Do you want a free Kindle copy of the vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Deepdive or the vSphere 5.0 Clustering Deepdive? Today and tommorow, Thursday June the 6th, you can download the Kindle (US Kindle Store) copy of both these books for free!
So make sure you pick it up either today or tomorrow, it might be the only time this year it is on promo.
New Storage DRS whitepaper available at VMware.com
Last Friday my last and latest whitepaper about Storage DRS was published on VMware.com. Go to http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10363 and download the whitepaper: “Understanding vSphere 5.1 Storage DRS“.
Download and read this whitepaper if you want to learn more about the five key elements of Storage DRS. Here’s a little snippet from the whitepaper:
Step 1. Determine Whether Datastores Are Violating the Space-Utilization Threshold
If the space utilization of a datastore exceeds 80 percent, the datastore violates the threshold and the vSphere Storage DRS load-balancing algorithm is invoked. vSphere Storage DRS attempts to avoid an out-of-space situation and therefore runs a load-balancing operation as soon as the datastore exceeds its space-utilization threshold. This operation can be outside of the normal load-balancing interval of every 8 hours.
The space-utilization threshold is a soft limit, enabling vSphere Storage DRS to place virtual machines in the datastore cluster even if all datastores exceed the space-utilization threshold. vSphere Storage DRS attempts to generate prerequisite migrations before virtual machine placement. If this fails, the virtual machine is placed on the datastore that provides the best overall cluster balance.
This performance applies to space-utilization load-balancing operations as well, even if all datastores violate the space-utilization threshold. vSphere Storage DRS tries to keep space utilization near the threshold across
all datastores.
Download:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmw-vsphr-5-1-stor-drs-uslet-101-web.pdf
Embarking on a new adventure – Joining PernixData as Tech Evangelist
Sometimes something comes along that makes you feel you need to get involved with. Something that makes you want to leave the comfortable position you have now and take up the challenge of starting all over again. Help turn that something into something big. Well that something is in my case PernixData and its Flash Virtualization Platform.
Joining PernixData means I’m leaving the great company of VMware and an awful lot of great colleague behind. Some of them I consider to be good friends. During my years at VMware I learned a lot and words cannot describe how awesome those years were. Designing the vCloud environment for the European launching partner, consulting a lot of the Fortune 500 firms, participating in VCDX panels around the world and co-authoring three books are some of the highlights during my time at VMware but I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of other great moments. Being a part of the technical marketing team was amazing! Besides working alongside the best bloggers in the world I had the privilege to work with the engineers on a daily basis. Having a job that allows you to think, talk and write about technology you absolutely love is great and difficult to let go.
But opportunities do come along and as I mentioned in the beginning some of these opportunities spark the desire to become a part of that story. When I attended a technical preview of the Flash Virtualization Platform at PernixData I got excited. I think just as excited as when I saw my first vMotion. Meeting the founders and the team made me realize that this company and product was more than just a single product, this platform is a game changer in the world of virtual infrastructure and datacenter design. Which drove me to the decision to accept a position with PernixData as Technology Evangelist.
As the Technology Evangelist I’m responsible for helping the virtualization community understand PernixData’s Flash Virtualization Platform (FVP). And as the first international employee I also will be focusing on expanding the European organization.
I will be starting at PernixData soon, can’t wait to start
vSphere 5.1 update 1 release fixes Storage vMotion rename "bug"
vSphere 5.1 update 1 is released today which contains several updates and bug fixes for both ESXi and vCenter Server 5.1.
This release contains the return of the much requested functionality of renaming VM files by using Storage vMotion. Renaming a virtual machine within vCenter did not automatically rename the files, but in previous versions Storage vMotion renamed the files and folder to match the virtual machine name. A nice trick to keep the file structure aligned with the vCenter inventory. However engineers considered it a bug and “fixed” the problem. Duncan and I pushed hard for this fix, but the strong voice of the community lead (thanks for all who submitted a feature request) helped the engineers and product managers understand that this bug was actually considered to be a very useful feature. The engineers introduced the “bugfix” in 5.0 update 2 end of last year and now the fix is included in this update for vSphere 5.1
Here’s the details of the bugfix:
vSphere 5 Storage vMotion is unable to rename virtual machine files on completing migration
In vCenter Server , when you rename a virtual machine in the vSphere Client, the VMDK disks are not renamed following a successful Storage vMotion task. When you perform a Storage vMotion task for the virtual machine to have its folder and associated files renamed to match the new name, the virtual machine folder name changes, but the virtual machine file names do not change.
This issue is resolved in this release. To enable this renaming feature, you need to configure the advanced settings in vCenter Server and set the value of the provisioning.relocate.enableRename parameter to true.
Read the rest of the vCenter 5.1 update 1release notes and ESXi 5.1 update 1 release notes to discover other bugfixes
Awesome read: Storage Performance And Testing Best Practices
The last couple of days I’ve been reading up on EMC VPLEX technology as I’m testing VPLEX metro with SIOC and Storage DRS. Yesterday I discovered a technical paper called “EMC VPLEX: Elements Of Performance And Testing Best Practices Defined” and I think this paper should be read by anyone who is interested in testing storage or even wanting to understand the difference between workloads. Even if you do not plan to use EMC VPLEX the paper delivers some great insights about IOPS versus MB/s. What to expect when testing for transactional-based workloads and throughput-based workload? Here’s a little snippet:
“Let’s begin our discussion of VPLEX performance by considering performance in general terms. What is good performance anyway? Performance can be considered to be a measure of the amount of work that is being accomplished in a specific time period. Storage resource performance is frequently quoted in terms of IOPS (IO per second) and/or throughput (MB/s). While IOPS and throughput are both measures of performance, they are not synonymous and are actually inversely related – meaning if you want high IOPS, you typically get low MB/s. This is driven in large part by the size of the IO buffers used by each storage product and the time it takes to load and unload each of them. This produces a relationship between IOPS and throughput as shown in Figure 1 below.”
Although it’s primarily focused on VPLEX, the paper helps you understand the different layers of a storage solution and how each layer affects performance. Another useful section is the overview of good benchmark software which describes the basic operation of each listed benchmark program. The paper is very well written and I bet even a joy to read for both the beginner as well as the the most hardened storage geek.
Download the paper here.