array to make full copies of data within the array
2. Block zeroing, enabling the array to zero out large numbers of blocks
3. Hardware-assisted locking, providing an alternative mechanism to protect VMFS metadata

With vSphere 5.0, support for the VAAI primitives has been enhanced and additional primitives have been introduced:

• vSphere® Thin Provisioning (Thin Provisioning), enabling the reclamation of unused space and monitoring of space usage for thin-provisioned LUNs
• Hardware acceleration for NAS
• SCSI standardization by T10 compliancy for full copy, block zeroing and hardware-assisted locking

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By admin, July 16, 2011 11:03 pm

作為意大利龍頭大阿哥的Alfa Romeo過去曾經出過不少漂亮而又聞名于世的超級跑車﹐比較出名的有8C﹑TZ及T33系列。其中自己不太喜歡TZ﹐總覺得它比較沒有性格﹐當然這是相對于60年代同期的法拉利250GTO而言﹐聽聞AA今年底即將推出那設計幾乎完美的T33﹐我絕對是萬分期待的﹗

曾經見過西班牙的車模攝影高手Impression把此車拍得無比的漂亮之後就著了魔﹐直至去年才有幸收藏到了Spark製作精美1/43的Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione﹐心裡其實還是很掛念大個子的它。但我對一眾MR的1/18“龜殼”8C手版並不感興趣﹐主要考慮因素是MR的性價比跟我收藏的預算距離實在太大。

好了﹐之前見過Burago的1/18版本﹐但總覺得不大對勁兒﹐後來才知道原來Burago的比例根本就不對﹐Welly的才是皇道﹗但本地車模店很少見過有Welly版的8C Competizione﹐有也是曇花一現﹐機會瞬間流失。上一次出現在拍賣場已經是去年底﹐但也是緣份擦身而過。這星期我終于從上次那個贏得此車的買家手中獲得了這個“第三手”的散包8C﹐而且比他那時購買的價格還要便宜了許多﹐才港幣75元正﹐沒錯﹐真是便宜的令人難以置信﹐哈哈。

經過近1個小時的清潔﹑修補和打蠟﹐Welly的Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione終于回復了原來漂亮的外貌。說真的﹐Welly的這款8C就跟網友們的評論一樣﹐性價比來的實在太高了﹐造型好看之餘﹐細節也很充分﹐而且四個輪子都有彈簧﹐玩味十足。最主要是Welly的油漆質量上乘﹐在維修過程中用田宮打磨膏去掉了好些表面的油漆﹐車身依然是光潔發亮。

總結這台車可能是我近年收藏裡性價比其中最高的一款﹐如果你們有機會遇見﹐此車一定不能錯過。

1/18 Welly Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione – Red

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By admin, July 14, 2011 10:17 pm

My God! Look at the curves, she’s so stunningly beautiful!

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By admin, July 14, 2011 3:49 pm

一直都以為韓國人很大男人﹐但這個韓國傻小子確是個例外﹐他的真摯和簡單讓所有現場的人都感受到了那份震撼的浪漫。

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By admin, July 13, 2011 1:17 pm

After reviewing all the latest features, I would say it should be called vSphere 4.5 instead of vSphere 5.0 as there isn’t much improvements feature wise over the previous 4.1 version.

To my great surprise, VMware launched it’s latest flagship product vSphere in such a hurry, it was originally planed to be released in Q3, 2011 or later. Why is this?

As people say “the devil always lies in the details”, after half reading the latest pricing guide, I quickly figured out the answer to the above question.

It’s all about $$$, VMware tells you the latest vSphere 5.0 doesn’t have any more restriction in CPU/RAM on an ESX host, that sounds so fabulous isn’t it? Or IS IT?

Let’s make a simple example:

Say you have the simplest cluster with two ESX hosts with 2 CPU and 128GB RAM each, you Enterprise Plus edition for these two is USD13,980.

With the previous vSphere 4.1, you have UNLMITED vRAM entitlement and up to 48 cores.

With the brand new vSphere 5.0 pricing model, for the same amount of license (ie, USD13,980), you can only have 192GB entitled vRAM, so in order to have the original 256GB vRAM entitlement, you need to pay extra 2 more Enterprise Plus license, which is USD6,990.

The more RAM your server has, the more you are going to pay with the new licensing model.

So my conclusion is VMware is discouraging people going into cloud in reality. Think about this, why would you buy a Dell Poweredge R710 (2 sockets) with only 96GB RAM installed? The maximum RAM Powerdge R710 is capable of 288GB RAM but you need to pay EXTRA (288GB-96GB) / 48GB = 4 more Enterprise Plus license.

In reality, CPU is always the last resource to run out, but RAM IS! Future server will have much more powerful CPU for sure, but RAM is still the number 1 factor deciding your cloud capacity, IOPS is the 2nd, Network is the 3rd and just to remind you once more, CPU is the last!

Very clever VMware, but will potential customer buy this concept is another story.

Hum…may be it’s a strong sign that I can finally sell my VMW after all these years.

Finally, interesting enough, Microsoft also responsed to this interesting topic.  “Microsoft: New VMware Pricing Makes VMware Cloud Costs 4x Microsoft’s”

* Please note the above is my own personal interpretation as a user, it doesn’t represent my current employer or related affiliates.

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By admin, July 13, 2011 10:34 am

Today VMware announced the release of VMware vSphere 5.0 by surprise! The following is  some of the key features of this release: 

• Convergence. vSphere 5.0 is the first vSphere release built exclusively on the vSphere ESXi 5.0 hypervisor architecture as the host platform.
• VMware vSphere Auto Deploy. VMware vSphere Auto Deploy simplifies the task of managing ESXi installation and upgrade for hundreds of machines.
• New Virtual machine capabilities. 32-way virtual SMP, 1TB virtual machine RAM, Software support for 3D graphics, and more.
• Expanded support for VMware Tools versions. VMware Tools from vSphere 4.x is supported in virtual machines running on vSphere 5.0 hosts.
• Storage DRS. This feature delivers the DRS benefits of resource aggregation, automated initial placement, and bottleneck avoidance to storage.
• Profile-driven storage. This solution allows you to have greater control and insight into characteristics of your storage resources.
• VMFS5. VMFS5 is a new version of vSphere Virtual Machine File System that offers improved scalability and performance, and provides Internationalization support.
• Storage vMotion snapshot support. Allows Storage vMotion of a virtual machine in snapshot mode with associated snapshots.
• vSphere Web Client. A new browser-based user interface that works across Linux and Windows platforms.
• vCenter Server Appliance. A vCenter Server implementation running on a pre-configured Linux-based virtual appliance.
• vSphere High Availability. VMware High Availability has been transformed into a cloud-optimized availability platform.

Here are some of the reasons why I’m excited about this: 

• App Aware API.  This is the same API that has been used by Neverfail’s vAppHA and Symantec’s ApplicationHA products.  Now with 5.0, this API is publicly available.  This means anyone can craft a solution that allows for the monitoring of a application and interfacing with vSphere HA to restart the VM.  Couple this with the new vSphere Web Client’s ease of extensibility and you have the potential to do some great things.
• Ever had DNS resolution cause you issues when using vSphere HA?  With 5.0, all dependency on DNS for vSphere HA has been removed!
• IPv6 is now supported.
• Logging.  There have been a lot of improvements to the log messages with vSphere HA.  This was done to make the log messages more descriptive than ‘unknown HA error’ and should help with identifying configuration issues.
• Several user interface enhancements.  Now you can see more detailed state information about the hosts in your cluster and what role they play with vSphere HA.

The changes to the vSphere HA infrastructure now eliminates the primary/secondary constructs that existed in previous versions of vSphere.  Replacing that is a master/slave model.  In this model, one of the hosts is designated as a master, while the other hosts are designated as slaves.  The master coordinates most of the activities within the cluster and relays information to and from vCenter.

For now though, the reason why this is so great is that you no longer have to worry about details such as what hosts act as your primary nodes and which ones act as secondary nodes.  If you are installing vSphere HA in a blade chassis or making a stretched cluster, this is excellent news for you!

Heartbeat datastores is a feature that allows vSphere HA to utilize the storage subsystem as an alternate communication path.  Using heartbeat datastores allows vSphere HA to do things like determine the state of the hosts in the event of a network failure of the management network. Which brings up another enhancement to be excited about:  management network partitions are now supported in 5.0!

Finally, vSphere 5 has changed entitlements around CPU cores and memory use. The company has lifted licensing restrictions for cores per processor and RAM per host. It’s also eliminated the “advanced” version of vSphere plus, leaving just Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. vSphere 5 has also introduced a small change to the entitlement process around what is known as virtual memory or vRAM.

You must obtain new licenses to deploy VMware vSphere 5. Your existing VMware vSphere 4 licenses will not work on vSphere 5.

For more, please refer to What’s New in vSphere 5.0 and vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging Whitepaper as well as Compare VMware vSphere Editions.

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By admin, July 12, 2011 12:57 pm

Wow! This French girl does know how to twist her body!