You ever ask the question “Wow, I wish there were a consolidated place to find everything* there is to find about NetApp and Virtualization?”

I ask that question all the time.  The following is a release of my internal notes I’d forward to people when they say “NetApp + Citrix?” “NetApp + VMware” or “NetApp + Hyper-V”

This way, both you AND I have a single place to go look and I don’t have to reinvent my wheel!

Everything you wanted to know about NetApp and Virtualization but were afraid to ask.

 NetApp Virtualization Team Blog – Great resource of information and the definitive source on updates of new documents, TR’s, etc – It is where I’ll update new links like those above from.

VMware and NetApp

• TR3428 – NetApp and VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Storage Best Practices
• TR3562 – Best Practices for VMware ESX Server 3.0 Backup on NetApp
• TR3606 – HIGH AVAILABILITY AND DISASTER RECOVERY FOR VMWARE USING NETAPP SNAPMIRROR AND METROCLUSTER
• TR3646 – RAPID DEPLOYMENT OF ORACLE® DATABASE 11G USING VMWARE® INFRASTRUCTURE AND NETAPP FLEXCLONE®
• TR3671 – VMware Site Recovery Manager in a NetApp Environment
• TR3675 – Fast and Easy SnapManager SharePoint Server 2007 Deployments Using VMware Virtualization and NetApp Storage
• TR3683 – Microsoft Exchange 2007 on VMware Infrastructure 3 and NetApp iSCSI Storage
• TR3697 – Multiprotocol Performance Test of VMware® ESX 3.5 on NetApp Storage Systems
• TR3704 – NetApp SAN Solutions for VMware
• TR3705 – NetApp and VMware VDI Best Practices
• TR3724 – VMware VDI on NetApp Storage Systems 1,000-seat Deployment Guide Using NFS
• TR3725 – VMware VDI on NetApp Storage Systems 4,000-seat Deployment Guide Using NFS
• TR3734 – SAP on Windows and Microsoft SQL Server with NetApp Storage and VMware
• TR3737 – SnapManager 1.0 for Virtual Infrastructure Best Practices
• TR3770 – 2,000-Seat VMware View on NetApp Deployment Guide Using NFS – A Scalable Solution Architecture on a Cisco Nexus Infrastructure

Microsoft and NetApp

• TR3701 – NetApp and Microsoft Virtualization: Making Integrated Server and Storage Virtualization a Reality
• TR3702 – NetApp and Microsoft Virtualization Storage Best Practices
• TR3733 – Microsoft Hyper-V on NetApp Deployment Guide

Citrix and NetApp

• TR3694 – NetApp and Citrix XenServer 4.1- Building a Virtual Infrastructure from Server to Storage
• TR3711 – Citrix XenDesktop 2.0 with NetApp Storage – Pilot Deployment Overview
• TR3731 – NetApp Virtualization Solutions for Citrix XenApp Environments
• TR3732 – Citrix XenServer V5.0 and NetApp Storage Best Practices
• TR3748 – NetApp and Citrix VDI Best Practices
• TR3755 – Verification Test with MetroCluster in a Xen Environment

Oracle and NetApp

• TR3712 – Oracle VM and NetApp Storage – Best Practices Guide

And some definite –must- reads!

• TR3505 – NetApp Deduplication for FAS Deployment and Implementation Guide
• TR3747 – Best Practices for File System Alignment in Virtual Environments
• VDI infrastructure considerations: Choices that dramatically influence user experience and cost outcomes (VMWorld)
• Capacity Savings and Storage Utilization Guarantees: What’s Included, and Are They Worth Considering?
• Total Cost Comparison: IT Decision-Maker Perspectives on EMC®, HP® and NetApp™ Storage Solutions in Enterprise VMware Environments
• NetApp Storage Efficiency Calculator

NetApp 50% Virtualization Guarantee* (Effective until December 31, 2009)

• FAQ – 50% Virtualization Guarantee* Program
• WP7053 – The 50% Virtualization Guarantee* Program Technical Guide

Top Must Read Knowledge Base Articles (Virt-KB!)

• Recommended Settings for VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2\Update 3 when connected to NetApp Storage Systems
• VMware LUN Alignment in ESX 3.x
• VMware ESX Guest OS I/O Timeout Settings for NetApp Storage Systems
• VMFS volume resignaturing in a NetApp environment
• SnapDrive licensing for VMware servers with multiple virtual systems on them
• Adding more than 8 NFS datastores on a VMware ESX host (As seen in TR3428)
• VMWare ESX Virtual Machine Storage troubleshooting
• Virtual machines that are accessed through NFS datastores appear to be inaccessible
• Flexclones: VMware volumes and LUNs
• Disk Alignment on Linux with NetApp LUNs for VMware

NetApp Virtualization and Twitter!

Yes! I was able to track down the folks at NetApp who are on Twitter, so follow them here!

• @chrisgeb (Chris Gebhardt)
• @Abhinav_Joshi (Abhinav Joshi)
• @bgracely (Brian Gracely)
• @VirtuallyNetApp (Jack Mcleod)
• @Vaughn_Stewart (Vaughn Stewart)

NetApp Virtualization and YouTube!

• NetAppTV (Customer Success Stories and other cool videos)
• NetAppTube (Demos from VMWorld and more!)
• NTriantos (SMVI, VDI, OSSV and more!) 

NetApp Tools for Virtualization!

• VMware ESX Host Utilities 5.0R1 (Includes MBRScan)
• MBRAlign (To align VMDK’s)
• Rapid Cloning Utility (ToolChest)
• SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure 1.01

And last but not least!

 Vaughn Stewart – Virtual Storage Evangelist and all around great VM Guy!

So, hopefully these resources will be useful to you, I know they’re pretty useful for me and I reference them often.   Definitely read the Must Reads, regardless of Virt Solution!

Yay! More Free books, what a good way to start off the new year!

It’s unknown when this expires, so I’d definitely suggest downloading sooner than later!

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (From the Desktop to the Datacenter)
by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Virtualization Team

Look forward to another Virtualization focused post in a few days, or a few cycles, grin.

Excellent! One of my self-infected accounts I created to track this Phishing scam has hit paydirt!

Here is what the tweet will look like:

It brings you to the same type of site, again no malware or spyware executing by visiting there.

By now the site should be in your anti-phishing dialog (Chrome and Firefox caught it, I had to bypsas that to get to the site)

You do have to watch out because the method of distribution of this attack appears to be very SLOW to hit, I’ll see tweets come 2-3 or 15-20 minutes a part from the same account, so be wary of the tweets we’re in for a long night of this infection continuing to spread!

If you have been infected – Change your password, and make sure you haven’t stopped following people.   That’s all I can say for now.  Reference these links for more details on this Phishing Scam on Twitter

Twitter Phishing Scam with Blogspot – Post Mortem

Phishing Scams finally hit Twitter!

Gone Phishing

Alright, in honor of the great successes brought about by Jason Mitchener’s question before, a few more funny blog posts! (It may not be funny, it may simply be ironic what this Worm has done ;))

So on to our question of – Who is Craig Martin?

Which is a pretty good question, he appears to be a traveler and a Kiwi – I love Kiwi’s, especially with Strawberry!  

Well, for one thing by the look of his website he’s a pretty busy guy out wining and dining err wining.

He’s an editor of websites, so I’d suggest checking out his (various) sites, because from his main site alone, wow! Looks good to me! Very structured especially inlight of others trying to do similar and only inducing chaos.   I also think it’s cute how he says “zed” in his little video, not to mention that he has a whole introduction and video going on – while sitting in a beautiful garden!

He’s a traveler, adventurer, Ninja.  Okay, maybe he’s not a traveler, but he is a hardcore ninja, the likes of which you could only counteract with Pirates.

So, be sure to follow @craig_martin and check him out, he’s great and apparently with his following of 666 followers he’s in lieu with the devil so help break him from that habit! ;)

Oh, and he’s very friendly so check him out! :)

What are our lessons learned so far from this little Twitter Phishing Scam?

First of all, this involved infecting a single or single groups of people.

Distribution consisted of Infect a person by sending them to a site to capture their credentials.   Once those usernames and passwords were collected, they would then use those compromised credentials to send this same message (via DM) to their followers, and continue the spread.

If Joe has 10 followers and DM’s it to those 10, and those 10 have 10 followers and DM it to the next 10, shortly you’d have thousands who are redistributing this – So long as they’ve visited the site and entered their credentials to be captured.

I see a lot of anger “I’m going to get person ‘x’ who sent me this message!”

It’s not the fault of the sender, not entirely.   They were compromised by a phishing scam, it happens, you should work towards educating them instead of castrating them.  So next time it will be part of their sense to not transmit their username/password to an untrusted site.

How could this terrible thing have happened? Now I hate (BlogSpot, Twitter, Followers)

Don’t hate the player, just be glad that it WAS done this way (a semi-safe site with only a small portion of cookies which get added to your browser)   Here is what could have happened if it were introduced in an effective ‘distribution manner’.

You visit the site, you are prompted for credentials.  Perhaps you’re prompted for credentials, though the better payload would be in the form of Malware, Spyware, Phishing-ware, Password capturers, and a number of other infection mechanisms.

Once this would be done, you’d be able to compromised on a number of fronts and able to distribute this to millions instead of just the few followers you have – Infecting Facebook, your banking account, etc so on and so forth.

What can I do about this in the future?

The universal rule of communication, especially unsolicited is ask yourself a few questions.   Would you visit this link if you were having a conversation with the person? Having established rapport with them while talking? Yes likely.

However the tip here is – Random “auto-dm’s” does not guarantee a reason to visit their link.  Yes a lot of people DO send out auto-DM’s, to the bane of all of us (SocialToo/ChrisBrogan– Thanks for helping limit that exposure!)  However, don’t bane all communication in the future.   If you think someone seriously DID write a funny blogpost about you because the person knows you, definitely do check it out! But in all seriousness, if you’ve not had some kind of established communication with this person to justify it, and let alone it brings you to not a funny blogpost, but to a fake twitter login page – Be sure to question it and use your common sense here.

Oh, and be wary of ever entering your credentials – again unless you explicitly trust the source.

Hopefully this Post-Mortem helps you deal with this situation, I’m still waiting for my self-infected account to start tweeting out to me (Controlled infection) For every problem there will be people looking to exploit it, and others trying to solve and contain it.   I’ll be there trying to find new solutions and rid the world of future exposure as well :)

Good luck, and feel free to follow me if you like :) @cxi