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Technology Short Take #33

Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in Networking, Security, Storage, Virtualization by slowe | 1 comment

Welcome to Technology Short Take #33, the latest in my irregularly-published series of articles discussing various data center technology-related links, articles, rants, thoughts, and questions. I hope that you find something useful here. Enjoy!

Networking

Tom Nolle asks the question, “Is virtualization reality even more elusive than virtual reality?” It’s a good read; the key thing that I took away from it was that SDN, NFV, and related efforts are great, but what we really need is something that can pull all these together in a way that customers (and providers) reap the benefits.
What happens when multiple VXLAN logical networks are mapped to the same multicast group? Venky explains it in this post. Venky also has a great write-up on how the VTEP (VXLAN Tunnel End Point) learns and creates the forwarding table.
This post by Ranga Maddipudi shows you how to use App Firewall in conjunction with VXLAN logical networks.
Jason Edelman is on a roll with a couple of great blog posts. First up, Jason goes off on a rant about network virtualization, briefly hitting topics like the relationship between overlays and hardware, the role of hardware in network virtualization, the changing roles of data center professionals, and whether overlays are the next logical step in the evolution of the network. I particularly enjoyed the snippet from the post by Bill Koss. Next, Jason dives a bit deeper on the relationship between network overlays and hardware, and shares his thoughts on where it does—and doesn’t—make sense to have hardware terminating overlay tunnels.
Another post by Tom Nolle explores the relationship—complicated at times—between SDN, NFV, and the cloud. Given that we define the cloud (sorry to steal your phrase, Joe) as elastic, pooled resources with self-service functionality and ubiquitous access, I can see where Tom states that to discuss SDN or NFV without discussing cloud is silly. On the flip side, though, I have to believe that it’s possible for organizations to make a gradual shift in their computing architectures and processes, so one almost has to discuss these various components individually, because to tie them all together makes it almost impossible. Thoughts?
If you haven’t already introduced yourself to VXLAN (one of several draft protocols used as an overlay protocol), Cisco Inferno has a reasonable write-up.
I know Steve Jin, and he’s a really smart guy. I must disagree with some of his statements regarding what software-defined networking is and is not and where it fits, written back in April. I talked before about the difference between network virtualization and SDN, so no need to mention that again. Also, the two key flaws that Steve identifies—single point of failure and scalability—aren’t flaws with SDN/network virtualization, but rather flaws in an implementation of said technologies, IMHO.

Servers/Hardware

Correction from the last Technology Short Take—I incorrectly stated that the HP Moonshot offerings were ARM-based, and therefore wouldn’t support vSphere. I was wrong. The servers (right now, at least) are running Intel Atom S1260 CPUs, which are x86-based and do offer features like Intel VT-x. Thanks to all who pointed this out, and my apologies for the error!
I missed this on the #vBrownBag series: designing HP Virtual Connect for vSphere 5.x.

Security

Via Forbes Guthrie on Twitter, I saw this post on how to setup a CA on Linux and use it in a Windows environment.
Ranga also has a nice write-up (via Trevor Gerdes) on using the SSL VPN functionality in vCNS Edge.
“Best practices” for vCNS 5.1 App Firewall? For shame…didn’t anyone tell them the correct term is recommended practices? (I’m kidding, of course—the content is well worth reading.)

Cloud Computing/Cloud Management

Hyper-V as hypervisor with OpenStack Compute? Sure, see here.
Cody Bunch, who has been focusing quite a bit on OpenStack recently, has a nice write-up on using Razor and Chef to automate an OpenStack build. Part 1 is here; part 2 is here. Good stuff—keep it up, Cody!
I’ve mentioned in some of my OpenStack presentations (see SpeakerDeck or Slideshare) that a great place to start if you’re just getting started is DevStack. Here, Brent Salisbury has a nice write-up on using DevStack to install OpenStack Grizzly.

Operating Systems/Applications

Boxen, a tool created by GitHub to manage their OS X Mountain Lion laptops for developers, looks interesting. Might be a useful tool for other environments, too.
If you use TextMate2 (I switched to BBEdit a little while ago after being a long-time TextMate user), you might enjoy this quick post by Colin McNamara on Puppet syntax highlighting using TextMate2.

Storage

Anyone have more information on Jeda Networks? They’ve been mentioned a couple of times on GigaOm (here and here), but I haven’t seen anything concrete yet. Hey, Stephen Foskett, if you’re reading: get Jeda Networks to the next Tech Field Day.
Tim Patterson shares some code from Luc Dekens that helps check VMFS version and block sizes using PowerCLI. This could come in quite handy in making sure you know how your datastores are configured, especially if you are in the midst of a migration or have inherited an environment from someone else.

Virtualization

Interested in using SAML and Horizon Workspace with vCloud Director? Tom Fojta shows you how.
If you aren’t using vSphere Host Profiles, this write-up on the VMware SMB blog might convince you why you should and show you how to get started.
Michael Webster tackles the question: is now the best time to upgrade to vSphere 5.1? Read the full post to see what Michael has to say about it.
Duncan points out an easy error to make when working with vSphere HA heartbeat datastores in this post. Key takeaway: sometimes the fix is a lot simpler than we might think at first. (I know I’m guilty of making things more complicated than they need to be at times. Aren’t we all?)
Jon Benedict (aka “Captain KVM”) shares a script he wrote to help provide high availability for RHEV-M.
Chris Wahl has a nice write-up on using log shipping to protect your vCenter database. It’s a bit over a year old (surprised I missed it until now), and—as Chris points out—log shipping doesn’t protect the database (primary and secondary copies) against corruption. However, it’s better than nothing (which I suspect it what far too many people are using).

Other

If you aspire to be a writer—whether that be a blogger, author, journalist, or other—you might find this article on using the DASH method for writing to be helpful. The six tips at the end of the article are especially helpful, I think.

Time to wrap this up for now; the rest will have to wait until the next Technology Short Take. Until then, feel free to share your thoughts, questions, or rants in the comments below. Courteous comments are always welcome!

Tags: Automation, Hardware, HP, HyperV, Linux, Macintosh, Networking, OpenStack, Puppet, SDN, vCloud, Virtualization, vSphere, VXLAN, Writing

Reducing the Friction: BBEdit to MarsEdit

Friday, May 31, 2013 in General, Macintosh, Personal by slowe | 6 comments

In some of the presentations that I give on productivity and efficiency, one of the things I mention is reducing the friction; that is, making processes more streamlined so they’re easier to perform. In this post, I’m going to describe one way I reduced the friction for producing and publishing blog posts using BBEdit, TextSoap, MarsEdit, and some AppleScript.

It’s no secret that I’ve become a huge fan of Markdown, the human-readable plain text “markup” format created by Jon Gruber. The vast majority of all my content is now created in Markdown, and then converted to RTF (to share with my Office-using co-workers), PDF (for broader publication), or HTML (for publishing online). Until very recently, my blog publishing process looked something like this:

Write the blog post in Markdown, using TextMate.
Using a built-in Markdown binary in TextMate, convert the Markdown into HTML.
Run the raw HTML through TextSoap (very handy tool) to remove smart quotes and curly apostrophes.
Paste the parsed HTML into MarsEdit for publication to my blog.

While it seems complicated, it wasn’t terribly complicated—but it wasn’t as seamless as it could be. So, I set out to improve the process. The first big change was a switch from TextMate to BBEdit, which is more extensible (and kept up to date by the developer). That change allowed me to do two things:

Switch from the built-in Markdown support in TextMate to using a separate (and more up-to-date) MultiMarkdown binary maintained by Fletcher Penny.
Introduce an AppleScript (BBEdit has outstanding support for AppleScript) to automate some portion of the process.

My first pass at automating the process just got me back to where I was before—writing Markdown in BBEdit, converting to HTML, cleaning the HTML with TextSoap, and pasting into MarsEdit. Not too impressive, but acceptable, and a process with which I was familiar. I stuck with that process for a while, primarily because it was a known entity. A couple of days ago, though, I asked myself: Can I do better? Can I be more efficient?

So, my second pass at automating the process is much more comprehensive. The AppleScript I wrote as a result of challenging myself to reduce the friction does the following:

Takes the Markdown from BBEdit and converts it to HTML.
Using the HTML produced by the standalone MultiMarkdown binary, it then calls TextSoap to (in the background) clean the HTML according to a custom cleaner I’d created (the custom cleaner, called “Replace HTML Entities,” just replaces curly quotes and curly apostrophes, which don’t translate well on my site).
Creates a new, blank blog post in MarsEdit, into which it pastes the cleaned HTML as the body of the post.

I store the script in BBEdit’s scripts folder, which means I can invoke the script easily from within BBEdit.

Here’s the AppleScript itself (click here if the script doesn’t show up):

Now, I can write my Markdown in BBEdit, invoke the script, and get dropped out to HTML code sitting in a new blog post in MarsEdit. All I need to do to publish the post at that point is supply the metadata (tags, categories, title, excerpt) and click Send to Blog. Done. (I used this process for this post, in fact.) How’s that for reduced friction?

Tags: Blogging, Macintosh, Productivity, Writing

vSphere Design Guide Giveaway

Monday, April 1, 2013 in General, Virtualization by slowe | 122 comments

You might have seen that the second edition of VMware vSphere Design was recently released. How would you like to win a free copy?

Starting today (no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke) and running through April 15, you can enter to win a signed print copy of VMware vSphere Design, 2nd Edition! I’m giving away a free, signed copy of the book to five lucky individuals who enter and win in this book giveaway contest.

Here’s how to enter to win one of the 5 free, signed copies of the book: simply post a comment on this site telling me why you would find this book useful. Yes, that’s it!

There are a few contest rules you’ll want to note:

You’ll need to use a valid e-mail address when you post your comment, because if you’re a winner I’ll be contacting you via e-mail to get your shipping information.
If I notify you via e-mail that you’ve been selected to win a copy but you fail to respond within 48 hours with your shipping address, I’ll select a new winner in your place.
Because I’m paying for the shipping out of my own pocket, I’ll have to limit this contest to continental US residents only. (Sorry folks—my personal budget can’t sustain sending print books worldwide.)

Aside from the limitation to continental US residents only, this contest is open to anyone, so don’t hesitate—enter today!

Tags: VMware, vSphere, Writing

Announcing VMware vSphere Design, 2nd Edition

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 in Virtualization by slowe | 17 comments

I’ve been phenomenally lucky to be involved in a number of book projects around VMware vSphere. I think that most people probably know me for the wildly popular Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and Mastering VMware vSphere 5 books (released at VMworld 2009 and VMworld EMEA 2011, respectively), but in late 2010/early 2011 I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Forbes Guthrie and Maish Saidel-Keesing on VMware vSphere Design. Even though that book hasn’t sold as many units as the Mastering books, it’s a work of which I’m equally proud. The topic of designing vSphere environments can be difficult to address, but I think we did a pretty good job.

Today I’m excited to announce that Forbes Guthrie and I–along with some support from Kendrick Coleman–have undertaken a revision of that book, to be released as VMware vSphere Design, 2nd Edition.

VMware vSphere Design, 2nd Edition

In addition to a new cover design (nice, huh?), this new version of the book has a new interior as well! The book has been thoroughly updated to include design topics and considerations for vSphere 4, vSphere 5, and vSphere 5.1. In addition to discussing design topics like management, storage, networking, and security, Kendrick contributed content around design considerations for vCloud Director. The updated and expanded content makes this a great resource for anyone who will be designing VMware vSphere environments.

For more information about the book, or to see a list of resellers for the book, visit the publisher’s page.

Thanks, and I think I speak for Forbes and Kendrick when I say that we hope this resource is useful to you!

Tags: Virtualization, VMware, vSphere, Writing

How I Build the Technology Short Takes

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 in General, Personal by slowe | 1 comment

Shortly after I published Technology Short Take #27, a reader asked me on Twitter how I managed the information that goes into each Technology Short Take (TST) article. Although I’ve blogged about my productivity setup before, that post is now over two years old and horribly out of date. Given that I need to post a more current description of my tools and workflow, I thought I’d take a brief moment to answer the reader’s question. Here’s how I go about building the Technology Short Take articles.

I’ve mentioned before that I have three “layers” of tools: a consumption layer, an organization layer, and a creation layer. I’ll break down the process according to these layers.

The Consumption Layer

This is where I go about actually finding the content that gets pulled into a TST post. There’s nothing terribly unique here; I have a collection of RSS feeds which I subscribe and I get content from people I follow on Twitter. I will also visit various Usenet newsgroups and certain IRC channels (only on irc.freenode.net) from time to time.

If you’re interested in seeing the RSS feeds to which I subscribe, here’s an OPML list of all my subscriptions.

The majority of the content I consume is web-based, so when I find an article that I want to use in a TST post, I’ll save that as a Safari web archive. I wish there was a more platform-independent method, but as yet I haven’t found a good solution. Once I’ve saved a page for future use, then we move into the organization layer.

The Organization Layer

As content is discovered via any of the various consumption layer tools, I then need to get that content “sucked” into my primary organization layer tool. I use a really, really fancy tool—it’s called the file system.

When I save a web page that I’m planning on including in a TST article, I generally save it, by default, to the Desktop. I have a program named Hazel that watches the Desktop and Downloads folders for web archive files, and automatically moves them to a WebArchives folder. From there, I use a couple of saved Spotlight searches to identify newly-created web archives that don’t have a source URL or don’t have any OpenMeta tags assigned. For these newly-created web archives, I use the Spotlight comments field to store the source URL, and I use an application named Tagger to assign OpenMeta tags.

Once a web archive has its source URL and OpenMeta tags assigned, then I have a group of saved Spotlight searches the group files together by topic: virtualization, storage, OpenStack, Open vSwitch, etc. This makes it super easy for me to find web archives—or other files—related to a particular topic. All these saved searches are built on queries involving the OpenMeta tags.

Content will remain here until either a) I use it in a TST article and no longer need it; or b) I use it in a TST article but feel it’s worth keeping for future reference. I might keep content for quite a long time before I use it. Case in point: the Q-tools stuff from Dave Gray that eventually found its way into some of my VMUG presentations was something I found in 2009 (it was published in 2008).

The Creation Layer

After collecting content for a while, a scheduled, recurring OmniFocus action pops up reminding me to write the next TST post. At this point, I go back to my organization layer tools (saved Spotlight searches and content folders) to pull out the various pieces of information that I want to include. I write the post in Markdown using TextMate, building off a skeleton template that has all the content headers already in place.

Using the saved searches I described above, I’ll search through my content to see what I want to include in the TST post. When an item is included in a TST blog post, I’ll write my thoughts about the article or post, then grab the source URL from the Spotlight comments to make a hyperlink to the content. If the content is useful and informative, I might keep it around; otherwise, I’ll generally delete the saved web archive or bookmark file. I repeat this process, going through all my saved content, until I feel that the TST post is sufficiently full of content.

Then, because it’s all written in Markdown, I convert the post to HTML and actually publish it to the site using the excellent MarsEdit application. TextMate makes this incredibly easy with just a few keystrokes.

And that’s it! That’s the “mystery” behind the Technology Short Take articles. Feel free to post any questions or thoughts you have about my workflow and tools in the comments below. Courteous comments are always welcome.

Tags: General, Productivity, Writing

Posts From the Past, December 2012

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 in General by slowe | No comments

Every now and then, it’s kind of fun to look back at the content that I’ve generated in my 7 years of blogging here (soon to be 8 years). With that in mind, here are some “posts from the past” for early December.

Calling for the Best Storage Recommendations

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 in Storage, Virtualization by slowe | 36 comments

The funny thing about technology is that there is rarely one answer that fits all situations. This is the root of the reason behind the all-too-familiar IT answer, “It depends.” Rarely is this challenge more evident than when trying to write a book that is applicable to as broad an audience as possible. The challenge is compounded when the topic of your book is a large, complex suite of software like VMware vSphere.

As an author, you want to provide information that is helpful, yet at the same time you know that you simply cannot provide the “right” answer for all the possible readers out there. And you also know that you simply don’t have enough pages or enough time to discuss every single potential factor that might play into how a particular technology should be deployed or configured. As an author, you rarely have the time and page count to go as deep as you’d like. (There are exceptions—the HA/DRS clustering deep dives are good examples.) So, you try to take a balanced approach, making fairly broad recommendations that will apply to the largest group of individuals in the most common set of circumstances or situations.

Because you know you can’t provide the “right” answer for all possible situations and environments, you also know that there will be individuals for whom the book isn’t as helpful as it is for others. Perhaps their particular environments have circumstances that aren’t common, or perhaps their functional requirements drive their vSphere environment in directions most organizations don’t go. That’s fine—that’s the whole reason “It depends” is such a popular answer.

As a result, I can’t say that I was terribly surprised when someone on Twitter pointed me to this Spiceworks thread criticizing some broad RAID recommendations that I made in Mastering VMware vSphere 5. As I’ve already stated, it’s impossible (in my opinion) to provide the “right” recommendations for every possible user in a relatively-mainstream IT book such as Mastering VMware vSphere 5. What did surprise me, though, was that the thread was surprisingly vitriolic, focusing more on me personally than on the recommendations themselves (“Mr Lowe…should not be spreading his ignorance” and “I’ve seen some stuff he’s written and I’m none too impressed”). That’s a shame—it would have been so much more helpful for other Spiceworks community members and the virtualization community as a whole if the thread had focused more on providing “better” RAID recommendations than what I included in the book.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to issue a call to the storage experts out there (which I am not, and have said that on numerous occasions) to chime in and provide what they think are the “best” RAID recommendations or storage configurations to support a VMware vSphere environment. Keep in mind the challenges I described earlier—you need recommendations that are broadly applicable to many users, many environments, many situations. Please add your thoughts in the comments below, and—where applicable—please provide any relevant affiliations or disclosures. All courteous comments are welcome!

(Full disclosure: I do work for EMC, although this is not an EMC blog and “Mastering VMware vSphere 5″ was not sponsored or supported by EMC in any way. I speak only for myself.)

Tags: Storage, Virtualization, VMware, Writing

Mastering VMware vSphere 5 Now Available

Thursday, October 6, 2011 in Virtualization by slowe | 49 comments

I’m very excited to announce that both Kindle and paperback copies of Mastering VMware vSphere 5, the eagerly-anticipated vSphere 5 book, are now available from Amazon. At the time of this writing, the Kindle version was priced higher than the paperback version, but I’m hoping that Amazon—who solely controls pricing for Kindle books—will drop the price soon.

The book is also available from other outlets and in other formats, if you’re interested:

Barnes and Noble has the book both in paperback and as a NOOK book.
The book is available as an iBook through iTunes, if you’d prefer to get it in that format.
You can also get it directly from the publisher as an Adobe E-Book or in paperback form.

One of the complaints of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 was that the electronic formats weren’t fast enough coming, so we’ve really tried to address that this time around.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the book!

Tags: Virtualization, VMware, vSphere, Writing

Announcing Mastering VMware vSphere 5

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 in Personal, Virtualization by slowe | 42 comments

Now that the lid has been officially lifted on VMware vSphere 5 (see my initial launch coverage here), I’m finally able to discuss a significant project that has been consuming a great deal of my free time for the last several months: Mastering VMware vSphere 5.

Yes, that’s right—there will be a new revision of my best-selling book on vSphere 4, completely updated and refreshed for vSphere 5. The previous edition, Mastering VMware vSphere 4, received rave reviews and was very well-received by the VMware community, selling over 20,000 copies since its release at VMworld 2009.

In the new revision for vSphere 5, you’ll find coverage included on the major new features:

Storage DRS
Profile-driven storage
VMFS-5
New hardware offloads in VAAI v2
The Linux-based vCenter Server virtual appliance

As in the previous edition, I’ve done my best to supply comprehensive coverage of the entire product suite, from installation to networking to storage, security, and automation. This book won’t go as deep as some other book on the market, but that’s not really its purpose. Mastering VMware vSphere 5 is targeted at getting you as much relevant, real-world information as possible to help you manage and optimize your vSphere 5 environment.

Right now, we’re targeting availability of Mastering VMware vSphere 5 around September 20, 2011. Due to the vSphere 5 release schedule, it was almost impossible to have the book ready any sooner. It will be available for pre-order via Amazon.com very soon. (In fact, some have said that the new book has already shown up on the Amazon UK site.) The book should be available in both print form and electronic form almost simultaneously.

As soon as the book is available for pre-order, I’ll update this article accordingly.

Tags: Virtualization, VMware, vSphere, Writing

Announcing VMware vSphere Design

Monday, January 31, 2011 in Collaboration, Virtualization by slowe | 31 comments

This is a joint post of three prominent writers in the virtualization community: Forbes Guthrie, Scott Lowe, and Maish Saidel-Keesing.

For the past 6 months we have been working on a joint project. It has actually been kept pretty quiet, and it is now time to make this public.

Previous VMware vSphere books have focused on how to master the technology, deep-diving into certain elements and giving tips & tricks that help you manage your virtual infrastructure.

But we felt there was something missing in all these books. What was missing was how to design an infrastructure, accounting for all the elements that you need to consider. For example:

What kind of servers should I use?
Which storage: NFS, iSCSI or FC?
How do I scale a vCenter Server appropriately?

…and many more similar questions. This is how VMware vSphere Design was born…

The three of us collaborated on the book, to not only explain how to configure each element of your infrastructure, but to make you think about all the options available, and how each choice can impact the overall design. It should help you find the right solution for your environment—because no “one size fits all.”

To our knowledge, it is the only book focused on designing VMware vSphere implementations. It is written for engineers and architects who plan, install, maintain and optimize vSphere solutions.

The book details the overall design process, server hardware selection, network layout, security considerations, storage infrastructure, virtual machine design, and more. We debate the merits of scaling up servers versus scaling out, ESX versus ESXi hypervisors, vSwitches versus dvSwitches, and FC, FCoE, iSCSI or NFS storage. We show you which tools can be used to monitor, to plan, to manage, to deploy and to secure your vSphere landscape. We run through the design decisions that a typical company might face, and question the choices you come to. The book is packed with real-world proven strategies. VMware vSphere Design examines how the virtualization architecture for your company should ideally look, be it a newly deployed environment or an optimization of the existing infrastructure.

VMware vSphere Design is available now for pre-order on Amazon and will be in the stores around the middle of March 2011.

We would like to thank Jason Boche for acting as the technical editor for the book. (Note from Scott: I can’t speak for Forbes or Maish, but I know that Jason’s contributions as technical editor definitely improved the quality of this book. His role should not be underestimated!)

We hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed writing it!

Tags: Virtualization, VMware, vSphere, Writing

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