Category Storage

Did you hear the announcement?! This is pretty sweet if you ask me! (Ooh! Ooh! Ask me! Ask me! :))   EMC Shrinks Midrange Storage Delivering Twice the Capacity in Half the Floor Space to Optimize Resources in Physical Data Centers  The literal important parts of this announcement are:

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced new high-density configurations of its market leading EMC® CLARiiON® CX4 and EMC Celerra® Gateway systems systems, delivering twice the capacity of previous systems in half the floor space optimizing precious and expensive data center space and resources. Additionally, the more compact midrange storage systems will support high capacity 2 terabyte (TB), low power SATA disk drives, which consume significantly less power than previous generations.

The new high-density configurations combined with 2 TB SATA drives, high performance enterprise flash drives, and EMC storage efficiency technologies—like disk spin down and EMC fully automated storage tiering (FAST)—enable customers to more easily manage the growth of storage-intensive applications. These comprehensive solutions, unique in the industry, are designed to reduce power consumption and cooling costs, and significantly reduce physical space requirements and satisfy weight considerations in today’s data center or remote office locations. Customers can achieve this substantially greater storage density within their existing datacenter power and cooling schemes.

Key Facts:

• High density CLARiiON CX4 system configurations offer up-to 390 2TB, 5,400 and 7,200 RPM SATA drives and high performance flash drives in a single rack using half the floor space and number of power connections required for the same number of drives in conventional racks. Customers wanting to enable CIFS and NFS can deploy the more compact CLARiiON CX4 systems with high density Celerra Gateway systems.
• The energy-efficient 5,400 RPM 2TB SATA drives provide twice the capacity while consuming over 60-percent less power per GB than 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA drives.
• High density CLARiiON CX4 configurations also support 1TB and 2TB SATA disk drives, as well as enterprise flash drives, which store data on electronic memory rather than spinning disks.
• The more compact CLARiiON CX4 configurations also support EMC spin down technology—which powers down inactive disk drives—saving 65-percent of the power required by traditional spinning SATA drives.
• The high density configurations offer full access to all disk drives from the front of the storage system’s rack. The sliding design enables the front enclosures to be moved forward, providing easy access to enclosures and drives in a second ‘slide out’ tier.

"Physical space constraints present significant challenges to IT administrators facing the task of managing 50-percent or more information each year," said Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division at EMC. "We’ve developed the industry’s most comprehensive compact storage system. In addition to an innovative hardware solution that reduces floor space requirements, EMC offers software that makes the most cost-effective use of the storage system and ensures that the right information is on the right media at the right time. In doing this, we’re helping our customers address the challenges of managing significantly more information, more efficiently, using less power and with more automation."

Availability & Services

The new high density CLARiiON and high density Celerra Gateway configurations, which are based on EMC CLARiiON CX4 systems, are available today worldwide. EMC will make high-density EMC Celerra unified storage system configurations available later this year.

Additionally, EMC Global Services offers a complete suite of services from assessment to implementation to migration to help customers quickly realize the value of their new high density CLARiiON CX4 and Celerra Gateway storage system. EMC also provides services targeted to help customers fully leverage EMC FAST technology on the new configurations to optimize system performance, further increase capacity utilization and improve service levels.

So, the highlights –

• CX4 and gateways
• Twice the capacity, half the floor space while consuming 60% less power than 1TB 7200
• 2TB disks + EFD = more FAST for your buck!
• Drive Spin down, but we’ll have to see that in action relative to how many drives are in use in this scenario

Oh, and I’m sure you can clearly read the rest! So you tell me what you think? Do you see enhancements of how this will dramatically impact your CLARiiON today on the floor for the future and beyond?   Seriously reducing drive counts has it’s SIGNIFICANT benefits, especially when considering the heavy utilization of SATA 1TB’s and how you’re using them on the floor today.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

So, I promised you guys in Iomega ix4-200d data reconstruction, ssh and more! that I would expose the password to login to the ix2 and ix4 as soon as I could.    Well, your wait is finally over!

Let’s start as you normally would, by logging into the support console!

http://192.168.1.1/support.html

Whoa, what’s that I highlighted there and even tossed in an arrow?! Can I MAKE it any more straight forward? Psst.. Click on Support Files :)

Ooh, what’s that little guy down there? Dump? Yea, I didn’t even notice this before (because I had shell access myself ;)) but this is for your benefit!

The system will go through "Gathering system state…"

Why yes, I did go mad with clicking colors and arrows in the win7 version of MSPaint.. Okay, but I digress. :)

Click that bad boy, which will include dump data about your system! Download it, and open it!

Drill down into the dump –> config –> etc –> and open up the file named “shadow”   (dump-20100107225620.tar.gz\dump-20100107225620\config\etc)

Find your shadow File in there, and lo and behold, you will have your Iomega root users hash!    Now it’s just a matter of cracking it!

It is beyond the scope of this article to tell you how to actually crack the pwd.. (giggle) go here, download john the ripper and you’ll do just fine :)

Taking my seed from my system and running it through a simple alphanumeric search, I come up with username root, password soho! That was easy! That works if you have NO Password set!

Through a collaborative effort with @randyjcress @Kiwi_Si @VirtualisedReal and @gabvirtualworld we were able to determine that by using soho and whatever password you use on the system, that should do it! And really, the credit does primarily go to @randyjcress for leading us in that specific direction so props randy! :)

ie: admin pwd is apples, so login using sohoapples – This is still undergoing verification, but I thought I’d share it out there, while we sort it out!

Disclaimer: The means to perform all of these tasks has been replicated and verified in the wild without requiring any intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the system. 

You may remember my rocking consolidated blog posts for Symmetrix FAST and Celerra FAST – But here is something I didn’t even have to create myself! This is a pure total rocking consolidation for Avamar! Wowza is the first thing I’d say, and for what it’s worth, I’ve seen the internal version of the same site – Believe me when I say, the customer facing version you see below here is WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY better!  Seriously ! Check it out, and if you don’t think this is totally rocking, I’ll one-up it and do it even better! ;)

The link may require credentials on EMC’s PowerLink – so please keep that in mind when it comes to accessing the site!

So, check it out! This will be your best friend when it comes to working with Avamar, and solving your backup problems and other for the future! :)

Hey big datacenter, I think “booyah” is in order, with this almost stealth announcement of UIM for Ionix!  

Look at the big picture and see what this means for your datacenter!

So, out of box today UIM fully supports management of the whole Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) stack, with evolution to support the rest of the Vblock infrastructure!   Which means taking your Pain of glass you have today and truly turning it into a comprehensive datacenter wide pane of glass for managing the entire stack from a single interface.

What this can mean is consolidated views of your entire Vblock infrastructure..

In the first release your datacenter will be cooking with Service Profile Catalogs enabling a “recipe” for building services and the basis for truly delivering infrastructure as a service.  Yea I know it sounds like lip service but when was the last time you truly had this level of ‘cookie cutter’ capability to deploy what you want, where you want it without having to reinvent the wheel every single time – Service Profile Catalogs will be the answer to let you take control of your datacenter again.

Though, if you feel that even creating recipes is a recipe for disaster – Policy-based management helps keep your environment honest to ensure configuration policies are set and enforced to ensure system-wide compliance to avoid configuration drift.   Oh, did I mention this functionality is also fully supported in this release of UIM with Cisco UCS Network infrastructure, such as Nexus and MDS? I say sweet! :)

What helps to complete this story is Unified Provisioning, configuration, change management – and a simplified integration.

What I’m particularly floored by is the deployment, bare metal provisioning which includes automated provisioning of the disaster recovery site! (Whoa, he did not just say Automated DR!)

The story around provisioning, configuration and change management will be the foundation of your success in the datacenter of the future.   Think about it! unlimited revision history, fine-grained tracking, traceability, and reproducibility! This isn’t the datacenter of 2010! This sounds more like the datacenter of 2100!     Out the gate this first release of UIM will focus on the unified provisioning, configuration and change control of Cisco UCS and the related network infrastructure.

You aren’t going to get away so easily though! I did say simplified integration and I mean it!   UIM Element management integrates with your existing enterprise management solutions on the floor today, providing change and compliance events to help track critical changes.   Furthermore, it leverages Cisco UCS manager APIs and EMC storage management systems allowing you to take advantage of existing instrumentation and component configuration.

So, putting all the marketing jibber jabber aside what does this mean for you, the datacenter owner?   This means that old fashioned model of “Is UCS ready? WTF is this VCE thing? Why do I even need a simplified datacenter operation? What do you mean Private Cloud, it’s sunny outside!”  It means welcome to the future of your datacenter.   The days of silo provisioning, configuration, management and troubleshooting are over!   You know that the top of mind conversation for the 2010 datacenter and on ever C-class’s lips will be  datacenter virtualization, reshaping the data center, and enhanced security – Take a look at that Gartner list and you tell me that VCE isn’t the answer to 5 or more of them ;)

So, the future is most definitely here (hey, 14 days ahead of schedule! How can you go wrong?!)  So there’s no better time than the present to educate yourself about this opportunity and what the rest of the future lay in store.  if you’re looking to discuss the future of your datacenter, let me know because your priorities are my priorities!

I’ve taken the liberty to consolidate all of the Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 1.0 documents here for your ease: (Powerlink credentials required)

? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Release Notes
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Data Sheet
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Installation Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Report Advisor User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Backup and Recovery Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager System Management Console Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Regular Expressions User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Infrastructure Driver Release Version Support Matrix
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Non-EMC Software Read Me
? EMC Ionix Device Services Engineering DASL Language Changes

I’d also like to thank Chad Sakac for this great YouTube Video and post More VCE Vblock Details including EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager and Storagezilla for their post Vblock and Ionix Unified Infrastructure Management

So for those of you who know me, you know I initially complained about a data reconstruction problem with my ix4-200d! I accidently pulled the power cable out (doh!) and then my system came up JUST fine, and said “Data reconstruction, 2%” Yea, it said that FOREVER – And it did nothing and got nowhere! Regardless of how many reboots I made! (Though my data access was fine!)

And even going to the “Update Device Software” tab, it always reported “The device software is up to date” Which I now know is a LIE! LIES I SAY! :)

I did a little searching and came across an updated firmware! (oh my!) however it didn’t say it’d do anything about data reconstruction problems! But hey, I always like to be running the latest/greatest, so I downloaded and installed the latest firmware! StorCenter ix4-200d Firmware Version 2.1.25.229: Read First (You’ll find this to be quick and painless!)

Well, some minutes passed and all of a sudden the system was all “DATA RECONSTRUCTION IS HAPPENING IN THE HIZZY!” Okay, not in those exact words.. but I don’t feel like pulling my power to try to reproduce the problem – needless to say, my data reconstruction resumed and finished in short order! Score one for the bucko! (dated reference much?!)

So I deep dove into the system to see what else had changed! (nothing consequential that I could find) but my journey to find a way to ssh this box had not ended! I was determined! I must.. I must.. I must increase my SSH ability! And while searching I came across not only this webpage SSH/Shell access to iomega StorCenter ix2 but that little gem of a webpage included this little link at the bottom! http://ip-of-nas/support.html – Which when you browse to it on your ix4, you end up seeing a page which looks like… this!

This has a few little gems, only two of which will I look at in any detail – Support Access and Recover Disks

Well, Support Access looks pretty damn straight forward! Check the box, reboot, and SSH will be enabled (permanently!)

The Storage Recovery Verification is a bit more interesting – my “guess” is that it allows you the ability to force the data reconstruction many of us complain of! Again, I have no intention of forcing the deal to try to see what happens if I fail my system – You simply let me know if this works for you – with data reconstruction woes :)

Sweet, eh! So, I feel comfortable sharing the process on how to do this.. because frankly, I had to find it from the outside looking in! So I definitely grant you good luck on solving your data reconstruction, firmware updating, and enabling SSH on your NAS!   Until I find an externally cited source though.. I cannot share with you my passwd I used to log in to my ix4 ;)

As promised!  Shell access to your ix2/ix4 exposed! “Get yer red hot ssh here!”

If you come across a site referencing it though, I’d be glad to add it to the mix!  Thanks for your patience.. and look forward to a future post around getting my ‘gigabit runs at 100mb’ problem :)