Category Microsoft

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.

Firstly, a hearty congratulations to the 8 Year old (and 1 day) Lavina Shree who recently completed her MCP Exam in C#.

[NDTV via NewLaunches]

She has made quite an accomplishment for defeating the previous title holder Arfa Karim from Pakistan who was 10 Years old at the time she completed her MCP exam in 2005.

Apparently, she is 8 years old, and not 9 years old as some of the stories report (Her own website reports this)

Okay, time for the Therapy Faq on this.

Q: Should I feel bad about myself and my own certifications?

A:  No, why should you feel bad?   If you had a photographic memory and were 8 years old, wouldn’t you be able to find the time to study just a bit? I mean, outside of your regular 80 hour workweek fixing networks or dealing with your significant other, I’m sure you’d be able to find a few minutes to study for an exam, right?

Q:  What? But seriously, she’s 8 years old! Not even 9 years old like the other reports are saying!

A:  Wait, you’re right.    I forgot these exams aren’t based upon sole memorization and require you to have to think about extremely bound concepts the likes of which cannot exist in books.   I mean when I go into the Oracle to take the exam, it analyzes what I have in my brain and then starts providing dynamic questions the likes of which noone could ever hold challenge to.

Q: Does this happening make the Certification process at all less valuable?

A: Absolutely not.   That same analysis could be said of the Bar Exam, SAT’s or GRE’s.    Some people are extremely good at certain things (say, memorization) but that is not to say that they know everything there is, only what they’ve read.   So, while you can know the ‘answer’ to a defined question, if provided with a question outside the context of original discussion that shows your true ability to innovate and provide a solution.   If I want someone to be able to recite back to me verbatim a fixed question/answer, I’d get Wikipedia or something.

Q: So you’re saying I should feel good for this girl, and not feel bad about myself?

A: Exactly.  I think it is great, prior to this a lot of people didn’t even realize there was such a thing as the MCP.  Now perhaps some may feel this is bad PR, but any PR is better than none, and this will pass.    Especially when a girl who is cited as having performed feats of memorization at age 3? No, this will definitely do wonders for the Certification community and help to improve the process as a whole for years to come.   We’ve been watching it come for the past several years as tests have improved to be more relevant, and this will be no different.

Good luck out there, get ready for a whole new Certification year! And I look forward to the new innovative Betas as you should!

As always, thank you ever so much Joanne Lin (MS) !

For those of you who saw the last Free E-book deal from Microsoft Press, it is back again with another stringent timeline to get it!

You have until December 24th to download these beauties!

With a simple ‘click’ and ‘register’ you can have these two Beautiful E-Books downloaded and in your possession for reading and excitement!

Understanding IPv6, by Joseph Davies

Writing Secure Code for Vista, by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc

If you’re even remotely interested in these technologies, free stuff, books, reading, future certification and anything else – this is the deal for you!

To keep up to date of deals like this, you can subscribe to the Microsoft Press Connection Newsletter.

Happy Holidays, and this gift is wrapped and ready for Christmas and Hanukkah!

It’s a dark night, you’re in a cold murky alley.   There’s a random file found in the root of your drive (or mount point).   Suddenly, your cluster goes offline.   WTF!

If you’re thinking, “Damnit, what did my storage vendor do now!” You’d be mistaken.

There’s this little doozy out there:

“A physical disk resource may unexpectedly fail or go offline when the IsAlive function is executed on a Windows Server 2008 cluster node” to the tune of Q953652

Microsoft declares it to happen when you meet the following scenario:

• You have a Windows Server 2008 cluster node.
• The IsAlive function is executed on the cluster node while a file is being accessed in the root folder of the cluster disk.

In this scenario, a physical disk resource on the Windows Server 2008 cluster node may unexpectedly fail or go offline. This behavior occurs randomly.

Or otherwise read as: If you have a file in the root of Drive letter or Mount point, the drive may ‘disappear’ when you have this configured in a cluster (This does not apply to Server 2008 single servers)

Quite often this is blamed on the storage (regardless of vendor) so be sure to keep your clusters up to spec and make sure to apply this Hotfix from Microsoft, especially if you meet this criteria!

Good luck Clusters, and those cold dark alleys won’t be so bad.