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Dell with the help of VMware has achieved the top score with SPEC Cloud™ IaaS 2016 Benchmark.
These results were achieved on FX2s Chassis using Dell PowerEdge FC630 with E5-2698v4 processors running VMware ESXi 6.5 and VMware Integrated OpenStack 3.1, controller by vSphere 6.5.
This Hardware, Software combo created on a cluster of 8 data nodes were able to create 468 VMs, with a Elasticity score of 87.4 % and a Scalability score of 78.5 @ 72 Applications Instances.
This results can be viewed on SPEC’s website, at the follow link https://www.spec.org/cloud_iaas2016/results/cloudiaas2016.html
Figure of the Cluster Environment.
List of Cluster Equipment.
Figure of the Published OSG Cloud result.
By replacing the E5-2698v4 processors in the data nodes of the cluster with E5-2699v4, we were able to improve the SPEC Cloud score by 11.7%.
Achieving a Scalability score of 87.7 @ 80, with an Elasticity score of 88.6%, while creating 520 VMs, without increasing the Provisioning Time of only 25 seconds.
This 11.7% increase was due to having 2 more cores per processor, for a total of 4 cores per data node and a cluster increase of 24 cores over the previous cluster configuration.
Figure of the update results with E5-2699v4 processors installed in all the Data Nodes.
As seen in the in the chart below there was a 11.1% increase in the amount of VM’s created by the cluster, after installing the E5-2699v4 processors in the data nodes.
In the Chart below there was an 11.1% increase in the amount Application Instances that the cluster can create.
There was an 11.7% increase in Scalability and seen in the figure below.
Scalability is the total amount of measured work done by the application instances that are running in cloud environment in the cluster.
There was a 1.3% increase in Elasticity. Elasticity is difference between the baseline and the clouds application workload performance.
Each VM runs a baseline of the an application workload, before entering the cloud environment.
As seen in the chart below there was a 81.4% decrease in Provisioning Time over traditional Openstack clusters, when using VMware's VIO Openstack cluster.
The R720 and R630 in this chart are using the traditional Openstack software on physical servers.
SPEC’s Benchmark to measure cloud performance is SPEC Cloud™ IaaS 2016. This benchmark use a suite of tools to measure cloud performance.
The benchmark sets up VM’s as cloud instances to stress the provisioning of the Cluster and then runs computing workloads on those instances to figure out Scalability and Elasticity of the cluster.
For more information on SPEC’s Cloud™ IaaS 2016 visit the following website https://www.spec.org/cloud_iaas2016/ .
The VMware software used in this cluster is ESXi 6.5, VIO 3.1 and vSphere 6.5. ESXi 6.5 is an embedded hypervisor, which allow the creation of VMs without an underlying OS.
VIO 3.1 is a VMware product that creates an OpenStack cluster on VMware infrastructure.
This software combo allows for the creation of an integrate openstack cluster on the Dell PowerEdge servers hardware.
Once the Cluster is created it can be controlled via VMware’s vSphere software.
For information on the VMware Software used for this Cluster visit: http://www.vmware.com/go/vsphere and http://www.vmware.com/go/openstack.
Updated monthly, this publication provides you with new and recently revised information and is organized in the following categories; Documentation, Notifications, Patches, Product Life Cycle, Release, Knowledge Base Articles.
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Knowledgebase Articles
New
229675 - error: disk deployment blocked due to HyperDeploy
When re-provisioning computers the following error may be seen: Disk deployment blocked due to HyperDeploy by Host: Hyper-V server name
Created: May 23, 2017
Revised
149541 - Redirection not working for Web Access
When creating a new website, the default.aspx should get edited automatically and a redirector setup to point to the new website, for example...
Revised: May 1, 2017
55554 - Cannot load pit file when launching Published application through Web Access
When browsing to the location identified in the error message, "<path><name>.pit", the file is not present. The PortWise cache cleaner has...
Revised: May 3, 2017
73446 - How To: Improve Performance to a Virtual Desktop VDI Session
When connecting to a VDI over a slow connection users report that the performance on the VDI is degraded, or sessions are disconnected often.
Revised: May 5, 2017
227781 - How to set the minimum memory with Hyper-V
The Hyper-V role in Windows 2012 has an improved Dynamic memory feature that adds a property called Minimum Memory. This allows you to specify a...
70481 - HOW TO: Secure Access Certificate Configuration
Revised: May 11, 2017
183146 - Smart card logon to Web access
When using Smartcards to authenticate, by default you still need to type in a Username and Password to log into the Web Access site before you can...
Revised: May 19, 2017
182486 - Best practices for User Profile Management (MetaProfiles)
Most issues with User Profile Management are due to the user's profile being too large as a result of too much being captured.
Revised: May 22, 2017
148502 - Saving Windows Credentials Store with Metaprofiles
Is it possible to use Metaprofiles (User Profile Management) to save the Windows Credentials Store (for example saved Outlook passwords) so that...
147847 - After updating PNTools user is presented with a blank screen on login.
After updating PNTools user is presented with a blank screen on login.
Revised: May 23, 2017
Product Life Cycle -vWorkspace
Revised: May 2017
Patches
228613 - Mandatory Hotfix 654037 for 8.6 MR3 Mac Connector
This mandatory hotfix addresses the following issues: Picture is pasted instead of copied text when copying from Excel 2016 to Mac version of...
Created: April 21, 2017
228607 - Mandatory Hotfix 654123 for 8.6 MR3 Linux Connector
This mandatory hotfix addresses the following issues: It is impossible to launch any application with non-English user name if Cred SSP is...
228830 - Mandatory Hotfix 654125 for 8.6 MR3 Android Connector
Created: April 26, 2017
228414 - Quest Metaprofile Server (pnmfps service) not listening on any port 5206
After setting the Storage Servers in User Profile Management | Properties, Profiles are not stored. The other symptoms are: No file...
Created: April 18, 2017
228827 - vWorkspace 8.6.x patch installers
When trying to upgrade vWorkspace 8.6 to mr1, mr2 or mr3 running the setup in the full installer package does not appear to upgrade the version...
Revised: April 4, 2017
224308 - Hyper-V host is showing offline and is unable to be initialized.
Hyper-V host fails to initialize and is showing offline. The following message may be seen in the vWorkspace console: "Remote computer could not...
Revised: April 14, 2017
228413 - PNTools versions are detected as outdated after upgrade.
vWorkspace Monitoring and Diagnostics detected PNTools versions to be outdated after an upgrade. Alarm was triggered and you could be...
Revised: April 21, 2017
Revised: April 26, 2017
63874 - The Remote Computer requires Network level authentication error.
When trying to connect to a machine, an error occurs. The Remote Computer requires Network level authentication error.
Revised: April 27, 2017
Revised: April 28, 2017
Revised: April 2017
This blog post is written by Sapan Jain and Krishnaprasad K from Dell Operating System team.
VMware ESXi versions (Dell customized VMware ESXi 6.0.x) shipped out of Dell factories may expose a failure when users try to upgrade to a higher version using VMware Update Manager (VUM).
The failure would be seen in "Remediate" step in the upgrade process and error code may be similar to "Cannot execute upgrade script on the host".
This issue will not be seen if users have installed ESXi using Dell customized VMware ESXi images downloaded from support.dell.com (OR) VMware ESXi images posted at www.vmware.com/download.
How do I check the Dell customized version running on my system?
Resolution
The problem is caused by having upper case letters for the files residing in ESXi file system. For example, you may see that /altbootbank has files of upper case.
There are no workarounds available which can be used to proceed upgrade when this failure is hit. There is no data loss even though the upgrade is failed, you may boot back to the original ESXi configuration prior to upgrade. The available options to recover from this failure are as follows:-
1. Upgrade using Dell iDRAC vMedia/CD Based method.
2. Use scripted upgrade using PXE infrastructure.
This issue is fixed from the following versions of Dell customized VMware ESXi releases.
This blog post is written by Elavarasan Selvaraj and Krishnaprasad K from Dell Operating System team.
The Common Information Model (CIM) interface on an ESXi host provides a way of remotely monitoring the hardware health of your hosts via the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) protocol. It builds on a standard HTTP(S) API, allowing secure SSL/TLS protected authentication and communication between the host and the management stations. From ESXi 6.5 onwards, VMware introduced a new namespace named as ‘wbem’ as an extension for esxcli which controls the services such as sfcbd and wsman. From ESXi 6.5 onwards, sfcdb and wsman are disabled by default as wbem is kept to false by default.
The wbem services gets enabled automatically when an OEM provider VIB is installed. For example when Dell OpenManage systems management software is installed on ESXi 6.5, you may see that the services such as sfcbd and wsman are started automatically. This blog detail on the options wbem provides which can help understand and troubleshooting CIM related issues.
This section summarizes some of the options provided by wbem which would be helpful for users relying on CIM systems management stack with in ESXi to monitor/manage their systems.
Below is what you see on a newly installed ESXi 6.5 in terms of the service status.
~] esxcli system wbem get
Authorization Model: password
Enabled: false
Loglevel: warning
Port: 5989
WSManagement Service: true
You may see that the service is disabled by default. This also mean that sfcbd and wsman services are turned off by default.
~] /etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog status
sfcbd is not running
~] /etc/init.d/wsman status
openwsmand is not running
After enabling wbem, you may observe that sfcbd and wsman are turned on.
~] esxcli system wbem set -e 1
sfcbd is running
openwsmand is running
~] esxcli system wbem set --help
Usage: esxcli system wbem set [cmd options]
Description:
set This command allows the user to set up ESX CIMOM agent.
Cmd options:
-a|--auth=<str> Specify how to authorize incoming requests. Values are password, certificate, password is by default. Changes take effect when --enable is
specified.
-e|--enable Start or stop the WBEM services (sfcbd, openwsmand). Values: [yes|no, true|false, 0|1]
-l|--loglevel=<str> Syslog logging level: debug|info|warning|error
-p|--port=<long> Set the TCP port on which the CIMOM listens for requests. The default is 5989
-r|--reset Restore the WBEM configuration to factory defaults
-W|--ws-man Enable or disable the WS-Management service (openwsmand). Enabled by default. Changes take effect when --enable is specified.
~] esxcli system wbem -h
Usage: esxcli system wbem {cmd} [cmd options]
Available Namespaces: provider
Available Commands: get Display WBEM Agent configuration. set This command allows the user to set up ESX CIMOM agent.
There is an extension available for wbem (named as provider) as well which is useful to understand the providers that are registered to sfcbd and enabled. Below is a sample command output taken from an ESXi 6.5 host with default providers. When Dell OpenManage is installed, you may see an additional entry named as 'OpenManage' to the below.
~] esxcli system wbem provider list
Name Enabled Loaded---------------- ------- ------sfcb_base true truevmw_base true truevmw_hdr true truevmw_hhrcwrapper true truevmw_iodmProvider true truevmw_kmodule true truevmw_omc true truevmw_pci true truevmw_vi true true
The below command provides an option to enable/disable individual providers registered to sfcb.
~] esxcli system wbem provider set <-e | --enable> <yes|no, true | false, 0|1>
Few other useful commands related to wbem are the following.
~] esxcli system wbem set -a | --auth=<str>
The authentication method defines how the incoming requests are authenticated from the external HTTPs APIs. Password and certificate are the two options available.
~] esxcli system wbem set -e | --enable true|false (sfcbd, openwsmand)
~] esxcli system wbem set -W | --ws-man true|false (openwsmand)
This allows the administrator to enable/disable wsman service specifically.
~] esxcli system wbem set -l | --log-level=<str> debug|info|warning| error
This is an important parameter available for wbem. This is a useful option for troubleshooting CIM issues.
~] esxcli system wbem set -p | --pot=<long>
Setting the TCP port for CIMOM communication listens the request from outside HTTPs API. By default it's set to 5989. You may use this parameter only if there is a requirement to change the default port used.
~] esxcli system wbem set -r | --reset
This command resets the wbem configuration to the default.
Dell systems management support for ESXi 6.5
DellEMC provides an inband management tool known as OpenManage in which it provides two specific solutions named as Server Administrator (OMSA) and iDRAC Service Module(iSM). Dell released an OMSA version of 8.5 supported for ESXi 6.5 which is a test and document supported version. The iSM version is yet to be out for ESXi 6.5.
This blog was originally written by Navya SM from OS Engineering team in Dell
Windows containers is a concept introduced with Windows server 2016 TP3 on both Core and GUI based OS image. A container looks a lot like a virtual machine (VM)-and is often considered a type of virtualization-but the two are distinctly different. Both host an operating system (OS), provide a local file system, and can be accessed over a network, just like a physical computer. However, a VM provides a full and independent OS, along with virtualized device drivers, memory management, and other components that add to the overhead. A container shares more of the host’s resources and consequently is more lightweight, quicker to deploy, and easier to scale across data centers. In this way, the container can offer a more efficient mechanism for encapsulating an application, while providing the necessary interface to the host system, all of which leads to more effective resource usage and greater portability. More details about the containers can be found at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/ windowscontainers/about/about_overview.
Windows Server 2016 actually offers two different types of container run times, each with different degrees of application isolation.
Windows Containers offer isolation through namespace and process isolation, whereas Hyper-V Containers isolate each container via VMs. Windows Containers share a kernel with the container host and all the containers running on the host. In contrast, with Hyper-V Containers the kernel of the container host is not shared with the Hyper-V Containers. The Container Host can be either full OS or Core OS or a Nano edition. Both the types of Containers can be managed using Docker.
Prerequisites:
Note: For the Container feature to work better all the Microsoft updates should be installed along with the OS.
Windows Containers on Full OS:
3. Configure the firewall on the container host for the docker and configure the docker to listen on both the tcp and pipe using the commands given below.
4. Windows Containers need a base image to be installed. Base OS images are available with both Windows Server Core and Nano Server as the underlying operating system and can be installed using docker pull.
a. docker pull microsoft/windowsservercore or
b. docker pull microsoft/nanoserver
5. The docker command set is used to manage and work with containers. To create a new container and run commands on it we will have to use “Docker run” command and “docker ps” lists the containers that are running.
6. To run commands on the existing container we can use “docker exec <container name> <cmd>”
7. To start or stop a container we can run using “docker start/stop <container ID>”.
8. Hyper-V containers on the other hand needs nested virtualization to be enabled (before installing Hyper-V role) as the Hyper-V host will be a VM and the containers will be the nested VMs on top of it. Below are the steps to create Hyper-V containers
The rest of the steps remain same on the Hyper-V container host
Windows Containers on Nano Server:
Install-Module -Name DockerMsftProvider -Repository PSGallery –Force
Install-Package -Name docker -ProviderName DockerMsftProvider
Restart-Computer –Force
5. The container host needs base OS image to hold the containers. The Windows Server Core and Nano Server has got the base OS image as the underlying OS. We can pull the base OS images using the docker pull cmd which fetches the ready image for use.
If the hyper-V containers are needed the also get the server core image using
6. We need a remote system to manage docker on Nano server and so we need to configure the following for the same by installing docker on the remote server.
7. Now we can create and connect to the container by using docker commands as same as that of the full Windows server OS
The same can be seen using “docker ps –a” command as shown. We have to start the container using “docker start <container ID>” and can stop the container using “docker stop <container ID>”. To execute a command on a running container “docker exec <container ID> <cmd>”
If the Nano server is installed on a VM, then the Hyper-V role has to be installed to create the Hyper-V container with nested virtualization being enabled but the rest of the steps remain same.
This part is to cover the creation of containers, but to use the containers we have to get the network connections for the same.
Content of this blog is originally written by Shubhrata Priyadarshinee.
This blog provide steps for TPM 2.0 enablement in bios, kernel, TPM-2.0 user space utility and uses of TPM ownership in TPM 2.0 in SLES12 SP2.
It also helps to find out solutions to the below error messages.
Dell PowerEdge have the TPM 2.0 chip built on the motherboard. However, it is not enabled by default. Therefore, we need to enable the TPM in the BIOS.
To enable TPM 2.0 in BIOS:-
Press F2 while system boots -> System setup -> System BIOS -> System Security -> TPM security -> turn ON TPM security if not and Enable TPM hierarchy
Under TPM advanced security do the following
Screenshot showing TPM configuration setup page for 13G dell PowerEdge server.
Screenshot showing TPM advanced configuration page for 13G dell PowerEdge server.
#cat /boot/config-4.4.21-69.1.x86_64 | grep TPM
output will look like this: CONFIG_TCG_TPM=Y
# cat /sys/class/tpm/tpm0/device/description
output of above command will look like this: TPM 2.0 Device
# lsmod | grep -i tpm
Output will look something like this.
TPM 2.0 uses tpm2-0-tss package that provides an open-source TCG software stack (TSS) implementation and tpm2.0-tools package that provides the tpm-2.0 tools based on tpm2.0-tss.
TPM 2.0 does not work with TPM 1.2 trousers package and tpm-tools. So when working with TPM 2.0, install below two packages.
Mount SLES 12SP2 GM DVD or configure SLES12 SP2 repository and install both of the packages, by running below commands.
#zypper install tpm2-0-tss
#zypper install tpm2.0-tools
#systemctl status resourcemgr.service
#systemctl enable resourcemgr.service
#systemctl start resourcemgr.service
#tpm2_takeownership -o new -e new -l new
#tpm2_takeownership -o new1 -e new1 -l new1 -O new -E new -L new
https://github.com/01org/tpm2.0-tools/blob/master/manual
https://github.com/01org/TPM2.0-TSS
https://github.com/01org/tpm2.0-tools
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4302-6584-9
This blog post is originally written by Shubhra Rana and Vinay Patkar from Windows Engineering Team
Cloud security is one of the trending areas due to high adoption rates by small and huge businesses alike. Security of the virtual layer is very important from the customer’s perspective as all the private data is hosted over virtual machines. This paper is aimed at describing the role of TPM 2.0 chip in guaranteeing the best security features to the VMs hosted in a third party environment in collaboration with the Hyper-V Shielded VM security feature introduced by Microsoft.
Refer to the white paper located at Dell TechCenter which provides some useful information for users who plan to use Shielded Virtual Machines on Dell PowerEdge servers with Windows Server 2016 Installed.
Dell EMC has announced an update to the PowerEdge C6320p modular server, introducing support for the Intel® Xeon Phi x200 processor with Intel Omni-Path™ fabric integration (KNL-F). This update is a processor-only change, which means that changes to the PowerEdge C6320p motherboard were not required. New purchases of the PowerEdge C6320p server can be configured with KNL or KNL-F processors. For customers utilizing Omni-Path as a fabric, the KNL-F processor will improve cost and power efficiencies, as it eliminates the need to purchase and power discrete Omni-Path adapters. Figure 1, below, illustrates the conceptual design differences between the KNL and KNL-F solutions.
Late last year, we introduced the Dell EMC PowerEdge C6230p Server, which delivers a high performance processor node based on the Intel Xeon Phi processor (KNL). This exciting server delivers a compute node optimized for HPC workloads, supporting highly parallelized processes with up to 72 out-of-order cores in a compact half-width 1U package. High-speed fabric options include InfiniBand or Omni-Path, ideal for data intensive computational applications, such as life sciences, and weather simulations.
Figure 1: Functional design view of KNL and KNL-F Omni-Path support.
As seen in the figure, the integrated fabric option eliminates the dependency on dual x16 PCIe lanes on the motherboard and allows support for a denser configuration, with two QSFP connectors on a single carrier circuit board. For continued support of both processors, the PowerEdge C6230p server will retain the PCIe signals to the PCIe slots. Inserting the KNL-F processor will disable these signals, and expose a connector supporting two QSFP ports carried on an optional adapter using the same PCIe x16 slot for power.
Additional improvements to the PowerEdge C6320p server include support for 64GB LRDIMMs, bumping memory capacity to 384GB, and support for the LSI 2008 RAID controller via the PCIe x4 mezzanine slot.
Dell EMC offers several HPC solutions optimized for customer usage and priorities. Domain-specific HPC compute solutions from Dell EMC include the following scalable options:
For HPC storage needs, Dell EMC offers two high performance, scalable, and robust options:
The Dell EMC HPC System for Research, an ideal HPC platform for IT administrators serving diverse and expanding user demands, now supports KNL-F, with its improved cost and power efficiencies, eliminating the need to purchase and power discrete Omni-Path adapters.
Dell EMC is the industry leader in HPC computing, and we are committed to delivering increased capabilities and performance in partnership with Intel and other technology leaders in the HPC community. To learn more about Dell EMC HPC solutions and services, visit us online.
http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/learn/high-performance-computing
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/high-performance-computing/
www.dellhpc.org/
Dell EMC World 2017 has officially kicked off and there are a number of activities going on both on the ground, and virtually.
To keep track of the event agenda, visit http://www.dellemcworld.com/agenda.htm for more details and view live streams.
If you want to keep track of what's going on with the Dell EMC Elect, here is the calendar of events they will be participating in.
The podcasts can be listened to at the following links:
itunes podcast link
https://soundcloud.com/dellemc
If you are there in person or following online, you'll know where they will be: