When I talk with companies about IT processes and IT service management (ITSM), ITIL seems to be the de facto standard for ITSM. Implementing an ITSM without using ITIL, seems to be impossible. I have many customers that have implemented ITIL-based ITSM processes and most of them had enormous trouble during the implementation and/ or operation.
Lean ITSM and ITIL? Companies mainly have three problems during the implementation and/ or operation of ITIL processes:
Today a tweet from Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) has caught my attention:
Don't waste money on automation without first looking at your processes. https://t.co/PWeFDbyQkb pic.twitter.com/7RvhmvS6GQ
— Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) May 8, 2016 https://twitter.com/CTOAdvisor/status/729141035692068865
Keith wrote a nice blog post and I really recommend to read it. His point is, that automation enables business agility.
The point of automation is to enable business agility. Business agility isn’t achieved by automating inefficient processes. The start of an IT automation project begins by examining existing processes and eliminating inefficiency.
Today I got an email from HPE, which has informed me of the imminent end of support for HPE Data Protector 7.0x 8.0x. As of June 30, 2016, HPE will offer no new updates or patches for Data Protector 7.0x and 8.0x. This means that
Telephone and email support new security updates, and new product updates will be phased out. The self-help support will be continued until June 30, 2018. Self-help includes access to the knowledge base, current patches and access to known problems.
What is a problem? A problem is an obstacle, that has to be surmounted. Solving a problem is connected with obstacles. Or more general: Problem solving is a process to get from an unsatisfactory to a satisfactory situation.
Most of us get paid for solving problems. It’s irrelevant if you are paid for solving technical problem (e.g. My computer doesn’t work), or if you are paid to create solutions for customers (e.
Last year in December, I updated the first customer from HPE Data Protector 9.04 to 9.05. Immediately after the first tests I noticed, that backups were made using the NBDSSL transport. I expected that the SAN transport would be used, because the prerequisites were met and it has worked until the update. I opened a case at the HPE support und I was advised to install the hotfix QCIM2A65619. With this hotfix, several files were replaced:
The Virtual Environment Integration (VE Integration) provides protection of VMs in virtual server environments. It is used o integrate HPE Data Protector with various virtualization environments, currently VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. For Citrix XenServer is a script solution available. I will focus on VMware vSphere.
What is possible? I took this table from the “HPE Data Protector 9.00 Integration Guide for Virtualization”.
Feature VE Integration Online backup ✓ Crash-consistent backup ✓ Application-consistent backup ✓ Granularity vmdk, vmx Full/ Incremental/ Differential ✓/ ✓/ ✓ Support for changed block tracking (CBT) ✓ Where does the Data Protector component need to be installed?
Last week, I was surprisingly booked by a customer who observed a problem in his network. Unfortunately, colleagues worked on this network some day before (moving servers, routers etc. to a new pair of HP 7509 new core switches).
It was quickly clear, that some of the clients have received the wrong DNS servers from the DHCP server. The environment is a bit unusual. The customer is running two Active Directory domains (root and sub domain) in a single layer 2 broadcast domain.
After updating my lab to VMware vSphere 6.0 U2, one of my hosts continuously thrown an error during an update scan.
Host returns ESX error code 99, unhandled exception has occurred
The first thing I’ve checked was the esxupdate.log on the affected ESXi host. This is the output, that was logged during a scan operation.
2016-04-04T13:42:13Z esxupdate: vmware.runcommand: INFO: runcommand called with: args = '['/sbin/esxcfg-advcfg', '-q', '-g', '/UserVars/EsximageNetTimeout']', outfile = 'None', returnoutput = 'True', timeout = '0.
I really like the idea behind Kanban. I wrote about it in 2014 (Organize your work with Kanban), and I even wrote my bachelor thesis about it (Industrialisierung der ITIL Service Operation Phase unter Verwendung von Lean Management // Industrialization of the ITIL Service Operation phase with Lean Management).
The word “kanban” comes from the japanese and can be translated with “signboard”, “card” or “billboard”. Kanban is a scheduling system and helps to implement the pull principle in a lean manufacturing system.
Nearly two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post (VMware Horizon View space reclamation fails) about failing space reclamation on automated desktop pools with linked clones. Today I write about the same error, but caused by another problem. In both cases, the error is logged in the View Administrator and the vSphere (Web) Client. On the View Administrator, the following error is shown:
"Failed to perform space reclamation on machine COMPUTER NAME in Pool POOL NAME" Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.
