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Fix for FreeNAS on HPE MicroServer Gen10 X3216 Stuck Console Issue

When you try to install FreeNAS 11 on the new HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 X3216, the installer stops booting and appears to be stuck at:

pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pcib0: _OSC returned error 0x10
pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0

This article explains how to fix the issue during the installation and how to apply the fix at an installed system using the FreeNAS Web Interface.

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Virtual Volumes Vendor Status - December 2015

vvol-december-2015VMware vSphere 6.0 with the new Virtual Volumes (VVol) storage architecture is in the market since 9 month now. Many vendors have adopted the technology and the list of supported storage arrays has grown massively in the last couple of month. This post takes a look on the current status and which vendors are supported today:

  • Atlantis
  • DataCore
  • Dell
  • EMC
  • Fujitsu
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Hitachi
  • Huawei
  • IBM
  • NEC
  • NetApp
  • NexGen
  • SANBlaze

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Storage Landscape - From Traditional Storage to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

This is the week where VMware Virtual SAN is going to be released. This might change the storage landscape massively as it brings a radically simple hyper-converged storage. Before it goes GA in a few days I want to give a brief overview of the current storage landscape and how it has been transformed from traditional LUN based storage to a hyper-converged infrastructure.

  • Traditional Storage
  • Hybrid Arrays
  • All Flash Arrays
  • Software-Defined Storage
  • Storage Virtualization
  • Converged Infrastructure
  • Hyper-Converged

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Analyze and Replay IO Workloads with VMware

One of the most commonly problem in VMware migration projects is that the storage is undersized. When you want to size a new platform it is important to know the IO requirements. Unfortunately storage is often only sized for capacity, which is a great mistake. VMware offers tools you need to analyze and record workloads and replay them in the new platform. This post explains how to capture workloads with vscsiStats trace mode and replay them with I/O Analyzer.

vmware-io-analyzer

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HP N40L Shared Storage with vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)

Without a shared storage it is quite hard to deploy a reasonable test scenario. Within vSphere 5 VMware introduced the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). The VSA transforms the local storage from up to 3 servers into a mirrored shared storage. This sounds really great for a testing environment because it supports plenty VMware Features like vMotion, HA and DRS.

Prior to installation there are a few things to check because the VSA has very strict system requirements. As it is only a testing environment and I do not consider getting support, so the main goal is getting the VSA up and running. The server requirements are:

  • 6GB RAM
  • 2GHz CPU
  • 4 NICs
  • Identical configuration across all nodes
  • Clean ESXi 5.0 Installation

I deliberately ignored all the vendor/model or hardware raid controller requirements, as this are only soft-requirements. The HP Proliant N40L supports all above requirements, except the 2GHz CPU. But there is a little XML File which contains the host audit configuration the installer uses during the installation. I am going to tweak this file a little bit to get the installation done.
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