Speed, Speed, Speed

Who would've ever thought you'd see network performance like this on an Windows box:

This is the networking graph I got off of a physical box running the inital push for Quest vConverter's Continuous Protection option. The blip in the middle was it switching from the C: volume to the D: volume. It just about knocked my socks off - I've never seen anything eat up the entire NIC on Windows.

I found out some really cool stuff with vConverter. With the Continuous Protection option, you can keep a full-image copy of your physical server on an NTFS Share, ESX(i) Server, or Hyper-V server. After the first push, it just copies block (or file level) changes (whichever option you want) to the target store. This way, if you ever lose your physical box, you can either immediately pop it online in your ESX/Hyper-V box, or do a V2P back to your original hardware once it's back up and running. Very cool stuff.

Even cooler - let's say you're looking at Offsite DR. You already have Virtual Servers (VMware or Microsoft) in a hardened data center, and are currently replicating your VMs at your main office offsite to there. Good for you! Now how do you push your physical boxes out there?

With vConverter, you can do your initial copy locally (say to an NTFS Share on a NAS device), then you can take it to your Datacenter, and upload it to your SAN that your ESX or Hyper-V boxes use. Then go into vConverter, do a "change target" and select your ESX or Hyper-V box, tell it where the data is, and your good to go. Now all you have to worry about getting across the WAN is your block changes. Now you really do have an Offsite DR solution.

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Dustin Shaw

VCP

Exchange Memory Utilization

Recently I had someone ask me what the recommend maximum settings were in Exchange 2010 before getting a performance hit. After I pulled up the appropriate TechNet Articles for him, I decided I'd go ahead and post them here.

Here's the Article for Exchange 2010.

Memory configurations for Exchange 2010 servers based on installed server roles

Exchange 2010 server role	Minimum supported	Recommended maximum
Edge Transport	4 GB	1 GB per core (4 GB minimum)
Hub Transport	4 GB	1 GB per core (4 GB minimum)
Client Access	4 GB	2 GB per core (8 GB minimum)
Unified Messaging	4 GB	2 GB per core (4 GB minimum)
Mailbox	4 GB	4 GB plus 3-30 MB additional memory per mailbox: The total required memory is based on the user profile and database cache size. For more information about how to determine the total required memory, see Understanding the Mailbox Database Cache.
Client Access/Hub Transport combined role (Client Access and Hub Transport server roles running on the same physical server)	4 GB	2 GB per core (8 GB minimum)
Multiple roles (combinations of Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox server roles)	8 GB	4 GB plus 3-30 MB additional memory per mailbox: The total required memory is based on the user profile and database cache size. For more information about how to determine the total required memory, see Understanding the Mailbox Database Cache.

Here's the Article for Exchange 2007.

Memory configurations for Exchange 2007 servers based on installed server roles

Exchange 2007 server role	Minimum per server	Recommended	Maximum per server
Edge Transport	2 GB	1 GB per core (2 GB minimum)	16 GB
Hub Transport	2 GB	1 GB per core (2 GB minimum)	16 GB
Client Access	2 GB	2 GB per core (2 GB minimum)	16 GB
Unified Messaging	2 GB	1 GB per core (2 GB minimum)	4 GB
Mailbox	2 GB; also depends on number of storage groups (For information, see later in this topic.)	2 GB plus from 2 megabytes (MB) to 5 MB per mailbox. This is variable based on user profile. For more details, see "Mailbox Server Role" later in this topic.	32 GB
Multiple roles (combinations of Hub Transport, Client Access, Unified Messaging, and Mailbox server roles)	4 GB; also depends on number of storage groups (For information, see later in this topic.)	8 GB plus from 2 MB to 5 MB per mailbox. This is variable based on user profile. For more details, see "Mailbox Server Role" later in this topic.	32 GB

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vFoglight 6.5 is out

Quest vFoglight 6.5 was released today and is available for download from Quest's site.

For those who aren't familiar, vFoglight is Performance Management software for Virtual Environments (both VMware and Hyper-V).

Here's a breakdown of the new features available in vFoglight 6.5, as highlighed by Ben Scheerer:

Release Highlights
With Version 6.5, Quest vFoglight is focused on addressing specific virtual management needs by:

• Reducing time and effort required to manage and fix problems in the virtual infrastructure through built-in automation, workflow based alert remediation and in-context administration
• Easily presented user centric views “perspectives” that provides a single view giving a complete understanding of the infrastructure status 
• Leveraging additional hypervisor technologies to more seamlessly fit into existing virtualized environments

vFoglight v6.5 includes new and improved capabilities across performance monitoring, administration, remediation, capacity planning, chargeback, and service management in a single, downloadable solution.

• Only to offer a unique visual paradigm using color coding and movement to direct administrators to problem areas
• Reduces time and effort required to manage the virtual infrastructure through built-in automation, workflow based alert remediation and in context administration
• Capacity planning capabilities quickly identifies bottlenecks, predict capacity failures, provide scenario models and identifies candidates for optimization
• Understand how the infrastructure is supporting key applications and business services including the ability to associate costs for the use of infrastructure
• Supports heterogeneous hypervisor platforms including VMware and Hyper-V
• New support for Exchange Server 2010 (Foglight for Exchange)

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vsd-mount [!!] Error

Ran into this on one of our ESX hosts recently after shutting it down for some maintenance:

* vsd-mount ...  [!!]

You have entered the recovery shell. The situation you are in may be recoverable. If you are able to fix this situation the boot process will continue normally after you exit this terminal
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
/ #

I was unable to get in troubleshooting mode on the ESX box, so I couldn't run any commands of consequence. I perused around and determined pretty quickly that reloading was my quickest and easiest option. After all, we've got a Distributed Switch setup, and the rest are just basics (IP, etc), so it wasn't a very hard decision.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Office for Mac 2011 Release

Office for Mac 2011 is slowly becoming available as of Today (11-1-10).

It's out on Technet and MSDN for download as of today, and the rest of the universe will be close behind.

One thing of note is that Oulook for Mac 2011 (included in it) allows you to connect to Exchange. Yes, Outlook is back for the Mac.

The one caveat people may want to pay attention to is that Outlook 2011 requires Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010. So if you are still running Exchange 2003 (or earlier...) you'll need to plan for a forklift of your Exchange server to stop the screams from your Mac people.

You can read all about it here.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

ThinkPoint Virus

Seen a new virus running around in the last week. It's called the ThinkPoint; it's a rogue antivirus software, much like the traditional "Antivirus 2010" viruses.

Here's a good site on how to kill it.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP