Wednesday, April 24, 2013

How to get iDRAC 6 Console Working with Google Chrome

     I've been able to use Dell's Remote Console, iDRAC 6, to work with Google Chrome without any issues. You can login to the web interface and navigate all of the menus without any re-configuration to the iDRAC settings. However to launch the Virtual Console and Virtual Media interface, you must make one adjustment. You must change the virtual console from Native to Java and specify the javaws.exe as the launcher for the JNLP file that will download.



1. Log into the web interface for iDRAC.
2. Select System from the right menu and then click Console/Media.
3. Select the Configuration screen menu
4. In the Virtual Console section, locate the Plug-in Type drop-down menu and select Java (Native is the default)



5. Click Apply at the bottom of the screen.
6. Select the Virtual Console and Virtual Media screen and then click Launch Virtual Console to launch the server console.
7. The file viewer.jnlp will download. Once the download is complete, click on the file download notification in Google Chrome to open it.
8. Click the Select a program from a list of installed programs radio button and click OK.


9. Click Browse...

10. Navigate to the Java Runtime installation directory on your computer and open the BIN folder (the complete path on my computer, which has a default installation, is C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin)
11. Select javaws.exe from the list of files and click Open. (This program file is called the Java(TM) Web Start Launcher)
12. Check the box Always use the selected program to open this kind of file and click OK.


13. Confirm any security or firewall prompts that appear.





Boom! You should be good to go.


Production Environment

  • Microsoft Windows 7 64bit with SP1 (and fully patched on the date of this writing)
  • Google Chrome 26.0.1410.64 m
  • Java Runtime 7u21
  • Dell iDRAC6 1.95



Dell iDRAC 6 Virtual Console - Keyboard Not Working


   When I launch the virtual console for the server my iDRAC is installed on, I am able to see the screen and to click on the logon buttons, however when I want to type anything...no text is passed to the console. I dug a little bit on the Internet and found two suggestions:
  • Problems first appeared after I changed the IP address on the iDRAC config. After some digging, I was able to get my keyboard working again within the Virtual Console Native Plugin by updating the firmware. [Note: I tried this, but it did not solve my problem]
  • I had a defective iDRAC expansion card with outdated firmware. I replaced the card with one running the current firmware (because I was also unable to update the firmware remotely) and the problem was solved. [Note: Wow...strange. iDRAC is built into my Dell system's motherboard, Poweredge R710]
  • I just had the same issue. Login to your DRAC and change the console type from Native to Java. Once I did this i could use my keyboard. It seems to be a problem with iDRAC plugin on my local computer. [Note: This does not appear to be possible with iDRAC 6, this tip must be for a previous version]
  • ...by adding the new iDRAC IP to Trusted Sites in IE.[Note: We already did this via Group Policy and the iDRAC website is trusted]


   None of these things were problems for me, so I tried to run the console in Google Chrome...the browser I normally use for the Internet. I was able to login and when I tried to launch the console, a JNLP file downloaded to my computer to run. From a quick search, I was able to see that JNLP are Java files, and I don't have Java Runtime installed on my computer, so the file would not open. So I downloaded Oracle Java Runtime 7 and installed it (despite my worries of the infinite exploits running around on the Internet and the frequent news releases of security problems with Java). I closed Internet Explorer, relaunched it, logged in, launched the Virtual Console...and still no dice.

I'll post the final solution later.

Notes:
Windows 7 64bit
Internet Explorer 9
Java Runtime 7u21
iDRAC 6 1.95

UPDATE: I found that the 3rd solution I found works for me, I just didn't know how to do it. Here's one way to switch from Native to Java consoles (note: Java Runtime is required as well).


  1. Log into the web interface for iDRAC.
  2. Select System from the right menu and then click Console/Media.
  3. Select the Configuration screen menu
  4. In the Virtual Console section, locate the Plug-in Type drop-down menu and select Java (Native is the default)
  5. Click Apply at the bottom of the screen.
  6. Select the Virtual Console and Virtual Media screen and then click Launch Virtual Console to launch the server console.

Dell iDRAC 6 Firmware 1.95 Installation Notes

As of April 2013, the latest firmware download for iDRAC 6 is version 1.95 A00. The details of the firmware from Dell are:


Q1FY14 iDRAC Monolithic release 1.95
iDRAC6 V1.95
Release Date: 2/21/2013
Importance: Urgent


Download Link


Fixes & Enhancements

  1. Creating a partition from an image failed intermittently with Dell supported 8 GB SD card.
  2. Cannot create Certificate Signing Request (CSR) with remote and local RACADM.
  3. Cannot perform firmware update using the Web interface with Internet Explorer 10 browser.
  4. Cannot upload an SSH public key using command racadm sshpkauth if the key does not end with an "=" or "==" at the end of the key string.
  5. RAC serial redirect prompts for user credential when cfgSerialConsoleNoAuth is enabled.
  6. Power monitoring graph is not visible in iDRAC6 Web interface with Internet Explorer 10 browser.
  7. If the user password has (?) character, access is denied for WSMAN commands.
  8. In iDRAC6 express configuration console/media tab is listed in the system page. The Console/media tab must not be available in iDRAC6 express configuration.
  9. If  is ON on the management station and Virtual Console is launched, and then if any letter is pressed small case letter is displayed. If  is OFF and any letter is pressed, then Capital letter is displayed.
  10. The racadm vmdisconnect command from local and Remote racadm displays an error while disconnecting Remote File Share (RFS) attached media-"Error:No Virtual media devices are currently connected". But the media is connected through RFS before executing the command.
  11. In the iDRAC Web interface -> System Summary page -> Server Health section, the Power Supplies component health status displays as critical health instead of warning health in the absence of redundant power supply.
  12. Hardware inventory page in iDRAC Web interface displays information for two Power Supply Units (PSUs) when only one is present.
  13. Broadcom NIC Firmware Version in the iDRAC Web interface -> System Inventory page is not listing the correct version.
  14. Lifecycle Controller version is not displayed in the iDRAC Web interface System Summary and System Details pages.


Installation Notes
I upgraded from version 1.92 Build 5 to 1.95 A00 using the Update tools in the iDRAC Web Console. After downloading the .EXE file for Windows systems, I used 7zip to extract the files to my hard drive. Two files were created:

iDRAC6_1.95_A00_ReleaseNotes.txt
firmimg.d6

In the iDRAC webpage console I clicked iDRAC Settings and then selected the Update tab. I clicked Browse, selected the firmimg.d6 file, clicked OK, and then clicked Upload. The file upload took about 3-5 minutes (pretty slow for a 50MB file...) and then I received the following message:

iDRAC6 Firmware Image has been updated successfully.
The iDRAC6 has been reset. You will not be able to access the iDRAC6 with this browser session.
Please close and reconnect to the iDRAC6 using new browser session.

I closed the webpage and then reconnected to the IP Address. Everything looks good at first glance.

Dell iDRAC 6 Default Username and Password


After connecting my iDRAC ports to the network and connecting to the webpage using the IP address in Internet Explorer, I needed to login...

The default username is root, The default password is and calvin.

Dell iDRAC 6 1.1 User Guide

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Understanding "Ready Time" in VMware vSphere - Some Excerpts From VMware Docs


Ready Time
(Originally published on Aug 27, 2008)
     Stated simply, ready time is the amount of time a VM wants to run but  has not be provided CPU resources on which to execute.  Somewhat  confusingly, ready time is reported in two different values between  esxtop and VirtualCenter.  In esxtop is reported in an easily-consumed  percentage format.  A number of 5% means the VM spent 5% of its last  sample period waiting for available CPU resources.  In VirtualCenter  ready time is reported as a time measurement.  In VC's real-time data,  which produces sample values every 20,000 ms, a number of 1,000 ms is  reported for a 5% ready time...
The most common cause of high ready time is trying to get too much work out of too little hardware. 

Co-scheduling SMP VMs in VMware ESX Server
(Originally published on May 2, 2008)
     For a multiprocessor VM (also known as an "SMP VM"), it is important to present the guest OS and applications executing within the VM with the illusion that they are running on a dedicated physical multiprocessor.  ESX Server faithfully implements this illusion by supporting near-synchronous coscheduling of the virtual CPUs within a single multiprocessor VM. 
     The term "coscheduling" refers to a technique used in concurrent systems for scheduling related processes to run on different processors at the same time.  This approach, alternately referred to as "gang scheduling", had historically been applied to running high-performance parallel applications, such as scientific computations.  VMware ESX Server pioneered a form of coscheduling that is optimized for running SMP VMs efficiently...
   ...at any particular point in time, each virtual cpu (VCPU) may be scheduled, descheduled, preempted, or blocked waiting for some event.  Without coscheduling, the VCPUs associated with an SMP VM would be scheduled independently, breaking the guest's assumptions regarding uniform progress.  We use the term "skew" to refer to the difference in execution rates between two or more VCPUs associated with an SMP VM...
     ...Relaxed coscheduling in ESX Server 3.x...instead of requiring all VCPUs to be co-started, only those VCPUs that are skewed must be co-started.  This ensures that when any VCPU is scheduled, all other VCPUs that are "behind" will also be scheduled, reducing skew.  This approach is called "relaxed" coscheduling, since only a subset of a VM's VCPUs must be scheduled simultaneously after skew has been detected...


VMware Performance Study (PDF)
VMware ESX Server 3 -- Ready Time Observations
     As overall CPU utilization and the number of virtual machines increase, the scheduler is more likely to require a virtual machine to wait for access to a CPU. Even when a guest operating system is not servicing load, there are maintenance activities that the operating system must perform (for example, it must service clock interrupts to maintain correct time). Thus, even idle guests must be scheduled, consume CPU resources (albeit small), and accumulate ready time. The fact that the scheduler is allocating CPU resources to operating systems — rather than to applications as a normal operating system does — can make the scheduling somewhat more complex than it is in normal operating systems...Ready time can be an indicator of saturation on a system.
Several factors affect the amount of ready time seen.
  • Overall CPU utilization: You are more likely to see ready time when utilization is high, because the CPU is more likely to be busy when another virtual machine becomes ready to run.
  • Number of resource consumers: (in this case, guest operating systems): When a host is running a larger number of virtual machines, the scheduler is more likely to need to queue a virtual machine behind one or more that are already running or queued.
  • Load correlation: If loads are correlated — for example, if one load wakes another one when the first load has completed its task — ready times are unlikely. If a single event wakes multiple loads, high ready times are likely.
  • Number of virtual CPUs in a virtual machine: When co-scheduling for n-way Virtual SMP is required, the virtual CPUs can be scheduled only when n physical CPUs are available to be preempted.
     In multiprocessor systems, an additional factor affects ready time. Virtual machines that have been scheduled on a particular CPU will be given a preference to run on the same CPU again. This is because of performance advantages of finding data in the CPU cache. In a multiprocessor system, therefore, the ESX Server scheduler may choose to let a few cycles on a CPU stay idle rather than aggressively move a ready virtual machine to another CPU that may be idle.
    Ready time for a process in isolation cannot be identified as a problem. The best metrics for
examining the health of a server continue to be:
  1. CPU utilization
  2. Response time, and
  3. Application queues

Storage (HDD/DAS/NAS/SAN) Performance Testing With IOMeter - Raw Throughput


How to use IOMETER for testing raw storage throughput...just straight dumping and pulling data from disks sequentially. Another entry will show how to simulate different workloads (like SQL).

1. Download and Install IOMeter

2. Verify that the volume or drive that you want to test is already connected, partitioned, and formatted on the computer that is running the stress test. (you may also test mapped network drives)

3. Launch IOMeter and select your computer name in the Topology field (System in my example)

4. Select Worker 1.
    

5. The first tab, Disk Targets, should already be selected will display all of the volumes available to benchmark. Select the volume (or Target as IOMeter refers to them) that you want to test. (Note: You can only test one target at a time)
     

6. Enter a numerical value for Maximum Disk Size. IOMeter will create a file called iobw.tst on the volume for running its tests. Be sure to create a test file larger than the memory buffers on your storage device, otherwise you will only see cache I/O which is deceiving. I usually test with a 10GB Disk Size, so I enter 2048000. 
     Note: 204800 sectors = 1GB on a disk partitioned with 512KB sectors (the default), so a 10GB file would be 2048000, etc. (be sure you have this much free space on the target)

7. Change the value of # of Outstanding I/Os from 1 to 1 per target

8. Change the value of Write IO Data Pattern from Repeating bytes to Full Random (and click OK)
Note: If you have already performed steps 9-20 before, click the Open button (first button from the left) and select the configuration file you previously saved and skip ahead to step 18.  Here's a downloadable ICF file if you'd like to use it and skip ahead.


9. Select the Access Specifications tab and click New.

10. Only set the following access specifications:
          Transfer Request Size = 256 Kilobytes (text field)
          Percent Random/Sequential Distribution = 100% Sequential (slider bar)

          Percent Read/Write Distribution = 100% Write (slider bar)




11. Under the name file I enter in 256K_Write. Select OK.

12. Scroll down to the bottom of the “Global Access Specifications” field and select the new script and click on the << Add button.

     (Note: Steps 11-14 are repeat of steps 7-10 to create a Read version of the same job)


13. Select the Access Specifications tab and click New.

14. Only set the following access specifications:
          Transfer Request Size = 256 Kilobytes (text field)

          Percent Random/Sequential Distribution = 100% Sequential (slider bar)

          Percent Read/Write Distribution = 100% Read (slider bar)




15. Under the name file I enter in 256K_Read. Select OK.

16. Scroll down to the bottom of the Global Access Specifications field and select the new script named 256K_Read and click the Add button in the middle.


17. Select the Results Display tab and change the Update Frequency to 1.


18. Select the Test Setup tab. Modify the Run Time field to 15 Minutes.

19. Enter 180 Seconds for the Ramp Up Time.

20. Click the Save button along the top (2nd from the left) and save this configuration file for future tests. This will allow you to skip steps 9-19 by simply loading the configuration file.



21. Click on the tab Results Display so that you can watch the test run and then click the button along the top with the green flag on it to start the tests.


You can now use this configuration file to run tests on various types of storage to see the performance in comparison to each other.
 Note: The first time you run your benchmarks on a particular type of storage, you will not see anything immediately in the Results Display. This is because IOMeter must first create a test file on the storage device.
For comparison's sake, some test results I've seen with this test:

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Lookout Mobile Security for Businesses

Today I enquired about using Lookout Mobile Security for businesses. Here's the auto-reply that I got.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jenny Roy <no-reply@wufoo.com>
Date: Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 6:07 PM
Subject: Interested in Lookout for your business?



Hi there,
Thanks for filling out the form on our website for Lookout Business. We are currently working on building a pretty cool product to help you manage and secure the mobile devices in your business. While it's not quite ready just yet, we would love to learn more about the problems you need to solve when it comes to your mobile devices. If you'd like to add more detail than what you previously sent, feel free to reply with more info.

Also, we will be opening up a Beta program to a small, select set of VIP companies. If you'd like to be considered for the Lookout for Business Beta program, send me a note back and I'll put you on the waiting list. The Beta will be an opportunity to shape the product direction, and in return we will be offering a 50% discount off the list price.

We will continue to share more information and updates with you as it becomes available.

Thank you again for thinking of Lookout. We hope you have had a great experience with the consumer app and can't wait to help you with your business needs as well.


Jenny Roy,
Lookout