I occasionally have VMware customers ask about jumbo frames, most often in reference to their iSCSI SANs. I attribute the curiosity mostly to VMware now officially supporting jumbo frames for iSCSI and NFS in vSphere. So with vSphere supporting it, and if your NICs, switches and SAN support it, should you use it?

Maybe. It depends on your goal, your equipment, and your workloads.

At the basic byte-counting level, you get 1460 bytes (1500 byte payload minus 20 bytes of IP and 20 bytes of [minimal] TCP) of iSCSI payload out of a 1538 byte iSCSI frame (1518 byte frame plus 8 bytes of preamble/SOF and 12 bytes of interframe gap), which is 94.93% efficient. With 9000 byte jumbo frames, your iSCSI payload is 8960 bytes out of a 9038 byte frame, or 99.14% efficient, a 4.21% gain. Not huge, but not insignificant.

However, the biggest potential gains of jumbo frames is not on the wire efficiency side, but on the host processing side. Each packet requires checksum calculations and protocol computation overheads. If your main CPU is doing these calculations, the conversion to jumbo frames can provide some CPU relief. TOE (TCP Offload Engine) functionality in your NICs (with O/S support) shifts some or all of those calculations to the NIC hardware, and TSO (TCP Segmentation Offloading) and LRO (Large Receive Offload) support can also bring CPU relief. An important note is that VMware does not currently support most TOE functionality, but does provide support for TSO, and support for LRO for a very limited set of NICs (which are conveniently the Intel VT and Broadcom 5708/5709 cards commonly found in Dell servers). See KB 1006143.

But the single most important question to ask yourself before going down the jumbo frames road is this: Am I intending to push my servers and storage so hard that I need the gains from jumbo frames? I support a fairly large number of setups, and I’m rarely designing anywhere near the edge of equipment performance. I like comfortable performance buffers, and so do my customers. I also like having excess performance capacity for growth. If you’re at the performance edge, perhaps the more appropriate question is whether your core design and core equipment are the right choices. Perhaps you need to step them up a notch. If you’re deeply concerned about the CPU load from software iSCSI, buy hardware iSCSI HBAs (but be sure to verify them against the VMware hardware compatibility list!). Also note that some new NICs are being listed as “NIC w/TOE iSCSI”, but these are not the same as a full iSCSI HBA, and you will not get the hardware offloading of iSCSI that you desire.

The best community posting I’ve found on iSCSI with vSphere:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vsphere.html

TOE, TSO, and LRO support by VMware:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006143

Blaine Kahle

LinkedIn Letter, click to enlarge

I have a habit of saving and forwarding many of the ridiculous voicemails that salespeople leave in my inbox, but it isn’t too often I receive a letter of this quality, pointing to the problems that salespeople face when introduced to social networking.

The beauty of social networking is that I can typically gain value from the people I am connected to, before I am asked to buy something..  The danger comes when we decide to sell before providing any real value. Gary Vanerchuk said at Big Omaha, “we are like 18 year old boys trying to close too fast.” –This is why salespeople ruin social media.

In sales, people are told that they can reach a broad audience through social media and think they can reach this audience without working at it. To provide real value to the people you connect with takes real work. Social media doesn’t eliminate working hard, in magnifies it. We now have more messages and more people, but each person seeks information. Our messages are read much quicker and distributed to a larger audience, making it more important to respond.

I’m waiting for the realtor who wants to answer my questions online and tell me about market conditions, helping me to learn their expertise.  Teach me about how I can use my home and rental property better.  If I met you at a social gathering, you probably wouldn’t ask me to list my house immediately, you would probably find out my needs and I would describe my situation.

Finally, to this realtor’s credit, I do admire his personal touch in a handwritten letter but I think his effectiveness will improve if he provides content to his network and improves his penmanship.

After 9 seasons of the Biggest Loser, NBC continues to attract a steady audience of couch-dwellers intrigued by the success of obese contestants training as though they were professional athletes. I will admit to being a fan of this phenomenon, but find myself wondering why?

I look into the IT industry and realize we wage a similar war to each of these contestants. in order to take control of the health of IT networks we must understand the affect of small methodical issues. It doesn’t take eating one greasy meal to become morbidly obese, but eating a little extra at every meal has huge implications. The worst networks I see were overlooked daily over time; patches were missed, upgrades were delayed, hardware sits in boxes and software is left un-deployed.

Very few of us operate like Jillian Michaels to motivate ourselves proactively when we are already in good health. But we know that’s what we want.

So what changes?

What we know is that each network environment we manage requires a level of discipline. If you are a manager of IT professionals, you know this all too well. Each component needs to be prioritized and scheduled for ongoing maintenance and checks and balances need to be in place to insure the reliability of these actions, even when automated.

If you are a single IT professional, you face the most difficult of self-disciplined tasks; ensuring the health of your network where there are no professionals around. That is, there are no doctors observing the missteps or checking cholesterol, the only observers are looking for dramatic symptoms, not habits.

Now is the time to get off the couch and weigh-in on your environment and be honest with yourself about what needs to be done each day. And if you want to hear about massive transformations, I have a few stories that would keep Jillian awake at night.

-Ben Pankonin

Thursday’s landline outage for much of Southeast Nebraska included the city of Lincoln’s 911 service. After 935 minutes, from 7:45 AM to 11:20 PM, media outlets published alternative emergency numbers. As an IT guy for a high performance comapany, I was shocked to see this happen in several of the communities that I serve. Landline service is usually regarded as the gold standard for Five Nines service.

Due to this recent outage it will take 181 years of perfect service to reach 99.999% uptime on this system. Ironically Windstream’s website promotes Four Nines of reliability for home service with the Your Landline is your Lifeline campaign. But surely 911 service is not Four Nines, with almost an hour a year of downtime?

Our goal isn’t to be hard on a local phone company, but since many of our boardroom ideas come from enterprise server rooms, we want to see what businesses can learn.

First, it appeared as though both the primary and redundant switch were modified and then upgraded. Whether or not this was the ultimate issue, only 1 technician can tell us that, but we do know that whenever upgrading a system, we need to verify a backup (yes good switches can have backup configurations) and verify the primary before modifying the secondary.

Secondly, whenever your system demands a high level of reliability, you want to have options, whether that is rolling to an alternative site or a different telecommunications company, many small businesses are implementing backup Internet connections to keep communications a priority.

Lastly, I’m sure that in this case these were enterprise switches, but often even in larger deployments, business decision-makers overlook the impact that switches play in a business environment. Whether you are looking to prioritize traffic for a VOIP deployment or just have a more stable network, switches and other network infrastructure are key to keeping your environment stable.

Ben Pankonin

For all the hype of virtualization, it appears as though each IT vendor is carrying their virtualization wand and applying it to every prospective customer, promising cost savings and better performance. While I do believe strongly that virtualization is the answer, let’s look at a couple of the problem areas that could cause access to your data be slower than a toad.

I’ll take 1 more of everything. That’s the theory at work. Make sure your environment can survive while losing an entire server, a single drive, a processor, some memory and even a switch. If you design it correctly virtualization is the least expensive way to produce great redundancy. (N + 1, or better)

Start with a good platform. While prices continue to decline for virtualization software, the entry-point with Microsoft’s hyper-v is included with your Windows servers, Citrix and VMware both have low-costs to get started. Microsoft and Citrix seem to be chasing VMware’s lead in marketshare and functionality. Make sure when you chose your virtualization platform, you keep in mind the growth potential, features and ease-of management. Currently, it is tough to beat the scalability and ease of management with VMware.

Don’t forget my disks. One of the most common elements missed when implementing virtualization is faster storage.  4 years ago, when you bought that server with drives in it, you bought 4 drives at 10,000 rpm and it ran just fine. Now, you can run a lot more servers on the newer quad-cores and a bit more memory, but don’t forget that you will need some fast storage to handle this load. Depending on your size you will either need to build a SAN, or at least install more fast drives in your servers.

What’s this button do? Too often virtualization projects take place because of a short-term need and leads to more work down the road. 15 minutes with someone who’s done it before can help lead you to a better solution that will scale down the road.

Send in the backup. While you can create more redundancy with virtualization, don’t forget that you still need to back it up. Your current backup may still be viable, but new alternatives may suit your needs better.

While you don’t have to be Harry Potter to implement virtualization correctly, a few careful practices will keep you out of trouble. Once you have your environment setup, virtualization will simplify management and give you more flexibility long-term.

-Ben Pankonin

Mattel’s most recent Barbie® creation, the “Computer Engineer Doll” sports the sort of geek that might fit-in at our office. While I won’t pretend to be dissapointed that it has taken 124 careers for Barbie to become a Computer Engineer, it does bring some excitement to our industry.

I participate regularly with local education institutions who look to help educate students in technology and thought this would present an opportunity for us to give Barbie® a few words of advice as she begins her new career.

image by Mattel

Lose the Bluetooth during meetings. I’m impressed with your use of technology, but make sure you listen to the clients that are in front of you, without getting distracted.

You can’t survive on your looks. It’s true in every industry, you find people who want to survive on their looks may find themselves attracting attention, but soon it won’t be the kind of exposure they want. Study hard Barbie.

Demonstrate flexibility. While you can position yourself for success, don’t expect to have that pose everyday.  After a late night of implementation and troubleshooting, you will learn to become more flexible.

Maintain a well-rounded background. Keep up your grades in your business classes too, you might be surprised when you are asked to understand a balance sheet or write correspondence for a non-technical client.

Don’t talk down to your non-technical friends. Ken will ditch you faster than you can pull out a credit card if you become a tech know-it-all. If you want to keep your friends riding in the pink Jeep, you will learn that you must be able to communicate without displaying arrogance.

We wish you good luck in your new career path and if you haven’t found a place to land, send a resume over to Five Nines’ career page, we could always use a little more fashion in our engineering teams.

-Ben Pankonin

For many business consumers, the reaction to your last technology purchase is like getting to the bottom of a box of chocolates and realizing you are sitting alone on the couch with a box of Kleenex and reruns of “Pride and Prejudice”. We have all fallen victim of the blinking lights and cool features that romantically draw our attention and our wallets, but here are a few suggestions to keep from feeling guilty after your next purchase.

Start with the end in mind. You won’t find yourself growing old with hardware without thinking of why you need it. True, Stephen Covey wasn’t writing about technology when he wrote this statement, but his habits make a lot of sense for those of us who get obsessed with a little bit of gadgetry. The important thing to remember is the application. When looking for hardware or software, look to the final affected business process or benefit first, then your technology purchases have a realistic chance of meeting those expectation.

Justify it. While you may know she’s worth it, make sure you know why. Hardware purchases are often the least justified solutions.  But with capacity planners and more monitoring tools than ever before, now is the time to find a way to justify your business IT purchases.  If you are purchasing a highly mobile laptop for a salesperson or a new server environment, the value of each can be quantified.

Think about growth. You want to make sure this model fits you for the long-haul. Asking a CFO for more money because the current infrastructure doesn’t scale is one of the most painful conversations. I am amazed at how many times I work with a new customer whose technology infrastructure is restricted by hardware and software limits.  Even if your company is not in acquisition mode or hyper-growth, you may reach these limits in other ways.  Adding new equipment, people or processes should be a part of the original thought-process.

Ask for help. It is far easier to check your compatibility now than it is to seek counseling later. Often times we ask for help only after we have made our purchase, rather than searching to see if these gadgets, business tools and devices are what they are cracked up to be. For your next purchase, check with someone to see if your purchase is going to be a good match.

In order to keep yourself from feeling lonely by not having a good relationship between business and technology, fit technology into your objectives. While you don’t need an elaborate online personality test to see if your next technology purchase is a good fit, this should keep you from staring into the blinking lights, hoping for romance.

In almost every New Year’s Eve celebration you will hear that song “Auld Lang Syne“. “Auld Lang Syne”, meaning “Old Long Since” or “long long ago” in our field, it may refer to things we did last year.

While we frequently don’t expect to use the word tradition to describe anything we do with technology, you might be surprised at the ways tradition affects your use of technology. Many IT software and hardware companies have lulled us to sleep with the expectation that we can continue paying maintenance, replace hardware on a pre-set schedule and all of our technology problems will stay away for another year. The truth of the matter is that even technology savvy companies get into habits that lead technology down the dangerous road to tradition.

I recently had a client call to ask if we could help develop a backup solution. They have been using the same backup software from a major vendor for the past 8 years, keeping maintenance and upgrading when needed. As I took the call, I illustrated, based specific requirements, I actually would recommend a different solution today than I would have just 6 months ago. Another client just this week asked me, “can I call-in to get my voice mail”? Funny, I thought, I haven’t dialed-in to voicemail in years, simply viewed it on my mobile device as a .wav file or utilize ‘single-number-reach‘ to leave one voice mail for all devices.

While your technology traditions may not date back to the 1700s like Auld Lang Syne, being conscious of those areas where technology becomes tradition helps your company keep from becoming stagnate. Happy New Year from Five Nines.

-Ben Pankonin

As 8″ of snow blanketed the Midwest, many grumbled about the challenges of conducting business in while worrying about road conditions. Several brave souls at Five Nines dared to think differently, creating the first ever Five Nines Flyers. These unique thinkers crafted a one-of-a-kind racing sled from a Dell r710 server box, a little extra tape, a trash bag and a passion for fun. Was this a lesson in the uncalculated risks of a tail-bone injury or a way to keep work from becoming stale?

Five Nines Flyers

Developing a culture of innovation begins with individuals who are willing to think outside of the immediate work in front of them.  Businesses often expect individuals to come up with an idea when asked, but we need to understand that innovation often begets innovation.  That is, whether you are looking for a fun idea with 8″ of snow on the ground or a creative way to structure a 25 branch office, it is easier when you are surrounded with innovators.

While at Five Nines we may not have discovered a new Olympic sport nor did we actually break Clark Griswald’s land speed record, we may have inspired a few to think differently about work, life and even innovation.

For more exciting video visit Five Nines on YouTube.

1. iPhone Competitors
   We won’t go as far as to say there are any killers in the bunch, but a new range of devices have smartphone users excited about new apps and better answers to mobility. True, the iPhone still remains dominant, but continued innovation by Palm’s webOS, Google’s Droid and better RIM devices are bringing new ideas to a larger mobile dinner table.
2. Windows 7
   No need to utter the words of Microsoft’s last OS, Windows 7 sheds a new light on the possibilities for desktops and laptops present in this new OS. With touch, cleaner operating system, better performance and the largest beta testing ever, Windows 7 trumps its predecessor. We can be appreciative that we finally have an operating system that provides new functionality without sacrificing stability.
3. Virtualization
   Perhaps a perfect storm for actualization partners in 2009, this year with companies looking to cut costs and gain better redundancy, both VMware and Microsoft are building better, less expensive ways to implement virtualization. Let’s be fair, part of what has allowed VMware to implement more virtualization over the last year is the fact that Microsoft now extensively supports virtualization on nearly all server platforms including Exchange and Domain Controllers. Whether a business looking for better disaster recovery, less hardware expense or more redundancy, we have reason to give thanks. Even hardware vendors have brought costly SAN storage into small business price ranges.
4. The Rise of the Netbook
   Lowering the cost for remote devices, Netbooks continue to allow for a successful end-user experience while keeping the processing in the cloud.  This important step allows many people to be grateful for greater processing and mobility per dollar.
5. The Cloud Gets Clearer
   More has been developed for cloud-computing in the last year. It’s hard to avoid the barrage of news about the future of cloud-computing. While still young, businesses are beginning to trust some computing elements in the cloud.  Both Microsoft and Google have announced and are rolling out extensive cloud-computing models and Amazon’s elastic cloud expands.  Businesses owe much thanks to the companies who are extending their computing infrastructures to support our processing and storage needs.