Storage Nation

Ok – the latest Celerra VSA is available, along with the new SRM4 end-to-end guide! Note: make sure that if you’re using VMware vSphere 4 (or Workstation 6.5 and later), and have a platform that supports Intel VT or AMD-V to enable hardware offload – this has a massive effect on Celerra VSA performance and responsiveness.   Details here . 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 shown here .   That link also has instructions on where to get it. Better performance with less CPU, memory constrained configs Fixed issue in the 5.6.47.11 version that made eth2 not work right.

We’re finally back on line after (hopefully) rectifying a hack that had all of my web sites being redirected to places like Realtor.com, White Pages.com, etc.  I guess these companies pay someone to get their visitor numbers up by stealing traffic from other peoples’ sites.  It is annoying and wrong.  My wife, whose blog is also

Ok, recap: vSphere 4 introduced a new multipathing option for block devices (NMP Round Robin). This option works on both Active/Active storage platforms and Active/Passive storage platforms that support ALUA (Asymmetrical Logical Unit Access) NMP RR distributes IO for a device down all active paths (in the case of ALUA, it doesn’t use active-non-optimized paths), and uses a single path for a given number of IO operations, governed by a parameter (iooperationslimit) This value defaults to 1000, but can be changed.  If you change it, there is a known issue with vSphere 4 that on ESX reboots that the value changes to a random value.   (this was discussed here ).   This bug is expected to be fixed in vSphere 4 update 2

EMC solutions enabler 7.1 is out and directly available as a vApp. If you login to Powerlink (EMC partners, customers, employees) you can find it here: Home > Support > Software Downloads and Licensing > Downloads S > Solutions Enabler Here’s a screenshot of the download link.  Personally, I’ve found the vApp package makes deploying solutions enabler (set of tools, public APIs used by many storage-related management tools) much easier.   Remember that if you are using a Symmetrix with Solutions Enabler that you can easily configure gatekeeper LUNs (small LUNs used for inband communication to the Symmetrix) using physical mode RDMs.

As the economy starts to revive, and IT spending starts to pick up a bit, I've noticed some optimism return to our industry. Yes, it's great to see some positive earnings reports in the press.  Nothing wrong with that