非誠勿擾真人Show

By admin, October 25, 2010 2:30 pm

fcwr

最近喜歡上了天天在Youtube看江蘇衛視的“非誠勿擾”節目。非誠勿擾真人Show嚴肅來的又很搞笑﹑作狀來的又很真實﹐有時浪漫得很感動人﹑有時又想上去抽他們兩巴掌﹗

我的意思是這個現在在大陸很火的節目至少出席的嘉賓或者表演者們的即場反應是很真的﹐“非誠勿擾”的確真實的反應了很多的現實社會現象﹐很到肉﹐所以我喜歡看﹗

芳華絕代的Mercedes-Benz 500K Special Roadster

By admin, October 23, 2010 11:14 pm

今天去百貨公司買家品﹐臨走的時候經過玩具區突然發現了與眾不同的它。

深深地吸引著我眼球的完全是那紅火色流線型的車身﹐高貴中帶有極其不凡的氣質﹐當時還沒來的急看清楚﹐遠看只知道是台老爺車。

雖然自己對1950年前的車不大感興趣﹐但它還是令我刮目相看。細看內容之下﹐知道這次肯定又撿到了寶貝﹐1936年特別版的開篷奔馳500K﹐還隱約記得很多年前CMC曾經出過這系列﹐但就是沒出過開篷的版本。此車極有可能是Maisto車模歷史裡做工最好的一款﹐性價比絕對稱得上一流﹐油漆光亮﹐車頭燈﹑輪子及發動機刻劃細緻﹐而且開關部件之多完全對得起這個價位。其實沒它﹐收它純粹是因為它出類拔萃﹐氣宇不凡漂亮的外型。

它應該是我收藏品裡年代最悠久的一員﹐這台1936年的奔馳500K應該跟我那紐約布魯克林大橋的背景挺佩搭的﹐改天一定要付諸行動拍個天昏地暗才成。

 

1/18 Maisto Mercedes-Benz 500K Type Special Roadster (1936)

IMG_2951

賽道歷史上的光輝: Ford GT 40 MKII

By admin, October 23, 2010 4:40 pm

Ford GT 40 MK 系列曾經在世界超跑賽道歷史上佔有一個極其重要的席位﹐我特別喜歡這個系列裡的MK II﹐因為它那幾乎趴在地上的扁平車身﹐加上兩隻大大的眼睛﹐其實MK II 氣勢來的更像南美洲的眼睛蛇﹐伺機把對手隨時KO。

delPrado這款Ford GT MKII性價比來的很高﹐因為年代已久﹐所以車身難免有些泡泡﹐但作為收個車型來說﹐還是特別值得的。

 

1/43 delPrado Ford GT 40 MKII

delPrado IMG_2952a

delPrado IMG_2952b

Feature Request to Equallogic, please add READ ONLY to specific iSCSI initiator

By admin, October 22, 2010 10:55 pm

From Equallogic Support:

I believe our (Dell EqualLogic) intent was to either restrict access
on the volume level, not based on the ACL passed by the
initiator.  However, if you can express in writing exactly what you
would like to be added as a feature, why you would like this
feature, and how it would be beneficial to you within your
environment, we will create an enhancement request on your behalf.

Just be aware that submitting an enhancement requests does not
guarantee your request will be honored.  New features are added at
the sole discretion of the engineering team and will be added based
upon the needs of all customers and if the underlying code can/will
support the request.

 

 

My Reply:

It’s because many people use Veeam Backup to backup their VMs and in order for Veeam to use SAN offload feature (ie, directly backup the VM from SAN to backup server without going through ESX host), so we need to mount the VMFS Volume direclty from EQL to Windows Server Host and you may ask it will corrupt the VMFS volume which is concurrently mounted by ESX Host, NO it won’t as before mounting the volume on Windows Host, we issued automount=disable to make sure Windows Server won’t automatically initialize or format the volume by accident. (In fact, I found the mounted Equallogic volume under Disk Manager cannot be initialized, everything is gray out and it won’t show in IOMeter as well, but you can Delete Volume under Windows Server 2008 Disk Manager, strange!)

It will serve as a Double Insurance feature if EQL can implement such READ-ONLY to a specific iSCSI initiator that will greatly improve the protection of the attached volume for use of Veeam SAN Offload Backup.

I am sure there are many Veeam and Equallogic users would love to see this feature added.

Please kindly consider adding this feature in coming firmware release.

Thank you very much in advance!

半島酒店的Rolls Royce Phantom

By admin, October 22, 2010 1:12 pm

今天早上起床﹐發現樓下特別熱鬧﹐原來是鄰居的大喜之日﹐還有架半島酒店的超級大型Rolls Royce陪襯﹐正宗英國綠的Phantom真的很有氣勢﹗

以下是拿Canon大炮照的,哈哈。。。實在太漂亮了!

IMG_5708

IMG_5703

IMG_5706

Enable Copy & Paste when using VM Remote Console in ESX 4.1

By admin, October 21, 2010 12:38 am

To enable Copy & Paste option when using VM Remote Console in ESX 4.1:

1. Log into a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Client and power off the virtual machine.

2. Select the virtual machine, on the Summary tab click Edit Settings.

3. Navigate to Options > Advanced > General and click Configuration Parameters.

4. Click Add Row and type the following values in the Name and Value columns:

isolation.tools.copy.disable – false
isolation.tools.paste.disable – false

Veeam Backup & Replication v5 and ESX VAAI with Equallogic Array

By admin, October 20, 2010 4:39 pm

Count Down is on the way, only 6 hours left, it is probably the most anticipating problem in VMware ESX backup world in 2010!

veeam_v5

 

I’ve posted a question in Veeam’s forum asking the following and gained lots of knowledge regarding How Veeam backup works over SAN as well as Equallogic stuffs.

Veeam v5 can tell EQL to take a snapshot locally first using VAAI (ie, super fast), then send that Completed snapshot to Veeam Backup server for de-dupe and compression and then finally save to local storage on the backup server.

=====================================
For example, we have three kind of backup running at 6AM daily AT THE SAME TIME.

VMs are all on Equallogic SAN VMFS volume.

1. Acronis True Image backup inside each VM. (ie, File Level, backup time is 5-10 mins per VM)
2. Veeam Backup SAN (ie, Block Level, backup time is 1-5 mins per VM)
3. Equallogic Snapshot (ie, Block Level, backup time is 1-5 seconds for the whole array)

Will this actually create any problem? I mean LOCKING problem due to concurrent access to the same volume?

But Beginning with Equallogic version 5.0, the PS Series Array Firmware supports VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) for VMware vSphere 4.1 and later. The following new ESX functions are supported:

• Harddware Assisted Locking – Provides an alternative meanns of protecting VMFS cluster file system metadata, improving the scalability of large ESX environments sharing datastores.

So this shouldn’t be a problem any more.

Any hints of recommendation?

 

I feel very happy now as finally VAAI can be used to greatly increase the snapshot performance and shorten the backup window, together with Veeam’s vStorage API, I am pretty sure the backup time is going to break the records shortly, I will report later after I installed B&R V5 tomorrow.

One more thing, I did try to use ASM/VE to backup and restore VM once for testing, I forgot if it’s with VAAI or not or if the FW is 4.3.7, but it’s quite slow and one thing I also don’t like is to backup snapshot onto the Same Array!

1. Array space is too expensive to place snapshot on it, at least for VM, I am ok with taking array snapshot for lun/volume only though to avoid array failure kind of disaster.

2. It’s not safe to place VM snapshot on the same array, what if the array crashes?

3. As an EQL user, everyone know that “Dirty Bit” problem (ie, once the block is written, there is no way to get it back.) In other words, it’s a great waste of deleted/empty space. Not Until EQL releases the Thin/Thick Space Reclaim feature in the coming FW5.x version, I think the technology is still not mature or ready yet to have VM snapshot to be placed on EQL volume. FYI, 3PAR is the only vendor having true Thin Space Reclaim, HDS reclaim is a “fake ” one, search google about a 3PAR guy commenting about HDS’s similar technology you will see what I mean.

4. Remember EQL use 16MB stripe? It means even there is 1K movement in block, EQL array will take the whole 16MB, so your snapshot is going to grow very very very very huge, what a waste! I really don’t understand why EQL designed their stripe size to 16MB instead of say 1MB, is it because 16MB can give you much better performance?

5. Another bad thing is even you buy a PS6500E with lots of cheap space, but you still can’t use ASM/VM to backup a VM on PS6000XV volume and place the snapshots on PS6500E, it HAS TO be the same array or pool and stay at PS6000XV, so seem there is no solution.

That’s why we finally selected Veeam B&R v5 Enterprise Edition and that’s how I arrived here and encounter all the great storage geeks!
=====================================

Some of the very useful feedbacks: 

 The EQL Snapshot is done on the EQL Hardware Level. The vmware snapshot is done at vmware level, with vaai hardware assisted but not done on the hardware level. (BUT if it is exactly that what you want DELL provides a cool tool named auto snapshot manager vmware edition, this will allow you to trigger a hardware snapshot exactly the same time a vcneter snapshot is triggered – good for volume shadow copy consistency).

The VEEAM Snapshot is done with vCenter Server or ESX/i directly using VAAI or not (dependes on your firmware and esx/i version). Don´t mix around Hardware Snapshots and hardware assisted snapshots, is is NOT the same.

 

That is correct, but at a very small time window, VAAI kicks in, when the snaphot is triggered, at this time VAAI kicks in with the locking mechanism. But then again, don´t mix it up with a hardware snapshot, VAAI can NOT trigger SAN-Vendor-specific hardware snapshots.

You can quite do a lot with Equallogic SAN, if you want it. There are many ways allowing you to trigger hardware snapshots if you want them triggered. So i suggest you take a look at

a) Auto Snapshot Manager VMware Edition
b) latest Host Integration Tools (H.I.T.)

 

Correct, but VEEAM/vmware-triggered snapshots, when doing backups at night, would not really grow that much because the time window for doing the backup is extremely small (when using high speed lan and cbt) – therfor me personally i have no problem with it – and even if it gets a problem: VEEAM has sophisticated mechanisms which allow you to safely break the backup operation if the snapshot grows too huge.

 

 

Update: Official Answer from Equallogic

Good morning, 

So, the question is does VMware’s ESX v4.1 VAAI API allow you to have one huge volume vs. the standard recommendation for more smaller volumes while still maintaining the same performance?

The answer is NO.  

Reason: The same reasons that made it a good idea before, still remain.   You are still bound by how SCSI works.  Each volume has a negotiated command tag queue depth (CTQ).  VAAI does nothing to mitigate this.   Also, until every ESX server accessing that mega volume is upgraded to ESX v4.1,  SCSI reservations will still be in effect.  So periodically, one node will lock that one volume and ALL other nodes will have to wait their turn.   Multiple volumes also allows you to be more flexible with our storage tiering capabilities.   VMFS volumes, RDMs and storage direct volumes can be moved to the most appropriate RAID member.

i.e. you could storage pools with SAS, SATA or SSD drives, then place the volumes in their appropriate pool based on I/O requirements for that VM.

  

So do you mean if we are running ESX version 4.1 on all ESX hosts, then we can safely to use one big volume instead of several smaller ones from now on? 

Re: 4.1. No.  The same overall  issue remains.  When all ESX servers accessing a volume are at 4.1, then one previous bottleneck of SCSI reservation and only that issue is removed.  All the other issues I mentioned still remain.   Running one mega volume will not produce the best performance and long term will be the least flexible option possible.   It would similar in concept to taking an eight lane highway down to one lane.

 

In order to fully remove the SCSI reservation, you need VAAI, so the combination of ESX v4.1 and array FW v5.0.2 or greater will be required.

As a side note, here’s an article which discusses how VMware uses SCSI reservations.  

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005009

Here’s a brief snippet from the KB.

There are two main categories of operation under which VMFS makes use of SCSI reservations.

The first category is for VMFS data-store level operations. These include opening, creating, resignaturing, and expanding/extending of VMFS data-store.

The second category involves acquisition of locks. These are locks related to VMFS specific meta-data (called cluster locks) and locks related to files (including directories). Operations in the second category occur much more frequently than operations in the first category. The following are examples of VMFS operations that require locking metadata:
    * Creating a VMFS datastore
    * Expanding a VMFS datastore onto additional extents
    * Powering on a virtual machine
    * Acquiring a lock on a file
    * Creating or deleting a file
    * Creating a template
    * Deploying a virtual machine from a template
    * Creating a new virtual machine
    * Migrating a virtual machine with VMotion
    * Growing a file, for example, a Snapshot file or a thin provisioned Virtual Disk

 

Follow these steps to resolve/mitigate potential sources of the reservation: 

a.Try to serialize the operations of the shared LUNs, if possible, limit the number of operations on different hosts that require SCSI reservation at the same time.

b.Increase the number of LUNs and try to limit the number of ESX hosts accessing the same LUN.

c.Reduce the number snapshots as they cause a lot of SCSI reservations.

d.Do not schedule backups (VCB or console based) in parallel from the same LUN.

e.Try to reduce the number of virtual machines per LUN. See vSphere 4.0 Configuration Maximums and ESX 3.5 Configuration Maximums.

f.What targets are being used to access LUNs?

g.Check if you have the latest HBA firmware across all ESX hosts.

h.Is the ESX running the latest BIOS (avoid conflict with HBA drivers)?

i.Contact your SAN vendor for information on SP timeout values and performance settings and storage array firmware.

j.Turn off 3rd party agents (storage agents) and rpms not certified for ESX.

k.MSCS rdms (active node holds permanent reservation). For more information, see ESX servers hosting passive MSCS nodes report reservation conflicts during storage operations (1009287).

l.Ensure correct Host Mode setting on the SAN array.

m.LUNs removed from the system without rescanning can appear as locked.

n.When SPs fail to release the reservation, either the request did not come through (hardware, firmware, pathing problems) or 3rd party apps running on the service console did not send the release. Busy virtual machine operations are still holding the lock.

Note: Use of SATA disks is not recommended in high I/O configuration or when the above changes do not resolve the problem while SATA disks are used. (ie, USE SAS 10K or 15K or EVEN SSD should greatly help!)

 

An updated review from InfoWorld about New EqualLogic firmware takes a load off VMware

Fine Tune Windows Server 2008 R2 TCP setting for Equallogic iSCSI SAN

By admin, October 20, 2010 11:32 am

To show Glbal TCP Parameters:
netsh int tcp show global

1. How to enable and disable TCP Chimney Offload (aka TCP offload) in Windows Server 2008 R2:
netsh int tcp set global chimney=enabled
netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled

Determine whether TCP Chimney Offload is working, type “netstat –t” the line shows “Offloaded” is with Offloaded feature enabled.

2. How to enable and disable RSS in Windows Server 2008 R2:
netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled

3. Disable TCO Autotuninglevel in Windows Server 2008 R2 for performance gain in iSCSI
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

 

Update Jan-24:

I simple enabled everythingand found there is no difference on Equallogic iSCSI IOMeter performance.

TCP Global Parameters
———————————————-
Receive-Side Scaling State          : enabled
Chimney Offload State               : enabled
NetDMA State                        : enabled
Direct Cache Acess (DCA)            : enabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level    : normal
Add-On Congestion Control Provider  : ctcp
ECN Capability                      : enabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps                 : disabled

 

 

DCA should be enabled with multi-core processors whenever RSS is enabled.  It allows for NETDMA clients to indicate that destination data is targeted for a particular CPU cache and this is what we want with high-performance IO like iSCSI.

ECN is Explicit Congestion Notification and is enabled by default and is a little more complex as it tweaks TCP protocol when sending a SYN and is mostly used by routers and firewalls. Since the default is enabled, I’d just set it to the default and be done with it.

Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter

By admin, October 19, 2010 12:08 pm

Dell has announced it’s upcoming virtual appliance “Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter (aka DMPVV)”, basically, it’s an integrated OpenManage to vCenter and best of all, we can upgrade BIOS/Firmware directly from vCenter, no more downtime using USC or other method. (ie, works just like in Windows environment, in-line upgrade without shutting down ESX, of course, you need to reboot it after the upgrade is completed.)

I do hope Dell will make it a FREE PRODUCT for all its Poweredge Customers.

Why? Why NOT?

  • Most of us already installed OpenManage on ESX, so we can see most of the server hardware data like temperature, warning, configure storage, etc.
  • ESX also provides an extensive Hardware Health section
  • Using the free Veeam Monitor 5 also can give you the above with tracking as well
  • Host Profile is also available in ESX Enterprise Plus version
  • Warranty Information can be found easily on-line

So why would someone pay for a nicer GUI ? Ok, you may argue that BIOS/Firmware upgrade thing, well, I don’t mind do it in USC, it’s even safer as I am upgrading BIOS/Firmware at lowest system level. :)

1

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Update March 6, 2011

Installing and Configuring the Dell Managment vCenter Plugin – The Dell TechCenter

Update July 19, 2011 

Trial Version (Latest v1.0.1)

ESX4.1, P2V Migration Tracking (Source using True Image Server files)

By admin, October 18, 2010 1:02 pm

Best Method Learned: DO NOT TRY TO RE-SIZE or CONVERT THE SOURCE DISK TO THIN when using vCenter Converter Standalone, if you want to reduce the size of the original disk, then do this using Storage vMotion after the conversion is completed, see details below:

I HAVE RELALY BEEN THERE AND WENT THOUGH ALL THE PAIN ONCE, now I am happy after I did this intensive research on P2V using backup image.

8:20PM Start, disconnect physical server external network cables connecting to the Internet, leaving internal LAN on for VPN, so I am still able to RDP into the server.

8:36PM Take a final incremental snaphot on the physical server using True Image Server Echo (TIS9.1/TIS9/TIS8 all having some kind of wired problem during conversion, so better upgrade the TIS version on the physical server first)

8:40PM Since I’ve already copied all the previous TIS backup files to the vCenter server beforehand, so it only took me 4 mins to copy this final incremental backup file over.

9:04PM Use vCenter Converter Standalone to import TIS backup files and converted into Equallogic SAN volume (which is Thin-Provisioned), it’s so fast, 120GB in about 24 mins (about 83MB/s over 1Gbps). If you are going to do Re-size or Make it Thin at this stage, the conversion process is going to take at least 3-4 times longer and still failed at the end even you are able to boot the VM (You will either face login failure with correct password or some service will NEVER START for un-known reasons), so my suggest would be just KEEP THE SOURCE AS THICK (aka flat) and do all the THIN later, keep reading please.

10:08PM Finished re-configuring VM, disabled all the unnecessary services, uninstall all no need software and drivers (luckily I still have that physical running side by side in the above for comparison just in case some configuration need to be made), finally the VM is running on Version 7, with VMXet3 driver and using Para-virtualized for Disk Controller (this really boost the performance by at least 3 to 5 times, booting the same W2K3 physical server required 7 mins before, using normal SCSI Parallel is about 4 mins, using Para-virtualized is about 30 seconds!!! Wow!!! Of course, I am not sure if it’s to do with ESX4.1 and EQL FW5.0.2 supports Storage Hardware Acceleration and MEM. Everything is just so much faster than before. However you still have this WASTED big 120GB THICK disk that’s converted form a RAID-5 (36GBx5) Physical Server.

10:20PM Now is where the magic happens. I then did a Storage vMotion (ie, migrate the datastore) to the real VMFS volume where it should be (it was on a temp VMFS just for conversion), AND NOW YOU CAN USE THIN-PROVIIONING, guess how long does it take for Equallogic PS6000XV to do that? Yes, total 12 mins to migrate that 120GB thick and converted to thin (about 30GB)! Amazing! Again, I am pretty sure it’s something to do with ESX4.1 and EQL FW5.0.2 supports Storage Hardware Acceleration and MEM, that VAAI storage hardware acceleration thing is really kicking in!

So the whole thing took about 2 hours, seemed easy right? However I didn’t tell you I’ve spent the whole week about 30 hours to do many trial and errors with different conversion method things like use TIS Echo to convert the TIBs into VMDK (WASTE OF TIME, DON’T TRY IT), Boot TIS rescure media and then directly restore the image into VMDK (waste of time), re-size or thin the source disk and then found out I can no longer login and even I can login, some important services just never start. What about real-time conversation, FORGET IT! It will take FOREVER (so slow) and you will encounter even more problems then using a backup image.

So to put things into summary, here is what you need to do if you have True Image Server or other backup files for P2V conversion. 

  1. Use vCenter Converter Standalone and simple import the TIB files, do not make it thin and do not re-size it. This proved to be the FASTEST conversion speed. (about 85-95MB/s over a 1Gbps COS link)
  2. Then use Storage vMotion to do the actual Thin-Provisioning, if you have VAAI storage hardware acceleration, it will really help in this stage. You will see under esxtop iSCSI network traffic is really low, but IOPS is really high, so you know VAAI is working hard on the array itself and ESX Host CPU is almost nothing during the Storage vMotion as ESX Host no longer required if VAAI or SAN OFFLOAD is being used.
  3. Make sure you use Echo version of True Image Server to ensure the most compatible or safe conversion for your VM. TIS9.1/TIS9/TIS8 just created too many unknown problems

 * One more thing, DO NOT TRY TO CONVERT TWO VM at the same time if the TIS backup images are on the same local harddisk partition, it’s just too much for your server and somehow vCenter Converter will lock TIS files of one VM, so when you try to convert the 2nd VM, the size will somehow misleading (ie, it’s actually 30GB used, but it will show 120GB fully used, I think it’s related to vCenter Converter can only lock one TIB file at the same time. If you try to force converting the 2nd VM, strange thing DO HAPPEN, so just take your time, have a cup of coffee of tea, sit back and relax.)

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