Now that I have space to play with on the CX3-20 I can return to moving forward with VMWare. My plan is to use all of our FC drive for VMWare and databases. Currently I'm using most of our FC disk for a file server. I've set a LUN migration job to migrate the meta-LUN we created on the FC disk over to a 8TB LUN I created on our new SATAII drives.
The LUN migration processes if very easy and straight forward within Navisphere. It's going to take a couple of days to migrate the 3.5TB LUN over. I've started this yesterday and set the priority to ASAP. BTW this LUN is in production and our user base isn't being affected at all.
So I've connected out second ESX server to our FC network and zoned it to the CX3-20. I've installed VMWare Virtual Center on a windows 2003 server to manage both of our hosts. Just getting that done was a huge learning curve. Thanks to the forums and searching I was able to figure it out. Maybe I'll make a post about the steps to setting up Virtual Center and two hosts on a SAN.
Now I'm going to test VMotion to see how that works for myself.
OK so I've done it a manual VMotion move from host to host and it worked like a charm.
Now time to clean up mu LUNs and create a huge LUN for all my guest OS and share that between both hosts.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
emc CX300 to CX3-20 conversion done
The conversion is finally done. The hardware has been sitting behind my desk for months and this weekend it finally happened. It went off without a hitch and it took about 7 hours as expected. The Dell guy knew exactly what he was doing and as he should have. Prior to the conversion I prepped the rack by moving the DAE's up 1U to make space at the bottom for the new storage processor 1U unit. If I hadn't done that it would have taken an extra hours to move all that stuff up.
We've also added our 5th DAE with 1TB SATAII drives for a total of 15TB. After the hot spare and the LUN overhead I've got ~12.5TB to play with.
We've also added our 5th DAE with 1TB SATAII drives for a total of 15TB. After the hot spare and the LUN overhead I've got ~12.5TB to play with.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Data center move
Oh yes I have to move my data center down to our new office. Our new room is finally of professional grade. We have rows of racks for server and another row just for network gear. We have real dedicated AC units three of them in an N+1 redundancy configuration. We have a real central UPS. No more of those rack based bottom crap. God I hate those. Dedicated power and cooling for my room. I even have a big red button to shut down the entire room :D
Before the move I've got a few things that I'm trying to get done.
1. upgrade my SAN
2. move 5TB of data to the new DAE
3. consolidate as many servers as I can with VMware. I should be able to shave off 14 physical servers and make them VM's
4. install new PRI lines for our VoIP system (ordered)
5. install 10mb to the internet (ordered)
6. get with our data integrators and be the quarterback.
My plan for that weekend will be to have the movers pack up everything that we are taking and move them to the new office. Once there I'll get on the phone (cell) with Verizon to transfer our DID's over to the new PRI's. Then get the phone system up and tested. Move our IP's to the new routers so our DNS entries should not change (I'll have to confirm this). Get our SAN online and exchange cluster up and running. Then our file servers and VMware cluster. Should be easy right? :D
So when am I going to do all of this? I was planning on getting it done before Dec 22 but since I'm going on vacation I don't want anyone calling me while I'm in Jamaica. Plus I doubt that the 5TB of data will be copied by then. So I'm shooting for some time in January. I should we well rested.
Before the move I've got a few things that I'm trying to get done.
1. upgrade my SAN
2. move 5TB of data to the new DAE
3. consolidate as many servers as I can with VMware. I should be able to shave off 14 physical servers and make them VM's
4. install new PRI lines for our VoIP system (ordered)
5. install 10mb to the internet (ordered)
6. get with our data integrators and be the quarterback.
My plan for that weekend will be to have the movers pack up everything that we are taking and move them to the new office. Once there I'll get on the phone (cell) with Verizon to transfer our DID's over to the new PRI's. Then get the phone system up and tested. Move our IP's to the new routers so our DNS entries should not change (I'll have to confirm this). Get our SAN online and exchange cluster up and running. Then our file servers and VMware cluster. Should be easy right? :D
So when am I going to do all of this? I was planning on getting it done before Dec 22 but since I'm going on vacation I don't want anyone calling me while I'm in Jamaica. Plus I doubt that the 5TB of data will be copied by then. So I'm shooting for some time in January. I should we well rested.
SAN upgrade
We are smack in the middle of upgrading our emc CX-300 to a CX3-20. We went from flare code 19 to 26 last week and another guy will come out and convert it to a CX3-20. They said it will take 7 hours. This should be fun....NOT! I may have to come in the Sunday right after Thanksgiving. Such is life.
During that conversion we will also be adding a new DAE (disk array enclosure) that is about 14TB. We are getting 1TB disk each. Yeah we need all that space. We burn through disks here at an alarming rate. It seems like every few years I have to move our entire production data over to new disk and quite frankly I am tired of it :/ But the job job must get done.
During that conversion we will also be adding a new DAE (disk array enclosure) that is about 14TB. We are getting 1TB disk each. Yeah we need all that space. We burn through disks here at an alarming rate. It seems like every few years I have to move our entire production data over to new disk and quite frankly I am tired of it :/ But the job job must get done.
So it's been a while....Move update Phase I
So back in June I mentioned that my office is moving (Phase I), well that is complete. It's wasn't easy but it wasn't hard either. A lot of coordinating with vendors to get services delivered. I was dealing mostly with Verizon. I want to thank Donna Moriarity at Verizon for keeping me up to date throughout that entire project. She wasn't even our project manager go figure.
Anyhow we are at two site now about 15 city blocks apart in NYC. We are connected via a 1 gig direct connection. So that new office seems like they are working at the main office still.
A crash course in single mode and multi mode connection. When the curcuit was installed it was a single mode fiber hand off. Now I was very new to single mode and multi mode jargin. It didn't take me long to get my head around it though. I was pressed for time. I got my Cisco 3560's stacked and configured and all I needed was the line connected and away we go. Boy was I wrong. I had about 2 weeks to get that going and wireless with local and guest VLANs working.
I quickly learned that Cisco switches are multi mode and most of the fible cables on the market were multi mode. All the cables we had were in fact multi mode. So I had to act fast and order single mode cables but this was before I realized that the Cisco gear didn't take a direct multi mode connection. So when the cables arrived (one for both ends) the connection still didn't work. Then I figured that there must be a piece of this equation that I was missed. I then found that my gear on both sides need a single mode to multi mode converter transceiver and Gbic. The order was placed and once I got them we were in business. My link was lit and data was flowing like a river. Everything worked perfectly. Phones across the link, data, emails, printing perfect. My VLAN's were all configured without issues ;)
So now I burned though a week with all the back and forth ordering so I'm left with less than a week before the move and the wireless was installed yet. We mounted the AP's and installed the WLAN controller. We got a guy in to do it for us but we were just as involved in it as he was and actually telling him how certain things should be done. None-the-less we got it going the day of the move which was on Friday Sept 19th. Everything went smooth. My workstation guys and mover did a midnight move and I came in in the morning just to check to make sure all the login were ok.
Another project under my belt signed sealed and delivered.
Anyhow we are at two site now about 15 city blocks apart in NYC. We are connected via a 1 gig direct connection. So that new office seems like they are working at the main office still.
A crash course in single mode and multi mode connection. When the curcuit was installed it was a single mode fiber hand off. Now I was very new to single mode and multi mode jargin. It didn't take me long to get my head around it though. I was pressed for time. I got my Cisco 3560's stacked and configured and all I needed was the line connected and away we go. Boy was I wrong. I had about 2 weeks to get that going and wireless with local and guest VLANs working.
I quickly learned that Cisco switches are multi mode and most of the fible cables on the market were multi mode. All the cables we had were in fact multi mode. So I had to act fast and order single mode cables but this was before I realized that the Cisco gear didn't take a direct multi mode connection. So when the cables arrived (one for both ends) the connection still didn't work. Then I figured that there must be a piece of this equation that I was missed. I then found that my gear on both sides need a single mode to multi mode converter transceiver and Gbic. The order was placed and once I got them we were in business. My link was lit and data was flowing like a river. Everything worked perfectly. Phones across the link, data, emails, printing perfect. My VLAN's were all configured without issues ;)
So now I burned though a week with all the back and forth ordering so I'm left with less than a week before the move and the wireless was installed yet. We mounted the AP's and installed the WLAN controller. We got a guy in to do it for us but we were just as involved in it as he was and actually telling him how certain things should be done. None-the-less we got it going the day of the move which was on Friday Sept 19th. Everything went smooth. My workstation guys and mover did a midnight move and I came in in the morning just to check to make sure all the login were ok.
Another project under my belt signed sealed and delivered.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Extracting email address from Exchange....
I've got a call from Messaglabs to update our email address that are allowed to send emails through their system. They are trying to decrease the possibility of a dictionary attack which will scan an entire domain with made up words and send emails to any and every address in that domain. So to help keep the company secure I've had to stop what I was doing to attend to this matter ASAP.
So how does one get all the valid emails out of Exchange 2003? Well you'd think it was as simple and right click and export right? WRONG! Exchange 2003 does not allow you to export all of your email address in the manner that you think. There may be some 3rd party tool but who wants to go through all of that.
Here is a simple solution that I found that works great. You'll need Windows support tools for ADSIEdit installed on your DC's (the one you'll run this command on)
First go to a global catalog server and run ADSIEdit (if that does not work you don't have the support tools and you'll need to download them - they are apart of 2003 SP1)
1.run ADSIEdit
2.expand the doamin to see the OU's
3.right click on the OU you are trying to get the addresses from (we are talking about the OU that has all or most of the users and groups with email addresses)
4a.go to properties
4b.on the left field you are looking for the distinguishedName
5.click edit and copy the entry
6.paste this to notepad - it should read OU=YourOUname,DC=yourDomainName,DC=com
example
UO = abc
domain = xyz
OU=abc,DC=xyz,DC=com
7. go to the command prompt on the same server and type
csvde -f c:\addresseslist.csv -d "OU=abc,DC=xyz,DC=com" -r (mailnickname=*) -l mailnickname,proxyaddresses -p subtree
edit whats in bold to accommodate your environment.
8. no go to the C:\ drive and import the .cvs file into excel.
All done. You'll need to make sure the excel import wizard runs so you can set the perameters so that it's easy to extract the email address.
So how does one get all the valid emails out of Exchange 2003? Well you'd think it was as simple and right click and export right? WRONG! Exchange 2003 does not allow you to export all of your email address in the manner that you think. There may be some 3rd party tool but who wants to go through all of that.
Here is a simple solution that I found that works great. You'll need Windows support tools for ADSIEdit installed on your DC's (the one you'll run this command on)
First go to a global catalog server and run ADSIEdit (if that does not work you don't have the support tools and you'll need to download them - they are apart of 2003 SP1)
1.run ADSIEdit
2.expand the doamin to see the OU's
3.right click on the OU you are trying to get the addresses from (we are talking about the OU that has all or most of the users and groups with email addresses)
4a.go to properties
4b.on the left field you are looking for the distinguishedName
5.click edit and copy the entry
6.paste this to notepad - it should read OU=YourOUname,DC=yourDomainName,DC=com
example
UO = abc
domain = xyz
OU=abc,DC=xyz,DC=com
7. go to the command prompt on the same server and type
csvde -f c:\addresseslist.csv -d "OU=abc,DC=xyz,DC=com" -r (mailnickname=*) -l mailnickname,proxyaddresses -p subtree
edit whats in bold to accommodate your environment.
8. no go to the C:\ drive and import the .cvs file into excel.
All done. You'll need to make sure the excel import wizard runs so you can set the perameters so that it's easy to extract the email address.
Checking in......
I've been quite busy since I last posted here is what I've been up to;
My office is moving in phase so I've been attending weekly meetings to make sure everything from the IT standpoint goes according to plan.
The phase one move will be about half the office moving to a new space fifteen blocks away. All the IT recourses will stay here until phase two. In the meantime I am connecting both offices via Verizon Metro-fiber (1 gig).
We are also rolling out a firm wide MPLS WAN solution to connect offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. I've been doing a lot of coordinating with Verizon via phone, email and meeting to make sure this is a solid solution. We originally contracted Savvis for this project so they could set us up with their MPLS solution but they could not deliver and we were forced to cancel and go with Verizon.
I'm also in the process of upgrading our EMC CX300 to a CX3-20. The CX3-20 will allow us to utilize 120 disks vs the CX300 maxing out at 60 disks. Plus all the other bells a whistles that the CX3-20 has to offer.
We are also upgrading our Cisco call manger and unity VoIP system to 6.1 (I think) it's the linux version.
I think thats it for now. I'm sure I've missed some things. My brain is rattled these days with so much going on both at work and home. I need a vacation BADLY!
My office is moving in phase so I've been attending weekly meetings to make sure everything from the IT standpoint goes according to plan.
The phase one move will be about half the office moving to a new space fifteen blocks away. All the IT recourses will stay here until phase two. In the meantime I am connecting both offices via Verizon Metro-fiber (1 gig).
We are also rolling out a firm wide MPLS WAN solution to connect offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. I've been doing a lot of coordinating with Verizon via phone, email and meeting to make sure this is a solid solution. We originally contracted Savvis for this project so they could set us up with their MPLS solution but they could not deliver and we were forced to cancel and go with Verizon.
I'm also in the process of upgrading our EMC CX300 to a CX3-20. The CX3-20 will allow us to utilize 120 disks vs the CX300 maxing out at 60 disks. Plus all the other bells a whistles that the CX3-20 has to offer.
We are also upgrading our Cisco call manger and unity VoIP system to 6.1 (I think) it's the linux version.
I think thats it for now. I'm sure I've missed some things. My brain is rattled these days with so much going on both at work and home. I need a vacation BADLY!
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Old VM's to New ESX server
So for all of us small/medium size guys who are facing problems with old VMs on older servers or moving VM from test into production who don't have Vmotion or any of the cool stuff how do they do it?
I know of two ways. One way is command line and the other is gui. The command line way it more fun LOL but it's long and prone to error. The gui way like everything gui related to short and to the point. I'll go over the command line way first b/c it's good to know these things.
Moving VM's from ESX host to ESX host (method 1)
First you'll have to unregister you VM from the target host. To do this you have to use an ssh tool to console in like putty. SSH into the host where the VM that you want to move is located. Run the command to list your VM's
vmware-cmd -l = lists your VM's
You will notice that VM's show up with long character names followed by the shortcut name which is what you named your datastore within the Infrastructure client.
Now you'll need to unregister your VM that you want to move. To do so you'll use the command
vmware-cmd -s unregister /path/to/datastore (this path should look something like this /vmfs/volumes/datastore name
Now using FastSCP b/c this allows you to SCP into the server with root access (great tool), connect to the target ESX host and destination ESX host. You should see both host on the left side pane.
On the destination host create a folder where your volumes are and call it the datastore name. On the target browse to into the VM folder that you want to move to the new host. You will see about a dozen or so files. Copy all the files ACCEPT the .vmdk files over to the folder you just created in the new host.
Once that copy is done on the destination host create a temp folder where ever you have available space (must be enough to hold the size of the .vmdk files). Now copy the .vmdk files from the target server to this location. This copy takes a while depending on the size of the .vmdk files, 40GB is about 2 hours.
Once the files are copied run the vmkfstools command.
vmkfstools -i /path/of copied vmdk/name.vmdk /path/of where all the other files are/name.vmdk
So you will run this tool against the .vmdk files you just copied to allow the tool to reincorporate the .vmdk files over to the first set of files you copied earlier. So you must have both paths correct of it will fail.
This process takes a little while b/c it has to put everything back together and I think it defrags at the same time.
Moving VM's from ESX host to ESX host (method 2)
Use VMware Converter. LOL thats it. I found out the hard way that this was the easiest way to move VM from host to host. My last post explains how to do it.
I know of two ways. One way is command line and the other is gui. The command line way it more fun LOL but it's long and prone to error. The gui way like everything gui related to short and to the point. I'll go over the command line way first b/c it's good to know these things.
Moving VM's from ESX host to ESX host (method 1)
First you'll have to unregister you VM from the target host. To do this you have to use an ssh tool to console in like putty. SSH into the host where the VM that you want to move is located. Run the command to list your VM's
vmware-cmd -l = lists your VM's
You will notice that VM's show up with long character names followed by the shortcut name which is what you named your datastore within the Infrastructure client.
Now you'll need to unregister your VM that you want to move. To do so you'll use the command
vmware-cmd -s unregister /path/to/datastore (this path should look something like this /vmfs/volumes/datastore name
Now using FastSCP b/c this allows you to SCP into the server with root access (great tool), connect to the target ESX host and destination ESX host. You should see both host on the left side pane.
On the destination host create a folder where your volumes are and call it the datastore name. On the target browse to into the VM folder that you want to move to the new host. You will see about a dozen or so files. Copy all the files ACCEPT the .vmdk files over to the folder you just created in the new host.
Once that copy is done on the destination host create a temp folder where ever you have available space (must be enough to hold the size of the .vmdk files). Now copy the .vmdk files from the target server to this location. This copy takes a while depending on the size of the .vmdk files, 40GB is about 2 hours.
Once the files are copied run the vmkfstools command.
vmkfstools -i /path/of copied vmdk/name.vmdk /path/of where all the other files are/name.vmdk
So you will run this tool against the .vmdk files you just copied to allow the tool to reincorporate the .vmdk files over to the first set of files you copied earlier. So you must have both paths correct of it will fail.
This process takes a little while b/c it has to put everything back together and I think it defrags at the same time.
Moving VM's from ESX host to ESX host (method 2)
Use VMware Converter. LOL thats it. I found out the hard way that this was the easiest way to move VM from host to host. My last post explains how to do it.
VMware is sweeeeeet!
So I've moved forward with VMware full swing. We purchased a new server for our production VM environment. The server specs are as follow;
HP DL580 G5
4 Quad core 3GHz Xeon cpus'
48GB memory
2 72BG 10K rpm HD
2 Qlogic HBA's
connected to our emc SAN
This server is a beast. If you didn't realize that is 16 cores in this one. I can host about 5 VM's per core for a total of 80 VM's give or take depending on resource allocation.
This server could replace pretty much all the servers on my network. And in essence I could have one rack with just this box and my SAN.......but I'm not doing that. I'm just going to consolidate our file servers and our single function servers. No need for those 1U guys anymore that just run IIS.
So why is VMware so sweet. Well b/c it's owned by emc. Really b/c the integration into your environment is almost transparent to the end users. You can literally convert a physical server that dying into a VM in a matter of hours providing you are ideally setup with a SAN and your ESX host is up and running.
Using VMware Converter (free) you can install it on the physical machine you want to convert or if that machine is out of space like most old servers are you can install it on any other server and point to converter to the server you'd like to convert. Once the VMware Converter is installed you run the app and a wizard opens up pretty much asking you what server you want to convery, what volumes (c:, d: and any others), where you'd like to house these volumes (this is best in a SAN environment where you have already carved out a LUN for this server), name change, network config and thats it. Once you hit start the physical server is still online with users connected and it takes a snapshot of the entire server files and all and turns it into a VM. Not only does it do that but it also send the VM over to the ESX host and powers it on (power on is an option if you want no downtime).
The amount of time it takes depends on how much data you will be converting. Remember the converter will be taking that physical server with everything on it that you picked into a VM. So if it's a server with a 40BG database all that has to come over. Thats takes about 2 hours. The converter has an ETA as well.
It's great. I am amazed that emc and VMware have automated this entire process.
HP DL580 G5
4 Quad core 3GHz Xeon cpus'
48GB memory
2 72BG 10K rpm HD
2 Qlogic HBA's
connected to our emc SAN
This server is a beast. If you didn't realize that is 16 cores in this one. I can host about 5 VM's per core for a total of 80 VM's give or take depending on resource allocation.
This server could replace pretty much all the servers on my network. And in essence I could have one rack with just this box and my SAN.......but I'm not doing that. I'm just going to consolidate our file servers and our single function servers. No need for those 1U guys anymore that just run IIS.
So why is VMware so sweet. Well b/c it's owned by emc. Really b/c the integration into your environment is almost transparent to the end users. You can literally convert a physical server that dying into a VM in a matter of hours providing you are ideally setup with a SAN and your ESX host is up and running.
Using VMware Converter (free) you can install it on the physical machine you want to convert or if that machine is out of space like most old servers are you can install it on any other server and point to converter to the server you'd like to convert. Once the VMware Converter is installed you run the app and a wizard opens up pretty much asking you what server you want to convery, what volumes (c:, d: and any others), where you'd like to house these volumes (this is best in a SAN environment where you have already carved out a LUN for this server), name change, network config and thats it. Once you hit start the physical server is still online with users connected and it takes a snapshot of the entire server files and all and turns it into a VM. Not only does it do that but it also send the VM over to the ESX host and powers it on (power on is an option if you want no downtime).
The amount of time it takes depends on how much data you will be converting. Remember the converter will be taking that physical server with everything on it that you picked into a VM. So if it's a server with a 40BG database all that has to come over. Thats takes about 2 hours. The converter has an ETA as well.
It's great. I am amazed that emc and VMware have automated this entire process.
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