SPEC has diligently working on an industry standard version of VMmark since something like 2006. The first version of their product is complete and was released during my recent holiday. I have been talking with colleagues and customers about SPECvirt for years and would like to talk about what SPECvirt is and what it is not.
SPECvirt Released
July 26th, 2010
Jul, 26 2010
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vSphere 4.1: Performance Improvements
July 22nd, 2010
Jul, 22 2010
Last week I took my first vacation in a year and a half. I had not missed a single day of work in 18 months. So last week, when I was galavanting through Spain and running terrified, screaming, and covered in sangria through the streets of Pamplona, VMware made its biggest announcement in over a year: the launch of vSphere 4.1. My old team put out what looks to be a wonderful “What’s New in Performance” paper so I want to take a few minutes to add my thoughts to some of the great work VMware has done.
vSpecialists Needed!
July 21st, 2010
Jul, 21 2010
Chad Sakac’s blog posts have recruited many of the industry’s brightest and most dedicated technical specialists. I hope to duplicate his efforts here and help get the word out that technical pre-sales experts and evangelists are needed throughout the Asia Pacific region. We are hiring big in Japan, China, and Australia and have urgent need to get good people in now! But even if we are not yet growing in your home town, I urge you to contact me (drummonds at yahoo dot com) to throw your hat in the ring. We may soon want reach in your city.
So, what exactly are we looking for? We want technical experts to work with myself and regional pre-sales resources to help close VCE-related deals. This means an ideal candidate will know all three of these technologies. But, in truth, VMware skills are most direly needed now. Time exists to ramp up on Cisco and EMC technologies.
We want people that love technology. We want guys and girls that are enthusiastic, and have had their coworkers telling them this forever. We want people that show customers a new product or feature with the excitement of a child handling a new toy. We want people that build out home labs with a software infrastructure that could support a medium sized business.
Can VI and Storage Administrators Play Well With Each Other?
July 2nd, 2010
Jul, 02 2010
This week I am in Tokyo visiting my colleagues in EMC and our good friends at VMware and Cisco. Today in a EMC/VMware solutions exchange, I talked about the continued problems with storage configurations that are blamed on the virtual infrastructure. These misunderstood problems slow VMware deployment, tarnish VMware’s name, and inhibit the customer’s ability to extract value from their purchase. VMware, EMC, and the rest of the storage vendors need to do a better job at helping VI administrators identify and correct storage problems.
In many of the environments I have diagnosed, I have traced the problem to a poor relationship. VI admins lack basic storage skills and storage admins are supplying LUNs via email or web requests, not interactive design sessions. I offer one customer–protected through anonymity–whose story showed a failure of the storage/VI relationship.
It was a couple of years ago that this customer asked for my recommendation on extents. I told him there exist no performance scalability concerns with extents, but ailing LUN diagnosis can be difficult. He said extents were a requirement in his environment because the storage admin would only provide him standard, preconfigured 20 GB LUNs. If he needed larger volumes, the storage admin insisted he aggregate in software (RAID, LVM, extents, etc.) I immediately knew this lack of cooperation would doom them to failure. Would it surprise you to hear that I heard from this customer many more times as problems were escalated to me?
It occurs to me that three things will decrease the storage mistakes that get blamed on VMware:
- Regular meetings with people from VMware and EMC so everyone understands these problems, can identify them, and can help each other work through them.
- Good VMware tools to help VI administrators recognize storage bottlenecks so they go to their storage team before going to VMware.
- An increase in VMware administrators’ view and control of storage so they become partners in storage decisions and not nameless, voiceless customers.
The good news is that solutions are present or imminent:
| Problem | Solution |
|---|---|
| EMC/VMware information sharing | Meetings like I am doing in Tokyo and all over APJ |
| VMware storage tools | vCenter, esxtop, vscsiStats, SIOC*, Storage DRS** |
| VI admin storage visibility and control | EMC’s storage plugins and other vendors’ tools |
(*) Demonstrated by VMware but not announced or committed to a release.
(**) Not demonstrated ever but we can dream, right?
OK, team. I know I have been preaching to the choir for years about fixing these performance problems. It is now time for some preventative maintenance. Storage vendors, help VMware by educating their customers on how to diagnose and correct storage problems. Customers, install the vCenter plugins from your storage vendor and be sure you understand what you are looking at. VMware, get your new features out.
OK, everyone put your hands in the circle. Shall we do this? OK, break!