10 Biggies to Help Managers and Admins Avoid Virtualization Pit-Falls

I wish this information was available 10 years ago when I started working with virtualization, but then again, like many reading this, I thought I was an expert and didn’t need it. Now I see myself as a student because of how fast virtualization is changing.

1. First and most important, look at the big picture for why you are implementing virtualization. Most managers look solely at VMware, XenServer, Hyper-V or any other virtual server product for ROI (return on investment). Bad way to make IT decisions! Look at the big picture. How will virtualization affect everything and everyone it makes contact with? For example: How will your storage be affected when you start sharing it with hungry VMs, will the I/O hold up? Or, how will your system administrator handle the new responsibilities? How will you handle the users when they start complaining that everything is slow because you didn’t consider I/O and new responsibilities?

2. Once you have a big picture view of what you want to do with virtualization then consider that you’re still probably missing a few things that you will learn along the way. Just look at these challenges as growing pains, and unavoidable. Virtualization dynamically changes as the environments grow and upgrade. First there’s the experimental ESX or free ESXi, Hyper-V and XenServer host that gets you started. Then when the experimental host(s) get filled up there’s the small farm of host servers that get landed when you actually start purchasing new hardware and the full infrastructure licenses. Beware! of the “wow we can virtualize everything” period that happens from 50 – 200 virtual servers. At this point everything seems to work fine because you haven’t saturated your SAN I/O, or host memory and CPUs. But then there’s that point that happens at VM number 201 (201 is a relative number, it could be more or less depending on a number of factors) where panic is unavoidable if you haven’t prepared properly. That’s why you need to read the rest of this post.

3. Now that consideration 1 and 2 are out of the way, which are mainly to make IT managers think, I’ll get to the good stuff. Have a backup strategy in the beginning that is made for backing up the VM images. Don’t rely on your legacy backup software for physical servers. Yes NetBackup or whatever can still do agent backups of files of a VM, this is a no brainer. However, how are you going to do a full system restore? Unless it’s just data, 5 hours after your backup administrator begins the system restore he is still going to be trying to solve this riddle. You want a good solution that makes an image backup. Solutions: VCB, vRanger Pro, Veeam Backup, Avamar. These are all specific backup tools for virtualization. Avamar can work on any type of virtual environment including Sun containers.

4. Know your storage limits. Capacity is just one part of the storage requirement. The other part is I/O or OIPS (Input/Output Per Second). VMs have different I/O needs. One hungry database or SharePoint VM on a LUN that shares it’s disk parity with multiple LUNs can cause performance problem across all the LUNs in the disk parity group. The best way I have found to avoid this is to design your storage with the biggest I/O pool available. I/O begins at the disk and 15K disks have roughly 200 IOPS where 10K disks have 150 IOPS (SATA have 30 – 50 IOPS). Do the math, which is better? After capacity and I/O is considered, then there is the pathing, which needs to be manually configure to split I/O down multiple paths to the SAN/NAS cache. I’ve seen million dollar equipment brought to its knees because this stuff was overlooked. It’s usually not the equipment (HP, NetApp, EMC) that is causing the problem, its configuration. Whether you plan to use FC, NFS or iSCSI, this is important for your storage administrator to consider. Otherwise, you will be playing VM storage Tetris and I guarantee you will lose.

5. This is in conjunction with 4, VM template configuration. If you’re planning to have a huge pool of I/O then you will never know your template configuration is poor. VM configuration is important and is easy to overlook. Most will find out how important when I/O runs out… I’ve read this best practice on many blogs – “put data and OS, and even swap files on separate LUNs.” I agree this is a good best practice, but I am taking it even further and adding a criteria. “Separate LUN on separate disk parity groups.” Here’s why, ten - 15K disks will give you roughly 1500 IOPS across each LUN it is carved into. Depending on the size of the drive you may have various LUN sizes of 200 to 500 GB (each with 10 – 20 I/O hungry VMs) sharing the same IOPS. Splitting data, OS and swap onto more spindles will give you more IOPS and possibly an alternate path to the 2nd storage processor (active/active), or more cache that is assigned to another FC or NIC port. Make sure data store names include what the LUN is for (Data, OS or swap) and odd even disk parity (data goes on odd, OS go on even).

6. Clean up your messes. Don’t leave old proof of concept (POC) VMs or equipment running after the POC is done. Nothing is harder to do then to clean up a VM environment 2 years after everyone who was on the original project team has left and your VM inventory now has 500 VMs in it. The first place you need to look when you hit your host and storage limits is here. Out of 500 VMs you can bet there are at least 50 VM zombies that are idly running and using up precious resources. Then there’s the clean up of zombie VM folders that are from VMs that were improperly deleted and the files were left on the data store (you know the VM you said you’d delete later - that was 2 years ago). Clean up also helps control “Sprawl”. Sprawl is a fancy word for out of control.

7. You probably didn’t hear me the first time so I’m saying “Backups” again. I’m putting this down again to make sure you have a backup solution that backs up the complete VM image. It’s no easy task to change backup process 2 years and 500 VMs later so make sure you do this right from the start.

8. Establish standards for your environment. All hosts will be on the certified version of ESX or whatever hypervisor you use. Once you allow old hosts to say around after you have decided to build new host on the current ESX version, it won’t be long before your virtual infrastructure is fragmented. Remember, virtualization is evolving almost daily and new features are on each new version of ESX and Hyper-V. Live migration didn’t work on the old Hyper-V version but it work on R2, but it doesn’t work across R1 to R2 or R2 to R1. Get all those R1 upgraded to R2 so all are the same and live migration works. Keeping the standard isn’t easy because VM administrator are also system administrators, they have to land the servers, configure the host, as well as deploy the VM and configure the VM. It’s the same people doing both jobs and in some cases they are storage and network administrators too. Make sure you have enough staff to maintain your standards. I’ve known more than a few overworked, underpaid and miss-understood VM administrators in my time.

9. I hate this one as much as any true IT professional but someone has to keep doing the job if you leave and take a better paying job somewhere else. Make sure you keep good documentation. If it’s required, cool Visio’s of everything is nice for management, but even more important for day to day support staff are “How To” documents. How to land and provision a host (hardware and hypervisor). How to deploy a VM. How to add additional disk space to the “C” drive of a VM. How to P2V a system. How to properly request more storage. How to decommission a VM. How to schedule a VM backup. How to recover a VM from a backup. Also keep the “How To” documents up-to-date. You need a new “How To” for each version of ESX because they are not the same; customization to the SWAP volume for example is different on 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5. Hyper-V and XENserver have their own little tweaks as well.

10. Don’t buy every tool out there thinking its going to fix everything I have spent the last 2 hours writing about. Listen to what I am saying. Listen to your support staff. Carefully listen to vendors who want to sell you something because there is no silver bullet for poor planning. And, while on the subject of vendor, any consult recommendation with direct connection with equipment vendors should also be scrutinized. I’ve seen the best SAN money can buy collapse under 25 VMs because it was haphazardly used (VM storage Tetris). Many of the problems I have warned you about can be avoided if you plan. Read number 1 and 2 again until this makes sense. To the VM administrators who are fighting the daily battles because most of what I have written about is already occurring in your virtual environment, I feel your pain. To all the new bright-eyed IT managers and system administrator who are licking their chops because they are finally getting a budget to start virtualizing, I warn you and say, “Consider the big picture and plan, plan, plan!”

Hopefully this post has been helpful. Other items that were not covered are: How to monitor VM and host servers, disaster recovery DR of virtual environments, capacity planning, forecasting and hardware (servers, network and storage) brands and types. These can be topics for the next 10 biggie list. My final note is “Backups” will challenge traditional thinking so heed my warnings.

Six Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Google

Google provides many ways to protect your privacy online that you may not know about. Here are six good ones.

1. Know your privacy rights: Use the Google Privacy Center. This site includes all of Google's privacy policies, as well as privacy best practices for each of its products and services. Although the "legalese" of privacy policies can be difficult to understand, Google's Privacy Channel offers a library of short YouTube videos with practical tips on protecting your data when using Google products and services. Try the "Google Search Privacy" and "Google Privacy Tips" series.

2. Protect your content on the services you use. Some content that Google stores for you, such as photos uploaded in Picasa Web Albums, are public by default. You can protect your privacy when you upload photos by choosing the appropriate checkbox.

Choices include "unlisted" (accessible only if you have the Web link, and not indexed by Web search engines) or private (viewable only by named users who must sign in).

Another example: You can take a Google Chat "off the record" if you don't want the instant messaging transcript stored.

In contrast, Google Latitude, which tracks your whereabouts by way of GPS-enabled cell phones, does not share your location data by default. You must authorize others to see it. Latitude stores your last known location, but not your history.

3. Turn off the suggestion feature in the Chrome browser. By default, Chrome retains a history of Web sites you've visited -- and the full text of those pages -- so it can try to guess which Web address you want as you type in the "Omnibox."

You can turn the feature off by going to "Under the Hood" under Options and unchecking the "Use a suggestion service" box. You can also select other privacy options, including surfing in Chrome's "incognito" mode.

4. Turn off Web History. You may have turned on the Web History option, also called Personalized Search, when you first created your Google account. If so, Google may be maintaining a "personalized" search history for your use.

Google does not use this data to target ads. It uses a separate search history, stored in Google's server logs and associated with a browser cookie, for that purpose. That data is "anonymized" after nine months. But your Web History is retained forever, unless you turn it off or delete the contents.

5. Opt out of interest-based ad serving. As of March 11, Google and third parties in its AdSense network are using not just contextual information (what you're searching for) but a history of previously viewed Web pages to serve up targeted advertising. The idea is to serve up ads that are more relevant to your interests.

You can remove interest categories Google has attributed to you or add others by visiting its Ad Preferences page. You can also opt out. To make the opt-out setting permanent, however, you'll need to install a plug-in for each browser you use. It's available for IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

6. Add SSL to Gmail. You can encrypt e-mails you read and create in Gmail. Your log-in data is encrypted by default by SSL encryption, but SSL is turned off when you interact with your e-mail, because it can slow performance.

You'll find the option in Settings under the General tab. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the "Always use https" option under the Browser Connection setting.

My Mother taught me

My Mother taught me LOGIC…

“If you fall off that swing and break your neck, you can’t go to the store with me.” My Mother taught me MEDICINE…

“If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to freeze that way.” My Mother taught me TO THINK AHEAD…

“If you don’t pass your spelling test, you’ll never get a good job!” My Mother taught me ESP…

“Put your sweater on; don’t you think that I know when you’re cold?” My Mother taught me TO MEET A CHALLENGE…

“What were you thinking? Answer me when I talk to you… Don’t talk back to me!” My Mother taught me HUMOR…

“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.” My Mother taught me how to BECOME AN ADULT…

“If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.” My Mother taught me about GENETICS…

“You are just like your father!” My Mother taught me about my ROOTS…

“Do you think you were born in a barn?” My Mother taught me about the WISDOM of AGE…

“When you get to be my age, you will understand.” My Mother taught me about ANTICIPATION…

“Just wait until your father gets home.” My Mother taught me about RECEIVING…

“You are going to get it when we get home.” and my all time favorite thing–JUSTICE

“One day you will have kids, and I hope they turn out just like YOU .. then you’ll see what it’s like.” In between all this, my Mother taught me how to Live! Thank you Mom for all I have learned these years.

Best Wishes for Mothers Day!

Three Questions for Lifelong Happiness

You already have everything you need to create a wonderful life for yourself. You know everything you need to know to be your own best friend, a gentle guide, a teacher and a helper to yourself so you can be truly happy and fulfilled.

You can learn how to become your own psychotherapist for life, and how to resolve the difficulties that stand between you and personal joy.

Be Honest With Yourself
The starting point of becoming your own best friend is for you to be perfectly honest with yourself and your relationships. Refuse to practice self-delusion or hope for the best. For example, when something is making you unhappy, for any reason, the situation will tend to get worse rather than better. So avoid the temptation to engage in denial, to pretend that nothing is wrong, to wish and hope and pray that, whatever it is, it will go away and you won't have to do anything. The fact is that it probably will get worse before it gets better and that ultimately you will need to face the situation and do something about it.

Deal With Your Problem at a Higher Level
There's an old saying that you can't solve a problem on the level that you meet it. This means that wrestling with a persistent problem is often fruitless and frustrating. For example, if two people who are in a relationship together are constantly fighting and negotiating and looking for some way to resolve their difficulties, they may be attempting to solve the problem on the wrong level. Dealing with the problem on a higher level, those people would ask the question, "In terms of being happy, is this the right relationship for us in the first place?"

Find the Right Job for You
Many people work very hard and experience considerable frustration trying to do a particular job. However, in terms of their own happiness, the right answer might be to do something else, or to do what they're doing in a different place, or to do it with different people-or all three. Here are a few questions for you to answer in this arena of happiness. Write them down at the top of a sheet of paper, and then write as many answers to each one as you possibly can.

What Would It Take?
The first question is: "What would it take for me to be perfectly happy?" Write down every single thing that you can imagine would be in your life if you were perfectly happy at this very moment. Write down things such as health, happiness, prosperity, loving relationships, inner peace, travel, car, clothes, homes, money, and so on. Let your mind run freely. Imagine that you have no limitations at all.

What is Holding You Back?
The second question is a little tougher. Write down at the top of a page this question: "In what situations in my life, and with whom, am I not perfectly happy?" Force yourself to think about every part of your day, from morning to night, and write down every element that makes you unhappy or dissatisfied in any way. Remember, proper diagnosis is half the cure. Identifying the unsatisfactory situations is the first step to resolving them.

Determine Your Happiest Moment
The third question will give you some important guidelines. Write down at the top of a sheet of paper these words: "In looking over my life, where and when have I been the happiest? Where was I, with whom was I, and what was I doing?"

Decide What to Do
Once you have the answers to those questions, think about what you can do, starting immediately, to begin creating the kind of life that you dream of. It may take you a week, a month, or a year, but that doesn't matter. Every single thing you do that moves you closer to your ideal vision will be rewarding in itself. You'll become a more positive and optimistic person. You'll feel more confident and more in charge of your life, and you'll achieve true peace of mind.

Action Exercises
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, examine your business and personal relationships carefully. Is there any situation you wouldn't get into again if you had it to do over?

Second, make a list of every single thing in your life that would make you happy and then think about what you could do to begin achieving them.

Third, allow yourself to dream and fantasize about your ideal life, what it would look like and feel like, and then do something every day to make it a reality.

Bend But Don't Break

One of my fondest memories as a child is going by the river and sitting idly on the bank. There I would enjoy the peace and quiet, watch the water rush downstream, and listen to the chirps of birds and the rustling of leaves in the trees. I would also watch the bamboo trees bend under pressure from the wind and watch them return gracefully to their upright or original position after the wind had died down.

When I think about the bamboo tree's ability to bounce back or return to it's original position, the word resilience comes to mind. When used in reference to a person this word means the ability to readily recover from shock, depression or any other situation that stretches the limits of a person's emotions.

Have you ever felt like you are about to snap? Have you ever felt like you are at your breaking point? Thankfully, you have survived the experience to live to talk about it.

During the experience you probably felt a mix of emotions that threatened your health. You felt emotionally drained, mentally exhausted and you most likely endured unpleasant physical symptoms.

Life is a mixture of good times and bad times, happy moments and unhappy moments. The next time you are experiencing one of those bad times or unhappy moments that take you close to your breaking point, bend but don't break. Try your best not to let the situation get the best of you.

A measure of hope will take you through the unpleasant ordeal. With hope for a better tomorrow or a better situation, things may not be as bad as they seem to be. The unpleasant ordeal may be easier to deal with if the end result is worth having.

If the going gets tough and you are at your breaking point, show resilience. Like the bamboo tree, bend, but don't break!

-- Author Unknown

Lesson of the Fence

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper to hammer a nail in the back fence.

The first day the boy had driven thirty-seven nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence

Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out a nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.

“You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When we say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say ‘I’m sorry,’ the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.”

-- Author Unknown

Live for Today

..............................Oooo

Some people .............(.....)
come into our lives.......).../
and quickly go........... (__/

oooO
(.....) .......Some people
..\.. ( ........become friends
...\__)...... and stay a while...

leaving beautiful .....Oooo
footprints on our ....(.....)
hearts..................).../
........................(__/

oooO
(.....)...... and we are
.\.. ( .......~ never ~
..\__) ......quite the same

because we have
made a good friend!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right Now -

-somebody is very proud of you.
-somebody is thinking of you.
-somebody is caring about you.
-somebody misses you.
-somebody wants to talk to you.
-somebody wants to be with you.
-somebody hopes you aren't in trouble.
-somebody is thankful for the support you have provided.
-somebody wants to hold your hand.
-somebody hopes everything turns out all right.
-somebody wants you to be happy.
-somebody wants you to find him/her.
-somebody is celebrating your successes.
-somebody wants to give you a gift.
-somebody thinks that you ARE a gift.
-somebody hopes you're not too cold, or too hot
-somebody wants to hug you.
-somebody loves you.
-somebody admires your strength.
-somebody is thinking of you and smiling.
-somebody wants to be your shoulder to cry on.
-somebody wants to go out with you and have a lot of fun.
-somebody thinks the world of you.
-somebody wants to protect you.
-somebody would do anything for you.
-somebody wants to be forgiven.
-somebody is grateful for your forgiveness.
-somebody wants to laugh with you.
-somebody remembers you and wishes that you were there.
-somebody is praising God for you.
-somebody needs to know that your love is unconditional.
-somebody values your advice.
-somebody wants to tell you how much they care.
-somebody wants to share their dreams with you.
-somebody wants to hold you in their arms.
-somebody wants YOU to hold them in your arms.
-somebody treasures your spirit.
-somebody wishes they could STOP time because of you.
-somebody praises God for your friendship and love.
-somebody can't wait to see you.
-somebody loves you for who you are.
-somebody loves the way you make them feel.
-somebody wants to be with you.
-somebody wants you to know they are there for you.
-somebody's glad that you're his/her friend.
-somebody wants to be your friend.
-somebody stayed up all night thinking about you.
-somebody is alive because of you.
-somebody is wishing that you noticed him/her.
-somebody wants to get to know you better.
-somebody wants to be near you.
-somebody misses your advice/guidance.
-somebody has faith in you.
-somebody trusts you.
-somebody needs you to send them this letter
-somebody needs your support.
-somebody needs you to have faith in them.
-somebody will cry when they read this.
-somebody needs you to let them be your friend.
-somebody hears a song that reminds them of you.