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HowTo – create a volume greater than 2 terabytes in win2k3 (min sp1)

Tom — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:59:12 +0000

For a task that is REALLY easy it took a more googling than I had anticipated to come up with the solution. Once your volume has been delivered to the server it is important to initialize the disk but not to create any partitions.

Open Windows Disk management.
Click Action -> Rescan disks to make your new disk appear, if greater than 2tb it will appear as 2 partitions on 1 disk
Right click on the disk and initialize the disk
Open a windows command prompt
type “diskpart”
type “list disk”
select the new disk that’s over 2tb
convert gpt
Now from windows Disk Management you should see a single disk greater than 2tb

Information on the diskpart utility: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/300415

The most important prereqs include Windows 2k3 is up to at least sp1 and that no partitions exist on the disk.

Very Small shootout: DeDuplication (NetApp) vs. Compression (vRanger Pro)

Tom — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:50:56 +0000

The purpose of this shootout was to analyze already backed up images of VM guests sitting idle on disk. We like to keep 7 days online, so I was curious as to how the two compared in our environment.

Compressed vs Deduplicated

COMPRESSED: (backed up via vRanger Pro over VCB, size on win NTFS volume)
citrix_server = 4.29gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 9.76gb
citrix_server2 = 6.14gb
win2k3_member = 4.97gb

compressed vm total = 25.16gb

UNCOMPRESSED:

citrix_server = 10gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 20gb
citrix_server2 = 10gb
win2k3_member = 35gb

uncompressed total = 75gb

DEDUPED VS COMPRESSED:

deduped = 54.29% savings (NetApp cmd output below)
compressed = 66.45% savings

Here’s the actual output from the NetApp find_space exe:
A-SIS Deduplication Space Savings estimate.

Name of Fingerprint File: d:\esx_deduped.txt Total Number of Directories: 5 Total Number of Files: 58 Total Number of 4K Blocks: 19662390 Total Number of Duplicate Blocks: 10673928 Percentage of Duplicate Data: 54.29 Scan Start Time: Wed, Jul 30 2008 3:40:16 PM Scan End Time: Wed, Jul 30 2008 4:22:25 PM

I’ll be honest, I was expecting deduplication to blow compression out of the water even with only 4 vm’s. I’ll go out on a limb and venture that deduplication would provide more results as you toss more vm’s into the picture.

vmworld 2007, lots cpu cores, de-dupe what? and skinny ubuntu

Tom — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:58:08 +0000

Lots is going on this week at VMworld 2007. I watched a video at the AMD booth of a server being upgraded from dual proc dual core to dual proc quad cores featuring their new “Barcelona” F series cpu. The only change required is a bios upgrade which they actually replaced with a new physical bios chip. They stated in the video that no additional power, cooling or hardware is required for the upgrade. The upgrade made a significant change in system performance. FMI for quad core opterons…

I’m seeing a lot more companies adapting a de-duplication technology to their product. Netapp and Data Domain are a couple of vendors that I spoke to about this. Data Domain was interesting to me because they supply you with an entry level HW appliance with redundant disk storage at RAID 6. The cost is about $17k for their entry level appliance. The appliance comes with 2.5 raw tb of space which is the equivalent to 25tb of actual vm files because of the capabilities of de-duplication. Pretty incredible.

Ubuntu is visiting VMworld again. They’ve released a version of ubuntu that’s slimmed down for usage with virtual appliances and virtual machines. The product is called Jeos (pronounced juice).

Tonight is the VMworld 2007 Party…

vmware hba drivers and microsoft clustering

Tom — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:45:00 +0000

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=1560391

Using 2GB Fibre Channel Drivers on ESX Server 3.0.1
Products

VMware ESX Server
VMware VirtualCenter
Details

ESX Server 3.0.1 is installed with 4GB Fibre Channel drivers by default. However, the following conditions require you to roll back to 2GB Fibre Channel drivers, which are available on the VMware Infrastructure CD.

*
MSCS clustering on an ESX Server system requires 2GB Fibre Channel drivers.

*
Some arrays are qualified only with 2GB HBA and Fibre Channel drivers in ESX Server 3.0. These arrays are footnoted in the ESX Server 3.x Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_guide.pdf).

Solution

To determine which Fibre Channel drivers are installed

1.
Use the command vmkload_mod -l to determine which drivers are installed.

2.
Review the command output. 4GB drivers are indicated by lpfcdd_732, qla2200_707, or qla2300_707. If one of these is present, modify your drivers.

To modify installed Fibre Channel drivers

1.
Uninstall any 4GB drivers using the command rpm -e <4GB_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -e VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2200-v7.07-7.7.4.1vmw-29822

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.

2.
Install the 2GB drivers using the command rpm -Uvh <2GB_driver_name>.

Example:

rpm -Uvh VMware-esx-drivers-scsi-qla2300-v7xx-7.4.0.1vmw-29822.i386.rpm

The actual driver name varies, depending on the Fibre Channel manufacturer and ESX Server build number.

In the file /etc/vmware/esx.conf, change:
*
lpfcdd_732 to lpfcdd_7xx

*
qla2200_707 to qla2200_7xx

*
qla2300_707 to qla2300_7xx

4.
Issue the command:

esxcfg-boot -b

Also known as update-boot, this option implies -g (regenerate-grub) plus a new initrd creation. The command looks in esx.conf to see what is there and builds an appropriate initial RAM disk (initrd) and puts the appropriate data on the grub.conf kernel command line.

5.
Reboot the system.

6.
(Optional) Follow the instructions again in To determine which Fibre Channel drivers are installed (above). Ensure that all instances of 4GB Fibre Channel drivers were replaced with 2GB Fiber Channel drivers.

Product Versions

VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x