VMworld 2014 Recap

Well, VMworld 2015 is next week so I guess I'd better get this one published!  I actually found this sitting in my drafts, I was waiting for a picture to come through which took so long I forgot to go back and publish it after receiving it!  So here it is in all it's glory...

This was my first VMworld as an employee.  My new role gave me a unique perspective to the conference.  Having attended every previous conference as a VMware customer has given me knowledge and experience I can pass on to my customers so they can get the most out of the conference.

Consequently, I walked through the Solutions Exchange but didn't spend as much time there as I normally do.  I attended a whopping one break-out session, and all of the general sessions.  Why?  Because I spent most of my time with my customers - assisting them in some form or shape.  I also spent a lot of time at TAM Customer Central.  What is TCC you ask?  It's a top secret location we reserve for VMware TAM customers where we provide special break-out sessions not available to VMworld attendees, receptions and meeting rooms among other things.

The theme this year was NO LIMITS.  Here is some cool desktop wallpaper for you:

And here is the Moscone all dressed up:

We were asked to provide pics of us with our customers for use as a collage at VMworld to be displayed at various times such as just before and after the general sessions.  Here's the pic I sent in with "Mr. Corvette" Jarod and his red sports car that made us mini-celebrities for the week:

Another one of those TAM customer benefits is the Hands-on Labs VIP tour.  This gives select customers a behind-the-scenes look at HOL operations and how the whole thing is managed.  Check out these stats:

Its interesting that the NSX lab remained the most popular lab during the entire conference - indicates a lot of interest by our customers.  And, consequently I think, this product continues to gain momentum in the marketplace.

And pics of how we used Log Insight and vCOps to monitor the environment via custom dashboards:

Even though I attended as a VMware employee this year, I was still invited to the CTO party (I had customers in attendance, so I'm sure that helped):

Why yes Johnny, everything is better with bacon:

And a pic from the Alumni Elite pre-party party - the pic I was waiting for as it was taken by someone else's camera - which wouldn't be complete without a shot with the big guy (me=literally, Mr. Gelsinger=figuratively):

And finally, lookie at what I found:

I found a "Meet the Experts" area hidden (not really) on the third floor of Moscone West.  If you have any technical or strategic product questions, these are the guys to ask and anyone can sign-up.  I highly recommend this resource if we offer it again in 2015.

Here's to seeing you there next year (he says with bacon in one hand, bourbon in the other)!

Moving a DFS-Replicated Share to a New Drive

Here is the process I've followed successfully several times:

Add drives/VMDKs to file server VM

In the Windows OS:

•    I used 500GB VMDKs and created a Spanned Volume
•    Use GPT partition style to allow volumes greater than 2TB (future-proof the volume)
•    Use Dynamic type disk to allow for Spanned Volumes
•    I named the volume "Spanned" so I could easily recognize the drive

Copy Data to the new volume

Create Robocopy batch file on C drive:


robocopy d:\home n:\home /E /DCOPY:T /COPYALL /R:1 /W:1 /NP /LOG:c:\scripts\HomeCopy.logThe source path should include the directory on the root drive (probably drive D) because of inherited permissions
Run this once per day to minimize the amount of files required to be copied for the final sync
Perform the final sync

Stop DFS Replication service

Stop DFS Namespace service

Delete the share

Run last robocopy batch file

Make sure to close all sessions (except yours) and open files.

Delete the old pagefile

wmic computersystem set AutomaticManagedPagefile=False
wmic pagefile (lists pagefiles)
wmic pagefileset where name="D:\\pagefile.sys" delete

Switch Drive Letters

Final Robocopy job must be complete!

Review the log file to ensure all files have been copied in the final pass.

Note that Robocopy will probably error on "desktop.ini" files - these are unimortant and will re-created by the OS so you can safely ignore these errors on these files.

Delete all data on the replicated share

DFSR will notice the drive has changed and will try to do a full sync.  If you don't perform this step the replicated share destination will likely fill up and run out of space.

Start DFS Replication service
Start DFS Namespace service
OR REBOOT SERVER

Create Pagefile on new drive

Create new instance:

wmic.exe pagefileset create name="D:\pagefile.sys"

Set Size:

wmic.exe pagefileset where name="D:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=8191,MaximumSize=8191

Dont' use "MB" at end of size (ulike MS KB); Set for 8191MB (Good for 8GB system)
shutdown -r -f -t 0

For memory dump files and other settings, see:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424384(WS.10).aspx

Post Move Testing
Test namespace
Test replication
Test VSS

Troubleshooting

Check the log files at C:\Windows\Debug

If you see the message "content not set" in the log run the following command to set primary replication membership:
DFSRADMIN Membership Set /RGName:<replication group name> /RFName:<replicated folder name> /MemName:<member you want to be primary> /IsPrimary:True

See:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725893(WS.10).aspx - What happens during the initial replication

Check the DFS Management MMC

Re-add namespace server if its missing.
Also try disabling/re-enabling target folder.

Back in Black!

I hit the sack.  It's been too long I'm glad to be back...

Yes, it has been one year since I've blogged on VMware and virtualization.  Well, in my defense, a lot has happened keeping me from spending quality time with my beloved blog.

My biggest excuse = I joined VMware!  I am a Technical Account Manager for customers in the Dayton/Cincinnati area.  Shameless plug = if you would like to know more about what a TAM can do for you, please reach out to me by leaving a comment and I'll get back to you.

I was warned that the first year is like drinking from the fire hose and I found that to be true, but in a good way.  So yes, I did neglect my blog to the point of having to delete drafts that are no longer relevant.

But the good new is:  I'm back!  I've personally re-committed to posting articles on a more-frequent/regular basis (although not on a specific schedule, no change there).

Note that the opinions in my blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect that of my employer.  Also note the subject matter won't change either - I won't post "newsie" articles as there are too many other blogs that do a good job of that.

What I will publish are articles describing technical problems I'm seeing in the field along with their resolution.  I may also post articles of a more strategic nature on occasion.

My experience with customers in the field gives me a unique perspective (and fresh content!) on many IT topics.  Three of my accounts are in healthcare so I may also publish articles discussing challenges specific to that segment.

Finally, next week is VMworld 2014!  I'm doing things a little differently this year - instead of one VMworld recap article (which I may still publish), I'm going to try to post bits through-out the week so stay tuned!

They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To

Such a cliche, but so true when it comes to printers.  I purchased an HP OfficeJet Pro L7590 for $160 about 3 years ago and it recently failed.  The print heads need to be replaced.  The cheapest price I could find?  $68 each and this printer needs 2 - that's almost the price I paid for it!!!  After further investigation I discovered this is an all-to-common scenario.  Manufacturers are making printers cheap (as in low quality), selling them cheap (as in low-price) and making money on the expensive consumables - ink, paper, printheads, etc.  If your printer experiences a problem not covered under warranty, in most cases it's cheaper to pitch it and buy a new one than to get it fixed.  Does this make any sense?

The OfficeJet printed quality prints while it lasted, but now is relegated to scanning duties, since that's the only function that works on it.

Around the same time, my HP LaserJet 4100 started printing really bad lines and other artifacts on the paper.  Here is an example:

First, let me tell you a little bit about this printer.  I acquired it from a previous employer that was just going to throw it away.  I literally saved it just before it was going to be thrown in the dumpster.  It wasn't working and the help desk administrators figured it was cheaper to pitch it than get it fixed.  This thing did live on the factory floor in a harsh environment.  It had a thin covering of black soot and looked even worse inside.

I took it home and the following weekend blew out as much gunk as I could with my air compressor.  It still wouldn't work.  I noticed it had a memory DIMM installed so I removed it, cleaned out the area and reinstalled the module.  Voila!  The printer booted successfully.  The toner cartridge had about a 1000 more pages left!  Test prints looked nice and clean.

It continued to create great looking output for about 2 years, then started experiencing the problem mentioned previously.  After further investigation, one of the suggestions was to replace the toner cartridge.  I purchased a refurbished cartridge and installed it into the printer but no luck, same problem.  Then I found what would finally fix the problem and wouldn't you know, the part costs $20!  Wait... what?  I don't have to throw the whole thing out?  Yep, and let me tell you, these things are built like tanks.  HP probably hates how so many 4x00's are still in production.  For $20, why not fix it?  Yes, they are somewhat slow compared to newer laser printers and it's only black/white, but the price per page is very low.

If you see lines on pages like the one pictured above, you most likely need a new fuser sleeve.  In some cases, I would recommend a whole fuser kit, which runs roughly $60.  In my case, I decided to try replacing the fuser sleeve with a new one I purchased on eBay (made in America, ironically enough).
The old one looked like this:

Notice the lines and discoloration on the sides.  There's even a small piece of paper "fused" to the sleeve on the far left.  Now here's what a new one looks like:

Notice the smooth, even and darker black color of the sleeve.  It was very easy to replace - here's a link to a video with step-by-step instructions:

Now, the output looks like this:

Okay, so now that we've replaced the fuser sleeve and the output is looking great.  Let's reset the page/paper and maintenance counts.

Reset Paper Count Procedure:

1. Turn the printer off
2. Hold down the value­ - and item - keys (the left side)
3. Switch the printer on
4. Release the keys when the display changes to reset maintenance count.

Reset Maintenance Count:

1. Turn the printer off
2. Turn the printer on
3. Press the select button when the memory starts to count and hold down until all three LEDs illuminate
4. Release the select button
5. Press up arrow until the message new maintenance kit is displayed on the control panel
6. Press select, the display will read new maintenance kit and the printer will reset.

Now you will have a Supplies Status print-out that looks like this:

Beautiful!  So if you come across an HP LaserJet 4x00, especially for free and even if it doesn't work, I highly recommend taking it home and spending an hour getting it working for years of future service.  They don't make printers like these anymore.

Post-VMworld 2013 Recap

Okay, yes, it's been too long coming, but it's finally here - my VMworld recap.  Now, I have a good excuse, but you'll have to read the next post for that!  Note that most of this was written shortly after the event, so in that since the content is "timely".  So here it is, enjoy!

Theme: Defy Convention - on the steps, pretty cool:

Ten years baby, yes!

There was the "10th Annual" wall this year where we all got our pics posted (and by all, and mean every attendee that wanted to have their pic posted).  We were one of the first pics taken so they're at the bottom of the "1".  Can you see me?

No?  Okay, then here's a close-up:

VMworld seemed to be about one word for VMware this year: focus.  I could see the focus (or re-focus in some cases) on the entire stack from the virtual infrastructure to hybrid cloud computing.  This focus seems to be coming from a renewed customer focus = they're really listening.  Proof-in-point = The shifting of vCloud Director features to vSphere and vCloud Automation Center, leaving the multi-tenant capabilities for cloud providers.  I really believe we have Pat Gelsinger to thank for this along with his management team.  With this renewed focus on customers, market and product/feature mix, I think VMware has really put itself in the position to continue to be on the forefront of innovation and an agent of change in the IT world.

Here are some other words that really defined VMworld 2013:
SSD
Flash
Software Defined x (datacenter, networking, storage, etc.)
Convergence (this time, as in compute, network and storage)
Imagine Dragons/Train
Alumni Elite (34 left!)
Server-side flash
Server-side cache
VSAN
vSphere 5.5
NSX
Did I mention SSDs?

Location: San Francisco this year and again next year - I really have nothing else to say about it.  I go there for the conference.  I actually prefer Vegas, but to each his own.

Keynotes: As I mentioned, this year was about a renewed focus on product mix and the datacenter stack including the following four areas - Compute, Storage, Networking and Operations.

The big story in Compute is the announcement of vSphere 5.5.  This will be a big release with a many improvements and new features.  I won't detail them in this post but you can read about them here:
https://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10385

The big story in Storage was, of course, VMware's new VSAN feature/technology.  And they announced a public beta you can download here:
http://www.vmware.com/vsan-beta-register

VMworld App:  Much better this year.  WiFi still weak during the general sessions, and it didn't help that the app was updated a half-million times during the event but I suppose there were a lot of schedule changes(?).

Alumni Elite Event:  Whoa!  The 10 year Alumni Elite event was, in a word, awesome!  They bused us down to Candlestick, er, AT&T park an hour before the VMworld party.  We got our own locker in the Giants locker room, along with great food and drink.  I'm not a big fan of clam chowder but it was so highly recommended I figured I had nothing to lose.  Holy cow, it was fantastic!

There were many highlights on this night, meeting VMware's CMO, Robin Matlock, was certainly one:

Getting to talk shop with VMware's CEO, Pat Gelsinger again this year was fantastic:

I also got to meet VMware's COO, Carl Eschenbach.  Let me tell you, all three of these executives were very down-to-earth, highly energetic, and very excited about VMware and the future of IT.  I really didn't expect them to be as genuine and accessible as they were but I was pleasantly surprised.  I really shouldn't have been since VMware is a great company that attracts great talent.

Later that evening we get to try the batting cages - 60MPH pitches, not a bad workout.  Out of six pitches, I made solid contact with three of them, whiffed one, got out of the way of one and fouled the last.  Pat is up after me and let me just say he made me look bad, and this was supposedly after only two hours of sleep!

Finally, I was told there are 34 of us left.  I only count 27 in this picture, so several didn't make it to the pre-party event.  We seem to lose about 10 per year.  25 next year?  I wonder who will be the last one standing?

VMworld Party:  Time to head out to the party:

It was a real "festive" atmosphere.  The entertainment for the night was Imagine Dragons and Train.  I thought both groups put on a great show.  Train was a bit of a surprise for me - I didn't realize how entertaining they would be nor did I realize how many of their songs I know until I heard them:

 

Solutions Exhibit:  There was another record number of exhibitors this year.  As always I highly recommend hitting the floor and talking to as many vendors as you can.  It a great way to discover new tools or solutions you may not have known even existed.  No unique schwag to report on this year, however there was still a lot of it if you wanted it.  And again, I didn't win anything - not that I tried very hard though.  There's always a group that hits it really hard.  I guess I don't have the patience, especially when I know the odds are quite high against me.

Attendance:  If there's one thing that's consistent about VMworld, it's that the attendance numbers go up every year and this year was no different:  over 30,000 - another record.

Break-out Sessions: I attended more of these this year than previous years and found them to be very useful.  This encourages me to go back to VMworld.com and view the ones I missed.  If you can't make VMworld, I highly recommended buying a subscription to gain access to the sessions.

Hands-on Labs:  These are all about timing - if you go at the right time, there's little-to-no line.  On the other hand, I saw lines that wrapped around the corner and outside of the building(!).  I'll try to take note of the best times next year, but for now my advice is if the line is long, keep checking back.  On a positive note, I did notice the line seemed to move at a decent pace.

Adventure:  So we asked a cabbie to take us to Gordon Biersch brewery/restaurant.  We had gone there the previous year and they had good food, great beer and scenery over-looking the bay.  So he drops us off at what looks like the right spot and takes off.  Walking up the steps we saw this:

Gordon Biersch = closed.  New Mozilla offices = opened.  At least it was tech-related?  Weird.  As we were walking back toward the pier, we stumbled upon an indoor/outdoor restaurant with a decent beer selection, so not all was lost!

So another great VMworld again this year.  What will next year bring?  All we know for certain is that it will be in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, August 25th-28th.

One last thing... why were there Hyper-V books in the store?

Until next year...

NGD: 1997 Fender American Standard Strat

I scored this one from GC Used for roughly half the going used rate.  The reason is because it was refinished - and it was either a terrible job or the previous owner tried to relic it.  Either way, the body needs a little TLC.

Until I have the time to properly refinish it, I stuck some stickers on it - one of which may look familiar to some of you.  It covers the name "Anna" that was carved into it.  I think it looks better now!

Yeah, the stickers really improved the tone. ;)

I've blogged about 90's strats before - the necks are great.  The bodies are typically heavier than more modern strats and don't have the same cuts/route measurements.  But I think their saddles are an acoustic improvement.  I understand the return to "vintage: rolled saddles, but they aren't "better".   I A/B this one with my 2011 Fender American Standard strat unplugged and the 90's was certainly louder, more acoustic with more "ring" to it (if that makes any sense).

The '97 pickups are as stratty-quack sounding as any I've heard.  The only confusing thing was the lack of a TBX tone pot.  It has three CTS pots so my guess is the stock pots were replaced.  Whoever did the replacement did it right as all pickups and switch positions function and sound as they should.

It didn't come with the trem bar but I happened to have an extra righty lying around so NBD.  I actually like the (opposite) curve though I might try to straighten it out jut a bit.

The neck is in great condition as are the frets.  There is some binding at the nut - the slots probably need to be widened a bit with a small dab of graphite.  No case but at the price I paid I can't complain.

So there it is, the VMware strat!

2013 VMware vExpert!

Looks like 2013 is going to be another stellar vYear!  I found out last week that I was awarded the vExpert designation again this year.  The official announcement and list can be found here:
http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2013/05/vexpert-2013-awardees-announced.html

VMware has a good thing going with this program - it gives them the opportunity to recognize those that are active in the virtualization community and provides benefits to the receivers from both VMware and it's partners.  Here's a partial list of the benefits I've received thus far:

• Eval licenses from VMware
• Polo shirt from Tintri (now x2)
• Free year subscription from Train Signal
• $100 off VMworld registration
• Free license for V-locity Performance Accelerator from Condusiv
• Access to various VMware beta programs like vSphere and Project NEE

On a related note, I also completed registration for VMworld 2013 last week.  A decade of VMworld!  Keep watching for my VMworld recap in early September.