General purpose Windows Storage spaces server

So after someones request I decided to write a blogpost about this  We needed a new storage server in our lab enviroment. Now we could have bought a all purpose SAN or NAS, but we decided to use regular Windows Server features with Storage Spaces, why? Because we needed something that supported our protocol needs (iSCSI, SMB3 and NFS 4) and Microsoft is putting alot of effort into Storage spaces and with the features that are coming in vNext it becomes even more awesome!

So we specced a Dell R730 with alot of SAS disks and setup storage spaces with mirroring/striping so we had 4 disk for each pool and 10 GB NIC for each resource.

So after we setup each storage pool, we setup a virtual disk. One intended for iSCSI (Vmware) and the other Intended for NFS (XenServer) lastly we had one two-disk mirror which was setup for (SMB 3.0) so since this is a lab enviroment it was mainly for setting up virtual machines.

Everything works like a charm, one part that was a bit cumbersome was the NFS setup for XenServer it requires access by UID/GUID

The performance is what you would expect from two-way striping set on SAS 10k drives. (column size set to 2 and interleave is 64kb)

Since we don’t have any SSD disks in our setup we don’t get the benefit of tiering and therefore have a higher latency since we don’t have a storage controller cache and so on.

Now for Vmware we just setup PernixData FVP infront of our virtual machines running on ESX, that gives us the performance benefit but still gives ut the storage spaces that the SAS drivers provide.

Now that’s a hybrid approach

#nfs, #storage-spaces, #vmware, #xenserver

Software defined Storage? Dell’s got you covered

Earlier I’ve discucced a bit on Software defined storage and how this is an growing market with new vendors appearing all the time. Some of the concept behind SDS is the ability to move features that have previously only been available to the hardware solutions into the software stack. https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/software-defined-storage-and-delivering-performance/

Now as I mentioned there are a lot of different vendors here, some focus on delivering high performance, some on delivering adequate I/O on commodity hardware, some on flexibility, and many in between.

So what do we choose ? Since there are so many different vendors here it might be a hard choice to choose one over the other. The big question is what do I need ? Do I need to run big OLTP databases running on an average 200,000 IOPS, do I need to have a hyper-v cluster setup using commodity hardware in order to have a low cost on my Storage? Do I have existing Vmware infrastructure that I want to improve my IOPS on ? Looking to buy new hardware to have next generation VDI platform ? Do I have a bunch of different backend NAS / DAS and SAN I want to pool into a large unit of storage?

So the question is what do I have, what do I want and where do I need to go

And as the title mentiones, when you are looking for a new solution/ platform for software-defined storage, well then Dell’s got you covered.

Dell is one of the few hardware vendors who is certified for most of the different SDS solutions such as.

VSAN: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan

Storage Spaces: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?&chtext=&cstext=&csttext=&chbtext=&bCatID=1642&cpID=16445&avc=79&ava=0&avq=0&OR=1&PGS=25&ready=0

EVO: RAIL http://www.vmware.com/products/evorail

Dell also has a strategic partnership with Nutanix (which is going to be Dell hardware shipping with Nutanix Software) called the XC-series

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/press-releases/2014-06-24-dell-software-defined-storage-portfolio

Also Dell has partnership with both Nexenta and Atlantis

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/dell-nexenta-storage

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/mediagallery/20439148/download

Dell has also included a partnership with SanDisk in 13th generation servers which allows for simple SSD tiering on servers –> http://www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/press-room/press-releases/2014/sandisk-das-cache-software-now-available-for-next-generation-dell-poweredge-servers/

So Dell has many different SDS options on their solutions, and also their SC-series, Equallogic, Compellent for running traditional workloads.

#dell, #evo-rail, #nexenta, #nutanix, #storage-spaces, #vsan

Dell VRTX førsteinntrykk og nyheter med Windows Storage Spaces

Jeg ser mange forespørseler rundt dette både ute i markedet samt på sosiale medier så derfor måtte jeg bare skrive om dette på norsk

Tidene endrerer seg, det samme gjør teknologien. Det siste året har det vært mye fokus rundt konvergert infrastruktur. I essensen betyr at man slår sammen flere komponenter til en enkelt løsning. Tradisjonelle løsninger baserer seg vanligvis på 3 hoved komponenter, servere, nettverk og lagring.

Så visst man skal sette opp et virtualiseringsmiljø er man avhengig av disse 3 komponentene. Alle de store leverandørere gjør mye her for å få på plass løsninger, som f.eks Storage spaces med Windows Server gjør at man ikke er så avhengig av et dyrt SAN for å få en god ytelse å kjøre et virtuelt miljø på.

Samtidig som nettverk begynner å bli mer og mer virtualisert så vil man begynne å styre dette direkte fra virtualiseringsmiljøet i stedet for ute på enheten selv. Men selv om all denne teknologien kommer på plass så er man avhengig av at de 3 hardware komponentene er satt på plass å det er her konvergert infrastruktur kommer inn.

Dell har designet en ny konvergert løsning som kalles PowerEdge VRTX, rettet mot større kunder med behov for lokal infrastruktur på utekontorer eller som et komplett virtuelt datasenter for  mindre til mellomstore bedrifter. Denne kan faktisk stå under en pult da det er mulig å få den levert med hjul. Kan fort tenkes at den bråker mye men neida, den er like stille som en vanlig stasjonær eller laptop. Men det som er unikt med VRTX er at den slår sammen de 3 komponentene (servere, nettverk og lagring) i et chassis. 

Et eksempel, så kan denne bestå av 4x M520 Server (Definerte VRTX M520 servere siden VRTX utgavene har egen firmware) med 12x 3,5” disker. Alle serverene i chassiet deler midplane slik at alle serverene kan få tilgang til lagringen og nettverk. Lagringen blir presentert til serverene som SAS disker, og via management consolet til VRTXen definerer vi hvilken server node som skal ha tilgang til lagrings enhetene. Den kommer også med 3 full lengde PCI-E sloter som gjør at vi f.eks. etterhvert som det blir supportert sette inn et Nvidi GRID kort. I tillegg kommer VRTX med 5 halvlengde PCI-E slot. Totalt 8 PCI-E sloter utøker bruksområde,

du kan kople på ekstern lagring hvis du vokser ut av VRTX, ulike GPU og nettverkskort.

Her er det flere muligheter som dukker opp avhengig av hva den skal benyttes til.
Vi kan f.eks bruke den som en scale-out file server med SMB 3.0, hvor f.eks to noder som scale out-file server og 2 noder som Hyper-V servere. Da har vi et ferdig virtuelt miljø kjørende på samme løsning. Med 2012 R2 kan vi også bruke SSD disker som en del av løsning å få Storage Tiering funksjonalitet, refererer til min tidligere artikkel –> https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/storage-tiering-for-scale-out-file-server-jbod-sas/ For å få enda bedre ytelse på lagringen.

En annen ting kan også være å levere VDI løsninger, med f.eks Nvidia grid skjermkort satt inn, er det fult mulig å sette opp en fullstendig VDI løsning med lagring og mulighet til å levere “tunge” grafiske applikasjoner enten via Citrix eller Microsoft RemoteFX. Så det blir spennende å følge med på dette fremover å hvordan dette spiller sammen med Microsoft!

Jeg ser også at Dell og Microsoft har fått et tettere samarbeid, både på lagring og leveranse av VDI løsninger. Nylig har også Dell annonsert at de har kommet med hardware støtte for Storage Spaces i Windows Server med PowerVault løsningen sin. Dette gjør det enklere å sette opp billige lagringsløsninger for virtualiseringsmiljø med Hyper-V. Dere kan lese mer om nyheten på Microsoft annonseringen her –> http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2014/02/11/today-dell-announced-hardware-support-for-storage-spaces-in-windows-server.aspx 

Visst det skulle være noen spørsmål så er bare å legge igjen en kommentar!

#convergert-infrastruktur, #dell, #storage-spaces, #vrtx

Windows 8 an improvement ?

With the upcoming release of Windows 8, allot of people have stated that this OS is not meant for the enterprise businesses. Some say that it will be a new vista(Even thou I was really satisfied with Vista).And some are  just excited for the new release! Like myself!

(NOTE: THIS POST IS BASED ON WINDOWS RC, SOME FEATURES MAY STIL L CHANGE UNTIL RELEASE)

Either way, I can say for certain that this does not smell like a new vista release. This is a (so far since it is in RC ) stable, solid, speedy, packed with allot of features OS. So far there aren’t any BIG exciting features for the enterprise businesses that isn’t already in windows 7.
Of course there will be some people that want windows 8 because its new and hip and it has metro 🙂
But my general opinion is that windows 8 is primarily aimed at the regular user.

if you wish to deploy windows 8 in a enterprise remember the following,
1: end-user training ( this is always a point regardless of which operating system deployment) but the normal users are used to have start menu click click click.. So if you are upgrading to Windows 8 the end-user training will take a lot of time.
2: App-store and policy. With windows 8 Microsoft has released an Appstore and how will you control it within your enterprise? Should users be able to install apps from the Appstore?
3: Application comp ability (again this is a valid point for every OS deployment and every windows 7 app works with windows 8)

Of course there are some new features that is aimed at the enterprise level, I will go trough this in detail later. But this post is going to explore the new features in Windows 8 and see if it worth the investment for the user.
Let’s call it a mini review. Since this post is going to be huge.

For the end-user the biggest difference will be the new GUI called Metro.

Microsoft is going to enforce this GUI on to all users, so there is no way to disable this GUI like you could with Aero.
Bad call from Microsoft? Well…. Microsoft wishes to convert developers to develop for the Metro GUI and you can’t do that without having the users to actually use it.
And Apps that is created for Metro is also useable for Windows RT and Windows 8 phones! Which  will make 1 Metro apps available for many platforms.
Users of the regular windows can switch between Metro and the regular desktop by pressing the Windows button. It takes some time getting used to, but once you get comfortable with it rocks!
IT comes by default with some Apps created from Microsoft such as Mail ,Calendar, Picture, Map, SkyDrive, Store, Camera, XBOX Live & so on.

If you need to know a bit more about Metro you can see my previous post regarding Windows 8 shortcuts.
https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/windows-8-shortcuts/

Troubleshooting:
When regarding troubleshooting, Windows has a lot of features available  for the user when regarding
1:System Troubleshooting.
2: Application Troubleshooting.7
3: OS Troubleshooting.

Now if you wish to open Advanced troubleshooting menu (for a computer you have to press F8 button during boot)
And you get these options (If you have multiple OSes installed you will have another button here that says choose OS)
If we explore the Troubleshooting menu we have these options.

Microsoft has added some extra features to Windows 8, called “Refresh your PC” And “Reset your PC” Under Troubleshoot.

Refresh your PC:

Your files and personalization settings won’t change
Your PC settings will be changed back to their defaults.
Apps from the Window Store will be kept
Apps you installed from discs or websites will be removed
A list of removed apps will be saved on your desktop

This well be useful when you are getting a sluggish system.

Reset your PC:
All your personal files and apps will be removed
Your PC settings will be changed back to their defaults

Which can be useful if you say sell your computer.

If those aren’t enough Windows has some other tools we can use under Advanced Options.

System Restore is a known feature which has been included with the latest releases. System Image Recovery is also a known feature which allows you to revert your computer back in time to a state where the image was created.
Automatic Repair is a new feature that check’s if there is missing or damaged system files that make Windows unable to boot.  Note this is a replacement for the “Last know good configuration” in previous version.

If you manage to come into Windows you have a lot more features there regarding troubleshooting.

Windows also have a lot of Maintance tasks in order to prevent Windows to becoming sluggish. And by default there is a Automatic Maintance that runs at 03:00 each  night. (IT also by default has the right to wake computers up from sleep) (I have no idea what the task does but it is hidden in task scheduler)

If you open Control Panel –> Recovery you have the option to create recovery points for “Reset your PC” & System restore.

Windows 8 also comes with Windows Defender, (Witch basically is Microsoft Security Essentials wrapped around with the name Windows Defender) 
Is this healthy for the competition ? Not really since Microsoft is deploying its own antivirus solution with the OS, most people won’t bother getting a new one. And for most people this is enough.
Microsoft is scoring pretty high with their AV software, that it has low memory consumption and it’s free, and offers pretty decent protection.
Of course it’s not very high  on features but it gets the job done.
Even if it isn’t good for competition, the fact that this is installed by default, gives the users more security as soon at the OS is installed.

Windows Firewall hasn’t changed a lot since Windows 7. You have all the same features as you did before, nothing new and exciting here.
There has been some improvements in the Zone identifier service. (In Windows 7 I had some issues with the zone identifier just switching from domain to private)

Windows update pretty much looks the same as well, just a change of graphics. And alas no new fancy features here.
 

Now this is a feature I Love! View event changes on Device Drivers.
Now you can view changes in a device driver via Event Viewer (They don’t show by default in event viewer so you have to open Device Management and go to Events on a particular device)
But so far I haven’t had any faulty drivers for Windows 8, even NVidias device drivers work like a charm!

Storage Spaces, now that’s a new feature in Windows 8.
This is a software-raid feature. It allows you to add devices to the computer and then create virtual hard drives on that device. Or you can split the hard drive over multiple physical disks.
If you have 3 physical devices, you can have equivalent to RAID 5.
But remember this is not hardware based, so this might affect the CPU.

 

File History is a kinda-new feature for Windows, it replaces the “Shadow copy” this function’s main property is to take a copy of a file based on what settings you set.
The default setting is Save a copy each hour, use 5% of disk space and keep saved versions forever. It is also recommended that you use an external drive USB harddrive or something when you want to use file history.

And alas! Windows 8 also comes with the same Memory Diagnostic program as before.

A big change that has happened in Windows 8 is the revamp of Task Manager.
First of if you open Msconfig and check the startup pane you will see that you have to open the Task Manager in order to see that startup applications.

The Task Manager has gained a lot of improvements.
As you can see here. The Startup items is now moved to the task manager.

You can even view the App history via Task Manager (This however might be a problem, if a admin can see the App history of another user, this is configurable via Group Policy if you wish to disable App history)

You can also minimize all the services for a particular user.

The Performance window has also become a lot cleaner.

Something new to the remote desktop client is the ability to detect what kind of WAN link you are on, and configure what quality to use.
And Persistent bitmap caching is moved down and is enabled by default.

Another feature that has gotten a drastic change in the Explorer.

By pressing the file button you now get access to open command prompt and PowerShell

And all the toolbar buttons open a set of commands.

For application troubleshooting, you now have the option to run the compability troubleshooter directly from the Compability tab.
The settings you can apply to an application is the same as before. One new feature that might be useful for application compability is that Windows 8 now features hyper-v.
Im guessing Microsoft will be using this in the future for deploying vm hosted apps.

New password settings.
In Windows 8 you have the possibility to set a Picture password which allows you to create a gesture.
You can also create a PIN code which you can use to login in with (NOTE: This code only uses numeric code and 4 characters long and can only be used to login locally, not RDP)
You can also register/login with your windows live account.

And a very improved feature is PowerShell support.
Windows 8 now has approximately 1000 cmdlets and functions out of the box, while Windows 7 has about 400. 
PowerShell ISE has gotten a revamped GUI, and you can now have all the commands available from the menu.

When selecting one commands you now get the variables available for that command up.

You can also use “Show-command” in a regular PowerShell session to get a list of all the PowerShell commands.

Windows To-go:
Now this is a nifty little feature, this allows you to have a bootable Windows 8 from a USB-drive. Which allows you to carry your OS around you on a stick!
Secure? Not-really unless you have a hardware switch that allows for encryption of the thumb-drive ( but then again you get a slower OS)
If you want to try out windows 8 to go, you need to download the tool Imagex which is found in the WAIK tool. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5753

Then open diskpart via a command promt (as administrator)
type list disk
find the disk drive that is going to be used with windows to go
type select disk * (where * is the number of the disk)
type clean and press enter
type create partition primary and press enter
type format fs = ntfs quick and press enter
type active and press enter

Next we have to use the Imagex tool to install windows on the usb-drive.
c:\imagex.exe /apply e:\sources\install.wim 1 f:\  and press enter
This command user Imagex to install windows from e:\ (This is the installation media of windows) onto the drive F: (This is the thumb drive)

When this is done, you have to edit the boot record.
bcdboot.exe e:\windows /s f:

Remember there are some limitations to using Windows to go:

• Hibernate and sleep are disabled by default. To help prevent Windows To Go from accidental data corruption during roaming hibernate and sleep are disabled. They can be re-enabled by using Group Policy settings.
• Internal disks are offline. To ensure data isn’t accidentally disclosed, internal hard disks on the host computer are offline by default when booted into a Windows To Go. Similarly if a Windows To Go drive is inserted into a running system the Windows To Go drive will not be listed in Windows Explorer.
• Trusted Platform Module (TPM) isn’t used. When using BitLocker Drive Encryption a pre-operating system boot password will be used for security rather than the TPM since the TPM is tied to a specific computer and Windows To Go drives will move between computers.
• Windows Recovery Environment isn’t available. In the rare case that you need to recover your Windows To Go drive, you should re-image it with a fresh image of Windows.
• Push Button Reset isn’t available. Resetting to the manufacturer’s standard for the computer doesn’t really apply when running Windows To Go, so the feature was disabled.

And note this is not as fast as using Windows 8 from a local disk, but then again you get the portability

ISO Mount:
You now have the ability to mount ISO files directly from explorer, before you needed to have a third party software to do this.
(Now if they’d only include Bin & cue files as well)

IE10 (With Metro style and without)
Microsoft’s new and improved Browser now includes Flash player by default.

Metro IE10.

And with it comes new features regarding Privacy settings and smart screen filter.
As you can see there is a added feature regarding “Location”

Family safety.
As in the previous version you can activate family safety for other Local users.

And specify web filtering, time limits + Windows Store restrictions!

In Disk management you now have the option to create VDHX files instead of regular VHD.

VHDX features:

• Support for virtual hard disk storage capacity of up to 64 TB.
• Protection against data corruption during power failures by logging updates to the VHDX metadata structures.
• Improved alignment of the virtual hard disk format to work well on large sector disks.

 

Windows 8 has a lot to offer, and for most enterprises a lot of the new features that are available regarding SMB shares in Windows Server 2012 requires that you have windows 8 in order for it to function. Might be that Windows will release a new Service Pack for windows 7 in order to support those last functions. For the regular user, is it worth the money? I think so…. When Microsoft releases Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT the Microsoft Appstore will explode with new apps. Since they all use the same platform (Metro)

I believe it is a bit faster then Windows 7, even thou I has the Metro overlay. I’m convinced is an improvement, give it a try yourself –> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso?ocid=W_OFF_W8P_TechCenter_ISO_EN-US
Remember that you need to type the product key during install
Happy testing!

#app-history, #file-history, #powershell-3, #storage-spaces, #usb-to-go, #windows-8, #windows-8-to-go, #windows-8-troubleshooting

Hyper-v 3 commands in powershell

Hyper-v 3 brings alot new functionality on the field in their fight against vmware.
Will this be enough to take on the battle with vmware? In case if you have SCVMM 2012 and Hyper-v3 the gaps are getting closer. .

Some of the main features for Hyper-v 3:

• No processor/core limit on the Hyper-V host
• 160 Logical processors
• 2TB memory on the host
• 1TB memory per VM
• 1024 VM’s per Hyper-V host
• 32 virtual processors per VM
• Failover Cluster Support
• Live Migration
• Live Storage Migration
• Shared Nothing Live Migration (without requiring shared storage)
• RemoteFX with more monitors and resolutions
• Storage Spaces
• VMs on File Based Storage (SMB 2.2 Share on a Scale Out File Server)
• Vendor independent NIC Teaming (This ive explained in earlier post)
• Hyper-v replica

In a later post ill discuss the connection between scvmm 2012 and hyper-v but for this post ill focus directly on Hyper-v and quick commands you should learn in order to do basic stuff in Hyper-v

First of you can see all the commands, related to Hyper-v by typing the command.
Get-Command -Module Hyper-V

In case there have been some updates from Microsoft you can use the Update-help command to update the help library in Powershell.

Lets do some basic commands:
1: Create a new virtual machine.

New-VM –Name “new 2” –MemoryStartupBytes 1GB –NewVHDPath d:\vhd\base.vhdx

This will create a new virtual machine named new 2 with 1 GB of memory and the VHDX is stored on the drive D:

Of course you have alot of other parameters here that you can change, you can use the get-help new-vm you see all the parameters.
In case you have some old virtual machines you want to import in the new Hyper-v you can use the Import-vm command

Import-VM –Path ‘D:\Test\VirtualMachines\5AE40946-3A98-428E-8C83-081A3C6BD18C.XML’

Here you just specify XML configuration file of the old virtual machine, and ill will get created with the settings it had.

Of course you can also start and stop the VM using the «Start-vm or Stop-vm»
Something that might be useful to remember, is to change the vlan of the network on the virtual machine.

Set-VMNetworkAdapterVlan –VMName test –Access –VlanId 121

This will change the VlanID on the virtual machine named test to vlan 121 (This is using standard 802.1q trunking protocol) Which all network equiptments support today. Its also the same one that vmware uses.

Just have to shoot in some Cisco commands here as well 🙂
If you want to change the vlan on a interface that the vm is connected to.

Incase you have the vm connected to a cisco switch you can use this command, to change then vlan ID on the switch interface.

enable
conf t
interface FastEthernet0/1
switchport access vlan 121 

Incase you want to look a bit closer on the Powershell cmdlets for Hyper-v I suggest you check out this Microsoft page on Hyper-v http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848559.aspx

Now this is the end of post 1, more will follow I will try to include SCVMM2012

#storage-spaces, #vhd, #virtual-processors