Reviews on The IT Hollow

Linksys AC3200 Review

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:05:47 +0000

I ran into that funny problem where if you have so many wireless devices you’re overloading your tiny wireless router that you’ve had for 5 years. After looking around a bit I settled on the AC3200 Triband Router from Linksys. I wanted something that would be really powerful to handle all of my devices and something with a cool factor.

The device arrived and had some simple instructions to configure it. Connect to the default SSID via a wireless device and open up your web browser to myrouter.local to get connected. The setup had a “Quick Setup” mode to get everything running quickly but I found that the quick setup would not work for my environment. The quick setup expects that you’ve connected your Wireless Router directly to a cable modem and in my case I’m connected to a layer three switch behind an ASA firewall. After resetting the router and doing the manual setup though, everything was good.

Netgear AC1200 Review

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 14:26:10 +0000

I had one of those serious first world problems where I was intermittently getting poor wireless connectivity from my upstairs bedroom at night. My wireless router is downstairs in my office on the opposite side of the house, and my neighbors’ wireless was also causing some interference. So I was about to get out my chainsaw to start taking out a wall and part of my upstairs floor, when I thought “Maybe a wireless extender would work for me?”

QNIX Q2710 Monitor Review

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:28:29 +0000

I just bought two new 27 inch (yeah, they’re large) monitors for my home office thanks to a suggestion from Satyam Vaghani over twitter of course. He pointed me towards the QNIX QX2710 monitor and I was first surprised with the price. At less than $350 I had to give it a shot. I mean really, who wouldn’t want two 27 inch monitors on their desk?

The Good

The resolution was something I was really looking at. I selected the 2560 X 1440 resolution so that I didn’t feel like I needed to buy a new monitor in a year or two because something cooler came out. I’d say at this point in time, a 1920 X 1080 resolution is fairly standard. Also, with it being a much larger monitor than I’ve been accustomed to, the resolution needs to increase as well to provide a clear picture.

You Got Your Analytics in my Storage Array - DataGravity

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:52:05 +0000

The Array

I know what you’re thinking, show me the product! What does it look like, how big is it.

4U storage shelf
2U Storage Controller (dual controllers)
CIFSNFSiSCSI
48TB or 96 TB with additional 2.4TB or 4.8 TB SSD
Homemade RAID that allows for 2 disk failures on the same storage pool

Recovery

Something out of the norm with DataGravity’s array is that they use a completely separate set of disks for snapshots. Disks are automatically assigned to different pools are nothing is required from the Administrator to set this up. This diverges from what the rest of the industry is typically does. There are two schools of thought here though:

Asigra

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:55:55 +0000

I got a chance to get a first hand look at Asigra at the Tech Field Day Extra sessions on the Monday of VMworld 2014. I went into the sessions thinking that his was just another backup company, but found that they have a very robust suite of backups and they’ve been around for a very long time.

Asigra handles, Cloud Platform apps such as Office365, Salesforce, Google, storage array integration, vSphere snapshot integration, file level backups and the list went on.

HP v1910-24G Switch Review

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 13:27:17 +0000

When my Cisco 3750 finally died, I was bummed out but looking for a replacement. No sense in crying about my loss, or trying to decide IF I’m going to replace my switch since, my whole lab would be kind of useless without it.

My requirements for a new switch were pretty simple.

Layer 3 Routing Capabilities
24 Gigabit Ports or better
Cheap

The HP v1910-24G (JE006A) seemed to meet my requirements so I ordered it from Amazon when I saw that it was under $300. I needed to get it in my lab fast, so I quickly made the purchase but I’ll admit I was skeptical. Timothy Carr eased my mind a bit when he tweeted me.

HP 9470m Laptop Review

Mon, 05 May 2014 14:54:18 +0000

I recently purchased the HP 9470m EliteBook and wanted to give it a quick review.

The Good

The laptop has a pretty slim design as you would expect from an EliteBook. Be aware however that this is not as slim as a Mac b ook Air, or the Samsung Series 9 laptops. The good news though is that you don’t need to use a dongle just to plug in an Ethernet cable. The same goes for having a VGA output which I often use for presentations. It can be a pain to hunt down a dongle to connect to a wired network, or a projector so I give this Elitebook points for that.

Use CloudPhysics to Determine How Much SSD Cache to Buy

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:11:37 +0000

CloudPhysics continually surprises me with their innovation when providing cards for simulation purposes. I’ve posted a couple of times already about how I really like their AWS pricing calculator (they also have vCHS as well). Having a good idea about how much your existing environment will cost if you make modifications is a pretty big win for a CIO.

While I was at GestaltIT’s Virtualization Field Day 3, two weeks ago, Irfan Ahmed showed us a new card that would simulate how much SSD Cache you should buy based on your current workloads.

Atlantis USX with VMware VSAN?

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:45:12 +0000

Last week I attended the Virtualization Field Day 3 put on by the amazing staff at GestaltIT. One of the sessions was hosted by the folks at Atlantis Computing and they were giving us an overview of their Atlantis USX product.

All travel expenses and incidentals were paid for by Gestalt IT to attend Virtual Field Day 3. This was the only compensation given.

Atlantis USX Overview

Before we get to the crux of the issue, a quick refresher on what Atlantis USX does. The USX product will utilize existing SAN, NAS and DAS and combine it with a server ram to do caching. The value proposition is that Atlantis USX can carve out RAM to be used as either a whole datastore (SUPER FAST) or combine it with existing storage and have it act as a cache. Keeping the cache so close to the processor without having to go across a bus or HBA, which can add additional latency, can be an important addition to a performance strapped storage solution.

CloudPhysics vSphere Design Based on Big Data Analytics

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:36:08 +0000

One of the companies I was most interested in seeing at the GestaltIT Virtualization Field Day 3, was CloudPhysics. I was already a little familiar with the company because I’d written a post on my experience in the lab. While my original post was obviously good, you can’t really get a more passionate and knowledgeable explanation of the solution than from the Co-founder and CTO Irfan Ahmad. The presentations can be found online.

VMTurbo as a Market Economy

Sat, 08 Mar 2014 19:09:38 +0000

VMTurbo was kind enough to come to the GestaltIT Virtualization Field Day 3, and present to a group of technical bloggers about their product “Operations Manager”. I was familiar (or thought that I was) with this product so I expected to see a presentation about some software that would give you alarms when virtual workloads started to misbehave. I found out that my perception about this product was misguided so I wanted to clear it up for anyone else who was under the same impression as I was.

Initial Musing about Coho Data Scale Out Networking

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 22:26:57 +0000

I was fortunate enough to have spent some time at the Coho Data headquarters this week for the announcement that their new product, DataStream 1000, is now generally available.

The announcement was made at the GestaltIT Virtualization Field Day 3, which was streamed live and the recordings can be found online.

All travel expenses and incidentals were paid for by Gestalt IT to attend Virtual Field Day 3. This was the only compensation given.

Should You Consider Pure Storage as your Next Array?

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 07:24:20 +0000

If you are coming up on a storage refresh cycle soon, Pure Storage is worth taking a look at as your new storage array. I was fortunate enough to see them present their solution at Virtualization Field Day 3 this year and got a good look at their storage.

All travel expenses and incidentals were paid for by Gestalt IT to attend Virtual Field Day 3. This was the only compensation given.

PernixData FVP 1.5 Beta

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 14:50:50 +0000

Good news for all of you eagerly awaiting the next iteration of the PernixData FVP software. Version 1.5 is now in Beta and you can request the download for your own testing from the following link http://info.pernixdata.com/Betaprogram.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing I am a PernixPro which entitles me to early access to software, licenses or other merchandise. The thoughts expressed in this post are my own and have not been vetted by PernixData.

PernixData in the Lab

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 14:35:00 +0000

While I was at VMworld this year in San Francisco, there was a lot of buzz about this company called PernixData. Maybe the buzz was just from some of the superstars that built this company such as Co-Founders Satyam Vaghani (better known as the father of VMFS) and Poojan Kumar (also co-founder of Exadata).

Given the smart minds that have been around the company since the start, I thought I better stop by their booth and at least say “hi”.

Zimbra Offers Great Alternative for Microsoft Exchange

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:28:53 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of Microsoft Exchange ever since I’ve been involved in managing email servers. Exchange has been a topic of several of my posts this year because let’s face it, Exchange is the 100 lb gorilla of mail servers and has been for some time. But I’ve seen a fair number of colleges using a new mail system from Zimbra so I thought it was my duty to try it out. After all, there is a free 60 day trial of a VMware appliance available so what did I have to lose?

Samsung Series 9 Laptop Review

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:10:16 +0000

I’ve almost always preferred HP laptops for work purposes based on how stable they’ve been for me. But while shopping for my last laptop, I decided to try out the Samsung Series 9.

To be honest, the biggest reason I decided to look at this laptop was the sleek design. I knew that I would be traveling a lot with my new position and having a light weight laptop was certainly preferable. In addition an SSD drive made me feel better about jostling the laptop around without damaging it.

HP Performance Viewer

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:42:54 +0000

I decided to check out the new HP Performance Viewer and found it to be pretty useful. The appliance comes as an OVF so it’s great for importing into your vSphere environment. Once it’s installed you can go to the management URL and all you have to do is provide the name of the vCenter and login credentials. That’s all for the configuration!

At this point I’d give the appliance some time to gather statistics, but if you just can’t wait I’ll give you some of the details from my install.

PHD Virtual Review

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:18:40 +0000

I’d been hearing a lot of buzz about PHD Virtual after seeing them at VMworld and the Chicago VMUG Conference and thought that I’d try them out. I was quite pleased with their product and recommend that you check them out if you’re looking for virtual backup solutions. I know that the big player in the market seems to be Veeam so if you’d like a comparison of features, check out this information from ITComparison.com to get a non-biased opinion.

VMworld 2012 Right Here Right Now

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 02:24:48 +0000

VMworld 2012 was in San Francisco this year and the weather was beautiful. San Francisco was a lovely host and the Moscone Center proved to be very capable of handling the large crowds that were around for the event.

The Solutions Exchange was massive. It included companies like HP, EMC, Netapp as well as some startup companies like Tintri, PHD Virtual and a very new Cloud Physics which was the talk of VMworld this year. Check them out at http://www.cloudphysics.com.

HP Gen8 Server Class Review

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:15:10 +0000

Hewlett-Packard has released the details of their new product line the Gen8 (don’t call me G8) servers. The new line as, you would expect, has all of the performance increases that seem necessary when coming out with a new product. The new Sandy Bridge XEON processors are onboard, they’ve increased the number of DIMM slots, increased the total amount of memory allowed per system while also increasing the memory speed supported. HP has also switched over to PCI 3.0 which is providing much faster speeds for PCI devices.

VMWorld 2011

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:42:15 +0000

VMworld 2011 was held at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Over 25,000 attendees this year.

It was held in Las Vegas, but the sites and attractions didn’t take away from the event. Despite all the distractions that Las Vegas can provide, there was too much going on at VMworld to get caught up in the city.

My favorite part of VMworld was the Hands on Labs.

After signing up for the specific lab you wanted, you were ushered to your assigned desk. There were dual screen workstations setup at every desk and very straight forward instructions on how to complete the labs. These labs would get very in depth and would show you why and what was happening behind the scenes when you would perform your operations. I especially enjoyed the Netapp lab.