Here’s the incomparable Gabrie Van Zanten to change that, with a deep look at iSCSI configuration in VMware. It’s good to see that not everyone has been swallowed up in the lead-generation hype machine!

Most customers I work with use FC connections to their EMC storage we’ve sold them, but today I was with a customer who has a complete DELL setup and used iSCSI to connect to their Dell Equallogic PS4000E storage over a set of Dell PowerConnect switches.  I was asked to configure the dependent hardware iSCSI nics.

We love the new site graphics too, Gabe!

via Posterous http://gestaltit.posterous.com/dependent-hardware-iscsi-adapter-on-esxi5-gab

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Dependent hardware iSCSI adapter on ESXi5 – Gabes Virtual World
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He observed: “Server vendors put DAS (direct-attached storage) in servers. Storage vendors put compute in storage. Over time these hybrid configurations will get more workloads.”

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | EMC denies big server biz plans … but IS building servers
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A great little piece on NIC teaming with Windows. Aidan Finn says his mind is changed now that it’s included in Windows Server 2012 and fully supported for Hyper-V and failover clustering.

True, MSFT hasn’t had NIC teaming and there’s a KB article which says they don’t support it.  NIC teaming is something that the likes of HP, Dell, Intel and Broadcom provided using their software.  If you had a problem, MSFT might ask you to remove it.  And guess what, just about every networking issue I’ve heard on on Hyper-V was driver or NIC teaming related.

As a result, I’ve always recommended against NIC teaming using OEM software.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V & Network Card (NIC) Teaming
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Tony Bourke really stirred up a hornets’ nest with this one! Who would have thought that “storage NAT” would be so controversial?

NPIV and NPV are among the two most ill-named of acronyms I’ve come across in IT, especially since they sound very similar, yet do two fairly different things. NPIV is an industry-wide term and is short for N_Port ID Virtualization, and NPV is a Cisco-specific term, and is short for N_Port Virtualization. Huh? Yeah, not only do they sound similar, but the names give very little indication as to what they do.

He followed up with a second post on analogies for NPV/NPIV…

When comparing Fibre Channel to Ethernet/IP, it’s important to remember that they are different. In fact, significantly different. The only purpose for relating Fibre Channel to Ethernet/IP is for the purpose of relating those who are familiar with Ethernet/IP to the world of Fibre Channel.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | NPV and NPIV
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We’ve loved Brien Posey’s series on server hardware. Now that it’s wrapped up (all 9 parts!) it’s worth a look at the whole.

In many ways server hardware really isn’t all that different from desktop PC hardware. Both use the same basic components such as memory, CPUs, and power supplies. In spite of these similarities however, server hardware can seem completely foreign to those who have previously only dealt with desktop hardware. The individual components tend to be more advanced than the components that are found in desktop computers. Servers may also make use of redundant and / or how swappable components. Occasionally PCs might have redundant or even hot swappable components, but such features are much more common on servers.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Server Hardware Explained
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Google built their own switches using merchant silicon. Now they’ve built their own routers, and they’re using OpenFlow between the control and data plane. Here’s Ivan Pepelnjak’s take on the news, the hype, and the reality.

Google is (as far as I know) the first one that implemented the end-to-end system: gathering application needs, computing paths, and installing them in the routers in real time.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | OpenFlow @ Google: Brilliant, but not revolutionary
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It doesn’t sound like Ivan Pepelnjak is all that enthusiastic about Brocade’s OpenFlow/SDN strategy. It’s not that he sees a problem with the strategy itself, just the “us first” marketing tone…

It’s nice to see OpenFlow support on yet another platform and MLX is one of the few (if not the first) OpenFlow platforms with 100 GE interfaces … but I fail to see anything exciting in the rest of the strategy. However, I know Brocade has great engineers (who will likely get upset halfway down this blog post) and interesting products, so I hope to be proven wrong..

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Brocade: Yet Another SDN Strategy
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Kennedy apparently did say that the employee headcount at the company is likely to be reduced through layoffs, attrition, and “restructuring,” the last of which typically results in layoffs. He also reportedly said Avaya had too many locations, which suggests that geographic consolidation is in the cards.

…

Speaking of cuts, reports that HP might be shedding a whopping eight percent of its staff are troubling. Remember, HP is a company that was headed by Mark Hurd, a CEO notorious for his operational austerity. Hurd wielded the sharp budgetary implements so exuberantly, he must have brought tears to the eyes of Chainsaw Al Dunlap, former CEO of Sunbeam, who, like Hurd, was ousted under dubious circumstances.

via nerdtwilight.wordpress.com

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Last Week’s Leavings: Avaya and HP | Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds
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An interesting thought about converged infrastructure. As Dwayne says:

The issue that I have with converged infrastructure is that it’s solving a problem that these companies helped to create

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | So Your Boss Thinks You’re Stupid – Converged Infrastructure
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Martin “Storagebod” Glassborow suggests two reasons EMC reversed course on virtualizing behind the VMAX: Maintaining margin on controllers and adapting to a flash-filled world. Both are reasonable ideas…

The speed of change in the spinning rust market appears to be slowing, certainly the incessant increase in the size of hard disks is slowing and there means that there might be less pressure to technically refresh the spindles and a decoupling of the disk from the controller makes sense. EMC can protect their regular upgrade revenues at the controller level and forgo some of the spinning rust revenues. They can more than make up for this out of maintenance revenues on the software.

But I wonder if there is a more pressing technological reason and trend that means that it is a good time to do this; that is the rapid progress of flash into the data-centre and how EMC can work to increase the acceleration of adoption. It is conceivable that EMC could be looking shipping all-flash arrays which allow a customer to continue to enjoy their existing array infrastructure and realise the investment that they have made. It is also conceivable that EMC could use a VMAX like appliance to integrate their flash-in-server more simply with a third party infrastructure.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Virtually Pragmatic?
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