blog.virtualtacit.com

Is this really a surprise to any of you? I mean come on, your wife gets ousted a few months early, you know the taste in Mendel’s mouth was growing sour. That is four high profile positions lost in the last three months, noted here, here and here. Is VMware choking on its own tongue, where do they go from here, what will be announced at VMworld next week to calm the masses? It goes without saying that is the beginning of a new era for VMware, the fate of one company is not hinged on one man. As long as innovation continues to drip from the pores of VMware, they will continue to thrive in an ever changing market. As always thanks to virtualization.info for cracking this story first. Prepare for a wild ride on Wall Street today my friends, this won’t be pretty…or will it?

Here is a quick video I did on the >FREE< Flex Profile Kit. I knew little to nothing on this framework until I started doing research for this video, but have been blown away with what it is capable of. Generally, VDI seems to be the most natural environment for this but let me know what you think…

As I was tooling around Powerlink today I noticed some analysis tools under <Support><Product and Diagnostic Tools><Environment Analysis Tools>. Specifically, they were oriented toward the following:  Celerra Health Check, Host Environment Analysis Tools, and Switch Analysis Tools.

What’s nice about these tools is that you can upload pertinent support script outputs and generate what is a complete analysis of that device or host.  On top of that it alerts you to potential problems and provides recommendations where needed. Here are the specifics around each, Note–all require a logon to Powerlink..

• Celerra Health Check
  • Method used to generate output file -
    • collect_support_materials, talked about here
  • Specifics-
    • Displays information about the Celerra Linux operating system, NAS version and model, control station configuration and file systems, data mover configuration, filesystems, interfaces and utilization, and backend checks.
    • Provides notices and warnings of potential problem areas where appropriate
    • Provides recommendations, where appropriate
• Host Environment Analysis Tool (HEAT)
  • Method used to generate output file -
    • EMC Grab and EMCReports depending on the OS
  • Specifics
    • Processes the output of the EMCReports script for Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 hosts and performs the following functions:
      • Displays information about the host, memory details, IRQ levels, Windows services, network adapters, disk drives, file system alignment, SCSI, drivers, host bus adapters, installed software and hot-fixes, EMC PowerPath and Solutions Enabler, Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Celerra software, device mapping and application and event log checking.
      • Checks versions of system drivers, HBA drivers and firmware, EMC PowerPath and Solutions Enabler software, volume management software, EMC Disk Array software against the latest versions that are EMC Supported.
      • Provides notices and warnings of potential problem areas where appropriate.
      • Provides recommendations where appropriate.
    • Process the output of the EMCGrab scripts for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Tru-64/OSF1, and Solaris hosts and performs the following functions:
      • Displays information about the host, OS, OS patches, host bus adapters, multipathing, drivers, file systems, installed volume management software, EMC PowerPath and Solutions Enabler software, Symmetrix, Clariion, Celerra software, device mapping and application and event log checking.
      • Checks versions of system drivers, hba drivers and firmware, EMC PowerPath and Solutions Enabler software, volume management software, EMC Disk Array software against the latest versions that are EMC Supported.
      • Provides notices and warnings of potential problem areas where appropriate.
      • Provides recommendations where appropriate.
• Switch Analysis Tool (SWAT)
  • Method used to generate output file -
    • Depending on the Switch Vendor
      • • a supportshow from a Brocade switch, or
        • a show tech-support details from a Cisco switch, or
        • a Data collection from a McData switch
  • Specifics
    • Displays information about the switch properties, effective configuration, name server entries, port statistics, fabric OS file system, zone checks, environment, memory, licensing, VSAN and some logging checks.
    • Provides notices and warnings of potential problem areas where appropriate.
    • Provides recommendations where appropriate.

Considering this whole process is web based you simply browse to the output file and select upload. The output is analyzed, an HTML report is generated and emailed to you. How is that for service!

If your looking for a EMC/VMware slant from the inside out then you got to check out VirtualGeek. From the foremost VMware expert within EMC, Chad Sakac, otherwise known as Mr. VMware has cannonballed into the blogging scene with some really cool posts as follows:

• 10 Gigabit Ethernet and VMware - A Match Made in Heaven
• So, how **EXACTLY** does VM HA’s admittance algorithm work?

Outside of his blog are a number of YouTube videos listed below…

• EMC & VMware: IP Storage-iSCSI, NFS, or Fibre Channel?
• Simple Acceleration of VMware Virtual Desktop Integration
• EMC & VMware: Tier 1 Application Availability & Flexibility

Keynote at this years EMCWorld..

• EMC World Keynote

His evangelistic approach is captivating and quite enjoyable, I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot from Chad. The industry will be listening, will you?