A discussion of the Cisco blade switch offerings for the Dell PowerEdge M1000E blade chassis continues previous discussions on blade topics, including using the Dell management tools and solutions to bulk up Dell blade deployment, how to leverage the management tools to deploy large quantities of blades, and what the product engineers and product marketing managers have to say about the latest editions to the Dell blade portfolio: Dell PowerEdge M805 and PowerEdge M905 blades.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Previous Chat Sessions on Blade Topics

• 06-24-08 : Flexible Blades Management Features - Mike Roberts, Armando Acosta, and Chad Fenner
  
• 06-17-08 : Architecting Blade Management - Scott Hanson
• 06-10-08 : Managing Blades - Scott Hanson
• 07-22-08 : Blade FlexAddress - Samit Ashdhir and Scott Hanson
• 09-09-08 : Bulking Up Dell Blades - Scott Hanson and Armando Acosta
  
• 09-16-08 : Dell M805 and M9905 Blades - Roger Foreman and Armando Acosta
  

Cisco Dell M1000E Switch Solutions Information Portal

Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH	Hello life
lifeflakes	Hey Scott
lifeflakes	Always wanted to attend these chat sessions, but due to varied time zone was unavailable to do so
DELL-ScottH	What time zone/country are you in ? We don't officially start for another 40 minutes
lifeflakes	Ha, I know, I'm from Asia-pacific (India), and it's almost going to be 1 Am out here
DELL-ScottH	Ooofffa... better get some Mt Dew in your system :-)
lifeflakes	:)
DELL-ScottH	Are you with Dell or a customer ?
lifeflakes	With Dell - Tsr
DELL-ScottH	Cool, how long have you been on the TechCenter? Things that we could do better or add?
lifeflakes	I have been now I guess six months on it, and yeah it's been quite informative; went through the chat transcripts and found great blogs from those; like the Chuck's blog on EMC products--quite informative, and then some whitepapers on iSCSI, FlexAddress… those were very useful--comes in handy!
lifeflakes	I'm not sure about the time line; could be lesser than that
DELL-ScottH	Yeah nuggets everywhere, sometimes hard to find them, but worth digging
lifeflakes	Yeah true
lifeflakes	Would you also be doing a competitive analysis anytime on these chats?
DELL-ScottH	Just sent you a badge on the site :-)
DELL-ScottH	Todd just did a whitepaper against the Dl585 and R900
lifeflakes	Ok
DELL-ScottH	Looks like he hasn't posted it yet
lifeflakes	Out here the M1000e is surely picking up, and customers are by-passing the rack orientation and moving to modular if it's anything more than five servers or so... and with that you have HP, Sun, IBM all on the bus
DELL-ScottH	Should be through legal soon
lifeflakes	But our toughest competition is from HP
DELL-ScottH	Yes blades seem to be picking up nicely, and our solution is much better now
lifeflakes	Yes they are awesome
DELL-ScottH	Yeah, seems that IBM lost all the lead they had in the beginning
lifeflakes	Yeah, they did
DELL-ScottH	Our FlexAddress solution is so much easier to use than HP’s equivalent solution... you see the demos I did?
lifeflakes	Nope... did read the whitepaper though
lifeflakes	Will check them now
lifeflakes	You talking against virtual connect right?
lifeflakes	And our's is so much more economical!
DELL-ScottH	http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/7-17-08+blade+flexaddress+demo+-+comments
DELL-ScottH	Yeah, cheaper, easier, quicker
DELL-ScottH	No switch dependencies
DELL-ScottH	So what is keeping you up at 1 am?
lifeflakes	Just surfing the Web; was actually looking at how the financial markets are doing :)
DELL-ScottH	uggh, don't remind me :-)
lifeflakes	Ha I know
DELL-ScottH	I loaded up on financials a few months ago, thinking it was the bottom :-( ... I have great timing
lifeflakes	I don't know whether there is a Murphy's Law on this one
lifeflakes	:)
DELL-ScottH	Should be in the clear in a few years, luckily I can wait it out
lifeflakes	How are the blades getting adopted for virtualization.... quite good I suppose
DELL-ScottH	Yes, was just out at VMworld and was one of the big attractions in the booth
lifeflakes	Yes, it would get bullish sooner or later
DELL-ScottH	M905 is quite a blade with lots of I/O and memory slots, great for virtualization
lifeflakes	But then you don't face issues on the number of NICs
lifeflakes	Yes that’s true
lifeflakes	Good to have more NICs right – one NIC completely dedicated for Vmotion
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DELL-ScottH	Hey Todd
DELL-ToddM	Hello!
DELL-ToddM	What's up flakes?
lifeflakes	And I suppose we are the only blades to be featured in the Vmark benchmark on the 8 core space
lifeflakes	Nothing much just being an owl tonight
DELL-ScottH	Check the history, some good talk ... Tsr from India... jacked up on Mt Dew :-)
DELL-ToddM	Is it the code Red Mt Dew?
DELL-ScottH	Brb
lifeflakes	So Todd are you from the Pg
DELL-ToddM	Formerly of Pg - I am currently in the Marketing org - I consider myself to be Technical Marketing
DELL-ToddM	Scott and I are on the same team
DELL-ToddM	Where did the name lifeflakes come from?
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lifeflakes	Ha the browser hung
lifeflakes	And it was the brand new chrome
lifeflakes	:)
lifeflakes	Technical marketing that's good
lifeflakes	We really did make an impact with our power consumption report
lifeflakes	The out of the box comparison
lifeflakes	Good documents that always comes in handy
DELL-ToddM	The whitepaper that Scott mentioned earlier is being posted as we speak
DELL-ToddM	I will have a blog entry up in a day or so announcing it
lifeflakes	What's the link to your blog?
DELL-ToddM	http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/virtualization+frontier
DELL-ToddM	Right-click to avoid exiting chat session
lifeflakes	Todd, how is the VDI solution out there?
DELL-ToddM	VDI was talked about a lot at VMworld
lifeflakes	Is it easily taken, or does it require lot of presentation and pushing?
DELL-ToddM	It seems to be well accepted by some -- where it is a good fit -- but the time to deployment is longer
DELL-ToddM	Because it is new
lifeflakes	Yes, and the licensing cost too is not very digestible for a customer adapting to virtual infrastructure
DELL-ToddM	I have seen some compelling designs with blade chassis to support VDI
DELL-ScottH	I'm back... anyone care? :-)
DELL-ToddM	It's Scott - The Blades Expert
DELL-ToddM	I got a message from Tattooman1952 that he would be here at 2:45.....
lifeflakes	This chat is right after lunch time isn't it?
DELL-ScottH	Depends on how long a lunch you take ;-)
DELL-ToddM	Well, the way that Scott takes lunches, you could say that it is right after lunch time :)
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DELL-ScottH	Ha - trying to digest the bbq from salt lick
DELL-ToddM	It's really in the middle of the afternoon - halfway between lunch and quitting time for most
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DELL-ScottH	Today is the day we quit?
DELL-ScottH	Hello Andy and Roger
DELL-ToddM	Welcome Roger -- the other blades expert
DELL_AndyF	Good evening
DELL-ToddM	We are waiting for others to join -- usually we don't get most people into the chat room until 5 or 10 after
DELL-ToddM	Andy - Are you in Europe? Is it night already?
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lifeflakes	Ok next time I need to use a Dell handle to my ID
DELL-ToddM	Bruce - Good to see you!
lifeflakes	Just read that on the chat rules now!
DELL-ScottH	Hello Bruce
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Dell-Bruce	Hi!
DELL-ScottH	Hello Tony
Dell-Tony_A	Hello everyone.
DELL-ToddM	Bruce is the real Blades Switch Expert!
Dell-Tony_A	I am here just to back him up on the EqualLogic side. :)
DELL_AndyF	It's 10 pm, I'm in Geneva at the moment, as staying in hotels is boring; I'm always looking forward for a chat ;-)
DELL-ToddM	Lifeflakes is in India and it is really late for him!
lifeflakes	It's half past 1 in the morning out here
DELL-ScottH	Cry me a river about being in Geneva :-)
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lifeflakes	This is the part 3 right
lifeflakes	Where are the transcripts for the other 2 parts, not able to find them on the site
DELL-ScottH	Ok, let’s kick it off...
DELL-ScottH	The previous transcripts are here ...
DELL-ScottH	http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/chat+topics+and+transcripts
DELL-ScottH	Welcome Jacke
DELL-ScottH	Jake, I mean
DELL-ToddM	Hi Jake
Jake	Hello
DELL-ScottH	This weeks focus is on network switches in the blade chassis
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DELL-ScottH	Bruce is joining us from the Dell PowerConnect side of the house and can address questions from that solution area
DELL-ScottH	We also welcome any questions around the previous blade topics, and will dive off into any direction that is interesting
DELL-ScottH	We also have Tony joining us from the EqualLogic side of the house, if that comes up
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DELL-ToddM	Welcome resadeealvord and jsanghera!
DELL-ToddM	Perfect timing -- just getting started
DELL-ScottH	Bruce, please introduce yourself to get things started, and everyone please feel free to jump in at anytime, we can sort out the multiple conversations as we go
jsanghera	Hi there
DELL-ScottH	FYI, for newcomers use "action"... recent room history to catch up... and right-click on any Web links, or you'll get kicked from the chat ;-)
DELL-ScottH	Bruce, are you multitasking?
Dell-Bruce	Yep
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Dell-Bruce	I am a product engineer in the Dell PowerConnect group. I was lead engineer for the M6220 blades server switch.
Dell-Bruce	You have 100% of my attention now.
DELL-ScottH	:-)
DELL-ToddM	I think we could probably get by with 50% :)
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DELL-ScottH	One of the questions I've received from customers is around bandwidth... how is the latency and blocking issues with full chassis and 6 network switches?
Dell-Bruce	I usually work at 200%, so we are good.
Dell-Bruce	Depends on your configuration.
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Dell-Bruce	If you have 4 10GE ports coming out of each of the switches, then you have 16 Gig coming in on the server side and 40 Gig exiting the switch.
Dell-Bruce	There is more to the equation than that, but you do not have to be oversubscribed.
DELL-ToddM	The M6220 is a PowerConnect switch that is specific to the M1000e chassis online docs: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/pcm6220/en/index.htm
DELL-ScottH	It’s a ton of bandwidth, and I think most customers will have a tough time finding applications that can fill the pipe... except for resa who is doing HPC workloads
lifeflakes_	The FC switches are 16 internal and 8 external right?
Jake	We just bought an M1000e chassis, and I need some help understanding how things connect.
Jake	We have 4 modules in the back for Ethernet connections.
Jake	Each with 4 jacks.
Jake	Do those map to specific blades?
Jake	If so, how?
DELL-ScottH	Blade cookbook is great place to start: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/10g+blades+cookbook
resadeealvord	FWIW, on the HPC side of things, we are running 2 10gbe ports per 16 blades into a Force 10 C300 switch, and we obtained 65% of peak from Mplinpack benchmark ... way better than we have ever received with standard gigabit Ethernet
Dell-Bruce	The external ports on the M6220 do not map to blades (unless you need them to).
DELL-ToddM	There is a picture of the M6220 on page 28 of the user guide: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/pcm6220/en/ug/pdf/ug_en.pdf
DELL-ToddM	The M6220 is a switch, with internal ports, that all of the blades "connect" to; it has the external port that you see on the back
DELL-ScottH	Jake, did the cookbook help you understand the mappings of switch slots to blades?
DELL_AndyF	Jake, think of the switches as standard 20-port switch; 16 ports connect to each of the blades, 4 ports go to the outside
lifeflakes_	Are the M6220 iSCSI optimized as the Pc 5424 is?
Dell-Bruce	M6220 does not have the iSCSI optimization feature that the 5424 has.
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Dell-Tony_A	@lifeflakes: This does not necessarily mean that general iSCSI will not work, just that there are no optimization settings. Also, just a reminder that M6220 is not currently supported for EqualLogic SAN infrastructures. We are working on this now, but realize that this switch was designed and released before we acquired EqualLogic.
lifeflakes_	So wouldn't I be better giving a redundant pass-through and a Pc5424 or Pc5448 to connect to Md3000i or EqualLogic?
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DELL-ToddM	Note – Right-click on links to avoid exiting the chat session
Dell-Tony_A	For EqualLogic, that or using the Cbs3130 switches to attach to external switches would be the correct solution.
DELL-ToddM	Tony - They haven't been validated? Or they are not supported?
DELL-ToddM	What about Cisco switches for M1000e and iSCSI?
Jake	Would it be beneficial to have all 4 external connections plugged into my network? Would this provide more bandwidth, or just redundant connections?
Dell-Tony_A	Bruce, you want to answer that related to 6220?
Dell-Tony_A	Todd,
Dell-Tony_A	They have not been validated.
Dell-Tony_A	We are currently working on validation right now.
Dell-Bruce	Jake: You can configure multiple ports to be combined into a single logical link. These are called Lags, port channels, or Etherchannels. They give you redundancy and increased bandwidth.
Jake	Is there a better document for best practices scenarios for configurations? I am a newbie to the Blade environment and want to make sure I am setting things up right to begin with.
Jake	The cookbook gave great diagrams, but not really a "this is how it should be done" or “this is how it works”
Dell-Tony_A	6220 works fine with Md3000i (as far as I know ;-) ), but will not be supported with EqualLogic until validation is completed. Today, recommendations are to use the pass-through to external switches or to use the Cisco Cbs3130 laged to external switches.
DELL-ScottH	@jake - hate to give the "it depends" answer, but it really does... browse through what we have here -- http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/blades -- and then start a thread on the site with your applications and what you are trying to accomplish and we can mashup on it with other engineers and customers as well
Jake	That's cool, just looking for clarification. Thanks for the link.
lifeflakes_	Any idea as to when the 8 gbps FC cards and 10 gig HBA cards on the blades would be ready to ship
DELL-ScottH	@jake, so what are you going to run on the blades?
DELL-ToddM	Jake - Are you doing iSCSI storage? (It looks like we just injected that into the conversation looking back at things.)
DELL-ToddM	lifeflakes - We can't comment on future products that haven't been released or announced in this public forum
DELL-ScottH	In other words, send Todd an e-mail
lifeflakes_	Ok
Jake	We purchase 8 blades, Dual Quads with 16Gb memory. First is running SQL Server 2005, second is running the Application server to go with the first DB. They are Pinnacle Gradebook for schools. The third will be a SQL server running multiple small DBs. The last three are to be ESX servers. The middle two will turn out to be an Exchange front and back-end servers.
DELL-ScottH	What's the storage on the backend?
Jake	All is connected with FC to SAN through the two brocade switches.
DELL-ToddM	:)
Jake	Likely migrating to Exchange 2007, but right now running Exchange 2003
Jake	On a separate physical server
DELL_AndyF	Complete data center in one chassis :-) I'm loving it
Jake	Only four servers powered on right now.
Jake	Two SQL, one Web/app, and first ESX server with 0 VMs... ::tongue
DELL-ScottH	One of our former teammates is focused on education right now... Dave Jaffe, he's writing some papers on... Todd what is that stuff he works on?
DELL-ToddM	Banner
DELL-ScottH	0 VMs!
DELL-ScottH	So is Banner similar to Pinnacle Gradebook?
DELL-ScottH	He does a lot of sizings so might be good to get in touch with him
DELL-ToddM	I think that the network configuration may be a little bit easier, since storage is on FC
Jake	Just installed ESX last Tuesday... been put on hold for implementation until a few more people go over my plan.
DELL-ScottH	Todd, is his paper on a site?
DELL-ToddM	You will want to think about the networking for the ESX servers
DELL-ScottH	Or just e-mail him at dave_jaffe@dell.com... Tell him Todd sent you, not me :-)
DELL-ScottH	That's an underscore there
DELL-ToddM	Dave Jaffe Banner whitepaper - http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q08-20080283-suny.pdf
DELL-ScottH	Found this http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q08-20080283-suny.pdf
DELL-ScottH	Pick poke
DELL-ScottH	You owe me a coke
lifeflakes_	Well having mentioned about exchange 2007, I live this component architecture poster that was done by Microsoft and Dell, a real good one: http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/2/0/b20ed7c4-4c29-4e8c-8bce-02f3a7bc0071/exchangeposter.pdf
DELL-ToddM	I wish that Dave had to pay me for the publicity :)
Jake	I think I have it all, as far as hardware, 8 blades, four 6220 switch modules, two 4424 brocades for FC-SAN Connection...
Jake	Now I just need to get it set up right...
DELL-ScottH	oooffaa , what size do you have to print that out to be able to read it?
DELL-ScottH	Awesome chart, I hadn't seen that
Jake	I have a 42" plotter...
DELL-ScottH	Nice
DELL-ToddM	The question with ESX is how many networks do you need for VMs, Vmotion, Service Console, etc.?
Jake	Interesting paper. We are also using Sungard software, but it is Pentamation, AIX based.
Jake	We are also much smaller (14,000 students) and K-12 education
DELL-ToddM	Jake - Why did you decide to go with blades instead of traditional rack servers?
Jake	Consolidation of many older servers into one, environment (cooling), and space
Jake	We had already doubled our data center server room in size.
Jake	We currently have 40 different physical servers.
DELL-ToddM	I agree that having lots in one chassis is much easier to manage and deploy.
DELL-ToddM	More customers that I talk to (even smaller customers) are beginning to use blades.
Jake	We will likely have that down to half by the time we are done: 5-6 racks down to 2-3!
DELL-ScottH	Especially with the new 4-socket blades
DELL-ScottH	We're coming up at the end of the hour ... any other topics of discussion?
lifeflakes_	On the management of the blade chassis…
DELL-ScottH	Jake, please start a thread if you want us to look at your configuration in more depth
Jake	Thanks for the input and the links.
DELL-ToddM	I would like to thank Bruce and Tony for stopping by as the Experts of the Day!
DELL-ScottH	@lifeflakes - you're not tired yet?
DELL-ScottH	Yes, thanks!
Dell-Bruce	Goodbye!
lifeflakes_	Just wanted to know that I can cascade my CMC to manage 4 chassis... but not the iKVM, so I will have to draw connections out to an external KVM to manage right, I mean multiple chassis
lifeflakes_	Yeah probably will take this up some other time
DELL-ScottH	Be sure to join us next week for our VMworld 2008 wrap-up
lifeflakes_	Yes would surely... I think I’m going to be awake from now on, and the culprit is TechCenter :)
DELL-ScottH	KVM has to be connected
DELL-ScottH	To external multiple ports
lifeflakes_	Ok
DELL-ToddM	Later!
DELL-ScottH	Sorry for keeping you up so late. But thanks for joining!
lifeflakes_	Nah, my pleasure
lifeflakes_	See you next time around