lab Archives

September 6, 2016

New Lab Machine/Portable VM Box Version 3

Back in 2013, I decided that no matter what laptop I had, in some ways it would be better to have a small, light, portable machine that I could take with me to be more of an uber-VM box. That way, my laptop could always be small/light or I could have VMs running in both. I mean, I can be running 10 – 15 VMs at any given time.

It would also allow me to do things like, say, run VMware Workstation on my laptop but Hyper-V on the small machine. Since I started doing this, others have picked up and run with this idea as well. It’s not uncommon for people to use these kinds of setups now, whereas when I started, I was basically the only one. My setup has recently changed, so I figured I’d discuss what I’m doing now and give a bit of history of how much things have changed in a relatively short time.

Version 1

When I decided to do this, the initial Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) machines were a bit underpowered for my liking. I initially ordered the DC3217IYE NUC, but it’s i3 was not up to the task – it was more the design than the i3 as I have run VMs on equivalent processors. For Version One of my small but portable VM box, I settled on the Foxconn NanoPC AT-7700. It had:

i7-3517U CPU
16GB of memory
1 2.5″ SSD

This worked fairly well. For the barebones machine with no memory or SSD, I paid just under $500 US (since I get readers from all over the world). Being a U processor, it wasn’t always the snappiest configuration nor the coolest (yay fans), but it was a good foray into this type of setup. At that time, 16GB of memory cost me $100.

Version 2

Fast forward to July 2014, and the “you must power your device on” rule which is still in effect when flying internationally.For what it’s worth, it’s real. I was selected for a random check at London Heathrow prior to a flight back last year. This was post-security right down by the entrance to the plane. Why is this date/event significant? Just prior to that, I purchased the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7-4770R I was going to take over to use while speaking. That didn’t happen, but I did use the Brix at home. So in a year I went from a U processor to:

i7-4770R CPU – a full CPU, not a U
Still 16GB of memory (204-pin 16GB DIMMs were not quite out yet)
1 x mSATA and 1 x 2.5″ drive (woot! more internal storage)

I think I paid $600 – $650 for it. The Brix is a hefty little thing, and while powerful, has its share of issues in my opinion. The fan is nearly always on (granted, I push these boxes), and running a server OS is no picnic. To be perfectly honest, the general problem with these setups is this: if you want to run a server OS such as Windows Server 2012 R2, driver support is non-existent or trial-by-error to get certain things to work. The last time I was using the Brix a graphics update nearly broke it. Ultimately, it’s not the best choice – especially today.

What all this meant was I needed to maintain a 16GB-based laptop which I was fine with as my main portable. Since I couldn’t take these with me, they became extra home virtualization/lab boxes. The Vaio Z Canvas I got in June of 2015 (which has the i7-4770HQ) is the best portable box/laptop I’ve ever had, and I’m hoping they do an update.

Version 3

Fast forward to now. As I inevitably do, I push limits and 16GB is becoming less tenable for a configuration for testing and demoing. Again, I love my Z Canvas – it never gets hot nor do I ever hear the fan (except when updating Windows …). I also have more and more of a need to have a dual Hyper-V/VMware setup for various reasons. Running Hyper-V under VMware is possible, but not the best configuration. This configuration would never be my main portable VM box, but due to some customer work and what I need to finish the book over the next little bit, I needed something. Its first public debut will be for tomorrow’s 24 Hours of PASS – Summit Preview Edition where I will be doing the session “A Closer Look at Distributed Availability Groups” at 17:00 GMT (1PM Eastern/10 AM Pacific).

Enter the new Intel NUC – the NUC6i7KYK. Instead of just shipping less powered NUCs, Intel decided to ship a full blown one. First and foremost, it supports Windows Server 2012 R2 with its drivers, which is a huge selling point if you want to have a home lab and want to run something like Hyper-V not in the desktop OS. you can do things like Shared VHDX which simplifies FCI configurations (but also complicates and can cause other issues that are fixed in Windows Server 2016). A few weeks back, I picked one up. It’s configured with:

i7-6770HQ (basically the newer version of the processor of what is in my Z Canvas)
32GB of memory (I paid $114 at MicroCenter; it’s usually about $120 on Amazon)
It only has M.2 slots for drives, but it has two of them. More on that in a minute.

I wanted instant gratification, so I got mine at my local MicroCenter for $599. As of today, it’s $569.99 on Amazon. Talk about how far we’ve come! The new NUC is very light without the AC adapter/power brick. It ships with the skull cover which is not exactly my taste, and they include a plain one and a tool to change it, so I did. As you can see in Figure 1, it’s just slightly longer than a DVD and not much thicker than it.

Figure 1. New NUC vs. DVD case

Most people may be used to either more standard 2.5″ drives (SSD or HDD) or mSATA. This NUC only takes SSDs which have the M.2 form factor. An M.2 SSD looks similar to a stick of gum. Figure 2 shows what one looks like. For this build, I decided to go all out. I got what is the top of the line right now. These are not your normal M.2 drives. Sure, I could have “cheaped out” and purchased something like two Samsung Evo 850 1TB which are only about $350, and it would have been fine..

Figure 2. M.2 form factor SSD

Everyone who knows me I tend to do “go big or go home”, so I got what is arguably the best as of today – two 1TB NVMe M.2 2280 drives. The first is the hard-to-find OEM only Samsung SM961 1TB drives which is rated at 3200 MB/s for sequential reads and 1800 MB/s for sequential writes, and 450K IOPS for both 4K random reads and writes. It’s a smokin’ drive! The second one is the new OCZ (nee Toshiba) RD400 series (the RVD400-M22280-1TB) which is nice, but not as fast as the SM961. You can see its specs here.

I know there are some of you out there (including Max who is my business partner) who prefer to build PCs and pick things like power supply, case, etc. I am not that guy. I’ve done it, but I don’t geek out on that stuff. With this NUC, you unscrew the bottom, pop in the memory and drives, and away you go. Figure 3 shows what the NUC looks like with everything installed. I can’t say enough about how easy it is to get up and running with this.

Figure 3. Inside the NUC6i7KYK

I’ve set this up with one drive running Windows 10 with VMware Workstation 12, and the other running Windows Server 2012 R2. Again, thanks to Intel for supporting Windows Server 2012 R2 with drivers for the NUC. I did try to use Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5, but had driver issues (even when I tried to upgrade from Windows Server 2012), so I will wait until it is fully supported by Intel. This has been MUCH easier than the Brix and I’ve had no stability issues. Intel’s BIOS utility is also well thought out. You will want to make sure that the CPU power saving setting is disabled (it is on by default) if you want the best performance. Like my Z Canvas, Intel did a wonderful job with system design. I rarely hear the fan and it stays very cool even when running quite a few VMs.

So if you’re building a new lab or even want a new home PC (even if it’s just for music or watching video), I think you can’t beat the new Intel NUC6i7KYK. You don’t have to load yours up like I did with top-of-the-line SSDs and 32GB of memory, but for about $1000, you will have something very powerful and for equivalent money, we’ve come a long way since 2013 and Version 1. Because I can travel with it in the US, it may come with me to PASS Summit but we’ll see … it’s too soon to tell.

October 27, 2015

Aftermath of a PASS Summit Preconference Session

It’s currently the Tuesday morning after my PASS Summit 2015 preconference session “Advanced SQL Server Availability Architectures and Deployments“. Before I say anything, I wanted to thank all of the attendees for taking the time out of their schedules to spend a day with lil’ ol’ me and using their training budget for my session. I really do appreciate it. I know they have a choice, and it’s why I do things like stay for an hour after the session to answer questions. Needless to say, I was a bit fried by the time I was done. I grabbed dinner with my business partner Max Myrick, and as soon as I got back to the hotel, it was time for la la land.

The early buzz on Twitter so far has been very good. I am both humbled and pleased since I never make any assumptions going into things. When you put an event like this together, you sometimes have no idea how it’ll go. There were more, but below is a sampling of some of the comments posted (with their relevant links … I don’t make this stuff up).

“RDMA? RDMA! Happy as a pig in poop at @SQLHA presentation …”

“Geek heaven, lots of hardware discussions because guess what SQL runs on…:D”
@Ms_Alaina

“Best session ever! Addressed many pain points in design and implementation! Thanks!”
@mssqlranger

Thanks for the great session today @SQLHA lots of stuff I can use when I get back to work
@RutherfordTX

Lab creation setup for @SQLHA #PASS #Summit15 precon is *really* cool. I’d like to see something like that for training/sandbox inhouse 🙂

great class material, great class vibe 🙂

– @sqL_handLe

I will admit – it’s always fun to see 100 people doing labs simultaneously which are all hosted in the cloud (and no, not Azure or Amazon). This is the second year in a row I’ve done had labs at a PASS precon, and it’s gratifying to see months of hard work come together. Last year was the grand experiment. I remember many people thinking I was insane for even attempting it. And yes, the rumors are true – I demoed an Availability Group that spanned both Azure IaaS and Amazon EC2. Maybe I’ll blog about that configuration at some point.

Labs are fun …

You don’t just show up in October and do a precon with labs at a major event. The process begins much earlier in the year when the call for speakers happens. In my “go big or go home” philosophy, as if doing what did last year was not hard enough, I decided to one up myself and submit a higher level session that was more advanced. Why? Taking the challenge aspect out for me (I love a good one …), there’s a lot of people who have been asking for more than “What is clustering?” type of content. There’s always a risk in submitting something more advanced because one person’s 200 level is another’s 500 level. But what the heck, you only live once, right?

Before I even submitted another precon abstract with labs, I asked PASS if they would let me do it if it was selected. There’s a practical reason for this: cost. There are some very tangible things that are not free when it comes to doing a precon with labs. They said yes, so abstract submitted, and thankfully, accepted a few months later. Away we go – the real work now begins.

I truly believe that everyone learns differently, but for what I do, hands on experience is pretty essential. My labs are not some canned thing someone else does and I’m reusing; I spend time doing instructional design so it fits the content I will be presenting. I try to add a hands on component where I can in all that I do. It’s not always possible. For the lab portion, each student gets their own lab environment. The labs for this one had two main lab exercises which encompassed 10 VMs (six for Lab 1, four for Lab 2). That’s just under 200 GB of VMs for every student.

While doing my four day Mission Critical SQL Server class is one thing, making sure 100 people can all do labs at the same time is another. There’s a lot of back and forth making sure that not only the venue has enough bandwidth, but the company that I use for the labs will have enough horsepower reserved to ensure all of the attendees can use up to 1000 VMs simultaneously. There’s also the fact that all of this, again, costs money so it has to be practical. This is why PASS and I agreed both years to cap the attendees to a maximum of 100 people.

When labs start in a session of this size, there are always some issues to deal with (for example, resetting login or password information, various connectivity issues), but time in and time out, things have worked with only minor things to deal with. I want to give a quick shout out to the Washington State Convention Center folks. They handled a few issues with the wired connections as well as power pretty quickly yesterday. They’re also very nice to deal with (they even remembered the requirements from last year). I also need proctors – it’s nearly impossible in a class of that size to answer everyone’s questions on my own. A special thanks to Max as well as Nic Cain (blog | Twitter) for helping out yesterday. I also have to thank the folks back at PASS HQ, especially Leeza Zelmer. None of this is possible without them, but Leeza really was my main contact and helped facilitate quite a bit behind the scenes.

Will there be another precon at PASS Summit with labs in my future? Who knows … let’s see what 2016 brings. At the moment, I need a bit of time not to be worrying about VMs, connectivity, or labs for a few weeks, but chances are high I’ll be having the same “Will you allow me to do this?” conversation with PASS in the spring again. All the effort and time is worth it when students have comments like the above because the day really isn’t about me; it’s all about them and for them.

I’m looking forward to the formal start of PASS Summit tomorrow morning. See you at the keynote!

April 8, 2013

Building a Lab or Portable Demo VM Box Cheaply – Part 1

Last fall, I got my first new laptop in about 18 months which is an eternity for me. For a bit of my history see my blog post Laptops of Doom. The Panasonic CF-J10 served me well, but still wasn’t perfect. At 10.1″, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, 1 x USB 3.0 (albeit slow), a Core i7-2620M, and decent battery life with weight under 3lbs, you’d think I’d be happy as a clam. Even with the 1TB of SSD I had in there, it wasn’t enough room and the USB 3.0 was slow compared to other machines, which led me to believe it has to do with motherboard design (boo). It was starting to act up on me (trackpad not functioning right), so I knew I needed an interim solution. Enter the Sony Vaio Duo 11 (which I will do a review of at some point). I love the machine but its main weak link is only 8GB of memory, and it can’t be expanded since it’s basically soldered onto the motherboard. Welcome to 2013.

For the deliveries of my mission critical/high availability class last year in Australia, I took both machines with me – I was still well under 6lbs. I got an external mouse for the Panasonic and it was basically my demo box with Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012, and the Duo my main presentation machine. One nice thing about the Duo is the pen input for things like virtual blackboarding. Even with the Core i7 ULV, the Duo really seems snappier than my Panasonic. To date, I still haven’t yet sent the Panasonic back to Japan because I need a backup computer. The Duo only has regular Windows 8 (not Pro), so I’ve been using VMware Workstation a lot like I have in the past. I’ve been able to do my demos with an external USB 3.0 SSD drive, but they’ve been limited. Bottom line is I use both Hyper-V and VMware Workstation, and need a presenter machine. Sometimes one machine isn’t enough, so that got me thinking (and also because I want to be able to send my J10 in for repair) – what can I do?

My idea – crazy as it is/was – was to find a small, yet portable PC, connect it to my Duo via a crossover cable, and use Remote Desktop to get in.

Enter the small form factor (SFF) PC.

My weight requirements for schlepping still have not changed, and I am hanging out to see what happens once the Haswell-based laptops are introduced before even considering something new, but carrying around my Duo plus a small box running Hyper-V seemed somewhat reasonable if I can keep the solution portable. One reason I need this for some speaking engagements is that VMware Workstation allows me to show, say, Hyper-V and some scenarios like Live Migration easily. The problem is that you can’t easily run both Hyper-V and VMware Workstation at the same time under Windows 8 – you basically have to enable one and disable the other which you can’t really do mid-talk. The weight requirement has historically been difficult, since most SFF PCs with any power have been small by tower standards, but still kinda beefy and robust. That has changed recently.

Two boxes fit the bill: Foxconn’s AT-7000 series which you can get in Core i3 (AT-7300), i5 (AT-7500), or i7 (AT-7700) variants, and the Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC), which currently only has a Core i3 (rumor has it they are going to introduce an i5 version soon). There are two main variants of the NUC – one that has ethernet built in (the DC3217IYE) and two HDMI outs, and one with one HDMI out and one Thunderbolt but no ethernet (the DC3217BY). With both, it’s basically a plug in your own RAM and storage and away you go.

There are some other technical differences between the AT-7000 series and the NUC, namely:

The NUC has 3 x USB 2.0 ports (boo) and you would need an adapter for HDMI to VGA if you wanted to hook it up directly to something if HDMI was not an option (and it often isn’t when presenting; VGA is still the defacto standard). The AT-7000 has 4 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, DVI and HDMI out (and they include a DVI –> VGA adapter in the box).
Ethernet only comes with the DC3217IYE; you would have to get a USB one if you wanted ethernet for the DC3217BY. The AT-7000 series has it built-in, just like the DC3217IYE.
The AT-7000 series also has microphone, headphone, and line out if you want such things (unnecessary for portable use), as well as a card reader (SD/MS/MMC).
The NUC only has mSATA internally, whereas the AT-7000 can take a full 2.5″ drive.

You may be thinking that the AT-7000 is a slam dunk considering you can get your choice of processors and it has some better port options. On paper everything is always better.

I ordered both the DC3217IYE and the AT-7700 with the intention of returning one of them (we’ll see if that happens …) with 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM (DDR3 1600 MHz [PC3 12800]), a Mushkin 480GB mSATA SSD, and for the AT-7700, a StarTech mSATA –> 2.5″ adapter enclosure. I got the DC3217IYE and RAM from Amazon (they had better prices at the time, and with the NUC, a better return policy), and the 480GB SSD and the adapter enclosure from Newegg. Let’s look at my costs:

DC3217IYE – $292.49
RAM – $99.99
Crossover cable – $2.52
SSD – $439.99
AT-7700 – $489.99
mSATA adapter – $30.99

The NUC solution costs $834.99 and the AT-7700 solution $1063.48. Now, you may not need a 480GB SSD, and standard 2.5″ SSDs are cheaper than mSATA ones; I didn’t want to buy two sets of storage so here it really is the same thing for me. If you went down to the i3 ($339.99 at Newegg) or i5 ($399.99 at Newegg) and used a different SSD or even a standard platter-based drive, the NUC and AT-7000 series are basically parity cost-wise. Let’s say you pick the i3 AT-7300:

AT-7300 – $339.99
RAM – $99.99
Crossover cable – $2.52
500GB 2.5″ SSD (Samsung 840; not the Pro which is about $130 more) – $335.09 on Amazon now

The total is $777.59 – cheaper than the equivlent NUC solution. If you splurged and spent the extra $60 on the AT-7500 to get an i5, it would be only a few dollars more than the NUC solution. Crazy!

The thing about these solutions is that I’m looking at them as portable hypervisors and that’s how I’ll largely talk about them, but they’re so cheap and cost effective that they can work for a lab solution for your own personal use or where you work – and they’re tiny. That can’t be underestimated.

In Part 2, I will cover some differences that may make a difference for some (including myself) such as size and weight, and talk about the process of configuring these little wonderboxes. The third part of this series will concentrate more on usability and how they work in conext of my workflow.

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