Dell TechCenter

I recently posted a Dell TechCenter wiki page on the default behavior of VMware vSphere 4.0 when you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL. That behavior being to initiate the soft reboot process on the server even if the server is not in Maintenance Mode; and thereby, ungracefully rebooting all of your VMs on that server.  The wiki page describes what you need to do to remedy the situation. 

Lead by Thomas Cloyd, Product Marketing Senior Consultant, Dell has delivered tools designed to help customers move their datacenters toward the Efficient Enterprise.

1. Dell Blade Servers - Dedicated website to explore Dell M-Series Blade technology from high level to deep dive.
2. Dell Blade ROI Calculator - Calculate the Financial Benefits of Dell Blades, Fully Customizable to Your Specific Business
3. Dell DDR3 Memory Advisor - Understand new Intel Nehalem DDR3 Memory Architecture
4. Dell Server Savings Calculator - Illustrate your Power and Space Savings with New Dell Servers

Also, check out the initial and follow-up external review of the Dell Blade ROI Calculator.

I'm a big believer in simple tools with flexibility to create solutions for your needs. 

As a technical person I find nothing more satisfying than hacking a piece of code to create a unique solution.

Dell Repository Manager allows you to create custom repositories that contain the Dell Update Packages (DUPs) which are then exported to either an ISO file or a lightweight deployment script for Windows or Linux.

I've created two demos that show both.  The first one is an overview of the product and shows exporting to lightweight script for use in Windows.

In the second demo I hack on one of the files to automate the deployment after exporting the ISO and mounting across multiple blades in the chassis.  The changes to the script eliminate the user input and also reboot the blades if the updates were successful.  The nice thing is it is a simple shell script you can edit.  If you are familiar with simple scripting I'm sure you'll find yourself building more intelligence into the code.  I've also included details on editing the script used by Repository Manager to automate the execution and reboot after completion.

Watch the demos here.

If you are already a part of the EqualLogic fan base, hopefully you downloaded a free copy of SAN HQ 1.0 off the support site.  Less than a year after introducing an already great product (free to customers on support I might add), Dell EqualLogic is getting ready to debut the second version, likely before the end of the year.  

SAN HQ 2.0's interface is still as snappy, informative and intuitive as the previous generation, with some added capabilities:

Packaged Reports --

• "Top 10" reports such as Top 10 Busy Volumes, Top 10 Hosts by Connection, and more. 
• Performance Report
• Host Connections Report
• Group Configuration Report with Alerts
• Capacity Utilization and Trending Report
• Thin Volume Status Report
• Replication Status Report
• Alerts Report for All Groups
• Hardware Summary Report

Enhanced Analytics: calculation and display of maximum theoretical IOPS; degraded performance limits; estimated percentage-busy IOPS for groups, pools, and members; IOPS vs. latency; and volume queue depths

Broader Data Collection: additional metrics on iSCSI sessions, outbound replication, volume collections, network ports and controllers, including temperature charts

New Alerts: including those for unreachable member ports, port status, member disk mirroring issues, and disk alternate signatures

Better Communication: finer-grained control over e-mail notification and group e-mail settings

Improved Usability: single sign-on, new wizards, simpler navigation, and chart enhancements

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words, I'll save my usual marathon-length blog and throw up some screen captures from our two groups in the DellTechCenter monitored by SAN HQ 2.0:

Figure 1: Main page of one of our groups.

Figure 2: New with 2.0 SAN HQ Report Wizard

Figure 3: Page from "Top 10" report generated

Figure 4: Expanded Network port and controller information available in 2.0

Meet Ryan Weldon, Dell Virtualization Solutions Engineering Hyper-V lead.  He is helping Dell simplify IT with best practice for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V in Dell’s solution stack. He has put together a wiki page at the Dell TechCenter on a Hyper-V R2 lab configuration describing networking best practice recommendations for a Hyper-V R2 environment built on Dell. 

The design best practices are based on:

• Redundant hardware to eliminate a single point of failure
• Load balancing and failover for iSCSI and virtual machine traffic
• Redundant paths for cluster, Cluster Shared Volume (CSV), and Live Migration traffic
• Separation of traffic type for security and availability
• Ease of use and implementation

Ryan has also provided a script that takes any adapter that begins with the name "Local Area Connection" and renames them to their MAC addresses. Let us know what you think and what you are doing with Dell and Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V.