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Today DataCore announced their latest SANsymphony-V release. After the merge of SANmelody & SANsymphony, SANsymphony-V10 is the 10th generation of DataCores flagship product. Interestingly DataCore uses the terms  “software-defined” and “Virtual SAN”. Whether the product of the definition of the terms corresponds everyone should decide for themselves. But this is another story.

What is DataCore SANsymphony-V?

What DataCore definitely does is automating and simplifying storage management and provisioning. I really like it the simplicity. DataCore SANsymphony-V can deliver enterprise-class functionality, like synchronous mirroring, replication, snapshots, clones, thin-provisioning and tiering . It runs on x86 hardware with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or 2012. Multiple servers can grouped together for load balancing and redundancy. A storage pool can created out of the internal or external flash and roting rust. Single or mirrored virtual disks can be carved out of this storage pool. Hosts can access these virtual disks using iSCSI or Fibre-Channel. Because DataCore SANsymphony-V10 can use several different technologies as backend for storage pools, it’s easy to replace backend storage. You can add or remove disks to or from storage pools. If you backend storage is an old EMC CLARiiON and you get a new HP MSA 2040 Storage, you can replance the old storage without disruption.

If you want to see highly automated and efficient production processes, you have to leave the information technology (IT). Look at the the automotive industry, or generally a industry with a high amount on industrial production. What is the output of IT? It is an IT service. What is a service? A for the customer convenient usable combination of knowledge, technology and processes. The following is the definition for a IT service used in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3:

I faced today a really nasty problem. I have four HP ProLiant DL360 G6 in my lab. This server type has two 1 GbE NICs with the Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709 chip onboard, which are usually claimed by the bnx2 driver. While applying a host profile to three of the hosts, one hosts reported an error. Supposedly the host hasn’t a vmnic0 and because of this the host profile couldn’t be applied. Okay, quick check in the vSphere Web Client: Only three NICs. C# client showed the same result. Now it was interesting:

In 2008 HP acquired LeftHand Networks for “only” $360 million. In relation to the acquiration of 3PAR in 2010 ($2.35 billion) this was a  really cheap buy. LeftHand Networks was a pioneer in regard of IP based storage build on commodity server hardware. Their secret was SAN/iQ, a linux-based operating system, that did the magic. HP StoreVirtual is the TAFKAP (or Prince…? What’s his current name?) in the HP StorageWorks product familiy. ;) HP LeftHand, HP P4000 and now StoreVirtual. But the secret sauce never changed: SAN/iQ or LeftHand OS. Hardware comes and goes, but the secret of StoreVirtual was and is the operating system. And because of this it was easy for HP to bring the OS into a VM. StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) was born. So you can chose between the StoreVirtual Storage nodes (HW appliances) and the StoreVirtual VSA, the virtual storage appliance. This article will focus on the StoreVirtual VSA with LeftHand OS 11.

In addition to the benefits that VMware grants to vExperts, a couple of vendors grant also benefits to vExperts. This includes free licenses, subscriptions or other offers. This is only a loose compilation of vExperts benefits.

Vendor	Offer	Link
Solarwinds	Virtualization Manager NFR	http://bit.ly/1gYJtBB
Veeam	Backup & Replication NFR	http://bit.ly/1esRaFn
Pluralsight	Annual Plus Subscription	http://bit.ly/1esTa0o
Tintri	Polo Shirt	http://bit.ly/1eJqgE2
Devolutions	Remote Desktop Manager 1y NFR	http://bit.ly/1iRVXfm
Login VSI	VIP program	http://bit.ly/1esPY4M
Hewlett-Packard	StoreVirtual VSA NFR	http://bit.ly/1m4J6gt
Darren Woollard	Sticker & URL Shortener	http://bit.ly/1noB4gb
DataCore	SANsymphony-V NFR	http://bit.ly/1iUXd2N
Proximal Data	AutoCache NFR	http://bit.ly/1eLKoWa
VSS Labs	vCert Manager NFR	http://bit.ly/1eTncKP
Unitrends	Enterprise Backup for VMware or Hyper-V NFR	http://bit.ly/1eWqn4Q
Symantec	Backup Exec V-Ray Edition NFR	http://bit.ly/1eTFcEO
Royal TS	Royal TS/X NFR	http://bit.ly/1jtpNbB

I also recommend to check the following blog post:

One strength of Juniper Junos is the config file management. The concept of different configurations is nothing special. For example Cisco uses two configuration files to reflect the current configuration in the RAM (running configuration), and the configuration used on startup (startup configuration). HP is doing the same on their networking gear. If you are new to Juniper Junos, the concept of an active configuration and a candidate config, which holds the current changes but isn’t active, maybe confuses you.

A side effect of data growth is the growth of the amount of data that must be backed up. The path of least resistance is buying more disks and/ or tapes. Another possible solution is data deplucation. With data deduplication you can’t reduce the amount of data that must be backed up, but you can reduce the amount of data that must be stored. HP StoreOnce Backup is HPs solution to address this problem.

Already in the last year I noticed, that Pluralsight was giving tech VIPs one year of free subscription for their online training. This 1y subscription has a value of $499! Yesterday I saw a tweet with the offer for this year’s tech VIPs.

Congrats to the 2014 #vExperts & #MicrosoftMVPs! Did you know that you get 1 free YEAR of Pluralsight training? ==>http://t.co/5rFFs1e9Bx

— Pluralsight (@pluralsight) April 3, 2014

https://twitter.com/pluralsight/status/451823968228761602

To use this offer, you have to be member of at least one of the following programs:

The VMware vExperts program is a annual given title from VMware to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community. It’s an award for sharing their knowledge with the community. It’s a nice way to say “Thank you” from VMware.

There are three different tracks you can apply:

The Evangelist Path is for bloggers, authors and other members of the community, who demonstrate their passion and knowledge.

The Customer Path is for customers. This includes leaders of VMware customer organizations, like the VMware User Groups (VMUG), speakers, customers who helped to create customer success stories etc.

A discourse is going on in the community. I can’t say who has started the discourse, but the number of blog postings to this discourse is an indication for the interest at this topic. But what’s the topic?

Homelabs

A homelab is the datacenter of the poor man. Some people have the luck to use a fully populated data center for test and study purposes. Our job requires to work with the latest technology and products, so we need an environment for test- and study purposes. Back in the days it was sufficient to have some VMs on you computer or laptop. But as virtualization moved into the data center, it was necessary to have this in the lab. At this point homelabs began to explode.