November 2011 - TBL Networks

Mobile Apps For Which I Am Thankful

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Steve Glissman

Thanksgiving means many things to me. Turkey. Family. Stuffing. Pie. More Stuffing. Football. Napping (also stuffing).

In addition, Thanksgiving marks the time to remember the things for which you are thankful. On this day, I celebrate the mobile applications that make my life better.

Flashlight by Latter-Day Apps (Free)

With all the things that a smartphone can do, it is important to not forget the simple things. Case in point, this flashlight application, which allows you to use your phone’s camera flash as a flashlight. As a father of a two-year old, this application has increased my proficiency at quietly moving through the house, while still providing me access to crucial applications for business like …

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center By Cisco (Free)

With Cisco’s WebEx application, you can take your WebEx with you wherever you are. You can host meetings and presentations, or just attend them if you are out of the office, with a click of a button. This application is if you often travel by car, but still need to attend meetings.

Nike+ GPS By Nike, Inc. ($1.99)

I recently downloaded this application in anticipation of my holiday binge eating. Nike+GPS uses your smartphone’s GPS capability to help you keep track of distance and time. Unlike other applications that I have used, this one does not lock up. This application easily integrates with your music playlists, and also keeps your history so you can chart your progress.

Cisco Mobile By Cisco (Free)

Cisco Mobile allows you to take your office phone with you, without the downsides (lost voicemails, sending calls from your cell phone number) that come with using just call forwarding. This application allows you to achieve single number reachability – the ability place and receive calls using your work number only. Also, you can use the Wi-Fi feature to make calls without using your mobile minutes.

ooTunes Radio By Oogli LLC ($4.99)

ooTunes allows you to listen to most radio stations across the US from your smartphone. You can search for stations by location, format or name. I find this application a great alternative to the iHeartRadio application, which limits you to Clear Channel stations and requires to you use your Facebook account. ooTunes also provides you the ability make recordings, and to integrate your Last.fm account.

Papa John’s Pizza by Papa John’s International Inc. (Free)

Turkey. Family. Stuffing. Pie. More Stuffing. Football. Napping (also stuffing). At a certain point (or as I call it, Friday), you have to eat something else. This applications allows you to break up the monotony of turkey with the power of pizza.

Stretched Clusters: Use Cases and Challenges Part I – HA

Posted on November 14, 2011February 11, 2019 by admin

I have been hearing a lot of interest from my clients lately about stretched vSphere clusters. I can certainly see the appeal from a simplicity standpoint. At least on the surface. Let’s take a look at the perceived benefits, risks, and the reality of stretched vSphere clusters today.

First, let’s define what I mean by a stretched vSphere cluster. I am talking about a vSphere (HA / DRS) cluster where some hosts exist in one physical datacenter and some hosts exist in another physical datacenter. These datacenters can be geographically separated or even on the same campus. Some of the challenges will be the same regardless of the geographic location.

To keep things simple, let’s look at a scenario where the cluster is stretched across two different datacenters on the same campus. This is a scenario that I see attempted quite often.

This cluster is stretched across two datacenters. For this example let’s assume that each datacenter has an IP-based storage array that is accessible to all the hosts in the cluster and the link between the two datacenters is Layer 2. This means that all of the hosts in the cluster are Layer 2 adjacent. At first glance, this configuration may be desirable because of its perceived elegance and simplicity. Let’s take a look at the perceived functionality.

If either datacenter has a failure, the VM’s should be restarted on the other datacenter’s hosts via High Availability (HA).
No need for manual intervention or something like Site Recovery Manager

Unfortunately, perceived functionality and actual functionality differ in this scenario. Let’s take a look at an HA failover scenario from a storage perspective first.

If virtual machines failed over from hosts in one datacenter to hosts in another datacenter, the storage will still be accessed from the originating datacenter.
This will cause storage that is not local to the datacenter to be accessed by hosts that are local to the datacenter as shown in the diagram below.

This situation is not ideal in most cases. Especially if the datacenter is completely isolated. Then the storage cannot be accessed anyway. Let’s take a look at what happens when one datacenter loses communication with the other datacenter, but not with the datacenter’s local hosts. This is depicted in the diagram below.

Prior to vSphere 5.0, if the link between the datacenters went down or some other communication disruption happened at this location in the network, each set of hosts would think that the others were down. This is a problem because each datacenter would attempt to bring the other datacenter’s virtual machines up. This is known as a split-brain scenario.
As of vSphere 5.0, each datacenter would create its own Network Partition from an HA perspective and proceed to operate as two independent clusters (although with some limitations) until connectivity was restored between the datacenters.
However, this scenario is still not ideal due to the storage access.

So what can be done? Well, beyond VM to Host affinity rules, if the sites are truly to be active / standby (with the standby site perhaps running lower priority VM’s), the cluster should be split into two different clusters. Perhaps even different vCenter instances (one for each site) if Site Recovery Manager (SRM) will be used to automate the failover process. If there is a use case for a single cluster, then external technology needs to be used. Specifically, the storage access problem can be addressed by using a technology like VPlex from EMC. In short, VPlex allows one to have a distributed (across two datacenters) virtual volume that can be used for a datastore in the vSphere cluster. This is depicted in the diagram below.

A detailed explanation of VPlex is beyond the scope of this post. At a high level, the distributed volume can be accessed by all the hosts in the stretched cluster. VPlex is capable of keeping track of which virtual machines should be running on the local storage that backs the distributed virtual volume. In the case of a complete site failure, VPlex can determine that the virtual machines should be restarted on the underlying storage that is local to the other datacenter’s hosts.

Technology is bringing us closer to location aware clusters. However, we are not quite there yet for a number of use cases as external equipment and functionality tradeoffs need to be considered. If you have the technology and can live with the functionality tradeoffs, then stretched clusters may work for your infrastructure. The simple design choice for many continues to be separate clusters.

TBL Featured in Times-Dispatch

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Alan Sears

The recent accolades and achievements of TBL Networks caught the eye of the business editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who assigned special correspondent Joan Tupponce to the story.

Joan contributes the Trade Names column to the Metro Business section on Mondays of the Richmond newspaper. The article on TBL, entitled “TBL Networks a bright light in IT field” was published in this morning’s edition.

The full text may be found on the periodical’s website at http://www2.timesdispatch.com/business/2011/nov/07/tdmbiz11-tbl-networks-focuses-on-it-solutions-for–ar-1439607/.

Social Media and Mobility: The New Workplace Currency

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Steve Glissman

Cisco recently released their 2011 Connected World Technology Report. In this report, Cisco used college students and recently employed college graduates as their sample group to gauge the importance of technology to their lives. TBL President Alan Sears discussed the findings regarding the importance of the Internet to this group. When I read the report, I was stuck by the value that the respondents placed on social media and mobile devices.

Two-thirds of college students will ask about social media policies during interviews.
56% will not accept a job from a company that bans social media, or they will circumvent the policy.
50% would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
At least one in four said the absence of remote access would influence their job decisions, such as leaving companies sooner rather than later, slacking off, or declining job offers outright.
Three out of 10 feel that once they begin working, it will be their right- more than a privilege -to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

My initial thought was to see if Cisco planned on polling these same people in 10 years when they have 2.3 kids, a minivan and mortgage to see if they changed their position on social media access versus higher pay. However, after my old man rage subsided, I wrote down some productive thoughts based on these findings.

Embrace social media

While it will continue to evolve, social media is here to stay. Companies need to embrace it in a manner that allows employees to use it, but with guidelines that maintain professionalism and brand integrity.

At TBL Networks, we embrace social media via blogs (like the one you are reading right now), in addition to using various channels like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. However, if your company is not ready to embrace social media externally, you can reap the benefits of social media by using it internally.

Cisco Quad is a tool developed to combine the four cornerstones of the modern workforce: social, mobile, visual, and virtual. With Cisco Quad, your employees can collaborate internally, in a secure yet mobile environment. Cisco Quad comes with Cisco Enterprise Policy Manager, which help you enforce security and compliance while allowing mobility and flexibility in your collaboration environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_DHOqcavIo

Foster SECURE mobility

Remember when mobility meant that you had a laptop? Perhaps even more so than social media, mobility is driving the changes in technology. Smartphones and tablets empower your employees to work more effectively and efficiently when away from the office. However, unlike times past when business first provided employees with new technology, odds are that your employees are going to have, and also want to use, their own tablets and smartphones before you provide these devices. The “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) trend raises mainly new issues for employers, with security challenges at the forefront.

To deal with issues brought forth by BYOD, Cisco has introduced Cisco SecureX architecture. Cisco SecureX enforces security policies across the entire distributed network, not just at a single point in the data stream. Also, according to this video, this service also comes your own referee!

While seeing the demands of the younger generation might release your inner Judge Smails, the fact is that social media and mobility are driving changes in technology. However, the good news is that you get to choose the vehicle.