Monthly Archives: May 2011

2011 Memorial Day Camping – Trip and Camping Gear reviews…

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For the past 13 years, I’ve organized a group camping trip on Memorial Day weekend.  For the most recent 5 years or so we’ve also made the camping trip into a celebration and fundraiser for the charity that my wife and I founded (www.ctyl.org).  Every year I look at the available Washington State Parks on the east side of the Cascades for a group site that can accommodate up to 40 people, has a body of water nearby, and generally looks nice.  We go back to sites we like periodically as well.  Prior to 2011, we had camped at the following locations, some of them several times:

  • Alta Lake State Park
  • Lake Wenatchee State Park
  • 25-Mile Creek Campground (on Lake Chelan)
  • Perrygin Lake State Park
  • Lincoln Rock State Park (on Lake Entiat)

This year I decided to try Sun Lakes/Dry Falls State Park near Coulee City and aside from some variable weather that is always a bit of a challenge on Memorial Day Weekend, this location delivered a lot.

Dry Falls

First, the scenery is amazing and the group site, which is on a little hill between the main campground and the RV sites, is situated perfectly to take in the scenery right from your tent or picnic table.  Within walking distance of the campsite, there are miles of trails, a swimming beach, kids play area with climbing toys, a 9-hole golf course (Vic Meyers Golf Course), an 18-hole mini golf course, water balloon battle facility, water skiing, fishing, and paddle boating.  With a short drive (5-30 minutes depending) you can visit Lake Lenore Caves, Dry Falls Visitor Center, Grand Coulee Dam, and several different lakes for more fishing and boating opportunities.  For the 2011 Memorial Day weekend, the weather held to around 65-75 degrees during the day, two short rain periods (30 minutes each) came through, and on Sunday morning from about Midnight till 9am we experience very strong winds (30-40+ MPH) which toppled a tent and a screened shelter, and flattened several other tents.  The rest of the time it was sunny and nice.  At night it was pretty cold so heavy blankets/sleeping bags are a must.  Weather at Sun Lakes is typically very nice during the main part of summer (July/Aug/Sep) with average temps of 85 degrees during the day.

Speaking of winds and tents, I took some pictures of various tents that we had this year and how they were faring during the wind storm.  Most interesting was the two versions of REI Hobitat 6 tents that were next to each other.

Old REI Hobitat 6 in front, new version of Hobitat 6 behind

The older version (closest to camera) could not handle the wind even with all of the guy wires staked out for support.  The newer version held up just fine without any support lines.  Our screened shelter started to fall apart because we hadn’t properly secured it but once we staked down the support wires it stood its ground.  Our new, huge, tent held up great in the wind, except for the ground stakes that were included.  We had to switch to different ground stakes which worked much better.

Coleman WeatherMaster 10 16x8 3-Room Tent (Model # 2000008678)

This Coleman WeatherMaster 10 is a special Costco Only version based on the WeatherMaster 6 I believe.  The 6 has a screened porch while this Costco model had solid nylon to close the screens making the porch into a 3rd room.  It’s 16×10 feet in size and has near vertical walls on all 4 sides.  The hinged door is way more handy than you’d think it would be and it barely moved in the strong winds.  It’s huge inside with room for porta-crib, dog bed, bags and 2 queen air mattresses without trying very hard.  There were no rain leaks and it was easy to set up.  However it’s quite heavy to pack (about 50lbs) and it takes 20 minutes to assemble.  If you think you will see any wind, scrap the included tent stakes and buy the Coleman 9 inch ABS plastic stakes which are about $3 for 6.  You’ll need 22 ground stakes for this tent with the rain fly.  Make sure to bring a hammer or mallet and sink the ground stakes as far down into the ground as possible and at a slight angle (top of stake pointing away from the tent).

Coleman Tent Stakes ABS 9" (Model # 2000003425)

One thing to note… this WeatherMaster 10 tent is not the same one that Coleman lists on their website or that you’d find if you Google’d for it and based on the reviews I’ve read of that tent it’s a good thing.  The normal WM10 has angled walls on the ends that make it hard to stand up near the ends; the Costco version has much more standing room.  Costco sells this tent for $143 right now which is a screamin deal.

Several years ago I picked up a Coleman Tent Light which mounts to the inside wall or ceiling of the tent using a magnet with a metal plate on the outside.  It has been really handy and works with pretty much any tent.

Coleman Tent Light (Model# 2000000032)

Last year, we also replaced our leaking air bed with the queen sized Coleman Quickbed.  There are several versions of this with varying thicknesses and some with built-in speakers for MP3 players, others with attached carrying bags.  Regardless of which one you choose, the primary reason thing you need to look for is the built-in battery powered air pump.  You might think that you can use any pump to blow up your air mattress, and you’d be right, but having one built-in to the mattress provides several benefits.

  1. You don’t need to remember where you put your pump when you want to use the air mattress.
  2. You have a valid excuse for not letting other people borrow your air pump.
  3. In the middle of the night, when the air temperature has dropped and the air mattress pressure has dropped as a result of the denser air, you can reach over your pillow, turn a knob on the mattress, and pump it right back up without leaving your sleeping bag.

This air bed is one of the best things we’ve ever purchased for camping in my opinion.

Coleman Quickbed with MP3 Speakers and Built-In 4D Pump Queen

This year my wife has been experimenting and blogging about make-ahead cooking and she decided to apply it to camping.  So instead of bringing raw ingredients and preparing everything at the campsite, all of our meals were prepared ahead of time in various ways, some cooked and frozen, others chopped and ready for cooking, etc.  This made meal time quicker, easier, and tastier and also made clean up easier.  To cook the food we brought the usual two-burner propane stove (mine is an Edmund Hillary brand I’ve had for many years) and a griddle that fits perfectly on the stove.  For cookware we brought our Magma Nestable Non-Stick Stainless Steel set.  We originally bought this set for our boat and realized its size makes it perfect for these types of camping trips.  The set is definitely not light enough to pack in a backpack, but otherwise it’s awesome.  It cleans up easy and has pretty much every type of stove top pot/pan you need.  You can get this set at many marine supply stores or online at Amazon which has it for just about $200.

Magma Nestable Non-Stick Stainless Steel Cookware (10 piece)

While picking up our tent at Costco, we also noticed the Coleman All-in-One Cooking system and decided to buy it.  It’s a stove that can also be made into a grill or griddle and it comes with a stock pot that acts like a slow cooker.  It’s actually a pretty nice setup and Costco’s price can’t be beat.  We used all the modes and it worked quite well with one exception.  The slow cooker was a tad too hot even when the burner was on low so our chili kept boiling a little when we wanted it to just stay warm.  Other than that, a pretty sweet kit.  The kit includes the Coleman Insta-Start stove plus accessories that are normally optional but the kit’s price is lower.  It appears that it is only available as a complete kit at Costco, Sams Club, and Camping World and Costco’s price was $99.

Coleman All-In-One Cooking System (Model # 2000003609)

Another Costco purchase was the pack of three LED Flashlights.  They are TechLite Lumen Master flashlights with 150 lumens of output and run on 3 AAA batteries.  Online the price seems to be about $30 for the set of 3 but Costco had them for $19.99.  These are the brightest flashlights I’ve used, LED or not, period.  Totally worth the money and they are rugged aluminum and fit in your pocket.

TechLite Lumen Master CREE LED

Well, that wraps up this post.  I hope this is helpful to anyone looking for some camping ideas.

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Find your busiest LUNs Fast with Unisphere Analyzer Search

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One of the features that has been added to Analyzer (Navisphere and Unisphere) in recent versions is the ability to search for specific LUNs based on criteria.  This feature is actually pretty powerful because the criteria itself is pretty flexible.  For example, you can search for all LUNs attached to a specific host, or with a specific set of characters in the LUN name.  In addition you can search against performance metrics like Throughput, Response Time, or LUN Utilization.  This is where it gets interesting because you can look for poorly performing LUNs really quickly.  In the following example, I am going to build a search that looks for LUNs that have EX in the name (since all of my Exchange server LUNs have EX in the name) that ALSO have high LUN utilization for several polling intervals.

Once you’ve launched Analyzer and opened an Archive, click on the binocular icon in the tool bar to bring up the search dialog. 

You can choose a predefined search (a search you previously created and saved) or a new Object Based Query.  In this example we are going to build a new query so select “Object Based Query” and choose All LUNs in the drop down box.  If you wanted, you could narrow down the search to just Pool Based LUNs, just MetaLUNs, or Component LUNs, etc.)

Next we’ll define the LUN criteria by selecting the Name property, choosing Contains, and entering the “EX” value.  This will filter the search to only those LUNs that have EX in the name.  Finally we’ll set a threshold.  In this example, I’m looking for LUNs that have a LUN Utilization value over greater than 90% for at least 10 polling samples.  I could add more LUN criteria and/or more thresholds to further narrow down the results with AND or OR combinations.

Optionally, you can save the query so that it will be listed in the “Predefined Query” list in the future.  Click Search and set or edit the name of the search.

After clicking OK, Analyzer will create a new tab and populate the results of the search.  Once the search is complete you can graph metrics for the LUNs like normal.  Here I’ve selected Utilization to show why this LUN matched the search criteria — note the high utilization between 2am and 7am.

You can get much more granular with your searches if you are looking for something specific, or use metrics like Response Time to look for poorly performing LUNs attached to a specific server.  It’s pretty flexible.  I started using the search feature recently and thought others might be interested in it.  Try it out and let me know what you think.

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Performance Analysis for Clariion and VNX – Part 5 (FASTCache)

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<< Back to Part 4 — Part 5 — Go to Part 6 >>

Sorry for the delay on this next post..  Between EMC World and my 9 month old, it’s been a battle for time…

Okay, so you have an EMC Unified storage system (Clariion, Celerra, or VNX) with FASTCache and you’re wondering how FASTCache is helping you.  Today I’m going to walk you through how to tease FASTCache performance data out of Analyzer.

I’m assuming you already have Analyzer launched and opened a NAR archive.  One thing to understand about Analyzer stats as they relate to FASTCache, is that stats are gathered at the LUN level for traditional RAID Group LUNs, but for Pool based LUNs, the stats are gathered at the pool level.  As a result graphing data for FASTCache differs for the two scenarios.

First we’ll take a look at the overall array performance.  Here we’ll see how much of the write workload is being handled by FASTCache.  In the SP Tab of Analyzer, select both SPs (be sure no LUNs or other objects are selected).  Select Write Throughput (IO/s), and then click the clipboard icon (with I’s and O’s).

Launch Microsoft Excel and paste into the sheet, and then perform the text-to-column change discussed in the previous post if necessary.

Next create a formula in the D column, adding the values for both SPs into a single total.  We’re not going to graph it quite yet though.

Back in Analyzer, deselect the two SPs, switch to the Storage Pool Tab, right-click on the array and choose Select All -> LUNs, then Select All -> Pools.

Click on a RAID Group LUN or Pool in the tree, it doesn’t matter which one, deselect Write Throughput (IO/s) and select FAST Cache Write Hits/s.  In a moment, you’ll end up with a graph like this.

Click the clipboard icon again to copy this data and paste it into a new sheet of the same workbook in Excel.  Insert a blank column between column A and B, then create a formula to add the values from column B through ZZ (ie: =SUM(C2:ZZ2).

Then copy that formula and paste into every row of column B.  This column will be our Total FAST Cache Write Hits for the whole array.  Finally, click the header for Column B to select it, then copy (CTRL-C).  Back to the first sheet — Paste the “Values” (123 Icon) into Column E.

Now that we have the Total Write IOPS and Total FAST Cache Write Hits in adjacent columns of the same worksheet, we can graph them together.  Select both columns (D and E in my example), click Insert, and choose 2D Area Chart.  You’ll get a nice little graph that looks something like the following.

Since it’s a 2D Area Chart, and not a stacked graph, the FASTCache Write IOPS are layered over the Total Write IOPS such that visually it shows the portion of total IOPS handled by FASTCache.  Follow this same process again for Read Throughput and FASTCache Read Hits.  Furthur manipulation in Excel will allow you to look at total IOPS (read and write) or drill down to individual Pools or RAID Group LUNs.

Another thing to note when looking at FASTCache stats…  FAST Cache Misses are IOPS that were not handled by FASTCache, but they may still have been handled by SP Cache.  So in order to get a feel for how many read IOs are actually hitting the disks, you’d actually want to subtract SP Read Cache Hits and Total FASTCache Read Hits (calculated similar to the above example) from SP Read Throughput.  This is similar for Write Cache Misses as well.

I hope this helps you better understand your FASTCache workload.  I’ll be working on FASTVP next, which is quite a bit more involved.

<< Back to Part 4 — Part 5 — Go to Part 6 >>

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EMCWorld 2011 Announcements

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After flying into Las Vegas this morning, checking in to the Cosmopolitan Hotel with 2000+ other EMCer’s, and taking the bus to the Venetian, I’m finally settling in a bit.  I watched Pat Gelsinger’s keynote via recorded video on Facebook.com/EMCCorp to get caught up on what I’ve missed so far and there was more in there than I expected.

Buried in the hour long keynote about EMC’s portfolio and how it aligns with Big Data and Cloud Computing were several important announcements.

  1. Atmos 2.0 – Improved Performance, Compatibility with Amazon S3, and a Windows native client called GeoDrive.   Atmos already offered a client for Redhat Linux which joined the Redhat client into the Atmos Cloud for direct access to objects/files.  GeoDrive provides native file access to the Atmos cloud for Windows clients.  This is particularly useful for supporting legacy applications that have not (or cannot) be modified to use the Atmos RESTful API.
  2. Isilon NL108 – The new NearLine nodes contain 108TB of disk space in each node, and this increase in node capacity has similarly increased the maximum filesystem size of an Isilon cluster from 10PB to 15PB (In a SINGLE filesystem..  And yes, that’s PetaBytes).
  3. Project Lightning – PCIe based FLASH caching adapters for Servers.  Intended to work in conjunction with FASTVP to cache data at the server and possibly distributed across servers.
  4. EMC Hadoop (aka Greenplum HD) – EMC supplied and supported Hadoop distribution which can be acquired as software or as an appliance, similar to Greenplum.     

Lot’s more to come.  Chuck Hollis just sat down here so it’s time to socialize..

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