Best posts made by KOOLER

@KOOLER "do guy" = "do gui" LOL

@John-Nicholson said in The Inverted Pyramid of Doom Challenge:

One last thought...

IF the reason that Xen has 2% market share is because there is NO LOGICAL REASON for vSphere or paid Hyper-V (with VMM to manage) then that means 98% of IT people are idiots. If 98% are idiots, wouldn't that mean they should be outsourcing their IT as much as possible to their vendors or others? (and therefore not deploy Xen).

Catch-22

Xen has 2% of the market share because it never came out of the niche. Most admins are lazy (it's natural, all people are so deeply inside and lazy = OK) so if you need to perform 1 simple activity with ESXi and it "just works" but you need to run many whistles with Xen... Naturally you'll go ESXi next time! Just because you want to spend these +2 hours drinking Coors and watching Vikings losing another game. Being too professional != being good. IMHO of course.

@scottalanmiller said in The Inverted Pyramid of Doom Challenge:

@John-Nicholson said in The Inverted Pyramid of Doom Challenge:

There was thread on SW recently where someone said "NIMBLE SUCKS I DON"T GET THE IOPS I PROMISED". The next post was his Nimble sales rep posting "So I see your at 20% load, your IO latency is .5 ms currently and while your 220C model is one of our smaller ones we have far larger ones. If your having any problems please call us and we will help you" I laughed, but it made me realize the damage that incompetent IT do to the name of a product or application. We are at the point that a sales rep would rather piss off a customer and call them out as an idiot (he was nice about it) than risk their companies name being drug through the mud.

That's not incompetence, though. That's just someone lying. there is a difference.

There's no line in sand about that. Whatever you're going to do 10 people are going to love you but there will be one who'll either hate you or he'll not care. Nimble is more or less safe - they don't do software, but with software it's very easy to a) misconfigure and b) break something working and done by other guys. Who's one to blame? Of course storage vendor! He has SLAs!

@scottalanmiller said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:

@KOOLER said in Simplivity - anyone use them?:

P.S. It's a great pleasure to see known faces everywhere. It turns out IT is a very small world really

Amazing how much of that there is!

My petty officer in Navy was telling something like "Life is a line of a shops and people stay the same and only signboards change the text over the time".

@scottalanmiller said in Cross Posting - Storage Spaces Conundrum:

@KOOLER said in Cross Posting - Storage Spaces Conundrum:

OpenIO is something I've never seen before you posted so I dunno what they do.

We have it running here They are here in ML, too.

That's interesting! Nice to see more storage startups from Europe (France?).

are they VM-running or do they have native port ?

@ardeyn said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

This might be a bit of a necropost, but has anyone actually managed to do a side-by-side comparison of TS going with
1.VMWare+VSAN
2.Hyper-V+StarWind
> 3.Something like S2D?

It would be interesting to look at prices vs features of each option.

When you'll be comparing S2D setup consider one we'll sell you as well (Yes, S2D powered HCI, with StarWind vSAN or w/out - depends on do you need your storage outside S2D cluster or not). Because I can bet StarWind spending millions on Dell servers will get a better discount to share with a customer compared to what most of the SMBs have

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-hyperconverged-appliance

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

This isn't true. Don't get yourself intro trouble with misuse! You can't use it for production and you have to let EMC know you evaluate with a prod use in mind. That's EVERYTHING but free... IMHO.

https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

@zuphzuph said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

Does anyone have a stupid simple breakdown of pricing? I'm still confuzzled on how this per core stuff works... Currently I work for an MS partner so this isn't something I've had to worry about for quite some time...

For Server 2016 Standard:

$882 for the minimum 16 cores means that the per core price is $55.13.

You are required to buy in 2-core packs. Each 2-core pack then should cost $110.26.

If you have a 2 proc x 10 core server, for 20 total cores, then you will buy 10 2-core packs for $110.26 * 10 = $1102.60.

It won't be easy to stay within basic Standard fee for pretty much ANY server in ±12 months from now. Reason: TOO MANY CORES!

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@KOOLER said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

This isn't true. Don't get yourself intro trouble with misuse! You can't use it for production and you have to let EMC know you evaluate with a prod use in mind. That's EVERYTHING but free... IMHO.

https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

You are reading that incorrectly. That's just definitions, not the terms. Our EMC rep already confirmed it to us.

I read everything correctly. 3A grants you rights to use sofware for "Internal Use". Internal Use means non-commercial.

I don't know what EMC sales rep verbally told you. Talk to your lawyers with EULA in hand, it's public.

@JaredBusch said in EMC ScaleIO Available for Free for Non-Production Use:

@KOOLER said in EMC ScaleIO Available for Free:

@scottalanmiller said in EMC ScaleIO Available for Free:

@jason says that the EULA allows for production usage, just without support.

Not really...

https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

Nothing in that says not for production use. But it does say not for commercial purposes and customer development, etc. To me that reads, if I use it internally to run my business, i can.

If the law states you can't kill people it doesn't mean you can kill them with a fork just because fork isn't mentioned.

Production use = Commercial purpose

If you don't agree - go ahead, put SIO into production and be ready to re-write your house to your lawyer. I don't see what I can do to help here

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@KOOLER said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@KOOLER said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@scottalanmiller said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

@Jason said in Hardware refresh and Selling the Solution:

You can also use EMC ScaleIO for free with your own hardware if you use the community for support https://www.emc.com/products-solutions/trial-software-download/scaleio.htm (or you can buy the software or pre-configured dell servers with it).

For commercial use, too? How did I not know that they had opened this up?

Yes, the EULA has no restrictions on that. Their marketing terms of course try to convey you should " When you are ready to purchase a ScaleIO software license for full production use and maintenance, contact a Sales Associate" but the EULA has nothing requiring it.

This isn't true. Don't get yourself intro trouble with misuse! You can't use it for production and you have to let EMC know you evaluate with a prod use in mind. That's EVERYTHING but free... IMHO.

https://www.emc.com/content/terms/eula-scaleio.htm

E. “Internal Business Purposes” means an internal (non-commercial) Use for the purpose(s) of testing and demonstrating the features of the Software, and not for Customer product development, product testing, or other Customer research and development or commercial purposes.

You are reading that incorrectly. That's just definitions, not the terms. Our EMC rep already confirmed it to us.

I read everything correctly. 3A grants you rights to use sofware for "Internal Use". Internal Use means non-commercial.

I don't know what EMC sales rep verbally told you. Talk to your lawyers with EULA in hand, it's public.

Doesn't matter we have the Email from EMC. That is permission to use it.

If there's no financial interest from the person who told that he won't show up in the court, it would be you for EULA violation and EMC lawyers. When you install product you accept EULA and THAT is what you agree on when you use the licensed software. E-mail = junk.

@thwr said in 4 PB on USB3 Drives Single Storage Array:

@scottalanmiller said in 4 PB on USB3 Drives Single Storage Array:

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1874784-whole-hard-drive-manufacturerer

I kid you not, this is how the day of posting is going. Never saw what the OP's real goal is. But... what?

That's... interesting. Somehow. I've seen things before, like a guy who created a ZFS pool on 20-something USB thumbdrives to demonstrate ZFS failure handling when unplugging a member, but a production array with 4 PB on USB3? Probably not a good idea.

Why not getting a few cheap SAS enclosures, toploaders with 40+ disks for example? Backup and RAID are both big issues with so large arrays, hope that guy keeps that in kind.

Physical dimensions?

@Net-Runner said in Views on Halizard:

@KOOLER said in Views on Halizard:

We'll keep free version CLI-managed, like Hyper-V is. Initially Linux-based VSA with a web mgmt will be free as well

That's awesome! Do you have any ETA's yet?

Mid-January 2017.

P.S. I hope so ;)))

@NetworkNerd said in Vendor Mistake - VMware Infrastructure Decisions:

Before I started here a couple of months ago, my boss purchased a couple of Dell R630s and a PowerVault MD3820i (20 drive bays) to be our new infrastructure at HQ. We have dual 10Gb PowerConnect switches and two UPS devices, each connected to a different circuit. The plan is to rebuild the infrastructure on vSphere Standard (licenses already purchased) and have a similar setup in a datacenter somewhere (replicate the SANs, etc.). We're using AppAssure for backups (again, already purchased).

The PowerVault has 16 SAS drives that are 1.8 TB 7200 RPM SED drives and 4 SAS drives that are 400 GB SSD for caching. Well, we made disk groups and virtual disks using the SEDs (letting the SAN manage the keys), but it turns out we cannot use the SSDs they sent us for caching. In fact, they don't have SED SSDs for this model SAN.

At the time the sale was made, Dell ensured my boss everything would work as he requested (being able to use the SSDs for caching with the 7200 RPM SED drives). Now that we know this isn't going to be the case, we have some options.

First, they recommended we trade in the PowerVault for a Compellent and Equalogic. The boss did not want that because he was saying you are forced to do RAID 6 on those devices and cannot go with RAID 10 in your disk groups. As another option, Dell recommended we put the SSDs in our two hosts and use Infinio so we can do caching with the drives we have. In this case we would make Dell pay for the Infinio licenses and possibly more RAM since they made the mistake.

But I'm wondering if perhaps there is another option. Each server has 6 drive bays. So we have 20 drives total. Couldn't we have Dell take the SAN back, give us another R630, and pay for licenses of VMware vSAN for all 3 hosts? Each server has four 10 Gb NICs and two 1 Gb NICs. That might require we get additional NICs. But in this case, I'm not sure drive encryption is an option or if we can utilize the SEDs at all.

I've not double-checked the vSAN HCL or anything for the gear in our servers as this is just me spit balling. Is there some other option we have not considered? We're looking to get the 14 TB or so of usable space that RAID 10 will provide, but the self-encrypting drives were deemed a necessity by the boss. And without some type of caching, we will not hit our IOPs requirements.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Keep R630s, refund PowerVault, refund AppAss. Get VMware VSAN and Veeam (accordingly).

@matteo-nunziati said in New StarWind Virtual SAN Free - All restrictions removed!:

nice! still lack the HW for this, but definitively nice!

You can do that in Azure and now in Amazon w/out hardware.

https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/starwind.starwindvirtualsan

https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B06XWNJ5DW?qid=1491493304804&sr=0-1&ref_=srh_res_product_title

@scottalanmiller said in New StarWind Virtual SAN Free - All restrictions removed!:

This is awesome to finally have out and official. We've been talking about it for weeks but haven't had an announcement to point to.

@kooler we should celebrate! Let's do drinks. In say... 50 hours?

yes, we'll do that! what about some nice Sicilian place around here? (LOL, at least you'll tell how local ones suck compared to italy)

P.S. Max is in game

@BBigford said in For the love of IPOD...:

@dafyre said in For the love of IPOD...:

@DustinB3403 said in For the love of IPOD...:

Better yet. . .

"If they can afford 1 SAN, they can certainly afford 2, and make things truly solid". . .

that would be commission + just good IT.

Of course horrible finance control, but whatever.... with just a single SAN its still horrible finance control.

Would it not be a good time to start pitching better setups such as Starwinds Appliances?

Funny... I actually did bring that up, and was told since nobody has heard of them, then they probably weren't very good. I thought they were joking, but they weren't.

Who told that? Competitor?

@Tim_G said in Kooler on DFS-R Issues:

So... Keeping in mind you can use free Hyper-V server and free StarWind virtual SAN to build a two-node shared nothing SMB3 clustered file server free of charge... I think it's time to retire DFS-R See Step-by-Step guide:

Hyper-V: Free “Shared Nothing” SMB3 Failover File Server

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/part-2-smb-3-0-file-server-on-free-microsoft-hyper-v-server-20...

Except this violates the Hyper-V Server 20xx license and is illegal. Do it on Windows Server and all is well. You'll need two Windows Server licenses, but StarWind vSAN is free. Or use Linux with StarWind vSAN.

I'm not too sure about SMB 3.x on Linux, but there may be ways.

1. Yup. That's why there's a disclaimer on the page I reference

Disclaimer: Please, do not violate license agreements for financial benefit. If you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. This post is dedicated for one-time sole use of the mentioned setup – non-commercial, home lab or experiment. If you plan to earn money, please refrain from proceeding repeating the test described in this post.

2. There are third-party stacks like Visuality Systems NQ or MoSMB. I don't think Samba is going anywhere

@coliver said in Is HyperConvergence Even a Thing:

Hyperconverged to me is bringing disparate interfaces and technologies into one box. Storage, Hypervisor, Management, and Network on a single box managed from a single interface.

This is exactly correct and it's what a lot of vendors (including Microsoft) don't understand.

@NerdyDad said in ExaGrid:

So I asked the guy "What would happen if a controller in one of their ExaGrid node had died?" He said that the only things that are user replaceable are the drives, the PSUs, and the chassis. If there were multiple ExaGrid nodes clustered together, and one dies, the data on that one would not be available to you until it was restored.

I wasn't too keen on that idea. I was thinking more like striping across different nodes and restoring the missing data from checksums of the data that it had, but he was saying that that data would just be missing.

Not sounding like a viable solution to me. I'll keep my Synology's.

This means you don't want what they sell.