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Category: English

The blog written in english, usually stuff about servers and storage

Equallogic sizing – No Lefthand work here
In my current role within Dell I do pick up a lot of info about customer systems. Usually I get involved when performance is lagging and customers are complaining. From there I have to educate both the customer and the Dell force, in how to size a Equallogic array properly.

Denmark being a small country, most of the Equallogic installations are in the 2-3 arrays size, and due to the customer size it is not easy to add extra arrays as we want. So getting the sizing right from the beginning is cruzial. After we got the hybrid arrays in the Equallogic range, they are properly the most sold type right after the NL-SAS based ones.

So down to SMB sizing of Equallogic; From a Compellent perspective, and a rule of thumb from those systems, we need to get the SSD layer sized properly and not oversubscribe the NL-SAS based PSxxxxE arrays. Compellent uses 20% of all performance should come from Tier-3 (Typical NL-SAS), and all writes should be efficiently handled by Tier-1 (Write-Inensive SSD’s). From my point of view, we can transfer those rules easily to Equallogic sizing.

3 array system
- The top system in this picture is a PS6110XV with 24x300GB 15K drives in Raid-10
- The middle system is a PS6110X with 24x600GB 10K drives in raid-10.
- Last system is a PS4110E with 12x2TB 7.2K drives in raid-50.
As You might notice 62% of all space is on the PS4110E, and with Equallogic capacity loadbalancing kickin in, it means 62% of every volume resides on the slowest drives. In this case we have 38% of volumes on somewhat fast drives, and with a normal read-write ratio of 70/30 this should be fairly ok. Only comment here was to have 15K drives on 2 arrays and 600GB drives, which should add up to 40% of the combined storage. This customer, did choose to separate the volumes, so some of them only reside on the XV + the E array. For these volumes the capacity loadbalancing was way off, with a 13% of volume space on the XV and 87% on the E. No wonder this costumer complained about performance issues.

Back to sizing with hybrids: In many cases we have sold the popular PS6210XS with 9TB capacity, together with a PS4110E with 2TB or larger drives. In this scenario we have roughly 40% on the XS, about 20% of this space is on the SSD’s. This also translates into approx 2TB SSD capacity for a 25TB system, which is way under the rules stated at the beginning.

So get a proper 25TB Equallogic system with more than 10.000 iops, we will need to use the following
- A PS6210XS with 18TB capacity, it has 7*800GB SSD, and 17×1.2TB 10K drives.
- A PS4110E with 12x1TB disks, in a RAID-50, this gives us a little more than 7TB space.
This would means that 4TB SSD space can be used automatically as Tier-1, rest of the 10K drives in the XS array is considered as Tier-2, and the remaining space on the E array is tier-3. And Tier-3 space is only approx 30% of the total capacity.

So what about those large 2,3,4TB drives ? Never place them in the same pool as a hybrid, your capacity scaling will be way off. But create a separate low-performance pool for the volumes that do not need more performance than the NL-SAS drives provide.

If your unsure which volumes can be placed in which pools, do consider running a Dpack performance gathering tool, together with you Dell presales people. It can be obtained from here; Dell Dpack
03/04/2014
KACE K3000 and SSL – part.2

Unfortunately I had to re-evaluate my SSL config for the SSL-chain on the Kace K3000 virtual appliance.
But what I found was i neat script that created the right key + certificate and intermediate certificate.
Use this for your own convinience.
———-snip——————-
# SHA512 testcase — all 3 layers.
#
LEN=${LEN:-2048}

# create a root.
openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out ca.crt -keyout ca.key -subj /CN=DaRoot -newkey rsa:$LEN -sha512 || exit 1

# create an intermediate & sign
openssl req -new -nodes -out ca-int.req -keyout ca-int.key -subj /CN=Zintermediate -newkey rsa:$LEN -sha512 || exit 1
openssl x509 -req -in ca-int.req -CAkey ca.key -CA ca.crt -days 20 -set_serial $RANDOM -sha512 -out ca-int.crt || exit 1

# chain
#
cat ca.crt ca-int.crt > ca-all.crt

for who in 192.168.1.45
do
# create a request
openssl req -new -out $who.req -keyout $who.key -nodes -newkey rsa:$LEN -subj /CN=$who/emailAddress=$mikael_jensen@dell.com || exit 1

# sign the request
openssl x509 -req -in $who.req -CAkey ca-int.key -CA ca-int.crt -days 10 -set_serial $RANDOM -sha512 -out $who.crt || exit 1

# create some convenience formats
#
openssl x509 -in $who.crt -out $who.der -outform DER || exit 1
openssl pkcs12 -export -out $who.p12 -in $who.crt -inkey $who.key -chain -CAfile ca-all.crt -password pass:$PASS || exit 1
done

——————-snip done——————-

Use this as a script on a *nix machine with openssl package installed. I did it on a Fedora 20 laptop.

28/01/2014
KACE K3000 and SSL Certificates

Are you trying to create the SSL key certificate chain for the superb KACE K3000 ?
Use this short guide. Disclaimer; I found most of it on the web, but has made some alterations to handle the 2014+ security.

openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 1825 -key ca.key -out ca.crt
openssl x509 -in ca.crt -out ca.pem
openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca-int_encrypted.key 4096
openssl rsa -in ca-int_encrypted.key -out ca-int.key
openssl req -new -key ca-int.key -out ca-int.csr -subj “/CN=ca-int@acme.com”
openssl x509 -req -days 1825 -in ca-int.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out ca-int.crt

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server_encrypted.key 4096
openssl rsa -in server_encrypted.key -out server.key
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr -subj “/CN=server@acme.com”
openssl x509 -req -days 1825 -in server.csr -CA ca-int.crt -CAkey ca-int.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt

Remember to replace server@acme.com and ca-int@acme.com with your fully qualified servername. This worked for me for creating a KACE demo environment with K1000 + K2000 + K3000 chained together.

27/01/2014
Roskilde Flyshow 2013

37 billeder fra årets flyshow (airshow.dk), også med en hel Messerschmidt inden den nødlandede 🙂

37 Pictures from this years Airshow in Roskilde Airport (Copenhagen airport Roskilde), also with Messerschmidt ME109 before it made an rather nice emergency landing in a cornfield

18/08/2013
Raspberry Pi wireless setup

I have now recieved my wireless usb nano adapters from China. They were bought from DX.com and is tiny, and believe me they are very tiny.

After some small failures setting up these cards with static IP I found some help around the web, and this config worked for me on my network using wpa-psk as security on the wireless.

nano /etc/network/interfaces —> create following lines.

#allow-hotplug wlan0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address          192.168.11.32
netmask        255.255.255.0
broadcast      192.168.11.255
gateway         192.168.11.1
name-servrs 192.168.11.1
wpa-essid      secret
wpa-psk         secret2

Have fun

11/05/2013
Mama I’m coming home

Times have changed and times are strange
Here I come, but I ain’t the same
Mama, I’m coming home
Times gone by seem to be
You could have been a better friend to me
Mama, I’m coming home

You took me in and you drove me out
Yeah, you had me hypnotized, Yeah
Lost and found and turned around
By the fire in your eyes

You made me cry, you told me lies
But I can’t stand to say goodbye
Mama, I’m coming home
I could be right, I could be wrong
Hurts so bad, it’s been so long
Mama, I’m coming home

Selfish love yeah we’re both alone
The ride before the fall
But I’m gonna take this heart of stone
I just got to have it all

I’ve seen your face a hundred times
Everyday we’ve been apart
I don’t care about the sunshine, yeah
‘Cause Mama, Mama, I’m coming home
I’m coming home

(Solo)

You took me in and you drove me out
Yeah, you had me hypnotized
Lost and found and turned around
By the fire in your eyes

I’ve seen your face a thousand times
Everyday we’ve been apart
I don’t care about the sunshine, yeah
‘Cause Mama, Mama, I’m coming home
I’m coming home
I’m coming home
I’m coming home

13/01/2013
Equallogic and IOPS

I do see a lot of questions regarding Equallogic and IOPS, especially after the Hybrid arrays surfaced in to the public. The XVS from the PS6000-series and the new XS from the 4100 and 6100 series are those arrays I get an IOPS request for most often.

But it is not so simpel to state an IOPS number for these arrays, I do know the simple math when adding IOPS performance from all disks. This though, does not take a lot of things into calculation like how much can the mirrored cache on the controllers add in performance, what are the read/write ratio etcetera.

If you talk with some of the Dell partners who are certified in Dell storage, they are able to help with sizing of the Equallogic platform, but also take the above mentioned points into consideration. Dell has an on-line sizing tool, where the partner can create both existing environment (of Equallogic) and show the predicted performance when you buy additional arrays. The same tool certainly also show what a new setup will look like from performance perspective.

Before you do that why not run Dpack analyse ?

Dpack is Dell’s Performance Analysis Collection Kit which runs for 4 to 24 hours as usual, but is also able to log for up to 7 days if needed. Dpack runs in memory, so you don not need to install anything and after collecting is done you simply send in the collected data and get a nice performance report back from your Dell partner.

After reading the report, just tell your Dell Partner to size an Equallogic platform based on the Dpack outcome. Now you’re done and problably get a fine quote with a number of Equallogic arrays. This can be made so simple.

I’m sorry for not detailing the IOPS for the XVS or XS arrays, but at Dell we use a thing called RPS score which is very dependent of the read/write ratio and the arrays choosen.

05/10/2012
Client Hyper-V

I`m playing around with the new client hyper-v role in Windows 8 Pro ,and it seems like Windows is not just for the mainstreame user. The last couple of days there’s been a lot of writing for and against Hyper-V for the professional users.

From my view Microsoft finally got it right, I do not have anything against the Metro surface of Win8 it, it simply works well, both with a keyboard or a touchscreen, and people instantly knows where the windows key is.
This hurts just a little a bit for an old Linux guy like my self, but the when I realized that Microsoft have made it easy for me to create and manage virtual machines in a simple Windows 8, I was thrilled.
I’m doing a lot of demo stuff for different partners and customers, and often has to reset my environment back to “last known good configuration” when making a new demo ready. So using the builtin snapshots makes it less painful than before. I’ve been using VMware workstation for many years to run my demo environment which consists of both Microsoft and Redhat servers and a virtual Equallogic. This environment is going to be moved to the Microsoft Client Hyper-V with only my Redhat and Linux machines being the outstanding points I need to ensure is working.
Playing around with an Fedora 17, I came across some issues when trying to install the VM tools, the Fedora wouldn’t start but i might be an graphic driver issue.
This being said my demo platform is also being “refurbished” to a Windows 2012 Core installation with Equallogic Hit/ME tools installed and all managed from Server manager in the Windows 8. This is a an add-on for Windows 8 and when running this kind of setup it should make my demos less painfull as I will be able to manage all from my native laptop and from a virtualized server.

04/10/2012
Equallogic all over (again)

Dell recently released the latest series of PS-series array in the Equallogic family,this release with the series 14 and 17 controllers adds 10Gbit to the 6100 and 4100’s. What’s most important with these arrays, is the addition of both copper and fiberbased 10Gbit connections. The copper is standard RJ-45 whch requires Kat-7 cabling, but together with the 8024 from the classic Powerconnect range, you’ll have a cheap killer-setup.

The fiber is standard SFP+ connections which can be utilized with either TwinAxial copper-cables with integrated SFP+ or with SFP LC modules for longer distances.This combination of both fiber and copper options, is for Equallogic “old school”, this was last featured on Generation 1 and 2 arrays, and series 1 and 2 controllers all the way back in 2004/5

The biggest news story on the new additions is that for the first time the PS4000-series SMB range of arrays get 10Gbit interfaces, though you are still limited to a max of 2 arrays on the 4000-family. The normal 6000 series can have up to 16 arrays in the same SAN, or 2.1PB of data in total across 768 diskdrives, whereas the 4000 series can hav a total of 48 drives.

The limitation is still in the numbers of volumes/snapshots/replications you can have on the 4000 series, no change to this scheme

One other important feature to remember is “vertical port failover” which was re-introduced with the PS6100/4100 series. With reintroduction I mean this is also “old school”, and it is a nice feature, with a tendancy to confuse the IT-admins, as they have to count the number of lights on the switch. It does not matter if the link is activ on controller 1 or 2.

With the new arrays it is important to populate the same port on both controllers, e.g. RJ-45 or SFP+. You actually have 4 ports in total on the backside, plus two 100Mbit management ports, but you will only have light in one of the four dataports. The vertical port failover will happen between the same type of port, and if accidently have choosen to use SFP+ on controller 1, and RJ-4 on controller 2, you will get downtime if a controller failover should happen.

The new series of arrays will provide you with up to 160Gbit throughput for a large SAN, and set you back a few bucks. But a Equallogic solution is still cheap, especially when you compare others against the PS6110XS with 7 pcs of large SSD drives and 17 pcs of 10.000rpm drives for a total of +20.000 Iops and 10TB useable storage capacity, all in a single box. And with the performance loadbalancing inside the array it’s a killer.

About me: I’ve been working with (not for) Equallogic since the early days back in 2004/2005 and firmware revision 0.91. These arrays are my small babies, and when compared to all the other SAN products I havee encountered during the last 17 years, they are still no.1.

05/03/2012
The english version

Here at this site, I will keep al my arcles written in english. It might be in a combination of both uk-english, and us-english as I get my influence on the language from both sources.

Most of the time the blogs right here will contain some rather nerdy stuff about server, storage and networking and all what’s in between those segments. I have already written some well-recieved articles about my professional baby; The Equallogic storage arrays which I have been following since the early days of 2005. Except for this networking with Force10 and Dell servers might also be topics here.

It would be intriguing to get some more knowledge of Dell Secureworks, but this might take some time before I’m ready to post about this.

I reserve the right to also post some blogs of private character, for those people I got to know around Europe and rest of the world.

27/02/2012