Category: Data Center

Microsoft Windows Insight 0

[Review]: Introducing Windows Server System Insights

As an IT admin, one of the responsibilities you have is to ensure systems continue to run smoothly. That is true for a number of activities and components, such as monitoring if a disk is going to run out of space, determining how much memory and processing a Hyper-V host is consuming so you can plan for new VMs, and many other examples.

Linux Kernel Patching 0

[Review]: What’s kernel Live Patching?

Dynamic Software Updating (DSU) Dynamic Software Updating (DSU) is a field of research pertaining to upgrading programs while they are running. DSU is not currently widely used in industry. However, researchers have developed a wide variety of systems and techniques for implementing DSU. These systems are commonly tested on real-world programs. Current operating systems and programming languages are typically not designed with DSU in mind. As such, DSU implementations commonly either utilize existing tools, or implement specialty compilers. These compilers preserve the semantics of the original program, but instrument either the source code or object code to produce a dynamically update-able program. Researchers compare DSU-capable variants of programs to the original program to assess safety and performance overhead. Software Hot-Swapping Hot swapping can also refer to the ability to alter the running code of a program without needing to interrupt its execution. Interactive programming is a programming paradigm that makes extensive use of hot swapping, so the programming activity becomes part of the program flow itself. Only a few programming languages support hot swapping natively, including Pike, Lisp, Erlang, Smalltalk, Visual Basic 6 (Not VB.net), Java and most recently Elm and Elixir. Microsoft Visual Studio supports a kind of hot swapping called Edit and Continue, which is supported by C#, VB.NET and C/C++ when running under a debugger. Hot swapping is the central method in live coding,...

Remote Direct Memory Access 1

[Review]: What’s Remote Direct Memory Access(RDMA)?

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) provides direct memory access from the memory of one host (storage or compute) to the memory of another host without involving the remote Operating System and CPU, boosting network and host performance with lower latency, lower CPU load and higher bandwidth. In contrast, TCP/IP communications typically require copy operations, which add latency and consume significant CPU and memory resources.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 1

[Review]: Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Oracle Secure Global Desktop is a secure remote access solution for any cloud-hosted enterprise application and hosted desktops running on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and mainframe servers. Oracle Secure Global Desktop works with a wide range of popular client devices, including Windows PCs, Macs, Linux PCs, Chromebook and tablets such as the Apple iPad and Android-based devices.

Windows Admin Center - Server Manager 1

[Review]: Windows Admin Center (Project Honolulu)

Windows Admin Center (Formerly Project Honolulu) is a new browser based management tool. Windows Admin Center the evolution of traditional in-box server management tools for situations where you might have used Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to a server for troubleshooting or configuration. It’s not intended to replace other existing Microsoft management solutions.

Illustration of RecoverPoint for VMs protecting VMware VMs 0

[Review]: Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines

RecoverPoint for VMs is a virtualized solution that provides data replication, protection, and recovery within the VMware vSphere environment.

Enable quick recovery of VMware virtual machines to any point in time. Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines provides continuous data protection (CDP) for operational recovery and disaster recovery. You’ll manage your VM protection simply and efficiently.

VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) 1

[Review]: VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO)

This is not a new features on last vSphere version but I went to write a post about that. We had to deploy different replication scenarios for our customers and some customers needs Point-In-Time Recovery (PiT) and The PiT solutions using VAIO actually so learning about the API is necessary for administrators.

The vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) were introduced in vSphere 6.0 Update 1. The VAIO framework and program were developed to provide VMware and partners the ability to insert filters for I/O into the data path of virtual machines. These “I/O Filters” enable VMware, and partners, to intercept and manipulate the I/O. This manipulation can provide open-ended data services, but thus far is limited to four use cases, two of which are currently exclusive to VMware and two which are open for partners. These use cases are: Replication, Caching, Quality of service (VMware only), Encryption (VMware only).

vSAN ReadyNode Configurator - vSAN OEM 0

[Review]: What’s vSAN ReadyNode?

vSAN ReadyNode are x86 servers, available from all the leading server vendors, that have been pre-configured, tested and certified for VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Software. Each ReadyNodes is optimally configured for vSAN with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, I/O controllers and storage (SSDs, HDDs or flash devices).

vSAN Hybrid TCO and Sizing Calculator - Sizing Results 0

[Review]: VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) TCO and Sizing Calculator

VMware vSAN Hybrid TCO and Sizing Calculator Virtual SAN or vSAN is a software-defined storage (Hyper Converged) for VMware vSphere environments. Main goal of sing vSAN in VMware vSphere environments, is reducing implementing cost. So calculating TCO and device sizing will help to achieve better results. As vSAN technology owner, VMware has provided an online tool for calculating TCO and sizing for vSAN. The online tool is very useful for IT administrator to find cost of vSAN implementation with different scenarios. The online tool has four different sections: Sizing Inputs: You should fill the sizing inputs form with some information about your environment. Sizing Results: The online tool will calculate results according to the sizing inputs and show the result on this section. TCO Input: You should enter required information for Total Cost of Ownership. TCO Results: According to the information, the tool will calculate and shows the result for TCO calculation. Sizing Inputs This section is using for enter virtualization environment specifications. You must specify the some important information for the online tool to calculating vSAN TCO and sizing. The online tool can calculate requirements according to virtualization platform, there is two platforms for calculations: Server Virtualization Desktop Virtualization The online...

EMC Unity 0

[Update]: EMC Unity Storage Systems – Drive and OE Compatibility Matrix (Feb 2018)

EMC Unity Drive and OE Compatibility Matrix EMC Unity storage systems supporting the below disk drives: Unity SAS Flash 2 Drives – For use in FAST Cache, FAST VP or all-Flash-pools Unity SAS Flash 3 Drives – For use in all-Flash-pools only Unity SAS Flash 4 Drives – For use in all-Flash-pools only Unity Spinning Drives To function properly drives installed in an EMC Unity storage system require that the array be running the minimum required revision of the Operating Environment (OE). EMC provides a document  which lists the drive part numbers supported for Unity storage systems and the minimum software revisions required for each drive model. Notes: The drive part number (PN) appears on a label on the front of the drive carrier. Note that although the OE GUI may display an alpha suffix at the end of the PN (like EFD) these characters are not part of the actual orderable PN. All drives listed in this document are RoHS compliant. Unity drive models use the following prefixes: D3 = AC storage D3FC = AC FAST cache D3AF = AC storage when used in All-Flash-Array (AFA) D3N = DC NEBS storage D3NFC = DC NEBS FAST Cache The following...

EMC VNX 1

[Update]: EMC VNX2 Storage Systems – Drive and OE Compatibility Matrix (Feb 2018)

EMC VNX2 Drive and OE Compatibility Matrix The document will help you to know that the minimum compatibility between VNX storage system OE and disk drives. The supported part numbers and minimum version of software are listed. Before installing a new disk in a storage system, use the EMC Unisphere Manager to determine the VNX OE revision running on the storage system. In Unisphere Manager, the VNX OE revision appears on the Software tab of the Storage System Properties dialog box for the storage system. Note 1: Changes and additions in the tables since the last revision of this document are noted in red type. Note 2: The disk part number (PN) appears on a label on the front of the disk carrier. Note that although the OE GUI may display an alpha suffix at the end of the PN (like PWR or SSD) these characters are not part of the actual orderable PN. Note 3: PNs in tables with a ‘YES’ entry in the Spin-Down Support column may report a suffix of PWR through the OE GUI (EX: 005049278PWR). This PWR suffix is used by the OE and is not part of the actual orderable PN. Supported Disk Drives...

HPE iLO 0

[How To]: Configure HPE iLO via ESXi

There is a standard way to configure iLO for HPE ProLiant servers, HPE iLO can be configured after boot-up via SETUP utility on all type of servers and generations. If you press [F8] during boot-up, iLO configuration utility will be appeared and then you can configure all iLO configuration such as network connection.