The recent release firmware for Cisco UCS version 1.4 had enabled the support of new blade B230M1 and C series rack mount server integration allow server management from UCS manager. This is a big major changes to the IT market today. Now you will enjoy service profile functionality similar to blade system in Cisco UCS even though if you choose to deploy a rack mount base solution. Not every environment will go with blade system only, therefore Cisco UCS C series rack mount solution integrate with UCS manager is important. It is interesting to monitor the respond from others server vendor such as HP, IBM, DELL, SUN and etc for this major improvement.
Here is the sample screen shot
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Recently there are couple of issues I had faced on the latest DL 585 G7 server which installed with ESX 4.0 Update 2. The common problem reported by couple of users are same which could potentially caused all the network traffic dead off for the entire ESX host. The even worst case could be happen and cause Purple screen to the ESX host. The current solution is to either update the NICs driver with the latest version, but I will suggest to disable all on board NIC and replace with either Broadcom and Intel Gigabits adaptor. This will isolate unnecessary issues which I had not seen in others servers brand.
Please refer to the VMware Forum Here for the confirmation on bugs with multiple users who experience the same issues as I did.
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To deploy Microsoft Cluster on VMware ESX 4.1 is not new thing, you may need to choose the right storage protocol in this case. According to VMware best practices, on Fiber Channel SAN will be supported with the current version. You will need to present the Share Storage via FC LUN to build the microsoft cluster in VMware environment. ISCSI & NFS both are not supported in this case.
You can view the Official VMware Documentation from here.
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This morning when I woke up, I receive an email from my counterpart regarding Cisco UCS R-Series. At first, I I thought it was just another model of blade or rack mount system Cisco had added to their product line. Once I open up the official link and found that is nothing related to the blade or rack mount base UCS machines. Is a RACK!!!! after years of Cisco UCS come into the market, there had been number of users asking why Cisco UCS does not come with their own rack? Finally, I think Cisco has the answer to the customers who had asked the similar question before. Not a bad idea to add the R series as part of the offering, which may looks cool to deploy the full set of UCS & Cisco solutions in Cisco Rack itself now.
Read more information from the official link here
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Adoption to both virtualization and cloud computing, network become the important component of the success to both solutions. For many of the mature deployment and operation in virtualization, network become the uncontrolled piece in the virtual infrastructure which allow administrator to breech the change control management from the production network without proper authority from the network administrators. Some of you may not been agreed with this statement but it does impact the production environment.
The traditional vswitch or dvswitch did not provide control, manage as the physical switching environment in the data center. It allow administrator to provision new virtual machine and connect to network without proper request and change management in place. Let’s imagine, the effect will be the same as unauthorized persons connected a server to the production LAN without a change approval. In physical environment, we can shut off all the unused network ports in data center, in virtual, you will not able to perform this while using vswitch or dvswitch from vmware. Technology limitation for the past previous years does not allow network operation to be fully integrated until the Nexus 1000V from cisco & VMware join develop products come to place. This will allow administrator to manage and control the access level on the virtual environment as it does in physical switch. Transparency and Manageability is possible on virtual layer now. Network performance analysis and troubleshooting become easier compare to previous.
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