All our hard work seems to have paid off.  Based on the conversations and survey results we’ve received I think everything went very well. 

Labs

The labs were a huge success and for the most part went off without a hitch.  There were some issues with the SRM labs that lead me to believe that SRM doesn’t much like having many different people connected to it at one time.  Generally this won’t be a problem as SRM will be managed by a few people who will be doing very little outside of setup and actual tests/failovers.

Architecting Sessions

The architecting sessions were probably the most challenging sessions.  The Architecting vSphere session was very heavily attended, which led to some noise issues from side conversations, and spread people out far enough that it was difficult for them to hear.  Capping the attendance for these sessions would definitely pay off in the future.

Due to a major snowstorm in Denver, the VMware security specialist was unable to attend.  This left a major gap in the session I was promoting the heaviest.  I deeply apologize to those who came out specifically for that session.  We made do with who we had on hand, and I hope they were able to provide something valuable.  I’m happy to report that we are already actively working on scheduling him to come out for a future VMUG meeting.

The Architecting View session was surprisingly the least attended of the three architecting sessions.  Based on what I’ve heard, it sounds like there were a lot of people who were simply interested in learning about View.

A general piece of feedback we received was that these sessions should have been more structured and maybe a bit more specific with the topics.  I have discussed a few ideas with the VMUG leaders on how to continue this format in different ways, so keep an eye open for more information.

Presentations

The presentations seemed to be well attended, though I admit to not having spent any time listening to them due to supporting the labs and architecting sessions.  Survey results varied, but I attribute these variations to potentially different expectations and skill levels.  Hopefully everyone found the content somewhat useful and relevant.

Data Center Tours

I’m happy to report that the data center tours went over well and were way more popular than I expected.  I think CoSentry gained a lot from this offering as it seems that many people in attendance did not know about CoSentry before the meeting.

Food, facilities, etc.

I felt the food was excellent and well presented.  Better availability of drinks would be my only request.  Other than that, I didn’t hear any complaints.

The facility, I thought, was perfect.  The open space didn’t provide the ideal acoustics, but I think that was more than balanced out by the feeling of being in a nice open area (no claustrophobia).  Registration was a bit long, but was a necessary evil.  I’m glad people showed up plenty early to sign in.

Overall, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves and found something worthwhile.  Based on the survey results we received (about 1/3 of attendees) everyone did find the event worthwhile and particularly enjoyed the labs and the networking aspect.  This is encouraging, since the labs took the most effort to develop and networking is one of the primary goals of the VMUG.

If you have any specific feedback, please feel free to post it on the Omaha-Area VMUG Forum or send it to me directly here.

Thank you all for coming out!

This week is the culmination of months of work for me and the many others that have been working to get the next Omaha-Area VMUG event ready for an AMAZING time!  Everything is on track and the finishing touches are going on right now.  Last I heard we'll have close to 200 people registered!  If you haven't registered yet and would like to attend, please sign up here.  If you need more information, check out my previous post with all the details (almost all of the details are still accurate).

For those of you who will be in attendance, I'd like to thank a few people before the event so you have the opportunity to find them at the event and thank them yourselves for making this event possible for you.  Write these names down and hunt for them at the event.  Most of them should be there.  If you can't find them, then hunt me down and I'll point you in their direction.

Cisco and EMC get my first thanks for helping us secure the hardware necessary to host these labs.  Curtis Hayworth (EMC) and Dale Dewitt (Cisco) have been the frontmen to our requests, and our advocates, but I know they have several people behind them who have worked diligently to get us what we need in time to pull it all off.

A special thanks to Chris Simpson from VMware.  He has been instrumental in helping me align VMware resources.  He has also been willing to respond quickly to a lot of random questions I've had over the last few weeks.  Mike Bullerdick and Sheng Sheen have been my local support and I know they've promoted the living daylights out of this thing, which is no small part in its eventual success. 

Thank you to CoSentry for providing the facility, rackspace for the lab infrastructure, cool giveaways, and a large portion of the food that will be there.  Specifically, I'd like to thank Jason Phipps who has been my right-hand man through most of this.

Last, and most importantly, I'd like to thank Jodi Shely, Warren Dugas and David Olig who run the User Group together.  Thank you for taking up the huge mantle of running this group, thank you for asking Vital to help set this up, and thank you for all the support you've given me while building these labs.

I'd also like to thank Vital for handing me such an important project to our company and trusting me to pull it off.  I sure hope I've lived up to their expectations, because I've enjoyed it and would love to do it again in the future.

With the Thank You's out of the way, I'd like to apologize to my readers for my lack of posts on the VMUG Lab setup lately.  Building these labs has been a priority that has severely dug into my writing time.  I'm hoping to be able to keep a hold of the hardware for a few extra days so I can play a bit more (and of course blog about it).  Hang on, there'll definitely be more to come.

One of the labs we’re creating for the upcoming Omaha-Area VMUG is SRM.  It is posing some interesting challenges.  The biggest challenge is figuring out how to best provide a lab to 15 pairs of people without creating 30 sites.  We will cut some corners on that issue by having the instructor perform some of the core tasks like pairing sites and configuring the arrays.  This leaves users to work directly with the Protection Groups and Recovery Plans, which is where people need to pay the most attention anyways.

The other interesting challenge for us is one you find each time you setup SRM for a different array than you’ve done in the past.  In this case it was setting it up to use a CX4 using MirrorView. 

For those who aren’t familiar with why this is a big deal, let me explain.  SRM ties directly into the storage array in order to affect the status of the replication and to create LUN level snapshots during failover tests.  In order to do this, SRM uses a Site Recovery Adapter (SRA) to talk to the array.  The twist is that the storage vendor is responsible for creating the SRA for each array that SRM supports.  The difficulty lies in the different implementations and prerequisites each vendor has for their SRAs.

Here are a few things I discovered about using the EMC MirrorView SRA:

• Not only do you need to install the SRA on the SRM server, but you also need to install EMC’s Solutions Enabler.  As I understand it, Solutions Enabler is the foundation for software that needs to talk to the CX4 storage processors (somewhat analogous to the .NET framework).  EMC folks correct me where I might be wrong.
• After creating the remote mirror of the LUN, you need to create a snapshot of the destination LUN (at the recovery site).  The name you give this snapshot must include the substring “VMWARE_SRM_SNAP”.  Make sure reserve LUNs are created for this snapshot, which should be done when using the “Configure SnapView Snapshots” wizard.  The SRA will NOT create the snapshot on the fly for you like some SRAs will.
• A Consistency Group is not necessary unless your protected VMs cross multiple LUNs or you want multiple LUNs in a single Protection Group

Useful links:

EMC_MirrorView_Adapter_for_VMware_SRM_Release_Notes_v1.4

After about one week of playing with the lab gear EMC has loaned us to use for the upcoming VMUG, I’m ready to share my first impressions.

First off, let me say that these drives deliver on the promise the SSD drives offer.  They are FAST.

Generally, I’m seeing an XP template deploy in ~2 min (template is a thin-provisioned 10GB hard drive that is ~2GB on disk).  Windows 2003 templates (10GB thin provisioned HDD, ~4GB on disk) are deploying anywhere between 2 and 20 min depending on how many I’m deploying at once.  The average is around 8 min.

Boot times are even more impressive.  Windows 2003 VMs are powering on in 20-50 seconds, while Windows XP VMs are coming up in about 15 seconds (or less).  This is the time between the completion of the vCenter “Power on Virtual Machine” task and the Ctl-Alt-Del prompt.  There have been several times when I don’t even see the BIOS screen or the Loading Windows screen because they boot faster than the VM console can refresh.  This obviously has huge implications for VDI or DR environments that require tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines to power up in a short timeframe.

We’ve done some rough IOMeter testing as well.  I’m not ready to talk specific numbers, but generally we’re seeing almost 4x the IOPS on SSD disks than on 15k disks in the same array.  Latency increases from sub-millisecond times on the EFDs to tens of milliseconds on the 15k drives.

Overall, very impressive.  Of course, the EMC engineer that was helping us setup the arrays thought we should’ve seen better results.  I’d say good enough for now.

I wanted to start my series of blog posts about the Omaha-Area VMUG lab infrastructure with the base of the infrastructure (or any virtual infrastructure): the storage.

We were lucky enough to work out a deal with EMC to let us borrow a couple of Clariion arrays.  Specifically they are CX4-120 arrays.  Not that impressive you say?  What if I told you they were configured with six 200GB Enterprise Flash Drives (EFD) (see the first photo)?  Now do I have your attention?

Anecdote: I had an EMC sales rep ask me why I don’t have the face plates on our devices.  I told him it was because I care more about geeking out about the devices than about marketing the devices.

To summarize, we have two CX4-120s with about 1TB of usable EFD storage.  Both arrays have EMC’s mirroring software, MirrorView enabled so we can replicate between the two arrays (for the SRM lab).

The array consists of three distinct parts: the standby power supplies (SPS), which act as power distribution, but also contain batteries to allow for a graceful shutdown of the array should a loss of power occur; the storage processor enclosure (SPE), which contains the storage processors (SPs) (some may call these the controllers) and I/O modules (including fiber and iSCSI connectivity); and the disk array enclosure (DAE), which contains up to 15 drives (the first five of which contain the operating system for the array).  More technical details can be found here.

I would love to post a comparison of the HP EVAs that my company is used to dealing with (see the next picture with an EVA below and above the CX4 in our rack), but I have to admit to not knowing enough about either array to do such a comparison justice.  Not to mention the fact that I’d be comparing an array with EFDs to one with mostly 10k disks.  So, I’ll just discuss my experiences with the CX4 for what they are, not as a comparison to the EVA (sorry EMC).

The racking of the equipment wasn’t terribly complicated and was easily figured out using the enclosed quick start guide, though there is a mess of cables required to get all the pieces properly connected (see the next photo).

At this stage, we have only racked, cabled and powered on these two arrays, so I can’t judge performance yet.  That’s it for now, but keep a look out for a future post where I will hopefully be gushing on how awesome performance is on this array.

Registration for the Omaha VMUG on 3/24 is now open.  Hopefully you have already received an invite via email.  If not, please check out this one on VMware's site: http://campaign.vmware.com/usergroup/invites/Omaha_3-24-10.html Registration can be completed here: http://info.vmware.com/forms/VMUG_REG?eventcity=8367-omaha&theme=Omaha

Please note that the above link will only register you for the event itself.  You should receive a phone call from VMware to register for individual sessions (see my previous blog post for details).  Lab registration is limited and available first-come-first-served, so sign-up as soon as possible.

I previously posted that my company is cosponsoring the upcoming Omaha-Area VMware Users Group meeting on March 24, 2010.  I’m happy to announce that the schedule has been solidified!  Though registration is not yet open, you should keep an eye on your inbox and this site in the next couple of days so you can register as soon as possible (keep reading to find out why you’ll want to register as soon as possible).

Here’s the schedule of events:

The first two sets of labs will be hands-on and instructor-led.  They will provide a great opportunity to experience these technologies first hand to help jumpstart your knowledge.   The third lab will be self-paced with a lab manual that will guide you through the process of packaging applications with VMware ThinApp.  All labs will be limited to 15 lab stations, each with 2 students for a total of 30 participants per lab session.  Register early to make sure you get the lab sessions you want (registration should be open soon)!

The Whiteboard Room sessions will provide attendees the opportunity to discuss how to architect the given topic with experts and other attendees.  These sessions will feature open discussion, featuring only a whiteboard and no PowerPoint.  So bring your tough questions, ask how to solve a particular requirement, have the group validate your plans, or share your current architecture with others to see if maybe there’s a different way to do it. 

Important note: VMware is flying in the regional View specialist and a US-wide Security specialist to lead the respective architecting sessions.  If you’re interested in either topic, I’d take advantage of these two guys.  I know several people who have asked me about security related topics, so we’ve arranged this rare chance to ask a true expert.

The Presentation Room will feature a series of topics that will be presented in a traditional PowerPoint presentation format.  But this does not mean they won’t include interactive discussion on that topic.  If you’re interested in learning more about the topic, ask the speaker and challenge them with your questions.  PowerPoint doesn’t have to be boring, simply engage with the presenter to get more out of the session.

At several times throughout the event, CoSentry employees will be conducting tours of their Data Center facilities, including the hardware that will be running all our labs.  Check out what we’ve put together for you and what CoSentry has to offer.  It really is an impressive facility.

Other notable happenings:

• Cisco may be bringing in their Solutions Express mobile briefing center (think big eighteen wheel truck with lots of geekiness inside)
• Door prizes galore
• Networking with over 100+ like-minded IT professionals
• Over 15 engineers from Vital, CoSentry and VMware will be on hand to lead all the sessions and be available for one-on-one conversations
• Morning snacks available when the doors open at 9a, lunch from the locally owned Jailbirds BBQ and afternoon snacks
• Chat with all four of Omaha’s vExperts in one venue (can you name all four of them?  Maybe we should have a contest to see who can get all four of their signatures, hmmm…)

Hopefully that’s enough incentive to get you to come out.  I’d like to invite everyone within at least two hours of Omaha to join us.  We’ll be there to talk geek, not to gain customers.  Fair warning: there will be sales guys there, but we’ll have them on short leashes and make them available when/if you would like to talk with them.  That being said, they’re all good guys and can usually hold their own in a technical conversation.

Besides lots of technical questions and a notepad to write the answers down on, we ask that you bring two other things: business cards (for drawings and sharing with others – remember this is also a social event) and a driver’s license (we will be in a secure facility that requires proper identification and a CoSentry badge).

More details and registration will be released soon.  Keep an eye on this blog and the Omaha-Area VMUG forum.  Please feel free to share this information with others who may be interested in attending.  

Finally, keep a look out for more blog posts that will cover more details of the event, including the infrastructure we’re building out for the labs.

I sincerely hope to see you there!  And don’t be a afraid to stop me and say “Hi”.

Update:

The Cisco Solutions Express truck will unfortunately not be able to make it for this event.

For those of you in Omaha and surrounding areas, I'd like to you to mark off March 24, 2010 on your calendars. 

My company is teaming up with CoSentry and the Omaha-Area VMUG team to sponsor the next VMUG meeting on that day and I'm currently in the heavy planning and implementation phases for it.  It's going to be a great one, and possibly the biggest one yet for the Omaha VMUG.  We're working on providing hands-on labs, presentations, architecting/whiteboarding sessions and plenty of networking opportunities.  We'll also have lots of great Engineering talent available to answer questions.

It's difficult and rewarding work, which is hard to balance with lots of new opportunities popping up this year, but it's going to be totally awesome for everyone.

The VMUGs are intended to be technical meeting grounds for the VMware user community, not a place for sales pitches.  We respect that mantra and are doing it to be a contributing member of the VMware community in Omaha, not to sell you stuff. 

Please try and make it.  Keep an eye out on the VMUG Event Page or let me know for more details as they become available.  I look forward to seeing you there (even if you work for a competitor)!

Oh...and there'll be free food and prizes to give away.

Today I had the pleasure of attending the Midwest VMware User Group Regional Conference in Kansas City.  It was a fantastic get-together for the Iowa, Omaha, Kansas City, Missouri, Oklahoma City and Arkansas User Groups.  I was manning a vendor table for my company at the event, so can't judge the quality of the presentations, but the attendance was outstanding.  I believe I heard over 300 people were in attendance (not counting the vendors).  We had a lot of traffic at our table, and it looked like most of the other vendors had similar experiences.  I was surprised by the amount of conversation that was generated at our table, which told me people were genuinely interested in talking to the vendors.  This is a bit of a change from VMWorld where it seems most people are mainly interested in jumping in a booth to grab the free goodies and avoid the people manning the booths.

The location worked very well for the format they chose for this conference.  It was held at the Cerner RiverPort Facility in North Kansas City.  It is a former casino and provided ample parking and plenty of room for the presentations, vendor area and some quiet areas perfect for one-on-one meetings.

The food was great (definitely better than VMWorld) without being fancy.  Breakfast was light but had good variety, lunch was overly abundant and tasty, and the afternoon snack was a great mix of salty foods.

Having formerly lead the Omaha-Area VMUG, I can appreciate the effort it takes to arrange an event, but can only imagine the time it took to arrange this HUGE meeting.  I'd like to give kudos and a great big "thank you" to the people who put this thing together.  I hope to see it again year after year.