Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Best Damn Salsa

"Southern Caviar"

My wife makes this..it's excellent - I promise.

3 medium tomatoes chopped
1 medium onion chopped
1 jalapeƱo de-seeded and chopped
1 can of black beans (drained)
1 can black eyed peas (drained)
1 small can of chickpeas (drained)
Half green pepper, half red pepper de-seeded and chopped
1 bottle of Zesty Italian Dressing
1 Tablespoon Cilantro
1 clove of garlic
1 small can sweet white corn - drained.

Combine all of these ingredients into a large enough bowl, mix and refrigerate overnight. Enjoy.

Monday, March 24, 2008

SAN tips for Newb's like me.

This past year has been a learning experience with SAN's. Everything from Fiber Channel, iSCSI, vendor selection, snapshots, replication, LUNs, volumes, RAID types, best practices, ease of use... A lot to take in.

Ultimately, we decided on an EqualLogic solution consisting of a PS300, PS400,(The Dell EqualLogic PS5000E replaces the EqualLogic PS50E, PS70E, PS100E, PS300E and PS400E models.) and PS3700x (The PS5000X is the new name for the EqualLogic PS3700X model.) tied into two redundant Cisco 3750 switches.

So I offer the following for a first time SAN buyer with limited knowledge like myself.

- Ask questions, lot's of them.
- Subscribe to email lists...SearchStorage is a good one.
- Ensure your existing switch infrastructure is up to date and can support your SAN.
- Make sure to allocate enough space for Snapshots.
- Know your RAID levels..1,5,10,50.
- Know the amounts of raw storage, and how much storage will be left after the RAID configuration.
- Use tools like "perfmon" to look at disk i/o on your Windows boxes.
- Learn the differences between Fiber Channel and iSCSI.
- Ask questions..again.
- Think about long term growth, capacity, storage requirements.
- Take credit for everything when your SAN applications run like a champ.

SQL 2005 SAN Migration

Last night I migrated our SQL 2005 databases to our EqualLogic SAN. It went very well with minimal impact on end users. The storage was quick to configure and allocate. No issues with the iSCSI initiator.

Prior to actually moving the databases, our DBA cleaned them up a bit, sized, re-indexed..etc. I detached, copied the MDF and LDF files, and brought them back online.

These are sitting on a RAID 50 configured PS400 also with Exchange, and additional SQL data from a previous migration. Keep in mind, were only talking about less than 1TB of total data...so no bashing on best practices..etc. :)

The snapshots are happening and my backups are still running.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Busy Week

It's been a week or so since I visited last.

I have baby updates.

1st, "N" is walking..it's pretty exciting. The kid isn't even a year old yet and he's making it across the living room. Wifey and I went out and bought him his first real pair of shoes. Tonight we went to grab some grub and he started playing peek-a-boo for the first time..on purpose.

..we took a trip to Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis this past weekend. It was his first outing to the park..and a good day for it. He hung out with a few other kids...met some nice moms.

This week at work has been busy, more SAN migration happenings..which is what I'm doing now on my other machine. I'm in the process of moving 150gb of data - not that much, and it's taking forever. More projects, VMware is coming up soon. I need to write a business case for that in the coming days.

Wifey and I are trying to plan a vacation in April...somewhere. We finally applied for our passports last week. From what the post office is telling us, the turn around time has been pretty quick. Were not planning on using our passports this trip..perhaps sometime in the fall. So...we may head out to CA and drive the coast a bit. To be determined. It would be nice to get a break.

Are there more kids in my future???

I heard on the radio today that Pearl Jam has an unconfirmed date in DC in June. That's good news. Hopefully more info will be announced soon.

So, jibberish really...the beer is cold. Happy Belated St. Patricks Day.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

SAN Follow up

The SQL db to SAN migration didn't go exactly as planned.

I provisioned my storage on the EqualLogic volumes I setup. Once that was done, I installed the iSCSI initiator on the Windows 2000 server and was able to connect to the volumes. I opened up Computer Management/Disk Management but no drives listed at all. ??? DELL had installed it's own Disk Management utility replacing Windows. So, I uninstalled the Dell utility, rebooted...Blue Screen of Death!!! So for the next 2-3 hours I troubleshooted with no luck. Ultimately I ran a Windows 2000 repair to get the server back up.

At this point it's about 5:30am.

Once the server was back up, the Windows Disk Management utility was working. I could connect to the SAN volumes. More problems though aligning the disks which EqualLogic recommends and is generally a best practice.

The EqualLogic documentation referenced using DISKPAR for Windows 2000 and DISKPART for Server 2003. DISKPAR comes with the Windows 2000 resource kit that I did not have and the Microsoft download for the 2000 Resource Kit included DISKPART - which I later found out replaces DISKPAR. A bit of time figuring this all out. Running DISKPART to try and align the disk's resulted in "The arguments you specified for this command are not valid."

By this point my Maintenance Window was over, it's 7am and everything got put on hold at that point. I opened up a support request with EqualLogic the next day. I received a quick call back from an Engineer who said what I could do was mount the volumes on a Windows 2003 server, align them, then dismount and add them back to my Windows 2000 machine. That seemed to work.

Yesterday I spent most of the day quickly detaching our small db's, moving the mdf and ldf files to the SAN volumes and re-attaching with a SQL script. So far so good.

A bit frustrating but everything worked out.

-C

Sunday, March 9, 2008

SQL Migration

Welp...Tonight I will be copying SQL 2000 data over to our EqualLogic SAN. I am anticipating a smooth migration. We have two SQL boxes, one 2000 and one 2005. The 2005 box will be moved in the coming week or two - that might be a bit more work.

My only fear was that our developers/vendors had hard-coded the IP address into their programs and not the DNS name. The IP is changing to match the subnet of the SAN VLAN. As far as I know, all that is good to go.

I've configured my volumes..and now it's midnight..so I can start. I'll post back when I'm finished.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Toad!!

Ladies and Gentleman...Toad the Wet Sprocket is playing
Rams Head Live in Baltimore!!!

Tickets go on sale this Sat at noon.

FYI - Toad split up several years back...but every once in a while, they get together and do some shows. Lead singer Glen Phillips has had a great solo career since.

Brett Favre - Out

I was bummed to see Brett Favre go.

My guess is that the Baltimore Ravens will offer him a multi-million dollar deal for just his helmet. With no "body" necessary, Raven's owner Steve Bisciotti will focus on Ninja like tactics that will take the Raven's to the SuperBowl in 2009. Who needs a QuarterBack anyway?

Odd news from around the world.

Here's a thing or two I bet you didn't know.


Kentucky Elvis Impersonator Shows Up For Court Drunk And Dressed Like Presley

French Mayor Bans Villagers From Dying

Sugar-Free Gum Linked To Diarrhea

No swearing in South Pasadena this week

Man takes car on 2,000 mile test drive

Aussie brewery produces 'green' beer



Sunday, March 2, 2008

Sleep Don't Mean a Thing

good morning. At the tone the time will be..4:10am. "N" as this thing lately where he just decides to wake up anywhere between 2-4 every morning. He's woken himself up for one of the following:
- a. He's lost his pacifier
- b. He's hungry
- c. Wet/mass diaper explosion.

I told my wife the other day, his diapers are so green, he could give "eco-friendly" an entire new theme. Being political these days, I say he's had a Ralph. No offense.

Were also debating the pacifier taketh away time frame. When, where and how. I'm not sure that he "needs" it but it sooths him to do a number of things..such as fall back asleep. He may have it until he's 18 at this point. I just want one entire nights - 8 hours of pure sleep. So if your a mom - dad, what do you think? Time frames on the weening of the pacifier?? I've created a poll. Have at it.

gnight - I mean, g'd morning. ugh.
-C