Showing posts with label NetApp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NetApp. Show all posts

Monday, July 15, 2013

VCDX Sponsorship - A cool idea !!

Hi VCDX Aspirants,

If you are not aware about this but recently Nutanix has offered Sponsorship to anyone who is going for VCDX or in process of attaining VCDX.

The exact criteria is described here:

"We are looking for someone who has successfully completed all of the prerequisite exam requirements for VCDX and is ready to submit a Nutanix-based design for their VCDX defense. The lucky chosen candidate will receive as much preparation support as needed and have all submission fees paid for by Nutanix. Let us help you achieve your ultimate goal of becoming a member of the exclusive VCDX community."

And the benefits are:

The chosen candidate will receive:
• A VCDX bootcamp to prepare the candidate for the VCDX defense
• The VCDX submission fees paid for by Nutanix
• Travel and lodging for the VCDX defense


Now looking at this trend, wondering tomorrow or in near future all the big players e.g. EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP etc. will come up with an offering like this, which would give a candidate a chance/motivation to include the components in their design and get benefits of such offerings.


Now this is just my assumption here but it is something which can be done and the company will get more visibility in the community by promoting the VCDX process as a whole which is Elite and Unique in itself.

People are becoming more innovative day by day so not sure what kind of other offers they may started getting from such organizations or even from their employer, which eventually boost the morale of a person to go for such valuable status being a "VCDX".

Good Luck to those who entered in this offer from Nutanix and love to see more of such offers from others in the community.

Share and care !!

Cheers !! 

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Disable/Enable ABC for NFS Troubleshooting on NetApp

I was reading some issue with NetApp NFS troubleshooting and came across the KB from NetApp to disable flow Control on the Array.

This new Flow control setting is listed under a RFC 3465 which is described as ABC (Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC)).

Now this particular settings takes care of TCP Congestion Control with Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) settings on the array.



As per this document  Storage Best Practice Document (TR-3749.PDF) page 25 Flow control means:


 FLOW CONTROL
Flow control is a low-level process for managing the rate of data transmission between two nodes to prevent a fast sender from overrunning a slow receiver. Flow control can be configured on ESX/ESXi servers, FAS storage arrays, and network switches. For modern network equipment, especially 10GbE equipment, NetApp recommends turning off flow control and allowing congestion management to be performed higher in the network stack. For older equipment, typically GbE with smaller buffers and weaker buffer management, NetApp recommends configuring the endpoints, ESX servers, and NetApp arrays with the flow control set to "send."


And further reading on the Congestion Management with Flow control - TR-3802.pdf page 23 , it mentioned other technologies to use such TCP windowing, increased switch buffering, and end-to-end QoS which may reduce the need for simple flow control throughout the network. Now I think along with that you can add the setting for ABC as per the RFC mentioned above. You can read the RFC to get more idea on how exactly it works on the TCP stack.

Fro ONTAP 8.1 Netapp has  released the guide with the following command:


ip.tcp.abc.enable

(Enables/disables the use of Appropriate Byte Counting in TCP Congestion Control following RFC
3465. Valid values for this option are on or off. The default value for this option is on.)



Now if you need further information on how to set this up on the affected Array and I would suggest to get in touch with the vendor.

Now this may or may not improve the overall situation but its worth giving a try.


Please share if you can.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Storage Integration Guides for vSphere

Vendor Integration Guides

I am putting here the links for the storage integration guide from various vendors which will help you configure and design your VMware Storage based on the vendor recommendation and best practices.
If you see any storage array not listed here, please leave the comment below and I will update it.