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.

Re-Purposing an Old EMC Celerra

One of the reasons I was hired by my current employer was to implement an EMC Celerra NS352 NAS/SAN that was purchased the year before.  That was six years ago.  Since then I have moved all workloads off of this storage and on to other SANs.  So what to do with this device?  We tried selling it to four different vendors that specialize in used hardware - none of them would take it, not even for free.  Ouch!  Instead of paying a recycling company to come pick it up, I decided we could re-use it for tier II or III data.  Note that the Celerra has a CLARiiON SAN back-end.  I was never impressed with the Celerra's performance (putting it nicely) but connecting the CLARiiON directly to the SAN fabric and shutting-down/disconnecting all of the NAS head components should be worth the effort.  It does have roughly 13TB of 2Gb fibre drives after-all.

A word about maintenance:  This NAS/SAN system EOL'ed in February of this year.  Now the data I'm hosting on here will not be very important - backups, temporary data, test VMs, etc, but if a disk or other component fails (and it will), it would be more than nice to get the item replaced in a timely manner.  Enter third-party maintenance.  The Celerras were already under third-party maintenance, I simply worked with the existing vendor to convert the asset from Celerra to CLARiiON.  This also had the unexpected benefit of further reducing the cost of the maintenance contract.

The following sections document the process and procedures I used to re-purpose the CLARiiON back-end of two Celerras, giving a little more life to what would have otherwise been sent to the scrap heap.

Shutdown and Cabling

1. Power off Celerra NAS head (not CLARiiON disk shelves or Service Processor bay)
2. Disconnect Ethernet and fiber cables from SP bay.

Re-IP The Service Processors

1. Connect a laptop to the Ethernet port on SPA
2. Change laptop's IP to 128.221.252.111/255.255.255.0
3. Browse to 128.221.252.200 (SPA)
4. Logon using nasadmin/nasadmin
5. Drill down to SPA, right-click and choose properties
6. Under the Network tab, change IP and SP Network Name.
7. Unplug the Ethernet cable from SPA an connect to SPB.

Repeat steps above but Browse to 128.221.252.201 (SPB).
Connect both SPs to Ethernet switch.

Now the remaining steps can be performed remotely.

User Management

I recommend setting up an administrative user to coexist with nasadmin. There is also an existing "admin" user that I would just leave there. I create an account named "Administrator" with a unique password.

1. Go to the Tools menu and select Security\User Management\Add.

Clean-up Existing LUN

There will likely be many LUNs that were configure for and consumed by the Celerra NAS part of the system.  I simply deleted all of these, event the DART/OS LUNs and RAID Groups.  I did not have any hosts defined/registered.

Enable Access Logix

1. Right-click on the CLARiiON (serial number) and choose Properties
2. In the Storage Access tab, in the Data Access pane, check "Access Control Enabled"

Disk Layout/Hot Spares

Next I generate a disk layout report to see what disks are assigned as hot spares. Go to the Reporting node and generate a Configuration\Available Storage report.  Check to see where the current hot spare disks are located. I typically like to have these at the end of the disk cabinet/bus enclosure. Move the spare(s) to the appropriate drive(s) as needed.

The last EMC recommendation I'm aware of is 1 hot spare per 30 disks.

SAN Fabric Configuration

Time to connect the CLARiiON to your fibre fabric. 

• Each SP should have 2 ports. Connect one port to each fabric.
• Both SPs should be connected to both fabrics.
• Create an alias for each port/WWN in your SAN switch.
• Create the zones in your SAN switch to allow the hosts to "see" the CLARiiON.
• Save and enable the new configuration.

Host and LUN Creation, Masking

Now that the CLARiiON can see the hosts, its time to register the hosts with the CLARiiON:

1. Right-click on the CLARiiON (the serial number) and choose Connectivity Status
2. Note that you will need to know the WWNs of each FC port of your hosts. All of my hosts are ESXi servers, so the following instructions will be for these types of hosts.
3. Highlight the Initiator Name and click Register
4. The Initiator Type should be "CLARiiON Open"
5. Enter the HBA information
6. Enter the Host information
7. When finished click OK
8. Click the Refresh button and you should see the host name appear in the "Server Name" column
9. Complete the remaining initiators.

After you have all of the hosts registered, its time to create the LUN(s) you want the hosts to consume:

1. Create a RAID Group -
1. Right-click on the RAID Groups node and choose 'Create RAID Group'
2. RAID Group ID: leave the default value ("0" for the first one)
3. Number of disks: this is the stuff that starts religous wars. To keep it simple I use groups of 5 using RAID5.
4. RAID Type: RAID 5
5. Disk Selection: you could leave the default of "Automatic" and Navisphere will choose for you. However, I've never liked it's choices, so set it to manual and choose the disks that make the most sense (for example, the first 5 disks in enclosure x).
2. Create the LUN -
1. Right-click on the RAID Group you just created and choose "Bind LUN"
2. RAID Type - default should match the RAID Group setting
3. RAID Group - should be the same ID as the one you selected
4. Rebuild Priority - leave default
5. Verify Priority - leave default
6. Default Owner - Choose Auto
7. LUN Size - Choose MAX from the drop-down list

Connecting It All Together

1. Create the Storage Group -
1. Right-click on Storage Groups and choose "Create Storage Group"
2. I used the name of my cluster since this storage will be shared among all hosts in that cluster
2. Add hosts to the storage group - 
1. Right-click on the storage group name and choose "Connect Hosts"
2. Select all of the hosts that should be a member of this group and move them to the right-hand pane
3. Click OK
3. Add LUNs to the Storage Group -
1. Right-click on the storage group and choose "Select LUNs"
2. Expand out the appropriate component and select the LUN(s)
3. Click OK

That's it! Your hosts should now be connected to the CLARiiON storage and consuming LUNs per what youy have configured above.

Other Notes

• I recommend documenting the config as your setting this up. This includes network names, IPs and SP WWNs which can be found at:
       Storage Domains\LocalDomain\[SerialNo]\Physical\SPs\SPA(B)\Ports
       (It's the second half of each WWN)
• Don't forget to recan your ESXi hosts and check to make sure the paths are using RoundRobin, VMW_SATP_CX and IOPS=1
• I would also generate a new Available Storage report after each RAID Group/LUN creation event. I save these to an Excel spreadsheet for future reference
• Use a tool such as Solarwinds Storage Manager to monitor SAN usage and availability.

Cool Tool: Seagate Wireless Plus

Okay, the Seagate Wireless Plus is probably closer to a cool "toy", but it is cool nonetheless.  I was skeptical at first - why do I need yet another storage device for media when I have Spotify for music (or one of the countless online streaming music providers)?  Why not just use Amazon Video On Demand (or one of the countless streaming movie providers)?  Well, it stores movies, music and pictures.  It can stream up to four HD movies simultaneously.  Built-in 10hr battery, Wi-Fi broadcasting, apps for iDevices and Android devices, hmmm...

Then the rationalization, er... use case, hit me - since my kids have Android tablets, I could replace the bulky CD carrier and flaky behind-the-seat DVD players in the mini-van.  Sweet!  The kids keep pulling out the cables to the point where I'm re-splicing them once every couple of months.  With this thing I can turn it on, put it in the glove box and forget about it.  Nice!

Problem!  How do I get all of those movies ripped and copied on to the drive.  Well, its going to take two more (cool) tools to get this done.  First up, Slysoft's AnyDVD HD.  One year of updates is roughly $80 and 2 years is around $103 (I'd get 2 years).  It's worth every penny.  This handy little software sits between your DVD/Blu-ray drive and your software player such that the disc appears to be unencrypted.  We need the disc to appear this way for the ripping tool to work.

Now that we have unfettered access to our movie, how do we rip and compress it into one file?  Note that if we don't compress it we'll fill up the wireless drive much sooner than we might have otherwise.  Also remember we're streaming moving to 7" Android tablets, we don't need the HD detail Blu-ray (1080p) or even DVD (480p) gives us.  After searching the Interwebs for some time I discovered the answer: DVD Catalyst 4.  As of this writing its on sale for $10 but it's worth even the full price of $20.  This product is simply amazing - the number of supported devices is staggering.

This actually presented another problem - my kids have two different devices, an Acer A100 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (which has much better hardware specs).  Which device do I choose?  I tried a couple of different options but found the best compromise to be the Acer A101.  Using this profile, movies stream and playback fine on both devices.  They even work on my Samsung Galaxy S3 phone nicely.

With these two tools working together, ripping a disc to an MP4 file is an easy 2-3 click process.  After that, connect the drive via the USB port to the computer and copy the files to the "Video" folder.  That's it!

I'm about two-thirds through the discs and just now starting to break 100GB (out of 900GB+ free).  The kids have used it a dozen times on various trips w/o issue - they're happy so I'm happy!

I can highly recommend this product.  Note that I haven't discussed all of the features such as wireless Internet connectivity pass-thru.  I'm sure there are other "use cases" that I didn't even touch on.  If you need a portable drive that can be accessed wirelessly, this is it.

VMworld 2013: Are you ready?

VMworld 2013 - 10 years of VMworlds!  Registration is open - time to sign-up.  There were 45 of us that have attended every VMworld.  I predict 35 this year - time to start an office pool.

I'm on the VMworld Content Committee again this year and I'm seeing some fantastic sessions in the Business Continuity and Storage tracks.  Some are some reoccurring themes again this year such as Cloud and the Software Defined Datacenter, but I'm seeing more focus on specific aspects of these concepts - backup in the cloud, cross-cloud backup and recovery, Software Defined Storage and Software Defined Networking.  I'm seeing more on distributed storage than in past years.  I saw a demo of VMware's distributed storage tech at a session last year (I think they were calling vSAN).  I was very impressed.  Lot's of questions remain on scalability, performance and of course, when it will be released.  But given they had a working prototype last year, I have to believe it will be soon.

I remember the first VMworld - everything was anemic compared to today's event: standing-room-only sessions (if you could get in), a couple of dozen exhibitors, etc.  I do remember being blown away by some stats given by Diane Greene in the General Session, especially those on processor utilization - Mainframes=85%, Unix/mid-range=50%, x86/Wintel=5-15% (or something very similar).  Unfortunately, this video is not on the VMworld site.  However, for a blast down memory lane, check this one out:
http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-4087

I won't get to sign-up of another week or two but as my mom used to say "beggars can't be choosers".  And that's okay - the main thing will be getting a decent hotel within a decent walking distance.  May not be
possible this year but we'll see.

Overall it looks to be another good one.  What will be theme?  The party?  Who's the band? I'm guessing VMware has something special planned this year.  Another office pool?

See you there!