EMC World 2013 w/ Chuck Hollis

EMC World 2013 Takeaways

My first EMC World is in the books and it has been a great experience!  This week has been full of technical and personal goodies so I just want to jot down some notes to recap. First, from a personal perspective this has been the most valuable conference I’ve attended to date.  I’m so lucky …

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VCAP5-DCD-WEB

My VCAP-DCD Experience

Since VMware Partner Exchange 2013 in Las Vegas, I’ve been sick, my wife & kids have been sick, and work hasbeen really busy.  I’m finally back to “normal” and I’ve stewed long enough on my VCAP-DCD experience that I finally felt like putty fingers to the keys.  Most people know via twitter that I did …

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VMware Horizon Suite is Now GA

Today VMware released the much talked about Horizon Suite.  VMware announced this suite in mid-February and now, after a few short weeks, the Horizon Suite and components are now GA (generally available).  Among other things View has now been wrapped into the suite and is rebranded Horizon View 5.2 along with Horizon ThinApp 4.7.3.  Horizon …

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It’s Easy When You Want It

This post is just a recount of a random series of thoughts I had today. They may or may not mean anything to you but I believe there is a lesson in there somewhere.  Certainly one we’ve all heard before, but perhaps it will resonate or help someone out there to remember stop and look …

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VMware VCAP-DTD Beta Exam Experience

Today I sat the VCAP-DTD beta exam – VMware Certified Advanced Professional Desktop. More information can be found here. For reasons many other beta exam takers before me have divulged, I can’t talk too much about the exam or content.  But here is what I feel I can share. This is my first VCAP exam …

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EMC World 2013 TakeawaysMy VCAP-DCD ExperienceVMware Horizon Suite is Now GAIt’s Easy When You Want ItVMware VCAP-DTD Beta Exam Experience

May 09 2013

EMC World 2013 Takeaways

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May 9, 2013

EMC World 2013 w/ Chuck Hollis

EMC World 2013 w/ Chuck Hollis

My first EMC World is in the books and it has been a great experience!  This week has been full of technical and personal goodies so I just want to jot down some notes to recap.

First, from a personal perspective this has been the most valuable conference I’ve attended to date.  I’m so lucky to work with one of the EMC Elect members, Lauren Malhoit (@malhoit), who let’s me tag along with her to a bunch of cool events. And also a special thanks to Matt Brender (@mjbrender) who also has been kind enough to let an outsider like myself experience a few of the super cool events the EMC Elect get to do.  One such event was the tour of the SuperNAP data center which was ridiculously cool.  There is so much technology there and we all left awestruck. I highly encourage everyone to take a look the next time you’re in Las Vegas. Thanks to Missy Young (@MissyByte) for the excellent tour; she really knows her stuff!

Then, of course, there were the parties where I got to meet really great people like Dave Henry (@davemhenry), Chuck Hollis (@chuckhollis), and a host of other EMC Elect members.  I was astonished at how approachable and how easy it is to carry a conversation on with any of them.  The EMC Elect program is really great so head over HERE to learn more about it and its members.

Now on to the technical takeaways!  To keep this post relatively short and readable I’m staying very high level. I hope to have some follow-up posts to talk in more detail about some of these ideas so stay tuned.

Flash

I got to sit in on some very technical XtremIO sessions and this technology is truly remarkable and exciting!  The array is just amazing with its in-line dedupe, snapshot capabilities, thin provisioning, and, of course, performance.  This thing is going to be huge for those use cases that it makes sense in (read VDI, DB, etc).  It will allow much less complex VDI deployments because you can eliminate Linked Clones and just run full desktops!  Yes, the dedupe is that good!

There are also the other components to the EMC flash story which are XtremSF (Server Flash, formerly VFCache) and XtremSW (Software).  The differentiators here are the CPU offload and the software which supports non-EMC flash & SSD. By including a CPU on the PCIe flash card we see an increase in performance due to the proximity of the CPU to the addressable memory space and we aren’t constrained by having to size our hosts to accommodate the overhead of using the PCIe flash cards. I’ve seen numbers around 20% CPU load at peak flash utilization just to give you an idea of how many CPU cycles we’re saving.

And last with regards to flash is the roadmap. I can’t really share that information but I just want to say that I’m really excited by what is in the works. And you will be too once the information becomes public!

Next Generation VNX

I definitely thought we were going to get a VNX2 announcement this week. Alas, we did not but we definitely got a taste of what will be coming later in the year.  The next VNX will really be revolutionary from a performance perspective. EMC has rewritten the controller software, dubbed “MCx” to really take advantage of the multi-core multi-socket x86 Intel CPUs we have available today and in the future.  We saw demo’s of IOMeter pushing over a million IOPS through a VNX with less than 2.5 ms latency.  The CPU load was also extremely balanced across all 16 cores in the SP.  This is going to be a game changer for the mid-tier array.

Another feature set we got to see was the addition of more “data services” to the VNX platform. From within Unisphere we will be able to, with a few simple mouse clicks, download and install things like McAfee antivirus onto the VNX itself. A few more examples are RecoverPoint as well as VPLEX.  What does this mean and how does this work?  The details will perhaps be in a follow-up post (if those details become available) but at a high level we’re virtualizing those services and then running those directly on the VNX presumably through a hypervisor.  We didn’t get all the details so that absolutely an assumption on my part.

Last we got to see a true, production-ready, virtualized VNX or “vVNX”.  This has been around for a while and even before the VNX was out in the form of a virtual Celerra which were used for labs and testing.  However, the vVNX is going to be a supported piece of software that will support things like replication and most other VNX features.  The really cool use case we saw was that the vVNX can run in a public cloud environment like Amazon and you’ll be able to replicate your production physical VNX to the cloud-based vVNX.  Way cool!

ViPR

I saved the best for last.  ViPR won’t be GA for a few months and this is one of those (r)evolutionary steps that is tough to completely understand and articulate right now. It is really a game-changer and is truly exciting to just ponder all the possibilities we’ll have with this software.  ViPR’s mission is separating the control plane from the data plane of the underlying storage infrastructure to create a truly software defined storage solution.  With ViPR we will be able to take a heterogeneous storage environment (including non-EMC arrays and possibly DAS at some point) and provision, operate, and monitor everything from within a single console.  This is going to fundamentally change how we design and manage our storage – which is a good thing!  But it is going to take time, further understanding, and a willingness to embrace this shift.  When this product does GA it will be lacking some features I’ve mentioned but the roadmap is feature-rich and aggressive.  I can’t wait to dig deeper into ViPR and see where this rabbit hole takes our industry.  There have definitely been some negative comments on ViPR from competitors but I don’t think they understand this product (how could they at this point?) and how it is going to disrupt the storage arena.

Conclusion

In conclusion it is clear that EMC is a software company.  It is also clear that EMC roadmaps are in lockstep with those of VMware.  Also, EMC is really doing a tremendous job at adding in support for 3rd party products into their software solutions and making sure that there are rich sets of RESTful API’s for the developers. Performance is king and even though they haven’t been first to market in some of these new technologies I believe this will mean better products at release time. I certainly look forward to learning more about all of this technology and comparing/contrasting it to everyone else in the marketplace.  Thanks for reading!

 

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Mar 19 2013

My VCAP-DCD Experience

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March 19, 2013

VCAP5-DCD-WEBSince VMware Partner Exchange 2013 in Las Vegas, I’ve been sick, my wife & kids have been sick, and work hasbeen really busy.  I’m finally back to “normal” and I’ve stewed long enough on my VCAP-DCD experience that I finally felt like putty fingers to the keys.  Most people know via twitter that I did in fact pass the exam at PEX on February 26th, 2013.  Here are some reflections on the exam and my preparations.

First, I’ve been in a pre-sales role for about 8 months now.  Before that I was like many of you and was a customer or consultant working with VMware products for a number a years prior to my current role.  This really gave me the experience (along with the dreaded required class) to gain VCP status.  What I was missing were deep dive skills which can only be gained by experience or through proactive learning.  The DCD focuses on design, not administration, so if you aren’t sure what that means you can find more information here.

Here are some books and materials I used and some notes:

  • vSphere Design (a 2nd Edition is now available) – Highly recommended
  • vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deep Dive - There is a 5.0 version of this book that you may consider. The test is based off of 5.0. I own the 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1 versions but I don’t feel there were many, if any at all, places where the differences between 5.0 and 5.1 would cause a different answer.
  • VCAP5-DCD Exam Blueprint - Essential reading. This document describes the topics the exam will cover.
  • VCAP5-DCD Design Scenario UI Demo – Essential to view this demo and understand the tool before sitting the exam.  Having an idea of how the tool works will save you precious minutes.
  • vBrownbag DCD Series – This is a great video podcast series and I felt that this helped me target and even cutdown the amount of reading I needed to do.  There are also other resources on the vBrownbag website such as the PDF by Shane Williford (@coolsport00)

The last item that really helped “seal the deal” for me was attending the vSphere Design bootcamp at PEX.  By the final day I decided to book the exam for the following afternoon – and I’m glad I did!  The concepts were fresh in my mind and I think that really helped.

I have a few tips for the exam itself as well.  Make sure you know the differences between a contraint, requirement, etc.  This is essential and while I thought, “oh that’s easy”, I quickly found during the bootcamp exercises that it isn’t so easy sometimes.  So I did a little research online and figured out some ways to remember how to determine when something is a constraint or a requirement.  Also, the exam used to be setup so that you could skip questions and come back later.  This is no longer the case so make sure you understand that before trying to save all the design scenarios for last.  Time management is key.  Many people finish at the last second or don’t finish all the questions so make sure you spend the appropriate amount of time on the design scenarios (15 minutes or so) and multiple choice and drag ‘n drop (30-90 seconds).

One thing I noticed about the exam is that there is WAY more reading than is necessary for many of the questions.  So I came up with a system where I would quickly find the actual question and then skim the answers.  Once I knew a little bit about what they were looking for I could go back and skim to find my answer.  This eliminated over half of the reading.  Many questions had the same back story, too.  So, if you feel you need to save time, work backwards by reading the question & answers first.

On the design scenarios I found it easiest to read through the scenario text and then just start laying out all the objects available.  Once I could see all the options it helped jump start my design.  I would revisit the requirements and constraints and start eliminating extra pieces, arranging items, or connecting related objects.  When I started a scenario I wrote down the current time + 15 minutes.  That way I could quickly determine how I was doing on time and know that when I hit that 15 minute mark I needed to put the finishing touches on my design and move on.

Using these tips I was able to complete the exam with about 36 minutes to spare.  I felt pretty good when I hit the final submit button and let me tell you what a relief I felt when I saw the result.  Thanks to the vBrownBag crew and the authors to all the books I read and to everyone else who helped along the way!

 

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Mar 04 2013

VMware Horizon Suite is Now GA

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March 4, 2013

Today VMware released the much talked about Horizon Suite.  VMware announced this suite in mid-February and now, after a few short weeks, the Horizon Suite and components are now GA (generally available).  Among other things View has now been wrapped into the suite and is rebranded Horizon View 5.2 along with Horizon ThinApp 4.7.3.  Horizon Data is the product born from the Octopus data (think Dropbox for the enterprise).  You can read more about the suite here and numerous other places via your favorite search engine.

To download the new bits you can go to the Horizon Suite page on vmware.com HERE

To download just the Horizon View components you can go to the Horizon View page HERE

*Note: To download older version of View you’ll need to go to the old VMware View page HERE

 

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Jan 14 2013

It’s Easy When You Want It

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January 14, 2013

This post is just a recount of a random series of thoughts I had today. They may or may not mean anything to you but I believe there is a lesson in there somewhere.  Certainly one we’ve all heard before, but perhaps it will resonate or help someone out there to remember stop and look before jumping into the proverbial pond.

Today, after taking a much too long hiatus from exercise, my wife helped motivate me to get back on the horse.  It was 24 F outside this afternoon and I was honestly the most motivated I’ve been in a long time.  My options were some P90X – which I wasn’t excited about because of how out of shape I am right now – or a run outside.  After a brief internal discussion I mentally took inventory of my dresser drawers to see if I could come up with some outfit that would keep me alive while still allowing me freedom enough to run efficiently in the cold.  I had to dig deep and pull out some gear I hadn’t worn in the better part of a decade but I knew I could make it work.

Fast forward a bit to a few minutes into my brisk run/jog.  I realized that I couldn’t remember a time when I felt so good and excited to do something I’ve traditionally hated (I’m a swimmer by nature and have never enjoyed running).  So this caused me to introspect while I meandered through the streets of my neighborhood.  Why was I enjoying this activity which I’ve loathed for so long?  SIMPLE!  Because I wanted to do it!  Well, there were other things but boiled down it really was because I wanted to do something that was difficult for me, out of my comfort zone, and would make a fair amount of people scratch their head when they saw me out in the cold weather.

Now, what in the heck does this have to do with technology?  Let’s face it – technology changes quickly and we’re seeing disruptive changes all throughout the industry. For most, change is hard.  But for some, change can come easier (I’ll go out on a limb and say IT change is rarely easy) because those organizations latch on to technology, get excited about it, and make change happen.  This is quite certainly a double-edged sword, however.  Excitement is not a license to “go cowboy”, as some say, and charge into it without due diligence.  I’m sure most of us have got bitten by our own excitement to learn or conquer a challenge without fully understanding or planning.

So the whole point of this post is to say that there are many things to get excited about.  Just make sure you research, plan, commit, and have support before meeting those challenges head-on.  Now that I’ve met my exercise challenge head-on I’m sitting here trying to stop coughing and to find something that will make my lungs stop hurting from the cold air.  If this is a temporary issue then I’ll call this a success.  But if I get a lung infection or something else then I’ll wish I would have just sat and thought a little more about the consequences before jumping into that pond.

 

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Jan 10 2013

VMware VCAP-DTD Beta Exam Experience

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January 10, 2013

Today I sat the VCAP-DTD beta exam – VMware Certified Advanced Professional Desktop. More information can be found here.

For reasons many other beta exam takers before me have divulged, I can’t talk too much about the exam or content.  But here is what I feel I can share.

This is my first VCAP exam so I really just wanted to use this as a practice for the VCAP-DCD exam.  There is a demo video of the simulation tool used in the exam but it doesn’t quite do it justice.  There is a beta version of the blueprint available to eligible beta testers but I can’t share it with the public due to the NDA.  I only had a couple weeks to prepare which was over the holidays. Needless to say I didn’t have near the time that I wanted or needed but its a beta exam and all of the testers were in the same boat so why not?

The exam makeup is very similar to the VCAP-DCD relative to the number and mix of questions and simulations.  There are quite a few drag ‘n drop questions.  I definitely had to manage my time and I finished with 90 seconds to go.  But that is because I got behind and about halfway I really had to pick up the pace.  3.5 hours went by quick but I was definitely mentally exhausted afterwards.  One thing I typically don’t do, though, is leave feedback on questions during the exam. I’d say I commented on about a dozen questions mostly about things I felt should be clarified.  Hopefully that feedback helps the exam team.

During the exam I felt confident of many of my answers.  But towards the end I was less sure.  I’m not sure if that’s just due to being ready to be done with the exam or something else.  In any event it’ll be a long wait to get my results.  I may end up taking the VCAP-DCD before I even get these results which are due 3 weeks after the DTD exam is released to the general public.

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Nov 26 2012

VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials Published

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November 26, 2012

VMware ThinApp is a technology that allows you to package, or virtualize, applications so that they can be run without installation into the Windows OS (yes, it is a Windows-only technology).  There are many advantages to packaging your applications including ease of management, updating, and deployment as well as being able to run the same application package on multiple versions of Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, x86, x64).  And all of this is accomplished without modifying the client operating system regardless if that client OS is a physical desktop, server, or virtual machine.

A few months ago I was included in a pool of users who received invites to review a forthcoming book from Packt Publishing.  I knew it would take a decent amount of time to not only read the chapters but to also put in my feedback, corrects, and thoughts on the organization.  I also thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about the subject matter right from the horse’s mouth so I threw my hat in the ring; and I am definitely glad I did!  (Aside from the intellectual benefits it is definitely cool to see your name in print ;-) )

The book is called VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials and was published on November 23rd, 2012.  The author is Peter Björk, a ThinApp Specialist out of VMware’s EMEA offices.  As I began reading through the book it became clear that Peter really has a passion for working with ThinApp and has deep engineering knowledge of the product, its capabilities, and its nuances.

The book provides a great overview with use cases, examples, and package.ini file excerpts throughout.  The book also provides a chapter on troubleshooting which is worth the purchase price alone.  If you aren’t into cover-to-cover reading you can also use this book as a desk reference with the appendix which includes sections for folder macros, package.ini parameters, environment variables, and runtime switches.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is currently working with ThinApp or anyone who is trying to solve application virtualization and/or delivery challenges.  ThinApp is a great tool and quite frequently I find customers don’t understand it well enough or are not taking full advantage of its features.  I think that this book is a great resource to educate admins all the way up to VAR SE’s who will be helping in the design of application management solutions.

To view the 1st chapter of the book take a look at Packt Publishing’s PacktLib under the Virtualization category.  The book is available for purchase directly from Packt or via Amazon in paperback or e-version.

 

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Nov 14 2012

Cisco UCS – The VIC1240, Port Expander, and the VIC1280

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November 14, 2012

Over the previous few months we’ve been rolling out more and more M3 blades and gen2 UCS hardware (6248/6296 Fabric Interconnects and 2208XP FEX’s).  One question I’ve been getting repeatedly is, “What is the difference between the VIC1240 and the VIC1280?  And why can’t I just get VIC1280′s in my blades instead of the VIC1240?”  These VIC’s are the add-in Virtual Interface Cards that can grant and expand the bandwidth capabilities of some M2 and all M3 UCS blades.  I’m assuming you have some familiarity with UCS blades in general before reading the rest of this article but feel free to ask questions in the comments or via twitter.

First, let’s look at the VIC1240. This is actually not a mezzanine card but a mLOM (modular LAN on Motherboard).  There is a dedicated mLOM slot on M3 blades and nothing other than an mLOM can be installed in that slot.  The B200M3, which is a half-width blade, has one mLOM slot and one mezzanine slot.  The VIC1240 is the only mLOM currently offered by Cisco. From a feature perspective, the VIC1240 is has dual 2x10Gb ports (4 total).  To take advantage of all four 10 Gb ports you must be using 2208XP FEX’s.  If you are using 2204XP or 2104XP FEX’s then you’ll only get 2×10 Gb ports via a VIC1240.  The B420M3 is a full-width blade and it has one mLOM and two mezzanine slots; but again you’ll only be able to slot in a single VIC1240.  So, in either case, the maximum bandwidth you’ll deliver to your half or full width blade is 40 Gbps using 2208XP FEX’s.  Also note the way the port channels are configured in the different options and adapter combinations below.

 

B200M3 with VIC1240 Only

 

To get more bandwidth to your blades you have several options.  The most common are to use the VIC1240 port expander or the VIC1280.  The port expander is inserted into the mezzanine slot and requires a VIC1240 to be in the mLOM slot.  As the name implies, it expands the number of lanes, and thus ports, on the VIC1240 up to 8×10 Gb ports.  This does increase the bandwidth of a blade to a maximum of 80 Gbps.  The design consideration with this, however, is that you are expanding a VIC so if the VIC1240 fails you lose connectivity to the blade.  Some customers are ok with this risk because the port expander is quite a bit less expensive than the other option.

 

B200M3 with VIC1240 + Port Expander

 

The next common combination is the VIC1240 + VIC1280.  This is actually the combination of adapters that comes with many of the Smart Play bundles currently offered.  This gives you the same potential amount of bandwidth and 10 Gb ports as the VIC1240 + port expander combination but provides adapter redundancy.  If the VIC1240 fails then you can still fully operate on the VIC1280 ports (which are connected to both fabrics).  When you lose one of these adapters you just lose it’s bandwidth due to the resiliency built into the UCS architecture.  The VIC1280 is an 8×10 Gb mezzanine card which fits into the mezzanine slots of the blades not the mLOM slot.

 

B200M3 with VIC1240 + VIC1280

 

If you have a B420M3 then you can use a VIC1240 + port expander + VIC1280 to get the best of everything – adapter redundancy and 160 Gbps of bandwidth to your blade.  To get to 160 Gbps you also need to have all 16 uplinks lit up between your two 2208XP FEX’s.

 

B420M3 with VIC1240 + Port Expander + VIC1280

 

To summarize the VIC1240, port expander, and VIC1280 are the components you will utilize to provide high amounts of bandwidth to your blades.  They internally connect to the 2100/2200 series FEX’s (also called I/O Modules or IOM’s) which are then uplinked to the Fabric Interconnects.  Based on your redundancy requirements and your bandwidth needs you have a few popular options – VIC1240, VIC1240 + port expander, and VIC1240 + VIC1280.  If you are using the B420M3 blade (the only M3 full-width blade currently offered) you can throw in all three cards (VIC1240 + port expander + VIC1280) to get the maximum amount of bandwidth per blade – 160 Gbps. This is a great amount of flexibility to have and is more bandwidth than most of my customers would ever need.

 

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Nov 01 2012

Cisco Announces Updates to UCS and Nexus Lines

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November 1, 2012

November 1, 2012 – Cisco Announces Updates to UCS and Nexus Lines

Today was a great day for current (and future) Cisco UCS customers.  While UCS has been taking over the #2 slot in the blade server market there have also been some challenges.  Scalability, management of rack mount UCS servers, and lack of local zoning and storage protocol support on the fabric interconnects.

I’m a huge fan of UCS and honestly designing around (or through) these and other challenges wasn’t a big deal for most of my customers.  But many of these challenges have been solved with the announcements Cisco made today.  I don’t need to reinvent the wheel so I’m just going to link to some great resources regarding these announcements.  In addition to UCS there has been an update to Cisco’s Cloud management tools and the Nexus 7000 product line.

  1. UCS Central – This new tool allows us to manage multiple UCS domains.  As Colin McNamara puts it, “A manager of managers”.  Here’s the announcement. *UPDATE* Here’s another good article by Colin Lynch (@UCSGuru).
  2. Cisco UCS Manager 2.1 – This update brings us the ability to manage our UCS rack mount servers via UCSM over a single cable.  Previously we required separate data and management cabling which could cause some messes in your design and racks.  UCSM 2.1 also allows us to do Fiber Channel zoning directly on the Fabric Interconnects as well as multi-hop FCoE.  Here’s a post by Colin McNamara (@colinmcnamara) that talks about both UCS Central and UCSM 2.1.
  3. Nexus 7004 Announced – This one has been in the rumor mill for quite some time and I’m glad it finally has been officially announced.  The 7004 has a side-to-rear air flow which is unique in the 7000 series.  It also doesn’t require fabric modules which reduces the complexity and footprint.  It will be a good fit for those who couldn’t justify the cost of a 7009 or 7010 but still wanted more than what a pair of Nexus 5500′s had to offer.  Read more here.
  4. Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1 – This is a tool that is new to me and I definitely need to learn more about its use cases and requirements. At a minimum it helps manage and orchestrate VDC’s (virtual data centers) within your cloud infrastructure.  Here are two great links to learn more. Announcement  and 5 Cool Things to Know about CIAC 3.1.

I’m sure there is going to be a flurry of information coming over the next few weeks.  UCSM 2.1 is not available for download yet but I plan on taking a look at it as soon as the release notes are posted.  Hopefully they’ll update the UCS simulator soon as well.  I’m curious to look at how CIAC might integrate or compete with VMware’s vCloud.  Stay tuned for more on these topics!

 

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Oct 26 2012

Vows Renewed: vSphere 5.1 & View 5.1 Compatibility Fixed

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October 26, 2012

When vSphere 5.1 was announced back in August 2012 at VMworld San Francisco, one important piece of information that was beaten into our brains was that View 5.1 was NOT compatible with the new vSphere platform. While many customers don’t go out and throw the latest bits at their production environments on the day of release it was a bit of a head scratcher as to why two of your flag-ship products would require a divorce while simultaneously unifying their version numbers.

However, this is now water under the bridge.  Late Thursday, October 25th, 2012, VMware quietly published a KB article (2035268) which simply states that View 5.1 is now compatible with vSphere 5.1 with links to a new ESXi ISO image or an ESXi patch.

One thing that I was still curious about, though, was what caused the incompatibility.  VMware employees were mum at VMworld on the details but a few did mention something about the CBRC (content-based read cache) in ESXi causing part of the problem.  The CBRC is a feature in the hypervisor that enables the View 5.1 feature called the View Storage Accelerator - the ability to dedicate up to 2048 MB of RAM on ESXi hosts to caching of high I/O blocks of your View desktops.

Well now we know that this was THE problem.  According to the patch notes:

Important!

When the View Storage Accelerator feature is enabled in View, Multiple Content-Based Read Cache (CBRC) disable requests issued from View to hostd might cause View to lose connectivity to an ESXi host.

(On an aside, there definitely was an issue with PowerPath V/E for EMC customers which was fixed in this release as well, but it was unrelated to the View problem)

Now this has obviously been corrected and we can look forward to the renewal of vows between vSphere 5.1 and View 5.1 in our own environments.

 

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Oct 21 2012

Cisco Updates EoS and EoL Dates for UCS Hardware

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October 21, 2012

Today Cisco announced updates to its End of Life (EoL) and End of Sale (EoS) UCS product lists.  The meat of this announcement entails the 6100 series Fabric Interconnects as well as the B200 M2 blade server.  Fixed configuration B200 M2′s had been EoL’d earlier but the regular SKU’s will remain available until March 1st, 2013.

Not that you need any more reasons to be looking at Gen 2 UCS hardware for new orders or upgrades, but now you have more motivation.  The newer Fabric Interconnects are the 6248UP and 6296UP while the B200 M2 is replaced by the B200 M3 which were all became generally available early in 2012.  You can find more information about Gen 2 UCS hardware in this post by Varrow’s Jason Nash.

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects and Cisco UCS 2100 Series IO Modules

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco UCS B200 M2 Blade Server

 

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