VCDX Defence – A Reality

Posted on by Craig

Seems like an age ago that during VMworld 2013 Europe Gregg Robertson coerced me into agreeing to put my name down for a VCDX defence date in 2014.  At the time I didn’t give it much thought apart from trying to help bring the panellist to the UK to help other people out who wanted a British defence.

Since then I completed the VCAP5-DCA which was a task in itself (as I don’t administrate a vSphere environment), this was followed by far too many hours putting together a VCDX Architecture Design before submitting it too VMware for review.

Yesterday at 18:17 UK time I received the email from Mark Brunstad which had ‘Your VCDX Application Review Results are attached. Please read the document carefully and respond as requested.’ in the email body.

My first thought was crap, never mind I can’t be defending must have gotten something wrong as there would be no way VMware would make you open up the attached PDF.  I felt a bit despondent but opened the attachment anyway to get my feedback.  Straight away my eyes caught the middle section of the PDF the location of the defences will be in Germany, eh (I thought), quickly scanning back I saw the words

I am happy to inform you that you have achieved a high enough score to allow you to proceed to the defense stage of the process

At that moment I felt two things exhilaration and nausea, pretty much the same feeling when I went on the 300ft Skycoaster at Kissimmee Florida

fun-spot-usa-old-town-kissimmee-florida

After I had picked myself up from the floor, reality sunk in that I have (somehow) managed to join the individuals who have been asked to step in front of the panellists to try and obtain the VCDX qualification.

Guess that means I will be making a impromptu trip in July to Germany!

HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 534FLB Adapter – Outstanding iSCSI I/O

Posted on by Craig

534FLB AdapterProblem Statement

Use of HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 534FLB Adapter in a vSphere design using dependent hardware iSCSI mode.

Need to find out the number of outstanding iSCSI I/Os that the adapter can handle, to ensure that number of concurrent SCSI commands has been taken into account.

Methodology

HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 534FLB  is based on Broadcom 57810S chipset which uses the bnx2i driver/firmware (see March 2014 VMware FW and Software Recipe)

Broadcom’s bnx2i iSCSI driver is dependent hardware iSCSI (see Cormac Hogan excellent blog post on vSphere 5.1 Storage Enhancements – Part 5: Storage Protocols)

A dependent hardware iSCSI adapter is a third-party adapter that presents itself as a normal NIC, but has an iSCSI offload engine.  It requires the use of VMKernel interface, which is then tied to the vmhba (HBA).

Solution

The following applies to the Broadcom 57810S chipset:

  • Total outstanding iSCSI Tasks (I/O) per port = 4096 (4K)
  • Total iSCSI Sessions per port = 128 – 2048 depending on the Operating System (Host limited)

Each iSCSI Session facilitates communication with a different Target:

  •  Total of 512 outstanding iSCSI Tasks (I/Os) per Session

Therefore using HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 534FLB Adapter we can have 1024 outstanding iSCSI Tasks across two adapters of 512 each.

VCDX Book Give Away – Results

Posted on by Craig

Due to a technicShowCoverVCDXal oversight at London VMUG on 15th May 2014, Gregg Robertson and I forgot to give away the excellent VCDX Boot Camp book during our ‘VCDX Application – What Does IT Take?’ presentation.

On the 16th May 2014, I opened up the chance to win the book to the wider vCommunity and I’m pleased to say that we had 44 people register for a chance to win.

Procedure

As the 44 emails came in they where each assigned a number e.g. email number 1 was assigned number 1.

Over the weekend my daughter and I put all the names into a hat and she picked out the lucky winner!

Results

The soon to be proud owner of  John Arrasjid, Ben Lin and Mostafa Khalil excellent book is entrant number ‘6’ Craig Bramley.

Well done Craig, I will be reach out to you, to confirm your mailing address.

Book Review – Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere

Posted on by Craig

Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphereThe book author Christian Mohn @h0bbel is a four year VMware vExpert veteran who is active member in the VMware Community  presenting the vSoup Podcast.

Christian tweeted if anyone would be interested in reviewing a copy of his first book ‘Learning Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere‘, I accepted as I’m a firm believer in helping out colleagues who put time and effort into the vCommunity.

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of the Learning Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware vSphere’ for review.  The opinions in this post are mine and the information contained are unbiased

Target Audience

The target audience for the book is for vSphere administrators looking for an introduction to Veeam Backup & Replication v7.  It’s not intended to be a technical deep dive.

Book Flow

When reading a technical book the logical flow from chapter to chapter is one of the key areas that I look for.

The author starts with an introduction to Veeam including the architecture and components that make up the backup application.  This leads onto configuring backups,  restoring data, replicating virtual machines and finally other features.

This logical flow makes the book enjoyable to read, and includes a couple of puns which placed a smile on my face!

Common Sense Advice

Throughout the book, the author gives common sense advice to his target audience, which includes:

  • 3-2-1 backup rule
  • RPO/RTO definitions
  • Backup Repository placement
  • Considerations for installation/service accounts
  • When to use incremental or reversed incremental backup types
  • What happens when you restore a VM Guest file
  • Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager use cases

Final Thoughts

The author has done a great job of delivering what he set out to do, which is an introduction to Veeam.

 

VCDX Book Giveaway

Posted on by Craig

Due to a technicShowCoverVCDXal oversight yesterday at London VMUG, Gregg Robertson and I forgot to give away the excellent VCDX Boot Camp book during our ‘VCDX Application – What Does IT Take?’ presentation.

Written by John Arrasjid, Ben Lin and Mostafa Khalil the book is aimed at anyone who is embarking on the journey towards the elite certification.

The main chapters are:

  1. Certification Overview
  2. Preparation
  3. The Design
  4. Defense Overview
  5. Design Defense
  6. The Design Scenario
  7. The Troubleshooting Scenario

The book provides an in depth look into how the certification was formed and what the panellist expect from a candidate.

To add this book to your collection, just complete the form below on or before 9PM Friday 23rd May 2014.

The winner of the book will be drawn on 24th May 2014 and will be notified by email.

Note: The giveaway is open to anyone

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