Jul 242023
 
Picture of an DL360p Gen8 1U Rack Server with IO-PEX40152 Installed

A few months ago, you may have seen my post detailing my experience with ESXi 7.0 on HP Proliant DL360p Gen8 servers. I now have an update as I have successfully loaded ESXi 8.0 on HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 servers, and want to share my experience.

It wasn’t as eventful as one would have expected, but I wanted to share what’s required, what works, and stability observations.

Please note, this is NOT supported and NOT recommended for production environments. Use the information at your own risk.

A special thank you goes out to William Lam and his post on Homelab considerations for vSphere 8, which provided me with the boot parameter required to allow legacy CPUs.

ESXi on the DL360p Gen8

With the release of vSphere 8.0 Update 1, and all the new features and functionality that come with the vSphere 8 release as a whole, I decided it was time to attempt to update my homelab.

In my setup, I have the following:

  • 2 x HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Servers
    • Dual Intel Xeon E5-2660v2 Processors in each server
    • USB and/or SD for booting ESXi
    • No other internal storage
    • NVIDIA A2 vGPU (for use with VMware Horizon)
  • External SAN iSCSI Storage

Since I have 2 servers, I decided to do a fresh install using the generic installer, and then use the HPE addon to install all the HPE addons, drivers, and software. I would perform these steps on one server at a time, continuing to the next if all went well.

I went ahead and documented the configuration of my servers beforehand, and had already had upgraded my VMware vCenter vCSA appliance from 7U3 to 8U1. Note, that you should always upgrade your vCenter Server first, and then your ESXi hosts.

To my surprise the install went very smooth (after enabling legacy CPUs in the installer) on one of the hosts, and after a few days with no stability issues, I then proceeded and upgraded the 2nd host.

I’ve been running with 100% for 25+ days without any issues.

The process – Installing ESXi 8.0

I used the following steps to install VMware vSphere ESXi 8 on my HP Proliant Gen8 Server:

  1. Download the Generic ESXi installer from VMware directly.
    1. Link: Download VMware vSphere
  2. Download the “HPE Custom Addon for ESXi 8.1”.
    1. Link: HPE Custom Addon for ESXi 8.0 U1 June 2023
    2. Other versions of the Addon are here: HPE Customized ESXi Image.
  3. Boot server with Generic ESXi installer media (CD or ISO)
    • IMPORTANT: Press “Shift + o” (Shift key, and letter “o”) to interrupt the ESXi boot loader, and add “AllowLegacyCPU=true” to the kernel boot parameters.
  4. Continue to install ESXi as normal.
    • You may see warnings about using a legacy CPU, you can ignore these.
  5. Complete initial configuration of ESXi host
  6. Mount NFS or iSCSI datastore.
  7. Copy HPE Custom Addon for ESXi zip file to datastore.
  8. Enable SSH on host (or use console).
  9. Place host in to maintenance mode.
  10. Run “esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore-name/folder-name/HPE-801.0.0.11.3.1.1-Jun2023-Addon-depot.zip” from the command line.
  11. The install will run and complete successfully.
  12. Restart your server as needed, you’ll now notice that not only were HPE drivers installed, but also agents like the Agentless management agent, and iLO integrations.

After that, everything was good to go… Here you can see version information from one of the ESXi hosts:

ESXi 8 on HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8
VMware ESXi version 8.0.1 Build 21813344 on HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Server

What works, and what doesn’t

I was surprised to see that everything works, including the P420i embedded RAID controller. Please note that I am not using the RAID controller, so I have not performed extensive testing on it.

HPE P420i RAID Controller with VMware vSphere ESXi 8
HPE P420i RAID Controller with VMware vSphere ESXi 8

All Hardware health information is present, and ESXi is functioning as one would expect if running a supported version on the platform.

Additional Information

Note that with vSphere 8, VMware is deprecating vLCM baselines. Your focus should be to update your ESXi instances using cluster image based update images. You can incorporate vendor add-ons and components to create a customized image for deployment.

Mar 122023
 

Are you running an HPE Nimble or HPE Alletra 6000 SAN in your VMware environment with iSCSI? A commonly overlooked component of the solution architecture and configuration when using these SAN’s is HPE Nimble and HPE Alletra 6000 SAN IP Zoning with an ISL (Inter-Switch Link).

When it comes to implementing these SANs, it’s all about data availability, performance, optimizations, and making sure it’s done properly.

I want to share with you some information, as I feel this important and required configuration consideration is often ignored, with many IT professionals not being aware it exists.

HPE Alletra 6000
HPE Alletra 6000 SAN

I recently had a customer that purchased and deployed two HPE Alletra 6010 SANs for their VMware environment, where I was contracted to implement these SANs. Even though the customer purchased HPE Technical Installation and Startup Services, the HPE installer was not aware of IP Address Zoning and it’s purpose, advising us to disable it.

I actually had to advise the technician that numerous HPE technical documents recommended to enable and configure it when you have an ISL. He then researched it, and confirmed we should have it enabled and configured.

IP Address Zoning

When you have SAN switches that include an ISL (inter-switch link) that are connected to an HPE Nimble or HPE Alletra SAN, it’s preferred not to have traffic go across that interlink, as it creates additional hops for packets, as well as increases latency.

However, in the event of a switch, NIC, and/or path failure, we do want to have the interlink available to facilitate data access and be available when required.

Using NCM (Nimble Connection Manager) and SCM (Storage Connection Manager) on your VMware ESXi hosts, the HPE Nimble and HPE Alletra storage solution can intelligently choose when to use the interlink depending on paths available, and the current health of SAN connectivity. It does this through IP Address Zones.

You must have the NCM or SCM plugin installed on your ESXi hosts to be able to use IP Address Zones, and use the HPE Nimble Storage path selection policy (NIMBLE_PSP_DIRECTED).

Implementing IP Address Zones

To implement this, you’ll need to assign an IP Zone to each of your switches. Please see below for a table from HPE Alletra documentation:

HPE Nimble and HPE Alletra SAN IP Address Zone Types for ISL configuration
HPE IP Address Zone Types for ISL Configuration

You can choose to either bisect the subnet, or use a method of dedicating even numbered IPs to one switch/zone, and dedicating odd numbered IPs to the other switch/zone.

This allows you to zone each switch, and keep traffic in the zone avoiding use of the interlink which would cause additional hops and latency. You’ll need to configure on the storage array the Zone Type you selected.

In the event of a failure, the interlink will be available for non-optimized path access to ensure continued data access.

Jan 112023
 
HPE Simplivity Logo

When attempting to log in to your VMware vCenter using the HPE Simplivity Upgrade Manager to perform an upgrade on your Simplivity Infrastructure, the login may fail with Access Denied, Incorrect Credentials, or Incorrect Username and Password.

Despite confirming that the credentials are correct (logging in to the vCenter UI, as well as the vCSA console via SSH), the HPE Simplivity Upgrade Manager will continue to fail on connection.

The Problem

During the login process, the HPE Simplivity Upgrade Manager will not only check the credentials and attempt to logon to the vCenter server, but it will also attempt to pull and validate the SSL certificates (whether trusted or not) on the vCenter server.

During the typical login process, after entering the credentials and clicking “Connect”, the user will be prompted with the SSL certificate information asking to approve the connection. In this specific circumstance the SSL window is not presented.

HPE Simplivity Upgrade Manager Login Failed

Because of the SSL check not being presented, I thought there may have been a chance with trusting the connection, and possibly HPE Simplivity wasn’t able to show the error specific to the SSL check failing.

vCenter Download Trusted Root CA Certificates

When clicking on this, I was presented with an HTTP 404 error (File not found), meaning the certficiates weren’t present, which I felt may be contributing or causing this problem.

The Solution

After doing a quick search, I was able to find a VMware KB 89325 addressing the issue of being Unable to download Trusted Root Certificates for VCSA because it shows 0kb file.

Logging in to the vCSA appliance, I was able to determine that the appliance was missing the certificate symlink to allow the certificate download by running this command:

ls -ltra /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot

Inside of the directory listing, there was no symlink for certs, which should point to “/var/lib/vmware-vpx/docRoot/certs”.

I went ahead and created the symlink using the following command:

ln -sfn /var/lib/vmware-vpx/docRoot/certs /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot/certs

When using the “ls -ltra /etc/vmware-vpx/docRoot” command from above, I was now able to verify that the symlink existed:

vCenter DocRoot showing “certs” symbolic link

After creating the symlink, I was able to download the Trusted Root CA zip file (you don’t need to do anything with this file as the download was just a test).

I now went back to the Upgrade Manager to attempt to login, and it was successful.

Sep 042022
 

With VMware ESXi 6.5 and 6.7 going End of Life on October 15th, 2022, many of you are looking for options to update hosts in your homelab, especially in my case putting ESXi 7.0 on HP Proliant DL360p Gen8 servers.

As far as support goes, HPE last provided a custom installer for ESXi for versions 6.5 U3 which was released December of 2019. This was the “last Pre-Gen9 custom image” released, as ESXi 7.0 on the DL360p Gen8 is totally unsupported.

Update: Check out my post covering ESXi 8.0 on HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 servers!

ESXi 6.7 or higher on the Gen8 Servers

The jump from 6.5 to 6.7 was a little easier, as you could use the 6.5 custom installer, and then upgrade to 6.7. For the most part, as long as the hardware itself was supported, you were in pretty good shape.

Additionally, with the HPE vibsdepot loaded in to VMware Update Manager (now known as Lifecycle Manager), you could also keep all the HPE drivers and agents up to date.

ESXi 7.0 on the Gen8 Servers

Some were lucky enough to upgrade their current installs to 7 with no or limited problems, however the general consensus online was to expect problems. There were some major driver changes, which I think at one point led to an advisory to perform a fresh install, even if you had a fully supported configuration with newer generation servers such as the Proliant Gen9 and Gen10 servers, when upgrading from older versions.

In my setup, I have the following:

  • 2 x HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Servers
    • Dual Intel Xeon E5-2660v2 Processors in each server
    • USB and/or SD for booting ESXi
    • No other internal storage
  • External SAN iSCSI Storage

Concerns and Considerations

My main concern is to not only have a stable and functioning ESXi 7 instance, but I also, if possible would like to have the HPE drivers, agents, and integrations with iLO.

You must consider that while this is completely unsupported, you do need to make sure that the components of your current configuration are supported, such as the processor and PCIe cards, even if the server as a whole is not supported.

Make sure you reference your hardware on the VMware Compatibility Guide (HCL).

In my case, my processors were supported, however my RAID controller was not. So theoretically, since I’m not using my RAID controllers, I should be fine.

The process – Installing ESXi 7.0

I was able to install ESXi 7.0 on my HPE Proliant Gen8 servers, by performing the following steps.

  1. Download the Generic ESXi installer from VMware directly.
    1. Link: Download VMware vSphere
  2. Download the “HPE Custom Addon for ESXi 7.0”.
    1. Link: HPE Custom Addon for ESXi 7.0 U3 for July 2022
  3. Boot server, install using the Generic Installer downloaded above.
  4. Mount NFS or iSCSI datastore.
  5. Copy HPE Custom Addon for ESXi zip file to datastore.
  6. Enable SSH on host (or use console).
  7. Place host in to maintenance mode.
  8. Run “esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore-name/folder-name/HPE-703.0.0.10.9.1.5-Jul2022-Addon-depot.zip” from the command line.
  9. The install will run and complete successfully.
  10. Restart your server as needed, you’ll now notice that not only were HPE drivers installed, but also agents like the Agentless management agent, and iLO integrations.

You’ll now have a functioning instance.

HP Proliant DL360p Gen8 running ESXi 7.0

In my case everything was working, except for the “Smart Array P420i” RAID Controller, which I don’t use anyways.

Additionally, if you have a vCenter instance running, make sure that you add the HPE vibsdepot repo to your Lifecycle Manager. After you add the repo, create a baseline, and attach the baseline to the host, go ahead and proceed to scan, stage, and remediate the server which will then further update all the HPE specific drivers and software.

May 142021
 

Welcome to Episode 02 of The Tech Journal Vlog at StephenWagner.com

In this episode

What I’ve done this week

  • 10ZiG Unboxing (10ZiG 4610q and 10ZiG 6110)
  • Thin Client Blogging and Video Creation
  • VDI Work (Instant Clones, NVME Flash Storage Server)

Fun Stuff

  • HPE Discover 2021 – June 22 to June 24 – Register for HPE Discover at https://infl.tv/jtHb
  • Firewall with 163 day uptime and no updates?!?!?
  • Microsoft Exchange Repeated Pending Reboot Issue
  • Microsoft Exchange Security Update KB5001779 (and CU18 to CU20)

Life Update

  • Earned VMware vExpert Status in February!
  • Starlink in Saskatchewan, Alberta (Canada)
    • VDI over Starlink, low latency!!!
    • Use Cases (Oil and Gas Facilities, etc)

Work Update

  • HPE Simplivity Upgrade (w/Identity Store Issues, Mellanox Firmware Issues)

New Blog Posts

Current Projects

  • 10ZiG 4610q Thin Client Content
  • 10ZiG 6110 Thin Client Content
  • VMware Horizon Instant Clones Guides and Content

Don’t forget to like and subscribe!
Leave a comment, feedback, or suggestions!

May 012021
 
Picture of NVMe Storage Server Project

For over a year and a half I have been working on building a custom NVMe Storage Server for my homelab. I wanted to build a high speed storage system similar to a NAS or SAN, backed with NVMe drives that provides iSCSI, NFS, and SMB Windows File Shares to my network.

The computers accessing the NVMe Storage Server would include VMware ESXi hosts, Raspberry Pi SBCs, and of course Windows Computers and Workstations.

The focus of this project is on high throughput (in the GB/sec) and IOPS.

The current plan for the storage environment is for video editing, as well as VDI VM storage. This can and will change as the project progresses.

The History

More and more businesses are using all-flash NVMe and SSD based storage systems, so I figured there’s no reason why I can’t have build and have my own budget custom all NVMe flash NAS.

This is the story of how I built my own NVMe based Storage Server.

The first version of the NVMe Storage Server consisted of the IO-PEX40152 card with 4 x 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVMe drives inside of an HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Server. The server was running ESXi with TrueNAS virtualized, and the PCIe card passed through to the TrueNAS VM.

The results were great, the performance was amazing, and both servers had access to the NFS export via 2 x 10Gb SFP+ networking.

There were three main problems with this setup:

  1. Virtualized – Once a month I had an ESXi PSOD. This was either due to overheating of the IO-PEX40152 card because of modifications I made, or bugs with the DL360p servers and PCIe passthrough.
  2. NFS instead of iSCSI – Because TrueNAS was virtualized inside of the host that was using it for storage, I had to use NFS since the host virtualizing TrueNAS would also be accessing the data on the TrueNAS VM. When shutting down the host, you need to shut down TrueNAS first. NFS disconnects are handled way healthier than iSCSI disconnects (which can cause corruption even if no files are being used).
  3. CPU Cores maxed on data transfer – When doing initial testing, I was maxing out the CPU cores assigned to the TrueNAS VM because the data transfers were so high. I needed a CPU and setup that was better fit.

Version 1 went great, but you can see some things needed to be changed. I decided to go with a dedicated server, not virtualize TrueNAS, and go for a newer CPU with a higher Ghz speed.

And so, version 2 was born (built). Keep reading and scrolling for pictures!

The Hardware

On version 2 of the project, the hardware includes:

Notes on the Hardware:

  • While the ML310e Gen8 v2 server is a cheap low entry server, it’s been a fantastic team member of my homelab.
  • HPE Dual 10G Port 560SFP+ adapters can be found brand new in unsealed boxes on eBay at very attractive prices. Using HPE Parts inside of HPE Servers, avoids the fans from spinning up fast.
  • The ML310e Gen8 v2 has some issues with passing through PCIe cards to ESXi. Works perfect when not passing through.

The new NVMe Storage Server

I decided to repurpose an HPE Proliant ML310e Gen8 v2 Server. This server was originally acting as my Nvidia Grid K1 VDI server, because it supported large PCIe cards. With the addition of my new AMD S7150 x2 hacked in/on to one of my DL360p Gen8’s, I no longer needed the GRID card in this server and decided to repurpose it.

Picture of an HPe ML310e Gen8 v2 with NVMe Storage
HPe ML310e Gen8 v2 with NVMe Storage

I installed the IOCREST IO-PEX40152 card in to the PCIe 16x slot, with 4 x 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME drives.

Picture of IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME
IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME

While the server has a PCIe 16x wide slot, it only has an 8x bus going to the slot. This means we will have half the capable speed vs the true 16x slot. This however does not pose a problem because we’ll be maxing out the 10Gb NICs long before we max out the 8x bus speed.

I also installed an HPE Dual Port 560SFP+ NIC in to the second slot. This will allow a total of 2 x 10Gb network connections from the server to the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG 10Gb network switch, the backbone of my network.

The Server also have 4 x Hot Swappable HD bays on the front. When configured in HBA mode (via the BIOS), these are accessible by TrueNAS and can be used. I plan on populating these with 4 x 4TB HPE MDL SATA Hot Swappable drives to act as a replication destination for the NVMe pool and/or slower magnetic long-term storage.

Front view of HPE ML310e Gen8 v2 with Hotswap Drive bays
HPE ML310e Gen8 v2 with Hotswap Drive bays

I may also try to give WD RED Pro drives a try, but I’m not sure if they will cause the fans to speed up on the server.

TrueNAS Installation and Configuration

For the initial Proof-Of-Concept for version 2, I decided to be quick and dirty and install it to a USB stick. I also waited until I installed TrueNAS on to the USB stick and completed basic configuration before installing the Quad NVMe PCIe card and 10Gb NIC. I’m using a USB 3.0 port on the back of the server for speed, as I can’t verify if the port on the motherboard is USB 2 or USB 3.

Picture of a TrueNAS USB Stick on HPE ML310e Gen8 v2
TrueNAS USB Stick on HPE ML310e Gen8 v2

TrueNAS installation worked without any problems whatsoever on the ML310e. I configured the basic IP, time, accounts, and other generic settings. I then proceeded to install the PCIe cards (storage and networking).

Screenshot of TrueNAS Dashboard Installed on NVMe Storage Server
TrueNAS Installed on NVMe Storage Server

All NVMe drives were recognized, along with the 2 HDDs I had in the front Hot-swap bays (sitting on an HP B120i Controller configured in HBA mode).

Screenshot of available TrueNAS NVMe Disks
TrueNAS NVMe Disks

The 560SFP+ NIC also was detected without any issues and available to configure.

Dashboard Screenshot of TrueNAS 560SFP+ 10Gb NIC
TrueNAS 560SFP+ 10Gb NIC

Storage Configuration

I’ve already done some testing and created a guide on FreeNAS and TrueNAS ZFS Optimizations and Considerations for SSD and NVMe, so I made sure to use what I learned in this version of the project.

I created a striped pool (no redundancy) of all 4 x 2TB NVMe drives. This gave us around 8TB of usable high speed NVMe storage. I also created some datasets and a zVOL for iSCSI.

Screenshot of NVMe TrueNAS Storage Pool with Datasets and zVol
NVMe TrueNAS Storage Pool with Datasets and zVol

I chose to go with the defaults for compression to start with. I will be testing throughput and achievable speeds in the future. You should always test this in every and all custom environments as the results will always vary.

Network Configuration

Initial configuration was done via the 1Gb NIC connection to my main LAN network. I had to change this as the 10Gb NIC will be directly connected to the network backbone and needs to access the LAN and Storage VLANs.

I went ahead and configured a VLAN Interface on VLAN 220 for the Storage network. Connections for iSCSI and NFS will be made on this network as all my ESXi servers have vmknics configured on this VLAN for storage. I also made sure to configure an MTU of 9000 for jumbo frames (packets) to increase performance. Remember that all hosts must have the same MTU to communicate.

Screenshot of 10Gb NIC on Storage VLAN
10Gb NIC on Storage VLAN

Next up, I had to create another VLAN interface for the LAN network. This would be used for management, as well as to provide Windows File Share (SMB/Samba) access to the workstations on the network. We leave the MTU on this adapter as 1500 since that’s what my LAN network is using.

Screenshot of 10Gb NIC on LAN VLAN
10Gb NIC on LAN VLAN

As a note, I had to delete the configuration for the existing management settings (don’t worry, it doesn’t take effect until you hit test) and configure the VLAN interface for my LANs VLAN and IP. I tested the settings, confirmed it was good, and it was all setup.

At this point, only the 10Gb NIC is now being used so I went ahead and disconnected the 1Gb network cable.

Sharing Setup and Configuration

It’s now time to configure the sharing protocols that will be used. As mentioned before, I plan on deploying iSCSI, NFS, and Windows File Shares (SMB/Samba).

iSCSI and NFS Configuration

Normally, for a VMware ESXi virtualization environment, I would always usually prefer iSCSI based storage, however I also wanted to configure NFS to test throughput of both with NVMe flash storage.

Earlier, I created the datasets for all my my NFS exports and a zVOL volume for iSCSI.

Note, that in order to take advantage of the VMware VAAI storage directives (enhancements), you must use a zVOL to present an iSCSI target to an ESXi host.

For NFS, you can simply create a dataset and then export it.

For iSCSI, you need to create a zVol and then configure the iSCSI Target settings and make it available.

SMB (Windows File Shares)

I needed to create a Windows File Share for file based storage from Windows computers. I plan on using the Windows File Share for high-speed storage of files for video editing.

Using the dataset I created earlier, I configured a Windows Share, user accounts, and tested accessing it. Works perfect!

Connecting the host

Connecting the ESXi hosts to the iSCSI targets and the NFS exports is done in the exact same way that you would with any other storage system, so I won’t be including details on that in this post.

We can clearly see the iSCSI target and NFS exports on the ESXi host.

Screenshot of TrueNAS NVMe iSCSI Target on VMware ESXi Host
TrueNAS NVMe iSCSI Target on VMware ESXi Host
Screenshot of NVMe iSCSI and NFS ESXi Datastores
NVMe iSCSI and NFS ESXi Datastores

To access Windows File Shares, we log on and map the network share like you would normally with any file server.

Testing

For testing, I moved (using Storage vMotion) my main VDI desktop to the new NVMe based iSCSI Target LUN on the NVMe Storage Server. After testing iSCSI, I then used Storage vMotion again to move it to the NFS datastore. Please see below for the NVMe storage server speed test results.

Speed Tests

Just to start off, I want to post a screenshot of a few previous benchmarks I compiled when testing and reviewing the Sabrent Rocket 4 NVMe SSD disks installed in my HPE DL360p Gen8 Server and passed through to a VM (Add NVMe capability to an HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Server).

Screenshot of CrystalDiskMark testing an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD for speed
CrystalDiskMark testing an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD
Screenshot of CrystalDiskMark testing IOPS on an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD
CrystalDiskMark testing IOPS on an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD

Note, that when I performed these tests, my CPU was maxed out and limiting the actual throughput. Even then, these are some fairly impressive speeds. Also, these tests were directly testing each NVMe drive individually.

Moving on to the NVMe Storage Server, I decided to test iSCSI NVMe throughput and NFS NVMe throughput.

I opened up CrystalDiskMark and started a generic test, running a 16GB test file a total of 6 times on my VDI VM sitting on the iSCSI NVMe LUN.

Screenshot of NVMe Storage Server iSCSI Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark
NVMe Storage Server iSCSI Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark

You can see some impressive speeds maxing out the 10Gb NIC with crazy performance of the NVME storage:

  • 1196MB/sec READ
  • 1145.28MB/sec WRITE (Maxing out the 10GB NIC)
  • 62,725.10 IOPS READ
  • 42,203.13 IOPS WRITE

Additionally, here’s a screenshot of the ix0 NIC on the TrueNAS system during the speed test benchmark: 1.12 GiB/s.

Screenshot of TrueNAS NVME Maxing out 10Gig NIC
TrueNAS NVME Maxing out 10Gig NIC

And remember this is with compression. I’m really excited to see how I can further tweak and optimize this, and also what increases will come with configuring iSCSI MPIO. I’m also going to try to increase the IOPS to get them closer to what each individual NVMe drive can do.

Now on to NFS, the results were horrible when moving the VM to the NFS Export.

Screenshot of NVMe Storage Server NFS Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark
NVMe Storage Server NFS Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark

You can see that the read speed was impressive, but the write speed was not. This is partly due to how writes are handled with NFS exports.

Clearly iSCSI is the best performing method for ESXi host connectivity to a TrueNAS based NVMe Storage Server. This works perfect because we’ll get the VAAI features (like being able to reclaim space).

iSCSI MPIO Speed Test

This is more of an update… I was finally able to connect, configure, and utilize the 2nd 10Gbe port on the 560SFP+ NIC. In my setup, both hosts and the TrueNAS storage server all have 2 connections to the switch, with 2 VLANs and 2 subnets dedicated to storage. Check out the before/after speed tests with enabling iSCSI MPIO.

As you can see I was able to essentially double my read speeds (again maxing out the networking layer), however you’ll notice that the write speeds maxed out at 1598MB/sec. I believe we’ve reached a limitation of the CPU, PCIe bus, or something else inside of the server. Note, that this is not a limitation of the Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME drives, or the IOCREST NVME PCIe card.

Moving Forward

I’ve had this configuration running for around a week now with absolutely no issues, no crashes, and it’s been very stable.

Using a VDI VM on NVMe backed storage is lightning fast and I love the experience.

I plan on running like this for a little while to continue to test the stability of the environment before making more changes and expanding the configuration and usage.

Future Plans (and Configuration)

  • Drive Bays
    • I plan to populate the 4 hot-swappable drive bays with HPE 4TB MDL drives. Configured with RaidZ1, this should give me around 12TB usable storage. I can use this for file storage, backups, replication, and more.
  • NVMe Replication
    • This design was focused on creating non-redundant extremely fast storage. Because I’m limited to a total of 4 NVMe disks in this design, I chose not to use RaidZ and striped the data. If one NVMe drive is lost, all data is lost.
    • I don’t plan on storing anything important, and at this point the storage is only being used for VDI VMs (which are backed up), and Video editing.
    • If I can populate the front drive bays, I can replicate the NVMe storage to the traditional HDD storage on a frequent basis to protect against failure to some level or degree.
  • Version 3 of the NVMe Storage Server
    • More NVMe and Bigger NVMe – I want more storage! I want to test different levels of RaidZ, and connect to the backbone at even faster speeds.
    • NVME Drives with PLP (Power Loss Prevention) for data security and protection.
    • Dual Power Supply

Let me know your thoughts and ideas on this setup!

Oct 182020
 
Screenshot of The Tech Informative Side Chat - HPE Integrated Lights-Out

A new Side Chat Episode of the Tech Informative is now live on YouTube. In this episode we are covering HPE Integrated Lights-Out, also known as HPE iLO.

The Tech Informative Side Chat on HPE Integrated Lights-Out (HPE iLO)

The Tech Informative is a video podcast by Stephen Wagner and Rob Dalton that hopes to explore everyday technologies from the perspective of Information Technology professionals.

Rob Dalton is a lover of IT and a Director by profession. Rob considers himself a jack of all trades, an IT veteran, and is also the author of “Secured Packets”, a technology blog with a focus on security. Rob’s blog can be found at: https://www.securedpackets.com

Stephen Wagner is the President of Digitally Accurate Inc., an IT Solutions and Managed Services company. Stephen is also the author of “The Tech Journal”, an online Technology Blog. Stephen’s blog can be found at: https://www.stephenwagner.com

In this Side Chat, we cover the following:

What is HPE iLO

  • iLO and OneView
  • iLO Amplifier Pack
  • iLO, InfoSight, and HPE Servers

What does iLO do

  • Remote Access
  • Firmware Management
  • Server provisioning (Install OS, Recover, DR, etc.)
  • Features we find most valuable

How is HPE Integrated Lights-Out licensed

Competing Products

  • iDRAC
  • IPMI

We also cover what’s on the next episode of The Tech Informative

Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Leave a comment, feedback, or suggestions in the video comments section.

Jul 072020
 
Picture of a business office with cubicles

In the ever-evolving world of IT and End User Computing (EUC), new technologies and solutions are constantly being developed to decrease costs, improve functionality, and help the business’ bottom line. In this pursuit, as far as end user computing goes, two technologies have emerged: Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI), and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In this post I hope to explain the differences and compare the technologies.

We’re at a point where due to the low cost of backend server computing, performance, and storage, it doesn’t make sense to waste end user hardware and resources. By deploying thin clients, zero clients, or software clients, we can reduce the cost per user for workstations or desktop computers, and consolidate these on the backend side of things. By moving moving EUC to the data center (or server room), we can reduce power requirements, reduce hardware and licensing costs, and take advantage of some cool technologies thanks to the use of virtualization and/or Storage (SANs), snapshots, fancy provisioning, backup and disaster recovery, and others.

See below for the video, or read on for the blog post!

And it doesn’t stop there, utilizing these technologies minimizes the resources required and spent on managing, monitoring, and supporting end user computing. For businesses this is a significant reduction in costs, as well as downtime.

What is Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Many IT professionals still don’t fully understand the difference between HDI and VDI, but it’s as sample as this: Hosted Desktop Infrastructure runs natively on the bare metal (whether it’s a server, or SoC) and is controlled and provided by a provisioning server or connection broker, whereas Virtual Desktop Infrastructure virtualizes (like you’re accustomed to with servers) the desktops in a virtual environment and is controlled and provided via hypervisors running on the physical hardware.

Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI)

As mentioned above, Hosted Desktop Infrastructure hosts the End User Computing sessions on bare metal hardware in your datacenter (on servers). A connection broker handles the connections from the thin clients, zero clients, or software clients to the bare metal allowing the end user to see the video display, and interact with the workstation instance via keyboard and mouse.

Pros:

  • Remote Access capabilities
  • Reduction in EUC hardware and cost-savings
  • Simplifies IT Management and Support
  • Reduces downtime
  • Added redundancy
  • Runs on bare metal hardware
  • Resources are dedicated and not shared, the user has full access to the hardware the instance runs on (CPU, Memory, GPU, etc)
  • Easily provide accelerated graphics to EUC instances without additional costs
  • Reduction in licensing as virtualization products don’t need to be used

Cons:

  • Limited instance count to possible instances on hardware
  • Scaling out requires immediate purchase of hardware
  • Some virtualization features are not available since this solution doesn’t use virtualization
  • Additional backup strategy may need to be implemented separate from your virtualized infrastructure

Example:

If you require dedicated resources for end users and want to be as cost-effective as possible, HDI is a great candidate.

An example HDI deployment would utilize HPE Moonshot which is one of the main uses for HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis. HPE Moonshot allows you to provision up to 180 OS instances for each HPE Moonshot 1500 chassis.

More information on the HPE Moonshot (and HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System) can be found here: https://www.stephenwagner.com/2018/08/22/hpe-moonshot-the-absolute-definition-of-high-density-software-defined-infrastructure/

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure virtualizes the end user operating system instances exactly how you virtualize your server infrastructure. In VMware environments, VMware Horizon View can provision, manage, and maintain the end user computing environments (virtual machines) to dynamically assign, distribute, manage, and broker sessions for users. The software product handles the connections and interaction between the virtualized workstation instances and the thin client, zero client, or software client.

Pros:

  • Remote Access capabilities
  • Reduction in EUC hardware and cost-savings
  • Simplifies IT Management and Support
  • Reduces downtime
  • Added redundancy
  • Runs as a virtual machine
  • Shared resources (you don’t waste hardware or resources as end users share the resources)
  • Easy to scale out (add more backend infrastructure as required, don’t need to “halt” scaling while waiting for equipment)
  • Can over-commit (over-provision)
  • Backup strategy is consistent with your virtualized infrastructure
  • Capabilities such as VMware DRS, VMware HA

Cons:

  • Resources are not dedicated and are shared, users share the server resources (CPU, Memory, GPU, etc)
  • Extra licensing may be required
  • Extra licensing required for virtual accelerated graphics (GPU)

Example:

If you want to share a pool of resources, require high availability, and/or have dynamic requirements then virtualization would be the way to go. You can over commit resources while expanding and growing your environment without any discontinuation of services. With virtualization you also have access to technologies such as DRS, HA, and special Backup and DR capabilities.

An example use case of VMware Horizon View and VDI can be found at: https://www.digitallyaccurate.com/blog/2018/01/23/vdi-use-case-scenario-machine-shops/

 Conclusion

Both technologies are great and have their own use cases depending on your business requirements. Make sure you research and weigh each of the options if you’re considering either technologies. Both are amazing technologies which will compliment and enhance your IT strategy.

Jun 072020
 

This month on June 23rd, HPE is hosting their annual HPE Discover event. This year is a little bit different as COVID-19 has resulted in a change of the usual in-person event, and this year’s event is now being hosted as a virtual experience.

I expect it’ll be the same great content as they have every year, only difference is you’ll be able to virtually experience it from the comfort of your own home.

I’m especially excited to say that I’ve been invited to be special VIP Influencer for the event, so I’ll be posting some content on Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course generating some posts on my blog.

HPE Discover Register Now Graphic
Register for HPE Discover Now

Stay tuned, and don’t forget to register at: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/discover.html

The content catalog is now live!

May 262020
 

So you want to add NVMe storage capability to your HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 (or other Proliant Gen8 server) and don’t know where to start? Well, I was in the same situation until recently. However, after much research, a little bit of spending, I now have 8TB of NVMe storage in my HPE DL360p Gen8 Server thanks to the IOCREST IO-PEX40152.

Unsupported you say? Well, there are some of us who like to live life dangerously, there is also those of us with really cool homelabs. I like to think I’m the latter.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a supported configuration. You’re doing this at your own risk. Also, note that consumer/prosumer NVME SSDs do not have PLP (Power Loss Prevention) technology. You should always use supported configurations and enterprise grade NVME SSDs in production environments.

Update – May 2nd 2021: Make sure you check out my other post where I install the IOCREST IO-PEX40152 in an HPE ML310e Gen8 v2 server for Version 2 of my NVMe Storage Server.

Update – June 21 2022: I’ve received numerous comments, chats, and questions about whether you can boot your server or computer using this method. Please note that this is all dependent on your server/computer, the BIOS/EFI, and capabilities of the system. In my specific scenario, I did not test booting since I was using the NVME drives purely as additional storage.

DISCLAIMER: If you attempt what I did in this post, you are doing it at your own risk. I won’t be held liable for any damages or issues.

NVMe Storage Server – Use Cases

There’s a number of reasons why you’d want to do this. Some of them include:

  • Server Storage
  • VMware Storage
  • VMware vSAN
  • Virtualized Storage (SDS as example)
  • VDI
  • Flash Cache
  • Special applications (database, high IO)

Adding NVMe capability

Well, after all that research I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I installed an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 inside of an HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 to add NVMe capabilities to the server.

IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with 4 x 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME

At first I was concerned about dimensions as technically the card did fit, but technically it didn’t. I bought it anyways, along with 4 X 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVMe SSDs.

The end result?

Picture of an HPE DL360p Gen8 with NVME SSD
HPE DL360p Gen8 with NVME SSD

IMPORTANT: Due to the airflow of the server, I highly recommend disconnecting and removing the fan built in to the IO-PEX40152. The DL360p server will create more than enough airflow and could cause the fan to spin up, generate electricity, and damage the card and NVME SSD.

Also, do not attempt to install the case cover, additional modification is required (see below).

The Fit

Installing the card inside of the PCIe riser was easy, but snug. The metal heatsink actually comes in to contact with the metal on the PCIe riser.

Picture of an IO-PEX40152 installed on DL360p PCIe Riser
IO-PEX40152 installed on DL360p PCIe Riser

You’ll notice how the card just barely fits inside of the 1U server. Some effort needs to be put in to get it installed properly.

Picture of an DL360p Gen8 1U Rack Server with IO-PEX40152 Installed
HPE DL360p Gen8 with IO-PEX40152 Installed

There are ribbon cables (and plastic fittings) directly where the end of the card goes, so you need to gently push these down and push cables to the side where there’s a small amount of thin room available.

We can’t put the case back on… Yet!

Unfortunately, just when I thought I was in the clear, I realized the case of the server cannot be installed. The metal bracket and locking mechanism on the case cover needs the space where a portion of the heatsink goes. Attempting to install this will cause it to hit the card.

Picture of the HPE DL360p Gen8 Case Locking Mechanism
HPE DL360p Gen8 Case Locking Mechanism

The above photo shows the locking mechanism protruding out of the case cover. This will hit the card (with the IOCREST IO-PEX40152 heatsink installed). If the heatsink is removed, the case might gently touch the card in it’s unlocked and recessed position, but from my measurements clears the card when locked fully and fully closed.

I had to come up with a temporary fix while I figure out what to do. Flip the lid and weight it down.

Picture of an HPE DL360p Gen8 case cover upside down
HPE DL360p Gen8 case cover upside down

For stability and other tests, I simply put the case cover on upside down and weighed it down with weights. Cooling is working great and even under high load I haven’t seen the SSD’s go above 38 Celsius.

The plan moving forward was to remove the IO-PEX40152 heatsink, and install individual heatsinks on the NVME SSD as well as the PEX PCIe switch chip. This should clear up enough room for the case cover to be installed properly.

The fix

I went on to Amazon and purchased the following items:

4 x GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink for 2280 M.2 SSD

1 x BNTECHGO 4 Pcs 40mm x 40mm x 11mm Black Aluminum Heat Sink Cooling Fin

They arrived within days with Amazon Prime. I started to install them.

Picture of Installing GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME
Installing GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME
Picture of IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME
IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME

And now we install it in the DL360p Gen8 PCIe riser and install it in to the server.

You’ll notice it’s a nice fit! I had to compress some of the heat conductive goo on the PFX chip heatsink as the heatsink was slightly too high by 1/16th of an inch. After doing this it fit nicely.

Also, note the one of the cable/ribbon connectors by the SAS connections. I re-routed on of the cables between the SAS connectors they could be folded and lay under the card instead of pushing straight up in to the end of the card.

As I mentioned above, the locking mechanism on the case cover may come in to contact with the bottom of the IOCREST card when it’s in the unlocked and recessed position. With this setup, do not unlock the case or open the case when the server is running/plugged in as it may short the board. I have confirmed when it’s closed and locked, it clears the card. To avoid “accidents” I may come up with a non-conductive cover for the chips it hits (to the left of the fan connector on the card in the image).

And with that, we’ve closed the case on this project…

Picture of a HPE DL360p Gen8 Case Closed
HPE DL360p Gen8 Case Closed

One interesting thing to note is that the NVME SSD are running around 4-6 Celsius cooler post-modification with custom heatsinks than with the stock heatsink. I believe this is due to the awesome airflow achieved in the Proliant DL360 servers.

Conclusion

I’ve been running this configuration for 6 days now stress-testing and it’s been working great. With the server running VMware ESXi 6.5 U3, I am able to passthrough the individual NVME SSD to virtual machines. Best of all, installing this card did not cause the fans to spin up which is often the case when using non-HPE PCIe cards.

This is the perfect mod to add NVME storage to your server, or even try out technology like VMware vSAN. I have a number of cool projects coming up using this that I’m excited to share.