Purchased 3 TB Seagate USB 3.0 drive from Amazon (http://amzn.to/TpduBU)

Waited… Very excited to connect to my ix2….

A few days later my 3 TB USB expansion drive arrived.  I hurried to unpack and connect to my ix2 expecting plug-and-play.  I plugged by no play.

An overwhelming feeling of sadness consumed me, followed by WTF then the joy of knowing I could and would hack this to make it work.

Knowing that this Iomega thing had to be running Linux I began to scour web for how to enable SSH with Firmware Version 3.3.2.29823

Found plenty of how to information on Firmware Version 2.x but 3.x (Cloud Enabled Firmware) is a bit more sparse.

Finally to enable SSH:  http://ip/diagnostics.html

SSH now enabled, opened PuTTY and SSH to device.

Username:  root
Password:  soho

Boom!  In….

A quick “df -h” shows my currently configured capacity:

A quick “cat /proc/scsi/usb-storage/4″ followed by a “fdisk -l” reveals the drive is being seen by the ix2.

Created partition on /dev/sdc, “fdisk /dev/sdc”

Now what?

Hmmmmm…. Maybe I can create a mount point on /mnt/pools/B/B0, seems logical.

Whoops forgot to mkfs.

Run “mkfs /dev/sdc1″

“mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/pools/B/B0/”

Hmmmm…..

“umount /dev/sdc1″

Tried to partition with parted (core dumps, ix2 running ver 1.8.  pretty sure GPT partition support not ready for primetime in vet 1.8)

Let see if I can get a new version of parted.

Enabled apt-get (required a little work)

cd /mnt/pools/A/A0
mkdir .system
cd .system

mkdir ./var; mkdir ./var/lib/; mkdir ./var/cache; mkdir ./var/lib/apt; mkdir ./var/cache/apt;  mkdir ./var/lib/apt/lists; mkdir ./var/lib/apt/lists/partial; mkdir ./var/cache/apt/archives;  mkdir ./var/cache/apt/archives/partial; mkdir ./var/lib/aptitude

(I think that is all the required dirs, you will know soon enough)

cd /var/lib
ln -s /mnt/pools/A/A0/.system/var/lib/apt/ apt
ln -s /mnt/pools/A/A0/.system/var/lib/aptitude/ aptitude
cd /var/cache
ln -s /mnt/pools/A/A0/.system/var/cache/apt/ apt

run “apt-get update”

Should run without issue.

run “aptitude update”
Note:  Should run without issue.

Jettison that idea, not enough space on root and /mnt/apps to install new version of parted and required dependencies.

New approach:

run “dd /dev/zero /dev/sdc”

Let run for a minute of so to clear all partition info (ctrl-c) to stop

Download EASEUS Partition Master 9.2.1 from filehippo (http://www.filehippo.com/download_easeus_partition_master_home/)

Install EASEUS Partion Master 9.2.1 on Windows 7 desktop
Connect 3 TB Seagate USB drive to Windows 7 desktop
Partition and format partition ext3 using EASEUS Partion Master 9.2.1
Note:  This takes a little while.

Once complete I connected the drive to my Iomega ix2

Voila!

Cleaned up the “/mnt/pools/B directory” I created earlier (“rm -rf /mnt/pools/B”)

Reboot my ix2 (make sure I didn’t jack anything up) and enjoy my added capacity.

Pretty sick footprint for ~ 4.5 TB of storage (1.8 TB of it R1 protected).

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This post was driven by a requirement to map RDM volumes on target side in preparation for a disaster recovery test.  I thought I would share some of my automation and process with regards to mapping RDM devices that will be used to present RecoverPoint replicated devices to VMs as part of a DR test.

Step 1:  Install VMware vCLI and PowerCLI

Step 2:  Open PowerCLI command prompt

Step 3:  Execute addvcli.ps1 (. .\addvcli.ps1)

PowerShell

function Add-vCLIfunction { <# .SYNOPSIS Adds the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions. .DESCRIPTION Adds all the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions. VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface has to be installed on the system where you run this function. You can download the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface from: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/vsphere_cli?view=overview .EXAMPLE Add-vCLIfunction Adds all the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions to your PowerCLI session. .COMPONENT VMware vSphere PowerCLI .NOTES Author: Robert van den Nieuwendijk Date: 21-07-2011 Version: 1.0 #> process { # Test if VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface is installed If (-not (Test-Path -Path "$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Bin\")) { Write-Error "VMware vSphere CLI should be installed before running this function." } else { # Add all the VMware vSphere CLI perl scripts as PowerCLI functions Get-ChildItem -Path "$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Bin\*.pl" | ForEach-Object { $Function = "function global:$($_.Name.Split('.')[0]) { perl '$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin\$($_.Name)'" $Function += ' $args }' Invoke-Expression $Function } } } }

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function Add-vCLIfunction {   <#   .SYNOPSIS     Adds the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions.   .DESCRIPTION     Adds all the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions.     VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface has to be installed on the system where you run this function.     You can download the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface from:     http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/vsphere_cli?view=overview   .EXAMPLE     Add-vCLIfunction     Adds all the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface perl scripts as PowerCLI functions to your PowerCLI session.   .COMPONENT     VMware vSphere PowerCLI   .NOTES     Author:  Robert van den Nieuwendijk     Date:    21-07-2011     Version: 1.0   #>   process {     # Test if VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface is installed     If (-not (Test-Path -Path "$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Bin\")) {       Write-Error "VMware vSphere CLI should be installed before running this function."     }     else {       # Add all the VMware vSphere CLI perl scripts as PowerCLI functions       Get-ChildItem -Path "$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Bin\*.pl" | ForEach-Object {         $Function = "function global:$($_.Name.Split('.')[0]) { perl '$env:ProgramFiles\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin\$($_.Name)'"         $Function += ' $args }'         Invoke-Expression $Function       }     }   } }

Step 4:  Execute getluns.ps1 (. .\getluns.ps1)

getluns.ps1

#Initialize variables #Replace [INSERT VCENTER SERVER NAME] with your vCenter server name, leave preceding and and trailing " $VCServer = "[INSERT VCENTER SERVER NAME]" $objLuns = @() $objRDMs = @() #Connect to vCenter Server Connect-VIServer $VCServer $clusters = Get-cluster foreach ($cl in $clusters) { $clv = $cl | Get-View if ($clv.Host.count -gt 0) { #assume that all ESX hosts see the same luns $vmhost = get-view $clv.host[0] #Get ScsiLuns except local storage $ScsiLuns = $vmhost.Config.StorageDevice.ScsiLun | ? {$_.canonicalname -notmatch "vmhba0"} #Get Datastore volumes $Datastores = $vmhost.Config.FileSystemVolume.MountInfo foreach ($Lun in $ScsiLuns) { #Define Custom object $objVolume = "" | Select ClusterName,LunName,LunUuid,Lunsize,VolumeName #Add porperties to the newly created object $objVolume.ClusterName = $clv.Name $objVolume.LunName = $Lun.CanonicalName $objVolume.LunUuid = $Lun.Uuid $objVolume.LunSize = $Lun.Capacity.Block * $Lun.Capacity.BlockSize / 1GB foreach ($vol in $Datastores | % {$_.volume}) { if ($vol.extent | % {$_.diskname -eq $Lun.CanonicalName}) { $objVolume.VolumeName = $vol.Name } } $objLuns += $objVolume } } #RDM information $vms = $cl | Get-VM | Get-View if ($null -ne $vms) { foreach($vm in $vms){ foreach($dev in $vm.Config.Hardware.Device){ if(($dev.gettype()).Name -eq "VirtualDisk"){ if(($dev.Backing.CompatibilityMode -eq "physicalMode") -or ($dev.Backing.CompatibilityMode -eq "virtualMode")){ $rdm = "" | select VMName, LunUuid, DiskLabel $rdm.VMName = $vm.Name $rdm.LunUuid = $dev.Backing.LunUuid $rdm.DiskLabel = $dev.DeviceInfo.Label $objRDMs += $rdm } } } } } } foreach ($rdm in $objRDMs) { foreach ($disk in $objLuns) { if ($disk.LunUuid -eq $rdm.LunUuid) {$disk.VolumeName = $rdm.VMName + "/" + $rdm.DiskLabel} } } $objLuns | export-csv "scsiluns.csv" -notypeinformation -useculture Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

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#Initialize variables #Replace [INSERT VCENTER SERVER NAME] with your vCenter server name, leave preceding and and trailing " $VCServer = "[INSERT VCENTER SERVER NAME]" $objLuns = @() $objRDMs = @() #Connect to vCenter Server Connect-VIServer $VCServer $clusters = Get-cluster foreach ($cl in $clusters) {     $clv = $cl | Get-View     if ($clv.Host.count -gt 0) {         #assume that all ESX hosts see the same luns         $vmhost = get-view $clv.host[0]         #Get ScsiLuns except local storage         $ScsiLuns = $vmhost.Config.StorageDevice.ScsiLun  | ? {$_.canonicalname -notmatch "vmhba0"}         #Get Datastore volumes         $Datastores = $vmhost.Config.FileSystemVolume.MountInfo         foreach ($Lun in $ScsiLuns) {             #Define Custom object             $objVolume = "" | Select ClusterName,LunName,LunUuid,Lunsize,VolumeName             #Add porperties to the newly created object             $objVolume.ClusterName = $clv.Name             $objVolume.LunName = $Lun.CanonicalName             $objVolume.LunUuid = $Lun.Uuid             $objVolume.LunSize = $Lun.Capacity.Block * $Lun.Capacity.BlockSize / 1GB             foreach ($vol in $Datastores | % {$_.volume}) {                 if ($vol.extent | % {$_.diskname -eq $Lun.CanonicalName}) {                     $objVolume.VolumeName = $vol.Name                 }             }             $objLuns += $objVolume         }     }     #RDM information     $vms = $cl | Get-VM  | Get-View     if ($null -ne $vms) {         foreach($vm in $vms){             foreach($dev in $vm.Config.Hardware.Device){                 if(($dev.gettype()).Name -eq "VirtualDisk"){                     if(($dev.Backing.CompatibilityMode -eq "physicalMode") -or                         ($dev.Backing.CompatibilityMode -eq "virtualMode")){                         $rdm = "" | select VMName, LunUuid, DiskLabel                         $rdm.VMName = $vm.Name                         $rdm.LunUuid = $dev.Backing.LunUuid                         $rdm.DiskLabel = $dev.DeviceInfo.Label                         $objRDMs += $rdm                     }                 }             }         }     } } foreach ($rdm in $objRDMs) {     foreach ($disk in $objLuns) {          if ($disk.LunUuid -eq $rdm.LunUuid) {$disk.VolumeName = $rdm.VMName + "/" + $rdm.DiskLabel}      } } $objLuns | export-csv "scsiluns.csv" -notypeinformation -useculture Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

Step 5:  Execute mpath.ps1 (. .\mpath.ps1)

mpath.ps1

PowerShell

Add-vCLIfunction $env:VI_USERNAME="root" $env:VI_PASSWORD="password" $result = foreach($esx in Get-VMHost){ esxcfg-mpath -l --server $esx.Name | %{ if($_.Length -gt 0){ if($_.Contains(': ')){ $temp = $_.Split(":") $desc = $temp[0].trim(0) $value = $temp[1..50] -join ":" Add-Member -InputObject $obj -Name $desc.trim() -Value $value.trim() -MemberType NoteProperty } else{ $obj = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ VMHost = $esx.Name Name = $_ } } } else{ $obj } } $obj } $result | export-csv "mpath.csv" -notypeinformation -useculture

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Add-vCLIfunction $env:VI_USERNAME="root" $env:VI_PASSWORD="password" $result = foreach($esx in Get-VMHost){   esxcfg-mpath -l --server $esx.Name | %{         if($_.Length -gt 0){             if($_.Contains(': ')){                 $temp = $_.Split(":")                 $desc = $temp[0].trim(0)                 $value = $temp[1..50] -join ":"                 Add-Member -InputObject $obj -Name $desc.trim() -Value $value.trim() -MemberType NoteProperty             }             else{                 $obj = New-Object PSObject -Property @{                     VMHost = $esx.Name                     Name = $_                 }             }         }         else{             $obj         }     }     $obj } $result | export-csv "mpath.csv" -notypeinformation -useculture

Step 6:  Get SP collect from EMC CLARiiON / VNX array

At this point you should have all the data required to map the RDM volumes on the DR side.  I simply import the two CSVs generated by the scripts into excel (scsiluns.csv, mpath.csv) as well as the LUNs tab from the SP Collect (cap report).

Using Excel and some simple vlookups with the data gathered above you can create a table that looks like the following:

I could probably combine these three scripts into one but under a time crunch so just needed the data, maybe I will work on that at a later date or maybe someone can do it and share with me.

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I have tested a ton of tabbed remote connection tools.

RDTabs (http://www.avianwaves.com/tech/tools/rdtabs/):  Like it for pure RDP, no SSH, http, etc…

Terminals (http://terminals.codeplex.com/):  Slow and a little buggy IMO

Remote Desktop Manager (http://devolutions.net/):  Over built app, not portable, etc…

I am now using mRemoteNG (http://www.mremoteng.org/):  Love it!

This fits all my needs.  Supports all the protocols that I require, no install portable version available which is perfect for me.  I have the portable version in my dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com/) folder so I can launch on any machine and have all my connections readily available.  I can add connections anywhere and they sync’d via  dropbox.  The perfect solution for me.  The app is light weight and fast, give it a try.

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So this may seem like a strange post, as most people will think that I am going to be talking about a an IDE application, a RAD tool, a CRM application or some sort of text-to-speech processor, regardless of what you are expecting I can almost guarantee you will be expecting something a little more sexy than what you are about to see (especially if you are not a parent).

I think this app is so useful I am not only posting to my appoftheday.org blog but also to my gotitsolutions.org blog because it is that good.

Let me provide some background.  I have two wonderful little girls, a 5 year old and a 6 month old, for anyone with children we all we have retooled the human machined (ourselves) to have a CPU that is focused on work and coprocessor that deals with our children while we try to focus (we can flip this paradigm as well).  I have to say my time slicing skills are second to none, you learn how to work in 2 min slices while breaking away for 30 seconds to lend some CPU cycles to an often overheating parental coprocessor.  I often read emails back later that had the same thought double typed, missing words, etc… this is because I am processing too much information, my mental programming is way off.  I have this huge array of things I need to do, things I am doing, things I am being told to do, things my kids want to do, yadda, yadda, yadda…. Let’s just say that the that I often suffer pointer corruption which leads to memory leaks, corruption and eventually a segmentation fault (in non techie lingo this is know as a freak out, but this is a technical blog hence the techie speak).

So to the point of the post.  There is this brilliant lady named Julie Aigner-Clark the founder of The Baby Einstein Company, absolute best videos for kids under the age of one to help cool down the coprocessor (why didn’t I start filming shiny lights and hand puppets 10 years ago).  My 5 year old will even watch the videos.  There is this great website site called YouTube where you can find Baby Einstein videos as well as other great videos like Oswald, WordGirl, Hannah Montana and The Pink Panther (a few of my older daughters favorites) So you are probably asking what relevance does this have.  I will explain, be patient, I know how difficult this probably is because you 6 month old wants to eat and your 5 year old wants you to “Play Barbies” with her.

I am in my office trying to work and my daughter comes in, she wants me to stop what I am doing to play with her, I attempt to stall and concentrate at the same time (very difficult).  I eventually sit her on my lap (applies to 6 month old and 5 year old) and open YouTube in my browser and start playing our favorite Baby Einstein or WordGirl video.  Good so far.  I pop out the video window from youtube.com and resize my excel sheet and attempt to work, here is a screen shot of what I am left with:

So on the left my daughter(s) can sit on my lap and watch the vide while I work on the spreadsheet on the right.  Now here is the issue, I only have 3/4 of the screen which can be a little annoying, if I need to use another app it can be a big issue.  So what is the effect of me switching windows:

Oh no, the video moved to the background, scramble to resize the browser window to avoid a complete meltdown.  Reflexes are not that good so I rarely accomplish the goal.

Now for the introduction of a must have application that dramatically improves productivity, focus and sanity.  The app is called DeskPins and simply it allows you to pin any window to the foreground so lets look at a couple of examples of how I use this.

I follow the same process as before with finding a video on YouTube, popping out the video windows but now I pin the video window to the foreground.

Now I can maximize my spreadsheet (far better) and without the video moving to the background, I can move the video window around as needed.  I can open FireFox and not worry about losing the video to the background.

The app works on 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows (I am running on 32 bit XP, 32 bit Win 7 and 64 bit Win 7) and has become an invaluable tool for me.  Hopefully this post helps with some use case examples and helps other parents occupy their children in times of need.  Enjoy!

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Anyone interested in technology entrepreneurship needs to watch this video.  As technologist we tend to get wrapped up in the product and how it needs to be the best, needs to be fully baked before it can be sold, etc…  This video will be very enlightening.

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It has been said that the best thing about the internet is that anyone can publish, unfortunately the worst thing about the internet is that anyone can publish.  Another fitting cliché is that opinions are like buttholes, I propose that the blog sphere has become a public restroom, reeking from the stench of personal opinion backed by analogies, anecdotes, etc… and little fact (much like the opinions expressed in this blog).  By no means am I absolving myself from the claims made in this post, I am as guilty as the next guy when it comes to writing valueless content, but I do feel like I mix in some valuable content that is based on empirical data and facts.  I am all for some good rhetoric but let’s face it people, we all like to hear ourselves talk regardless of how little value the commentary actually has.  When your platform is largely opinions based loosely on facts as defined in the “Marchitecture” documentation you have to be willing to accept the 50% of the people who will agree with your perspective and 50% of the people who won’t.  Why does anyone even care what influences the authors perspective, why does it matter to the content consumer?  The assumption we all should make is that the content author is motivated by something, this motivation can be pure or corrupt in nature.  The great thing is you can decide to either agree or disagree, offer up some additional conjecture or not, that is the beauty of free will.

A WORD OF CAUTION TO BLOG CONTENT CONSUMERS

Every person has a predisposition to one perspective or another thus the concept of a non-biased view of the world, policy, product, etc… is made impossible by this little thing we call human nature.  But wait it's worse, beyond just human nature we have what I believe to be the two additional key aspects that influence behavior:

Indoctrination:  The belief system in which we participate (e.g. – WAFL vs CoW).  There is no doubt that a long time NetApp employee, user, etc… who has been indoctrinated in to the culture, ideology, thought process, etc… will believe that WAFL is a superior technology when compared to CoFW.  In contrast a person indoctrinated into the EMC culture could likely argue why CoFW is a superior technology.  The problem is that both of these perspectives speak to the technology and not the use case.

Personal Gain (monetary or otherwise):  My favorite because it has a huge impact because the so called independent analysts in the technology community (who will remain unnamed due to the litigious nature of the world we live in) are really marketing mercenaries or blackmail artists depending on your perspective.  This is not to say that analysts do not initiate coverage on technologies that they are no being paid to follow but let’s just say that the coverage of technologies that are being paid to follow is a bit more substantial.  It is funny how as human beings our opinions tend to align with our goals.

So my word of caution is as follows, trust ONLY yourself (and yes you can trust yourself, it is true that you likely have an agenda but is also true that this agenda is likely in your best interest), read lots of differing opinions and formulate your own.  Realize that reading information found on the web can be a dangerous thing if you don’t take what you have learned, internalize it and think for yourself.  My favorite example here is researching symptoms on WebMD, use the WebMD Symptom Checker and enter the req’d info (e.g. – male, 35-44 years), click submit, then drill down on the head, once you get to the symptom picker choose Headache (worst ever) now take note of the only possible condition.  Enough said about the dangers of the internet and not thinking for yourself.  So PLEASE apply some modicum of logic, reason and realism when digesting opinionated content.

So what prompted this seemingly common sense cautionary tale.  My opinionated colleague over at RecoveryMonkey.net posted an OPINION entitled “More FUD busting: Deduplication – is variable-block better than fixed-block, and should you care?” on his blog that received criticism from other opinionated ministers of public enlightenment and propaganda.  I have read through the posts and the short answer is everyone is correct and equally adept at the art of FUD slinging, what a tragedy.   IMHO the market today (especially among the big boys) has parity +/- 1% (exclusive of the features that don’t work or no one cares about, and yes they exist in all products), the 1% differentiation is often littered with caveats, the blogs outlining these caveats, workarounds, use cases, etc… are the valuable ones, spend more time consuming this content and less time reading content that reminds more of TMZ than a technical blog.

It should be fairly easy when consuming content to determine what is valuable and what is not, just read Scott Lowe’s Blog to see what good content looks like.

One final thought, was the FTC warning really necessary, really????  See what I mean about the litigious nature of our society.  It all starts with nationalizing health care, the next thing you know the FTC is commandeering your blog, where does it end.

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A customer asked me the other day about a method to do some data profiling against a file system.  So I thought I would share the request, my suggestion and little PowerShell script I crafted to do some data profiling.  The request read as follows:  “Do you know of any tools that will list all files in a directory, and all subs and provide attributes like filename, path, owner, create date, modify date, last access date and maybe some other attributes in report format?”

My recommendation was a commercial product called TreeSize Professional by JAM Software the product license cost is ~ $50 and worth every penny, scan speeds are good, supports UNC paths and reporting is intuitive.  Overall an excellent product.

As an alternative below is a quick PowerShell script (also attached to post as data_profile.ps1) that will create a CSV file with data profiling information, once the CSV file is create the CSV can be opened in Excel (or your spreadsheet tool of choice) or imported into a DB and manipulated.

The above script scans all files recursively starting at c:\files and outputs the results to results.csv.  One thing to note is that the scan stores all data in an array in memory, the is because the PowerShell Export-Csv function does not support appending to a CSV file (you gotta wonder what Microsoft talks about in design meetings).  I will likely create a version of the script that uses the out-file function to write each row to the csv file as the scan happens rather then storing in memory until the scan is completes and then writing the entire array to the report.csv file, goal here is to reduce the memory footprint during large scans.

The output of this file script will be similar to the following:

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So about a week ago my Blackberry (8900) booted to a screen stating “Error [some number I can’t remember]:  Reload OS”, obviously not good.  So I broke out JLcmder (a must have for all hard core Blackberry hackers), and proceeded to wipe and OS and reload my BB.  Yesterday afternoon I am sitting at my desk and I look down at my Blackberry and it is sitting there with a white screen, nothing but a white screen.  I try a soft reboot, and back to the white screen, I try a battery pull, back to the white screen.  Then in not my finest moment I some how rationalize that running over to the T-Mobile store will be the easiest/quickest fix, they waste a solid 30 mins of my life pulling the battery repeatedly and praying that it will boot, I will never get that 30 mins back.  As usual I returned to the office hooked the BB up to a laptop to see if I could connect from JLcmder, no luck.  I removed the battery, sim card and my MicroSD memory card, replaced the battery and rebooted, my BB returned.  I then stated scouring the forums, turns out that a few others had seen an issue with a corrupted SD card that caused the white screen of death.  Last night I formatted my SD card (fat32) and placed it back into my BB and the phone booted fine (happy about that).  When will I realize to never call my carrier for technical support (I have been with Verizon, AT&T and now T-Mobile and they are all the same. When you go to a BB specialist and the first thing they tell you do is pull your batter, you have to wonder how special he or she is.)  Hope this helps someone.

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