This TechTuesday chat is open-topic discussion format. Bring your questions, comments, ideas, and expertise on any enterprise technology or data center subject you'd like to discuss with the group.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH Hey, my great LCD script fiend! I owe you a blog post once they fix my Dell logon for my blog
lynxbat Ha. That is old news now. My 15 minutes is up ;)
DELL-ScottH Yeah, what have you done for me today? Or in the last five minutes right?
lynxbat Yup
DELL-ScottH Hey Justin! Hey Terpmeister
terpmeister Hey, saw the Twitter :)
DELL-ScottH Thanks for bricking my MD3000i. Twitter rocks. Maybe today we just have a Twitter rock star party
wantmoore No prob, dude. Glad I could help
DELL-ScottH Seriously, is that defrag still running?
wantmoore Yep. It’s on the last LUN now
DELL-ScottH Is there a progress indicator or something? You have I/O going to it?
wantmoore Just the "operations in progress" window
wantmoore Doesn’t give any sort of time indicator
DELL-ScottH I think I bricked the MD because I had I/O with a bunch of VMs going while I tried the upgrade; big no no on my part
terpmeister Ouch, is Gold Support going to help you out?
wantmoore Yeah, the readme specifically says to stop I/O operations ;)
DELL-ScottH Yeah, they got two guys on the line, but actually we didn't do anything—just bounced everything, and it started to recover. Yeah, yeah, yeah, as I was told several times by the support guy :-) I was just trying to act like a real customer :-)
wantmoore Well, that’s good to know though that the controllers are somewhat resilient to botched firmware upgrades
DELL-ScottH Yeah, I was crossing my fingers; you would hope that they build a lot of checks and balances into a firmware update, especially a big one like that
DELL-ScottH Hey Nick, happy birthday! Seems like you celebrated for about a week!
terpmeister You would think, but I remember last year we were upgrading a third-party storage system (can't recall the model) and somebody decided to change the IRQ on it. After it wouldn't boot, we called tech support, and they said never change the IRQ! Then why did we have the option to change it?
DELL-ScottH Exactly. Never put something in the interface because somebody will find it and dork with it
JasonPowell Hey Scott
DELL-ScottH Hola Jason
DELL-ScottH So is the Mini 12 for you or the wife?
JasonPowell Mini 12 is pretty :-)
JasonPowell No upgrade option for RAM :(
DELL-ScottH Really? Back doesn't come off like the 9?
JasonPowell Someone Twittered that it's soldered in
terpmeister Nothing a dremel and/or soldering iron can't fix
JasonPowell Nothing on the bottom
DELL-ScottH I think the base 1 GB is soldered on, but I think there is another slot
JasonPowell No doors on the bottom. I forgot to buy a CD-ROM, so my plans to put Windows 7 on it will have to wait
DELL-ScottH Bootable USB
JasonPowell Unless it will boot from USB, but the size and weight are sweet
wantmoore I bet we can find a USB CD-ROM around here amongst our other junk
terpmeister How long do they run off of battery?
JasonPowell Claimed six hours—with 6 cell
DELL-ScottH Yeah, I almost went for it instead of my 9, but I really like the smaller size in the 9 but curse the 10 that was announced. I've gotten four hours on the 9 with the screen dimmed
JasonPowell Pics of my Mini 12: http://twitpic.com/photos/jasonpowell Right-click the link.
DELL-ScottH Ha
DELL-ScottH Hello Behzad
wantmoore Why did I even click the link? The stupid thing is sitting six feet from me
terpmeister Nice, I wonder how I can convince the wife to let me get one :)
JasonPowell Anything we should know about server road maps? We are looking to get two servers this month, but if something new is coming shortly we'll wait
DELL-ScottH Hmmm, define shortly, and I'll skirt as much as I can to keep my job
DELL-ScottH Lol @justin
wantmoore IE: we want to take advantage of Dell Eoy ;)
JasonPowell Let's say shortly = June
wantmoore <= Ready now ;)
DELL-ScottH Well, if you want Eoy bargains, you have to buy what's on the truck :-)
JasonPowell I think my Dell rep is supposed to have an NDA on file for us. Guess I could ping him as well
DELL-ScottH How often do new generations of servers come out? (I'm poking you, so I won't spill beans)
DELL-ScottH Hey Jbarton and Roger!
jbarton Hello
JasonPowell LoL
Dell-RogerF Afternoon.
DELL-ScottH So maybe every "twoish" years? Would that be your guess?
JasonPowell That would be my guess
DELL-ScottH And when did we announce the 10G line of servers?
JasonPowell Seems like desktops used to be on an 18-month rotation
DELL-ScottH Except for these dang Minis, which I guess I need to buy like every month! 10G was some time in mid 07...and we will be in mid 09 pretty soon...right? Maybe you need to bring the team down to Austin for an executive briefing
wantmoore I can have a suitcase packed in an hour
DELL-ScottH Hello Jweida
DELL-ScottH Hello Brace
jwieda Hello from Chicago
DELL-ScottH Burrr
brennels Happy New Year, guys, hope you had happy holidays
jwieda You got that right...
Behzad Hello Scott
JasonPowell Sorry...I'm back
wantmoore Scott, high here on Thurs/Fri is gonna be 9 and 7F. I could use a trip to Austin about now
DELL-ScottH Well, we were supposed to have another installment of our Microsoft system management topics with the Dell IT guys, but they had other plans. So now we have an open mic afternoon!
JasonPowell We'd love to visit you guys :-)
DELL-ScottH Would love to have you come down. It's about 60 here right now. Always sunny
wantmoore How many servers do we need to buy to get Dell to pick up air travel?
DELL-ScottH Hmmm, a few :-)
terpmeister Our old Dell reps were invited down once; we had to pay for everything, so we passed on that one :)
DELL-ScottH So in this chat we can discuss previous topics, new happenings with MD3000i firmware updates, or show off some of your great blog posts, products, anything… thanks to all for joining
wantmoore I've made two blog posts in the last few days regarding the MD3000i, one about merging/defragging to get all the free space contiguous and another regarding the firmware update: www.wantmoore.com/
DELL-ScottH As a few of you know, we did slip in the MD3000i firmware update that supports RAID 6 and >2 TB LUNs just before the holidays
jwieda Will there be any discussion around OS deployment with the Dell toolkit and SCCM?
Behzad When is it going to be available?
DELL-ScottH Unfortunately, that team had to push off that topic until next week. They are all off-site and couldn't join us
DELL-ScottH We do have some transcripts from the last few chats around that topic
JasonPowell Scott, I saved a Config.cli on an EqualLogic array and FTP'd it off. Wiped the array. Now FTP'd the Config.cli file back on, but how do I “replay” the Config?
DELL-ScottH www.delltechcenter.com/page/chat+topics+and+transcripts
DELL-ScottH I'd have to ping one of our EqualLogic experts—not sure
jwieda Okay, thanks. I'll join next week and look for an update then
jwieda Cheers.
DELL-ScottH Will check for you. Bye
DELL-ScottH Hello Gary
garyrm Howdy
DELL-ScottH I did find something interesting that I hadn't noticed before. I get questions all the time about how can you tell the difference between a 2950 II and III
JasonPowell Scott, I just wondered if you knew off the top of your head. I'll ping my EqualLogic dude :-)
DELL-ScottH If you have physical access to the box, there is actually a II or III printed on the left tab of the rack
DELL-ScottH Yeah, Todd was the EqualLogic expert round here. I'll dive into those boxes once I unbrick the MD3000i all the way :-)
NickNick Difference between them?
wantmoore Got any extra 1 TB EqualLogic disks laying around? Like, 14 of them?
wantmoore Or even 500 GB ones :)
jbarton I have a question about ESXi and OpenManage integration
DELL-ScottH Shoot
jbarton I see that certain hardware monitoring is integrated into the VI client, but I am wondering where Dell is with regard to hooks into hardware monitoring so that OMSA can be installed on a guest OS
DELL-ScottH On the ESX host or the guest?
jbarton A guest running on the ESXi server. Since there is no service console, I would want to install OMSA inside a guest
DELL-ScottH The stance has always been that OMSA is for physical hardware, so they (OM team) won't support OMSA on a guest OS. There will be OpenManage support built into U4, so if you want to use IT Assistant to manage/monitor ESXi, if you put U4 patches then integration will be built in for the host, but still not for guests. Make sense?
terpmeister Is U4 available yet?
DELL-ScottH Nope
jbarton Yes, that answers my other question, about how IT Assistant would interface with ESXi. I just noticed that there is a separate version of ESXi where another vendor has incorporated hooks into hardware monitoring, and thought Dell might be doing the same thing
DELL-ScottH Well, we do have CIM, so you do get the host hardware information and status in the VI console
terpmeister Good, I just got done upgrading my servers to U3
jbarton Yeah, I have used CIM for Nagios alerting, and I think the VI console has a lot of information too. I was just curious about some of the more in-depth information available in OMSA
terpmeister I noticed a performance hit when I was using CIM
DELL-ScottH Hello Karim. Use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
DELL-ScottH Yes, the more in-depth is coming with U4
jbarton Thanks for the information
Karim Hi Scott, will do
Karim Did you manage to get the MD3000i sorted at all?
DELL-ScottH Half of it is back; the other half is still doing a firmware copy from the surviving half—looks like it will survive
terpmeister Speaking of monitoring host hardware, anybody have any experience with Veeam Monitor? Thoughts or impressions?
DELL-ScottH ...Trying to find that screen shot of CIM on ESXi: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/3_13_2008+-+ESX+3i+-+Comments
DELL-ScottH Yeah, if Vmdoug wasn't in a meeting I thought he would be all over an "open" chat session :-)
Karim Heh, doesn't IT Assistant at the moment pull the guest OS information—at the moment anyway? Or is that only with ESX infrastructure?
DELL-ScottH Very limited—doesn't give you the depth of information that a full-blown agent would
Karim I take it that’s to do with the limited SNMP traps and locked down console—a bit slow today (insomnia sucks) but U3/4?
DELL-ScottH U4 will have OpenManage agent integration built in for ESXi. With ESX right now you can install OMSA agent on the host, but not the guests
DELL-ScottH Some people want it in the guest for tracking guest disk usage and some other non-technical asset information
DELL-ScottH Hey Todd!
virtualTodd Hey everybody
DELL-ScottH When is U4 coming out? <-- Throws Todd right under the bus!
Karim Ah, a bit like jbarton was saying, Nagios running on it
virtualTodd Who?
Karim Lol
DELL-ScottH Yup
terpmeister Lol
DELL-ScottH So how was the dentist, and how goes the virtualized Exchange testing?
virtualTodd The trip to the dentist was short and easy—I wish I could say the same for Exchange testing. Loadgen takes forever to initialize its users
DELL-ScottH Well, maybe we can get you some Dell hardware in the cube :-)
virtualTodd I started this initialize on Monday, and it should be done some time on Thursday
DELL-ScottH Doh, sounds like @wantmoores defrag on the MD3000i
virtualTodd Did you get my MD3000i up and running on both controllers yet? I mean your MD3000i?
DELL-ScottH Still running the update on the second controller, and since we're both here, isn't it our MD3000i, for the next 30 minutes? :-)
JasonPowell Todd, you know the EqualLogic exec command stuff?
virtualTodd Anybody going to VMworld Europe next month?
DELL-ScottH You going to get to go?
virtualTodd Jason, I didn't
Karim Where/when is it, Todd?
virtualTodd Oops. Jason, I didn't get a chance to do any EqualLogic exec stuff—except for an upgrade
JasonPowell Trying to replay a Config.cli file
DELL-ScottH Hello joraye. Use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
virtualTodd Well, all I know is that it is in Europe at the moment—give me a sec to look it up
DELL-ScottH Cannes, France
virtualTodd Februay 24-26
DELL-ScottH Here's the pics of the 2950 II and III tabs I talked about earlier: http://twitpic.com/12k0m and http://twitpic.com/12k0v
DELL-ScottH Right-click on links
Karim Yeah, just noticed it ;) Will have to try and get around to it (if I can somehow escape the Glasgow office)
virtualTodd My team is working on some performance numbers to be presented at VMworld Europe
DELL-ScottH Any peeks you can give us?
virtualTodd Should be pretty good stuff
DELL-ScottH I guess they are good, or they wouldn’t be presented
DELL-ScottH terpmeister! You tweeted our secret
virtualTodd There actually are a couple of different things that are in process; don't know which will be used
DELL-ScottH Saw the paper on internal VMware case study of virtual Exchange. Pretty cool, you have the link handy?
virtualTodd I put the link on delltechcenter.com VMware/exchange page a few weeks ago
DELL-ScottH Doh, you still have writer access? http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/08q4_vm_exchange_server_2007_vi3_wp.pdf
virtualTodd www.delltechcenter.com/page/exchange+and+vmware
terpmeister Should I delete it?
DELL-ScottH @terp - Nah, it's okay
virtualTodd Don't tell anybody, but yes I'm still a writer on the wiki
DELL-ScottH Just ribbing you a little...if I didn't want it out there I would have kept my trap shut :-)
Karim Hmmm, VMware docs down there
DELL-ScottH Of course, if it slips, it's all my fault :-)
terpmeister Lol, sorry, was just excited :)
DELL-ScottH Because it did from U3, but it can't slip more than once, right?
terpmeister Well, all I said was Dell Chat, didn't say who :)
virtualTodd Anybody download and run Windows 7 beta last week?
Karim Got the ISO down but not tried it yet
DELL-ScottH Oh yeah, I think we all did…at least I did. It's on my Mini 9 beside me right now
DELL-ScottH Running tweetdeck in the lab, dedicated :-)
Karim Heard it nuked a few peoples’ MP3 collections as well :P
DELL-ScottH It's sole purpose in life. Well, it did say, “Back up those MP3s" in bold letters
terpmeister @virtualtodd, Yep, blogged it here: http://redmutt.com/?p=381
terpmeister In fact, installed it on my ESXi environment
DELL-ScottH Cool, nice screen shots
virtualTodd I downloaded it, but haven't had a chance yet to install. Planning to use local VMware Workstation to install—any recommendation in terms of HD size?
DELL-ScottH It bombed when I installed in VMware workstation, but pretty sure it was my configuration because I've seen others install it in workstations just fine
terpmeister @scotth thx
DELL-ScottH I installed Ultimate on the Mini and it took roughly 10 GB for the base install, so maybe 14-16 would be good, or 10-12 and just install home
terpmeister I set aside 32 GB for mine; it was happy with that (but I have almost a TB of storage)
Karim How’s it running on the Mini, Scott, and any performance issues?
DELL-ScottH It is as fast or faster than my XP install. Just perception, but some things that would pause/hiccup on my XP are no more with Windows 7
virtualTodd Scott, does the wireless work well under Windows 7?
DELL-ScottH And that's with the Aero features
DELL-ScottH Works great
Karim Nice, what about compared with Vista? Better performance?
DELL-ScottH I've been streaming movies from the XPS 420 to the Mini at home and it doesn't hiccup any more
Karim Only recently installed Vista so don't see much difference :P
JasonPowell Sweet—someone got Windows 7 running on the Mini 12?
JasonPowell www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7-beta-on-mini-12-t2478.html
DELL-ScottH It's better than the Vista SP1 on my corporate Latitude D820, but the corporate image has so much junk installed
Karim I bet; nice to see the Japanese fighting fish on the wallpaper
JasonPowell Vista64 and Windows 7 64 are both speedy on my D830s
DELL-ScottH I had Office 2007 on the Mini with XP, and it worked fine. I'm going to try it on the Windows 7 later this week, as I’m expecting better or same performance
DELL-ScottH Yeah, we only get 32 bit on our corporate image :-(
Karim Vista got pulled over here for the corporate systems after they found out about the admin access issues on it
DELL-ScottH I appreciate everyone stopping by. Next week we will be back to regularly scheduled topics. Links are on the home page. How about everyone give a shout out to their blogs/twitter/company sites. They will show up in the transcript—throw a little traffic your way :-)
JasonPowell Pimp your blog time? :-)
Karim Trying to do a roll call, Scott? :P
DELL-ScottH Yup ;-) As long as I don't see nsa.gov, then I'm fine :-)
JasonPowell http://jpowell.blogs.com and http://twitter.com/jasonpowell
terpmeister Blog: http://redmutt.com; Twitter: http://twitter.com/terpmeister
Karim failbus.com....kidding borrowed that from hak5 show on CES
DELL-ScottH Lol
joraye_knight http://twitter.com/joraye
wantmoore Justin Moore:www.wantmoore.com and http://twitter.com/wantmoore
Karim http://twitter.com/raging_dragon
DELL-ScottH My blog, when I can log in (grrr, fix it IT): http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/systems_edge/
Karim Lol, what’s the deal with the community site ATM anyway? What did you break in it? ;)
DELL-ScottH Doh, three minutes to get to the next building for a meeting...thanks to all! See you next week if you can make it
terpmeister Thanks for the chat, cheers
DELL-ScottH Oh don't get me started on the community site...I mean I tow the line; it's great :-)
Dell-RogerF Bye