Aug 26


Well it is time for VMworld again. I’m excited to go this year as I have been doing a lot of VMware in 2011. I have recently purchased VMware Service Manager, VMware Application Discovery Manager, VMware vCenter Operations Enterprise, VMware Configuration Manager for Windows Workstations, Servers, and Linux Servers, as well as EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor and ControlCenter. I’m looking forward to getting all of it implemented of course. But next week I am really interested in the technical deep dives and continuing to watch for strategic information about these products. I am bringing a 2nd employee this year as my department has grown a bit.

Automation and IT Service Management are big interest points for me this year. VMAXe and VPlex integrations and best practices also are in scope for me this year. To top it all off I plan to spend as much time in the hands on labs as possible.

If you see me out there feel free to chat me up on topics of interest. I still need to find out if there is a bloggers lounge and take care of some last minute scheduling.

See you there!

May 17

Here is an easy way to find your trespassed lun’s on Clariion.

naviseccli -h 10.1.1.161 -getlun trespass

The output is as follows on my test array:
LOGICAL UNIT NUMBER 37
Default Owner: SP A
Current owner: SP B

LOGICAL UNIT NUMBER 25
Default Owner: SP B
Current owner: SP A

You can use this command to trespass a single lun.

naviseccli -h 10.1.1.161 trespass lun 37

This will return you to the command prompt when finished. So run the getlun command again to see if the lun is still trespassed.

If you have a lot of luns to trespass you can use the following command on both storage processor ip’s

naviseccli -h 10.1.1.161 trespass mine
naviseccli -h 10.1.1.162 trespass mine

May 13

EMC World has ended and I am on a plane thinking about Ionix UIM. This is a product that appears to be geared towards configuration of vBlock. I’m interested in answering some questions for myself. I am curious if I can automate the provisioning of new blades as they arrive at my location. I am also interested in automating the provisioning of new chassis as they are plugged into my UCS fabric interconnects.i am interested in automating the full provisioning and configuration of ESXi. Tis could help me move a long the path of getting out of the server provisioning business.

Currently provisioning a new blade is extremely easy with UCS. I said easy not instant, fast, or man power free. Unpack and slide in sounds great and not worrying after this point sounds great. Minutes to a couple of hours later have VM’s start vMotioning to it would be awesome.

Today we have to log into UCS and assign a service profile. Then we zone it in the brocade switches and assign a boot LUN in unisphere. Now we boot it and mount an iso to install ESXi. Then we add the rest of the storage to it that is our normal datastores. Assign a host profile that never seems to be perfect and configure the network. Near this point some final tweaks and we have VM’s on it. A process that seems to take us a couple of days at best.

I do not think UIM is going to support brocade but it might. In he help file I saw only mention of MDS. I bet it does support nexus though. I’ll get this questions answered soon enough. The lab the product seem simple from a functionality point of view but it did meet a key piece of strategy to remove manual process and replace with automation. It also appeared to fill a gap in physical capacity reporting in a single pane though not as good as I want. I would love to see integration with capacity iq to show true capacity including virtual capacity.

All in all UIM is something I plan to look at further.

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