The title of this blog post mentions two terms that have to be explained. First, a VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (or VMware vMSC) is a configuration of a VMware vSphere cluster, that is based on a a stretched storage cluster. Secondly, HP 3PAR Peer Persistence adds functionalities to HP 3PAR Remote Copy software and HP 3PAR OS, that two 3PAR storage systems form a nearly continuous storage system. HP 3PAR Peer Persistence allows you, to create a VMware vMSC configuration and to achieve a new quality of availability and reliability.

The recovery of an Exchange mailbox using a recovery database is usually no big deal. Simply restore the database, create a recovery database and recover the mailbox or items from the mailbox. Sometimes you have the luck that the customer has licensed the Data Protector Exchange 2010 Granular Recovery for Exchange (GRE). This was unfortunately not true in my case. Okay, so let’s do it the old way. The needed tape was available in the library and luckily it was a full backup.

The whole story began with a tweet and a picture: Spotted Marvin on VMware campus during a break this morning "first hyperconverged infrastructure appliance " pic.twitter.com/1iIPocjREX — Fletcher Cocquyt (@Cocquyt) June 7, 2014 This picture in combination with rumors about Project Mystic have motivated Christian Mohn to publish an interesting blog post. Today, two and a half months later, “Marvin” or project Mystic got its final name: EVO:RAIL. What is EVO:RAIL?

On the HP Discover in June 2013 (I wrote 2014, sorry for that typo). HP has announced the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 All-Flash Array. To optimize the StoreServ platform for all-flash workloads, HP made some changes to the hardware of the nodes. The 7450 uses 8-core Intel Xeon CPUs instead 6-core 1.8 Ghz CPUs, the cache was doubled from 64GB to 128GB and they added some changes to the 3PAR OS: HP added additional cache flush queues to separate the flushing of cache for rotating rust and SSD devices.

This is only a short blog post. Just got an e-mail from the DataCore Support. They found a critical bug in SANsymphony-V 10.0.0.0 which should be fixed with Update 1. Only VMware customers are affected, because the bug is related to VMware Thin Provisioning Thresholds. Update 1 is planned for early September 2014. If you’re running SANsymphony-V 10.0.0.0 open an incident at the DataCore Support to get an available hotfix. If you have planned to update to SANsymphony-V 10, delay this update until the release of SANsymphony-V 10 Update 1.

The developtment of the Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) goes back to H3C, a joint venture between Huawai and 3COM. With the acquisition of 3COM by HP, IRF capable products were integrated into the HP Networking product portfolio. What is IRF? IRF is a software-based solution to connect multiple switches together and create a logical switching devices. The idea behind IRF is to create a logical device with one control and multiple data planes.

Sometimes it’s necessary to limit specific traffic in terms of bandwidth. Today I like to show you how to manage bandwidth limits using QoS and firewall policies. Especially if you have only limited bandwidth, e.g. a DSL connection, it can be useful to manage the used bandwidth for specific hosts or protocols. I use a really simple setup to show you, how you can manage bandwidth using CoS on a Juniper SRX.

Virtualization is an awesome technology. Last weeks I visited a customer and we took a walk through their data centers. While standing in one of their data centers I thought: Imagine that all server, that they are currently run as VMs, would be physical?. I’m still impressed about the influence of virtualization. The idea is so simple You share the resources of the physical hardware between multiple virtual instances. I/O, network bandwidth, CPU cycles and memory.

Everyone has their own technique to organize work. As you maybe know, I’m a big fan of Lean. And you know maybe also, that Lean is a philosophy based on the aspect to create value for customers and eliminate waste of resources in production processes. Taiichi Ōno, the father of the Toyota productionsystem, defined seven forms of waste. Womack and Jones developed Lean Production, which is based on TPS, and highlighted five principles to achieve a lean production.

I’m a bit late, but HP released a new version of their HP Service Pack for ProLiant in June 2014. This version of the SPP supersedes the version 2014.02.0(B). This release adds support for HPs new 20 GbE adapter HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 630FLB Adapter HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 630M Adapter and contains new firmware (v4.20b) for HP BladeSystem c-Class Virtual Connect, 4/8Gb 20-port and 8Gb 24-port FC components. HP also added the following firmware and software components to this release: