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Using Jumbo Frames on an HP Proliant ML115 G5

March 26th, 2010

Simon Seagrave

A question I have been asked a couple of times now is “will the HP Proliant ML115 G5 support jumbo frames”? Many of you existing ML115 G5 owners out there are probably looking at using some iSCSI or NFS based shared storage with your ML115 G5 lab server particularly if you are using VMware vSphere or Microsoft’s Hyper-V and need a central place to storage your VMs. As you probably know enabling jumbo frames can give you significant performance increase between your host and the shared storage by not having to transmit as many network packets which can only be a good thing.

Though I hate to be the bearer of bad news as unfortunately the NC105i integrated network controller found in the HP Proliant ML115 G5 doesn’t support jumbo frames as it uses the Broadcom BCM5722 controller chip which, as you can see below, doesn’t provide this functionality.

HP ML115 NC105i Jumbo Frames

HP Proliant ML115 G5 Jumbo Frames NC105

So what this means is that if you want to run jumbo frames from your ML115 G5 then you will have to add a PCI or PCIe based network adapter which has the jumbo frames functionality. I use these two VMware ESX/ESXi approved network cards mentioned in my earlier post here, both of which support jumbo frames and can be picked up for a reasonable price on EBay or similar.

Hope this helps prevent any confusion and saves you time in trying to get jumbo frames to work.

Technorati Tags: VMware,vSphere,ESX,ESXi,HP Matrix,Proliant,ML115,G5,nc105,jumbo frames,network,card

Posted in 3rd Party Products, Hewlett Packard (HP), Proliant Servers, VMware

1 Comment »

Amazing New VMware Backup Product Announced – Veeam SureBackup

March 23rd, 2010

Simon Seagrave

Veeam SureBackup has finally been announced and more detail released. In my recent pre-release interview with Veeam’s Doug Hazelman we found out that it SureBackup was an actual technology rather than a specific individual product and today’s announcement fills in the gaps.

SureBackup is a collection of new features which will be found in the next release of Veeam Backup & Replication (v5.0). It should be pointed out that today’s announcement was exactly that, an announcement, with no actual product available to download and use at this point in time.

As the Veeam SureBackup announcement video mentions, SureBackup is a “new concept built on a proven technology” including the following pre-existing Veeam product features:

Support for Changed Block Tracking & thin-provisioned disks
FastSCP
SmartDedupe & Compression

The newest feature to be added to this existing list of features is “Recovery Verification” which will provide the ability to open and start up every VM which has been backed up and then check the integrity of the OS and any applications it may have installed, along with data. The amazing thing is that it can do this for every VM each time the backup is run!

So no more risk of finding that your backups don’t actually work or are in some way corrupted when you are up against it in a disaster recovery type scenario.

The process is that upon a VM being backed up the compressed VM backup file is then started and the OS booted. Once up and running the VM, OS and any applications are then verified to be working ok.

The ‘fenced-off environment’ you see mentioned above can be run on existing hardware so this combined with the minimal requirement for extra storage makes this a pretty lean setup. With a backup VM running in the ‘fenced off environment’ a very granular level of application data can be recovered, such as individual emails or records from a database.

To me this all sounds too good to be true and I am going to be interested to see how quickly it will perform these VM backup verifications, along with how many it can do concurrently and whether this is just limited by the hardware on which you are running it on. Veeam give an impressive example of the times we can expect to see: An MS Exchange server VM with 156GB of storage only takes 2 minutes to verify – wow! Now that I look forward to seeing.

For more information check out Veeam’s SureBackup video below.

For now it’s just a waiting game until this cool new technology is released for trial downloads, there is no ETA as yet though I will let you know if/when I hear anything.

Technorati Tags: Veeam,SureBackup,VMware,VM,backups

Posted in 3rd Party Products, Backups & Replication, VMware

4 Comments »

Linksys (Cisco) SLM2008 Switch – Updating Firmware from v1.0.1 to 2.0.0.10

March 19th, 2010

Simon Seagrave

The Linksys, or Cisco as it is now branded, SLM2008 is a fantastic little Layer 2, 8 port gigabit smart switch which is ideal for a home or work lab environment. I have been using mine for the last 18 months with my VMware vSphere lab without issue.

The original versions of this switch (ie: >12 months or so ago) are still branded as Linksys and are running an earlier version of the firmware, v1.0.1. Cisco have since rebranded the switch entirely to Cisco and have released it with an updated version 2.0 of the firmware. At the time of writing the latest version of the firmware was v2.0.0.10 and can be downloaded from Cisco’s website here.

Cisco SLM2008 Smart Switch I have had a few queries over the last few months as to whether it is possible to upgrade one of these older Linksys branded SLM2008 switches to v2.0.0.10. The good news is that it does work and to test it I upgraded one of my SLM2008 switches. To demonstrate I took a number of screen shots outlining the upgrade process.

Before you proceed I should point out that it this firmware update resets all your settings, including the default IP address of the switch so you may want to save your settings first.

As you can see my SLM2008 was originally running v1.0.1.

Next, after selecting the ‘Admin’ section select the firmware update that you downloaded from the Cisco site.

After pressing ‘Proceed’ it won’t appear that much is happening. Don’t be fooled as it is upgrading in the background, it’s just not very clear…

Once it has completed it will ask you to select another page whilst the system reboots. If you had changed the default IP address (ie: 192.168.1.254) then be aware that this firmware update reverts it back to the factory settings.

After putting going to log back into the switch the first thing you’ll notice is the new Cisco branded logon interface.

As mentioned above, it is at this point that the firmware update resets all your settings, including the default IP address of the switch. This also includes the user name and password. To save you looking them up again here are the default IP and username and password settings for the SLM2008:

IP: 192.168.1.254

User Name: admin

Password: admin

The switch, as you can see below, is now running firmware version v2.0.0.10.

The following is a copy of the updates and fixes to this (v2.0.0.10) firmware revision since v1.0.1.

Changes Since Cisco SLM2008 8-Port Gigabit Smart Switch
with PD and AC Power Firmware Version 1.0.1
Device web user interface was updated and problems were fixed.

GUI
The switch’s web-based configuration utility now reflects the Cisco Small
Business style.

The following problems were fixed in firmware version 2.0.0.10:
• Web browser availability. Firmware upgrade notice for Mozilla Firefox users
only.
• When upgrading firmware using the Firefox browser, user has to click the
Proceed button twice to see the progress bar.
• If the administrator closes the web browser directly and does not click Log
Out. the switch cannot be managed by a different management IP address
until the web admin session times out.
• The default timeout period is 300 seconds or when the administrator
accesses the utility and clicks Log Out. Until the web session times out, the
administrator can directly access the switch (without going through the
login process) when opening a new web session using the same
management IP address and log out has not occurred from the previous
session. This issue is resolved for the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and does
not include a resolution for Mozilla Firefox.
• STP Bridge ID value not correct.
• Firmware version 1.0.1 adds a VLAN ID value to the Bridge ID and does not
follow the STP standards. Resolution: Removed VLAN ID from Bridge ID in this firmware version.

If you’re not too worried about the any of the changes/fixes outlined above then there isn’t really a compelling reason why you’d want to upgrade, though if you’re like me you may just want to stay up to date with the latest version and in case Cisco have sneaked in any ‘undocumented’ fixes.

Technorati Tags: Cisco,SLM2008,Linksys,switch,VMware,lab,firmware,upgrade,update,guide

Posted in 3rd Party Products, Networking, VMware

2 Comments »

Veeam Sure Backup: Pre-release Interview with Doug Hazelman

March 18th, 2010

Simon Seagrave

So what has Veeam got under wraps that is creating such a stir at moment? A new technology that they claim “will change the way you look at VMware Backup. Forever.” That’s a pretty big claim but from the positive feedback from the industry analysts who they’ve already shared this secret with I get the feeling they are about to announce something big!

What better way to try and get a sneak preview into what Veeam Sure Backup maybe about than by talking with the Veeam’s Director of the Global Systems Engineering Group, Doug Hazelman. In this interview Doug gives an overview on how Sure Backup will fit with Veeam’s existing backup product, Veeam Backup & Replication and what we can expect to see and not see at Monday’s new ‘technology’ announcement (22nd March 2010). Check out the audio interview by clicking on the play button below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

There will be a bloggers pre-announcement briefing on Sunday so expect to see plenty of coverage this Monday including here at TechHead. So do you think you know or can guess what this new backup technology is about? Why not leave your prediction in the comments section below.

Also, check out Doug’s blog at VeeamMeUP.com for the latest Veeam information.

Technorati Tags: Veeam,Sure Backup,Doug Hazelman,announcment,VMware,backup,VM,interview

Posted in 3rd Party Products, VMware

3 Comments »

5 Minute Review – VKernel Capacity View

March 3rd, 2010

Simon Seagrave

Here’s a new free VMware basic capacity utility from the folks over at VKernel that I thought was worth drawing your attention to. It’s called ‘Capacity View’ and “identifies capacity based performance issues such as virtual machine I/O latency or under-allocated CPU, memory or storage. Additionally, it monitors your available capacity for new VM deployments and shows you which over-provisioned VMs can be rightsized to free up wasted capacity."

I thought I’d try something a little different by putting together a quick 5 minute review video that provides you will an overview of the product. The video shows you the install process, configuration and then the final thing. This should give you a good feel as to what the product is about and whether it’ll have any application in your own VMware vSphere environment.