IT and Business hopefully a little different way..

Pictures of the Teardown of a HP Gen 8 Proliant DL380 and the new Intel Speed Socket

I am onsite for the HP sponsored Generation 8 Tech Day in Houston, and the first presentation today is around the proactive support.

Presenter: Jeff Carlat, Worldwide Dir. of Marketing and Jerry Chin, Technical Director of Support Automation

The goal of the Gen 8 release was around reducing risk by minimizing manual errors, making administrators tasks more automated.  50% of all datacenter outages are a result of human error and the goal is to eliminate them.  Then next segment is to aid the channel partners in growing the small to medium businesses.  After some of the discussions yesterday this is refreshing.  Many of the talks were around the enterprise and larger IT shops, the components in proactive support are geared to spread from the smallest shop to the largest enterprise.  One of the largest changes is the Insight Online and Insight Remote Support solutions.

Insight Online: First cloud-based, personalized dashboard for monitoring device and support status.

Easy of Use

• Proactively monitor and manage HP contracts and warranties
• View and manage HP service credit balances
• Instant, secure visibility to critical asset and support alerts
• Create reports for proactive asset and support management
• Enable your authorized service provider to monitor and support your infrastructure remotely

Efficiency

• Display of 24X7 remote device monitoring of service events
• Automated support case generation and status tracking
• Automated device discovery and display in Insight Online for users of HP Insight Remote Support 7.0

Access Anytime, Anywhere

• 24 X 7 monitoring with fast, secure and accurate remote support and service
• On premise or off premise secure access

Follow along as I live blog on the HP Gen 8 server deep dive.  I am joining a group of other bloggers in Houston for the next two days to see everything from the new marketing strategy to the firmware update process to a deep dive.

First Up: Jim Ganthier, HP Vice President Marketing, Operations and  GM Mainstream Business Enterprise

“Don’t think of HP as individual components, think of them as Lego blocks that can build what no one else can deliver”

HP is looking to change the server industry in 100 days, by starting with Project Moonshot in Novenber of 2011, high performance servers get changed.. Then Project Odyssey at the end of November, and the last in Project Voyager.  A goal to change the way server admins manage systems and transform the basic abilities of server administration.  Voyager was deployed in Feb. looks to change multiple things, including:

• Manual Operations cost companies on average $24 million over three years
• Manual facility optimization drives up energy costs up to $29 million over three years
• Unplanned downtime cost clients approximately $10 million an hour.

Project Voyager = Proliant Gen8 servers publicly.  The goal is the world’s most self sufficient servers.  The first addition discussed is the Proactive Insight Architecture.  The results of intelligence and automation include:

• 3x Admin productivity improvement
• 6x Performance for the most demanding workloads
• 70% more compute per watt
• 66% faster time to problem resolution

“Dont think of Project Voyager as just the Gen 8 servers but think of it as a solutions, service and datacenter…many of the solutions and benefits can result in less than a 5 month ROI.” This gives admins 30 more days a year to innovate for your business

Topic: Transforming  the server experience with customer -inspired innovations

Presenter: Gary Thome

Being the largest server vendor in the world gives HP the benefit of also talking to the most customers.  It allows HP to collect data on the inhibitors and barriers the users face to shift and form the R&D strategy.  Gen 8 was a $300 million R&D investment.

The goal is to make the server part of the datacenter not just a component.  Finding out information like is this server running hot or is the datacenter near it hot is not available in todays servers.  The Gen8 adds this intelligence.  It also adds functionality to integrate support and move it from a manual process to an automated one.  On the motherboard there is a sea of sensors, along with the active health system, that logs and runs policies against the equipment.

HP System Update Manager is designed to fix the industry wide issue of firmware updates.  It provides update checking and dependency checks all within one tool, including testing dependencies and firmware that will fail if ran together.  It will even tell you when you need reboots. Over 1600 points on the server are monitored at any given time.

The growth of SSD allows for 100x the storage performance from the Gen7 systems.  HP not has caching mechanism with SSD backed DRAM.  There is also a new algorithm to allow for multiple VMs that provide random writes to a smart array to be reorders to allow each VM to write sequentially.  More on this later…

The next step of growth is for the datacenter.  HP now has intelligent PDU to not only monitor per server but throughout the datacenter.  Location services are also added.  One key add on is the ability to tell you if you power both power supplies into a single leg and have no redundant power.  The location based section will utilize a location sensor that can be added to a rack and a sensor in the rail kit.  More later on what racks this can be added to.  It is know that many places will not replace all racks just o use Gen 8 servers.

Some new additions are inspired by customer.  First is a smart socket guide built in conjunction with Intel.  Allows for proper CPU install without causing motherboard failures.  Traditional CPU on the left.  Smart Socket on the Right

The second would be the Smart drive do-not-remove indicator.  When a drive is in a state that it should not be removed because it is a single component of a RAID set that is active then the light will remind you not to pull the drive.

Intel and HP: Partnering to drive perfromance and architecture innovations

Presenter: Keith Kirkendall : Intel Senior Applications Engineer

Intel places people similar to Keith with the major vendors to work on direct integration with the major manufacturers.  The release of the Xeon e5 is the latest release included in the server processor family.  Enhancements include almost doubling the system IO on the motherboard, by integrating PCie onto the motherboard along with other enhancements. An 80% increase in floating point calculations.  There is a 50% improvement is power management with the e5.

HP Transforming the Server Market

Presenter: John Gromala, Director IIS Blades to Cloud

Focusing on embedded management inovations that are intended to improve the lifecycle of the servers.   One of those issues is the firmware update process.  This process according to customers was the most time intensive component of server management.  A three phase circular process from HP allows to help with these issues.  Intelligent Provisioning to Smart Update to Active Health monitoring.  All of it is based on the upgrade to the iLO management engine.

The biggest change in the firmware process is solution based deployment and testing.  Service pack releases are tested fully integrated.  You can now set different updates depending on your own server separation.  You can change timing as well as which updates get applied depending on the groups you assign.

Firmware Update Process – Old to New:

HP is the first in the industry to not only add AD integrated firmware decisions, but also allows you full rollback and downgrade of both drivers and firmware.  Although it is not currently supported on Virtual Connect drivers.During the installs you can schedule some updates, as well as provide the following reports:

• Inventory Selections
• Target Firmware Details
• Target Installable Details
• Failed Dependency Details
• Installed Details

VMware has released a mobile client for their newly released MyVMware page.  For years one fo the biggest issues with VMware has been the confusing licensing and user management.  With the release of MyVMware, many of these issues have been resolved.  One thing I will enjoy is the ability to grab a license key directly from my phone when I need it.  After working for a reseller and now a vendor, both big VMware partners, I often need to test software that it can be a pain to go grab a license key from the portal only to not be able to use cut and paste and have to type the key in.  Now I can open my app, grab a key and still type it in, but it is much quicker.  I took a few screenshots of the app and listed them below so you can get an idea what the app can do.

1. Start by logging in:

2. You then have to approve the EULA (Surprise!)

3. You will then see your profile

4. You now have to pick your folders (whatever ones you have created on the MyVMware website)

5. Once you go into the folder you can see the products under it.

6. The select the product and click next (you have to do that each time, that is kind of annoying) and you will see the license keys

Click on the power icon on the top to logout, or the gear to set your refresh and timeout time

This weekend I got the great news that I was selected again as a VMware vExpert for 2012.  Sounds impressive right?  To some people in the VMware community and IT as a whole it does, but many people have no idea what the vExpert designation means.  As a second year vExpert, I have been lucky in that I got to be part of a rather exclusive group.  For 2012 there have been 382 vExperts announce globally.  I wanted to break that down a little more and found that of those 149 are first time vExperts.  216 are returning from being a vExpert in 2011 and only 74 have been vExperts since the first year in 2009.

This is a group not made of technical experts, although many if not all of the vExperts are very knowledgable about VMware and the related products, but rather more of an ambassador program.  One that is leading the charge to further virtualization in all industries.  Many of these vExperts have been the consultants that pushed virtual machines out of R&D and into the mainstream.  Others have been internal staffers that “saw the light” and helped their companies move to the cutting edge.  Regardless of what the vExperts do for work, they all go above and beyond when it comes to their outreach.  Many are very active in the social media space.  You can look up the announced 2012 vExperts on Maish Saidel-Keesing‘s twitter list. (https://twitter.com/?category=people#!/maishsk/vmware-vexpert-2012).  Others have led VMware User Groups for years and you can find them on the newly created user workspaces on myVMUG.org or organized and ran local vBeer events.  Others have written books or maintained podcasts, some have even spent countless hours helping others on the message boards as users and moderators.

It goes without saying that I am humbled to be included in a fantastic group.  And for those of you who are not yet vExperts, know that while technical knowledge is always very important, there is a reward for being outgoing, helpful and social.  The vExperts have been able to be ambassadors and often trend setters by gaining access to previews and betas thanks to the great support team at VMware.  Alex Maier has taken charge of this motley group and given direction and guidance and the godfather of the group John Troyer has given many days and nights evangelizing the cause.  Thank you to them for their help and I hope I can continue and be able to announce a 2013 vExpert designation as well.

Today marks my last day as a solutions architect for a reseller.  I have been working on and off for resellers since college and very infrequently have I seen a technology that I thought could be a true game changer.  The last one I can think of was VMware, and as many of you are aware that has played out well for me over the past few years.  While I have learned so much working for both Convergence Technology (@convergencetech) and Clearpath Solutions (@clearpathsg) in the reseller world, I got an offer too good to turn down.  Make sure to go follow them both as they have alot of smart guys (and girls).  So after much thought it was time to trust my gut again.

Starting on Monday I will be the Federal / Mid-Atlantic Solutions Architect/Sales Engineer for Nexenta(@nexenta).  For those of you not familiar with Nexenta, they have been listed as the fastest growing storage startup ever.  The interesting thing on that is that they are actually a software company.  Nexenta was started in 2004 and came out of stealth in 2008.  As a small and growing company that focuses on the virtualization, big data, and storage space, I felt they were a great fit.  NexentaStor is the flagship product built on the ZFS filesystem.   allows SMB to Enterprises to use commodity hardware with NexentaStor layered on top as fully functional enterprise class SAN and NAS units.  The feature set is actually much larger than I would want to put in this one post so expect more to come as I get more and more ramped up.

The great part is I will also still be able to be heavily involved with VMware.  I will also be joining as the third member of Nexenta’s Virtualization sniper team (I just made the name up but I like it).  I will be joining Theron Conrey (@theronconrey) and Tom Howarth (@tom_howarth) to help Nexenta continue to grow the relationship and integration with virtualization products.

I am really excited and looking forward to this next step and my first with a manufacturer.  Thank you to all that have supported me to here and heres to a great new adventure.

Over the past year I have been lucky enough to spend quite a few days with the HP team learning about converged networking and systems and how they feel it all fits into “the cloud.”  This week HP kicked off a new series of roadshows to bring the same depth that I got to see at shows like HP Discover to the general public and without you having to travel.  With more companies looking at Flexpods and vBlocks then wondering how to get in at a slower pace and not just buy the whole thing at once, HP has tried to set up some building blocks.  If you just have HP servers you may already have a few of the pieces according to their cloud evangelists.  Follow the link below to sign up for any of the local shows.  To make it a little easier I included the schedule.  I know I learned alot during these type shows not completely about HP but even just concepts and ideas that I can apply to so many other vendors and solutions.

HP Pathways to the Cloud

Information Link

Schedule:

• March 7 – Houston
• March 8 – Boston
• March 14 – Orange County
• March 15 – Seattle
• March 21 – Dallas
• March 22 – Atlanta
• March 28 – Washington DC
• March 29 – Chicago
• April 3 – NYC
• April 9 – Phoenix
• April 11 – Denver
• April 12 - Cincinnati
• April 18 – Tampa
• April 19 – San Francisco

*In full disclosure, by sending this I am entered in a drawing to win a HP Microserver and I like new toys.  I planned to attend even before I knew about the contest though and so should you…

Throughout your life you meet millions and millions of people.  Many of those people will become friends, some coworkers, some family, and some will just pass by with you never knowing who they really are.  Of all of these people there are always a few that stand out that often don’t even realize why.  These are the people that have the most influence over who we are both personally and professionally.  It may be a high school coach or the boss from your first job or maybe a college professor.  For me, my first mentor was my third and fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Martha Staub.  I found out this weekend that Mrs. Staub has passed away after a long battle with cancer and this had led me to this post.  I did not know at such an early age that a single person could have such impact outside of your Mom and Dad, but she taught many of us growing up how to live and love.  Looking back I am amazed at the things I have carried on to this day.  If we did not have our binders organized she would open them up to see what fell out (I know try that in todays schools).  It sure taught me that I needed to be organized all the time and I know it has kept me in line throughout my professional career.  Mrs. Staub had some health issues one year and her husband, Paul came in to help out for most of a year.  They worked tireless hours with young kids and as I grew I got to see how much they each meant to one another.  It might seem weird that an elementary school teach meant so much but she came to my High School Graduation, I visited her during a trip to Florida in college, her and Paul even came to my wedding.  As I grew up I had other great mentors that never knew how much they meant either, a former Olympic sprinter to push our high school track team, collegiate all-americans in college, a CIO at a former job that made me step outside of my comfort zone and take a more active leadership role, the business owner that reminded me that the best solution may not be perfect but it is the one a company can afford.

I truly believe that every day we may meet someone who can influence our lives and make us a better person.  I only hope that I can have that same influence over someone else to help them grow.  I know Mrs Staub had that kind of influence on me and still does and she will be missed.

This past weekend I upgraded my Mother-in-law’s home printer. I am normally not one to put a review out on a home printer but I was very surprised by this one, it’s ease or use and capabilities.

Read more

Last week I took and passed the VMware Certified Professional 5 exam at the local Pearson Vue testing center in DC. As most of you know I have spent the last few years as a solutions engineer, pre-sales engineer, or architect depending on what you want to to call the positions. Since most of my time was spent in pre-sales and design work I was rather apprehensive about taking the VCP test. The test seems to be more geared towards the everyday admin than those of us who have been working with VMware since the GSX days. The great thing is there are lots of study guides and things designed to help people pass the exam. There are some great new things about this test. The biggest I believe is there was nothing on my exam and from talking to others it seems consistent that the minimums and maximums are no longer part of the test. I always thought that was a part that was not really needed. If I need to know the maximum number of virtual machines per LUN and host, I can just look them up. The test is much more situation based. If you want to get an idea of the question style, take a look at either of the question links below. Be forewarned though that unlike previous VMware exams, the braindumps are just for a gauge of questions. There was probably only 10-12 questions on my exam I recognized and there are 85 questions and I think all of those were from the official mock exam. I used a few great resources for studying and hopefully it will help a few of you out before the February 29th deadline to take the class again, or for those of you taking it the first time.

Study Guides

• Jason Langer’s VCP5 Blueprint – virtuallanger.com/vcp5/
• Damian Karlson’s VCP5 BroanBags – http://www.professionalvmware.com/

Questions

• Official VCP5 Mock Exam – MyLearn.vmware.com – This is a really good one to do over and over. Just make sure to always get 1 question wrong or you wont be able to take it again
• aiotestking.com – This is a braindump style site. It changes on a consistent basis and the newest dumps are the highest numbers.  These are not actually on the exam (in my experience)

The study guides are all great but make sure you really spend sometime in a lab working on the actual product. You can do just about everything on VMware Workstation with demo licenses.  If you are trying to cram I would spend the most time on the blueprints.  If you understand it then you should have a good chance with that and the time you spend working on a lab.

Good Luck to you all and I hope it helps…