Monthly Archives: August 2012

Attending the Dell Tech Summit EMEA

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As you read this I’m preparing to get on my way to the DELL Tech Summit in Lisbon, Portugal for a few days. I’ll be discussing the needs we have from them as customers (and their competition actually for that matter) when it comes to hardware in the Microsoft landscape in the era of Windows Server 2012.

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I’m very happy and eager to tell them what, in my humble opinion, they are doing wrong and what they are doing right and even what they are not doing at all Smile  I believe in giving feedback and interaction with vendors. Not that I have any illusion of self importance as to the impact of my voice on the grand scheme of things but if I don’t speak up nothing changes either. As Intel and Microsoft are there as well,  this makes for a good selection of the partners involved. So here I go:

  1. More information on storage features, specifications and roadmaps
  2. Faster information on storage features, specifications and roadmaps
    • Some of these are in regards to Windows Server 2012 & System Center 2012 (Storage Pools & Spaces, SMI-S, ODX, UNMAP, RDMA/SMB3.0 …) and some are more generic like easier & better SAN/Cluster failovers capabilities, ease of use, number of SCSI 3 persistent reservations, etc.
  3. How to address the IOPS lag in the technology evolution. Their views versus my ideas on how to tackle them until we get better solutions.
  4. Plans, if any, for Cluster In a Box (CiB) building blocks for Windows Server 2012 Private Cloud solutions.
  5. When does convergence make sense and when not cost/benefit wise (and at what level). I’d like a bit more insight into what DELLs vision is and how they’ll execute that. What will new storage options mean to that converged network, i.e. SMB 3.0, Multichannel & RDMA capable NICs. Now convergence always seems tied to one tech/protocol (VOIP in the past, FCoE at the moment) and it shouldn’t, plenty of other needs for loads of bandwidth (Live migration, Storage Live Migration, Shared Nothing Live Migration, CSV redirected mode, …).

Now while it’s important to listen to you customers, this is not easy if you want to do it right, far from it. For one we’re all over the place as a group. This is always the case unless you cater to a specialized niche market. But DELL serves both consumers and enterprises form 1 person shops to fortune 500 companies in all fields of human endeavor. That makes for nice cocktail of views and opinions I suspect.

Even more importantly than listening is processing what you hear from your customers. Do you ignore, react, or take it away as more or less valuable information. Information on which to act or not, to use in decision making, and perhaps even in executing those decisions. And let’s face it without execution decisions are pretty academic exercises. In the end management is in control and for all the feedback, advise, research that gathered and done, they are at the steering wheel and they are responsible for the results.

One thing that I do know from my fellow MVPs and the community is that for the past 12 months any vendor who would address those questions with a good plan and communications would be a top favorite while selecting hardware at many customers for a lot of projects.

Intel X520 Series NIC on Windows 2012 With Hyper-V Enabled Port Flapping Issue

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When you install Windows Server 2012 RTM to a server with X520 series NIC cards you’ll notice that there is a native driver available and the performance of that driver is fantastic. It’s really impressive to see.

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That’s great news but I’ve noticed an issue in RTM that I already dealt with in the release candidate.

The moment you install Hyper- V some of the X520 NIC ports can start flapping (connected/disconnected).  You’ll see the sequence below endlessly on one port, sometimes more.

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As you can imagine this ruins the party in Hyper-V networking an bit too much for comfort Confused smile But it can be fixed. The root cause for this I do not know but it is driver related. The same thing happened in the release candidate. But now things are easier to fix. Navigate to the Intel Site to download their freshly released driver for the X520 series on Windows Server 2012 and install it (you don’t need to install the extra software with Advanced Network Services => native Windows NIC teaming has arrived). After that the flapping will be gone.

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Hope this helps some folks out!

How To Deploy Windows Server 2012 on DELL UEFI Now–Notes From The field

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The most current UEFI OS Deployment on a R810 is a bit finicky when you want to deploy Windows Server 2012 using the normal procedure & selecting “Other OS” as it’s obvious that the entry for Windows Server  2012 is not in there yet. The problem is that the Windows installer doesn’t seem to create the best practice UEFI partitions. It just seems to create a 320MB System Reserved partition and the rest is for your OS installation as Primary partition. In a good (by the book UEFI) install you’d see a layout like this (from Sample: Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions by Using Windows Setup):

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The reason for this seems to be that the firmware is still not 100% up to date for how Windows Server 2012 deals with UEFI installations. This I learned via my very helpful twitter friend Florian Klaffenbach

While an update for the system firmware is in the works and won’t be to long away let me share you how I dealt with this issue. It’s a bit more work but it get’s the job done. At least for me on a R810 with BIOS version 2.7.4.

I’m copying and adapting the step by step from Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Early Adopter Guide – Dell here and adapting it to how I worked around it. It’s “magic” Winking smile.

Installing Using Dell Unified Server Configurator

  1. Connect the keyboard, monitor, mouse, and any additional peripherals to your system
  2. Turn on the system and the attached peripherals.
  3. Press <F10> in the POST to start the System Services. The Initializing UEFI. Please wait… and the Entering System Services…Starting Unified Server Configurator messages are displayed.
  4. In the Unified Server Configurator window, if you want to configure hardware, diagnostics, or set changes, click the appropriate option. If no changes are required, press OS Deployment. => you can opt to start with a cleanly build VDisk. Which is best and should suffice. But is doesn’t. We’ll clean the disk later anyway later on in Step 14.
  5. In the Operating System Deployment window, click Deploy OS. The Configure or Skip RAID window is displayed. If Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is configured, the window displays the existing RAID configuration details.
  6. Select Go directly to OS Deployment. If RAID is not yet configured, configure it at this time.
  7. Click Next. The Select Operating System window is displayed with a list of compatible operating systems.
  8. Choose Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and click Next.NOTE: If Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is not listed, choose any other operating system
  9. Choose whether you want to deploy the operating system in UEFI or BIOS mode, and click Next => I do not get this choice if UEFI is already on in the BIOS settings
  10. In the Insert OS Media window, insert the Windows Server 2012 media and click Next.
  11. In the Reboot the System screen, follow the instructions on the screen and click Finish. If a Windows operating system is already installed on your system, the following message is displayed: Press any key to boot from the CD/DVD …Press any key to begin the installation. If you used a clean VDisk this is no issue
  12. In the Windows Setup screen, select the appropriate option for Language, Time and Currency Format, and Keyboard or Input Method.
  13. Click Next to continue.
  14. STOP => Select to REPAIR your system and launch a command line. Form there you start diskpart and run following commands on the disk where you want to deploy Windows Server 2012:
    • select disk 0
    • clean
    • convert gpt

      In my case this is Disk 0. This is what the installer should be able to do automatically with a clean disk any way but it doesn’t happen.

      Now DO NOT navigate to the X: root and launch setup again. Shut exit the repair console and shutdown the server.

  15. Start the server
  16. Press <F10> in the POST to start the System Services. The Initializing UEFI. Please wait… and the Entering System Services…Starting Unified Server Configurator messages are displayed. => DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ANYMORE. It will take longer than expected but you will boot into the installation of Windows 2012 again.
  17. In the Windows Setup screen, select the appropriate option for Language, Time and Currency Format, and Keyboard or Input Method.
  18. Click Next to continue.
  19. On the next page, click Install Now.
  20. In the Operating System Install screen, select the operating system you want to install. Click Next. The License Terms window is displayed, click Next.
  21. In the Which Type of Installation Do You Want screen, click Custom: Install Windows only (advanced), if it is not selected already.
  22. In the Where do you want to install Windows screen, specify the partition on which you want to install the operating system. To create a partition and begin installation:
    1. Click New
    2. Specify the size of the partition in MB, and click Apply. A Windows might create additional partition for system files message is displayed. => NOW THE UEFI partitions on the GPT disk are created Open-mouthed smile.
    3. Click OK.Select the newly-created operating system partition and click Next.
      The Installing Windows screen is displayed and the installation process begins. After the operating system is installed the system reboots. You must set the administrator password before you can log in for the first time
  23. In the Settings screen, enter the password, confirm the password, and click Finish.
    The operating system installation is complete.

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Now, while this worked for me on the Dell R810 with BIOS 2.7.4,  I give no guarantees whatsoever. You’ll have to test it yourself or wait for the firmware update that is coming soon. Any way, perhaps it helps some of you out there!

The Right Stuff

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You all probably know that to get a difficult job done well and fast, you need the right people in the right place at the right moment in time. Those people also need the right tools. This requires people who can think on their feet, people who are resourceful and who will always seek and find opportunities under adverse conditions.

The placement and timing of these resources and assets is more than just management of some table matching names to roles. It’s not enough to have the right resources and skill sets. You need to know who and what is available and what these or they can contribute. Management is often not very good at this, so in a crisis they need to let go and rely on their people. Free Tip: you can’t start building a team when the crisis arrives 😉

It’s the boots on the ground will have to deal with the issues at hand and take the decisions. In a crisis time is of the essence. There is no place for too many layers of management, let alone micro management, only the ones with the right responsibilities insight and knowledge are needed and helpful. The decisions become tactical and operational within the context of the situation at hand and it its relation to the entire environment. So they have to be made by people who preferably know the environment well and have a very good skillset, drive and motivation. Basically this is what I refer to when I talk about the right stuff.

If you have ever worked or work in that sort of environment you know what I’m talking about. The knowledge that no matter where you are going for whatever reason, you’re doing so with a team of very skilled people who are the very best in the business, at the top of their game and ready to roll with any situation thrown at them. They are capable to react in a moment’s notice and focus entirely on the job at hand. If you’re interested in building such a team I suggest you select your team members very carefully. Head count doesn’t mean jack shit if they are the wrong people for the job and the team. Don’t ever lower the bar, it’s there for a very good reason.

This year I had misfortune of having to respond to two major HVAC disasters at night in a weekend. I had the good fortune of having the right stuff at my disposal. There is no “On Call”, there is no monetary compensation. This team is my crew and they are all volunteers who will do what is needed when it is needed. Why because they have professional pride and know that at these moments the very survival of the business they work for depends on them acting fast and correctly. To them it’s not about “somebody should do this” or ”that’s not my job”. It’s not about “this should be taken care of” or “I never had a template telling me what to do”. No, they step forward and get it done. This weekend, from the very first alert, 4 people were mobilized in 30 minutes and acted at the speed of light. This led to the emergency shutdown of a data center in a city 60 kilometers way to prevent a catastrophic meltdown of millions of euros in hardware (not even trying to put a value on the data loss). Two people were acting remotely and 2 (including me) were heading over there to have boots on the ground. The reason for this is that “the away team” could deal with anything that couldn’t be handled remotely and coordinate with facility management. Having people on site is important to all involved (two is preferable for safety reasons) for assessing the situation and for the sake of speed. More people often becomes less efficient as numbers are not the same as capability.

So to my team, I’m proud of you. I quote Beckwith “I’d rather go down the river with 7 studs than with a 100 shitheads”. You all know you’ve got the right stuff. Be proud of that!