Archives April 2009

So, if you haven’t seen my countless posts on the subject of “Getting on the Bus” I will be on the Bus, and I will be at TechEd this year :)

My official ‘announcement’ is finally up on the MSLCommunity Who’s on the Bus? Rider #9: Christopher Kusek (Atlanta to Los Angeles) and when on the road I will be doing constant updates on Twitter, Blogs (here and the MSLBlog) some live video on Ustream or BlogTV, and who knows what else! (I have no idea myself!)

I’ll be representing myself, the technology community, certification, education, learning, mentorship, and NetApp on this trip, so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

So, if you happen to be in any of the cities we’re stopping, or the locations’ were visiting, I encourage you to come up and say hello! :)

Below is the (up to date as of today) itinerary of all of the places we shall be visiting!

My Goal: To meet (and make friends with? :)) 1000 people between the tour and the ride to TechEd, so help me meet that goal! :)

The Career Express tour, day by day:

Friday, May 1st: Atlanta, GA

• United States Army School of Information Technology, in Fort Gordon, GA, 8:30am – 11:00am
• Ask the Experts at New Horizons Atlanta 3:00pm – 6:00pm
• Book signing with Eric Griffin, author of the Microsoft Press book, “Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition Step by Step” at Barnes & Noble (Buckhead store), 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Saturday, May 2nd: Atlanta, GA to Greensboro, NC

• Gwinnett Technical College, Lawrenceville, GA, 9:00am – 12:00pm

Sunday, May 3rd: Greensboro, NC to Philadelphia, PA

• Philly TechFest 2009 sponsored by Springhouse Education and Consulting Services, 12:00pm – 4:00pm (featuring live rounds of “Are You Certifiable?” Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 previews, and more)
• Microsoft Career Express at Cheyney University (Center City campus), 6:00pm – 8:00pm (register here)

Monday, May 4th: Philadelphia, PA to Cincinnati, OH

• Philly TechFest 2009 at Springhouse, 8:00am – 10:00am
• Antonia Pantoja Charter School, 7:30am – 9:00am (private event)
• Edward W. Bok Technical High School, 10:45am – 12:00pm (private event)
• MCP “Tweet-up” in Columbus (be sure to follow us on Twitter for details!)

Tuesday, May 5th: Cincinnati, OH to Indianapolis, IN

• MAX Learning Luau at MAX Technical Training in Cincinnati, 11:00am – 1:00pm (featuring Windows 7 previews, lunch, drawings and more!)
• “Bring a Friend” Night at “LANTech Training, Indianapolis, 5:00pm – 7:00pm (bring a friend interested in starting a career in IT, and you both might win a TechNet Plus subscription (and your friend might win a laptop, too!))

Wednesday, May 6th: Indianapolis, IN to Kansas City, MO

• Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS, 8:00am – 11:00am (featuring Windows 7 previews, IT Career guidance, and more—request info here)  (updated registration link)
• New Horizons Kansas City 12:00pm – 3:00pm (featuring Windows 7 previews, Windows Server 2008, .NET 3.5, SharePoint sessions and more—register here)
• Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS, 6:00pm – 8:00pm (repeat of morning event)

Thursday, May 7th: Kansas City, MO to Denver, CO

• MCP Study Break, Red Rocks Community College, Lakewood, CO, 8:00am – 10:00am (featuring live rounds of “Are You Certifiable?” and Windows Server 2008 exam prep sessions)
• Ask the Experts at Ameriteach, Greenwood Village, CO, 4:30pm – 8:00pm (featuring live rounds of “Are you Certifiable?” sessions on Windows 7, SQL Server, OCS and more—delivered by stellar MCTs!)

Friday, May 8th: Denver, CO to Santa Fe, NM

• Get Off the Bus! Free day for our intrepid but tired riders—come join us as we explore Santa Fe (follow us on Twitter to see where we’ll be!)

Saturday, May 9th: Santa Fe, NM to Phoenix, AZ

• Glendale Community College, 8:30am – 10:30am (details coming next week)
• Microsoft Technology Round-Up, Training to You, Phoenix, 12:00pm – 3:00pm (featuring Windows 7 previews and Windows Server 2008 certification sessions) (registration link updated)

Sunday, May 10th: Phoenix, AZ to Las Vegas, NV

• “How to Thrive in Your IT Career” at Netcom, 2:00 – 3:30pm (featuring Windows 7 preview)

Monday, May 11th: Las Vegas, NV to Los Angeles, CA

• Greet the Bus at TechEd 2009, 9am

Wait, what? LCDS? Who? When? Maybe even How?!

There’s a new version of the Microsoft Learning Content Development System!

Hey now, let me get this straight, you’re saying not only does Microsoft provide countless tools for Learning and Education through Programs and Blogs, but they also provide you tools so you can build your own education programs yourself?!

Yes, yes that is correct! The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) Is exactly that tool!

Not to mention that they even have ‘sample course titles’ that you can use to get yourself started creating your own education or training packages! To which I denounce ‘sweet!’

I never would have known about this if not for our good friends at the MSLearning Blog, so special thanks to them and especially Ken Rosen for his post on this – Roll Your Own E-Learning

For those of you who manage filers via FilerView or the Command Line, you’ll find this interesting (I swear, I promise you will! :))

The following is what happens when you create a volume using the NSM and choose NAS

Language on volume nsm_nas changed to en_US
(This is the what gets set – The rest below are the values set)

(snap reserve)
Volume nsm_nas: current snapshot reserve is 20% or 4096 k-bytes.

(snap sched)
Volume nsm_nas: 0 2 6@8,12,14,16,20

(snap autodelete)
snapshot autodelete settings for nsm_nas:
state : off
commitment : try
trigger : volume
target_free_space : 20%
delete_order : oldest_first
defer_delete : user_created
prefix : (not specified)
destroy_list : none

(vol autosize)
Volume autosize is currently OFF for volume ‘nsm_nas’.

(vol options)
nosnap=off, nosnapdir=off, minra=off, no_atime_update=off, nvfail=off,
ignore_inconsistent=off, snapmirrored=off, create_ucode=on,
convert_ucode=on, maxdirsize=62914, schedsnapname=ordinal,
fs_size_fixed=off, compression=off, guarantee=volume, svo_enable=off,
svo_checksum=off, svo_allow_rman=off, svo_reject_errors=off,
no_i2p=off, fractional_reserve=100, extent=off, try_first=volume_grow,
read_realloc=off, snapshot_clone_dependency=off

This is the same you’d expect as when creating via the CLI or using FilerView!

Now, this is what happens when you do the same actions, but choose SAN

Language on volume nsm_san changed to en_US
Security style for /vol/nsm_san/ changed from ntfs to unix
The space management policy for vol nsm_san has changed: autosize state enabled.
The space management policy for vol nsm_san has changed: autodel state enabled.

(I did edit the words above to fit, but you get the point :) – here are the results)

(snap reserve)
Volume nsm_san: current snapshot reserve is 0% or 0 k-bytes. (Down from 20%)

(snap sched)
Volume nsm_san: 0 2 6@8,12,14,16,20  (Didn’t change)

(snap autodelete)
snapshot autodelete settings for nsm_san:
state                           : on (Turned on now)
commitment                      : try
trigger                         : volume
target_free_space               : 20%
delete_order                    : oldest_first
defer_delete                    : user_created
prefix                          : (not specified)
destroy_list                    : none

(vol autosize)
Volume autosize is currently ON for volume ‘nsm_san’. (Enabled now also)
The volume is set to grow to a maximum of 24 MB, in increments of 1 MB.

(vol options)
nosnap=on, nosnapdir=off, minra=off, no_atime_update=off, nvfail=off,
ignore_inconsistent=off, snapmirrored=off, create_ucode=on,
convert_ucode=on, maxdirsize=62914, schedsnapname=ordinal,
fs_size_fixed=off, compression=off, guarantee=volume, svo_enable=off,
svo_checksum=off, svo_allow_rman=off, svo_reject_errors=off, no_i2p=on,
fractional_reserve=0, extent=off, try_first=volume_grow,
read_realloc=off, snapshot_clone_dependency=off

So, I don’t know about you, but this is pretty damn cool! The coolest bits are – when  I want to create volumes and I don’t want to look up the Best Practices for Vol auto growth and snap auto-deletion, I don’t need to now! Hooray!

Yea, I know I just wrote this post yesterday NetApp System Manager (NSM) 1.0 FCS Released! DOWNLOAD NOWZ! and my good friend Steve also released this on the NetApp Blogs:  NetApp System Manager 1.0

But while demoing this to some folks who hadn’t seen it before I noticed something I completely overlooked before!

To which I immediately stated “ZOMG! This is cool!” Seriously.  How often have you been in the scenario of wanting/needing to know how much space you’d reclaim from purging a snapshot – Now it’s even easier! ZOMG! WOOHOO! etc. :)

Not to mention there is this super cool Deduplication visual as well!

The section on the left is “Before” deduplication, and the right is “After”

There is so much more in here that is so cool, but I had to call out these two things, because wow! Just Wow! That’s so cool!

NetApp® System Manager 1.0 – Download

Wow, seriously! The NSM (NetApp System Manager) is now available for public consumption! Yes that means you! The public!

Where do I get it? – Login to now.netapp.com and scroll down in your downloads list and look for “System Manager” like I have shown below!

So, what are the really cool things you can do in the NSM? Let’s take a look!

Here is an look at what systems I am managing – Oh look! It paired my clusters, oh my! :)

Over on the right side, when you have your cluster selected you’ll see four sections, Properties, Performance, Notifications and Reminders

If you click on the little Arrows you will get taken into detail of that particular entry – So if I select the HA Pair, I’ll get more depth on the HA Pair – Etc! :)

I think this is pretty self-explanatory – But what is really cool is – Click the little Arrow and…!

You get the same information, but in numbers instead of little graphs! So pretty cool!

Various notifications will appear here – in my case, it happens to be License notifications – This lab box has a couple of expired Eval Licenses – So now you’ll be able to see this at a glance!

And the last high-level point is Reminders! In this case, it would appear I have disks to assign!

Going back to the main cluster overview – You can also drill down into some depth on specific filers! Here are the main sections! Storage, Configuration, Diagnostics and A/A Config!

Each of these sections have some pretty cool things you can do, and are fairly straight forward

And lastly the Active/Active Settings!

I’m not going to go into too much because you can find it yourself when you install the tool, but one thing I wanted to point out which is pretty cool is the Deduplication option! – If you click on Volumes you will be able to start Deduplication right there from the GUI!

Or from a Volume itself..

So, I won’t bore you too much on the details, but feel free to drill down, ask any questions, check out the NetApp Communities where this will be discussed and this blog and twitter! :)

Oh, and don’t forget to download it! :)