@scottalanmiller said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@storageninja said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@openit said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

., does it mean we need to leave these things since we don't have tools? Are these tools really worthy for this size of company? are they necessary?

Considering these tools charge per user (albiet with steeper discounts at scale) I'd argue SaaS solutions make a LOT of this stuff more accessible tha never before because it removes the expensive part (Staff trained with enough time and competence to deploy/manage them)

How many of this specific type are priced this way?

We have Office 365 essentials for email, but no additional tools like spam filter.
Spam filters are licensed per user.

We have general antivirus ESET, but no specialized anti-malware, anti-ransomware, anti.....
Licensed per user

We have firewall, but not additional add on like Outbound filters, etc.....
This I don't get as outbound firewall rules don't charge money, but if you want micro-segmentation per user that's a thing.

We don't have vulnerability scanners, commercial tools to monitor heartbeat of machines and network devices, no opendns kind of service etc...
DNS services can be priced per user, and monitoring like thousand eyes are per poll

@emad-r said in GeekBench Results for Cloud Servers:

Thought about Network testing and came up with this:

That's just a testing of peering.

@pete-s said in GeekBench Results for Cloud Servers:

As you said it might be the best cost performance ratio for cloud deployment.

ehhhhhhh. It's the best cost for selling someone a modernish core for hosting that lacks any real scaling issues, or licensing per core/socket concerns.

@openit said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

., does it mean we need to leave these things since we don't have tools? Are these tools really worthy for this size of company? are they necessary?

Considering these tools charge per user (albiet with steeper discounts at scale) I'd argue SaaS solutions make a LOT of this stuff more accessible tha never before because it removes the expensive part (Staff trained with enough time and competence to deploy/manage them)

@obsolesce said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

Never. I've never, not once, seen anyone use remotely close to the amount of RAM they think they need (who doesn't run multiple VMs). It's always a waste of money when someone wants tens of gigs of RAM... 20 or 30gb plus. Even in the teens.

I have co-workers who might try to build an entire nested openstack or kuberentes environment lab on their laptop, or a full SDDC in a box lab (NSX, nested ESXi hosts with vSAN cluster etc) and get a bit crazy.

@scottalanmiller said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@storageninja said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@scottalanmiller said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

And one key difference, SMBs tend to use homogeneous desktop environments. They "choose" Windows. Enterprises almost never do. They almost always deploy desktops as needed. Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. They don't just force one to everyone. Somewhere, some must, but it's rare.

Work for a 30K man company. I can have our VAR spec out whatever I really feel like and my boss will approve for a computer. Currently using the "standard choice" MacBookPro. When you use MDM API's and agents for management you don't really need to focus so much on a corporate "Image" (which Microsoft has been going away from as the SMB's tend to use it more). Our trusted stuff is behind SSO portals, or VDI generally.

I used to be able to do that at the non-profit with Windows and MacOS, but they wouldn't let me have the Chromebook that I wanted - even though it would have been cheaper and more useful than the Macbook they made me get

Hijack Anyone sees value in an i9 beyond cooking things on my laptop? I do some video render jobs but not enough to care (or I wouldn't just throw at my desktop if they became a chore).
Also is 32GB of RAM seriously useful if you don't run VM's locally?

I've noticed the biggest slowdowns on a Mac are

1. Running the SSD low on space
2. Putting the McAffee Virus with automated scanning of all files on access and no exceptions.

@nerdydad said in Looking for firmware:

Definitely not vSAN. All in one datastore and not expanded.

You have an external RAID Array I hope? This HBA does raw pass through well...

@phlipelder said in HP switches "lifetime" warranty and opinions on 2540:

We run NETGEAR XS712T and XS716T at the entry-level for full RJ45 10GbE and other than a few firmware glitches they've been flawless as the fabric between storage (SOFS) and compute (Hyper-V).

That switch has a very interesting interpretation of PVSTP if memory serves.

For Gigabit the SG500x series Cisco switches (the Cisco/Linksys child) have been solid whether standalone or stacked.

Well the SG series is the old Linksys OS and thankfully doesn't follow the RFC so It looks like these two should just work together.

@pete-s said in HP switches "lifetime" warranty and opinions on 2540:

Life time warranty used to be for the entire life of the product for the original owner but now lifetime means 5 years? How could 5 years be a lifetime? Are they only made to last 5 years? Or does lifetime mean different things depending on what product it is?

Do they issue security patches more than 5 years on the TOR switches? THAT is the lifetime, their commitment to patch issues.

@scottalanmiller said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

And one key difference, SMBs tend to use homogeneous desktop environments. They "choose" Windows. Enterprises almost never do. They almost always deploy desktops as needed. Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. They don't just force one to everyone. Somewhere, some must, but it's rare.

Work for a 30K man company. I can have our VAR spec out whatever I really feel like and my boss will approve for a computer. Currently using the "standard choice" MacBookPro. When you use MDM API's and agents for management you don't really need to focus so much on a corporate "Image" (which Microsoft has been going away from as the SMB's tend to use it more). Our trusted stuff is behind SSO portals, or VDI generally.

@scottalanmiller Microsoft charges more for Online Advanced Threat Protection right?

@nerdydad said in Looking for firmware:

I contacted VMware support and am thinking that they are full of crap. I'm on driver version 12 and supposedly need to be on version 16. I'm about ready to bang my head against the desk.
Thank you for taking my phone call today. We discovered that the ESXi host connecting to the storage with external HBA "Mass storage controller: Avago (LSI Logic) Dell 12Gbps SAS HBA external" The driver for that device is "lsi-msgpt3 version 12.00.02.00-11vmw" on the ESXi host version 6.5 U1. The ESXi 6.5 U2 host that is not able to communicate with storage have driver version "16.00.01.00-1vmw.650.2.50.8294253" I presume that this issue is related to the firmware version on the PCI device that we try to communicate trough. Please contact your hardware vendor in order to get correct combination and update it accordingly to their recommendation. I will keep this case open and wait for your update as agreed.

Why do you think they are full of crap. Ancient drivers can do really weird stuff with firmware versions they were never tested with. The External HBA in general is a crazy rarely used device and historically has fun bugs. If you don't like what they said call Dell...
I promise you LSI/Broadcom will ignore your support requests if it's a Dell part.

@pete-s said in Looking for firmware:

That's one reason I don't like Dell or HP. They put their name on stuff they didn't make and then makes firmware and drivers difficult to find, especially on older stuff.
Anyway straight HBA card on R640 seems to be the Dell HBA330.

Actually the internal HBA option is the HBA330+. The 330 was on the 13Gen platform. Same ASIC, same firmware, different connector.

According to this, it's just a card with the LSI SAS3008 controller, also known as the SAS 9300-8i controller card.
There are multiple sub-families within the 3008. Dell also runs their own tree.

Here are the latest firmware and tools
https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9300-8i#downloads

Outside of highly unsupported hacks to fix queue depth on the H310 I wouldn't ever use a non-Dell Firmware with their devices. They run their own branch.

And here is a guide from someone who flashed an IBM card wih the same controller. Maybe it could be of assistance in your case too:
https://www.servethehome.com/flash-lsi-sas-3008-hba-e-g-ibm-m1215-mode/

Just use the OpenManage Plugin for vCenter. This or iDRAC are far easier to update things with.

@nerdydad said in Looking for firmware:

The PCI card was make by LSI Logics/Broadcom. Anybody have anything?

That doesn't actually matter. You need to check the specific PCI-ID against the VMware VCG (and more specifically vSAN VCG if using vSAN).
For vSphere VCG treat the firmware version as a minimum. For vSAN see that version as an absolute (unless VCG engineering and vSAN GSS advise otherwise).
Given this is an external HBA I'm going to say this isn't vSAN (Not supported with Dell).

The VCG entry you are likely looking for is here: https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=34856
The inbox driver is lsi-msgpt3 version 16.00.01.00-1vmw and the firmware minimum is 15.17.09.06
If you want to discuss newer/async stuff talk to Dell. If you want to be able to manage this within vCenter (driver/firmware patching) deploy Dell OpenManage (It is like 100$ per server).

@phlipelder said in Looking for firmware:

We've seen some really nasty bugs patched by some of the latest SAS HBA firmware out of Dell (they cook their own).

They do run their own tree, but all the OEM's are a bit odd sometimes in when they pick and chose to checkout patches from Avago. It's still primarily (Whatever their name is this week, maybe Broadcom?) developing the firmware.

@dustinb3403 said in Nested hypervisors?:

An app vendor saying "you have to use X guest on X hypervisor" is a weird requirement. Unless there was a very specific feature/function that the guest somehow can can flex by using a specific hypervisor, and is the reason you as the customer engaged the app vendor.

It comes from a few cases....

1. VDI often hooks the hypervisor.
2. It comes from the fact that customers often ask the app vendor for performance and configuration advice, and to be fair it's kinda nice when everyone doesn't live in a silo at their ring.
3. It boils down to who gets blamed for an outage. An Application vendor is often expected to produce or support a RCA, and if the storage platform is Ceph running on BSD and they can't provide it the customer management may throw the baby out with the bathwater (It's not right, but it happens enough).
4. Nested Hypervisors have a lot of CPU overhead issues (Good luck finding a NUMA boundary through it), and storage latency is rarely consistent without taking extreme measure. Both of these can represent themselves as application layer problems. The complaints start at the app layer, as do RCA's on issues. They carry a lot of costs if people are constantly calling them and they are constantly having to investigate and say "it's your wacky Jenga pile of hypervisors".

If we lived in a mythical land where people didn't hold application vendors accountable to performance and availability this might work. Sadly that's not how things work. I can't tell you how many times people yelled and blamed and replaced "Shitrix" when the problem was a bad storage config.

@dustinb3403 said in Nested hypervisors?:

@storageninja absolutely, but in a lot of cases this is where your HCL comes into play.

Sure you might get XenServer installed on an Pi, but it doesn't mean that Citrix would ever sell you support.

Bingo. Hence my doubt that an Application vendor would be cool with supporting a hardware configuration that isn't supported by a hypervisor vendor. Given that they CAN"T really fix that problem (App vendors don't write nested paravirtual VMTools and drivers) It would actually be a sign of a bad app vendor to say "ohh yah that's cool".

Fun fact, ESXi actually offers nested VMTools (vmtoolsd VIB) to help with nesting it on itself. Nesting it on another hypervisor and trying to mitigate a lot of the quirks would require you port paravirtual drivers to ESXi VIBs. That would get fun

@dustinb3403 said in Nested hypervisors?:

Now if you bought a product from a vendor, and they state it does the AMAZING things, look for the fine print. I bet it states under what conditions the system is capable of performing those things, and the configurations to achieving them.

And the expectation at that point is that the vendor is supporting the entire stack because of that fine print.

A lot of the ISV stuff isn't just testing, but joint engineering relationships. If I have an issue with Cache, It's nice to know that the storage vendor, hypervisor vendor, and cache all have a strong working relationship so I don't get stuck as the integrator (or person trying to force groups to work together and burn costs that don't have an incentive to otherwise).

@dustinb3403 said in Nested hypervisors?:

@storageninja said in Nested hypervisors?:

If a vendor uses Oracle DB and says "We use Oracle" and you run Oracle on a x86 emulator on a Raspberry Pi, I can see you trying to claim a loophole, and I can also see the vendor not wanting to support you.

haha. . . now I have a project to go work on, thanks for that. . . JERK!

I mean, X86 Emulator, on ARM emulator, on SPARC. I mean... TECHNICALLY it's supported Oracle hardware! I mean come on, I thought this was America, Why CAN"T I GET SOME DAMN SUPPORT AROUND HERE!

@wirestyle22 said in Nested hypervisors?:

Epic and Cerner are insanely expensive EMR's, EPIC even more so than Cerner. I used Cerner at Barnabas Health. It doesn't apply to most people here.

All-Scripts support (Small Clinical EMR) is not going to support this config either.