Category Archives: DELL

Great Hardware Support Equals Fast Windows 2012 R2 Implementation

Posted on by
17

I love it when a plan comes together

We adopted Windows 2012 when right after it went RTM in august 2012. Today we’re are already running Windows 2012 R2 and ready to step up the pace. If you are a VAR/ISV that does not have fast & good support for Windows Server 2012 R2 consider this your notice. You can’t lead from behind. Get your act together and take an example from Altaro. Small, sure, but good & fast. How do we get our act together so fast? Fast? Yes, but it does take time and effort.

As it turns out, we’re pretty well of with the DELL hardware stack. The generation 11 and 12 servers are supported by DELL and on the Windows Server Catalog for Windows Server 2012 R2.

image

For more information on Dell Server inbox driver support see: Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM Inbox Driver Support on Dell PowerEdge Servers. By the way I can testify that we’ve run Windows Sever 2012 R2 successfully on 9th Generation hardware (PowerEdge 1950/2950).

We’ve been running tests since Windows 2012 R2 Preview on R710/R720 and it has been a blast. We’ve kept them up to date with the latest firmware & drives via SUU. And for our Intel X520 and Mellanox ConnectX-3 we’ve had rapid support as well.

So what more could you want? Well support from your storage array vendor I would think. I’m happy to report that Storage Center 6.4 has been out since October 8th and it supports Windows Server 2012 R2. Dell Compellent Adds MLC SSD Tier – Bests 15K HDDs on Price and Performance. Mind you on a lazy Sunday afternoon 2 quick e-mails to CoPilot got me the answer that Storage Center 6.3.10 also supports Windows Server 2012 R2.  Sweet!

And that’s not just DELL, the Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.4 is fully Windows Server 2012 R2 logo certified! That’s what you want to see from you vendor. Fast & excellent support.

image

Here’s the entire DELL hardware line up with Windows Server 2012 R2 support. Happy upgrading & implementation! If you have Software Assurance you’re set to reap the benefits of that investment today!

To my all employers / clients, you see now, told you so. Now, I have a thing in common with Col. Hannibal Smith, I love it when a plan comes together Open-mouthed smile.

image

I know some of you think that all the testing, breaking, wrecking of Preview bits, RTM & GA versions we do looks like chaos. Especially when you visually add the test server & switch configurations. But that’s what it looks like to YOU. To the initiated this is well executed plan, dropping all assumptions, to establish what works & will hold up. The result is that we’re ready today and by extension, so are you.

ODX Speed Up VHDX Creation Times On Windows Server 2012 (R2)

Posted on by
6

Some technlogies you just need to see in action instead of reading about it. I have posted a video on Vimeo that shows ODX in action on Windows Server 2012 R2 and a DELL Compellent SAN running Storage Center 6.3.10 firmware that supports UNMAP & ODX. Watch the video here or on Vimeo itself for a better experience. It’s a rerun of the demo scripts used in my TechNet Belux Live Meeting of this week.

We demonstrate the amazing speeds at which we can create VHDX files on both a traditional clustered disk and a Cluster Shared Volume. If you have ever tried to create a lot of fixed VHD/VHDX files, especially larger one, then you really need to check out ODX and its potential. If you have a SAN or think about acquiring one make sure you get this feature and be sure that it works as advertised.

I hope you enjoy it and inspires you to look where you can leverage this technology in your own environments.

Fixing A Little Quirk In Dell Compellent Replay Manager

Posted on by
3

If you’re running a DELL Compellent SAN you’re probably familiar with Replay Manager. It’s Compellent’s solution to take VSS based (and as such application consistent) snapshots.image

When you’re running Replay Manager you might run into the following issue when trying to access a host.image

Every time, you access a host for the first time after opening Replay Manager you’ll be prompted for your password, even if you select Remember my password. You don’t need to retype it so that’s fine, but you do need to click it.

In the system log you’ll see the below error logged.image

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Security-Kerberos
Date:          7/08/2013 9:55:43
Event ID:      4
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      replayserver.test.lab
Description:
The Kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server replaymanagerservice. The target name used was HTTP/myhost.test.lab. This indicates that the target server failed to decrypt the ticket provided by the client. This can occur when the target server principal name (SPN) is registered on an account other than the account the target service is using. Ensure that the target SPN is only registered on the account used by the server. This error can also happen if the target service account password is different than what is configured on the Kerberos Key Distribution Center for that target service. Ensure that the service on the server and the KDC are both configured to use the same password. If the server name is not fully qualified, and the target domain (TEST.LAB) is different from the client domain (TEST.LAB), check if there are identically named server accounts in these two domains, or use the fully-qualified name to identify the server.

Well, this a rather well know issue in the Microsoft world. Take a look here IIS 7+ Kerberos authentication failure: KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED. Browse to the possible causes & solutions. You’ll find this situation right in there. So what we do is execute the following command to register the correct SPN for the host or hosts on the Replay Manager service account:

SetSPN -a HTTP/myhost.test.lab TESTreplaymanagerservice

Do note to run this from an elevated command prompt using a account with sufficient AD permissions in AD. You’ll now no longer have to click on the username/password prompt and get rid of that error.

You can verify if the SPB for your hosts exists on your Replay Manager Service account by running:

SetSPN -l  TESTreplaymanagerservice

If this is the biggest issue you’ll ever have with a hardware snapshot service & hardware provider you know you’ve got a good solution.

Upgrading Your DELL Compellent Storage Center Firmware (Part 2)

Posted on by
7

This is Part 2 of this blog. You’ll find Part 1 over here.

In part 1 we prepared our Compellent SAN to be ready and install Storage Center 6.3.10 that has gone public.  As said, 6.3.10 brings interesting features like ODX and UNMAP to us Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V users. It also introduces some very nice improvements to synchronous replication and Live Volumes. But here we’ll just do the actual upgrade, the preparations & health check have been done in part 1 so we can get started here right away.

Log in to your Compellent system and navigate to the Storage Management menu. Click on “System”, select Update and finally click on “Install Update”.  It’s already there as we downloaded it in Part 1. Click on “Install Now” to kick it all off.

image

Click on Install now to launch the upgrade.

image

After initialization you can walk away for 10 minutes but you might want to keep an eye on things and the progress of the process.

image

So go have a look at your storage center. Look at the Alert Monitor for example and notice that the “System is undergoing maintenance”.

image

When the controller the VIP address of the SAN reboots it becomes unavailable. After a while you can login again to the other controller via the VIP, if you cant’ wait a few seconds just use the IP address of the active controller. That will do.

image

When you log in again you’ll see the evidence of an ongoing SAN firmware upgrade. Nothing to panic about.image

This is also evident in Alert Monitor. CoPilot knows you’re doing the upgrade so no unexpected calls to make sure your system is OK will come in. They’re there every step of the way. The cool thing is that is the very first SAN we ever owned that we don’t need engineers on site or complex and expensive procedure to do all this. It’s all just part of an outstanding customer service Compellent & DELL deliver.image

You can also take a peak at your Enterprise manager software to see paths going down and so on. The artifacts of a sequential controller failovers during an upgrade. Mind you you’re not suffering downtime in most cases.image

Just be patient and keep an eye on the process. When you log in again after the firmware upgrade and your system is up and running again, you’ll be asked to rebalance the ports & IO load between the controllers on the system. You do, so click yes.image

image

When done you’ll return to the Storage Center interface. Navigate to “Help”" and click on About Compellent Storage Center. image

You can see that both controllers are running 6.3.10.

image

You’re rocking the new firmware. As you kept an eye on your hosts you should know these are good to go. Send of an e-mail to CoPilot support and they’ll run a complete health check on your system to make sure you’re good to go. Now it’s time to start leveraging the new capabilities you just got.