Register now for the Dell | Datameer Webinar, “New Business Insights with Hadoop Analytics,” where we’ll highlight use cases demonstrating how companies are taking advantage of software and hardware advances to analyze data to increase insights with Hadoop.

ABSTRACT:

New Business Insights with Hadoop Analytics

November 7th |10am PT/1pm ET

The time it takes for users to deploy Big Data analytics dramatically decreases when organizations combine software and hardware together in a certified Hadoop package.

Analytic use cases spanning marketing, internet security, asset risk management, product usage and IT infrastructure are already driving competitive advantages and operational efficiencies. Companies in industries from Financial Services, Telco, Gaming, Retail, and Internet are already gaining competitive advantages from new insights.

Join us as we highlight:

• Use cases on how companies are taking advantage of software and hardware advances to analyze data with Hadoop
• How these changes affect the way businesses operate and analyze data
• How the joint Dell and Datameer solution can help increase time to insight

 Register at http://info.datameer.com/Analytics-Hadoop-new-business-insights-dell.html

VMware recently released bits to provide compatibility between VMware vSphere 5.1 and VMware View 5.1.x in VMware Knowledge Based (KB) article 2035268. There are two ways to extend compatibility between vSphere 5.1 and View 5.1.x. The first method is to deploy VMware's ESXi 5.1 ISO that provides the support. The second method is to apply VMware's patch to an existing vSphere 5.1 deployment. If you are using Dell's customized bits for VMware vSphere 5.1, then you should use the second method.  

For more details on the KB article, the ISO download and the patch download, please visit this article.

We’re proudly presenting a very special Cloud Chat on VMware vSphere and vCloud with an extraordinary guest: Duncan Epping, the maker of Yellow Bricks.

Thursday, 8th November 2012
6.00 pm - 7.00 pm CET
9.00 am - 10.00 am PST
11.00 am - 12.00 pm CST
12.00 pm - 1.00 pm EST

In order to attend the chat, go to delltechcenter.adobeconnect.com/chat (important note: do not type www  …) No registration is required. You only need to install a Java plug in for the chat (make sure you go to the site listed above a couple of minutes before the chat begins). If you have any questions, please contact florian_klaffenbach@dell.com. Looking forward to see you there!

A brief intro by Duncan Epping:

Yellow Bricks is a personal Blog about virtualization(mostly VMware related) maintained by me, Duncan Epping. The name is derived from an Arctic Monkeys song, Old Yellow Bricks. Yellow Bricks are solid but flexible at the same time because you can build virtually anything. Same goes for virtualization, it provides you with a firm foundation while gaining flexibility at the same time. Yellow Bricks, building blocks for virtualization.
Short introduction used on other sites like LinkedIn.:

Duncan Epping is Principal Architect in the Technical Marketing group at VMware and is focused on Cloud Infrastructure / vSphere architecture and integration. Previously, he worked at Oracle and multiple consultancy companies where he had more than 10 years of experience designing and developing infrastructures and deployment best practices. Duncan was among the first VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX 007) and the main author and owner of the leading VMware/Virtualization blog Yellow-Bricks.com. He is the co-author of multiple books including “VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive”, “VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive”, the “VMware vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide” and “Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vCloud Director”.
Honors:

• #1 in the Top 25 virtualization blogs 2012 on vsphere-land.com
• Listed in the Top 50 IT blogs 2011
• Listed as the most influential virtualization blogger
• #1 in the Top 25 virtualization blogs 2011 / 2010 / 2009 on vsphere-land.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed anywhere on this site are strictly mine and not the opinions and views of VMware.

Source: http://www.yellow-bricks.com

Duncan Epping, Principal Architect at VMware Technical Marketing - LinkedIn
David Hill, Senior Solutions Architect at VMware -  LinkedIn

As usual, the chat will be hosted  by:

Stephen Spector, Cloud Evangelist at Dell (Twitter: @SpectorAtDell)
Florian Klaffenbach, Solution Expert – Microsoft & Cloud Computing at Dell (Twitter: @FloKlaffenbach)
Rafael Knuth, Social Media Manager at Dell (Twitter: @RafaelKnuth)

A special thanks goes to Kong L. Yang, Technology Strategist and Enterprise Marketing Consultant at Dell who made this Cloud Chat possible! Follow Kong at Twitter: @KongYang

This blog post is authored by Megha Jayaraman from Global Solutions Engineering team.

Do you find creating virtual networks for your Hyper-v hosts tedious and mundane? Are you still stuck in the creation and management of virtual NICs for your Hyper-v virtual machines? Is Dell AIM fast becoming your favorite infrastructure management tool?

Look no further. Dell’s latest AIM release provides features to automate the virtual networking management of disk-booted Microsoft Hyper-V VMRack (Hyper-V VMRack booting from server’s local disk). Along with managing disk-booted Hyper-V VMRack through AIM, you can now also automate the creation of Hyper-v virtual switches and virtual NICs for the virtual machines.  Remember, AIM does not alter the functionality of Hyper-v networking feature set, but rather compliments it. It automates the mundane tasks of creating virtual networks according to the datacenter topology and assigning the virtual machines to their networks through the Hyper-v network manager.

This blog gives a technical overview on how we can automate virtual networking of disk-booted Hyper-v network through AIM3.6.  You also have an option to manually manage the hypervisor networking through the Read-Only mode of the VMRack configuration.

With this new feature, based on the AIM network channels defined on the server, virtual switches are created for each of the physical NICs available on the host.  The following screenshot shows how channels are defined for the server network interfaces. Channel 1 and 2 correspond to the AIM reserved network – named SCN - while the Channel 3 and 4 are associated with an application network on VLAN 6.

Once AIM manages the virtual switch creation on the hypervisor, virtual networks automatically get created and appear under the virtual network manager wizard. The AIM controller assigns a unique virtual switch name on the Hyper-V VMRack based on the channel number and the associated VLAN of the network, that the channels are part of.  For example, the SCN virtual switch is labeled as AIM-vSwitch-SCN-1-vlan-4004, where 4004 is the SCN vlan id.

AIM3.6 also manages the networking requirements of the personas running in the virtual machines on the disk-booted Hyper-V VMRack. It automatically creates the virtual network adapters on the virtual machines based on the persona network connections and associates them with the virtual switch.

The following screenshot shows how the persona running inside a VM is connected to an application network apart from the SCN network.

Based on the primary channel the network VLAN is associated with, AIM configures the virtual network adapters on the virtual machine. In this figure, we can see how AIM has created a new virtual network adapter on the virtual machine VM1 and connected it to the virtual switch AIM-vswitch-chan-3-vlan 6. 

The following figure shows how AIM configures the network connectivity of the VM under its settings automatically. One thing to note here is that for the persona discovery and monitoring, AIM uses legacy network adapters available with the Microsoft Hyper-V using the SCN virtual network. For the application networks, AIM leverages the synthetic adapter and connects it to the respective virtual networks.

After upgrading to AIM 3.6, you would need to rediscover their existing disk-booted Microsoft Hyper-V VMRack and configure the VMRack parameters for automating virtual networking.

With this new feature addition of automating Hyper-V virtual networking, AIM truly delivers a holistic network management of the data center through identification, configuration and management of physical as well as virtual networking infrastructure.

To know more about this new AIM3.6 feature and the upgrading process, please refer to the AIM technical documentation available with your AIM software. If you are a newbie and want to know more about AIM and its capabilities, please visit http://www.dell.com/aim

This post was written by Pritesh Prabhu

Dell is proud to announce the OpenManage Mobile 1.0 Evaluation Program.  This is a limited user study that will help us collect important feedback from you and provide input into our future mobile product offerings.

OpenManage Mobile enables Dell customers to manage their network from their mobile device, while away from their company premises. OpenManage Mobile focuses on providing OpenManage Essentials alerts to your mobile device and enabling you to take action on your hardware if there are any emergencies. OpenManage Mobile also allows you to view the health of your data center and perform basic functions (e.g., power tasks) using your mobile device. 

OpenManage Mobile is currently a Beta Application and is available only on the Android Platform. OpenManage Mobile curruntly supports OME 1.0.1 only. Support for the recently-released OME 1.1 is underway and will be made available soon. 

Write to us at om_mobile_feedback@dell.com and we will provide OpenManage Mobile to you. Thanks in advance for your feedback.

You can also find a flyer for the OpenManage Mobile beta on the Dell TechCenter.

So Say SMEs in Virtualization & Cloud

In Episode 46, Kong Yang and Todd Muirhead discuss Dell World 2012. We welcome your thoughts and feedback. 

Please click below to view the video.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Welcome to the third issue of the Dell Open Source Ecosystem Digest a collection of relevant technical content around OpenStack and Hadoop authored by Dell as well our partners and friends.

Preface

The number of contributors has grown to 10 (5 partners & friends plus 5 Dell employee blogs). Most likely, I will add further partners and their content to upcoming issues.

The more partners contribute, the more selection becomes crucial (you probably don’t want me to throw any sort of content to the wall and see what sticks to it). The big question is: How to select what’s relevant for you, the reader? I guess there are three answers to that question: 1. Iterate. 2. Iterate. 3. Iterate (and get you involved in that iteration process).

As of now, I assume you might be mainly interested in three areas (correct me if I’m wrong):

1. Events - where and when to get in touch with like minded folks (ideally within reasonable driving or flying distance)

2. Trainings - how to learn more about OpenStack and/or Hadoop

3. Distributions - get a consolidated overview over OpenStack and Hadoop packages, distributions and products (I couldn’t find anything like that on the web … so, there might be a gap to fill with our digest)

4. Dell - understand our offering and positioning in the OpenStack and Hadoop ecosystem

5. General - stuff that is happening around OpenStack and Hadoop

This week highlights

I would like to point you to five pieces of content in this issue:

“What Did You Like and How Would You Improve the OpenStack Summit?”
Help the OpenStack Foundation improve the event by filling out their survey
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OpenStackFall2012

“Dell Crowbar for OpenStack”
Get an insight into our major contribution to OpenStack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNAmWqUFXY&feature=youtube_gdata

“How VMware is contributing to OpenStack”
For all those who couldn’t attend the recent OpenStack Summit: A presentation by Steve Herrod, CTO at VMware
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_bwq78dWzI&feature=plcp

“Dell in the Clouds Europe Think Tank – An Online Happening for Cloud in Europe”
This event is going to be hosted next week which you can attend and participate in online
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2012/11/08/dell-in-the-clouds-europe-think-tank-an-online-happening-for-cloud-in-europe.aspx

Last but not least, you will find a sampling of Dell contributions to the OpenStack and Hadoop ecosystem in this digest - see in the Dell section below (which I am going to expand and update in upcoming issues).

Enjoy reading … and don’t forget to share your thoughts on the digest with me. You can find my contact data below. Thanks!

OpenStack

OpenStack Foundation: “What Did You Like and How Would You Improve the OpenStack Summit?”
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OpenStackFall2012

OpenStack Foundation: “Dell Crowbar for OpenStack” by Scott Johnson, Director of Engineering at Dell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNAmWqUFXY&feature=youtube_gdata

OpenStack Foundation: “OpenStack 101” by Joshua McKenty, Co-Founder & CEO at Piston Cloud Computing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCkzrezRmJI#!

OpenStack Foundation: “How VMware is contributing to OpenStack” by Steve Herrod, CTO VMware
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_bwq78dWzI&feature=plcp

OpenStack Foundation: “EMEA OpenStack Day: Call for Speakers & Prospectus for Sponsors”
http://www.openstack.org/blog/2012/10/emea-openstack-day-call-for-speakers-prospectus-for-sponsors/ and: http://emeaopenstackday2-esli.eventbrite.com/

Piston Cloud Computing: “Wish You Were There - A Second Chance to See Piston at the OpenStack Summit”
http://www.pistoncloud.com/2012/11/piston-at-the-openstack-summit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=piston-at-the-openstack-summit 

Hadoop

Datameer: “How Your Business Is Like the Obama Re-Election Campaign”
http://www.datameer.com/blog/big-data-analytics-perspectives/how-your-business-is-like-the-obama-re-election-campaign.html

Dell

“Dell in the Clouds Europe Think Tank – An Online Happening for Cloud in Europe” by Stephen Spector, Cloud Evangelist at Dell
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2012/11/08/dell-in-the-clouds-europe-think-tank-an-online-happening-for-cloud-in-europe.aspx

“History Repeats Itself: From Virtualization to Cloud in Open Source” by Stephen Spector - Personal Blog
http://spectorintexas.com/2012/11/08/history-repeats-itself-from-virtualization-to-cloud-in-open-source/

“ONE MILLION: Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) Ships Millionth Server” by Joseph B. George - Personal Blog
http://jbgeorge.net/2012/11/07/one-million-dell-data-center-solutions-dcs-ships-millionth-server/

“NOW HIRING: Dell’s Revolutionary Cloud and Big Data Team Expands” by Joseph B. George - Personal Blog
http://jbgeorge.net/2012/11/05/now-hiring-dells-revolutionary-cloud-and-big-data-team-expands/

Please find below a sampling of Dell contributions to OpenStack and Hadoop (compiled by Joseph B. George, Director Product Strategy and Marketing, Cloud and Big Data Solutions at Dell):

The first hardware solutions vendor to support OpenStack
http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/225900080/rackspace-nasa-open-up-cloud-computing-with-openstack-project.htm

The first HW + SW + Services OpenStack solution to the market - the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution
http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/press-releases/2011-07-26-dell-openstack-support

Launch of open source project “Crowbar” to fill the void of an automated bare metal OpenStack provisioner
https://github.com/DellCloudEdge/Crowbar

Release HW + SW + Services Apache Hadoop solution to the market - the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution
http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/by-service-type-application-services-business-intelligence-hadoop

Launch of the Emerging Solutions Ecosystem Partner Program to enable our customers by incorporating some of our best in breed partner technologies into our solutions, which includes Datameer, Pentaho, enStratus, Mirantis and Canonical, with more to come
http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/2012-04-16-dell-emerging-solutions-ecosystem

Launch of the Emerging Solutions Platform Partner Program to enable our customers by delivering solutions focused on specific workloads and target markets
http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/2012-10-16-dell-mcloud-helix-private-cloud

Contributors - Dell Partners & Friends

Datameer was founded in 2009 by some of the original contributors to Apache Hadoop, Datameer has grown to a global team, advancing big data analytics. Datameer is headquatered in San Mateo, California, with offices in New York and Halle (Salle) in Germany. Company website: www.datameer.com

enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management solution for deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in public, private and hybrid clouds. Where cloud services software (i.e. Eucalyptus, Joyent and Citrix CloudStack) target the delivery of cloud as a service, enStratus is focused on the consumption of one or more cloud services from a single, consistent management platform. Think of enStratus as the enterprise console to the world of cloud computing. Company website: www.enstratus.com

Mirantis delivers OpenStack cloud and open source application infrastructure. With the largest pool of OpenStack engineering expertise on the market, Mirantis helps service providers, SaaS vendors and enterprises build and run robust OpenStack cloud infrastructure, powered by the full force of open source innovation. Its focus: vendor-independent cloud implementation uncompromised by opaque hooks or proprietary packaging. The company has a unique cost-effective delivery model, founded on years of deep software engineering experience for demanding Fortune 1000 companies. Customers include Cisco, Dell, GE, Agilent, NASA, The Gap, Axcient and Nexenta. Mirantis is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with engineering centers in Russia and Ukraine. Company website: www.mirantis.com

OpenStack Foundation is an independent body providing shared resources to help achieve the OpenStack Mission by Protecting, Empowering, and Promoting OpenStack software and the community around it, including users, developers and the entire ecosystem. Foundation website:www.openstack.org

Piston Cloud Computing is the enterprise OpenStack company. Founded by several of the creators of OpenStack, our mission is to further the natural evolution of the OpenStack project while focusing on meeting the needs of the enterprise. Company website: www.pistoncloud.com

Contributors - Dell Employees’ Personal Blogs

Barton George Director of Marketing, Web Vertical at Dell. Personal Blog: http://bartongeorge.net/

Joseph B. George Director, Product Strategy and Marketing, Cloud and Big Data Solutions at Dell. Personal Blog: http://jbgeorge.net/

Rob Hirschfeld Software Development Principal Engineer at Dell. Personal Blog: http://robhirschfeld.com/ and Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/rollingwoodcitizen

Kamesh Pemmaraju Senior Product Manager Cloud Solutions at Dell. Personal Blog: http://www.cloudel.com

Stephen Spector Cloud Evangelist at Dell. Personal Blog: http://spectorintexas.com/ and Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/xenuser

Contact

Twitter: @RafaelKnuth
Email: rafael_knuth@dellteam.com

Authored by Louis Barton, Solutions Performance Analysis

Do you want to increase your datacenter’s performance capabilities while reducing its footprint?  Wouldn’t you rather manage a sixth of your current server deployment?   Wouldn't you like to increase your VM capacity by 10x over previous generation servers?  The 12^th generation Dell PowerEdge M820 offers customers the next step in server consolidation from legacy rack servers to ultra-dense blade servers.  With four processors packed into a full-height blade chassis space, the PowerEdge M820 offers customers the ability to do all of this, with higher benchmark performance than comparable blade servers from competitors.

This study shows how many legacy servers can be replaced with a single PowerEdge M820 blade server.  Although there is a remarkable advantage by using just one M820 blade server over previous generation rack servers, we've expanded on that idea to show you just how far a full blade chassis can take you in terms of server consolidation and VM capacity. 

The DVD Store benchmark was used to test the PowerEdge M820 against the older PowerEdge R710 and PowerEdge 2950 III servers.  This gave the study a three-generation comparison of performance improvements and the increasing benefit of upgrading to a dense, current generation solution.

Performance Scaling

The chart below shows the number of VMs and the Orders per Minute (OPM) you can achieve with each server in this study.  It clearly shows that a single PowerEdge M820 can process a much higher number of OPM and handle a greater VM load than the other servers in this study.  It is also capable of doing this in less rack space.  Eight full-height blade servers in a chassis take up 10U, the equivalent of five 2U rack servers.  The PowerEdge M820 scores 266% higher than the PowerEdge 2950 III and 90% higher performance than the R710:

Server Consolidation

With this increased output and compute density the number of servers you have in your data center can be significantly reduced by migrating to 12^th generation PowerEdge M820 blade servers.  This can create numerous footprint, power and financial savings. Below is a graphical representation of how many of the previous generation servers it would take to equal the maximum performance of PowerEdge M820 blade servers.  Just one chassis of PowerEdge M820 servers is equivalent to greater than one full rack of PowerEdge R710 servers.  The amazing server consolidation ratio is more evident when comparing against PowerEdge 2950 III servers; in a 10^th generation rack vs.12^th generation blade consolidation comparison, we see nearly 3 full racks of PowerEdge 2950 III servers shrink down to one-fourth of a rack of PowerEdge M820 blade servers.

VM Capacity

While we've added overall performance and reduced our datacenter’s footprint, our virtual environment has also seen an increase in density.  Our previous generation servers could only support a small number of high performing VMs, which affects aggregate performance.  However, PowerEdge M820 blade servers stretch those capacities to numbers in excess of 6 times that of our 10^th generation rack servers.  The chart below shows those increases in the same rack space footprint.

It’s hard to argue when you look at the performance, efficiency and consolidation benefits of the Dell PowerEdge M820.  By reducing your datacenter’s overheads and increasing its capabilities, the Dell PowerEdge M820 is the perfect solution for your business’s consolidation needs.  Please see here for the whitepaper of this study, also on Dell TechCenter.

DCB, iSCSI, and Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows Server 2012 and 12th Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers 

The following is posted on behalf of Brian Gautreau, Dell Global Solutions Engineer.

The data center is evolving and so too are the solutions that we build at Dell. The convergence of LAN and SAN into the same network is a significant shift in the data center and our customers are asking for guidance. These solutions are complex and require thoughtful design to deploy with confidence. The infrastructure supporting both the LAN and SAN must be robust and guarantee delivery of network traffic so that LAN does not starve SAN or vice versa. I’m Brian Gautreau, an Engineer in the Dell Global Solutions Engineering Team in Austin, TX USA. These are the problems that I and our Solutions Engineering team solve to enable our customers to deploy solutions faster and with more confidence.

I’ll discuss in the wiki below some background on converged networks and Data Center Bridging (DCB), some of the tools used for validation, and some features of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 used to solve convergence problems. Along with this background, examples of configurations used in switches and on servers are also included. Lastly, I touch on some of the hardware components that Dell solutions use to reliably deliver the converged fabric from end-to-end. As always, keep in mind that every data center and workload’s needs vary. If you are deploying a converged fabric, in-depth understanding of the environment must be taken into consideration and these factors must be included in any deployment.

Dell TechCenter Wiki: Hyper-V 3.0 and Converged Networks on 12th Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers 

By Sridevi Chandrasekaran and Shonn Burton

Dell’s advanced power management feature on 12G PowerEdge servers offers advanced power capping options. Blade level power capping helps to reduce cost by limiting peak power consumption during a specified time period. For example, a company’s email server can be set to a particular lower power cap value for the weekends. On blade servers, power capping capabilities are available not only at the blade chassis level but also at the server level and data center level.

Server level power capping can be set using the iDRAC7 web interface or CLI (either RACADM or WS-MAN).  An iDRAC7 Enterprise license is required for blade level power capping functionality.

Dell’s Open Manage Power Center (OMPC) provides a graphical user interface that allows you to set power caps at the rack, aisle and/or datacenter level.

Server level power capping is an improvement over previous generations of PowerEdge blade servers, as 11G blade servers are limited to Chassis level power capping.

Setting Power Cap value

On 12G blades the power cap can be set at several levels.  Dell provides a recommended range of power values, depending on your system configuration.  You can set a power cap value depending on your need for performance or power savings.

• If you set a power cap value within a recommended range then iDRAC7 will not request a power allocation from CMC above the power cap value you specified.
• If you set a power cap value below the recommended range then iDRAC7 may not be able to maintain the power cap and will request at least a minimum threshold level of power allocation from CMC.   
• If you try to set a power cap value above the recommended range then iDRAC7 will display a warning message and will not allow you to set that value.

Additionally, a power cap alert function sends out a notification if the user-defined power cap limit cannot be maintained.

Using OMPC, the servers in a data center can be grouped physically and or logically. In case of an emergency, such as a brownout, you can enable the Emergency Power Reduction feature on a predefined physical or logical group. This feature allows for maximum power throttling on specific groups of servers to minimize power consumption.  

For more details about power capping on Dell PowerEdge 12^th Generation blade servers, refer to the whitepapers below:

             Power and Cooling Innovations

             Power Efficiency

             SPEC benchmark performance

            OMPC Whitepaper

For more information about Open Manage Power Center, visit:

            OpenManage Power Center page on Dell TechCenter

Posted on behalf of Jordan Hargrave, Linux Software Engineer

Several Dell PowerEdge systems now support the capability of using 1TB RAM.  On systems with AMD processors, you may need to use certain command line options to make sure that your system functions correctly. The default IOMMU only supports 40 bit physical addresses, which causes problems on systems which have remapped the memory hole above 1TB.

The IOMMU is used to remap system buffers to addresses that a device supports.  Some devices cannot do I/O above the 4Gb limit and must use bounce buffers or other method to be able to perform I/O on system buffers which can be located anywhere in memory.  On an AMD platform there are three different IOMMUs which can be used, AMD-GART (default), Software and AMD-Vi.  The default GART only supports 40-bits of physical address... if a system buffer is located above this limit then the DMA I/O will go to the wrong location in memory, causing corruption or system hangs.  Therefore a different IOMMU must be used, or the system must limit the amount of memory available.

The software IOMMU creates a bounce buffer below the 4Gb limit.  This IOMMU performs basic memory copies to/from the bounce buffer before/after I/O completes.  It does not have any restrictions on the original system buffer address.

The AMD Vi is the new IOMMU for AMD devices and also does not have any limits on the original buffer address.  However on RHEL6.x kernels, the AMD IOMMU is disabled by default and must be enabled.

The following command line entries can be used to resolve the IOMMU issue:

'iommu=soft swiotlb=force'  : Enable software IOMMU

'amd_iommu_enable=on' : Enable AMD Vi IOMMU

'mem=999G' : Limit amount of memory available to the kernel

Resources:

        IOMMU Wikipedia entry

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU

Hi Community,

from now on I will compile the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of  the Microsoft MVP Community.

Currently, there are only a few MVPs contributing to this compilation, but more will follow soon.

@all MVPs If you'd like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (florian_klaffenbach@dell.com) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach). Thanks!

Exchange:

Quatro novos artigos técnicos sobre o Exchange Server 2013 RTM!! in Portuguese by Marcelo Vighi 

Hyper-V:

Live Migration Security Failures, Kerberos Live Migration Authentication & Constrained Delegation by Aidan Finn

You Pause A Clustered Hyper-V Host And Low Priority VMs are QUICK MIGRATED! by Aidan Finn

Expanded Supported Guest Operating Systems on WS2012 Hyper-V by Aidan Finn

KB2779204 – Live Migration Of Or Starting WS2012 Hyper-V VMs Fails With 0×80070569 Error by Aidan Finn

How to setup a Virtual Machine with Hyper-V Replica by Thomas Maurer

Windows 2012 Hyper-V VHDX Disk format : Why should you convert your VHD to VHDX and how (Step by Step) by Alessandro Cardoso

Hyper-V Guest Storage Performance: Above & Beyond 1 Million IOPS by Didier van Hoye

Windows Server Core:

Windows 2012 : switching from Server Core to Server with a GUI by Alessandro Cardoso

Hi Community,

here comes my second compilation of the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of the Microsoft MVP Community.

Currently, there are only a few MVPs contributing to this compilation, but more will follow soon.

@all MVPs If you'd like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (florian_klaffenbach@dell.com) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach). Thanks!

Exchange:

Usando o Outlook Web App 2013 offline in Portuguese by Marcelo Vighi 

Hyper-V:

Evaluate Hyper-V, Windows Server 2012, and System Center 2012 For Free by Aidan Finn

Hyper-V , XenServer, vSphere Comparison : Scalability,Performance;Density by Alessandro Cardoso

Windows Server Core:

Videocast: VHD Multiboot einrichten mit Windows Server 8 DP und Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in German by Carsten Rachfahl

System Center: 

Erro ao Reinstalar ou Atualizar o System Center Service Manager 2012 in Portuguese by Marcelo Sicnic

SCVMM 2012: Add Logical Network to all Hyper-V Hosts in HostGroup via PowerShell by Thomas Maurer

Microsoft Azure: 

#Microsoft Windows Azure Data Centers, the ‘Long Tour’ video 10min. by James van den Berg

Windows 8: 

Free eBook – Windows 8 For Dummies

How Will Windows 8 Enter The Business? by Aidan Finn

SQL Server: 

Survey On SQL Usage For System Center by Aidan Finn

Microsoft Core: 

Microsoft Assessment And Planning Toolkit (MAP) 8.0 Beta by Aidan Finn

Microsoft Events: 

The Microsoft Management Summit 2013 by Didier van Hoye

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Dell Open Source Ecosystem Digest - a collection of relevant technical content around OpenStack and Hadoop authored by Dell as well our partners and friends. This edition will be shorter than the previous ones - I cut out most of the repetitive information such as descriptions of our partner companies and I will consolidate them at one Wiki page shortly - let me know how that works for you. Your feedback is appreciated greatly!

By the way: With our fourth issue we proudly present ten (!) companies contributing to the digest, as well as five Dell employees. We started with just two contributors three weeks ago in our first issue (how cute is that?!). Enjoy reading and … watch out for the next issue!

OpenStack

enStratus: “The IT Revolution has Arrived”
http://enstratus.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/it-revolution-has-arrived.html

enStratus: “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing” - National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Department of Commerce (“The IT Revolution has Arrived” is linking to this insightful publication)
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

MorphLabs: “Why OpenStack Benifits from NexentaStor and Open Storage”
http://www.morphlabs.com/blog/why-openstack-benefits-from-nexentastor-and-open-storage/

OpenStack Foundation: “A lot of OpenStack events worldwide before 2012 ends”
http://www.openstack.org/blog/2012/11/a-lot-of-openstack-events-worldwide-before-2012-ends/

OpenStack Foundation: “Quantum Fog Networking for Pragmatic Overlays”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YFancwm2Vw&feature=youtube_gdata

Piston Cloud Computing: “Read our New Technical Brief - Enterprise OpenStack Networking: A Deeper Look”
http://www.pistoncloud.com/2012/11/technical-brief-enterprise-openstack-networking/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=technical-brief-enterprise-openstack-networking

Hadoop

Cloudera: “Axemblr’s Java Client for the Cloudera Management API”
http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2012/10/axemblrs-java-client-for-the-cloudera-manager-api/

Pentaho: “Looking to the Future of Business Analytics with Pentaho 4.8”
http://blog.pentaho.com/2012/11/12/looking-to-the-future-of-business-analytics-with-pentaho-4-8/

Dell

“Dell and MorphLabs Discuss Private Clouds” by Kamesh Pemmaraju - Personal Blog:
http://www.cloudel.com/dell-and-morphlabs-discuss-private-clouds/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dell-and-morphlabs-discuss-private-clouds


Contributors - Dell Partner & Friends

www.cloudera.com
www.cloudscaling.com
www.datameer.com
www.enstratus.com
www.inktank.com
www.mirantis.com
www.morphlabs.com
www.openstack.org
www.pentaho.com
www.pistoncloud.com

Contributors - Dell Employees’ Personal Blogs

Barton George Director of Marketing, Web Vertical at Dell. Personal Blog: http://bartongeorge.net/

Joseph B. George Director, Product Strategy and Marketing, Cloud and Big Data Solutions at Dell. Personal Blog: http://jbgeorge.net/

Rob Hirschfeld Software Development Principal Engineer at Dell. Personal Blog: http://robhirschfeld.com/ and Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/rollingwoodcitizen

Kamesh Pemmaraju Senior Product Manager Cloud Solutions at Dell. Personal Blog: http://www.cloudel.com

Stephen Spector Cloud Evangelist at Dell. Personal Blog: http://spectorintexas.com/ and Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/xenuser

Contact

Twitter: @RafaelKnuth
Email: rafael_knuth@dellteam.com

In case you wonder what this is all about, iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller in Dell PowerEdge servers allows you to update system firmware remotely using the WSMAN interface. If you are not familiar with this yet, I recommend reading this whitepaper.  

Here, we'll talk about errors you might encounter and what you can do to resolve them. Specifically when you see status as 'Failed'.

Upon initiating a firmware update via WSMAN, you are provided a Job class instance. The first thing that happens is the download of the update package. After some time, you might see the Job that looks like this:

   <n1:DCIM_LifecycleJob>
       <n1:InstanceID>JID_001352960608</n1:InstanceID>
       <n1:JobStartTime>TIME_NA</n1:JobStartTime>
       <n1:JobStatus>Failed</n1:JobStatus>
       <n1:JobUntilTime>TIME_NA</n1:JobUntilTime>
       <n1:Message>Package verification failed.</n1:Message>
       <n1:MessageID>RED007</n1:MessageID>
       <n1:Name>update:DCIM:INSTALLED:PCI:...:07.01.11.00</n1:Name>
       <n1:PercentComplete>NA</n1:PercentComplete>
   </n1:DCIM_LifecycleJob>

If you see one of the following in the Job Message:

• Package extraction failed.   (ID=RED008)
• Package verification failed.   (ID=RED007)

More likely, you have provided the incorrect package file format. Notice when you download a firmware update, you have a choice of "Format". One of them is "Update Package for Microsoft Windows" with file having EXE suffix. This is what you want.  There are many file types with EXE suffix so make sure you pick the right one. Also, you might see a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. You can use either version.

11^th generation servers:

Only in 11^th generation servers such as R710, you may get "Package verification failed" error message when updating any firmware if the iDRAC version in the system is older than 1.85 (or older than 3.35 on modular servers). To resolve, first update iDRAC to 1.85 (or 3.35 on modular). Reboot will occur and after the update Job goes to completion, you should be able to update other components to the latest.

If you see one of the following in the Job Message:

• The package is not applicable on this system.   (ID=RED017)
• The package specified does not match the target.   (ID=RED013)

More likely, you have provided the incorrect package for the component you are trying to update. It can be confusing especially when there are more than one model for a component such as NICs and RAID controllers. To resolve, simply trace back and verify that you picked the correct (a) system model and (b) component type/model when choosing the update package for the component you're trying to update.

So Say SMEs in Virtualization & Cloud

In Episode 47, Kong Yang and Todd Muirhead take a break from tech and talk the National Title picture. We welcome your thoughts and feedback. 

Please click below to view the video.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Hi Community,

here comes my third compilation of the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of the Microsoft MVP Community.

Currently, there are only a few MVPs contributing to this compilation, but more will follow soon.

@all MVPs If you'd like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (florian_klaffenbach@dell.com) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach). Thanks!

Exchange:

Microsoft release Exchange 2010 SP2 Rollup 5 by Johan Veldhuis

Hyper-V:

First Patch Tuesday with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Patches – New version of Hyper-V Integration Services by Thomas Maurer

Get Integration Services Version of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Virtual Machines by Thomas Maurer

KB2741477 – Can’t Add NICs To VM on W2008 R2 Clustered Host by Aidan Finn

Enable Processor Compatibility For Legacy OSs in WS2012 Hyper-V by Aidan Finn

Hyper-V PowerKurs V2 auf Windows Server 2012 läuft in German by Carsten Rachfahl

First Windows Server 2012 Cluster/Hyper-V related Patches by Didier van Hoye

Quick Walkthrough on App-V 5 Deployment by Lai Yoong Seng

Windows Server Core:

Windows Server 2012 Deduplication Results In A Small Environment by Didier van Hoye

Clustered Shared Volumes (2.0) in Windows Server 2012 by Kristian Nese

System Center: 

Infrastructure Planning & Design Guide For OpsMgr 2012 by Aidan Finn

Integrando Solicitações de Aplicativos do SCCM 2012 com o SCSM 2012 in Portuguese by Marcelo Sicnic

Windows 8: 

Windows 8 VDA Licensing For VDI by Aidan Finn

No Mistakes This Time, Mr. Eurocrat – The Windows 8 Browser Chooser by Aidan Finn

Microsoft Core: 

Reminder – Add Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 To Your Patching System by Aidan Finn

Very Important Note on Multichannel & Failover Clusters by Aidan Finn

KB2575625 – W2008 R2 Cluster Starts Failover After 80 Seconds When You Shutdown Active Node by Aidan Finn

Events: 

Dell Storage Forum 2012 Paris – Fluid Forward Think Tank by Didier van Hoye

Dell OpenManage Connection version 2.0 for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus is available now!

Dell OpenManage Connection version 2.0 for IBM Tivoli Netcool OMNIbus 7.3.1 provides event monitoring capabilities for:

• Dell PowerEdge and PowerVault systems from 9th generation (9G)  to 12th generation (12G). All existing generation systems support an agent-based in-band mode using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA). The 12G systems support also an agent-free, out-of-band mode, using integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 7 (iDRAC7).
•  Dell EqualLogic systems.
• Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC).

Dell OpenManage Connection monitors Dell devices by receiving alerts on the Netcool/OMNIbus console and allows one-to-one and one-to-many Dell consoles launches for detailed views from the Netcool/OMNIbus console.

The key new features in this release:

• Support for out-of-Band alerts monitoring from Dell 12G Servers.
• Monitoring alerts from Dell Chassis Management Controllers (CMC).
• Enhanced monitoring of new OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) and
• OpenManage Storage Management (OMSS) alerts (OM release 7.0 to 7.1) from Dell PowerEdge Servers.
• Enhanced monitoring of SCSI and iSCSI alerts from Dell EqualLogic systems.
• Support for integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) console launch.
• Support for Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC) console launch.
• Support for Dell OpenManage Essentials (OME) console Launch.

The product download links and product documentation are available on the Dell TechCenter Dell OpenManage Connection for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus wiki page. We encourage you to continue this conversation in the OpenManage Connections for 3rd Party Console Integration Forum if you have any comments or other feedback.

So Say SMEs in Virtualization & Cloud

In Episode 48, Kong Yang and Todd Muirhead give thanks for this past year. We welcome your thoughts and feedback. 

Please click below to view the video.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Hi Community,

here comes my fourth compilation of the most interesting technical blog posts written by members of the Microsoft MVP Community.

Currently, there are only a few MVPs contributing to this compilation, but more will follow soon.

@all MVPs If you’d like me to add your blog posts to my weekly compilation, please send me an email (Florian_Klaffenbach@dell.com) or reach out to me via Twitter (@FloKlaffenbach).

Thanks!

Featured Posts of the Week!

Extension to December 1st of The Great Big Hyper-V Survey of 2012 by Hans Vredevoort

KB2770917 Updating Host & Guest Integration Services Components – Most Current Version Depends on Guest OS by Didier van Hoye

Windows network virtualization is not enabled on a host NIC available for placement by Kristian Nese

Build a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cluster Using PowerShell by Aidan Finn

Exchange:

Tutorial: Utilizando CAS role para envio de mensagens – Exchange Server 2013 in Portuguese by Marcelo Vighi

Hyper-V:

Videointerview with Aidan Finn about Windows Server 2012 livemigration and Hyper-V Replica by Carsten Rachfahl

Videointerview with Hans Vredevoort about Network Teaming and Converged Networking in Windows Server 2012 by Carsten Rachfahl

Windows Server 2012 VHDX Thin Provisioning Benefits Explored by Didier van Hoye

KB2770917 Updating Host & Guest Integration Services Components – Most Current Version Depends on Guest OS by Didier van Hoye

Extension to December 1st of The Great Big Hyper-V Survey of 2012 by Hans Vredevoort

Create Lots Of Hyper-V Virtual Machines From A CSV File Using PowerShell by Aidan Finn

Build a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cluster Using PowerShell by Aidan Finn

Windows Server Core:

Demo VDI and RDS in Windows Server 2012 by Lai Yoong Seng

Enabling SMB Multichannel On Scale-Out File Server Cluster Nodes by Aidan Finn

Shared Nothing Live Migration Leverages SMB 3.0 Under the Hood by Didier van Hoye

System Center: 

Windows network virtualization is not enabled on a host NIC available for placement by Kristian Nese

Windows 8: 

Adding an SD Card To Windows 8 Tablet by Aidan Finn

Azure:

Creating a management infrastructure in Windows Azure by Kristian Nese

PowerShell: 

Testing Google Chrome Bookmarks with PowerShell by Jeffery Hicks