vFrank

Essense of virtualization

PernixData

vCenter er nede, hvad gør du?

by Leave a Comment

Hvad ville du gøre hvis dit vCenter blev utilgængeligt i morgen og hvilken indflydelse ville det have på din forretning? Svarene falder typisk i to kategorier:

  • Mit vCenter er ikke kritisk for min produktion og hvis det er nede installere jeg blot et nyt og forbinder det til mine ESXi servere.
  • KRISE! Hvis mit vCenter er nede er der ikke self-service, overvågning og styring af de virtuelle resourser. Jeg er på dybt vand!

Det er er en gammel kendt udfordring i et hvert datacenter. Hvordan beskytter man sin VMware mangement stack og får den hurtigt online igen med en lav RTO. VMware udvider sine management produkter. Hvor man tidligere kunne nøjes med en enkelt vCenter server består de fleste miljøer af adskillige servere til håndtere den daglige drift og rutiner. Den er i dag udbygget til:

  • vCenter (med intern eller ekstern database)
  • vRealize Operations Manager
  • vRealize Automation Center
  • vReaize Log Insight
  • NSX Manager
  • PSC (platform services controllers)
  • SDDC (VMware Cloud Foundation)
  • Management AD og DNS

Udover disse VMware services er der også flere administrative servere som IT afdelingen er afhængige af som kan tilføjes som kritiske komponenter til en disaster plan. Med det Software Defined Data Center er det ikke som tidligere hvor vCenter var “nice-to-have” – er det nu blevet til en kritisk funktion der altid skal være online. Hvis vCenter er nede skaber det problemer for ting som

  • Selv-provisionering af nye virtuelle maskiner
  • Overvågning
  • 3′ parts produkter der kommunikerer med vCenter

I et tilfælde hvor der er nedbrud eller datatab på management stacken er man ilde stedt. Hvordan bringer man stacken online når vCenter og evt. management AD og DNS er nede? Er din platform til beskyttelse 100% uafhængig af dem? Med stor kompleksitet er det muligt at bygge et system med traditional software som kan håndtere dette. Men hvordan tester man det? Hvordan sikrer man at alle windows servere benytter lokale service accounts og ikke AD konti? På hvilken måde kompromittere dette sikkerheden? Hvad med faren for Ransomware når traditional software kører på Windows og i værste tilfælde bliver backup data kryptereret og utilgængelig?

Til at løse dette er der behov for at se på problemet med friske øjne. Der er behov for en løsning der opfylder følgende

  • Baserer sig ikke på Windows og backup data er immutable
  • Har ingen afhængigheder af AD og DNS
  • Kan benyttes selvom vCenter er utilgængelig
  • Kan udføre en Instant-Mass-Restore og bringe ALLE administrative servere online med det samme og som en gruppe.
  • Simpel og alt inkluderet i et system (ikke 4-5 forskellige produkter og producenter)
  • Ingen single point of failures.

Hos Cohesity løser vi dette elegant og din management stack er beskyttet og muligt at lave recovery på få sekunder. De unikke funktioner ved Cohesity:

  • Policy baseret beskyttelse
  • Alt-i-et-system (de-dupe storage, backup software, databaser, always-online, fuld HA for alle komponenter software og hardware.)
  • Instant-Mass-Restore: Recovery af 5 eller 50 maskiner på få sekunder
  • SnapTree: Alle backup punkter er fully hydrated og instant-recoverable. Ingen baggrunds IO operationer for at lave syntetiske fulls
  • Test/Dev: Mulighed for at teste recovery når som helst og validere det virker

Hvis du ønsker at få en demo at dette i dit eget datacenter så tag kontakt.

Hvis du vil læse mere om hvordan Cohesity beskytter den fulde VMware Management Stack inklusive cloud foundation så læs mere her:

http://www.cohesity.com/vmware-cloud-foundation-vcf-cohesity-white-paper/

Video Demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtAoCi4HcX4

#Brixit PernixData

by 13 Comments

The last three years have been a fantastic journey. With PernixData I have personally been part of helping more than 100 customers getting low latency storage performance with FVP and never before experienced insight into their data center with Architect. I have made a lot of new friends, and I will miss all of the great colleagues at PernixData, never before have I been part of such a talented team. I did not expect our ways to part already but due to some rumours about a company acquiring PernixData I have chosen to get back to what I love the most: Evangelizing and helping a new young startup get their message out in the Nordics.

PernixData was my first startup and I was hired as employee number 75 and number 3 in EMEA. Working for a startup is nothing like any other job I have had. The energy, the passion and the dedication all around is unbelievable. Everybody wants to succeed and prove them self. All individual contributions makes a difference. There is no way to hide and great work is appreciated and applauded.

Shortly after I started working I was sent to new-hire training at the HQ in San Jose. I was bombed with information about the product, the processes, salesforce, marketing etc. Being this early has its benefits though. One thing I particularly remember was having private lunch with the CEO Poojan Kumar at a nearby restaurant. He welcomed me and told me how much he appreciated that I had chosen to join the company. I was in awe, my feeling was “thanks for letting me be the first SE hire in all of EMEA”, working with a great product with big potentials. I now understand that when you join a young startup with only a few months history of selling you are taking a big risk, the adventure could last many years or just a few months if things don’t work out.

Thinking back about the last 33 months it has been a thrilling experience. We celebrated many victories but also had our downs. One quarter selling like crazy to the next with PSOD (purple screen of deaths) that killed some major deals that was on the table. This is how it is, product is still maturing and not everything is perfect (yet)

My title at PernixData was “Systems Engineer” – but in the startup world your job far exceeds that of your title. You are doing marketing, lead generation, partner enablement, actual SE work like POC’s and presentations at VMUG. You pretty much do whatever it takes, and that is what is expected.

What I liked the most was how close you get to everyone at the company. You can talk directly to the CEO, you can give the Product Manager a call and have a big influence on the development of the product. Many things experienced in the field was brought back to PM, and later added or changed in the product.

Now that I am about to open a new chapter it has to be with another startup with disruptive technology. Joining one of the big established players is not even something I consider. Luckily timing is great and when my current employment ends I will start working for Cohesity as a Systems Engineer in the Nordic region. I am certain that we will meet at VMworld or many VMUGs to come. I am getting ready for another wild ride, with long working hours. (or as my girlfriend says, “Frank you do not work, you do what you love to do”)

 

 

PernixData Management Appliance is here!

by Leave a Comment

The appliance that a lot of you have been asking for is finally here and it is just what requested. No more struggles with MS SQL connectivity. From here on installing the Management server is dead simple all you need for preparations are.

  • IP address for the Management Appliance
  • Username and password for an account with vCenter admin privileges.

The appliance is packaged as an OVA file. Download the OVA and start the “Deploy OVF Template” wizard in vCenter. During deployment you need to input some information

  • Configuration size (tiny, small, medium, large) – this choice will affect how much memory, cpu and disk space the appliance will be configured with
  • Networking Properties: IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway and DNS Server.

PernixData Appliance OVA

Screenshot 2016-06-03 11.35.59

Screenshot 2016-06-03 11.34.46

The Appliance will then be imported into vCenter and you can power it up. After first power up you will need to access its config page via your browser. In your browser go to https://ip-address-of-mgmt-appliance. When you get to the login page you login with default credentials of

Username: pernixdata
Password: pernixdataappliance

Screenshot 2016-06-03 11.44.27

 

Then you follow the brief setup wizard and put in your vCenter credentials. Once done the appliance is all ready and you can start using it.

PernixData Nordic Tour 2015 with Frank Denneman

by 1 Comment

Frank Denneman (frankdenneman.nl) is back in the Nordic capitals for the PernixData tour 2015. The Agenda is PernixData FVP and our newest product Architect that will revolutionize the datacenter. Some highlights of what to expect:

  • Combine best-in-class user experience with robust real-time analytics
  • Deliver unprecedented visibility and control of virtualized applications and the underlying infrastructure
  • Maximize application performance while minimizing troubleshooting costs

Monday September 21st: Helsinki

Tuesday September 22nd: Stockholm

Wednesday September 23rd: Oslo

Thursday September 24th: Copenhagen

It is all free and you can sign up here for the event: Sign up here

Running PernixData FVP in Monitor Mode

by 2 Comments

Back in March Frank Denneman wrote the following article about running PernixData FVP in Monitor Mode. I suggest that you read it before you read this post.

The great thing about monitor mode is that without the use of Flash or RAM for acceleration you will get a clear picture of how your storage array is performing. With the information gathered from this exercise you will know what to do next. Monitor mode will either let you choose to continue the POC with PernixData and start accelerating virtual machines. Or you may learn that your storage array got the performance you need. No matter the outcome you as administrator will know more about your environment and have learned about the IOPS profiles from your virtual machines.

I often get the question “What graph should I look at in monitor mode?” 

A good place to start is the Summary graph on a Cluster level. This will show you information for all virtual machines latency running in that cluster. To start you should only add the two counters

– Datastore Read
– Datastore Write

Screenshot 2015-01-05 17.10.56

By looking at this graph you will get a quick summary of Read & Write latency the virtual machines are experiencing in your environment. At one data point in this graph we see a Read Latency at 105 ms. and Write latency of 30 ms.

When you see this there is no doubt that PernixData FVP will be able to help your virtual machines getting predictable low latency performance.

The next step is to try to accelerate your virtual machines. PernixData can use SSD, PCI-E flash or RAM for acceleration. When you choose you have two factors to think about

1. Performance of the acceleration media
2. Capacity

You want a good SSD/PCI-E flash device that gives you predictable low latency for read and write IOPS but you also want a drive with the right capacity. If the capacity is low you will not get the hit-ratio you are looking for. Capacity is a huge advantage for SSD/PCI-E over RAM. RAM is faster – but I would not sacrifice that capacity from a good performing SSD over RAM with lower capacity.

If we move on and start to accelerate with RAM/SSD/PCI-E you can then use the graphs again to show the difference.

This picture shows the Datastore Write Latency and Write latency. Write equals VM Observed Write. So that latency is what the VM is experiencing. At the data point highlighted we have a datastore latency of 30 ms. but the VM is experiencing 1.39 ms because of local flash acceleration!

Screenshot 2015-01-05 17.10.20

 

The next picture focuses on Read latency. The counters selected are Datastore Read & Read. The highlighted data point shows datastor latency at 105 ms but the VM is experiencing 5 ms because of local acceleration.

Screenshot 2015-01-05 17.10.03

 

Monitor Mode is a strong tool to use during a PernixData FVP POC. It is not necessary to use it though. If you have flash/RAM available from the get-go you can still use the graphs to show what is going on. The graphs are right inside the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client.

Once customers get FVP in their environment they don’t use the vCenter Performance graphs for storage performance anymore. They go straight to PernixData and uses them instead.

If you are interested in figuring out what storage Read & Write latency you are experiencing today. Then go and request a free trial version of PernixData FVP software here

 

PernixData FVP 2.0 Now Available

by Leave a Comment

It is here! PernixData FVP 2.0. During the last couple of months I have been getting experience with this in my lab and at selected customers. In 2.0 we are introducing 4 new groundbreaking capabilities.

Distributed Fault Tolerant Memory (DFTM):

Now we support the use of RAM for read and write acceleration. We still support the use of flash of course. We are just giving extra options for acceleration. From my experience in my lab RAM is INSANELY fast. It did not matter what kind of IO I threw at it. It just consistently performed with extremely low latency. Just imagine reading and writing data from RAM with 0,08 millisecond!

NFS support

This one does not require a lot of explanation. Now we support NFS datastores. It is implemented in the same transparent fashion as block storage. So absolutely no changes is made to the VM or NFS datastore.

User defined fault domains

With the use of RAM we also see the need to define your fault domains. If you are using RAM for Write acceleration you would probably like to have a copy of the Writes on a second host placed in a another RACK/Blades chassis/Datacenter. With fault domains you can now define your physical boundaries and make sure exactly where the writes are replicated to. This of course also works with flash.

Adaptive Network Compression

When we send the Writes over the PernixData network (default is vMotion but any vmkernel will work, you decide) we have seen in 1Gb environments that it can be a problem. In FVP 2.0 we will take a look at the data to be sent, and if it makes sense we will compress before we send it over the wire. This brings down the latency of WB +1/+2 policy in a 1Gb environment.

You can read the full press release here:

http://www.pernixdata.com/press-release/pernixdata-introduces-new-enterprise-subscription-and-vdi-editions-fvp-software

 

 

PernixData FVP 1.5 Beta Available

by Leave a Comment

Good news, we just released our Beta program for the upcoming FVP 1.5 release. You can apply for the Beta Program here:

https://beta.pernixdata.com/

Version 1.5 adds support for vSphere 5.5. Full support for the vSphere Web Client is available. If you are still running on vSphere 5.0 or 5.1 you will still use the vSphere Client C# client.

If you want to find out what PernixData is all about, please register for the beta and provide feedback.

New job as PernixData Systems Engineer

by 2 Comments

Pernixlogo

I have an announcement to make. After 5 years working as a VMware Trainer and Consultant and going independent with my own business vFrank Consultant I got a offered a great challenge.

The challenge was: Work for PernixData as the first Systems Engineer in Europe and help all of the new customers coming aboard. This was a challenge I could not resist.

For those who do not know PernixData is software you install in the vmkernel of your ESXi hosts. You then add some local flash/ssd to your hosts and this will be transparently used as Write and Read cache for your VM’s. This software is so cool that it even works with vmotion and HA. 

If you want to learn more about it, drop me a mail or check out www.pernixdata.com

Hopefully you will get as excited about the product as I am.