Cool environment Steve!

Now I wonder who will have the biggest?

.nick

I can’t wait to see what crazy stuff you come up with next…

That was something Chad Sakac told me a few months ago. Back before my latest Celerra VSA version (get it here), or my UIM appliance (sorry that one is vSpecialists eyes only right now).

I really have not done anything off the wall recently. Most of my day to day effort is dedicated to absorbing the information fire-hose that my team deals out on a daily basis. I have a couple of side projects I have been wanting to catch up on but they are all to big to start at the moment.

And to be honest it has been getting to me. I like contributing to the vSphere community and it has been a while (in my head at least) since I released something for that purpose.

So in that spirit I had a brainstorm Friday evening (2 days ago). I had been working on my blog and had a sudden crazy idea…

What if there was a WordPress plugin that would display stats from my vSphere home lab or work? Wouldn’t that rock??

Turns out there isn’t one. Or at least there wasn’t one till till now. After a weekend of coding I am happy to present the first WordPress Plugin for VMware vSphere: WP-vSphereStats

If you are super observant you may have noticed the plugin is actually running in the sidebar on the left. Basically the way it works is pretty simple.

The WP-vSphereStats plugin comes in two pieces. One is the WordPress Plugin itself. It is tested and compatible with WordPress 2.9 and above. It uses the new widget changes in 2.8 and is dependent on some helper changes in 2.9.

The second piece is a Windows command line tool used to pull stats from your vSphere Environment and posts them to a web service enabled by the WP plugin. The combination of these pieces means some pretty cool features:

1. The WP plugin allows you to run multiple widgets with different stats

2. All web service calls to your blog are secured by a key that is randomly generated. This prevents outsiders from changing you stats.

3. I tried to bring a wide range of interesting stats and safe for public stats. These include: total CPU, RAM, Storage, # of Hosts, # VMs, # of VMotions, Power States, etc.

4. The WP Plugin has error control to alert you when there is a problem with the web call (from admin settings).

5. The command line tool has two modes. One where you create a configuration file that is saved where you specify. The other where you point it to a configuration and update a WordPress blog. This allows you to update multiple blogs, schedule as you like, and securely caches login information for you vSphere Environment in XML.

6. I stayed away from creating new tables in the database. Everything is as lightweight as possible.

7. And best of all, the install is a snap. Two zip files extracted and you’re done.

This whole mini-project was a mini-vacation for me from working on my VMworld session and studying for my CCNP test next week. I tried to keep the whole program simple to allow easier support for me and  more fun for you. I scrapped the idea of an installed Windows Service and opted for the command line tool. But, I did spare no expense in time making sure the WP plugin was slick as can be. My apologies to those that don’t use WordPress. I may find time to write for another CMS but, if you are feeling intrepid, feel free to convert to your own purpose

To download and use the WP-vSphereStats plugin go here: WP-vSphereStats plugin

The plugin is in the process of being added to the WordPress Codex. Should be available from there by the end of the week.

And as always please leave comments if you like or dislike. Feedback always helps, especially if you have an idea on how to improve.
See you at VMworld 2010

.nick

Travers is extremely well respected within the team. He has a passion for technology with a strong focus on cloud computing design.

Check out his BIO here:  Travers Nicholas

And his first Nickapedia.com post here:  Geek Week : How to build an empire in 6 days

We have one more author starting soon as well. If you are interested in becoming an author please contact me at nick *(at)* nicholasweaver.com.

.nick

As a vSpecialist at EMC, we attend a lab construction week as part of the on-boarding and initiation ritual. The instructions are simple: take this list of applications and infrastructure configurations, and work as a team to install and configure them all with the kit we provide to you before the week ends. There are multiple objectives for Geek Week, the main ones being; get the team working together, learn about integrating EMC, VMware, and Cisco technologies, and develop a good understanding of technologies that are not yet released, so we are best able to support our customers at product launch time.

To kick off the week, Scott Lowe and Chris Horn dive into the details of what they expect from us:

With the equipment you have been given, please deliver the following by COB Friday:

• Rack, stack, cable all equipment (build a Vblock 1, and connect the non-Vblock components into their own environment)
• Upgrade EMC CLARiiON CX4 platform to FLARE 30 (prerelease)
• Upgrade EMC Celerra platform to DART 6 (prerelease)
• Upgrade Cisco UCS firmware, and UCS Manager to the latest release
• Install VMware vSphere 4.1 including vCenter Server 4.1 instances deployed as VMs (prerelease), and configure NFS, and VMFS datastores
• Configure hosts to use Cisco Nexus 1000V and PowerPath/VE
• Use Unisphere to configure storage and present the storage.
• Configure sub-LUN auto-tiering on the CX4(s) to move data automatically between the FLASH, FC, and SATA drives
• Connect VMware ESX 4.1 hosts to the CX4 array and enable VAAI support – storage hardware offload (prerelease)
• Set up 3 Atmos VMs and configure Atmos clients to use it’s storage
• Deploy VMware View 4.5 including a regular View Manager connection server as well as a Security Server
• Set up RSA enVision and configure it to monitor and correlate events from the VMware ESXi 4.1, vCenter 4.1, and VMware View 4.5
• Install Active Directory, Exchange 2007 and Replication Manager 5.2.3
• Configure Ionix UIM V2 to discover the Vblock 1 infrastructure (prerelease)
• Install two Celerra VSAs, and configure Celerra Replicator
• Install VMware SRM 4.0.1 using NFS, configure failover scenarios, invoke failover and failback with the agent for Celerra
• Install Avamar Virtual Edition and setup a backup schedule to protect all VMs, either through agents inside VMs, or through integration with VADP
• Install VMware’s Redwood Software (prerelease)

So how did we go? We started by mapping top down requirements of all of the applications, and their dependencies. We created some naming conventions and standard usernames/passwords. We drew up an infrastructure schematic that we could follow, and we took volunteers to lead each of the first round of tasks.

Once we felt like we had a plan, we walked into the data center to look at our equipment. It then went a bit silly for a while, like kids in a candy store . Everyone started grabbing at cables, connecting systems, opening terminal sessions to devices, and just geeked out. We all got so excited it is actually quite funny looking back at it now.

Nonetheless, we stuck to the plan and ended up closing off all of the tasks within the allotted time period. A pretty big accomplishment given there were only a few of us that have been with EMC for longer than 2 months. Well done EMEA vSpecialists, it’s a pleasure to work along side you all!

The technology highlight for me…

One of my favorite tasks was configuring the Vblock 1 storage (CLARiiON CX4-480). After deploying FLARE 30 I had to configure sub-LUN auto-tiering (Fully Automated Storage Tiering / FAST). The idea of FAST is that the system watches the access profile of information stored inside FAST storage pools and automatically promotes or demotes 1GB chunks of data between tiers based on the real application usage pattern requirements. In this particular array I had the following drives available for use:

• 5 x 400GB FLASH
• 4 x 200GB FLASH
• 15 x 300GB 15K FC
• 15 x 1TB 7.2K SATA

I left aside 4 x 200GB FLASH drives for FAST Cache (might write something about FAST Cache later) and created a new RAID 5 FAST storage pool with 5 x FLASH, 10 x FC, and 10 x SATA. This configuration should theoretically deliver a total of 12,600 back end IOPS (10.000 FLASH + 1,800 FC + 800 SATA) with a desirable response time, while also delivering a little over 10TB of usable capacity.

The interesting thing about this whole process was how easy it was to create this pool of storage with auto-tiering. I neglected to record myself creating this particular pool but I created another pool yesterday out of FC and SATA so that I could create a demo the simplicity – check it out:

YouTube: Create FAST Storage Pool

Next I created LUNs (All Thin provisioned) and allocated them to the ESX hosts. Once we started using the storage for our various projects we were working on, the CX4 started auto-tiering. I guess it was inevitable that almost all of the storage would end up on FLASH as we had enough FLASH in this pool to store all of the written blocks. Here is the tiering status of the storage pool which shows how much data is about to be moved, where it’s moving from and to, and how long it will take.

All in all, I’m extremely impressed with what the EMC engineers have come up with here with sub-LUN FAST, it’s yet another score for storage administrators, allowing them to spend less time optimizing and more time innovating. Which of your applications would you allow FAST to automatically optimize?

Eric Hollis & Chris Horn discussing VCE

Ok, if you are at Cisco Live 2010 and have any interest in the new Private Cloud innovations or in Virtualization, I have a who’s who of EMC vSpecialists onsite that you must meet.

1. We have in one location two of the masters of the VCE SST team. These guys eat, sleep, and breath Vblocks all day. Chris Horn, and Eric Hollis are the busiest vSpecialists and other than maybe Chad Sakac or Wade O’Harrow, have more face time with customers looking at private clouds than anyone. I highly recommend swinging by booth 1671 and asking to meet them. Tell them Nick (@lynxbat) sent you.

2. There are people who are in the know at EMC, and then there is Stephen Spellicy. This guy is involved in helping with product development, testing, and demo building across all parts of EMC. Have a question on Redwood UIM? Where EMC is going with Cisco and VMware? No other guy at EMC that I know of (I admit, not a long list…) is working the technology in the trenches like Stephen. He is also working the booths for VCE and EMC Journey to the cloud.

3. But, I am not done. We also have my step-brother (by employment) David Robertson. Storage guru, FCoE master, Nexus 5k experienced geek and a half. Have a difficult storage/FCoE/VMware question? I bet $10 Dave will have it answered for you in a very short and intense conversation.

4. Alongside the above we have John Avery (VMware, Cisco master), Jeff Thomas (Godfather of the West Coast & Virtualization for EMC), and Rick Scherer who just may be the only VCDX at Cisco Live (or at least that I have run into…).

EMC also has a great RSA booth, is a part of the Datacenter of the Future demo with Cisco, and great video demos of new Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) technologies.

I am also wandering around so if you want to meet up and talk about anything hit me up on twitter(@lynxbat). I will be at the Mandalay Starbucks today @ 9:30am for an EMC tweetup also.

The point being that EMC has sent their best and brightest (myself not included) so you can approach and ask the difficult questions about where you want to go with your datacenter. Take advantage before the conference ends. Even John Chambers had to drop by and see (see below).

.nick

Watching John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, give the keynote presentation today at Cisco Live 2010 I was struck by two important things:

1. The focus on changing the way the consumer / business users utilizes technology
2. The strong emphasis on the demand for a new model for business operations.

Both of these appear on the surface to be great marketing statements. But, what makes these different is the timing with the evolution of technology today.

I think the value proposition of the video on every business/consumer device is obvious. I know the Cisco Cius brings the capability to change the way interactions occur and collaberation begins. But, what affected me most was a simple statement that Mr. Chambers made:

“Today, change starts from the consumer and moves to the datacenter”

It just clicked for me with this statement. The drive for the private cloud, for infrastructure that is flexible, agile, and easily consumable is based on demand. It isn’t based on just the energy savings, cost efficiency, or enabling of new technology.

The consumers want more. They want their milk with their cookies. They want to do things quickly with lots of choice and a multitude of interaction. This trend is obvious with devices like iPhones, iPads, Flip Video, even mobile hotspots like Sprint Overdrive.

And because the consumers want more and the competition to fill that need accelerates; business development is demanding more from the way it interfaces with technology. The point being, that the acceleration of technology is imposing an demand on the way business is done today.

John Chambers illustrated this by pointing out the massive changes Cisco has done itself to the way it does business. The amount of patents, new products, and different markets Cisco is participating in is incredible. Their success is strongly tied to the speed with which they deliver new technology and business development.

The big two pillars that were built for this were Operational Excellence and Innovation. And John made strong statements around the VCE coalition (VMware, Cisco, EMC) and how important virtualization implementation from the consumer to the datacenter has become.

The idea of a business model where technology is a consumable that is distributed, flexible; and most importantly fast to deliver, is compelling. Another powerful statement was that the greatest obstacles are the culture and process and not the technology architecture itself. The strong focus is on modernizing the business architecture to be able to fully utilize the new technology innovations around the private cloud.

In the end, demand for interaction in our hands and between each other has created the demand for collaboration in the datacenter.

Having seen the focus at EMCWorld 2010 and now the strong alignment at Cisco Live 2010 I am excited to see what lays in store for VMworld 2010.

Opinions? Questions? Recipes for success? Feel free to comment below.

.nick

While a true blue EMC guy and VMware lover. I am also secretly a big fan of Cisco stuff. I love how they are always on the cusp of new technology. I also love networking and I am a huge fan of the new movements into Data Center Networking 2.0. My VMworld session this year is on virtualization and how it affects the way we look at networking.

I will spend my time this week tweeting and blogging about what I see and hear at Cisco Live. I will also spend some time at the great EMC booths including our Journey to the Private Cloud booth. Feel free to drop by and say hi. Also, EMC is hosting a TweetUp at the Mandalay Starbucks Wednesday @ 9:30am. Come out to meet all the killer Cisco competent vSpecialists and EMC peeps.

I am also going to take my CCNP composite test this week so if you run into me and I look like I have been studying all night; you will understand.

If you have something you would like me to look into and blog about, please post a request in the comments. I will try and respond to each and everyone I can.

See you there,

.nick

I have not had a very long career. In fact compared to most of the guys on the team I belong to, I am the newborn calf quivering on shaky legs. But, I can say that I have had a pretty exciting one so far. I have never been short on challenges and deadlines. And I have always been surrounded by incredibly skilled people (especially now). That said, without a doubt, EMCWorld 2010 was the pinnacle of my career so far.

I really do not know how to recap everything. In some parts I am going to feel like I am bragging (which I hate to do). In others, that I am taking credit for what is essentially just good timing. But I feel this experience needs to be shared and I will try my best to keep it simple. This is longer than my normal posts so I ask your forgiveness ahead of time.

Really, a combination of events built upon each other starting with VMware’s Tech Summit. I got invited by Chris Horn (a newly married guy now) a fellow vSpecialist to help him build the lab with Stephen Spellicy, Tee Glasgow, and Brian Lewis. The idea to use the Celerra VSA for this was not mine; but it was through this first exposure I started down the road in creating the Celerra VSA UBER edition.

To help with the Tech Summit labs I created the new UBER VSA, wrote lab control PowerShell scripts, and built most of the VCenter stuff within. Because there were issues related to some bad hardware I volunteered to show up early to Tech Summit in San Francisco and make sure everything was up for when the crew that was going to run the lab arrived.

Arriving early ended up being a good idea but with a team effort the labs went perfectly.

Because of my help with the TechSummit labs I got asked to help with the VPlex demo for EMCWorld. This started out with just ironing out some issues. Next thing you know I am taking ideas from Chad and Stephen Spellicy and turning them into monitoring tabs and plugins to automate the demo.

For weeks up to EMCWorld I was furiously coding away trying to make everything perfect. I must have performed over 50,000 VMotions on the VPlex. I even wrote a program that would do an entire teleport of 500 VM’s from one site to another, collect statistics on timing and performance, and then move them back. This would run continuously allowing me to test different aspects(tune) and ensure stability.

I left TechSummit early, got home, changed the clothes in my suitcase, and hopped a plane to North Carolina for a week of training. And from training I went straight to EMCWorld.

It was on the plane to EMCWorld that I had the idea to create something that allows the audience to see the teleports happening in real time. I ended up writing a C# WebApp that used AJAX to pull metrics from the vTeleport plugin I wrote and update asynchronously to a vCenter tab. By the time I landed in Boston I had the WebApp running perfectly. I used another application I wrote that simulated the vTeleports to code against since I could not access the lab equipment (it was in the loading dock at EMCWorld).

I arrived at EMCWorld a couple days before the big day (Monday Keynote) and wrote the UI for the new monitoring tab. After the equipment was live on stage, I loaded everything up (with Spellicy and Chad standing right by).

And it worked. 500 VM’s VMotioned in ~20 minutes, all live on the massive high-def screens on stage. The plugin worked. The teleport logic worked. It moved quickly. And my new monitoring tab looked perfect.

I can’t remember anything I have ever done working on the first try so I was beside myself in excitement. In a moment I will always remember, Chad turned to me and said “Nick, you are a freak. You know that?” Coming from a Master of technology like Chad Sakac you can’t get greater praise.

Fast forward to Monday @ 2:00pm… Pat Gelsinger, the new COO of EMC, was getting ready to walk out and introduce the world to the V-Plex. I was on the front row sweating bullets with Chris Horn and Stephen Spellicy on each side giving me encouragement. Behind me were three rows of my vSpecialist team- all arrayed in their cool shirts and representing what has to be the best group of technologists in the world today.

We were supposed to have a recorded video to use if something horrible happened. But we ran out of time to record it and Pat is the kind of guy who likes things live.

So here I am, sitting on the front row of an EMCWorld keynote. I am so new to this team I am not even through new hire training. And the COO of EMC is about to give a presentation on what is one of the most powerful technologies to be released by EMC, ever. This keynote demo is riding on the fact that:

1. My plugin runs correctly
2. My backend code executes the teleport workflow correctly.
3. The vCenter and ESX servers do 500 VMotions without issue (and inside 22 minutes)
4. And my WebApp is able to grab data and display it within vCenter without a hitch.

I am at this point thinking: “This is either one of the greatest moments of my career- or the moment I decide to switch to something else to do for a living.”

A few minutes later the moment of truth came. Chad joined Pat out on the stage. Chad talked about how cool it would be to move running virtual machines between datacenters and across storage resources. The main screen displays the VI Client console. He right clicks on the Datacenter. Moves down and selects the “vTeleport” option. And then he clicks on “Teleport to Hopkinton” (VM’s were in Boston). Now I knew that it takes about 10-18 seconds before VM’s start moving (inventory, location logic, etc). Chad knew this too and as they chatted for a bit about what was going to happen as I held my breath and I think almost all the other vSpecialists did too.

And then it happened. They started moving just as they were supposed to. All of a sudden I started getting slaps on the back and arms from my team as I stared up at those huge screens and thought: “Wow, it worked.” Chad and Pat moved on to talk about the use cases and progress. But for me, all the work and late hours had come to fruition. I was exhausted mentally and physically from the last month but absolutely overjoyed that all that work had paid off.

That moment was not mine. The team knew what I did but, that moment was a watershed for a lot of people in and outside of EMC. Virtualization is a core part of the future and the vSpecialist team as a group is uniquely staffed and positioned to make this future a reality. All I did was demonstrate in my small way what my team is capable of in many many different ways. That moment was for my team.

There were several other moments that I will never forget:

Later that evening the vSpecialists as a team were meeting at a restaurant for dinner. I had headed back to the hotel to change and literally passed out on the bed exhausted. I awoke with a start about 50 minutes later and realized I was late for the dinner.

I texted a buddy that was there telling him I was on the way and hopped in a taxi to the restaurant. As I walked up the stairs into the dining room I saw my team occupying two very long tables across the room. As I started to walk across the room, I was just some punk geek who overslept and felt like a heel for showing up late. And something happened that has never happened to me before. The entire team stood up and started clapping and cheering as I walked towards them. I didn’t even know how to react so I just hustled to my seat and sat down while looking embarrassed. I think the moment I realized they were cheering me, as I stood in the middle of that big room, I almost cried (yeah call me sappy). To be honored is one thing. But, to be honored by a group of people you hold in the most respect is something entirely different.

Later that week in our team meeting Chad thanked me for my work on the Celerra VSA and VPlex demo. I got rewarded with an iPad and another standing ovation from my team.

All the time I am thinking to myself: “Two years ago I walked around EMCWorld and would have never imagined anything like this could happen.”

So there is my story of one of the greatest weeks of my short career. I can’t imagine working for a better group of people or a company that is as well positioned to take me places. It is amazing what a great product, a great team, and a little luck mixed with some good old fashioned hard work can do.

Couple things I want to clear up since I get asked:

The vTeleport plugin used at EMCWorld was actually quite simple. There is a *real* plugin in the works (which I have seen personally) which is actually quite awesome. Mine was a way to demonstrate what is coming. I am turning the code I used for this into something quite cool for the VMware community (free cool tool). Look for it before VMworld this year.

The VPlex demo was REAL. There was no video and no net. Everything was live. Having probably done more VMotions on a VPlex than anyone outside the people that created it, I can say this; it is awesome and is almost too easy to forget it is even there.

It would be really cool if you could share your own stories of similar awesome moments you have had. Feel free to leave a comment or link to your own story. And thank you to all who attended EMCWorld.

.nick

1. I started a new job with EMC on the vSpecialist team
2. Released my major update to the vSphere Mini Monitor
3. Created the Celerra VSA UBER edition (now version 2)
4. Helped create the VMware TechSummit labs(VSA, lab automation)
5. Helped create the keynote demo for the announcement of the VPlex at EMCWorld 2010 (vSphere Plugin, automation scripts, Teleportation GUI, performance tuning).

I had just spent the last two days in Atlanta helping the rocking vSpecialist team redesign their lab network. This is the granddaddy of all the vSpecialist labs with tons of great demos we use frequently (live or recorded). They have grown so much they actually outgrew their original network design. I was on a plane about to take off back to Dallas when I pulled up my personal email on my iPad. In it I had an email from John Troyer informing me I had been made a vExpert for 2010. I just about leapt up in my cramped airline seat.

This is an extreme honor as I hold so many of 2009 vExperts in such high regard. Still a little humbling to imagine myself as part of this group but, I take this as a sign that the direction I am going is a good one. And will use it as motivation to do more for the VMware Community.

I wanted to give a big Thank You to John Troyer and his team for all the hard work they do. I also want to thank my fellow coworkers back at ThinkCash(now Think Finance), the VMware Community, Chad Sakac and his killer management team, and those great vSpecialists that keep me challenged on a daily basis.

I will try my best to represent this honor well.

.nick

UBER version 2.

It has only been 19 days since the original release of the Celerra VSA UBER edition for the masses. The response has been overwhelming and encouraging. And out of that appreciation I am excited to present the Celerra VSA UBER V2 (version 2). It has a host of new features and now features the combined input of the vSpecialist team to put the shine on it.

If you are not familiar with the original feature list with the first UBER version, then go here first.

Here are the new features and enhancements in UBER Version 2:

1. Even shorter initial setup
2. Better network configuration. Removal of old style Control Center config from original VSA (Thanks to Eric Hollis & Kevin Z for help)
3. Completely automated addition of storage. You heard that right… If you want to add more storage simply shutoff the VSA. Add as many hard drives as needed and turn back on. The VSA now detects the new VMDK’s, partitions, formats, mounts, performs Clariion configuration, and adds to storage pools. Gone are the days of manually having to configure. See video below for demo. (This by far was the biggest request)
4. The VSA now includes a Rapid Configuration script for setting up CIFS, NFS, and Replication between 2 VSA’s. This script will accelerate the creation of a baseline working set of VSA’s. We highly recommend you use this after becoming familiar with the Celerra management first. It is not meant to replace Control Center. (Thanks to Clint Kitson for the single-handed genius of this feature)
5. Now the standard configuration wizard includes setup of NTP.
6. Further speed improvements around network latency. Should see more stable and lower access times with NFS and iSCSI.

Couple outstanding issues:

1. Some setups will get alerts around ‘slot_3’ being reset or in a stale state. You may ignore this error. This slot is for the unused data mover. Still narrowing down why this happens to some setups.
2. If you go far along in the setup of replication and run into funky issues it is easier to redeploy the VSA and start over. Remember this is a simulation of a set of hardware. Not everything reverses as easily as it deploys. With the new wizards it is quicker this way too.

The new downloads are:

Celerra VSA UBER Version 2 – Workstation
Celerra VSA UBER Version 2 – OVA (ESX)

Please leave comments with opinions, questions, suggestions, or favorite recipes. The more comments the more inspired I will be to get the next rev out. Or maybe even something new that is not Celerra…

And while you wait for your download, watch this video showing off the new features(go full screen for more detail):

.nick