Lenovo X1 Carbon 3rd Gen 2015 – How to add LTE (WWAN)

 Mobile Computing, Wireless  3 Responses »
Mar 192015
 

So I picked up my new Lenovo X1 Carbon 2015 Gen3 laptop yesterday, and I absolutely LOVE it… I’ve been waiting for it to come in for a couple months now, and wanted to add WWAN as it wasn’t available as a preconfigured unit with the WWAN built in.

The unit I purchased was the 20BS0035US part number, which essentially is fully loaded with the exception of WWAN.

One big things for me is that I need to have LTE availability as I hate using USB data sticks. I did a bunch of research, and while waiting I went ahead and ordered the Sierra Wireless card that you can order as a configure to order.

I called IBM parts and placed an order for FRU Part# 04X6014 (Sierra Wireless Gobi5000 EM7345). When I received the laptop yesterday, I opened it to install the module, and thankfully the unit DID ship with the WWAN atennas built in. Installed the card, connected the antennas (orange is the main), popped in a SIM card and I was good to go!

The WWAN module is working great with Rogers on LTE in Canada!

Again, this laptop is SLICK!

For those of you that want to add it, place an order for the FRU Part# 04X6014. IBM notified me that this is a Wi-Fi adapter, however I can confirm this is in fact a WWAN adapter.

Event ID: 513 – The system cannot find the file specified.

 Windows Server  6 Responses »
Sep 302014
 

Recently, a new type of error I haven’t seen showed up on one of the servers I maintain and manage.

 

Event ID: 513

Source: CAPI2

Event:

Cryptographic Services failed while processing the OnIdentity() call in the System Writer Object.

Details:
AddLegacyDriverFiles: Unable to back up image of binary EraserUtilRebootDrv.

System Error:
The system cannot find the file specified.
.

 

Also, after further investigation I also noticed that when Windows Server Backup was running, sometimes snapshots on the C: volume wouldn’t “grow in time” so were automatically deleting.

It was difficult to find anything on the internet regarding this as in my case it was reporting “The system cannot find the file specified”, whereas all other cases were due to security permissions. On the bright side, I was able to identify the software that this file belonged to: Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Ultimately I found a fix. PLEASE ONLY attempt this, if you are receiving the “The system cannot find the file specified”. If you are seeing any “Access Denied” messages under System Error, your issue is related to something else.

 

To fix:

1) Uninstall Symantec Endpoint protection.

2) Restart Server

3) Disable VSS snapshots for C: volume (NOTE: This will delete all existing snapshots for the drive.).

4) Re-install Symantec Endpoint protection.

5) Re-enable VSS snapshots for C: volume.

 

When this issue occurred, I was seeing the event many times every hour. It’s been 4 days since I applied this fix and it has completely disappeared, back to a 100% clean event log!

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 – Overheating

 Microsoft, Microsoft Surface  No Responses »
Aug 142014
 

So I purchased a Surface Pro 3 today from the new Microsoft Store that opened up in Calgary, Alberta today. I purchased the 512GB – i7 version with 8GB of RAM.

The unit is slick, beautiful, and totally has a purpose, however there is one major problem I encountered: overheating!

 

First it sync’ed my apps from my Microsoft Account, upon installing 20 (Metro) apps, the unit overheated and I was presented with the black background screen with a circle and a thermometer icon. The unit had to cool down for a while before it allowed me to power on. I wasn’t even using the device, except 20 “apps” were installing in the background.

 

I put the unit in my server room (air conditioned to 18 degrees), and then proceeded to configure the Surface, install applications, and install all the Windows Updates and firmware updates. Since installing the firmware updates the unit has not overheated, however it’s burning my hand from just ONLY running Microsoft Outlook.

Here is a screenshot of the temperatures when running only Microsoft Outlook.

SurfacePro3-Overheat

This specific unit is too hot to use for me. It’s too hot for me to even hold to just read e-mails, and the sound of the fan racing non-stop (even when idling) is driving me absolutely insane. I’ve decided to return the unit for a refund until it sounds like these issues get resolved.

Is anyone else noticing overheating issues with their i7 version of the Microsoft Surface Pro 3?

UPDATE: I found this thread on Microsoft’s “Answers” forum – http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-surfusingpro/excessively-loud-fan-constant-overheating-during/1efa253a-f7f2-486b-a891-5633738b8532

HPE MSA 2040 Benchmark – Read, Write, and IOPS

 ESXi, HP, iSCSI, Storage, VMware, vSphere  42 Responses »
Jun 072014
 

I’ve had the HPE MSA 2040 setup, configured, and running for about a week now. Thankfully this weekend I had some time to hit some benchmarks. Let’s take a look at the HPE MSA 2040 benchmarks on read, write, and IOPS.

First some info on the setup:

-2 X HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Servers (2 X 10 Core processors each, 128GB RAM each)

-HPE MSA 2040 Dual Controller – Configured for iSCSI

-HPE MSA 2040 is equipped with 24 X 900GB SAS Dual Port Enterprise Drives

-Each host is directly attached via 2 X 10Gb DAC cables (Each server has 1 DAC cable going to controller A, and Each server has 1 DAC cable going to controller B)

-2 vDisks are configured, each owned by a separate controller

-Disks 1-12 configured as RAID 5 owned by Controller A (512K Chunk Size Set)

-Disks 13-24 configured as RAID 5 owned by Controller B (512K Chunk Size Set)

-While round robin is configured, only one optimized path exists (only one path is being used) for each host to the datastore I tested

-Utilized “VMWare I/O Analyzer” (https://labs.vmware.com/flings/io-analyzer) which uses IOMeter for testing

-Running 2 “VMWare I/O Analyzer” VMs as worker processes. Both workers are testing at the same time, testing the same datastore.

Sequential Read Speed:

MSA2040-ReadMax Read: 1480.28MB/sec

Sequential Write Speed:

MSA2040-WriteMax Write: 1313.38MB/sec

See below for IOPS (Max Throughput) testing:

Please note: The MaxIOPS and MaxWriteIOPS workloads were used. These workloads don’t have any randomness, so I’m assuming the cache module answered all the I/O requests, however I could be wrong. Tests were run for 120 seconds. What this means is that this is more of a test of what the controller is capable of handling itself over a single 10Gb link from the controller to the host.

IOPS Read Testing:

MSA2040-MaxIOPSMax Read IOPS: 70679.91IOPS

IOPS Write Testing:

MSA2040-WriteOPSMax Write IOPS: 29452.35IOPS

PLEASE NOTE:

-These benchmarks were done by 2 seperate worker processes (1 running on each ESXi host) accessing the same datastore.

-I was running a VMWare vDP replication in the background (My bad, I know…).

-Sum is combined throughput of both hosts, Average is per host throughput.

Conclusion:

Holy crap this is fast! I’m betting the speed limit I’m hitting is the 10Gb interface. I need to get some more paths setup to the SAN!

Cheers

VMWare vSphere iSCSI Port Binding – When to use iSCSI Port Binding, and why!

 ESXi, iSCSI, Storage, VMware, vSphere  60 Responses »
Jun 072014
 
vSphere Logo Image

Over the years I’ve come across numerous posts, blogs, articles, and howto guides that provide information on when to use iSCSI port binding, and they’ve all been wrong! Here, I’ll explain when to use iSCSI Port Binding, and why!

This post and information applies to all versions of VMware vSphere including 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0.

See below for a video version of the blog post:

VMWare vSphere iSCSI Port Binding – When to use iSCSI Port Binding, and why!

What does iSCSI port binding do

iSCSI port binding binds a software iSCSI initiator interface on a ESXi host to a physical vmknic and configures it accordingly to allow multi-pathing (MPIO) in a situation where both vmknics are residing in the same subnet.

In normal circumstances without port binding, if you have multiple vmkernels on the same subnet (mulithomed), the ESXi host would simply choose one and not use both for transmission of packets, traffic, and data. iSCSI port binding forces the iSCSI initiator to use that adapter for both transmission and receiving of iSCSI packets.

In most simple SAN environments, there are two different types of setups/configurations.

  1. Multiple Subnet – Numerous paths to a storage device on a SAN, each path residing on separate subnets. These paths are isolated from each other and usually involve multiple switches.
  2. Single Subnet – Numerous paths to a storage device on a SAN, each path is on the same subnet. These paths usually go through 1-2 switches, with all interfaces on the SAN and the hosts residing on the same subnet.

IT professionals should be aware of the the issues that occur when you have a host that is multi-homed with multiple NICs on the same subnet.

In a normal typical scenario with Windows and Linux, if you have multiple adapters residing on the same subnet you’ll have issues with broadcasts and transmission of packets, and in most cases you have absolutely no control over what communications are initiated over what NIC due to the way the routing table is handled. In most cases all outbound connections will be initiated through the first NIC installed in the system, or whichever one is inside of the primary route in the routing table.

When to use iSCSI port binding

This is where iSCSI Port Binding comes in to play. If you have an ESXi host that has multiple vmk adapters sitting on the same subnet, you can bind the software iSCSI initiators (vmk adapters) to the physical NICs (vmnics). This allows multiple iSCSI connections on multiple NICs residing on the same subnet to transmit and handle the traffic properly.

So the general rule of thumb is:

  • One subnet, iSCSI port binding is the way to go!
  • Two or more subnets (multiple subnets), do not use iSCSI Port Binding! It’s just not needed since all vmknics are residing on different subnets.

Additional Information

Here’s two links to VMWare documentation explaining this in more detail:

For more information on configuring a vSphere Distributed Switch for iSCSI MPIO, click here!

And a final troubleshooting note: If you configure iSCSI Port Binding and notice that one of your interfaces is showing as “Not Used” and the other as “Last Used”, this is most likely due to either a physical cabling/switching issue (where one of the bound interfaces can’t connect to the iSCSI target), or you haven’t configured permissions on your SAN to allow a connection from that IP address.

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