Why Nexenta is different

If you’re coming from the standard storage arena, it’s hard to put a bead on Nexenta. First off, it’s just software. But more than that, at it’s core is open source software. Think of it as a gobstopper with three layers. At it’s core it’s based off of illumos and ZFS. Added on top is NexentaOS, a ubuntu userland that makes software management easy. If you’re ever tried Ubuntu, you know that it’s pretty simple to install updates. The third and outermost layer to Nexenta are the additional modules that add additional enterprise functionality to the storage appliance.

What is illumos

The illumos project started as a binary compatible distribution of OpenSolaris, the comunity supported distribution of Solaris.  Years ago, for me anyway, it was the most cost effective way to learn Solaris.  The intent was to create a straight fork that would stay compatible with any possible future releases that Oracle makes to the community.  It turned out this was a pretty wise move.  The OpenSolaris project within Sun didn’t adjust well to the transition [1].  Now illumos stands at the center of a new OS community, with a SOLID enterprise class foundation.  Many of the folks that were contributing/creating to the solaris codebase continue to contribute to illumos, and it will continue to be an interesting project to watch.

What is ZFS

In short, ZFS is an enterprise grade file system. It was designed by Sun to be a modern filesystem to handle modern hardware. To understand why ZFS is important you also need to understand how modern harddrives work:

A modern hard disk devotes a large portion of its capacity to error detection data. Many errors occur during normal usage, but are corrected by the disk’s internal software, and thus are not visible to the host software. A tiny fraction of errors are not corrected. For example, a modern Enterprise SAS disk specification estimates this fraction to be one uncorrected error in every 1016 bits, or approximately one in every 1.2 PB.[19] A smaller fraction of errors are not even detected by the disk firmware or the host operating system. This is known as “silent corruption”. In a recent study, CERN found this issue to be problematic.

As hard drives get bigger, we’re all seeing data corruption become more of an issue. The changes of corruption, both noticed and silent, increase. In vmware envionments silent data corruption can ruin your day. I’m actually not sure how common it is, but in a service provider environment I worked at we had VMs that would not let us do anything with the vmdk. It seemed “stuck”. We couldn’t storage vmotion it, and it would continually give us grief. After troubleshooting for couple days, the only thing we could do was clone it and delete the original VM. That’s worked fine, but it could have been a lot worse. As storage envionments get bigger, silent data corruption will eventually happen in your environment unless you protect against it.

ZFS checksums every block that is written and automatically repairs blocks where corruption occurs. This provides end to end data integrity allowing you to be confident there won’t be a problem with the data when you need it.

Beyond this feature, ZFS allows for heterogeneous block and file replication, UNLIMITED snapshots and clones, compression, deduplication, non-disruptive volume increases and a host of other features. I’ll work through (and link to from here) these features in the future, but it’s important to get some other base functions explained.

What is the ARC

As legacy storage vendors will tell you; Cache is king.  The ability to cache data efficiently or “move blocks” or “other fancy caching name here” basically does one thing.  It moves data that is most accessed to a faster tier, or more responsive, layer.  ZFS leverages the ARC as it’s front line cache for most accessed blocks.  This means if your Nexenta appliance has 24G of RAM, it’s going to get 23 or so gigs to use to cache the most heavily used blocks.  As RAM is added, the ARC cache grows.  RAM being A LOT faster than SSD’s this proves invaluable for providing FAST response times and lower latency to the client devices.

What is the L2ARC

Below the ARC ZFS can leverage additional cache devices, in most configurations today this is SSD drives.  Cheaper than RAM, but still way faster than spinning tin.  This is the 2nd level of cache that Nexenta appliances use for caching “warm” data.  This hybrid storage model allows for Nexenta to use slow SLOOOOOWWWW disks for it’s main storage pool of the working size set (average amount of blocks that are constantly active) fit inside both the L2ARC and ARC cache.

What is the ZIL

The ZIL (ZFS intent Log) is the write cache.  Random R/W is the bane of every VMware administrators life.  Not only does Nexenta leverage a read cache, we can cache writes to more efficiently lay down blocks on the slow disks to better handle write workloads.

How does all of this tie together?

For our lab environment, if you can move the L2ARC and the ZIL to an SSD drive, you’ll already start being able to use some of the performance gains that Nexenta brings to the table. Even in a two drive configuration, if one of them is SSD, and there is plenty of Ram available, Nexenta can start helping increase performance through it’s caching technology.  But that’s not it, Nexenta brings to the table a host of other features.

1. Nexenta provides a software stack that can deliver NAS (NFS/CIFS) and/or SAN (iSCSI/FC)
   storage that allows for high performance allowing users to leverage current commodity technologies (ex SSD for performance).
2. It provides UNLIMITED snapshots and clones
3. It can be configured in a fully active/active HA configuration.
4. It provides block and file level replication that can be leveraged for easy DR configurations either in a syncronous or asynchronous configuration.
5. It’s vmware certified
6. It provides compession, dedupe and inline virus scanning. (not post process!)
7. metro clustering
8. global namespace
9. (this goes on and on)

[1] The opensolaris project wasn’t alone. Oracle’s purchase of Sun resulted in the forking of LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org, and MariaDB from MySQL. Bryan Cantrill’s talk at LISA  this year pretty much sums up oracle in a nutshell.

Outside the office I had the opportunities to get involved elsewhere as well. VMworld this year was awesome and I’m still watching presentations I didn’t watch live. VMunderground this year was pretty amazing. We had our biggest event ever. As always we had great sponsors and we were really impressed with the support and turnout from the community. I was invited to attend TechFieldDay6 but due to an unruly internal organ, attended TechFieldDay7 instead. Stephen Foskett runs a great event, and I was honored to be invited.

Locally, and against better judgement, I was voted in as president for my local LUG, and even though I didn’t have any intentions of running, I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. I’m also excited that we may be able to start more coordinated and focused efforts with the Iowa Ubuntu LoCo, as I’m moving into a more active role there as well.

One of the more interesting things I’ve done this year was take some time to attend the Open Storage Summit in San Jose. Great week, great presentations, and I took away a ton of information. Maybe more importantly, I took away the knowledge that these guys (and gals) are really building something different, something open, and something with community at the forefront. The team around illumos is really focused on making a difference. Nexenta has been a big supporter of VMUGs around the globe, and of course VMunderground as well.

The storage market has got to be a tough nut to crack. Buying your storage from a software company is something new in the minds of many companies and IT management, but it isn’t a new idea. Most of us in the industry today are completely ok with buying our compute and OS resource management from a software company. VMware has effectively moved the cheese for many MANY hardware companies. I don’t need to buy “windows specific” or linux optimized” hardware. Solid hardware that supports VMware is enough. This change isn’t done yet. I think Stephen Foskett’s assessment of VMware as Oedipus has legs. This doesn’t mean that traditional storage vendors are going to toss in the towel, there is significant innovation going on industry wide and they’ve got huge war chests to spend. It just means, like always, things are changing. This is a really exciting time to be involved in technology.

With the adaption of vmware’s VSA it’s important to realize, now more than ever, you don’t have to wrap mostly expensive tin around your software anywhere, anymore. You can leverage commodity hardware. You can build what you need, when you need it.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this tirade. New projects and new challenges. At this point it should be pretty evident where I’m placing my chips. It was a tough decision but I’ve decided to leave LightEdge and jump feet first into the open storage arena. I’ll be starting soon with Nexenta helping get open storage based solutions deployed to customers around the globe. Lightedge has been a great company to work for and I wish them the best of luck as they move forward.

In charting a new course I’m looking forward to new and exciting challenges. Wish me luck!

• it’s wildly successful

to me this means lots of updates and support for packages both from the vendor (canonical) as well as the community.

• support available from ONE install

What other distribution has one install for the community AND commercial support? Yea. I can’t think of one either. This allows users to choose how much support they want/need from one virtual appliance/installation.

• small minimal virtual machine footprint

The ovf will fit neatly on a 512M usb drive when complete.

why another virtual appliance tutorial?

I know that building virtual appliances is old hat for many of you, but I keep getting the question about how to build virtual appliances for distribution. In a recent scenario at my work, they were looking for a splunk virtual appliance that members of the consulting group could quickly leave on site. I thought this would be a good walkthrough. Let me know if you have any questions.

let’s get started!

First things first we need to download a copy of ubuntu server. Once you’ve got your iso downloaded, go ahead and build out the base VM that you’re going to use. For these types of deployments, I go ahead and configure the appliance inside a vApp as we are starting to deploy more of these on vCloud deployments.

build your vApp and VM

• In vSphere, right click on your cluster or host and select New vApp.
• Name your vApp, select next.
• If you need/want to isolate resources specifically for this vApp you can do so on the Resource Allocation screen. I’ll go ahead and reserve 1G of Memory cause I’m greedy like that. Select next.
• Select Finish and find your vApp in the VM list.
  Now we need to add the VM to the vApp.
• Right click on the vApp and select New Virtual Machine.
• Name your virtual machine and select Next (this demo will be for spunk so I’ll use the ever so cunning name splunk. Select Next.
• select which datastore you want this VM to temporarily live, select next.
• select the Guest Operating System for this VM, in this case, select the Linux radio button, and select Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) in the Version dropdown window. Select Next. (you did download the 64bit version right?!)
• Set the size of your virtual appliance, I’ll crank this down to 10G, as the splunk data directories will be remote NFS mounted in most cases. I’m a huge fan of thin provisioning. check it if it’s appropriate for your workload. select Next.
• Select Finish.
  

  install ubuntu

  mount the iso to your vm, and start ‘er up. Once you’ve selected your language, on the initial install screen…

• select f4

• select Install a minimal virtual machine [1]

• select enter (this takes you back to the main screen)
• select Install Ubuntu Server (should be checked by default) Select Next
• select your language again (don’t ask) Hit Enter
• select your location. hit Enter
• select No for keyboard layout
• select your Keyboard language (English (US) is default)
• select your Keyboard layout (English (US) is default)
• The system will load additional components as needed
• Network configuration. I SERIOUSLY recommend DHCP for just about everything. It’s 2011 folks, DNS and DHCP works.
• give your appliance a hostname (splunkappliance in my case) Select next.
• it’ll start up the clock and check your time zone. change it if needed or select Yes.
• For partitioning, I select Guided – use entire disk and set up LVM to make it easier to expand the install as needed down the road if required. Select this and hit enter
• default vm will have one disk listed, select it and hit enter.
• Select Yes to write the changes to disk, and hit enter
• If using LVM you’ll be prompted with the maximum amount of space in the volume group. Select Continue and hit enter.
• Select Yes to write the changes to disk and hit enter
• Enter your default full username, select continue.
• Enter your default user name, select continue.
• Enter your default password, select continue.
• You’ll be prompted with “How do you want to manage upgrades on this system?” I select install security updates automatically so I don’t have to worry about being blamed for something that is WAY outside my control 6 months from now. It’ll still happen, but I’ll sleep easier. Select which of the first two you want, and hit enter.
• Choose software to install. The only thing I select here is OpenSSH server. that’s it. select it and select continue.
• This will start the package install, and it should go relatively fast
• select Yes to install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record.
• Select Continue to finish your installation
• unmount the iso from vSphere client
• The above will install a really base system for your virtual appliance. I go ahead and install openssh-server on the vm so that it doesn’t need unproxied internet access during it’s first boot to get it installed. As I’m regenerating the ssh keys anyway, I don’t worry about it too much. This VM should boot REALLY really fast.
  

  /etc/issue

  /etc/issue.net is the file that handles what is displayed before a user logs in. like this:
  

  that’s pretty boring right? what we want for our appliance is to have something awesome like this:

  

  To get this we’ll need to do a couple of things. we’ll want to create a new script that is run at bootup every time. This will generate the /etc/issue.net for us after we get our ip address. Here’s the contents of a generic one I used for this demo. Adjust as needed.

  
  #! /bin/bash
  #
  # issue-reset set ipaddr in /etc/issue
  #
  # chkconfig: 2345 90 60
  # description: this will echo the ip address to /etc/issue for display
  #
  # Source function library.
  #. /etc/init.d/functions
  RETVAL=0
  #
  # See how we were called.
  #
  prog=”issue-reset”
  start() {
  #
  #change /etc/issue to display ip address
  #
  echo “AWESOMETACULAR Splunk Appliance” > /etc/issue
  echo “Powered by Ubuntu Linux and caffeine” >> /etc/issue
  echo ” ” >> /etc/issue
  netcount=$(/sbin/ifconfig | grep -o “inet”)
  if [[ $netcount > 1 ]]
  then
  echo “To manage this virtual appliance please use a web ” >> /etc/issue
  echo “browser on a different system and navigate to ” >> /etc/issue
  echo ” ” >> /etc/issue
  /sbin/ifconfig | grep “inet addr” | grep -v “127.0.0.1″ | awk ‘{ print $2 }’ | awk -F: ‘{ print “http://”$2″:8000″ }’>> /etc/issue
  echo ” ” >> /etc/issue
  else
  echo “This appliance does not have networking configured. Please log in to configure networking” >> /etc/issue
  fi
  echo ” ” >> /etc/issue
  cp /etc/issue /etc/issue.net
  # RETVAL=$?
  echo
  [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ]
  return $RETVAL
  }
  case “$1″ in
  start)
  start
  ;;
  *)
  echo $”Usage: $0 {start}”
  exit 1
  esac

  exit $?
  

  Once you’ve downloaded this, we’re going to move it to the /etc/init.d directory and rename it banner:
  mv ./banner.txt /etc/init.d/banner
  change the owner to root, and make it executable.
  sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/banner && sudo chown root.root /etc/init.d banner
  add /etc/init.d/banner to be run at startup:
  sudo update-rc.d banner defaults

  that’s it! You’ll want to edit that file to make it reflect what you want it to say, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

  firstboot startup script

  There are a couple of ways to handle first boot only startup scripts. The easiest way I’ve found is to edit the rc.local file to run a script, and when complete, clean up after itself. Here’s what my firstboot script looks like:

  
  #This script is run the first time a user logs in
  echo “Your Splunk appliance is almost finished being deployed”

  INSTALL=”apt-get install -y”
  REMOVE=”apt-get remove -y”
  SPLUNK_HOME=”/opt/splunk”
  apt-get update

  # email
  $INSTALL exim4-daemon-heavy

  # expire the user account passwd
  passwd -e defaultuser

  # new ssh key generation
  rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host*key*
  dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive -p critical openssh-server

  # splunk
  dpkg -i /root/splunk-4.2.4-110225-linux-2.6-amd64.deb

  #start splunk server for the first time
  $SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk start –accept-license

  #configure splunk to autostart at boot
  $SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk enable boot-start

  # clean up
  sed -i ‘s_/root/firstboot.sh_exit 0_’ /etc/rc.local

  echo “firstboot complete”
  

  You’ll want create a file with that as the content, save it, and put it somewhere where it can be run during boot. For ease of this demo, we’re going to put it in our home folder. Don’t Judge, this is just a demo.

  sudo mv ./firstboot.txt /root/firstboot.sh && sudo chmod +x /root/firstboot.sh && sudo chown root.root /root/firstboot.sh

  Now we’re going to setup this script to be run during first boot. using whatever editor you want edit /etc/rc.local and remove the exit 0 line and substitute it with the following line:

  /root/firstboot.sh

  Let’s walk through firstboot.sh and take a look at what we’re doing. In our example, we’re creating a splunk virtual appliance, so from the top:

• we’re updating our repositories
• we’re installing an MTA for splunk to use.
• we’re expiring the password for our default user account. Change this to reflect whatever username you selected.
• we’re deleting and regenerating ssh keys
• we’re installing splunk. For this example, you’ll need to get the splunk .deb package downloaded and put somewhere accessible. It’s free, go grab it now.
• Now we’re going to do some startup specific commands for splunk, first we’re going to set splunk to start for the first time and accept the license.
• Next we’re going to go ahead and configure splunk to start every time the server starts.
• after that’s complete, we’re going to clean up /etc/rc.local to not run this script again.That’s it for our startup script. pretty straightforward.
  

  Test your appliance

• power off the VM and create a snapshot.
• Power the vm on and test the startup, the install of our splunk package, and the firstboot configuration steps.
• If everything works, go ahead and roll back our changes and create your ovf below
• if it doesn’t power back on and dig in
  

  add some info to your appliance

  If you’re planning on posting updates to this, or you want to provide the default username and password information directly in the ovf file, you’ll want to edit some of the details of your vApp.

• Right-click on your vApp and select Edit Settings.
• On the options tab, select Advanced.
• Enter your appliance name, website, and any other information that you want to provide.

• export to ovf

• From the vSphere client, select the vApp, and in the File menu select Export, Export OVF Template.
• pick a directory where you can store your appliance
• export!

• test appliance

  one last test of your appliance and you’re ready for deployments. This last check for me usually provides a sanity check for the finished appliance. to deploy from vSphere client just:

• select file
• deploy OVF template
• browse to the directory and select the OVF file
• the only thing you should have to do other than picking a datastore, is selecting a network
• Go get a cup of coffee while the deployment occurs
• done!

• conclusion

  This walkthrough for a splunk appliance is pretty simple but if done correctly virtual appliances deployments can shave hours off of simple traditional application installations for your team. Getting more advanced versions of this, you could get fancy and add additional layers like puppet autoconfigs to further automate package deployments. Let me know what you think and if this worked for you!

  [1] this is what used to be the ubuntu JeOS install.

overview

First off, if you’re interested in the rapidly changing world around open storage software solutions and/or ZFS based storage, you should try to go next year. seriously. Start thinking about this now. This year had three great tracks and solid keynotes around the evolving world of storage and the datacenter, and it all made for a great show.

event organization

As a regular vmworld attendee, my bar is set pretty high about scale and size. This conf is much MUCH smaller. I quickly made my way through registration, and wandered around the partner area. The “people herding” side of running an event always seems to be where it falls apart, but this event was well organized and ran smoothly.

Thumbing through the schedule one of the things that stuck me was that all of the tracks had solid presentations, for both days. Like vmworld, when I wasn’t sure, I just dropped in on the session that I’d have the most questions to ask at the end of the presentation, hoping that the videos will be made available after the fact (Hey Nexenta, they are going to be made available right?)

Lunch was handled efficiently, and the dining area was large separate room.

keynotes

Keynotes were well planned and Nexenta did a great job getting speakers lined up.

That was just a few of them. All in all, an impressive lineup.

sessions

Out of all of the sessions that I sat through, I’ve got to say three of them stuck with me for different reasons.

I wasn’t expecting what I got in this session. at all. ACTIVE / ACTIVE / ACTIVE metro cluster (yea that’s three way) up and running today on nexenta with vmware. HOLY FRAKING AWESOME.

Sitting through this really made a few lightbulbs go off. the premise of this is why ZFS makes a silly awesome VSA for VDI workloads. I’ll write up something about this here in the coming week or so, it really deserves it’s own blogpost.

This was a closing presentation right before the summit ended. This was your typical “tuning” presentation, except for a few things:

1. it ran long…. like over an hour long.
2. no one got up and left. There were rears in chairs for the whole thing.

parties

You’d have been shocked if I hadn’t mentioned the parties right? Nexenta and sponsors threw a REALLY solid party at the Loft Bar and Bistro. While it wasn’t an official party around Open Storage Summit, some of the vmware folks in the area threw a #vBeers event on thursday night that was well attended and it was great seeing the nexenta team show up in force also. Thanks again to @KokopeIIi for organizing the silicon valley vbeers events.

closing thoughts

The three sessions highlighted above really solidified what I see going on in the open storage arena today:

I’ll be adding some photos that I took later this week. look for them here.

1. download an Ubuntu 11.10 Server iso.

2. Create a vm in vmware. I’ll assume you’re good there and skip that part.
3. mount your new iso and install Ubuntu Server 11.10 server.
   when you get to package selection, do nothing. just do a minimal install.

4. update and upgrade your system
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

5. install a supporting package for step 6…
   sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

6. add the cloudfoundry repositories
   sudo apt-add-repository ppa:cloudfoundry/ppa

7. update and install cloudfoundry server
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cloudfoundry-server
   During the install process you’ll be asked to set the root password for the mysql server that is installed as a dependency. You’ll also be asked for IP address information. This is information you’ll need to have if you want you installation to be publicly visible and is behind a firewall.

   Yea, it’s that easy.

   client install

   If you want to get the client installed on a different vm, follow the steps above on a fullblown Ubuntu to install the repositories (steps 5 and 6 above)

   Once that’s done it’s as easy as
   sudo apt-get install cloudfoundry-client
   to get the vmc installed.

   That should have all taken up about 15-20 minutes of your life, start to finish. (post downloads of course)

   Where to go from here?

   Dustin Kirkland has some great writeups about ubuntu and cloudfoundry so I recommend reading up on his blog here for some great examples.

   I’ll follow this up with some posts about wordpress and how to get it running in a cloudfoundry deployment soonish.

   ]]> http://conrey.org/2011/10/20/cloudfoundry-zero-to-server-in-7-steps/feed/ 2 http://conrey.org/2011/09/05/vmunderground-2011/ http://conrey.org/2011/09/05/vmunderground-2011/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:50:06 +0000 theron http://www.conrey.org/?p=1363 Let me start by saying thanks to all of our amazing sponsors. This year was hands down the best party we’ve thrown. It’s hard to top the thirsty bear in SFO, but the Nine Fine Irishman in LAS was a roaring success. Thank you to everyone who helped out and I’ll be posting some pictures over at the VMunderground site as soon as I can.

   I’m not sure there could have been a better way to kick off VMworld, and now that the event is over, looking back, I’m not sure it could have gone any better. Now to start planning a way to top it next year!

   Cheers!

   ]]> http://conrey.org/2011/09/05/vmunderground-2011/feed/ 1 http://conrey.org/2011/08/08/tech-field-day-lucky-number-7/ http://conrey.org/2011/08/08/tech-field-day-lucky-number-7/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:39:16 +0000 theron http://www.conrey.org/?p=1334 While I was on the docket for Tech Field Day 6 attendance AND a co-sponsored VMunderground Party my appendix decided it wasn’t going to play nicely. I made an example out of it and had it removed. I’m hoping that’s enough to keep the rest of my organs in line while I attend Tech Field Day 7. For those of you not familiar with Tech Field Day, here’s a blurb from TechFieldDay.com:

   Our Field Day events bring together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders to share information and opinions in a presentation and discussion format. Independent bloggers, freelance writers, and podcasters have a public presence that has immense influence on the ways that products and companies are perceived and by the general public.

   Tech Field Day 7 is being held in the grand city of Austin, TX. and will be sponsored by Dell, Veeam, Symantec, and Solarwinds.

   I’m thrilled to be a part of this event, and looking forward to meeting my fellow delegates as well as the presenting sponsors. This event is going to be awesome and I’m bringing a little something special to share from IA. I hope someone from Alaska is coming with quality ice.

   ]]> http://conrey.org/2011/08/08/tech-field-day-lucky-number-7/feed/ 1 http://conrey.org/2011/05/18/lvm-and-vmware-linux-guests-just-do-it/ http://conrey.org/2011/05/18/lvm-and-vmware-linux-guests-just-do-it/#comments Wed, 18 May 2011 05:23:10 +0000 theron http://www.conrey.org/?p=1329 What is LVM?

   Logical Volume Manager (LVM) provides a (virtualized would be a stretch) logical presentation of storage to the OS rather than physical devices. With LVM, logical partitions can span across multiple physical volumes. A single physical disk can divided into one or more physical volumes. This allows for a layer of mgmt above the base disk, before it get’s presented to the base os, for accessing and using physical storage.
   

   Why would I use it?

   Why wouldn’t you?! Most linux operating systems today offer LVM as part of the install. This can be chosen with no impact on the system even if no future changes are made to the disk layout. Say you’ve got a template that is 40G in size, and you’re deploying out a file server that will need additional space. Go ahead and use the template, and just add an additional disk (in the form of a physical volume) to the logical volume. easy peasy. This means you don’t have to have different templates for every possible use imaginable. If you need to reutilize a server for a customer, or for a new workload, you can remove physical volumes from a logical volume as well. Coupling this with a standardized base template and you’ve just tackled the problem of being unable to shrink vmdk files. (deleting, adding disks, copying data, removing disks gets to be a pain for a busy vmware admin)

   Example base install

   While it’s different for every distro during install it’s pretty straightforward during the disk selection and formating section. In ubuntu for instance, it’s already the default option you’re presented with during an 11.04 server installation:
   

   Adding an additional drive

   For this example I’ve created 10G ubuntu 11.04 vm. The first thing I need to do in order to add additional space to this VM would be to add another disk to the VM.

   With the vm powered up, From the vm console, select Edit Settings. In the Virtual machine properties window select the add button, select settings, select add Hard disk. In the Add hardware window, select the create new virtual disk radio button and select next. Set the size of the disk you’d like to add, and select next. Make a mental note of the Virtual device node (usually 0:1 for the first disk added after the base), select next, review the selection, and select finish.
   With the disk now listed in the Virtual machine properties window in bold, select OK. This will create and add the disk to your vm.

   rescanning

   Once you’ve added the disk, you’ll need to rescan the scsi bus to avoid downtime.

   you can run a

   ls /sys/class/scsi_host

   to identify the scsi hosts on your system.

   and run a

   echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host2/scan

   command to rescan the host bus and identify and new drives installed.

   adding a physical volume to the new drive

   to prep the disk, first thing I’ll do is format it:

   sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

   I’ll create a new partition (select n), primary (select p), select the 1st partition, (select 1), and use the whole disk (selecting the default options for first and last cylinder). Now I need to identify the partition as an LVM volume (select t to change the type, select 8e for Linux LVM) With that done we need to commit our changes (select w) and that should do it for the disk partition. To verify, you can run fdisk /dev/sdb and select p to display your disk’s partition information.

   

   first thing you need to do is add a physical volume to the new disk.

   pvdisplay will list the existing physical volumes.

   

   I’ll go ahead and initialize the new physical volume on the new drive.

   pvcreate /dev/sdb1

   doing a pvdisplay again will show the new physical volume created.

   adding the new disk to the logical volume

   first thing you want to do is identify what logical volume you want to add the disk to.

   sudo lvdisplay

   will list out the existing logical volumes on your system.
   

   I’m going to add the physical volume group I just created to the ubuntu volume group.
   vgextend ubuntu /dev/sdb1

   Now we need to extend the volume group to use the additional space. You won’t be able to use all of the drive, but you’ll get most of it.
   lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/ubuntu/root

   Now that the volume is using the new disk, we need to get the file system to identify it as well.

   warning: there are tons of reported issues this next command can cause while running on a mounted file system. While I haven’t seen it be safe kids, use snapshots.
   resize2fs -p /dev/ubuntu/root

   done!

   With that done, do a df -h and see your new and improved logical volume.

   interesting note: for those times when you actually are stuck trying to exceed the 2TB single vmdk limitation, and don’t want to publish new VMFS storage, using LVM is an easy way to get around the limit without having to make changes to your filesystem layout.

   summary

   I see enough linux installs to know that using LVM makes my life easier. I’m willing to bet if you’re using it actively today, you’d say the same thing. If you’re deploying linux vms for anything, take the time and set up your appliances for LVM. It makes adjusting them down the road that much easier. (I’m looking at you EMC) Additionally, this just scratches the surface of what you can do with LVM, demonstrating a single function to ease growing available space on a single volume. Once you’ve started using LVM, take the time to familiarize yourself with the rest of what LVM can help you do.

   References:

   http://www.redhat.com/magazine/009jul05/features/lvm2/
   http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
   http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/vmware-add-a-new-hard-disk-without-rebooting-guest.html

   ]]> http://conrey.org/2011/05/18/lvm-and-vmware-linux-guests-just-do-it/feed/ 1 http://conrey.org/2011/04/19/panologic-is-still-crushing-it/ http://conrey.org/2011/04/19/panologic-is-still-crushing-it/#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:18:18 +0000 theron http://www.conrey.org/?p=1236 Since vmware view 4.5 was released I’ve been spending more and more time looking at ways to deploy virtual desktops out to customers. Now that we’re dropping 4.6 in POCs and customer deployments, I’ve tried wyse thin clients, 10zig, and a couple of other brands. I’m still building my own custom view client bootable usb drives and cdroms.

   The addition of PCoIP to the vmware view arsenal was a watershed moment (or so I thought) as the ability to effectively stream audio and video to the device is critical.* As most people in the vdi arena I’ve talked to say, but don’t always say out loud “If you can’t watch youtube, some decision maker is going to claim vdi is a non starter for your environment”.

   I’d looked at the panologic zero clients at vmworld for a couple of years, but I was never in a position to really give one a test drive. The form factor of the devices was awesome. Talking with the folks on the vmworld floor, the installation was described as easy. I knew it didn’t use PCoIP, but even the video streaming appeared to be solid. Friends of mine kept telling me that they were worth looking into, but I wasn’t sure what the value add would be. Until now.

   

   the plan

   When Pano showed interest in being a sponsor for vmunderground this year, I was thrilled that they’d send me a unit to break test. Rather than just drooling over the device from now until vmworld, I looked at my office as a potential pano POC envionment. I sized out the required infrastructure, the number of units, the amount of bandwidth per device required, and the software costs. If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it well. (this article is more of a summary, if you’re looking for details, feel free to reach out to me)

   hardware

   When you open a pano zero client box, there is only one response. Damn this thing is sexy. They come in black and chromified (silver) and I gotta say, all chromed up, it looks good even powered off. Ports are ample; a DVI port (with adapter to vga), ethernet, 4 usb ports, and a headphone jack. Brain dead to hook it up. This is when I’d wished I made a note of the mac address for later, as it’s under the vga adapter. It’s also solid and heavy enough that if someone is walking fast towards you with one in their hand and they look angry, you should be nervous.

   software

   If you’re deploying pano, it’s important to note you really don’t need full blown vmware view. If you’ve got solid templates, good user management software, deduped storage, fast disk, and some cache, the pano management software does the rest.

   First part is go install deploy the pano manager virtual appliance. The link for this is provided from the folks at pano when you get your units. Save the appliance locally, and from within the vSphere Client select file > Deploy OVF template.

   Browse to where you’ve saved the virtual appliance, and select it, and select next.

   play the next, next, next, next game, selecting the datastore for the appliance, as well as how you want it configured to sit on your virtual infrastructure.

   Sit back and wait for the appliance to upload.

   Configuring the pano management software

   The pano manager configuration is as easy as tying it into your AD environment and locating devices on your network. (great directions on the pano website here) My lab environment was overly simplistic, and I’m sure that I didn’t take advantage of all of the configuration features I could have. For me though, the really interesting thing was that it took less than 10 minutes to go from appliance on the network to logging into zero clients.

   testing

   This was the first real test of my new vmware lab box, so I was excited to stretch it’s legs. During setup one of the key points about pano that should be talked about with more gusto is the simplicity of getting up and running. The configuration manager functionality was easy to use, the web interface is easy to navigate, and overall the complete lack of management on the end points saved me a significant amount of time. Basic desktop functionality for work was a no brainer and the redraw times were fast enough that I didn’t feel I was connecting to a remote VM. Oh, and youtube works just fine. Better than fine. amazing. The pano Control panel software is easy to adjust on the vm that is the target, interestingly the display was still rocking at an amazing 1680×1050 display resolution.

   My test case was to use this terminal for a week solely. This only lasted for about a day. Not due to any fault of the device, but because I was used to using more screen real estate and I didn’t have the dual monitor adapter. I defaulted to installing synergy plus in the vm and tying it to my laptop. This worked out perfectly, and the vm worked flawlessly streaming video and other important tasks. Additionally, I could test it against local applications easily.
   

   Video and bandwidth is something that needs to be addressed during planning any type of deployment. From a completely idle state the port traffic would drop to under 10 kbps a second. This is next to nothing. no screen redraws. nothing. However, when hulu or youtube was opened, the utilization climbed up. and up. and up.

   At one point with hulu, I has a window open using 3/4 of the available screen real estate and it was over 30 Mbps a second of traffic thru the port. For those not in the know, that’s a lot of traffic. Not saying that most users are going to be watching hulu at work, but I wanted to see what it would top out at. This was still completely watchable, so I made the window bigger making a larger area to refresh. This pushed the bandwidth used over 40 Mbps, and the screen started chopping up. I assume it was just way more than the video could handle locally. I also noticed at this point the device got warm. Not quite heat your coffee for you warm, but close. I understand this isn’t the target usage for this device but when it is used, it’s important it works.

   conclusion

   This thing rocks. With proper bandwidth planning in place, a solid vmware infrastructure, deduped FAST disk and very little effort you could easily deploy an entire small office with this type of solution in an afternoon. I can see why Pano is still considered top kit in the VDI space. If you’re looking for more information you can contact Pano directly for a starter kit, or contact a pano partner. If you’re around the 515 give me a ring and I can help point you in the right direction.

   * Hey vmware, where the heck is the PCoIP bits in the freely available linux view client?! The vendors have had these bits for well over a year. If I hear the open source argument one more time around this, I’m now going to redirect those folks to vmware’s awesome spring / cloud foundry crew to explain how it can be done legally.

   ]]> http://conrey.org/2011/04/19/panologic-is-still-crushing-it/feed/ 1 http://conrey.org/2011/04/18/new-esxi-test-box-the-green-machine/ http://conrey.org/2011/04/18/new-esxi-test-box-the-green-machine/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:34:55 +0000 theron http://www.conrey.org/?p=1291 For the longest time I had effectively removed most of the lab equipment from my house*. I was down to a laptop and a thin client, with most of my test gear either moved into a datacenter, or services moved over to a xenkibbutz guest. As a vExpert for 2010 I’m grateful that I have the chance to really dig in and test the breadth of vmware’s software offerings. While I could use a gear here and there at work, there were quite a few things that I needed a different environment for or where I couldn’t use work gear.

   So out to newegg I went, credit card (and budget) in hand, and ordered up some new guts for an almost john deere green chieftec matrix case that I just haven’t been able to part with for years.

   Here is my newegg parts list:

8. 1 x AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
9. 1 x MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
10. 1 x ZALMAN 9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
11. 2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL
12. 1 x 2GB usb drive (random vendor swag)

All in all I made it out of newegg at just under 500 bucks.

I used the instructions for installing esxi from here to install esxi on a flash drive for the boot device. The power supply I poached from a different old computer that I had mostly parted out already. I liberated an old dual port intel nic from an old server in the garage, as the onboard nic doesn’t work with ESXi and I was set. For a temporary vm storage solution, I’m using some spare drives internal to the server. A storage server is next, and I’m leaning on Matt B. from storageadventures.com and zfsbuild.com to help out with a crazy cheap nexenta lab box.

It’s been fun putting a box together, something I haven’t done for years, and I’ve got it tucked away in a corner at work for some testing. It’s amazing how quickly something like this goes from zero to hosting vms. If you’re in the market to piece together or buy an esxi lab box for your lab and don’t know where to start, I’d recommended Eric Siebert’s page here. I spent a good deal of time reading up, and I’m happy with what I pieced together. I think this old case of mine is going to be appropriate for testing out some new veeam hotness as well.


*ok maybe I haven’t gotten rid of EVERYTHING I could have, but most of it’s at least powered off.

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