Netapp ASIS Dedupe and VMWare

So back here I told you about ASIS dedupe volume limits:  Netapp asis dedupe. 

Why would I want tier 1 block based dedupe?  Well it doesn't work on unstructured data that well, I mean you might get some dedupe, but who knows how much.  

Where it makes crazy money is: VMWare.  This isn't specific to VDI.  Snapshots and dedupe allow  you to quickly backup your VMWare datastores while using almost no storage.  It also allows you to put 50 VMs in 100GB of space (well depends on your VMs but that is what I have right now).  Normally 50 VMs x 30GB for host OS = 1.5TB of space.  Yeah.  That makes some sense and cents.  You can usually dedupe down to about half the space (but sometimes like similar machines like clones it really works well).

So what is the downside?  Well dedupe uses CPU on your netapp, so if your netapp is pegged don't use it.  And there is the vol size thing linked above (but that isn't usually a problem).   Another interesting thing is you no longer have the data spread across many spindles, which means less IOPS.  But there is an interesting fix for that- PAM card.  Yup a cache card for the Netapp that keeps those commonly used deduped blocks (that are basically the OS data) in cache and gets you tons  of IOPS- only available on 3040 or faster (31xx or 6xxx shipping product).  So I've run a pretty good sized storage backend for VMWare off of 1 shelf and a PAM card.  If it were a lab, you could even do SATA and PAM card. 

This thing is like peanut butter and jelly- ASIS dedupe and VMWare.

Platforms for OS based Appliances

Sometimes I need a box for snort sensors or linux appliances, or BSD or even firewall distributions:

http://www.arinfotek.com/  Has some cool security oriented appliances- the Teak series.  

With iBase and Win Enterprise as competition in this sector.  Some have SSL acceleration or other cool security chips.

Here are some really cool boxes either way though:

The first is a full fledged tiny PC- also with bargain price:

Fit-PC2  It is a full PC even though it is small enough to stick to the back of your monitor.  Power consumption is a ridiculously low 5-8W.

The second is Hero Logic-   in competition with Soekris, but seems like a great polished product.  I'd love to try one out.

ESXi- VMWare's lightest and easiest Hypervisor

ESXi is lightweight and has almost all the features of ESX.  It is super easy to setup.

But did you know you can run it or install it from a USB key?  Well not at the same time, but check this out:

http://blog.torh.net/2009/02/22/running-vmware-esxi-hypervisor/

http://www.squishnet.com/?p=17

They are a little windows centric.  If you are on OS X or Linux it is easier (as you have dd and the linux boot tools on there.  But you get the point.

PC to Thin client Conversion

Want a terminal box no moving parts, centrally controllable, that speaks all the major terminal dialects (like citrix, VDI, rdp) made from your current old PCs?

PC to Thin Client Conversion to the rescue:

http://www.igel.com/igel/live.php,navigation_id,1297,_psmand,9.html

Apparently they are third in market share for terminals (HP and Wyse being in the lead)- and the conversion product is pretty cool.  Trying it in a pilot right now.   It isn't for everyone, but it is a compelling product.

Storage VMotion (with a gui)

Ever put some VMs on local disk and wanted to move them to your shared storage?  Have you wanted to do that without outage?

Maybe you wanted to patch an ESX box that has local VMs without bringing them down?

Maybe you didn't listen to me and used a block protocol instead of NFS for your VMs and now you are having to resize your LUNS and you didn't use something that resizes gracefully.

Then use storage vmotion:

Storage VMotion with a GUI

For free with a little gui in case you are not a CLI junky.

Does my Mac support VT instructions?

1) open a terminal

2) sysctl -a | egrep -i "vmx|svm"

Output will include a line like this with vmx in it:

machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM SSE3 MON DSCPL VMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM

Unless you are on an AMD somehow- svm is AMD's VT instruction, VMX is Intel's.  You really only have to look for vmx but I include both for completeness.

On linux you do:

egrep -i "vmx|svm" /cat/proc/cpuinfo

Riverbed Steelhead Password Recovery

If you lock yourself out of your steelhead box (tested on 4.0 or later), you can recover the password much like a router:

Get Console access.

Boot the appliance (or reboot)

When you see the word grub immediately press E.

Another GRUB menu appears, with options similar to these:
------------------
0: root (hd0,1)
1: kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sda5 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600n8
-----------------

select the line with kernel in it using up and down arrow keys

Press E to edit the kernel boot parameters.

Append " single fastboot" at the end of this line. Note the space before 'single', it is very important. (And do not enter the quotes.). Press Enter.

Press the B key to continue booting.

After the system starts, at the command prompt, type "/sbin/resetpw.sh" and press Enter.

The password will be blank.

Type "reboot" and press Enter to reboot the appliance.

NetApp Asis dedupe

It is impressive that you can deduplicate on live storage (most systems dedup on backup, or VTL)...

Here are the two caveats I've found:

1) Size of volume limitations.  It depends on CPU/RAM on the Filer, so different models do different things.

2) You really, really, want to be on 7.3.1 and any filers that replicate from it probably want to be on 7.3.1.  7.3.1 right now is new, so that scares some people.

here are the sizes:

Storage system model, Maximum size of volume without deduplication (TB), Maximum size of volume with deduplication (TB), Total data size of volume with deduplication (TB)
FAS2020 16 1 17
FAS2050 16 2 18
FAS3020 16 2 18
FAS3040 16 4 20
FAS3050 16 3 19
FAS3070 16 16 32
FAS3140 16 4 20
FAS3160 16 16 32
FAS3170 16 16 32
FAS6030 16 16 32
FAS6040 16 16 32
FAS6070 16 16 32
FAS6080 16 16 32
R200 16 4 20