Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

I’ve recorded a great interview with Vblock guru Jim Wentworth and UCS specialist Ron Heheman.  In this interview they will explain how FAST (Fully Automarted Strorage Tiering) performs data movement based on IOPS. We also touch some other topics like unified storage and the upcoming management software.

If you want to create great looking diagrams with data from the vCenter database look at this demo I’ve recorded with MS SQL Code Factory. It’s a premier Microsoft SQL GUI tool aimed at the SQL queries and scripts development. It is a good choice for everyone who need build SQL statements and edit SQL scripts with a convenient easy-to-use interface. The software provides you with a convenient easy-to-use interface, so it really does not require a deep knowledge of Microsoft SQL from its users.

It also has a Powerful BLOB Viewer/Editor: with MS SQL Code Factory you can view or edit BLOB data in the following ways: hexadecimal dump, plain text, graphical image or HTML page. A graphical representation of BLOB data supports five image formats: BMP, Windows metafile, JPEG, GIF and PNG.

http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

Last week Chad Sakac over at Virtual Geek has released the news about the availability of the EMC CelerraVSA Version 5.6.48.701.

What’s new:

•New OVA packaging, configuration for latest VMware tools and pvSCSI config – note this makes it vSphere 4 only (the VMware Workstation versions are also provided)
•New dedupe/compression code (faster, better, stronger)
•New VM-level hardware-accelerated fast clone (snapshot) and full clone (clone)
•Support for the new vSphere NFS Plugin.
•Better performance with less CPU, memory constrained configs
•Fixed issue in the 5.6.47.11 version that made eth2 not work right.
•And much, much more!!!

I’ve downloaded the CelerraVSA OVA and deployed this virtual storage appliance within my vSphere 4 environment on SSD storage but it doesn’t seem to make a big difference compared to deploying it local at SATA storage. I also added an 8 GB virtual disk to one of my existing virtual machines, the 8 GB disk is hosted at the EMC CelerraVSA which is connected trough iSCSI to one of the other ESX servers so the iSCSI data flows through the dedicated iSCSI network.

I did some tests with HDtunepro to find out what this Virtual Storage Appliance is up to and it’s looks to perform reasonable well for a VSA. Compared to a local SATA disk it’s about 10 times slower so it‘s not very fast but keep in mind that this is a full Celerra Simulator and can be used to familiarize yourself with all the great features like dedupe and replication. Besides that, it’s fully equipped with everything you need to build an SRM4 setup in a box.

Pablo Roesch has just announced the winners of the Scriptomania contest, congratulations to everyone that participated!

1. @alanrenouf
2. @lamw
3. @avlieshout

We are happy to announce our Script-O-Mania contest Winners. Our judges were extremely excited about all the creative and useful scripts submitted into the community. The decisions were tough to make, some we even considered splitting the prize money but in the end we went with the following line up. Congratulations to all that won and participated. Also wanted to thank Scott L, Robert B, Jeff H. again for their efforts in participating as Judges.

Steve Jin -> Winners of the VMware Script-O-Mania Contest: Who, What, How and Why?