Tag Archives: VMware

Customer Success Story with Dell, Citrix and VMware

I always find it interesting to hear how customers are using blade server technology “in the real world.”   Brickworks, a $1.7 billion Australian brick company with over 60 locations and 1,000 employees, recently provided The Australian with details about how Citrix XenApp Enterprise combined with VMware vSphere and Dell rack and blade servers helped develop a more efficient workplace for its employees.  Continue reading →

Will the New VMware vSphere 5 Licensing Affect Blade Vendors? (PART 2)

Since my last post, I heard lots of rumors that VMware would make some changes in their new licensing model. Well, this week VMware made an official announcement of changes and posted here.

VMware made very clear that all the changes were motivated by the feedbacks they have received: Continue reading →

What Is Your Ideal VMware Lab Environment?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been researching what are the “ideal” configurations for a home VMware vSphere lab.  Ideally, it would be small enough to run a few virtual machines and demonstrate high availability features like vMotion, DRS, HA or even FT.  The problem that I’ve run into is that I haven’t found a really good site that has a detailed list of parts and pieces to buy.  Continue reading →

A Plea to VMWorld Attendees

As VMworld 2010 is right around the corner, I wanted to take a few minutes to make a plea to all attendees. 

This year, IF you receive a bag or backpack that you just don’t want, please don’t throw it away, but instead take it home, go to the dollar store and fill  the backpack with pencils, crayons, paper and erasers and donate it to your local school system.  You would be AMAZED to find out the numbers of children who don’t get backpacks and whose familes can not afford the costly school supplies that are required each year.  You will be making some family happy and you’ll get the name “VMware” marketed throughout the schools, getting the next generation of techno geeks ready to learn all about virtualization.

Thanks for the consideration!

(UPDATED) Best Blade Server for VMware Is…

(Updated to include links to results)

I’ve had a few questions lately about “the best” blade server to use for virtualization – specifically VMware virtualization. While the obvious answer is “it depends”, I thought it would be an interesting approach to identify the blade servers that ranked in the top 5 in VMware’s VMmark benchmark.  Before I begin, let me explain what the VMmark testing is about.   Continue reading →

Dell FlexMem Bridge Helps Save 50% on Virtualization Licensing

Let’s face it.  Virtualization is everywhere.  

Odds are there is something virtualized in your data center.  If not, it soon will be.  As more workloads become virtualized, chances are you are going to run out of “capacity” on your virtualization host.  When a host’s capacity is exhausted, 99% of the time it is because the host ran out of memory, not CPU.   Continue reading →

Announcing IBM eX5 Portfolio and the HX5 Blade Server

UPDATED: 3/2/2010 at 12:58 PM EST
Author’s Note: I’m stretching outside of my “blades” theme today so I can capture the entire eX5 messaging.
 
Finally, all the hype is over.  IBM announced today the next evolution of their “Enterprise x-Architecture”, also known as eX5.  
Why eX5?  Simple:  e=Enterprise X=x-Architecture  5=fifth generation. 

IBM’s Enterprise x-Architecture has been around for quite a while providing unique Scalability, Reliability and Flexibility in the x86 4-socket platforms.  You can check out the details of the eX4 technology here. 

Today’s announcement offered up a few facts:   

a) the existing x3850 and x3950 M2 will be called x3850 and x3950 X5 signifying a trend for IBM to move toward product naming designations that reflect the purpose of the server. 

b) the x3850 and x3950 X5’s will use the Intel Nehalem EX – to be officially announced/released on March 30.  At this time we can expect full details including part numbers, pricing and technical specifications. 

 c) a new 2u high,  2 socket server, the x3690 X5 was also announced.  This is probably the most exciting of the product announcements, as it is based on the Intel Nehalem EX processor but IBM’s innovation is going to enable the x3690 X5 to scale from 2 sockets to 4 sockets – but wait, there’s more.  There will be the ability, called MAX5 to add a memory expansion unit  to the x3690 X5 systems, enabling their system memory to be DOUBLED.d) in addition to the memory drawer, IBM will be shipping packs of solid state disks, called eXFlash that will deliver high performance to replace the limited IOPs of traditional spinning disks.  IBM is touting “significant” increases in performance for local databases with this new bundle of solid state disks.   In fact, according to IBM’s press release, eXFlash technology would eliminate the need for a client to purchase two entry-level servers and 80 JBODs to support a 240,000 IOPs database environment, saving $670,000 in server and storage acquisition costs.   The cool part is, these packs of disks will pop into the hot-swap drive bays of the x3690, x3850 and x3950 X5 servers.

e) IBM also announced a new technology, known as “FlexNode” that offers up physical partitioning capability for servers to move from being a single system to 2 different unique systems and back again. 

 
Blade Specific News
1) IBM will be releasing a new blade server, the BladeCenter HX5 next quarter that will also use the Intel Xeon 7500.  This blade server will scale, like all of the eX5 products, from 2 processors to 4 processors (and theoretically more) and will be ideal for database workloads.  Again, pricing and specs for this product will be released on the official Intel Nehalem EX launch date.  
 

 

  

IBM BladeCenter HX5 Blade Server

 

An observation from the pictures of the HX5 is that it will not have hot-swap drives, like the HS22’s do.  This means there will be internal drives – most like solid state drives (SSDs).  You may recall from my previous rumour post that the lack of hot-swap drives is pretty evident – IBM needed the real estate for the memory.  Unfortunately until memristors become available, blade vendors will need to sacrifice real estate for memory. 

2) As part of the MAX5 technology, IBM will also be launching a memory blade to increase the overall memory on the HX5 blade server.  Expect more details on this in the near future. 

Visit IBM’s website for their Live eX5 Event at 2 p.m. Eastern time at this site: 

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/ex5/events/index.html?CA=ex5launchteaser&ME=m&MET=exli&RE=ezvrm&Tactic=us0ab06w&cm_mmc=us0ab06w-_-m-_-ezvrm-_-ex5launchteaser-20100203 

As more information comes out on the new IBM eX5 portfolio, check back here and I’ll keep you posted.  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

MAX5 Memory Drawer (1U)

 

I find the x3690 X5 to be so interesting and exciting because it could quickly take over the server space that is currently occupied by the HP DL380 and the IBM x3650’s when it comes to virtualization.  We all know that VMware and other hypervisors thrive on memory, however the current 2 socket server design is limited to 12 – 16 memory sockets.  With the IBM System x3690 X5, this limitation can be overcome, as you can simply add on a memory drawer to achieve more memory capacity. 
Industry Opinions
Check out this analyst’s view of the IBM eX5 announcement here (pdf).
Here’s what VMware’s CTO, Stephen Herrod, has to say about IBM eX5:

  

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Cisco Takes Top 8 Core VMware VMmark Server Position

Cisco is getting some (more) recognition with their UCS blade server product, as they recently achieved the top position for “8 Core Server” on VMware’s VMmark benchmark tool.  VMmark is the industry’s first (and only credible) virtualization benchmark for x86-based computers.  According to the VMmark website, the Cisco UCS B200 blade server reached a score of 25.06 @ 17 tiles.  A “tile” is simple a collection of virtual machines (VM’s) that are executing a set of diverse workloads designed to represent a natural work environment.   The total number of tiles that a server can handle provides a detailed measurement of that server’s consolidation capacity.

Cisco’s Winning Configuration
So – how did Cisco reach the top server spot?  Here’s the configuration:

server config:

  • 2 x Intel Xeon X5570 Processors
  • 96GB of RAM (16 x 8GB)
  • 1 x Converged Network Adapter (Cisco UCS M71KR-Q)

storage config:

  • EMC CX4-240
  • Cisco MDS 9130
  • 1154.27GB Used Disk Space
  • 1024MB Array Cache
  • 41 disks used on 4 enclosures/shelves (1 with 14 disk, 3 with 9 disks)
  • 37 LUNs used
    *17 at 38GB (file server + mail server) over 20 x 73GB SSDs
    *17 at 15GB (database) + 2 LUNs at 400GB (Misc) over 16 x 450GB 15k disks
    * 1 LUN at 20GB (boot) over 5 x 300GB 15k disks
  • RAID 0 for VMs, RAID 5 for VMware ESX 4.0 O/S

While first place on the VMmark page (8 cores) shows Fujitsu’s RX300, it’s important to note that it was reached using Intel’s W5590 processor – a processor that is designed for “workstations” – not servers.  Second place, of server processors, currently shows HP’s BL490 with 24.54 (@ 17 tiles)

Thanks to Omar Sultan (@omarsultan) for Tweeting about this and to Harris Sussman for blogging about it.

The IBM BladeCenter S Is Going to the Super Bowl

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave in Eastern Europe, you know by now that the New Orleans Saints are headed to the Super Bowl.  According to IBM, this is all due to the Saints having an IBM BladeCenter S running their business.  Okay, well, I’m sure there’s other reasons, like having stellar tallent, but let’s take a look at what IBM did for the Saints.

Other than the obvious threat of having to relocate or evacuate due to the weather, the Saints’ constant travel required them to search for a portable IT solution that would make it easier to quickly set up operations in another city.  The Saints were a long-time IBM customer, so they looked at the IBM BladeCenter S for this solution, and it worked great.  (I’m going to review the BladeCenter S below, so keep reading.)  The Saints consolidated 20 physical servers onto the BladeCenter S, virtualizing the environment with VMware.   Although the specific configuration of their blade environment is not disclosed, IBM reports that the Saints are using 1 terabyte of built-in storage, which enables the Saints to go on the road with the essential files (scouting reports, financial apps, player stats, etc) and tools the coaches and the staff need.  In fact, in the IBM Case Study video, the Assistant Director of IT for the New Orleans Saints, Jody Barbier, says, “The Blade Center S definitely can make the trip with us if we go to the Super Bowl.”  I guess we’ll see.  Be looking for the IBM Marketing engine to jump on this bandwagon in the next few days.

A Look at the IBM BladeCenter S
The IBM BladeCenter S is a 7u high (click image on left for larger view of details) chassis that has the ability to hold 6 blade servers and up to 12 disk drives held in Disk Storage Modules located on the left and right of the blade server bays.  The chassis has the option to either segment the disk drives to an individual blade server, or the option to create a RAID volume and allow all of the servers to access the data.  As of this writing, the drive options for the Disk Storage Module are: 146GB, 300GB, 450GB SAS, 750GB and 1TB Near-Line SAS and 750GB and 1TB SATA.  Depending on your application needs, you could have up to 12TB of local storage for 6 servers.  That’s pretty impressive, but wait, there’s more!  As I reported a few weeks ago, there’s is a substantial rumour that there is a forthcoming option to use 2.5″ drives.  This would enable the ability to have up to 24 drives (12 per Disk Storage Module.)  Although that would provide more spindles, the current capacities of 2.5″ drives aren’t quite to the capacities of the 3.5″ drives.  Again, that’s just “rumour” – IBM has not disclosed whether that option is coming (but it is…)

IBM BladeCenter – Rear View
I love pictures – so I’ve attached an image of the BladeCenter S, as seen from the back.  A few key points to make note of:
110v Capable – yes, this can run on the average office power.  That’s the idea behind it.  If you have a small closet or an area near a desk, you can plug this bad boy in.   That being said, I always recommend calculating the power with IBM’s Power Configurator to make sure your design doesn’t exceed what 110v can handle.  Yes, this box will run on 220v as well.  Also, the power supplies are auto-sensing so there’s no worry about having to buy different power supplies based on your needs.

I/O Modules – if you are familar with the IBM BladeCenter or IBM BladeCenter H I/O architecture, you’ll know that the design is redundant, with dual paths.  With the IBM BladeCenter S, this isn’t the case.   As you can see below, the onboard network adapters (NICs) both are mapped to the I/O module in Bay #1.  The expansion card is mapped to Bay #3 and 4 and the high speed card slot (CFF-h) is mapped to I/O Bay 2.  Yes, this design put I/O Bays 1 and 2 as single points of failure (since both paths connect intothe module bay), however when you look at the typical small office or branch office environment that the IBM BladeCenter S is designed for, you’ll realize that very rarely do they have redundant network fabrics – so this is no different.

Another key point here is that I/O Bays 3 and 4 are connected to the Disk Storage Modules mentioned above.  In order for a blade server to access the external disks in the Disk Storage Module bays, the blade server must:

a) have a SAS Expansion or Connectivity card installed in the expansion card slot
b) have 1 or 2 SAS Connectivity or RAID modules attached in Bays 3 and 4

This means that there is currently no way to use the local drives (in the Disk Storage Modules) and have external access to a fibre storage array.

BladeCenter S Office Enablement Kit
Finally – I wanted to show you the optional Office Enablement Kit.  This is an 11U enclosure that is based on IBM’s NetBay 11.  It has security doors and special acoustics and air filtration to suit office environements.  The Kit features:
*an acoustical module (to lower the sound of the environment)  Check out this YouTube video for details.
* a locking door
* 4U of extra space (for other devices)
* wheels

There is also an optional Air Contaminant Filter that is available that assists in keeping the IBM BladeCenter S functional in a dusty environment (i.e. shops or production floors) using air filters.

If the BladeCenter S is going to be used in an environment without a rack (i.e. broom closet) or in a mobile environment (i.e. going to the Super Bowl) the Office Enablement Kit is a necessary addition.

So, hopefully, you can now see the value that the New Orleans Saints saw in the IBM BladeCenter S for their flexible, mobile IT needs.  Good luck in the Super Bowl, Saints.  I know that IBM will be rooting for you.