Recently, I’ve just been assigned to design and implement vSphere Upgrade + VMware SRM 4.1 solution with HP Continuous Access Eva replication for one of my customer. Actually there are 3 SRM projects (HP Eva, NetApp & Hitachi) to be chosen and somehow I chose HP Eva as my preferred project. Although still at early stage (Brainstorming), I slightly feel headache when it come to SRM. There are so many thing I need to study such as requirement, dependency, scope of work (SOW) & etc. I don’t know the other places, but here in Malaysia unclear SOW can become complicated and cause me trouble in the future. Nevertheless, I’m ready for this and I’m going to share all my finding during the study with everyone here.

TBC..

Okay, let’s continue but before I start, please bear in mind that I’m not going to list out step-by-step installation of SRM 4.1 here. The purpose of this post is to share all my finding during SRM 4.1 + HP Eva CA replication study. Why this study is very important to me is because I want to discover the hidden thing for below items :- Read more

Last Thursday, I did some test with my junior to repair a Gentoo image (boot failed) which he got it from customer. Due to TOE issue on customer ESX host, he had to used some sort of ghost tool and convert the Gentoo to supported image first before he can export the machine to our test lab ESXi host via Converter Standalone. Everything went so well even though overall conversion took longer time than expected. Once the image successfully uploaded to ESXi 4.1 host, we powered on it and somehow the VM wasn’t able to boot and now without doubt I need to get my hand dirty in order for me to make the VM boot:-

• Power off VM
• Remove disk from inventory
• Add existing disk & select LSI over Bus Logic controller
• Power on VM

Unfortunately we got the same result. Okay now we thought about making new ram image (initrd) for the Gentoo. Somehow after few steps toward making new initrd image suddenly I changed my mind to reconfigure the grub first. Reboot the VM with live cd (I forgot which one we used) then :-

• $mkdir /mnt/tmp
• $mkdir /mnt/tmp/dev
• $mkdir /mnt/tmp/proc
• $mkdir /mnt/tmp/sys
• $mount -o bind /dev/ /mnt/tmp/dev
• $mount -o bind /proc/ /mnt/tmp/proc
• $mount -o bind /sys/ /mnt/tmp/sys
• $mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/tmp
• $chroot /mnt/tmp
• $mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp/boot
• $grub
• grub>root (hd0,0)
• grub>find /boot/grub/stage1
• grub>find /boot/grub/stage2
• grub>setup (hd0)
• grub>exit

Exit chroot and reboot the machine and hurey, the Gentoo VM finally able boot successfully without new initrd.

Note : I don’t see Gentoo in the supported guest for vSphere 4.1 and I recommend for those who still using this distro, please change it to supported one. Somehow, scsi controller wasn’t there after we uploaded to ESXi host and we need to create a new one of-course.

ariyossss

athlon_crazy

Finally, I’m happy that’s everything has been sort out and I’ve decided to pursuit my dream and staying with ZEN for many years. Not a bad news indeed in fact, I determined to give my full support to my beloved ZEN. It’s may sound like a gamble when I’d rejected to join MNC, but like some people said, “no gain without pain”. After much thought and careful deliberation, I believe ZEN is the right place for me.

p/s : Thanks to My Boss, Second Boss and the rest for their kind opinion.

The next 3 days will decide where my future lies… I thought it’s easy to decide when we are totally taking control of our own future but I’m totally wrong. This completely uneasy for me especially when I have to make a decision with some emotional thought. Selfishness will eliminate unnecessary feelings of guilt and will help me to make decision faster. It’s my dream and goal to be there one day even though this is not about dream ONLY. I know I will hurt someone’s feelings for sure although I have a choice not to and it’s driving me crazy.

Will this become one of my stupid decision ever knowing that I can also achieve the same dream with what ever I have right now? Or this could be something that I will regret forever?. Decision has been made easily before and my dream totally override everything that I concern most but when I try to move on, something is bothering me. Something that means a lot to me although I know it will not last forever. Something invaluable but the most important is, something that I don’t want to forget for the rest of my life. I feel unfair when I ONLY feel all this after been reminded it by someone. Naturally I don’t care much of it and I’m not type of person who feel heavy and have strong relationship with friends or colleagues.

I always feel that, people deserve a reward for every single hard work which they have done it in the past. Assuming my dream as reward towards my hard work and I ONLY can achieve this at the new place but “why at the new place and am I not being given an enough reward which I deserve and want most“?. Like I mentioned before, I can easily eliminate all doubts by just thinking about my family’s future and being selfish. But am I being selfish when I make decision after taking my family’s future into consideration?

At this moment I just want to be fair to everyone but am I at fault to pursuit what I believe is good for me and my family? Oh God please help me..

Many have agreed that yesterday event was such a great and successfully event has been conducted in Malaysia for the year 2010. There so much new technical information and resource has been shared by many big players such as HP, EMC, Compellent, Cisco, Dell & etc. I came a bit late for the event, however I managed to have some chit chat with few of my friends, partners and customers. Due to time constraints, I only visited Microvention and spent so much time there to know much about Xsigo and Splunk. Well Xsigo offering I/O virtualization. If I’m not mistaken, you can have or publish a multiple pNIC and HBA to the operating system(ESX/i) by just using single unique connection to xsigo. While for Splunk logging server, there were significant improvements with the latest release such as search speed, load balance & etc. I had no chance to visit the rest (Riverbed, Veeam & etc) but looking forward for the next events.

p/s : To be honest, this was the first VMware event I had attended since I started with VMware 3 years ago