@flaxking said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

Another thing to keep on mind is that for MS Partners to achieve competencies Azure based certs will now be required, which is another way MS is trying to give the market a push.

We are partners and need to keep a load of certifications on developers to get certain benefits. But these changes seem a little much for my infrastructure folk. Why would I want to certify for Azure when we don't really use Azure. We use Windows server on-premise. If that is going to go away someday I would rather get Linux and slowly migrate out software to work locally with that rather than get our folk Azure certified when we wont be using it.

I expect MS are phasing out the on premise OS, pushing people to certify for Azure, then once on Azure, slowly push the prices up more.

@stacksofplates said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

@stacksofplates said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

Containerization and FaaS have made development and deployments insanely easier and less costly.

True for non-cloud installs as well, though. And only true for cloud when you have completely reliable networking. Hosted FaaS is a real challenge if your ISP drops.

No it's not. Because you can just go somewhere else. It's a real problem when it's locally hosted and your ISP drops and no customers can access it.

That 'somewhere else' is also more expensive though... Doesnt mattwr if its AWS, Azure, Google Compute, or another... It costs a more. Local hosted doesn't mean one bad ISP will destroy service for customers. We have out infrastructure in our facilities in London, Aberdeen, Barcelona, Middle East, Singapore, Houston, Calgary, Toronto and Singapore. I can lose any site and that will have no impact to customers. Still a lot cheaper than cloud.

Last time I looked, a single one of my calculation servers came to around 80k GBP. High core count, multiple TB of RAM. In Azure, over 6 years, MS were coming back with something in the range of £450k ex VAT. Insane difference.

Hi folks,

We have a Windows Failover Cluster here using Starwind vSAN over three hosts, all local SSD storage. I'm looking for your thoughts on best practice on where VM should sit, as we have a few differences of opinions internally, and would like to get some external thoughts...

The two lines of thoughts currently are:

1. We have a Windows Failover Cluster, so we should add all VM to cluster storage and all VMs to the cluster, for management and HA for all VM

2. We have a Windows Failover Cluster, we should add VMs that need HA to the cluster storage and the cluster, and add all other VMs that do not need HA to the cluster, but with the VM storage local to one of the servers off of CSV storage (not HA)

I'm in the second group. Where are you and why?

My thoughts are (maybe wrong):

• Data in the CSV will replicate over all three nodes because of Starwind. So, each write to a CSV is actually three fold. If all VMs are in CSV storage and writing to all three hosts, we could considerably lower the life of our SSDs.

• CSVFS comes with a performance hit as each write has to be committed to each server which takes time. Plus, as a clustered file system that also comes with a performance hit. Adding everything to the cluster and CSV will just lower the performance over all for no reason as some applications do not need HA.

• If all VMs are on the CSV the Starwind sync channel will have more work to do. Possibly introducing additional performance issues where we do not need HA for each service.

• We can still add a VM to the cluster, but keep storage local to one of the three servers off of CSV. Where they dont require HA, thats fine as we can manage them all from WFC, whilst keeping performance (keeping load off the CSVs which isnt needed).

• We save space on the CSV for future HA server requirements. If the CSV is used for everything, the vSAN space will fill up quickly for non HA VMs, and when we finally have a need for a new HA system, we wont have room.

• Some applications naturally have HA with how they work, so as long as one VM is on hyper-v on each of the 3 hosts, the application stays up even without the VM being in cluster/CSV storage. So, why take up CSV space.

Logically, to me... this all adds up to using the CSV for only VMs that the company say need to be Highly Available, and leaving all else just on the local array outside of CSV storage.

What do you folks think?

Best,
Jim

@Dashrender said in Windows Failover Clustering... what are your views and why?:

Is the local physical storage all part of the pool for the CSV? If so, could you be spiking a single server's storage with a VM on that host, which could then cause performance delay for the whole CSV?

The storage currently looks like this. Each server has 21 TB of SSD as a $V. There are 5 CSVs/vSAN images on $V, each of 3 TB. That uses 15 TB of $V storage to provide the vSAN to the WFC. This leaves ~ 6TB usable on each host (18 TB total) as non CSV storage non HA local storage. The vSAN could of course be expanded in to this, rather than as is, but I dont think all should be CSV.

We recently looked at moving our workload to Azure. Lead by the Dev team. They looked at ways they could leverage various Azure services and technology (no idea which, it's their job) and the most economy option they came back with was $23,500 CAD per month. I presume that's based on them leveraging the most economical services in the best way. No idea though as I'm not involved on that side.

Our new server infrastructure which Dev use comes to just below $350k CAD which is set to last 5 years until the next replacement.

That's just below $6,000 CAD per month. Far less than the $23,500 CAD that Azure would cost. Even if we take IT staff wages in to this were still at a much lower number for dedicated systems with no contention.

For email, CMS etc, sure. For what our Dev team use, nope. And that's them leading that costing, not IT.

@scottalanmiller said in Windows Failover Clustering... what are your views and why?:

@Dashrender said in Windows Failover Clustering... what are your views and why?:

@Obsolesce said in Windows Failover Clustering... what are your views and why?:

The thing is, they are VMs, you can move shit around whenever, to wherever, should the need arise.... and without any downtime if needed. I think each server/service/system should have it's own "SLA" (it's almost midnight can't think of the word now) and should be placed appropriately. Only you can answer whether or not it needs HA. You can do the math to figure out exactly what the cost of each GB of SSD capacity, vCPU, Memory, etc. costs for HA placement versus non HA and decide appropriately where to put the VM. I really don't think Hard Drive life is a concern here, you'll pull through the lifespan of the drive easily, or you won't because it's defective which in that case doesn't matter anyways on your decision. So I don't think that's a factor here. It all comes down to math regarding costs vs what is being considered for placement.

wait a second - this whole box was likely built to be 100% HA - so anything running on it, or planned to be running on it was likely scoped with the expectation of being on HA, wither or not HA was needed - at least that's my expectation.

The VM's being put on it now that the OP is talking about, likely were never originally on the board for this cluster/hardware - where they? I mean - where/why are these VMs a thing now and what was the plan for their placement? Did whomever wanted these VMs get the sign off from the ones that paid for the cluster? (devil's advocate)

I think he said that the originally engineering plan was NOT this. It was designed to be non-HA for some or most of the workloads. Super high HA just for select workloads.

Correct. We had to get HA for the subset of our workload. So, this had to be built. We needed less budget to extend the storage, RAM and CPU on these three machines for the non HA compared to having to build entirely separate machines for that workload.

Purely, that was the plan. My mind, it still is. Just some folk are pushing to make all HA. Even, for example, PDQ. We do not need PDQ to be HA. It's a small VM, sure. But it 100% does not need HA. Even if 50GB, we don't need that replicated three times! If it is on a host that does die, if need be, I can start the backup on my veeam box. Once the host is fixed, I can migrate it to the fixed hardware.

Even our webservers don't need HA. Stick one on each host and use HAProxy so when one is down, the we server is taken out of the pool. Sure, make the HAProxy HA, or roll out a HAProxy cluster (I'm sure that would have built in application level HA of some form) but, sure, make that HA if need be.

We have proprietary software on top of windows that isn't made with application level HA. That's why we need the failover clustering. Those VM for sure need to migrate should a physical die. Outside of that, we just don't need it. But for that special case, we do. That's why we have it.

Even domain controllers don't need to be on the CSV. Have one local to each server with the DC in the cluster, but not on shared storage. If a host does die, you still have two DCs online and cam migrate fmso roles (if the holder died). No need to be in the CSV.

But, some folk want all in CSV, and want to waste lots of CSV storage for things that don't need it.

The point of the CSV was that as we increase our proprietary tool over the next few years, there is room to do so. If that space is full of data that doesn't need HA, we have lost the opportunity to use it.

Yes, the end solution is to make our application have a form of application level HA, but that's up to development to make, not IT.

@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:

To put this simply, every server that has compute and storage in the box is hyperconverged.

Buy* any server off of a shelf that is "self-contained" and you have a hyperconverged server. The value add in an HCI solution is the programming that allows you to take 2,3,4 or more of those servers and just plug them in and use it all as one large server.

So any host in the environment could go down, and while you'd have reduced capacity, the environment would simply move the workload to other available resources.

That is what I have always in my mind for HCI. Am I right in saying the value add can be done by say a Windows Failover Cluster over all nodes, which make use of vSAN storage? Like the HCA appliances vendors sell, the failover cluster provides the function to move VMs should a node fail, right? The vendor tech isnt some magic box which invalidates other solutions excluding such technology from being HCI?

@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:

@scottalanmiller said in What makes a system HCI?:

@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:

Ok, I can take that on board.

In what insane universe does a board...

1. Talk about IT
2. Know what HCI is.
3. Have any ability to discuss this.
4. Get into the weeds of understanding really, really technical IT underpinnings that no normal IT department knows?

I didn't notice this or maybe I just read past it. But @Jimmy9008 are you being asked to present to a "board" what HCI is?

Nonono, not at all. I mean this in the sense of I can take the idea on board/understand what was said/incorporate it in to what I think... nothing to do with boards.

@scottalanmiller said in What makes a system HCI?:

@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:

@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:

@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:

I get that a vendor has some cool tech they stick on top of their HCI hardware to sell me a HCA, but you can still have HCI without that super cool layer on top that they have, right? Or are we saying HCI can only ever be HCI if it has all the bells on top that vendors sell through their proprietary software/stack?

You could do HCI yourself, sure but building the tools to get it aren't something any individual would reasonably do.

Would users of Starwind vSAN, running a three node setup using their vSAN with WFC on top be HCI? Three nodes, all shared storage, to a Windows Failover Cluster running over all three nodes... sure, its not as polished as the scale solutions (never said it is).... but does that mean it is not HCI?

Starwind is the leader in high performance HCI. Starwind leads performance and scaling. Scale leads ease of use and automation. The two together effectively define HCI capabilities on the market. Everyone else is an "also mentioned."

How can this be when right at the start somebody said HCI is:
Compute virtualization
Networking virtualization
Storage virtualization

Because no aspect of that statement is true. Storage virtualization means nothing. NEtworking virtualization is very rare even in HCI. Compute virtualization is ubiquitous and you can't even call something production without it. None are a factor in defining HCI.

So with this in mind, that architecture I wrote out above which is quoted is in fact HCI then? It may not have the bells that Scale has, but it is still HCI, right?

Troubleshooting v Reimage.

I don't know about you folk but where something is broken and the estimate is more than one hour to fix, we just reimage as it is faster and brings the machine to a known good state - providing not a hardware issue. Any book should cover something similar as I have seen lots of IT folk spend days on a problem (read, money), where they should just reimage.

Hi folks,

Would anybody be able to recommend some virtual Web Application Firewalls? I have not looked at this before and want to see what options are available from you pro's before doing more online research.

We will soon have a few webservers/applications sitting behind HAProxy, which sits behind our ASA. Ideally we would be able to stick a WAF between HAProxy and the ASA. No budget for a physical box.

Probably no budget for a paid for virtual solution either. I hope to see something like HAProxy where it is free to use with a paid option.

Cheers

Hi folks,

Would anybody be able to recommend IT Contractors/ITSP in Perth, Australia? Ideally ones you have worked with, which you know are good at their job.

We have a new office out there (acquisition) and the current providers we are using are making a mess of things, so may be looking to move to some other solution if they don't sort this out soon. They supported the company we purchased already so we initially decided to use them due to the existing good relationship and are starting to regret that.

What we need (overview only, and new hardware already on site):

• stack + configure two Dell N3000 switches

• configure Cisco ASA for existing internet line outbound, and internal interface, plus SSH for management, and ASDM

• physically migrate from old firewall to new, and old switches to new over a weekend (new properly managed cabling)

• configure new Dell server with datacenter 2019 core and Hyper-V enabled, setup redundant 10GB uplinks to new switch stack. Provide access over that weekend once completed for UK team to roll out DC, DNS, DHCP

• configure APC UPS for PowerChute network shutdown to turn off the host upon power outage

• connect two meraki MR33 to n3000

• label everything, document, and supply photos for our remote support teams

Do you know any resources out there which could accomplish this? We would of course discuss specifics that's just an overview.

Some of the issues we have with the current supplier:

• can't get the new ASA to work with the internet line. Can't figure out how to enable SSH on the ASA

• have installed 2019 datacenter GUI, not core. Did not enable hyper-v

• have not been able to stack the switches, have not been able to enable remote access to switches (webui/SSH/telnet)

Basically, little confidence left.

Cheers

@dashrender said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@scottalanmiller

I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.

I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.

I'm lost - why are you bailing on this thread because one person said VDI is not how you should be moving forward? Other options were presented.

I don't see value in discussing why we have a VDI. The fact is we do and that will not be changing. Being told 'grumble grumble' that is not how to do it 'grumble grumble' is of no help to me. Regardless of what it does, VDI is staying. My options are keep the old stuff and hope it works for another 5 years until the next cycle, or use the budget I have to replace it for a new VDI stack. The project is not to asses the needs of requiring VDI, but to replace the VDI with a new VDI.

Most of the comments on the thread do not help with that so I gave up with it. Sure, if the project was 'get rid of VD' - but its not.

Somebody suggested Azure VDI, will take a look at that and keep looking at other options.

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@scottalanmiller

I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.

I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.

If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)

Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.

Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind

More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.

I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:

@scottalanmiller

I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.

I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.

If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)

Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.

Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind

More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.

I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.

Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.

As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.

Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.

You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.

Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!

You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!

You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.

You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.

Hi folks,

We are currently using Citrix for our VDI (Citrix Virtual Desktops) and Citrix Storefront to present Desktops to end users. This solution is around 5-7 years old, depending on the specific hardware, and we are now due to replace this in 2022.

I am writing this post to get a list of suggestions that we can research as alternatives to the existing stack. Some hardware is newer as the stack was added to over time for expansion. The whole solution needs to be replaced for a range of business reasons and also grown due to business growth.

Current Environment:
VDI: Citrix NetScaler <- Citrix Storefront <- Citrix XenDesktop/Citrix Virtual Desktops
Underline Hypervisor: VMWare ESXi
Physical: 20 Dell servers (a mix of blades enclosures running MX740c, several R630s, several R640s and several R730
Total: 312 physical cores, 7.4TB RAM.
Storage: Nimble iSCSI SANs total of around 1PB (although this is a mix of VDI and non-VDI data)
This supports around 700 users.
Guests: Windows 10 Desktops, internal only - not customer facing but high levels of uptime required as we are global and users are working somewhere on this system at all times. 4x9+

Age: depending on item, 5-7 years.
Note: pyramid of doom!

I would like to move this to a modern solution and get away from multiple servers sitting on top of a non redundant SAN.

One solution I am particularly interested in is Dell VXRail for VDI using VMWare Horizon. The VXRail is the Dell HCI solution and would enable us to scale up as needed and make use of VMWare vSAN to protect against any one host failure. Possibly more than one host depending on configuration. Virtual desktops would sit on the vSAN for storage so each desktop is HA, but we would move shares on a different stack. Perhaps something like a Dell VMAX/PowerMax which are 6x9 or so anyway.

Another option is to still stick to the whole Citrix ecosystem. Yet again, another option could be Azure VDI.

What would you suggest we look at?

Thank you,

@scottalanmiller said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Obsolesce said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

@Jimmy9008 said in Marketing - Video Editing Storage:

Originally, I was looking at proposing a 20 - 30 TB NAS populated with SSDs in the local office, with 10 Gbps NIC. This would provide high speed local access over the LAN to 6 marketing users.

If their PCs accessing a NAS at 1-10Gbps isn't good enough because their primary concern is speed, why would they push for way slower cloud storage, assuming no on-prem cache?

1 - 10 Gbps would be more than fine. That is what I proposed. But, the CIO is asking that the storage is Cloud only. Leading to this issue where the editing workstations are in office and the storage is remote.

I would connect the CIO with the users and ask if waiting hours or days to work on a file is good enough. Let the CIO take that up with users.

The CIO is pretty much of the opinion that the user should plan better and download files they need for editing whilst working on something else.