storage monkey

[storagemonkey-blog]

why not iSCSI?

i have been asked over and over again my thoughts on iSCSI. it isnt that i am against the protocol itself, but i dont see why we would use it when we have Fibre Channel. my reasoning below is in no particular order.

first is cost. if iSCSI is setup correctly with dual TOE cards with two separate networks for the iSCSI then they cost just as much as FC. this setup is very similar to FC but with NIC/TOE cards instead of HBAs. when pricing out properly setup iSCSI, i have always been able to do it with FC for within a few dollars (euros, pounds, etc) of the iSCSI setup.

second is transport. i am not against using TCP/IP. if the networks and network gear are physically separate, then TCP/IP shouldnt be an issue. now if we are sharing the same network gear as production traffic, then this could be troublesome. whenever the network team does any changes on the production side, it could impact the iSCSI. and I wont mention the evil word of STP... ok i did. shame on me. the other issue with TCP/IP is that packets are dropped when the network switch's queues are full. there is no announcement or notification, just dropped. this is part of the networking spec. SCSI just doesnt like dropped operations. FC doesnt drop packets (e.g. SCSI operations).

Fibre Channel devices talk to the FC network to be intelligent about pathing, queues, etc. when the pathing in the middle of the network changes, the end devices (that are using it) gets updates. one of the other key things is that the FC switches tell the end devices what the queues look like (they call them buffer to buffer credits). this is great since end devices know how much data they can put on the wire. this way there is no dropping of packets.

so with all that, i will take a properly configured FC or iSCSI any day.

[storagemonkey-blog]

certifications

why are certifications important?

well they are only important if you are getting past/through HR. some companies use certifications to "qualify" you for your job or for promotions. does it make sense? hell no. certifications only prove that you can pass a test. i have several certs myself. why? i had to get them to either get a promotion or get a new job. and i test very poorly. i suck a test taking. but i had to get the little piece of paper to prove to HR i knew what i was talking about.

why does HR rely on certifications soo much? they dont know IT. they arent geeks. so the certifications tell them that you know what you are doing. false. f-ing false. but it is the best thing that they can use.

i wish i was a better test taker. if i were i would go though all the $VENDOR's tests and crank them out. but since they are $100-$150-$200-$250 per test per shot at them, i cant afford to do that.

if someone could come up with a better way to qualify people i am all ears.

[storagemonkey-blog]

OC && EMCworld

while at EMCWorld, the network connection was non-perfect. yeah that is the PC way of stating that. Between having my laptop with me, and "vegas" bumping into me, TSA doing their magic (like dropping my laptop - Yeah TSA!), and who know what. I was afraid for my data.

so before I left for Vegas, I made a folder for my posts, notes & items I collected from Vendors on my OxygenCloud. Now as I went from meeting to meeting, session to session, vendor to vendor, I could just dump my files in the appropriate folder on my laptop and whenever I got network connection to the outside world, they would automagically sync back home to my personal OxygenCloud.

lots of people were trying this with Dropbox, Sugarsync, CX, and everyone else. they worked but I heard from many people that it would be over a day to get their files synced. I was in sync in minutes every time I walked into the bloggers lounge (that is where i got most of my internet connections while in vegas).

I proved how awesome it was by putting some docs on my OxygenCloud, then walking over to the vendor area with my phone to show that I could pull it up. for those of you that didn't go to EMCWorld, the bloggers lounge was right outside the vendors area.

with the stability of the platform, with the data being held in "my house", and it "just works", I will be with OxygenCloud for a long time.

[storagemonkey-blog]

EMCWorld 2012 Recap

What can i say about EMCWorld 2012? a lot.

hardware announcements

Atmos

I spent a lot of time with Atmos crew (Engineering, marketing, developers, support, etc). I cant talk about all the things that we discussed. BUT. cool things are coming including full Amazon S3 api support. WIN!

to all of the Atmos crew, thank you for spending so much time with me.

VMAX

I love the mighty might VMAX. it is a storage platform that does what it says and does it well. they are built like Russian tanks. you can beat the living daylights out of them, and they still just run.

VMAX FTS is a win for a lot of people that want to migrate from non-Symmetrix/VMAX to the VMAX (must be running 5876 code). With minimal downtime (basically long enough to point them from old storage array to new one) you can start the migration. going through this with ENG just make be feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

of course they released the next generation of the hardware (10k, 20k, 40k). monsters.

Isilon

Isilon released new hardware also. faster, more dense, etc. yeah baby, we can get more NFS in a smaller footprint. now that with the HDFS support, that makes it a big win for customers. you can grow your hadoop and your NFS as you see fit. you are not bound with separate pools of storage.

software announcements

WW Hadoop

this software package written inside of EMC, allows you to run hadoop jobs across multiple hadoop clusters. even clusters that aren't geographically local to each other. it is basically allowing you to do hadoop onto hadoop clusters. So you Map out to the hadoop clusters that do MapR within their cluster. Then the results are reduced back up to WW Hadoop. looking in hindsight it makes a lot of sense. Thanks to people like Dan (@dbbaskkette) for this awesome software.

other stuff

Puppet && Razor

Nick (@lynxbat) with PuppetLabs tools puppet to the next level with Razor. Razor allows you to use puppet do deploy to servers without having to go in and manually setup the hardware information before kickstarting the host. I know I am not doing justice in my description of Razor. people are using it to deploy huge amounts of servers without first probing the hardware for its information (MACs, iQNs, WWNs, etc). Amazing stuff! Plus EMC is has open sourced it. WOW!

Syncplicity

EMC announced that they acquired Syncplicity at the beginning of the conference. Syncplicity is similar to OxygenCloud but is designed for Enterprise or "Big Business" customers. Based on what I saw, I am keeping OxygenCloud for my personal cloud (yeah I run OC out of my house for my files… see previous posts about OC).

Labs

the vSpecialists setup and ran the labs again this year. Most labs offered and more taken. a lot more taken. They even made a VMAX VSA for the VMAX labs. WOW! thanks david (@daverdfw) for it! I tried breaking the VMAX VSA but it took everything I threw at it. Now, could I have done something very odd or edge case to break it, sure. But nothing I did from the commands I could remember off the top of my head broke it. the only lab that I was not able to do that I really wanted to was the Atmos lab. it is alright since I will work with EMC to get access to the lab at some point.

people

bloggers lounge vs alumni lounge

thank you EMC for the bloggers lounge. thank you very much. had comfortable places to sit and blog/twitter from. had plenty of power as long as the circuit break doesnt trip (one powerstrip had that issue a lot). plus it had a coffee bar with barista. and he made one hell of a espresso.

the alumni lounge had a nice selection of soft drinks and juices. hmm maybe the bloggers lounge had some of that too? maybe. alumni lounge had places to sit and work but not nearly as comfortable as the bloggers lounge. So I ended up grabbing drinks from the alumni lounge and going over to the bloggers lounge.

[storagemonkey-blog]

OxygenCloud (part 2)

I have been using OxygenCloud for a few days now. So far so good. I have been able to transfer files between Macs with no real issues (1 minor one). iPad/iPhone can see the files. Need a Windows Phone app (cant use my shiny new Lumia 800 WP phone with it).

since I am a geek, I had to look at the backend. and since I own the backend (my person linux server aka the HP G6) I can look around. OxygenCloud did a goo job of making the right files/directories. when I look at the backend that system stores the files with names of a very long nature (think hashes - not hashes) and dont directly map back to the filenames. There is SHA1 hashes for the files. Also if the files are larger than 512k, it breaks it down into 512k chunks. That is great so there can be parallelism in transfers. Also the limit on the size allows the SHA1 to be done without trashing all the memory of the server.

here is the one issue I have run into. if I compress an (Mac OSX) application before i upload it to OxygenCloud, then it works perfectly. if I put the app directly on the OxygenCloud, then copy it off on another machine, the app will not launch. I get the message "You can't open the application because it may be damaged or incomplete." this is after the app is full "synced". if I open the app on the cli using open, I get the follow error "The application cannot be opened because its executable is missing." now this issue can be circumvented by just zipping the app prior to putting it on the OxygenCloud.

the real test will be when I am at #EMCWorld later this month. I will have my MBP with me in Vegas and I will be putting/getting files from OxygenCloud from very spotty WiFi. they always put up WiFi but with as many geeks as we bring with as many WiFi enabled devices each of us has, it just kills the network. my linux server will be sitting at my home, my parents home or a friends place here on the east coast. I know I know the internet makes it that physical locations are not important.

Hey OxygenCloud (the company), cant wait to see you face to face in Vegas.

[storagemonkey-blog]

HP Pavilion G6

so for one of my latest pet (personal) projects was to setup OxygenCloud storage. I ended up buying a refurbished HP Pavilion G6. The laptop with memory upgrade was sub-$500 including the tax.

PROs:

decent price

i5 processor

8gig RAM (after upgrade)

500gig HD

15in screen (doesnt matter to project)

CONs:

chintzy keyboard (feels really really cheap)

HP (not a big fan of their laptops)

no rescue CDs/DVDs in the box

creation of the rescue CDs/DVDs/USB drive software doesnt work well.

laptop boots up with the screen powered off. has to push F3 to get the screen to turn on.

The laptop came with Win7 64bit Home Premium. Great. But I dont need it. I wanted to create the rescue CDs/DVDs/USB drive so I can put win7 back on it incase I need a win7 box later on. I created the USB drive with the software. I tried to boot off of it but it didnt work. Big surprise.

I loaded Ubuntu 64bit Desktop (12.04) on the laptop. It loaded smoothly, detecting all the hardware. Well I havent tested all the hardware but everything that I have tested has worked. The two items that tend not to work is Video cards and Wireless cards. both worked the first time out of the box.

I give the laptop a 5/10. but it will work for my project.

[storagemonkey-blog]

new project (OxygenCloud)

I have been looking at OxygenCloud since their debut. And I have been very interested in the concept/product. OC (OxygenCould) has released their "Oxygen Storage Connectors". Awesome! Now I can have private cloud storage for myself by myself.

What I need:

linux server (of some sorts)

"Oxygen Storage Connectors" software

storage

So I went down to MicroCenter over in Marietta. Worked with a guy named Dave. Dave did a good job and helping me find an OpenBox/Refurbished laptop that meets my needs. I ended up with a HP Pavilion G6 laptop. More on the laptop in another post. Here is what I got at MicroCenter.

HP Pavilion G6

4gig Memory upgrade

1.5TB Seagate GoFlex Desk USB2 disk

(downloaded a copy of) Ubuntu 64bit Desktop on DVD (outside of MC)

I installed Ubuntu on the HP Pavilion G6. The install was very easy. Ubuntu (12.04) has really tweaked their installer to be easy and just work. Next I setup the external drive (the 1.5TB) as a EXT4 instead of ExFAT/NTFS that it came as. I mounted up the drive as /mnt/oxygen. The last step is to install the OxygenCloud software. They have Ubuntu packages to download. The install was extremely easy. I just had to open local:18888 in a browser and configure the storage. a couple clicks later and it was up and running.

I next went to my Mac, and was able to see the space immediately. AWESOME!

[storagemonkey-blog]

what this is..

every now and then I as a geek need to express my thoughts of being a geek. and this is where I am going to do it. I have a few posts about a new laptop I have for testing Oxygen on. more details in that blog.