Archive
Discovering HP Technology in Las Vegas
I am very grateful and fortunate to have been invited by HP to attend their Discovery 2013 event in Las Vegas next week along with a small number of other bloggers from all over the world. This is my first time to HP Discover and I’m looking forward to learning a lot about all things HP infrastructure and applications, especially as it relates to Virtualizing Business Critical Applications and Software Defined Datacenter. HP are expecting 12000+ attendees at the event, which is being hosted at the Venetian Conference Center. One of the interesting stats I found out is that 46% of the attendees are in IT management positions. So that makes it a good place to network. This article will cover some of the sessions I’m going to be attending and looking out for. Note: Travel to HP Discover 2013 was paid for by HP; however, no monetary compensation is expected nor received for the content that is written in this blog.
The FUD Strikes Back – Oracle Licensing on VMware
In my original article on the FUD around Oracle Licensing and Support titled Fight the FUD – Oracle Licensing and Support on VMware vSphere I discussed the Oracle Partitioning Guide and it’s relevance to VMware environments. I provided a link directly to the document on the Oracle web site so that you could all read directly from the source. What I didn’t highlight in my article at the time was that Oracle constantly updates that document without notice and without changing file name or version numbers. My records indicate that it’s been changed three times in the past 3 years. Why is this important? Read on to find out.
DBA’s Don’t Lose Sight Of Your Databases When You Virtualize Oracle
As more and more customers virtualize their Oracle databases it becomes more important to give greater insight to their Oracle DBA’s to ensure Database service levels can be met and that DBA’s can understand how the infrastructure is supporting their databases. One of the fears DBA’s have when virtualizing Oracle databases is that they’ll lose control and visibility of the infrastructure. But this doesn’t need to be the case and smart organizations are putting the power back into the hands of the DBA’s. You can have your IT as a Service Infrastructure for Databases and still give Oracle DBA’s the visibility they need, using tools they are already familiar with.
VMware and SAP Shake Up Enterprise Applications with Production HANA Support in Hybrid Cloud and SDDC
I was first involved in virtualizing SAP in 2007, when SAP first offered support for deployment in VMware’s hypervisor. The project was for a large government department in New Zealand. Since then I’ve been involved in a number of large scale SAP deployments on VMware, mainly around Asia Pacific and Japan region. Back then we were trail blazing, and we knew it. But we took a methodical risk based approach and ensured we tested everything adequately (especially performance), the result was it worked just fine. These days virtualizing SAP is much more mainstream. But now we are about to take on the next generation of extreme workloads, which will deliver even more massive business benefits than virtualization by itself has, here I’m talking about SAP HANA and VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service.
Important! Default HBA Device Queue Depth Changes Between vSphere Versions
A little while ago I wrote an article titled 5 Tips to Prevent 80% of Virtualization Problems. This article was all about storage and how to configure your storage and the dangers to watch out for. This is because problems in virtualized environments are predominantly caused by or related to storage in one way or another. In that article I explained the impact of queue depths on performance and also some of the dangers of making the HBA device queue depths too high. What I didn’t know at the time I wrote the previous article was that the default queue depth for QLogic HBA’s was changed between vSphere 4.1 and 5.x. This article will being you up to date on the changes and the impacts of the change in default values between vSphere 4.x and 5.x.
VMworld 2013 Call For Papers Public Voting is Now Open!
Many of you that have submitted a paper for VMworld 2013 would have received an email saying that call for papers public voting is now open. For those that didn’t get the email I thought I’d let you know that you can now start voting for sessions. The competition this year is going to be even more insane than last year, so it would be advised to get in early and make your top sessions known.
vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide Official Release
One of the most important documents for any vSphere administrator or architect has been released. The vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide is now available. The guide was announced on the vSphere Blog by Mike Foley – vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide – Official Release. I’d like to thank Mike and the rest of the VMware Security Team that was involved in putting this invaluable resource together. It has been reformatted from the previous version to make it easier to use. I think you’ll all like the new improvements.
Best Practice Architecture for your vSphere Environment – Build a Management Cluster
I just read a great article written by James Knapp at ViFX (One of VMware’s Premier Partners in New Zealand) on the Best Practices (and good practices) of utilizing a Management Cluster as part of your VMware vSphere architecture. I would recommend you read it. I’ll give you my very brief take on this.
Fight the FUD: Virtualization of Oracle Evolves to Best Practice for Production Systems by David Floyer
I recently read an article published on Wikibon written by David Floyer titled Virtualization of Oracle Evolves to Best Practice for Production Systems. He makes some good arguments regarding virtualization of production Oracle systems, including ROI and TCO analysis. The examples given provide you with an idea of how you might optimize your environment to improve the efficiency of your investment in Oracle software without sacrificing SLA’s. I would highly recommend that you review the article as it contains some critical advice when considering Oracle software investments, including how to protect your investments from audits. I have first hand experience with how significant the savings can be from a properly optimizsed Oracle designs on VMware vSphere. You just need to take a bit of care and be smart about how you go about it. Here I will give you some additional things to think about based on a recent conversation I had with an Oracle Account Executive, which was quite interesting in my opinion.
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Your Author: Michael Webster, VCDX-066, vExpert 2012
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