Hello Dell community,

today some thoughts about NIC Partitioning.

What means NPAR?

NPAR is a technology used by Broadcom and Qlogic, which enables you to split up traffic on a Networkcard (NIC) in 4 partitions. NPAR is only working with 10GbE technology. NPAR is similar to QoS on Networklayer.

How can I split up the traffic?

You can split up the traffic in different ways. Like with QoS with UDP or TCP packet filter but you have also the option to split up in VLANs, Virtual Machine or application client. For application client your software must support multitenant.

When I split up the bandwidth is this dynamic or static?

You can have both, it is possible to set up static partitions or you can set it dynamic.

As you see in the picture, there are static bandwidths configured for iSCSI, FCoE, TOE and other protocols and dynamic for VMs. It is also possible that more than one Protocol or VM uses one Partition.

Has my switch to support NPAR?

No. Your switch has not to support, for your switch there is no different between an NPAR NIC than a normal NIC.

What about the OS, can every OS handle NPAR?

No. There is a list of supported OS,  Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Hyper-V Server, RHEL, 5.5 and 6, SLES 11 SP1, VMware ESX, ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0.

Why should I use NPAR?

From datacenter perspective it would reduce your cabling and maximize bandwidth.

How does this work?

Let me give you an example. For an Hyper-V cluster you need one NIC for Management, one NIC for Cluster Heartbeat, one for Livemigration, one for cluster shared volume, two iSCSI NICs and two or more NICs to attach you Company and VM Network.  So in the past you had many NICs or a few NICs with many ports. With NPAR it is possible to use at least two 10GbE NICs  Ports to setup the complete network environment. That reduces cabling and you don’t need big 2U sever to hold all the cards.

How to configure NPAR?

Check out the links below.

Qlogic

http://www.qlogic.com/OEMPartnerships/Dell/Documents/Converged/QME8242-k_converged_IO_Deployment_Guide.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK1OXNKynNw

Broadcom

http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/dell-57712-k-cndc-npar-setup-guide.pdf

For more questions and information take a look in this whitepapers and blogs.

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/Dell-Broadcom-NPAR-White-Paper.pdf

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/9711.hyper-v-network-design-configuration-and-prioritization-guidance.aspx

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pwcnt/en/broadcom-57712-k-faq.pdf

http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/10/dell-network-daughter-card-ndc-and-network-partitioning-npar-explained/

Thank you for reading.

Regards

Flo
PS. For further blog post please also check my webpage.

This post written by Sav Shreshtha

Greetings Dell Tech Center community members!

We know that many of you will attend VMworld 2012 in San Francisco, one of the biggest gatherings of IT professionals in the world.  While you are there, Dell is offering an opportunity for you to get the inside scoop on the integration of “Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter” with the new vSphere web client.

Will you be at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco? Do any of the following statements sound like you?

• Do you have hands-on or decision making responsibilities for your virtualization infrastructure?
• Do you currently or in the past used Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter?
• Do you currently or in the past used plug-ins for VMware vCenter?
• Has your production environment been virtualized for 3 or more years?

If some or all of the above sounds like you, how would you like the opportunity to meet with us at VMworld to have a conversation about the future of “Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter”? If this sounds like something you’d like to do, email sav_shrestha@dell.com.

Also, visit the Dell at VMworld 2012 landing page for more information on how to connect with us at VMworld 2012, San Francisco.

The stack operates and is managed as a single entity, with a single IP address, through the management interface (CLI, Web, or SNMP) of the stack master to deliver resilient high availability.  Other staking features include:

• Fast Failover – No more than a 50 ms interruption in unicast connectivity while the standby switch is taking control of the stacked units when master fails.
• Automatic Firmware Updates – In stacked switches, only the master needs to be updated with new firmware. All existing stack members including a newly added member to the stack will update their firmware from the master.
• Non-Stop Forwarding (NSF) on the stack – This guarantees the forwarding functionality of the stack units during master failover, and maintaining network connectivity with minimum data loss.
• Hot Add/Delete – This allows adding and removing units to and from the stack without any power cycling.

PowerConnect 8100 supports combining link aggregation across stacks. When compared with technologies like MC-LAG or M-LAG, this approach not only provides full bandwidth utilization, high availability links, rapid failover, and non-blocking networks, but also is a vendor independent architecture and support for IEEE 802.1AX-2008.

For more information about Dell PowerConnect 8100 switch series please visit www.dell.com/networking and continue the conversation on twitter by following @DellNetworking.

Written by Robert Hartman

Does this sound familiar? New user growth or business objective requires a new switch install. Whether the installation is a wiring closet or a rack, enter the traditional upgrade cycle: plan and budget ahead for what is needed; purchase; alert your users that the network will undergo maintenance for hours, a weekend, or longer; power down and pull out the old equipment; install new equipment; power up the network and… hope everything works.

What if this upgrade could be done simply and with more efficiency?

Most customers want networks to be simple to: install, configure, operate and maintain. Simplifying the first two should improve deployment speed and reduce network downtime.  Automating any of them can bring new level of efficiencies to your network. Ultimately, with faster installation and fewer headaches, the business is up-and-running faster and productivity is back up to optimum operation.

How can Dell help? The Dell PowerConnect 8100 Series switch family brings a number of new deployment efficiencies to drastically reduce time, effort and resource while scaling your network quickly. These new innovations can reduce the time from out-of-box unpacking to full operation to a matter of minutes or hours, significantly shaving off hours or even days from traditional installs. Here are some of the key innovations in the 8100 Series:

Install it quickly: With new Tool-less Enterprise ReadyRails™ mounting kits, PowerConnect 8100 switches utilize snap-in rails, which can install in seconds, drastically reducing install time while improving durability and sturdiness within the rack.

Deploy it quickly: With USB Rapid Deployment, one switch or stacks of PowerConnect 8100 switches can be configured in moment by rapidly deploying the switches without setting up complex TFTP configurations or sending technical staff to remote offices. Firmware upgrades are also a breeze.

Connect it quickly: With iSCSI Auto-Configuration, plug into an iSCSI array for instant SAN networking. The PCT8100 is fully integrated with Dell EqualLogic™ iSCSI arrays, with an Auto-Configuration function to optimize switch setup for iSCSI traffic and then automatically prioritize iSCSI traffic for high class of service.

Manage it quickly: With Dell OpenManage Network Manager, discover, configure and manage multiple switch stacks instantly with full traffic and performance monitoring. Quickly manage a PowerConnect 8100 switch or any other Dell PowerConnect and Dell Force10 switch added to the network with one management tool.

Now, automated deployment can maximize/accelerate productivity across the campus and business network, giving you a more predictable and efficient approach to growth. The PowerConnect 8100 enables a new level of automation and simplification for Campus Networks.

For more information about Dell PowerConnect 8100 switch series please visit www.dell.com/networking and continue the conversation on twitter by following @DellNetworking.

Dell will be hosting theater sessions at VMworld 2012 in Booth 1412 and 1523. The following highlights our theater sessions. Please click to see a higher resolution schedule image or download the Dell schedule here.

Dell at VMworld 2012: Sunday Theater Sessions

Dell at VMworld 2012: Monday Theater Sessions

Dell at VMworld 2012: Tuesday Theater Sessions

Dell at VMworld 2012: Wednesday Theater Sessions

Looking forward to the great conversations. See you at VMworld 2012.

The time is right here and right now. VMworld starts in tomorrow and will include the opening ceremonies for the Solutions Expo Floor. Dell will be in Booth #1412 and #1523 and we will have our SMEs ready to engage and discuss the power to do more with Dell end-to-end solution stacks.

You can also follow our SMEs at event on Twitter. The Dell Twitter list is here. And remember that the Dell at VMworld events page is here. Take advantage of our SMEs and join the conversations - ask what you want to ask. Again, the time is right here, right now and our SMEs are ready.

This week I sat down with Lance Boley and Kong Yang to talk about our annual user group at VMworld.  We know that that there are a number of you that couldn't attend this years conference and likewise there are a number of you that could attend but have a packed schedule.  So this year we have decided to take the DTCUG to the next level and live stream the event.  Our plan is to have a couple of webcams set up so that you can see the presentations, the presenters, and also the audience.  During the Q&A sections we will open up a live chat so you can get your questions in too.

This years user group will feature 3 technical presentations from the following people:

• Jason Boche will be presenting on Storage Center Integration With VMware APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA).
• Todd Murihead will be talking about what’s New in Performance on vSphere 5.1.
• Dave McCrory is presenting on data gravity - http://datagravity.org/ and the exploration of data physics.

Thanks to our AWESOME community we sold out the initial 100 tickets in less than 36 hours.  We opened up a few more tickets and now have 180 customers registered to come out.  If you do wish to attend in person, please reach out to Kong, Lance, or Myself.

If you are going to tune into the live stream you can do so by joining the online meeting http://delltechcenter.adobeconnect.com/dtcug/ or by downloading the IOS or Android Apps and entering the previous URL.

Dell TechCenter User Group Event at VMworld 2012.

Where:  Westin San Francisco Market Street in the Metropolitan I
When:    August 28th 4:30-7PM.

Posted on behalf of Jordan Hargrave, Linux Software Engineer

Although Dell does not officially support Ubuntu Linux on Dell PowerEdge servers, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or later kernels will work on PowerEdge systems with a few caveats.

The sb_edac (and i7core_edac) drivers must be blacklisted or patched with an upstream version.  Depending on which kernel you have, the sb_edac driver has a bug that may cause a temporary system hang when processing machine check events.  This is not a Dell-specific issue.  The bug will cause NMI watchdog timeout events to occur within the kernel message log:

[   94.816130]  [<ffffffff81640ac9>] do_nmi+0xf9/0x360

[   94.816134]  [<ffffffff81640130>] nmi+0x20/0x30

...

[   94.816150]  [<ffffffff8164356d>] notifier_call_chain+0x4d/0x70

[   94.816153]  [<ffffffff816435ca>] atomic_notifier_call_chain+0x1a/0x20

[   94.816157]  [<ffffffff81029b49>] mce_log+0x29/0x180

The acpi_pad and mei drivers must also be blacklisted as they can cause performance problems on Dell PowerEdge servers.  The acpi_pad driver is the ACPI Processor Aggregator driver, used for power saving features.  However it can interfere with the firmware if power saving features enabled in BIOS.  The acpi_pad driver is still undergoing development and may be best to blacklist the driver at this time, it is not a necessary driver for system operation.

The mei driver can cause error messages with watchdog timer and also prevent proper shutdown.

To blacklist a driver, you can either edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf or create your own /etc/blacklist/xxxx.conf file and add the lines:

blacklist acpi_pad

blacklist mei

blacklist sb_edac

blacklist i7core_edac

Resources:

kernel patch for sb_edac driver:

http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1112.2/03268.html

ACPI PAD driver bugzilla:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42981

Information on mei driver:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1970325

The CEO Round Table included our Dell CEO, Michael Dell; the triumvirate from VMware and EMC- Pat Gelsinger, Paul Maritz & Joe Tucci; and the CEO from NetApp- Tom Georgens. The session was moderated by Wired Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson. Usually, executive sessions at VMworld are all style and little substance i.e. lots of teleprompter reading and fixed messages. In addition, the CEO session was stacked head-to-head against three other highly regarded technical sessions with stupendously, credentialed speakers. Factor in the long lines that formed 30-minutes before the session for a 1500+ seat room and the anticipation was palatable.

The session started out with Chris talking about mobility, social media and the consumerization of IT. Michael was the first to address it and he discussed the shift from the traditional workforce to the mobile/remote/connected workforce. Michael, also, reiterated the importance of IT security. The discussions between the CEOs were great with the ice-breaker moment coming from Michael when he interjected that Dell does storage too during an EMC and NetApp back and forth. The audience quite enjoyed that moment.

Michael was on his A-game and had many wonderful moments during the session. His best moment was his candid response to Chris' question about the Post PC era. To which, Michael said, "The Post PC era has been great to Dell." Heck yeah! What an awesome, impromptu response. It was an instant classic. Overall, this session earned its well-deserved standing ovation when it ended.

Speaking of instant classic, DellTechCenter.com will have our annual User Group Event at VMworld (DTCUG-ip) from 4:30-7PM Pacific Time today in the Westin on Market Street in Met I Room. If you are not at VMworld, you can watch the presentations via DTCUG-ip. 

It goes without saying that the Dell TechCenter is there for the customers.  So to say thank you we hosted our fourth annual Dell TechCenter User Group (DTCUG) at VMworld, a way to give back to you for keeping our community strong and vibrant.  We want you to know how much we appreciate every question, answer, post, response and comment by giving you what you want out of a conference, knowledge.  That is why we had Jason Boche, Todd Muirhead and Dave McCrory present some new and compelling information special just for you.

Last nights event was kicked off with Jason giving us a demo and overview of Dell Compellent and the Storage Center integration with VMware VASA, followed by Todd who told us about what is news in performance on vSphere 5.1.  Dave took the stage to talk to everyone about a different way to look at data and applications that use data, something he calls Data Gravity. Finally we closed the night with some great prizes with 5 winners taking home SonicWall firewalls.  Congratulations to the winners and to the speakers for another great event.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

See you again next year and thanks again for being part of our technical community at DellTechCenter.com

As Jared pointed out in his blog post, there isn't a readily available package for wsmancli, a popular client tool for WSMAN. Thanks to him for providing an install package for Ubuntu 12.04. But what about a pakage for other Ubuntu releases? a package for other Linux distro?

Introducing WSL!

WSL* (pronounced "whistle") is a set of shell scripts that serve as a commandline client to WSMAN. It only requires tools already present in standard Ubuntu installation. There is no binary to worry about. No need to compile or build a package for a distro or version.

To verify, I booted an Ubuntu 10.10 Live CD and from a shell...

     $ wget ExpandOrDownloadLink
     $ unzip wsl.zip
     $ tar -xvjf wsl-0.1.6a.tbz
     $ cd dcim
     $ ./wsl enum DCIM_SystemView
       #you'll be asked for IP address and credential

That's it, you got a working WSMAN client.

Make sure you visit the WSL wiki for complete information.

The WSMAN target I used is PowerEdge R720 and R610 with Lifecycle Controller in iDRAC. There's a lot more you can get from this interface and you might be surprised what you missed. This video blog may help even as a refresher.

Like it?  Have a suggestion?  Leave a comment below.

Cheers!

* An open source community-based project.

This post was originally written by Michael Schroeder from the Dell Operating Systems Engineering team (OSE)

Join the Dell Operating Systems Engineering team to learn about the latest developments with Windows Server 2012 running on Dell Products.

Join us at 3pm Central time on September 4th, 2012 @ http://www.delltechcenter.com/chat

From the behind the scenes development efforts that helped shape Windows Server 2012 to the partnership between Dell and Microsoft to qualify the OS on Dell products, the OSE team has been heavily involved with Windows Server 2012 for several years. We’ll cover as many new features as we can. We would also like to hear from you what new Windows Server 2012 features you are most interested in.

Here are a few of the topics we will cover:

Base Platform and BIOS Support for Windows Server 2012:

Hyper-V:

• Scalability Improvements
• Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
• Dynamic Virtual Machine Queues (DVMQ)

Networking:

• Consistent Device Naming (CDN)
• NIC Teaming

Storage:

• Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)
• Storage Management  

Systems Management:      

• OpenManage 7.2 support
• Cluster Aware Updating
• iDRAC/PowerShell CIM cmdlets

 
Join us at 3pm Central time on September 4th, 2012 to learn more about Microsoft Windows Server 2012 & Hyper-V 3.0 !

Dell has published a whitepaper on Motherboard Replacement using the iDRAC7.  Here is a quick overview of what you can look forward to in the paper:

This feature makes an IT admin's life easier in the event that the motherboard on a Dell server has to be replaced.

Trying to manually write down all system settings and configuration is tedious, time consuming, and error prone.  Using Dell's export (backup) and import (restore) features makes returning a system to its original state automatic.

The procedure to accomplish this task are as follows:

1. Create a backup image of a system in case of motherboard replacement later on
2. Replace broken motherboard with new one
3. Restore desired image onto new motherboard using either of following options:
   • Using the Lifecycle Controller Platform Restore option (via F10 on POST)
   • Using the WSMAN-based Import method (Remote Enablement)

What is restored?

• Service Tag (Motherboard replacement only)
• Component firmware
• Component configuration data
• Component usernames, passwords, certificates, and licenses
• USC

As you may discover later, this method is an API but it can be easily scripted using tools already available in the OS such as winrm or client libraries such as from the opensource OpenWsman project.

See the full article in this whitepaper:

   Motherboard Replacement on PowerEdge Servers

iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller Technical Learning Series.

Last month, many Texas Linux aficionados converged on San Antonio for two days of Texas Linux Fest. This was my first time attending TLF, and I'm happy to say that the organizers put on a great event.

There were clearly some heavy themes this year. The first day was filled mostly with Chef 101 and a Chef Hackathon, both run by Opscode. On the second day, I mostly attended events about cloud computing or ARM. I think my favorite talks were those on cgroups by Red Hatter Bob Kozdemba, another on data security in the cloud by Sputnik “alpha cosmonaut” Dustin Kirkland, and Canonicaler David Mandala's talk about Ubuntu on ARM servers. (Really, how does one handle management and IP address allocation—let alone data security—for a rack filled with a thousand microservers?)

Also of interest to me, although in areas with which I'm less familiar, were talks on device trees and open ARM hardware. I think we'll be hearing more about both in the coming years, especially if ARM servers really take off.

The event also had an expo, and I was happy to see several OS vendors and communities represented, including Fedora/Red Hat, Debian, openSUSE, CloudStack, and FreeBSD. Oh, and I was pleased to see that Project Sputnik's work so far has paid off, having sighted a couple XPS 13's running Ubuntu. :-)

If you're in the area next year and have the chance, make sure to check out Texas Linux Fest! Hopefully I'll see you there.

Dell ended VMworld 2012 with two Best in Class Awards from Virtualization Review: (1) Best SMB Product - Dell vStart 100 (pictured with Dell Solutions Architect - Trenton Potgieter) and (2) Best Backup and Data Protection Product - Dell AppAssure. In addition, Dell EqualLogic Storage Blade Array was a New Technology Finalist in Tech Target's Best of VMworld 2012.

At VMworld 2012, Dell delivered breakout sessions, NDA whisper suite sessions, keynote & booth demos, customer meetings and of course, the ever popular - DellTechCenter.com User Group Event at VMworld 2012. Pictured below are the DellTechCenter.com Crew members - Dennis Smith, Kong Yang and Lance Boley with DellTechCenter.com RockStar Hans De LeenHeer in front of the Dell and Dell Wyse Booths.

Overall, this year's VMworld was the most attended with over 20000+ attendees. And Dell was a large part of the customer conversations and community engagements. This momentum will lend itself to Dell World 2012 in December in Austin, TX.

This image is a collaborative effort of Praveen Paladugu and Jeff Mendoza.

 NOTE: The liveDVD solution outlined below is NOT officially supported by Dell.

A newer version of the OM firmware live DVD is here. We were resolving some of the issues we ran into while building/testing this image and so the delay posting the image. Following are some of the changes introduced in this image:

64-bit image

 As requested previously, this image is a 64-bit image. We ran into some dependency issues with 32-bit vs 64-bit packages. All of which are resolved now.

Driverpacks

This image doesn't include any driverpack packages to update the driverpacks in Life Cycle controller. Adding the driverpacks blows up the image to beyond what a DVD can accomodate. So we removed all the driverpacks in this image. This image only has the firmware packages in it. 

Driverpacks are primaryly useful while installing new Operating Systems for accessing the target storage/network. So, if you only care about updating the firmware on the hardware components, this image will meet your needs.

600MB image

With the driverpacks removed, the image size comes down to ~600MB. So, this image will fit on a CD and can be used on older generation servers without any issues.

CentOS 62

The base OS on the image was updated to CentOS 6.2.

Hybrid ISO

The image created is a hybrid iso image. Meaning the same image can be used in a CD/DVD and an USB key as well. To use the image on an USB key run

dd if=CentOS62-OM71-Firmware-LiveDVD.x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M (where /dev/sdb is your USB key).

There are some known issues with using Hybrid ISO images on Dell servers, the related information is captured at http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/02/29/hybrid-iso-images-on-dell-servers.aspx.

Please check the above link before using this image on an USB Key.

The OM 7.1 Firmware liveDVD images can be downloaded from http://linux.dell.com/files/openmanage-contributions/om71-firmware-live/

For those who are not familiar with this image, please refer to our first blog at http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2011/08/17/centos-based-livedvd-to-update-firmware-on-dell-servers.aspx on how to use this image.

Feedback

We would very much like to hear from everyone using this image. Please leave us a note on poweredge mailing list or a comment below on how you are using this image and what changes would like to see part of this image. 

Dell has published a new version of a guide on using the WSMan API using LC2 with iDRAC7.  Here is a quick overview of what you can look forward to in the paper:

This feature makes an IT admin's life easier for remotely managing PowerEdge servers. 

This guide also includes sample WSMan command input as well as sample output for every available method, and accompanying scripts.

The following items are some of topics covered:

1. WSMan Configuration
2. Bare metal OS deployment
3. RAID Configuration
4. NIC Configuration
5. Hardware Inventory
6. Software Inventory
7. Firmware Updates

The accompanying shell script examples can easily be stacking together to create a fully functional workflow.

See the full article in this whitepaper:

 Web Services Interface Guide for linux

iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller Technical Learning Series.

Last weekend, about 1450 open source fan, over 80 users group get to gather at Open Source conference at Meisei University. Open source conference was started 2004 as a grass root community events by mainly Linux users. The number of attendees increased year by year. And now this event becomes one of the largest open source events in Japan. Events is not just Tokyo but nationwide from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

Other picture:  http://flickr.com/gp/michiyas/65J58E/ 

Total numbers of attendees are over 7000 last year. Those are open source communities which is attending this event are

Andoroid, CiviCRM, Clonezilla, BlueQuartz, Endian Firewall, Drupal, eZ Publish, Geeklog, Chef, Java, LibreOffice, Linux HA, MODX, Momonga, OpenOffice, Plone, Project Vine,Scalix, Tizen, Ubuntu, UltraMonkey, WorlPress, XOOPS, ZABBIX, OpenCloud, Koedo, Apache Camel, Asterisk, CloudStack, GNU AWK, JasperServer, jQuery Mobile, KDE, Liferay, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, OpenSUSE, PostgreSQL, SAMBA, Moodle…..

It seems most of commonly used open source project/users group ware there?
Dell TechCenter decided to join this event from last one, OSC 2012 Tokyo spring. This time we have following display and seminar.
-PowerEdge C, Displayed PowerEdge Which is optimized for Cloud service.
-White Paper of reference architecture, bunch of white paper which describes the usage of Open Source software.
-XPS 13 with Ubuntu with software for developers.
-Crowbar seminar, Talks about latest info of Crowbar, version 2.0

There are more event coming soon. So you should attend if you are in Japan!

Open Source Conference web site (In Japanese)

So Say SMEs in Virtualization & Cloud

In Episode 38, Kong Yang and Todd Muirhead return to highlight the trends that captivated the attention of attendees at VMworld 2012. We welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Please click below to view the video.

(Please visit the site to view this video)