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.