@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:

We are looking to virtualize the servers in the data center in our office. Since most of our applications run in two co-lo data centers, managed by a service provider, the data center in our office could almost be considered a remote office.
Currently we have mostly physical Windows servers (yes, I know it is 2017) in this data center consisting of:
Two file servers for a total of 7 TB
Security system server
HVAC system server
Warehouse conveyor control server
We need to add about 6 Linux servers for SIP and a telecom specific application.

Ideally, we can move VMs to another host if one fails, but it doesn’t have to be instantaneous.
Current storage need is ~8 TB with room to grow to ~15 TB in the next 3-4 years. DAS, NAS, etc., whatever might work best for this situation.
Dell suggested a 3-2-1 architecture for over $100,000, which does not seem at all practical.
Another vendor suggested Dell’s VTRX with 3 M630 blades plus the storage.
> We have started looking at HCI solutions, including Scale. StarWind and HPE SimpliVity as we do not the expertise in managing a hypervisor nor the time to manage it. Too many other projects and distractions.

We will need some sort of DR solution. We will want an on-site backup and a copy going off-site to Azure, AWS or similar.
Suggestions?

I can't say much about Scale, but both StarWind and SimpliVity (now proud part of HPE) have extensive pro active support facilities as part of their HCI offerings. It means it's going to be StarWind (and HPE of course) staff who'll "babysit" your IT infrastructure, watch critical telemetry and performance metrics and react BEFORE issue is going to happen. + dedicated support engineer doing all "grunt" work for you.

StarWind ProActive Support

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-pro-active-support

HPE|SimpliVity OmniWatch

https://www.simplivity.com/blog/2016/02/our-support-is-always-on/

Making long story short: you don't need to be a virtualization (storage?) expert anymore

Good luck!

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:

@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:

We have started looking at HCI solutions, including Scale. StarWind and HPE SimpliVity as we do not the expertise in managing a hypervisor nor the time to manage it.

That's the appropriate short list. Of those, @Scale is the one that is going to offload the most from your plate. Starwind provides HC but you are still managing the hypervisor on your own, separately. It's architecturally all together, but the management console is not.

It's changing...

StarWind Manager

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-manager

VMware-based appliances will probably stay with a vCenter + plug-in, but Hyper-V (and KVM soon, very soon) are getting own HTML5 GUI.

@sreekumarpg said in Microsoft SQL Backup Solution:

Hello All,

I would like to get the suggestion on SQL backup Solution. Currently our environment is have two node SQL cluster with around 16 TB of Data. We are using Rapid Recovery as the Backup solution. We have upgraded our Windows Cluster to 2012 with Clustered Share Volume and the SQL Cluster to 2014.

Now we are facing issue with Rapid Recovery as its not able to understand the clustered share volume and we are not able to take the backup of our SQL storage on Block level. As per Rapid Recovery, they are not sure when they will release a version which support CSV.

We are in a situation to look into another SQL backup Solutions. Currently I am testing the Unitrends backup Virtual appliance and Its is good in backup, but I am having some issues on the retention polices as they provide only minimal policy which is on the SQL instance level.

Kindly suggest me a good backup solution for the SQL database which is having application native backup agent or CSV support , rather than block level backup. Also with the backup policy and retention policy of

Backup : - Daily Incremental and Monthly Full backup
Retention : - 2 Week incremental and Last month Full backup.

Backup : Every 6 Month
Retention : Last 6th Month

Backup : Every Year
Retention : Last 2 year.

If this can be achieved in Unitrends please share the details.

Thanks in Advance.

Veeam

@tim_g said in Port - Storage Spaces Direct (S2D): SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) needed only on HBA?:

@dashrender

RAID would be provided by SS.

He would need a controller that is pass-through.

Technically S2D is designed to be used by DAS systems (or JBODs if you like to make Scott facepalm), and not internal server storage... even though it works just fine.

There's no problem to use RAID controller instead of a basic HBA as long as you a) patch the registry (see my link below) or use special "filter" driver to report "RAID" bus (sic!) as SATA or SAS, and b) disable write-back cache on BOTH controller and disk itself, so all writes become atomic.

Storage Spaces Direct: Enabling S2D work with unsupported device types (BusType = NVMe, RAID, Fibre Channel). Part 1: Registry hack

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/resolving-enable-clusters2d-bus-type-support-issue-on-some-storage-controllers

P.S. It's a BAD idea to use anything like that in production because as long as Microsoft support will discover your S2D configuration isn't supported they will pull out and walk away with a grin face.

@dave247 said in Can I get some direction on setting up Hyper-V server with a storage cluster?:

I have a few servers that are now available for whatever I want, since I've virtualized them to our vSphere 6.5 environment. We currently have a single SAN unit for our vm datastore which connects to two switches and then to three virtual hosts (SAM's Inverted Pyramid of Doom thing).

Anyway, I am trying to experiment with a different design as well as set up a new test environment. I want to install Hyper-V 2016 Server on my most powerful spare server, then I want to use my other two servers as mirrored or a distributed storage cluster.

I am not 100% on what is best practice on how exactly to set this up, so I'm hoping for some input. I mean, I'm a sysadmin at my job, so I understand how to install and configure stuff.. but I've not set up a completely new environment from scratch before.

Any advice is much appreciated!

SAM has a point (thanks for reference!)

Dave ping me anton AT starwind DOT com and I'll get you in touch with engineers who could help. You're welcomed to proceed with either commercial or a free version (no time bombs, no capacity or feature limits there).

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free

Good luck

@kuyaz said in 2 RAID 1 or 1 RAID 10 for VM Server Host:

Hi,

I have server with 2 x 1 TB SSD and 2 x 2 TB SATA.

I want to use this server as VM host.
My questions are :

1. Can I do RAID 1 for each SSD and SATA?
2. Can Raid 10 do different size and model (1TB SSD & 2TB SATA)?
3. What is the best RAID configuration for above use?
4. Should I go hardware RAID? or MDADM? I heard hardware is slower for SSD RAID?
5. What filesystem I should use on the host? ext4 or LVM? or other?
6. If I use CentOS 7, do you recommend XEN / VM for stability and user friendly system?

My aim is to get full speed with SSD for critical VM (database server VM guest, web apps, etc) and less critical VM on sata (mail server VM guest, etc).

Thank you.

Don't mix different types of the drives with different performance inside the same pool: you'll limit your resulting performance with the slowest (in your content - HDD).

Great job indeed !!

@mlnews said in Stanford Removes Java in Favor of JavaScript in Intro to Computer Science Course:

In a bit of a surprise move in the educational space, computer science bulwark Stanford University has chosen to remove Java and replace it with JavaScript in their Intro to Computer Science class. Java has been the language of this somewhat famous class since 2002, a run of fifteen years. They say that Java is showing its age, although to be fair JavaScript is nearly as old. Java itself is 22 years old this year. Since being purchased by Oracle, interest in Java has slowly fallen from its lofty peak during stewardship under Sun.

Anybody who's starting with anything except assembly language is WRONG!!! If somebody doesn't know how CPU works he can't make a decent software engineer: he'll use bloatware, write things in interpreted languages and bring file systems to kernel from user-land.

@scottalanmiller said:

That's a great idea, I need a person doing that for sure.

If you have a napkin sketches you can send as JPGs I have two designers here and some Visio guys who can definitely help

@ajstringham GOTO is for script kiddies! Real man with a big brass <...> use "jmp" or "B".

Do you guys like my T-shirt?

@Tim_G said in Accelerate your backups with StarWind Virtual Tape Library and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager:

Everything on the StarWind VTL side is great. It was quick and easy to install. I installed it on Hyper-V Server 2016, and it went flawlessly. I was able to remotely connect to and manage the VTL without issue across two sites.

The more time consuming parts was setting up SCDPM. But it's Microsoft, so you'll have that.

We'll simplify virtual images delivery (seed & back-seed) with the next update

@scottalanmiller said:

@KOOLER said:

@scottalanmiller said:

That's a great idea, I need a person doing that for sure.

If you have a napkin sketches you can send as JPGs I have two designers here and some Visio guys who can definitely help

I don't but I can see what I can whip up! Thanks!

You're welcomed! Any time you want to have something just let me know

@scottalanmiller said:

How many people would be interested in taking a day two day trip down to the New York State Finger Lakes Wine District after MangoCon 2016 in Rochester, NY?

[ ... ]

I'm definitely in!

@Dashrender said:

Assuming both nodes in a two node setup are the same. Is it better to split the VM load between the servers, meaning Starwind has to replicate in both directions, or is it better to run them all from a single host replicating in one direction?

You create two virtual LUNs and you split your VMs between two hosts having own virtual LUN replicated to "shadow" one on a partner. Within this scenario there's minimal "fight" for any of LUNs ownership so performance is better.

@hobbit666 said in For MangoLassi.it Forum Geeks: StarWind Virtual SAN NFR (not-for-resale) License!:

Applied for one but got nothing says they E-mailed me a link and license. So tried again and it says already done, but can't see any E-mail.

Ping me with a DM and your e-mail account and we'll check what's wrong there. Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said:

Need to let people know that email alerts are down for a while. We have grown so quickly that not only are we overrunning our daily email sending limits (we are on MailGun from Rackspace) but we are overrunning our monthly limits as well! We are now down for the month. We are working on getting the account upgraded and getting emails turned back on. But for the moment, you are not going to get any alerts.

Congrats! This is kind of an issue I'd LOVE to have

@mlnews said:

Pinging @KOOLER

Replied! Thank you for brining me in

@Addie Reputation should either go both directions OR keep "good" and "bad" karma counters. IMHO

@grey said in XByte sale on R510s:

Did anyone else get the email from them about their sale on R510s? The email was sent Aug 10 and I acted then. No one has contacted me back. Is that normal when a sale goes on? They just ignore people once they sell out (presuming that's what happened)? I was hoping to upgrade out of my 2950 for my home lab.

Too many people allies and they are busy accepting POs?

Kidding... xByte are good guys. Give them a call.