Registration now open: Dallas–Fort Worth VMUG Meeting
Posted: February 27, 2013 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: dfw, dfw vmug, local meeting, user group, users group, vmug, vmug meetings, vmware user group, vmware users group Leave a comment
The DFW VMUG has opened registration for its upcoming local meeting.
Sign up here: http://www.vmug.com/e/in/eid=801&source=5
I’d like to thank our meeting sponsors, Nutanix and Zerto, for helping keep the VMUG alive and kicking.
Yours truly will be giving a short presentation at 12:15 about why I worked *not* to have OTV implemented when the bank I worked for stood up its first DR site. I’ll also speak about VXLAN and why it’s not a L2 Data Center Interconnect. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that…
View the complete agenda for the most up-to-date information. We’ll also hold a vBeers following the meeting, so come and say hi.
My favorite virtualization blogs – oh, and go vote yourself!
Posted: February 24, 2013 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: best blogs, favorite blogs, top blogs, virtualization blogs, vmware blogs 2 Comments
So I just finished voting for my favorite blogs on 
Eric Siebert’s vSphere-land.com. This was my second time voting and I’d like to thank Eric for hosting and TrainSignal for their support of Eric’s work. The VMware army of bloggers is definitely strong, having added dozens of new bloggers this past year as well as the best bloggers posting great new content. What I’d like to do here is run down the list of how I voted just to say thanks to those who’ve contributed so much to my personal success these past 12 months.
Of showers and sysstat
Posted: February 20, 2013 Filed under: NetApp, Storage | Tags: flash cache, netapp cpu %, netapp cpu utilization, netapp performance, performance, performance analysis, sysstat Leave a commentI was asked by a client yesterday in passing how to check CPU utilization on one of their NetApp filers. I didn’t immediately know where to go and we quickly moved on to something else. So as I was showering this morning, as I do many mornings, I remembered that, of course, you can use sysstat to view performance data. Anyways, this is a real nice way to view instantaneous general performance data. Options for this command are shown below.
deathstar> sysstat ?
usage: sysstat [-c count] [-s] [-u | -x | -m | -f | -i | -b] [interval]
-c count – the number of iterations to execute
-s – print out summary statistics when done
-u – print out utilization format instead
-x – print out all fields (overrides -u)
-m – print out multiprocessor statistics
-f – print out FCP target statistics
-i – print out iSCSI target statistics
-b – print out SAN statistics
interval – the interval between iterations in seconds, default is 15 seconds
What’s the (SnapMirror) syntax, Kenneth?
Posted: February 19, 2013 Filed under: NetApp, Storage | Tags: /etc/snapmirror.conf, destination filer does not match hostname ignoring line, filer, ignoring line, invalid destination, NetApp, snap mirror, snapmirror, snapmirror.conf 1 CommentI had the opportunity to configure SnapMirror for a client today and it gave me a bit of a headache. I did what I thought was my due diligence: reading the relevant vendor documentation for SnapMirorr for each version of Data ONTAP, 7.3.2 and 8.0.3P3. What I failed to do was read a few lines further than I actually did – I missed a simple piece of syntax that turned a 30 minute WebEx into a 2 hour ordeal. I learned a good lesson about SnapMirror during this engagement, though, and I’d like to share it.
The SnapMirror of these three volumes were actually for a data migration because the source filer is being decommissioned. The general steps required in the engagement today were as follows:
<> Run a cable between what will be the dedicated replication links on each filer
<> Configure each interface with IP settings
<> Ensure SnapMirror is licensed and enabled on each filer
<> Configure /etc/hosts and /etc/snapmirror.allow files on source filer
<> Configure /etc/hosts and /etc/snapmirror.conf files on destination filer
<> Initialize the baseline replicaction
Book review: VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials
Posted: February 7, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews, VMware | Tags: 4.7, application virt, application virtualization app virt, bjork, packt, packt publishing, peter bjork, thin app, thinapp book, thinapp essentials, vmware thinapp, vmware thinapp essentials, vmware thinapp essentials 4.7 Leave a commentLast December I was fortunate enough to win a free copy of Peter Björk’s ThinApp Essentials book 
through a contest on Duncan Epping’s blog (http://bit.ly/V5QiZ2). Thanks to Duncan’s world-class comment-picking skills, I received the book in my hot little hands in a short amount of time. The book’s publisher, Packt Publishing, was kind enough to get the book to me quickly, though with my schedule and list of things to learn for my new gig, I’m just now getting around to writing down my impressions of Peter’s work. So without further ado my technically-savvy internets friends, my review of VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials: Learn how to quickly and efficiently virtualize your applications with ThinApp 4.7.
VirtuallyMikeBrown 