Intel Quad Port ET - ESX 4 - Not Recognized

Today I was installing ESX 4u1 on a DELL R610 and only the onboard NICs showed up, leaving a quad port Intel PCI card MIA. Upon further investigation, I found that DELL has replaced their Quad Port VT model with the ET model, which does not have drivers for it out of the box on the ESX 4u1 DVD. It uses the 82575 / 82576 chipset. You can find the driver cd here and it can be pushed either via update utility or reinstall and add drivers.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esx_esxi40_intel_82575_82576_dt/ZHcqYmR0QGpidGR3

I'm Back!

For those that follow this blog or just happen by it, I wanted to let you know that I am back online. I was lucky enough to get transferred from Upstate NY to Tallahassee FL by my company. Now every day is summertime. In any event, please expect me to be blogging more frequently now that I have settled.

StorageCraft ShadowProtect IT

Up until yesterday it seemed that there were only 2 major players in the V2P world, Platespin and Acronis, but then I found out that there was StorageCraft. Upon further digging I found that StorageCraft licenses their technology for OEM to VMware for the Converter Enterprise. After digging I found that the price was good $3500 list for unlimited conversions (but only one at a time) for the IT version and $179/server protected if you want to constantly protect servers (it does P2V, P2P, V2P, and V2V). I plan on demo'ing and posting my feedback.

Here is some info from the site:
http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectIT/

ShadowProtect IT Edition 3 provides the following benefits:
Bare metal recovery of Windows servers, desktops and laptops in minutes.
Restore or migrate backup images to and from physical systems and virtual environments (P2V, V2P and V2V).
Hardware independent restore of backup images to different systems (P2P).
Unlimited use on servers, desktops and laptops.
No software installation required.
Bootable recovery CD provides automatic hardware detection and network support.
Create full online or cold state backup images.
A simple view to quickly recover files and folders or update backup images.
Compress and encrypt backup images for efficiency and security.
Configuration tools to manage domains, mapped drives and network resources

vmBoost for Netware - Increase Performance on Idle Netware VM's

vmBoost

by Hamish Speirs




"Go green with your NetWare servers."

Originally developed to allow NetWare servers to run more efficiently under VMWare, vmBoost also has a benefit for physical servers - Energy Savings.

Many current NetWare servers are running on multiprocessor or multi core CPUs. When the workload on the server needs all of those CPUs, then they're there to work, but what about when there isn't much load on the server? When NetWare is 'idle', it is actually running an idle loop routine - so when idle, the CPU is actually working at 100% utilization, idling. Even with todays more efficient processors, running a CPU at 100% to do nothing is inefficient and expensive.

Typical workloads on NetWare servers are dynamic, so why have a static quantity of CPU resources available? What vmBoost does is make the available CPU resources dynamic. As the workload increases more CPU resources are made available. As the load decreases, the available resources are reduced. Instead of having a CPU running at 100% utilization when it's idling, idle CPU's are shut down completely. When the load on the server increases, the idle CPU is brought back online.

Just as physical servers are inefficient when idling, so are virtualized Netware servers. For example, a virtualized quad CPU NetWare server will drive three physical CPU's to 100% utilization, even when the server is completely idle. For this reason it has always been the rule to only allocate a single virtual CPU to NetWare when virtualizing it. By dynamically bringing CPU's on and offline according to workload, and more effectively idling them when they are online, a virtualized NetWare server can play nicely in a virtual infrastructure.

To download a demo, read more, or purchase, click the following link and go to the Home Menu and look for vmBoost link.

vmBoost Link

Watch the Progress of VMware ESX Snapshots Commiting

Through SSH logged in as root or su'd, navigate to the folder where the vmx file resides for a vm that is commiting a snapshot. Run the following command:

watch -d "ls -lhtu *vmdk"

When there is no more activity and all *.delta.vmdk's are gone it has finished.

Equallogic Support for iSCSI initiator and MPIO

vOptimizer Pro Released

The long anticipated vOptimizer Pro from Vizioncore has finally been released. I will have a full review with pics and video soon. Stay tuned.

http://www.vizioncore.com/vOptimizerPro.html