Here’s one for all you Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS) administrators out there. Imagine being able to perform basic management functions on your Cisco UCS from your iPhone when out of the office or away from your desk! Well look no further as Tige Phillips from Cisco has produced the Simple iPhone Management of UCS (SiMU) application for the the iPhone which can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store here. The interface has been designed with the iPhone in mind though you could also run it from an iPad just as easily. It is important to point out that this ‘lab’ version of SiMU does not use an encrypted connection, with all traffic travelling between the UCSM and SiMU application being in clear text, though encrypting this data stream using SSL s something that the author,Tige, is working for an upcoming version.

From SiMU Lab (Simple iPhone Management of UCS) you can perform simple management functions on a Cisco UCS such as login, reboot servers, check errors and assign service profiles to blades along with other basic administrative functions. The following is a brief description of the application from the SiMU application’s site:

“SiMU uses the open XML API built into the UCSM software. All of the security and access permissions are granted by UCSM and therefore are carried through to this application. SiMU Lab does NOT use secure communications. All traffic is passed between the UCSM and SiMU in clear text. For this reason SiMU should only be used in test environments and labs. A future version of SiMU will include SSL communications. Your password is stored in clear text in the memory of the iOS device, but is never saved to nonvolatile storage.

This application has been tested with version 1.2 and 1.3 of UCSM. If you do not have a Cisco UCS but want to learn more you can get a UCS simulator from the Cisco developers portal.”

So if you are a Cisco UCS Administrator this useful looking application could definitely be worth a look. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a UCS to try it out though if any of you do try it out I’d be interested in getting your feedback on it.

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It’s that time of year where nominations for the VMware vExpert are open, in fact they’ve been open for a couple of weeks now and close in a couple of days on the 30th April !  If you’re not familiar with the VMware vExpert Award here is an excerpt from VMware’s vExpert Communities page which gives a good description on what the award is all about:

The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book authors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts have gone above and beyond their day jobs to share their technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to their colleagues and community.

I’m throwing my hat in the middle again for nomination as I have really enjoyed being a VMware vExpert over the past year and being actively involved in the VMware community through writing my regular various VMware related posts on TechHead, along with replying to reader’s queries.   So please feel free to drop in a nomination for me to VMware (link below) if you feel that you’ve received value from my blog.  Thank you

Here is a link to the VMware vExpert Application Form

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By TechHead guest contributor, James Pearce:  EqualLogic’s PS4000 iSCSI storage arrays are targeted at the SME sector, particularly for VMware virtualisation, as well as “branch office” use for larger companies.  The XV model is reviewed, with 15k SAS drives, dual controllers and dual power supplies.

This is quite a complicated product, so I’ve split this into four sections:

Part 1 – An Introduction to the PS4000

Part 2 – EqualLogic Networking with Force10

Part 3 – System Management and Monitoring

Part 4 – Performance

This part is verging on a deep-dive but bear with it… the results are worth it!

Part 2 – EqualLogic Networking with Force10

Being iSCSI based, the PS4000 has a great dependence on decent GbE switches.  iSCSI traffic should always be on dedicated switches because it demands essentially no loss, is sensitive to latency, and has high throughput.  It is also sensitive traffic (using arp cache poisoning, physical access to a network carrying iSCSI is enough to assemble a replica of entire LUNs being accessed given sufficient time).

ESX also has some switching demands for iSCSI – specifically flow control and ‘well behaved’ port buffers, both with the aim of minimising packet loss.  Jumbo frames are also supported for paid-for ESX(i) installations, but their implementation will provide only a marginal throughput increase for heavy sequential IO (even with a 1500-byte MTU, IP is around 97% efficient).

Force10

EqualLogic recommend Force10 S25N switches for the PS series, positioned just above Dell PowerConnect.  At least two are required, and must be configured with a decent interconnect (preferably stacked).

The S25’s are somewhat purist – hyperterminal and a serial port is the order of the day, and the CLI is sufficiently different to Cisco’s IOS to make configuration time consuming and frustrating for the uninitiated.  Also, since there is no support in Dell’s OpenManage suite for them, for most SMEs lacking OpenView will have no way to monitor them.

Still what they lack in ease of management they make up for in performance – these 24-port units have a 95Mpps backplane (twice that of the Cisco 3750G) and a switching latency specified as “<5 µs”.  They also have (separately licensed) line-rate layer-3 capabilities.

The S25s are fitted with two internal PSUs and are rated at 100W, but used only about 50W during testing.

Force10 Switch Configuration

Rather unhelpfully all interfaces on the S25s are shipped administratively down so manual configuration is mandatory from the serial interface.  The basic configuration is at least reasonably straightforward,

• enable all ports
• create a 4-port LAG (or configure stacking)
• enable flow control on all ports
• configure global 1Q buffer policy

A simple configuration looks something like this (I’ve condensed this by showing only one port, but all ports will have the same configuration applied):

interface GigabitEthernet 0/1
no ip address
mtu 9252
switchport
flowcontrol rx on tx on
spanning-tree rstp edge-port
no shutdown

!
interface Port-channel 1
no ip address
switchport
channel-member GigabitEthernet 0/21-24
no shutdown
!
interface Vlan 1
!
interface Vlan 10
ip address 192.168.1.1/24
untagged GigabitEthernet 0/1-20
untagged Port-channel 1
no shutdown
!
buffer-profile global 1Q

The buffer-profile policy line of the configuration always displays that a reboot is needed due to a bug with v7.x of the firmware, but it’s correct implementation (dynamic port buffers) can be confirmed using show buffer-profile:

Force10#show buffer-profile detail fp-uplink

Global Pre-defined buffer policy: 1Q

Stack-Unit 0 Port-set 0

Buffer-profile : -

Dynamic Buffer 1603.75 KB (Current), 389.75 KB (Configured)

EqualLogic Configuration

The PS4000 series have a dedicated management interface, but even so this option needs to be manually set to be sure the system does not route iSCSI traffic through that interface.  Other than this and the basic IP configuration (one IP per interface, plus a virtual group IP), there’s not much to tweak.

The system is configured through the console port via a text-mode ‘wizard’, a simple process that takes only a few minutes.  Once done the system is available for use immediately, undertaking background initialisation in its own time.  Performance is of course impacted for until the initialisation is complete – I measured about 30MB/s sequential throughput whilst it was initialising.

VMware ESX iSCSI Configuration

There is some complexity to the ‘optimal’ ESX configuration for EqualLogic storage as detailed in Dell’s ESX multipath configuration guide.  Although the PS series can be just connected up and used almost immediately, significant performance gains can be made taking the time to get this right.

There’s a couple of tweaks that Dell don’t give away, although their excellent support teams will offer the information when pushed hard enough.  One is to disabled Nagle for connections through guest OS initiators (like the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator), since it is counter-productive with iSCSI, and the other is to set the round-robin IOPS value on a per-LUN basis in ESX to get proper load balancing between connections.

With this configuration applied, the vSphere multi-path capabilities can provide the full bandwidth right to any particular VM – over 200MB/s read performance with this array.

It’s worth noting that there are some issues presently, firstly that custom IOPS balancing settings are lost between host reboots, and secondly that LUNs with low IO levels will trigger lost path warnings periodically, which will be addressed with the ESX patch 5 due later this month.

Nagle
The Nagle algorithm is designed to prevent poor programming from flooding a network sending 1-byte packets, instead saving up all the 1-byte requests and pushing them out when there’s enough to fill a packet.  Unfortunately when combined with delayed ACK, the inevitably incomplete packet at the end of a transmission might not get sent immediately because there’s a standoff between the two ends, one waiting for an ACK and the other for the final packet (if it is an odd numbered packet), until a timer value expires.

For iSCSI, the impact is to add significant latency to small writes for applications that work with shallow queue depths.

There is no option in the ESX software initiator to directly control Nagle (delayed ACK can be controlled, hidden in initiator advanced option “Delayed ACK”, which is enabled by default).  On Linux it’s disabled by setting the socket option TCP_NODELAY, and in Windows it’s controlled on a per-interface basis with registry parameter TcpAckFrequency (Default is 2, 1=Disables delayed ACK), as documented in KB Q328890.

It’s worth noting that EqualLogic recommend using guest initiators for performance sensitive applications instead of vmfs volumes.  But in my testing, vmfs provided storage had more than adequate performance for all applications I tested, with the exception of the ancient Oracle import job which we’ll see later.

Round-Robin IOPS
By default, VMware’s iSCSI initiator will balance requests across multiple paths when LUNs are configured for round-robin, but it only changes paths every 1,000 commands.  As a result, performance is still limited to the capacity of one link, since only one link is really active at once.  A host startup script can be used to change this to a lower value (the trade-off being higher CPU utilisation to calculate the paths more often) as below, in testing I found that a value of 3 gave the highest performance.

/etc/rc3.d/S99_nmpfix.sh:

#!/bin/bash

Sleep 60

for i in `esxcli nmp device list|grep -i "Device Display Name: EQLOGIC" –before-context=1|grep -i "naa."|grep -i -v "Device Display Name"` ;

do esxcli nmp roundrobin setconfig –device $i –type "iops" –iops=3

done

nano can be used on ESX to type this in, and note that from ‘for’ to ‘Name” ;’ needs to be all on one line.  This code was developed from a vmware communities posting, here.  Once in, set it’s permissions to allow execution (‘chmod 777 S99_nmpfix.sh’) then run it and check the result using a second script thus:

nmpcheck.sh:

#!/bin/bash

for i in `esxcli nmp device list|grep -i "Device Display Name: EQLOGIC" –before-context=1|grep -i "naa."|grep -i -v "Device Display Name"` ;

do esxcli nmp roundrobin getconfig –device $i

done

Coming Next

The networking side does take some time to get right, but since the EqualLogic platform is easily capable of taking centre-stage for many companies deploying storage at this price point, it’s something that warrants the time taken to fully understand and test.

Next, I’ll look at the web management interface and the other configuration and monitoring tools EqualLogic provide.

_________________________________________________

About the Author

 James is regular guest contributor to TechHead and is a Kent based qualified accountant, currently working in information security and technical architecture with  most of his  time “being spent on virtualisation and business continuity at the moment”.

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I will be streaming live video, internet connection permitting from the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day here in Boston. There have been some great companies involved such as Cisco, Data Robotics, EMC, HP and VKernel.   We have a session from Cisco to come and past sessions are accessible from Livestream.com. Fancy being part of the event from the comfort of your own office/home, then click on the video feed below?

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This morning see’s the start of the first Gestalt IT Tech Field Day for 2010. There is a great line up of companies; Cisco, Data Robotics, EMC, HP and vKernel. Why not follow the event live from here at TechHead using the live coverage window below. Become part of the event by submitting your own questions which I will then ask on your behalf.

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Data Robotics have today announced a new addition to its line up of Drobo storage appliances called the Drobo FS (File Share).  The five drive bay Drobo FS is very similar in appearance to the Drobo S, which was released last November, with the exception that it doesn’t have any of the usual USB, Firewire or eSATA connectivity.  Connections to the Drobo FS are provided via a single 1Gb Ethernet post over which the AFP (Apple) and CIFS/SMB protocols can be used.  No NFS, you may be thinking?  Well, the good news is that if can be added.  Which leads me on to what I personally consider to be the real selling point of the Drobo FS – DroboApps!

What are DroboApps?

DroboApps have been around for a while now and could be downloaded and used with the DroboShare product which the Drobo FS has now superseded, integrated and improved the performance on.  The good news is that the DroboApps can also be installed onto the Drobo FS providing it with extra features or functionality that it may not have by default.  The DroboApps are developed by third party companies and individuals in a community type fashion which is being nurtured by Data Robotics.  There a handful of companies already who have produced applications such as FTP, SSD, Jumbo packets, iTunes media server and NFS to name a few.  There will also be a software development kit released into the community shortly.

So all of you virtualization heads out there are probably now having the same thought as I had when I first heard about this; Storage + 1Gb network connection + NFS + VMware ESX/ESXi = another option for a potential home or work lab storage solution! 

The DroboApps are free to download and use and can can be found at the DroboApps page here.

Drobo FS Uses

With the varied range of applications that you can install on the Drobo FS you could end up using it practically for anything (within reason), though according to DataRobotics the main uses for the Drobo FS are likely to be:

Shared File Storage – Centralize all digital files (videos, music, photos, documents) in a single, safe location.

Network Backup – Use free DroboCopy utility or preferred backup software to create automated backups for every machine on the network.

Private Cloud – Use free DroboApps to turn Drobo FS into a secure, private cloud accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection

The private cloud angle is an interesting one and is a feature that Data Robotics has partnered with 3rd party company, ‘Oxygen Cloud’ to provide.  According to Oxygen Cloud’s site at the time of writing this feature should be available starting in May.

Other Drobo FS Features

There are some other really features with the Drobo FS worthy of mention, including:

Plug In and Share – The Drobo FS connects directly to any Gigabit Ethernet network for a true plug in and share set-up experience. Supports standard data transfer protocols including Apple File Protocol (AFP) and Microsoft Common Internet File System (CIFS).

5-Drive Capacity and Instant Expansion to 10TB and Beyond – Customers with growing storage requirements can easily add data capacity by simply inserting a new hard drive or replacing the smallest drive with a larger one, even when all five drive bays are full. With Drobo FS, expansion is automatic, instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.

Single- and Dual-Drive Redundancy – The Drobo FS dual drive redundancy option protects against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives. Customers can engage this option with a single click without ever losing access to their data.

Self-Healing Technology – With BeyondRAID, the Drobo FS continually examines data blocks and sectors on each drive to flag potential issues. The preemptive “scrubbing” helps ensure data is being written only to healthy drive areas and automatically keeps data in the safest state possible – even when a drive fails.

Customizable Storage – Utilizing the growing library of DroboApps, including media and web applications, users can customize the Drobo FS to further enhance their sharing experience.

So where does the ‘Drobo FS’ fit into the Drobo range?

The Drobo FS fits bang-smack in the middle of the current Drobo range, as it offers the flexibility of having Ethernet connectivity for centralised data storage though is small enough to be adopted by the SMB or home user market.

How Much?

So how much is a new Drobo FS’?  Well, it depends on whether you want to add your own disks or not.  There is a base model which comes without disk, allowing you to slowly build the storage capacity of your Drobo over time or by utilising spare SATA disks you may have lying around home or the office. Or you can buy the Drobo pre-populated with disks up to a massive 10TB of total storage.  That’d even take me a while to fill !

First Thoughts

The Drobo FS is an interesting storage device from the aspect that you can install functionality (if available) when required and through which you can get hooks into some promising sounding remote file sharing, backup and cloud based features.  This level of flexibility is an attractive one especially when you can add your own standard SATA disks into the device for easy expansion.  Many, including myself,  will no doubt draw a comparison between the Drobo FS and the iomega ix4-200d storage device.  Though where there are some similarities there are just as many differences, all with their own associated pros and cons. For example; the iomega has dual 1Gb ports and supports NFS and iSCSI though you can’t use your own SATA disks to replace any failed drives and the write times are slower (according to Drobo) than that of the Drobo FS. 

The success of the Drobo FS will be determined by two basic factors in my opinion:

• DroboApps: If Drobo can really get behind and support the DroboApp community this will likely nurture application innovation by 3rd parties and individuals which will bring extra value to the product and in turn will drive Drobo FS sales and overall awareness of the Drobo product range.
• Price:  This old chestnut of course governs the success of many products, though as you can purchase an iomega ix4-200d for US$650 approx with 4TB (4 x 1TB) of storage with both iSCSI and NFS connectivity by default people will need to feel that there is sufficient value in the Drobo’s FS features to pay that little extra.

These are just my first thoughts on the new Drobo FS and I am looking forward to finding out more about the product and maybe getting some hands-on time when meeting with Data Robotics at the upcoming Gestalt IT Tech Field Day.

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