Around the Storage Block Blog : virtualization

Video summary of HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions

CalvinZ — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:40:00 GMT

I was trolling a bit this morning on the Internet and came across a YouTube video interview with our own Bill Chambers. Bill came to HP from LeftHand Networks and was interviewed by Virtual Strategy Magazine during the event. While I realize the event was a few months ago, the video serves as a good summary of the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN solutions. Here's the video::

(Please visit the site to view this media)

(If you have any issues viewing the embedded video, you can view this video directly on YouTube by clicking here)

And just because I really got a lot out of VMworld 2009, I thought I'd give you with a couple of the blog posts that I had done around the event. These have some great information that many will find useful:

My very late VMworld summary: Lots of good stuff here - I'd highlight the video of the P4000 demo that was done during our HP Super Session. The demo highlighted a multi-site stretched single SAN failover. There's also a video of me doing my social media thing that at least my kids got a good laugh at when they saw it.
VMworld special podcast #1: I talked with Adam Carter, our P4000 Product Manager, about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for remote and branch offices

To all those in the U.S., have a great Thanksgiving Holiday!

HP StorageWorks at Microsoft Tech Ed

CalvinZ — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:04:00 GMT

By Ian Selway, Worldwide StorageWorks Solution Manager

Heading off to the airport at San Francisco to begin my trip to Microsoft TechEd in Berlin..... 20 years after the fall of wall and right after this week's superb U2 concert, it'll be interesting to visit a city with such rich history. Oh and of course there's TechEd as well. Really looking forward to seeing some great HP storage demonstrations around Exchange server 2010 and our direct attached storage (DAS) offering. There's also going to be a really cool capability with our storage and the new Live Migration capability in Windows Server 2008 R2, though Calvin talked about that a bit in his previous post. I really think visitors will be amazed when they see what HP StorageWorks can offer with Hyper-V. Now all that's between me and Berlin, is the small matter of a 15 hour flight and layover......

So if you're at TechEd, be sure to come by and say hello at the HP booth (# P1), or on Wednesday 11th we'll be at the Microsoft Virtualization Solutions Kiosk.

Couple of ways to learn more about HP StorageWorks at TechEd:

SVR212 Deploying Microsoft Applications on HP Converge Infrastructure: A Look under the Covers. Wed 11th Room: New York 2 - Hall 7-1a at 17:30
SVR213 Best Practices to Implement Windows Server 2008 R2 on HP ProLiant Servers. Monday 9th London 1 - Hall 7-1b at 13:30
HP Cluster Extension for EVA - MS clustering and Hyper-V Live Migration extended to Storage on BladeSystem. In the demo theatre Thurs 12th. (this will be cool!!!)

And of course look out for a post or two coming from the show.

(Editor's note: Ian is now at TechEd - we hope to hear more from him this week).

Converged Infrastructure: Block based storage virtualization podcast

CalvinZ — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:55:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy

This is the third in a series of three podcasts focusing on our HP Converged Infrastructure announcement. In part 1, I spoke with Sr. VP and GM of HP StorageWorks Dave Roberson. In part 2, I talked to the former CEO of IBRIX Milan Shetti and Marketing Director Lee Johns about the new X9000.

In today's podcast, we talk about block-based storage virtualization. Storage virtualization is often a confusing topic because there are different types of storage virtualization. Today's podcast discusses two types of block-based storage virtualization: within an controller array (like our HP StorageWorks EVA) and network or SAN based (our StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform or SVSP). Each of these products had enhancements that were announced with the November 4th Converged Infrastructure announcement.

With the SVSP (link goes to the hp.com product page), we announced a "new" management tool - Command View SVSP. This will be very familiar tool to EVA customers as Command View SVSP is very consistent with Command View EVA. But it also simplifies and automates the task of provisioning a LUN. For the details, listen to the podcast.

The advancement with the StorageWorks EVA (link goes to EVA family page) is with our Cluster Extension EVA. This software manages the failover and failback between EVAs in a cluster. What's new with the software is support for Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration. We are the first array to support the new capabilities and again, there's more about this in the podcast. I also have a guest blog from one of our engineers below that goes into more details.

So with that, here's the podcast:

If you're browser has issues using the embedded player, click here to listen to the podcast with a different player. Here's a link to download the MP3 (right click and save the file).

By Matthias Popp, HP StorageWorks Architect, Storage Systems Integration

Migrating a running server across data centers, servers and storage?

Are you tired of planning weekend downtime for storage system upgrades, server patches or network changes in your data center? Are you getting the same "Not this weekend ..." response from your business managers and users?

HP worked with Microsoft to enable Live Migration of virtual machines (VMs) in Hyper-V R2 - not just between servers but also between your storage systems and hence between your data centers!

The latest release of HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension EVA orchestrates the interaction between Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Failover Clustering and Hyper-V Live Migration to move running Server VMs between servers and storage in one single step.

The newest version of Cluster Extension checks the disk array replication process and prepares for a Live Migration and swaps the replication direction when the VM's target server is connected to the remote disk array. All automatic with no further administrator interaction. You decide when to Live Migrate and Cluster Extension makes sure the data can be accessed. Simple as that.

Since your servers and storage are distributed between data centers, the same configuration and software is used for disaster protection. No need to learn additional tools. Use the ones you have!

Finally a simple solution to proactive maintenance with no downtime!

The new Live Migration support in Cluster Extension configurations will make a radical impact on your IT and business teams. Clustering software manages unexpected failures at any time and Live Migration enables maintenance during the work day. The IT team can now do server and storage maintenance during working hours. They no longer have to plan for downtime way ahead of a change. The IT management doesn't have to budget for expensive weekend and night working hours. Get your server and storage patched now, because you can!

The following paper explains the configuration and will soon be updated for Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V R2 Live Migration support: Disaster Tolerant Virtualization Architecture with HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension and Microsoft Hyper-V^TMwhite paper

Visit the HP booth at Microsoft's Tech·Ed Europe in Berlin next week for a demonstration and visit Microsoft's blog for more info about the webcast Building Effective and Highly Available Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft Virtualization

Converged Infrastructure: the new X9000 podcast

CalvinZ — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:18:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy

On Wednesday, I did the first of three podcasts talking about our HP Converged Infrastructure announcement. If you missed that one, I highly recommend that you listen to it. My guest was with our Senior VP and General Manager of StorageWorks Dave Roberson. Today in part 2, I talk with Milan Shetti, former CEO of IBRIX and Lee Johns, Director of Product Marketing about the HP StorageWorks X9000 Network Storage Systems family. As you might have guessed, the X9000 is based on IBRIX. Because the discussion was longer than my normal podcasts, I split it into two parts. In part one, Milan talks about the integration of IBRIX into HP StorageWorks and Lee and Milan give an overview of the X9000 family. Note that the volume on both of these is a bit low but since these were already a day late, I didn't want to make you wait longer to hear these. So turn your volume up a bit higher than usual. Here it is:

If you have difficulty with the embedded player in your browser, click here to listen to the podcast.

In part 2, I continue the conversation with Milan and Lee. In this part, we answer the question what's happening PolyServe, how the X9000 fits into the HP Converged Infrastructure, and discuss the strategic implications of the X9000.

If you have difficulty with the embedded player in your browser, click here to listen to part 2.

Here are a couple of things that can help you learn more about the X9000:

Visit the X9000 product page
Attend an IDC webcast next week on 12 November at 2 PM EST/11 AM PST.

In the next podcast in the series, we'll discuss what's new with the HP StorageWorks EVA and SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP).

What will EVA customers benefit from new NetApp program be? Zip! Zilch

CalvinZ — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:51:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy

In my last post, I included a couple of summary videos from our recent HP StorageWorks Tech Day. The hands-on lab really stirred up a few folks over at NetApp. The week after our Tech Day, they did a WebEx session to try to address some of the comments made by the bloggers about how difficult the management of their FAS system was. I won't go into details about that but I counted at least three different GUIs that they showed during that demo. The HP StorageWorks EVA has one - Command View. But, that's not the topic I want to cover today.

The old "switch-a-roonie"

During their online demo, Vaughn Stewart from NetApp also discussed the NetApp vSeries - a network based storage virtualization product - and suggested that HP and NetApp were partnering to help EVA customers. Vaughn thanked me for attending the demo and talked about partnering with HP. I thought he was trying to connect the fact that I attended as being an HP endorsement of the vSeries. It wasn't. I made it very clear that HP wasn't working with NetApp to put vSeries products in front of our EVA's. I told the demo audience that HP has our own network-based SAN virtualization product called the SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) that competes with the vSeries and in no way do we recommend EVA customers use the vSeries to virtualize a pool of EVAs. We have talked about the SVSP several times on this blog and it will be discussed in a podcast later this week.

I initially didn't understand why Vaughn brought the vSeries into the demo. But a week or two after the NetApp demo, they announced a new marketing program targeting EMC CX series and HP EVA installed base customers with their vSeries. Now it's pretty clear to me what was going on then. This new NetApp marketing program asks customers to consider putting a vSeries in front of an EVA or CX.

So I want to spend a few minutes now discussing why I think it would be a bad decision for any EVA customer to consider such a thing. It's my belief that the benefits to an EVA customer would be zip (and interestingly that is the name of NetApp's program).

Improve storage efficiency at what price?

The claim NetApp is making is that EVA customers are not efficiently using their storage capacity. That's a bit laughable given that with an EVA, every spindle is used for data and unless using tiering, we recommend a single disk group which gives incredible storage capacity efficiency. To be in the program, NetApp has to approve the customers' application. The customer is basically signing up to purchase the vSeries in 90 days if it delivers what NetApp will stipulate. Be sure NetApp also stipulates the peformance hit you'll take - but I'm ahead of myself on that one.

My guess is the number of customers that actually get into the program will be rather small and maybe that's a NetApp objective of their marketing program. I suspect that NetApp's real motive is to develop a list of CX and EVA customers that they can continue to call on.

The NetApp claims of improved storage efficiency will come from a couple of categories of services that the vSeries provides for the arrays attached to it.

Thin provisioning
Data replication (snapshot, clones, etc)
Deduplication

The EVA customer already enjoys capacity efficiencies with the first two categories of thin provisioning and data replication. (Note that the EVA doesn't use traditional thin provisioning today but uses a product called Dynamic Capacity Manager that accomplishes similar results by integrating with the OS).

For that matter, if customers wanted to pool their capacity of multiple EVAs and manage it as one pool, the SVSP offers thin provisioning and replication services too. What we don't offer today is primary LUN deduplication. But should customers running an EVA rush to deduplication their block-based mission critical storage? I think the answer is absolutely not and here's a few things to consider:

NetApp has recently claimed 37,000 deployments of deduplication (via their PR department) but in a recent earnings call, their executives said 37,000 downloads. I don't know about you but there's a big difference between the number of customers who download some free software versus who are actually using it, especially in production environments.
There's a trade-off to implementing deduplication with primary, block based storage - and that trade-off is performance. Data that I've seen from a few different sources has said that a top customer concern in a virtualized environment is performance. I've seen throughput testing results that say the performance degradation on a FAS system with dedup can be as high as 65%. Their own recommendations say to run it during low activity and not all of the time. NetApp also makes you sign a waiver stating you understand the risks of lower performance.
We haven't tested to see what the actual deduplication capacity savings would be and frankly there are a lot of factors that would play into that. Since the controllers in the vSeries are the same controllers in the FAS system, it's worth noting that we have found that the percentage of capacity savings is roughly equal to the percent of slowdown.
And that performance hit from deduplication doesn't include any other latencies that the vSeries introduces because of their in-line architecture.

So should an EVA customer put their arrays behind a NetApp vSeries for a potential small capacity savings when the potential performance penalty is high? And keep in mind the vSeries is based on the FAS controller. We've shown in a recent blog post that based on our testing, the performance of that degrades rapidly.

There are some good reasons to implement SAN-based virtualization with a product like the StorageWorks SVSP or the NetApp vSeries. However, for an EVA customer, NetApp's value proposition of getting better capacity efficiency of the physical storage just isn't one of them. A far better answer for the EVA customer is the StorageWorks SVSP. We'll cover this topic in podcast later this week so stay tuned for that.

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StorageWorks Tech Day - in their words so far....

CalvinZ — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:25:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

I've been home from our HP StorageWorks Tech Day for less than 24 hours and I still am floating on a cloud (No Foskett - not that kind of cloud!). When we first started talking about doing it a couple of months ago, I never would have imagined the incredible response we've had to it. But I'll leave some of my thoughts going into it and now for another post. For now, I wanted to point you to some of the posts by others who attended our event in Colorado Springs. You can read a bit more about the event by reading my post titled "StorageWorks Tech Day Starting Now".

So here are links to the posts I've seen so far from the attendees:

HP Tech Day 2009, Day 0 by Devang Panchigar. Devang included some great pictures of one of the most beautiful places in Colorado, Garden of the Gods
StorageMojo off to HP's Storage Tech Day by Robin Harris. Robin liked that we didn't require an NDA but missed our chance for cocktails in the agenda.
HP Storage Tech Day by Rich Brambley. Rich has a widget tracking the event Twitter hashtag on his blog.
HP StorageWorks Tech Day 2009, Day 1 by John Obeto. I met John at HP Technology Forum and am really glad he attended to learn more about StorageWorks.
HPTechDay 2009 Day 1: HP StorageWorks Technology by Devang Panchigar. Devang gives lots of details of not only the sessions but the conversations he had during the day and evening out.
HP StorageWorks TechDay & SMB Announcement by Simon Seagrave. Simon gave a summary of Day 1 and talked about the announcement we did at the beginning of Day 2
The Price of Quality by Ray Lucchesi. Ray focused on what he saw in our tour of the EVA test lab.
HPTechDay: HP really 'gets' storage! by Nigel Poulton. Nigel states that his opinion WAS that we didn't get storage; his opinion changed during the event. This is one of my favorite posts.
HPTechDay 2009 Day 2: HP Converged Data Center by Devang Panchigar. Devang gets the prize for the most thorough and timely updates. His Day 2 summary talks about our converged infrastructure discussion.
HP StorageWorks Tech Day 2009, Day 2 by John Obeto. I know John got sick after returning home but he toughed it out and put this post up.

NOTE: Somehow in editing HTML, I deleted a post on my list from Rich Brambley. Here's a link to it: HP tells storage virtualization future with LeftHand.

There were a few articles from a few folks who didn't attend but were watching the information pour across Twitter:

Tech Day gives a peek into the future of storage by Rick Vanover, Tech Republic. Rick was invited to Tech Day but couldn’t come; thanks for the article Rick!
HP lays out sketches of storage roadmap by Chris Mellor, The Register. The Register actually picked up chatter from Tech Day and wrote about it.
HP StorageWorks Tech Day 2009, Day 1 includes HP Total Care expansion announcements by Shane Pitman, TechVirtuoso.com. Frank Owens from TechVirtuoso was at the event - Shane published this article.
HP drops roadmap nuggets at StorageWorks TechDay by Beth Pariseau, ITKnowledgeExchange.com Storage Soup Blog

There were some interesting comments over Twitter, but I'll save those for another update this week.

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StorageWorks Tech Day starting now

CalvinZ — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:43:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

If you don't follow me on Twitter, you may not be aware that we have a blogger event going in on Colorado Springs. We've brought a number of prominent storage and virtualization bloggers and over the next day and a half, have a packed agenda. The topics we'll cover include:

Storage virtualization for enterprise customers - virtualize infrastructure, not just servers
Shared storage for virtual servers (SMB-focused)
Unified storage
Deduplication
Converged Infrastructure

We'll also have hands on sessions and demos of the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP), and HP LeftHand. Here's a list of who is here (the "@name is their Twitter user name):

Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) http://vmetc.com
Nina Buik (@NinaBuik) Connect Community (its a long URL so this is a hyperlink)
Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett) http://blog.fosketts.net
Robin Harris (@StorageMojo) http://storagemojo.com (Robin has already post a blog - click here to see it)
Greg Knieriemen (@Knieriemen) http://www.storagemonkeys.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=136
Ray Lucchesi (@RayLucchesi) http://silvertonconsulting.com/blog/
John Obeto (@JohnObeto) http://absolutevista.com
Frank Owen (@fowen) http://techvirtuoso.com
Devang Panchigar (@StorageNerve) http://storagenerve.com (Devang also posted a blog - click here to see it)
Nigel Poulton (@nigelpoulton) http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com
Simon Seagrave (@kiwi_Si) http://www.techhead.co.uk

I'm grateful to all of them for taking time out of their busy schedules to learn more about HP StorageWorks.

I'll be blogging here about what is going on and hope to have a few podcasts later in the week. If you want to follow the conversation real-time, we'll be using the hashtag #HPTechDay on Twitter. If you don't use Twitter, here's a URL where you can see all of the "tweets" using this hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23HPTechDay.

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HP LeftHand on the VMware Community Podcast

CalvinZ — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:15:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

Last week, I was invited by John Troyer, the host of the VMware Community Podcast, to join his weekly podcast. I met John at VMworld at the beginning of the month and he needed a partner to be a guest on the podcast. The format is a Q&A with the live and chat audience. On the call from HP were:

John Spiers, former CTO and found of LeftHand Networks, now our HP LeftHand Evangelists
George Wagner, Product Marketing Manager
Brad Katz, Support Engineer focused on integration with VMware
and me, HP Storage Guy aka Calvin Zito

I learned a lot and thought you might benefit from listening to this too. However, I can't figure out how to easily embedded the podcast here on my blog so let me give you a couple of options to listen to it:

Click on this link to open a pop-up streaming version of the webcast (note - it's about 55 minutes long)
Right click on this link and select "Save as" to download the MP3 file - it's a 24MB file

One question that came up during the podcast was a discussion about the pricing of our HP LeftHand VSA (Virtual SAN Appliance) software compared to a physical iSCSI-based array. We've talked about VSA on previous discussions here so I won't define it - if you're not familiar with it, click here to check out the product page where you can learn more. Someone on the podcast said that the cost of two VSA licenses was $10,000. and what's the point when you can get a cheap iSCSI array for that. So I wanted to talk more about that. First, the $10,000 price is a bit high. The U.S. list price is around 15% less than what was discussed on the call. So why is there value in software that can take direct attach storage on an ESX server and turn it into shared storage? Here are a bunch of them:

We have a cheaper iSCSI based arrays in our portfolio with our HP StorageWorks MSA family or our recently announced X3000 so it's not as if we don't know that you can get cheaper physical disk arrays.
You have to factor in up to 10TB of disk capacity which is what a single VSA supports - so compare the cost of 10TB of a physical array to the VSA allowing you to share up to 10TB of DAS that are probably sitting there today wasting away.
You get up to 10 VSA licenses with our HP LeftHand P4000 Virtual and Multi-site SANS. An incredible value.
We provide bundles with our servers that make the total purchase of the whole infrastructure - server, network, and storage - very attractive. These are the HP Virtualization Bundles that I've mentioned here previously.
VSA provides all the value of our P4000 SAN including replication, thin provisioning, Smart Clone, Snaps, Volume Copy and more. Last I looked, one competitor was charging an additional $60,000-80,000 for these value add features that are included FREE with both our VSA and P4000.
VSA can be spit across sites. A traditional iSCSI SAN - and this is key - can not.
With VSA you can manage other SAN technology behind it if it is shared as a LUN to the server with VSA.
With our BladeSystem, VSA can take advantage of existing Flex-10 infrastructure to manage QOS of your bandwidth
VSA is software not hardware. It is "greener" and subject to larger discounts for volume.

So with VSA software, we aren't just providing an easy way to turn DAS into shared storage for VMware but it does so much more.

I hope that context helps as you listen to the podcasts.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/HPstorageGuy. I'd love to hear from you and talk to you more about all things storage.

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My very late VMworld summary

CalvinZ — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:21:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

Ok, I know VMworld ended 11 days ago but last week was more than a little busy with Labor Day and playing catch up. I also had a bit of an excuse for holding off because I knew the video that I have at the end of this post was coming. So thanks for reading this more than a little late summary of VMworld.

HP Super Session

HP had a "Super Session" on Tuesday morning. There was a great storage demo and I'll have some details (a video) on that. I have a lot of notes from the session but I'm only going to cover it at a high level.

Our Executive VP of the Technology Solutions Group Ann Livermore kicked the session off. The session title was "Stop Virtualizing Servers, Start Virtualizing Infrastructure". Ann began by talking about industry trends: data center transformation, the information explosion, and delivering everything as a service. She went on to say that the challenges that IT face are around being able to deliver what the business needs today while preparing for tomorrow and working with a legacy infrastructure that is rigid and complex.

HP's answer to this is a converged infrastructure. This will be built on standard components where the whole infrastructure is virtualized: servers, storage, and the network. Our vision is to do this in a way to unify and optimize the data center, taking an integrated holistic approach. And make it easy to manage - both the physical and virtual infrastructure.

Ann highlighted that HP can deliver this the way our customers want - in house, outsource it to HP, or parts of the service delivered via the cloud and integrated into the customers environment. Ann then briefly discussed the announcement we did on September 1:

The HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Reference Architecture for VMware View addresses the performance bottlenecks and management complexities of other offerings
Direct administrator access, through VMware vCenter, to the physical infrastructure to manage server health, power use and remote control for the first time with the new HP Insight Control software for VMware vCenter
Simplified storage management by monitoring and configuring HP StorageWorks EVA within a virtual machine using the new Command View EVA management suite

Ann then invited Mark Potter, Senior VP of Enterprise Systems and Networking and Rob Taylor VP from EDS. Mark talked about managing virtual infrastructure as being top-of-mind for customers according to the latest "The Info Pro" wave study, and in fact the #1 issue of managing and monitoring virtual infrastructure jumped from the #11 issue in the previous wave to being the #1 issue in the latest wave.

During the super session, Adam Carter, HP LeftHand Product Manager, came out and gave a very impressive live demonstration of a single SAN environment in an ESX cluster. In the iSCSI-based SAN, Adam had set up two HP LeftHand P4000 arrays that simulated being stretched across the SAN in a multi-site configuration. While the distance between the multiple sites was only 10 feet, Adam said that depending on the WAN between the sites, the distance can be 100 miles. He also said that with the P4000, the software required to set up this disaster tolerant, high availability solution is included free. I grabbed a low-res video of the demo Adam did:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

What's impressive about this is that with traditional arrays, you'd have to set up two SANs, one at each site to have the fail-over capability. I looked at this recently for one competitor and just the software we're talking about is between $30-60K. And again, with HP LeftHand, it's all included for free, nada, ZILCH. Very impressive set of features that are included.

Other impressions of VMworld

Stephen Foskett organized a storage Tweetup on Tuesday night - I met so many people from both the vendor community as well as storage analysts. It was a big highlight of my week and was great to be in one room with a lot of the very smart storage people I engage with in the industry. I also got to spend some time with Alex McDonald from NetApp. If you've read our blog, you've seen some of the many conversations we've had with Alex and his other colleagues at NetApp. We didn't talk too much about our day jobs but it struck me afterward that it was good to be able to just hang out with other storage vendors that we vigorously compete with and have a beer.

Wednesday night was the VMworld party. That was a great chance to unwind and just have some fun. Earlier in the week, I had met storage bloggers Devang Panchigar and Ed Saipetch; it was fun hanging out with these guys along with Stephen Foskett and John Troyer (John manages social media at VMware). Here are a couple of pictures:

Me and Stephen Foskett at the VMworld party

John Troyer, Devang Panchigar, and Ed Saipetch rocking out to Foreigner.

I have a couple of other posts that I did around VMworld. Here's a short summary of what those were and links if you want to check them out:

HP Data Protector for VMware (podcast)
Virtual SAN Appliance for remote/branch office VDI (podcast)
VMworld event summary with Paul Jones, VMware alliance manager (podcast)

A couple of the negative sides of the event were:

The venue was too small for the number of attendees. Of the fourteen sessions I signed up for (several weeks ahead of time), six were full and I couldn't attend them without getting in the "standby" lines. When I saw those lines, there were more people waiting than seats in the room. The fee to attend isn't cheap (I paid over $1500 even though HP is VMware's best partner in terms of sales) so you'd expect that you could get into the sessions you want to attend. Talking to a former colleague of mine at HP who now works in the field for VMware, he told me that many customers (especially in government) are hesitant to send people to an event in Las Vegas (where they can accommodate much larger crowds) because it's perceived to be a boondoggle. Either VMware needs to limit attendance or move the event to a bigger venue. Really, there's no justifiable reason to pay as much as attendees do for this event and have so many sessions full.
My wife would tell you that I'm a picky eater - I think it's more that I enjoy good food (I'll eat almost anything expect liver). At VMworld, lunch every day was a boxed sandwich lunch. I'm not sure if it was too hard to feed 12,000 + attendees a decent lunch or if it was a cost savings measure. At HP Technology Forum, breakfast and lunches were hot meals that you looked forward too. The food in the Solutions Expo on the opening night wasn't very good either. Again, my compare is to our HP Technology Forum where there was lots of variety including made to order pasta, fresh sliced Prime Rib and lots of other very good choices. Maybe I didn't wander around enough but the food I found was cheese and crackers and a few appetizers. The one good thing about the box lunches at VMworld is that it "forced" me into the local area and I found a "Farmers Market" that had a great selection of international foods that were very reasonably priced. That ended up being where I had lunch every day.

And now the video I (note I didn't say you all) have been waiting for

While at VMworld, I was asked to have a video crew follow me around to get a sense at what a blogger does at an event like VMworld. I wish the crew would have followed me on Wednesday to get some video of the rockin' Foreigner VMworld party but hopefully you get a feel for the show and what I did at the show as a blogger.

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VMworld special podcast #2

CalvinZ — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:23:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

While at VMworld in San Francisco, I had a chance to talk to Paul Jones. Paul is our VMware Global Alliance Manager in HP's Enterprise Systems and Networking team. We talked briefly about our impressions of VMworld.

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Special VMworld Podcast #1

CalvinZ — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:41:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

During VMworld, I had a chance to talk with Adam Carter. Adam is our HP LeftHand Worldwide Product Manager and had just finished a session talking about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for remote and branch offices. I think you'll learn a lot about implementing VDI in a remote branch office and about our HP LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance. Adam also mentioned a VMware paper on this topic; this is a link to it.

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Off to the races at VMworld

CalvinZ — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:54:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

I don't recommend waiting until 10 PM the night before to pack for a 5:30 AM flight the next morning. I hit a few speed bumps trying to get everything I needed together for VMworld and was up until 1:30 AM and got up at 3:30 AM to head to the airport. Uggggggh! I was ready for a nap a 8 AM!

But a couple of things while I'm here:

Check out the blog post over on our HP Reality Check: Server Insights for a chance to win electronic Starbuck's gift cards. I'm wondering if I'm eligible to win as I could use a Starbuck's drip line right about now.
Thank you to the kind folks at the Hotel Palomar, a block from VMworld. I got into SFO at 6:15 AM, took BART into the city and was at my hotel by 7:15 AM. They checked me into my room and they are now my favorite hotel. I'm thinking nap sometime shortly after lunch.
I attended the "Introduction to Virtualization" session this morning an learned a lot. Unfortunately, all but one of the other sessions I wanted to attend today are full and thus, I have time to give a quick update from VMworld.
I just learned about a "Meet-up" at In-N-Out Burger on Wednesday night. As a recovering Californian, no trip to the sunshine state is complete without a stop at In-N-Out! I want mine "animal style".
There's a Tweet-up tonight at VMworld. I had the forsight to sign up as a "maybe", thinking I might be a bit tired tonight but I'll do my best to be there and I will be wearing my HPstorageGuy polo!

That's it for now from VMworld!

Data Protector for VMware podcast

CalvinZ — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:47:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

An often overlooked gem in HP's storage portfolio is HP Data Protector. I sat down to talk data protection of virtual machines and more specifically of VMware with Billy Naples, the HP Data Protector Product Marketing Manager. Billy knows data protection and this was a fun discussion for me to have, especially with VMworld next week.

If you have any issues with the embedded player, click here to listen to the podcast. If you want to download the MP3, right-click here and save the file.

Here are a few links where you can learn more about HP Data Protector:

HP Data Protector software product page: www.hp.com/go/DataProtector (now, that one is easy to remember)
Assuring Business Continuity in Virtualised Environments paper (someone is obviously British!)
Complete Protection for VMware environments with HP Data Protector software webcast (requires registration but it's well worth it - it's 16 minutes)
HP Data Protector 6.1 software VMware Integration Installation Best Practice technical white paper (Must read if implementing Data Protector with VMware)

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VMworld is almost here!

CalvinZ — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:02:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

Next week is VMworld in San Francisco - and as the number one partner of VMworld, HP will have a big presence at the event. Are you surprised to hear that HP is the number one partner? Here are a few "fun facts":

We have more server models certified for VMware than any other vendor
HP StorageWorks has more certified storage systems on VMware than any other vendor
HP StorageWorks systems on VMware span SMB to Enterprises and include SAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel shared storage technologies.
We are also the only VMware certified solution that takes disks or direct attached storage systems in an ESX server and turn them into a virtual SAN with HP LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance.
HP and EDS have more VMware certified professionals (VCPs) -768-- than anyone except VMware

I'll be there tweeting and blogging with some other colleagues. You can follow all of us: @ProLiant, @BladeNews, @TSatHP, @HPITOps, and yours truly, @HPStorageGuy. We'll be using the hashtag #HPVMW to help you find what we have to say. Use it your self and join the conversation!

If you are going to be there, drop me a tweet or leave a comment. To help you find me, here's what my HPstorageGuy polo shirt looks like:

If you can't travel to VMWorld, you can get all of the latest buzz from us at www.hp.com/go/VMworld.

Lastly, here are a few of the HP sessions at VMworld that you might consider that I'll also be attending:

"Stop Virtualizing Servers, Start Virtualizing Infrastructure", with HP EVP Ann Livermore (Session ID SS5150, Tuesday at 9:30 AM
"VDI to the edge: deploying virtual desktops to remote and branch offices", with Adam Carter from our HP LeftHand (Session ID SV2493, Wednesday at 4 PM)
"Conquering Costs and Complexity in a Virtualized Environment: Research and Case Studies" with IDC Research Vice President Michelle Bailey (Session ID VM5401, Wednesday at 10 AM)

Look for a few blog posts from VMworld next week and look me up if your there.

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Managing virtual infrastructure

CalvinZ — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:59:00 GMT

By Nimish Shelat, Product Manager for HP Storage Essentials Storage Resource Management (SRM) software

Hi again,

I've been thinking about virtualization clouds, specifically as it relates to server-storage visibility. Here're some of my thoughts, would love to hear what you've experienced in the area as well.

It's true that server virtualization technologies (eg., VMware's ESX) bring several huge benefits to the enterprise; but let's not overlook that these technologies also create some challenging dynamics in the storage environment.

Specifically, vendors like VMware and Microsoft recommend that all hypervisors use shared storage (i.e. SAN) to take advantage of dynamic application scaling technologies like Vmotion, LiveMotion respectively. Virtualization has dramatically increased network based storage within the enterprise. In fact, several storage analysts predict that 50% of new storage purchases are driven by server virtualization initiatives.

Gone is the well understood "server - SAN - storage array" interrelationship; now we have additional virtual machine abstractions like VMFS (virtual machine files system), VMDK (virtual machine disks), virtual HBA's to add to the complexity of the server-storage dependency. This complexity makes it hard for the server and storage team to control and make changes to their infrastructure. It raises several difficult questions, such as:

How much of WHAT is used?
What is underutilized and what can be reclaimed?
Do I have virtual servers not-under-management in my environment ?
Are these servers consuming expensive storage resources?

Without good answers to these questions, your enterprise will not use its storage resources effectively and you'll inevitably see a dramatic increase in storage budgets and purchase needs.

Another challenge introduced by virtualization is around speed. The enhanced agility of virtualization demands faster storage automation. With virtualization in place, you can no longer accept long latencies in the storage provisioning process. Your customers expect storage provisioning to be done quickly and in a repeatable way; the visionary customers are in fact, expecting coordinated server and storage provisioning solutions.

Here's where HP Storage Essentials SRM software can help. It makes storage configurations and resources visible again, creating benefits such as:

Comprehensive visibility into VM - storage dependencies
Accurate storage resource capacity management
Best in class Reporting and Dashboard
Automated and error-free provisioning of storage resources to VMware server
Virtual Server to Storage Array performance management

HP Operations Orchestration is a run book automation technology that orchestrates end-to-end IT processes. It provides out-of-the-box integration with Storage Essentials. By providing the automation and the orchestration engine, Storage Essentials provides its customers to fully automate their virtual infrastructure management.

Learn more on how HP Storage Essentials can help better manage storage in a virtual environment here (white paper titled: Managing storage in the virtual data centre: A white paper on HP Storage Essentials support for VMware host virtualisation). .

www.hp.com/go/storageessentials and www.hp.com/go/SEPE

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