Author's posts
Jul 06
WWN Converter 3.4.0
I just updated the WWN Converter to version 3.4.0. The changes based on the some feedback from the field. Thanks for that. If the included auto-update function fails, re-install the product from the ZIP file or via ClickOnce. Changed things since version 3.0.0: cleanup conversion dialog messages updated OUI Database / 06.07.2012 minor GUI tweaks …
Jan 01
Investigating NDMP performance
I spend some time on the Data Protector NDMP Integration, especially to compare it to CIFS/NFS backups available with the regular Disk Agent. Luckily an older EMC Celerra NS20 was available and I was able start immediately. A quick look at the NDMP support matrix revealed no restrictions since the unit was running T5.6.50.203. To …
Dec 30
Quiesced Snapshots for Exchange 2010 on vSphere 5.0
Due to an upgrade from vSphere 4.0 to 5.0 some of our virtual machines stopped working in VEPA/vStorage backup sessions. I’ve noticed that a quiesced snapshot using vCenter was not possible. I was able to fix the most of them by reinstalling VMware Tools to fix some VSS inconsistencies, but an Exchange 2010 VM caused …
Dec 30
Drown a VM using Ressource Allocation
Just came across a strange effect, at least strange for a system administrator, related to VMware Ressource Allocation. When checking one of my virtual servers I’ve noticed a high memory usage compared to the running processes in Task Manager and Process Explorer. The barely no free RAM left. I was not able find a relation …
Nov 29
Update Host Extensions using VUM
Have you ever wondered what happened to management agents the major server vendors provided in the past for VMware ESX? (e.g. HP Management Agents for VMware ESX) They have been moved into a more standardized framework within ESXi – the so called extensions. Those extensions are bundled with the regular ESXi installation media by most …
Oct 31
Gentoo Linux: Hyper-V R2 Enlightenment
If you ever worked with Hyper-V on Windows 2008 R2 you might know the Linux support is still an issue compared to other hypervisors like VMware. In the meantime Microsoft official supports SLES and RHEL as Hyper-V R2 guests. To have them running smoothly, you should install the Linux Integration Services Version 3.1 for Hyper-V …
Oct 17
Data Protector patch order
As you hopefully know, there is a specific patch order for Data Protector patches you should follow – especially on Windows CS, because the patches are not only applied to the Installation Server. The general rule of thumb is to apply patches in the following order: CORE CS / Cell Server CC / Cell Console …
Oct 13
Data Protector scheduling tricks
As you might have seen on Mr_T’s Blog on hp.com, there is a workaround available for the restrictions in the Data Protector scheduler. It allows you to schedule some specific points in time such as the last Friday per month which is not possible using the GUI at the moment. It you need to know …
Oct 13
Linux device persistence for Data Protector
Device persistence on Linux is not as hard as it seems. Current releases of all major distributions (RHEL and SLES) come with preconfigured udev rules. They will create aliases in the device filesystem in /dev/tape which is pretty handy. The name of the alias will vary, depending of the device but will remain consistent across …
Jun 09
Official Linux DM-MP and SVSP support
Even if this information is distributed in Native Linux Device-Mapper Disk Arrays reference guide trough SPOCK, I’d like to wrap up the most impotent facts for the impatient. By now, this is configuration is fully supported by HP. Emulex as well as QLogic FC HBAs are supported. I’d like to refer to SPOCK for a …