DD880 with 10Gb ethernet

If you plan to use 10GB NIC on your DD880 with twinax calbe, make sure you are using 7 ft.  Don't use 10 ft twinax cable because the card will not respond and only reboot of DD880 can clear it (sorry, it works like this by design and no workaround).  This can be found in Intel website.

http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/sb/CS-030612.htm

What if you must use longer cables?   Intel Ethernet SFP+Optics will be the anwser.  Cable length depends on the speed, cable specifications, and which optical module is used. Cable Lengths for Intel Ethernet SFP+ Optics provides the operating range in meters for optical cables used with Intel Ethernet SFP+ Optics.

http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/x520server/sb/CS-031094.htm

What are the SFP+ direct attach cable requirements for the Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520 Series?
A: Any SFP+ passive or active limiting direct attach copper cable that comply with the SFF-8431 v4.1 and SFF-8472 v10.4 specifications Maximum cable length for passive cables is 7 meters Support for active cables requires Intel Network Connections software version 15.3 or later

Turn off TCP chimney in Windows 2008

TCP chimney has caused more problem in Windows 2008.  ifgroup and failover do not work on Datadomain.  Windows 2008 client loses connectivity intermittently with backup server.  Once turned off TCP chimney, failover works fine on the media server.   There are new patches available from Microsoft for TCP chimney.  I have not tired it yet but don't plan to enable TCP chimney in the near feature since it causes more headache for me.

To turn off TCP chimney, run the following command
netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled

To confirm it is turned off, run the following command
netsh int tcp show global

restore to proxy on VADP

With VADP out in 2010, VCB will be out of the picture. However, one thing I don't like about VADP is the lack of restore of the whole image to the proxy host. I know it is not available in NetWorker. When I check the NetBackup guide, I don't see that option too. It will be required to restore directly to ESX host.

Believe it or not, when I work in support, I always discover customer has no space in the SAN for recovery of large VM and they want to keep existing VM. Now, I cannot recover the whole image to proxy and then use VMconverter to move it to a VM Workstation. It has to be recovered to ESX. I will consider it a lack of feature when comparing it with VCB.

NTFS read/write in Linux

I have a USB drive formated as NTFS and need to mount it to my CentOS laptop.  To enable read and write in NTFS, you can download NTFS-3g from http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/.  The instruction to configure it is on http://linuxconfig.org/How_to_mount_partition_with_ntfs_file_system_and_read_write_access

You can also use older version for CentOS and save you time by installing the rpm.  Run the following command
yum list fuse-ntfs-3g
yum update fuse-ntfs-3g

Once completed, run rpm -qa | grep "ntfs" to confirm the installation of rpm.  Now, you can read and write on your NTFS formatted USB drive.

What CentOS Linux kernel available?

I try to upgrade the kernel for my CentOS 5.4. I try to run yum upgrade kernel-smp and return no result. Eventually, find out this is changed in CentOS 5. There is no more kernel-smp. The following info is found in CentOS wiki page. So I run

"yum upgrade kernel" for my 64 bits dual processor laptop.

CentOS 5 provides the following kernel packages:

kernel: Contains the 'normal' kernel. This kernel includes support for both UP and SMP machines.

kernel-PAE (x86-only): Contains a kernel with support for 64GB of memory on x86 systems through Physical Address Extensions (PAE). Only x86 CPUs that support PAE can run this kernel. This kernel is provided because x86 systems can't address more than 4GB of memory without PAE extensions.

kernel-xen: Contains a Linux kernel that runs on the Xen hypervisor, for both privileged (dom0) and unprivileged (domU) domains. The Xen kernel is compiled with PAE support.

Reference page: http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/CentOS5

Flash player on 64 bits kernel of CentOS

Reinstall my laptop again with CentOS 5.4 64 bits. This time, I can't play youtube on my Opera browser. Uninstall Flash 32 bits. Then go to http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_square.html to download the 64 bits flash plugin for Linux. Copy it libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/opera/plugins. Restart browser and confirm the plugin path include /usr/lib/opera/plugins.

VCB with Windows 2008 R2

Recently, I got a question about backing up VM with Windows 2008 R2 as guest.  They mention to me why FULLVM works but File level fails.  Run some test and find out it is caused by the reserve partition configured at the beginning of the 1st Virtual HDD.  Try to assign a drive letter and think it will work.  Nope!  The error indicates it can't find Windows System folder and registry.  As of today, ESX 4.0 U1 release notes indicate it is not supported.  

Most encountered backup issue

Guess what most of the issue you will see on backup.  Name resolution and drive ordering.
I can say 70% of the time related to name resolution.  If you tell them it is DNS, they will answer you no.  Add it to host table, it works.  Guess what, different DNS server gives you different result. However, they will keep on telling you it is not their DNS server.
The other issue is drive ordering.  How come some of the drives do not start backup?!  The drive ordering is not correct.  Most of the time due to reboot.  For example, drive with SN 501 is configured as \\.\Tape0 (the first one) then drive with SN 502 is \\.\Tape1....  After reboot, now, drive with SN 502 is discovered first and become \\.\Tape0.  When you attempt to mount a tape on \\.\Tape1, (because the order the drives discovered is not the same, \\.\Tape1 is discovered first) you will get an error eventually.  If you are using FC Tape library, configure persistent binding!!!  Otherwise, you will end up wasting time to reconfigure your library everytime you reboot your backup server.

Conversion wizard of VMware Workstation

One of the benefit of becoming a VCP is to get a free copy of VMware workstation. I finally receive the permanently license key from VMware education. Installing it on my laptop running CentOS. The reason why I use VMware workstation instead of Virtualbox is NetWorking option. In Virtualbox, you cannot set static IP for your VM if the virtual NIC is run under NAT.

With VMware Workstation for Linux, there is no Conversion Wizard. It is only available for Windows version. So, I use the Clone option instead. Starting with VMware 6.5, you can install VMware ESX as VM, so I can get rid of my DL360 now. It is really noisy to run at home.

rdesktop

I am happy with my lenovo running CentOS 5.4. However, I have trouble running remote desktop to my Windows server at work. So, I install rdesktop-1.6.0-3 and it works perfectly fine.