Comments for Pushing Virtual Limits

Comment on Mozy state.dat part2 by Tiago

Tiago — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:29:42 +0000

It happens to me, too!

Who can help us?

Comment on SS4200-E - To buy or not to buy? by berginjm

berginjm — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:18:39 +0000

The basic hardware remains the same and if you followed the link to the documentation you would see that a multitude of features didn’t make it to the final release.
I did have a conversation with some folks that makes me think the 1.1 software release for the 4200 will be out shortly and it should rectify most of the shortcomings. Once that is available I may take the plunge. There should also be some new Iomega kit coming out with this LifeLine technology. All good things and all reasons to wait just a little bit before buying.

Comment on SS4200-E - To buy or not to buy? by Jason Litka

Jason Litka — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:14:47 +0000

That article you linked to is about the 4000, not the 4200; they use a completely different storage OS.

If you are looking for a storage solution that is expandable then consider building a system yourself. Linux software RAID is pretty good these days and a platform like OpenFiler gives you a lot of options. If you’re worried about the box itself breaking then you might purchase a hardware RAID controller which would make moving the array to a new system a bit easier.

Comment on In search of a home iSCSI system by Jesse

Jesse — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:46:46 +0000

You might try DSS-Lite from Open-E - It’s a single-user / home version of the DSS software, limited to 1TB and it may have a slightly smaller HCL. (My Adaptec 2610 6-port SATA controller doesn’t work on DSS_Lite but does work on the trial version of DSS)

Performance seems good and setup is pretty easy to deal with. It support fibrechannel target mode given the right HBA’s (Qlogic 2340 or better)

Jesse

Comment on Why start a blog? by Martin Cleaver

Martin Cleaver — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:14:59 +0000

So, where are you based? Toronto?

Cheers, M.

Comment on VMware on a CX3-40 by berginjm

berginjm — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:54:40 +0000

10-20GB in size with a few outliers at 70-80GB that are setup and then destroyed as soon as the issue is resolved.

When you count in multiple snap shots the profile for one VM tends to fall in around 35GB in size.

I try to keep it balanced so there is always 100GB free on each LUN (snapshots tend to grow).

Comment on VMware on a CX3-40 by Rich

Rich — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:25:04 +0000

John,

So how big is your average VM’s virtual disks? 20GB?, 100GB?. I ask because if you go with 400GB VMFS volumes across the board it determines how many VMs you fit per LUN.

BTW, thanks for reading http://vmetc.com!

Comment on Running Documentum eRoom 7 in VMware - Notes and tricks by Running Documentum eRoom 7 in VMware - Notes and tricks

Running Documentum eRoom 7 in VMware - Notes and tricks — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:05:03 +0000

[...] Chris Coyier wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptFrequently I get asked about how to deploy eRoom in a VMware infrastructure. Some people don’t even know that we fully support VMware (I blame this on the fact that VMware changed its logo to remove the “an EMC Company” subscript). … [...]

Comment on In search of a home iSCSI system by berginjm

berginjm — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:58:02 +0000

Open-E is new to me and I will definitely take time to check them out. Maybe they will work out a deal for a home user. The worst they can do is say no right?

As my environment is going to be very low load - DB server (2k8 running MS SQL 2k5); two application servers; one indexing server (possibly merged into an app box depending on load); and then an AD server. I really don’t think this will be too painful. The initial setup and indexing I/O will be high but having run this configuration frequently before I know my use case will generate minimal load.

I have spent enough time with the FreeNas product to come up with a basic plan. In the near future I will be receiving a 5u chassis with 24 sata hot swap bays. In that box I will build a four socket ESX machine. The initial VMDK volume will span 5×500gb drives (increased to 10×500 once I migrate some data). On that space I will load up 3i and install FreeNas as a VM. That will give me the greatest flexibility in terms of space allocation and utilization.

(The 5u came with a four socket board and chips in it so it seemed like a terrible waste to just lay FreeNas down on the bare iron.)

Comment on In search of a home iSCSI system by Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:53:31 +0000

I’ve been looking too - I’ve toyed with the (not so free) open-e software. (www.open-e.com) which if you go with the full package is feature-rich, including fibrechannel TARGET MODE support, but also costs about US$2000.

You might investigate OpenFiler (www.openfiler.com) as well, it offers iSCSI target mode support but I’ve not really found a way to bind interfaces together intuitively, and iSCSI over a single Gig-E interface just plain won’t work for me. (Running 14 VM’s over a single Gigabit connection would be the definition of choking mess)

Now that I have an available server I may install it and see if I can get the ethernet to bond via the linux interface and go that route.