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Posts tagged Storage
The teams that contribute to Hyper-V version 3
Aug 18th
When Sinofsky detailed the different teams that are building Windows 8, I noticed that Storage and File Systems are one and the same group. Beneath you see a list of the most important teams in my opinion that will leverage the Microsoft Private Cloud which is built around Hyper-V and System Center 2012. The release of Hyper-V version 3 in Windows Server 2012 or Server “8” as we still have to call it, will be the cream on the cake and will boost the Microsoft Private Cloud even further. What we have seen so far is much higher virtual CPU’s in guests and awesome Hyper-V Replication technology. Add to that a decent file system and new storage innovations, both in the host and in the guest, we are ready for primetime. What will happen to CSV? What will happen to the scalability of the Hyper-V cluster?
We will soon find out! The Build Windows 2011 developers conference will unveil what all these product teams have invented. I really can’t wait! Because the conference is sold out, I plan to reserve time for the live streams instead.
See: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/ and http://www.buildwindows.com/
HP EVA P6000 details live from HP Discover 2011
Jun 8th
This morning I attended a session about HP StorageWorks EVA feature enhancements. I will recap some of the details discussed in that session. After a short introduction by Tom Joyce, VP of StorageWorks Marketing, Joseph Algieri, Master Solution Architect at HP continued the presentation. Also Sheridan Kooyers, Master Firmware Architect for EVA at HP was available for answering questions. Sheridan is responsible for Continuous Access and is now working on VAAI development integration.
EVA has been HP’s enterprise storage flagship it was introduced in 2001, celebrating its 10 year anniversary. Their first models were the EVA3000 and EVA5000. Meanwhile 100.000 EVA’s have been sold to a large and very loyal customer base. HP have been talking to lot of customers and have organized focus groups. HP also learnt a great deal from the engineers of the acquired storage companies LeftHand, IBRIX and 3PAR. The storage engineering team has grown considerably. Large investments have been made in the product to again focus to deliver quality.
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HP Converged Storage
Jun 8th
Here is a video about HP Converged Storage. David Scott is talking.
Also take a look at blog post by @HPStorageGuy on this topic: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Converged-Infrastructure/Converged-Storage-It-s-about-time/ba-p/93565
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How serious is HP taking Hyper-V Private Cloud?
Jun 3rd
As an invited blogger I will be at HP Discover 2011 next week (6-10 June) at the Venetian in Las Vegas. It is HP’s big Enterprise Business event that covers HP’s entire portfolio products, solutions and services. If you want to follow what is going on please follow the hashtag #HPDiscover
Again I will view the presentations, workshops and exhibitions through the eyes of an architect of private cloud infrastructure. I want to find out if HP has discovered there is more than one hypervisor ready for prime business. Of course I will interrogate HP people about their integration with Microsoft Virtualization, System Center, Hyper-V Private Cloud and Azure.
I have been working with HP (and previously Compaq) servers and storage since day one and I’m looking forward to their newest developments and announcements. We have built many server virtualization platforms based on HP ProLiant (BladeSystem) servers, HP EVA, HP LeftHand and HP MSA, now called P6000, P4000 and P2000. I intend to take a closer look at HP 3PAR (and wonder if this storage array gets a P#### number as well).
Let’s see how far HP has progressed with integrating HP and Microsoft technology. Hopefully it is not a VMware only story as it has been in the past, despite HP’s involvement in Hyper-V Private Cloud, the Fast Track program and the reference architecture built for this purpose. The first proof of real involvement was the Hyper-V Cloud HP built for Microsoft Management Summit 2011, the event I attended three months ago. Never thought I’d see Vegas again so quickly. I am not complaining.
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SCVMM 2012 – Deep Storage Integration
Mar 26th
Many new cool functionalities were added to SCVMM 2012. In this blog I focus on the very deep Storage integration which can be accessed from the Fabric wunderbar.
One of the new features in SCVMM 2012 is integration with SAN storage arrays. The primary reason for this is of course there is not much point in building a Hyper-V Private Cloud without some sort of Fibre Channel, iSCSI or Shared SAS based type of shared storage.
Very much focusing on the standards that are available, Microsoft decided to employ the SMI-S Provider for this purpose, with VDS as a temporary option for backwards compatibility. Apart from managing software I had not had the pleasure to work with SMI-S before and I guess it is new for most of my readers. So let me first delve into what SMI-S really is.
Large clusters with HP P4000 and many iSCSI sessions
Jan 5th
In October 2010 HP published a customer advisory, warning for cluster resource failures in large Microsoft Windows 2008 and R2 clusters using multiple host NICs with HP P4000 SAN and its Device Specific Module (DSM) for MPIO.
If any combination of cluster nodes, MPIO NIC ports and storage nodes resulted in more than 31 iSCSI sessions per volume, these issues would surface. Cluster Validation tests would in fact fail in these configurations. Adding a cluster node or storage node without validation would fail or only partly work.
HP published a firmware update with patch 10085-00 increasing the number of iSCSI sessions from 31 to 64. HP promised to solve this problem in its next major release of P4000 SAN/iQ software.
The formula for calculating the number of iSCSI sessions is:
# of Microsoft cluster nodes *
( # of initiator NICs per cluster node * # of storage nodes)
Now that SAN/iQ 9.0 has been released we can see that HP has followed up on this issue:
A HP Support document released in December 2010 states that with the new release, it has solved problems with SCSI Persistent Group Reservation (PGR) by increasing the limit to 256 iSCSI sessions per volume. This number is high enough to cope with 16 cluster nodes and 8 storage nodes with two iSCSI network adapters. This adds up to 16 x 2 x 8 = 256: so still be careful with bigger configurations.
TweetCloud showing my pre-occupations
Sep 28th
Somebody was twittering his TweetCloud the other day. This inspired me to do the same. Just register at http://tweetcloud.com/ and see what you have been up to in Twitterland. Since I use Twitter primarily for business use there are not many words in it that I have to be sorry for. Ok, maybe a few 
Performance characterization report for Microsoft Hyper-V R2 on HP StorageWorks P4500 SAN storage
Jul 18th
HP has published a technical whitepaper focusing on the performance characterization of the disk sub-system for HP StorageWorks P4500 21.6TB SAS Multi-site SAN Solution (HP P4500 SAN), addressing questions a customer may have about deploying Microsoft’s Hyper-V R2 virtual machines (VMs) on HP ProLiant BL490c G6 Virtualization Blades (ProLiant BL490c G6) with HP P4500 iSCSI SAN storage device for backend storage.
Target audience: The intended audience includes, but is not limited to, individuals or companies who are interested in the use of Hyper-V R2 virtualization technology for consolidation and migration of servers to ProLiant BL490c G6 servers with HP P4500 SAN storage solutions.
This white paper describes testing performed in April 2010:
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA1-9557ENW.pdf
Azure V2V seems inevitable
Feb 5th
In my November blog I talked about moving virtual machines to the cloud. More evidence of an upcoming Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can be found on MSDN, which describes virtual machine sizing, ranging from 1-core (Small) to 8-core (ExtraLarge) virtual machines with memory up to 15GB of memory and 2TB of disk space.
Another service described is the ability to mount Windows Azure drives, which act as a local NTFS drive, mounted on the server’s file system, accessible to code running in a role. This was previously referred to as an X-drive. Mounting a so called CloudDrive requires Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1 (release 201001-01).
Will we really be able to migrate a virtual machine from our private cloud to the Azure public cloud? I don’t think we have to wait much longer before hybrid clouds become a reality.
Will we be able to move a VMware VM to Azure? I think you can answer that for yourself.
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