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HP officially announced the new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 today to some oohs and ahhs at HP Discover. The new 3PAR is an all flash array that can be utilized for small, medium or large business needs. HP is touting that some of their competitors are having difficulty with the flash hurdle because their systems were optimized for spinning disks. And other competitors who designed their arrays specifically with flash in mind from the ground up are not proven arrays from a reliability standpoint. ...

I want to address a concern that many HP Virtual Connect customers have had about monitoring their Blade Chassis. A question I’ve received was “How do I know if I have sufficient uplinks for my traffic?” Depending on the size of the organization and their familiarity with their networking equipment, they could be monitoring the available metrics on their switches. If they are not necessarily that network savvy or don’t have the proper monitoring tools in place, they can use the throughput statistics tools within Virtual Connect. These tools only give a simplistic view to the amount of traffic that is going across your uplinks, and doesn’t show the traffic going out each blade but it does get you some great high level information. ...

Once per year VMware takes time to present the VMware vExpert distinction to members of the community Evangelizing, teaching, helping and speaking about VMware techniques. The annual VMware vExpert title is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. The title is awarded to individuals (not employers) for their commitment to sharing their knowledge and passion for VMware technology above and beyond their job requirements. ...

If you find yourself in an unfamiliar network and want to understand how the networks are connected, it would certainly be nice to be able to tell what is connected to each other. Luckily there are a couple of protocols that are responsible for just that. Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) As you can probably guess from the name, the Cisco Discovery Protocol is a proprietary protocol from Cisco Systems. ...

One of the new features in the latest version of Windows Server is the ability to create server groups. When you open the server manager you’ll see some server group options on the dashboard. You can add other servers to manage, or create a new group. Also, pay attention to the “Roles and Server Groups” section at the bottom of the screen which shows some of the server groups that were already set up. ...

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. ...

Until recently, I never paid too much attention to flow control. I knew that it was used in networking, and that it was a setting that sometimes needed modified when I would puttyhyperterminal into a device, but that pretty much ended my knowledge of the matter. As the name suggests, “Flow Control” will limit the amount of data across a network interface. It’s a pretty simple concept but typically we’re not trying to slow down our network, but rather speed it up. Flow control can be used to slow traffic down rather than dropping frames. ...

 Microsoft has made the Exchange 2013 transition from Exchange 2010 a bit easier than it was in the past. This article should help to explain the process. Prerequisites Before you begin with this endeavor: Make sure that your Exchange 2010 infrastructure has been patched to Exchange Service Pack 3, this includes Edge transport servers, Client Access Servers, Hub Transport Servers and Mailbox Servers. This service pack is required for the coexistence period with Exchange 2013 as noted in the Exchange Team’s Blog. Say goodbye to Exchange 2003. You can not have Exchange 2003 in your organization any longer. Check your DNS Server and Event logs for errors. It’s unlikely that you had DNS errors before an upgrade that you didn’t already know about but it’s certainly worth taking a look just to check. A few minutes of discovery is well worth not having hours of troubleshooting afterwards. Plan your Exchange 2013 infrastructure. This article only explains the transition steps, but you should research and understand what your infrastructure should look like before you start a migration. Do you have multiple sites that need High Availability? Do you need multiple Exchange servers in a Database Availability Group? Do you need to separate your Client Access Server from your Mailbox Server for performance or management reasons, or can you put them on the same box? How many different Mailbox databases should you have? These are important design considerations. Licensing There are two flavors of Exchange 2013. Standard allows for up to five mailbox databases, and Enterprise allows for up to 50. ...

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 1 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 3 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 4 I assume you’ve reached this page because you finished ready part 1 and are now ready to dive into your newly installed Exchange 2013 server. ...

Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 1 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 2 Microsoft Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 Transition part 4 Migrate Mailboxes You’re ready to migrate your mailboxes! Go to the Recipient link, mailbox category and choose the mailbox(es) you want to migrate. I’ll be migrating [email protected] to the new servers. Click “To another database” action on the lower right hand side of the menu. ...