MSA1500cs periodically grinding to a halt with VMWare ESX 3.5

Last night for the third time since going live with VMWare in Sept. 2007 we had an issue where the MSA1500cs SAN that acts as the datastore for our 3 host ESX cluster ground to a halt. As the MSA1500 has no ability to log what it is doing this is a tricky one to figure out.

The first time it happened, I though it was because I had set the multipathing on the ESX hosts to fixed. Apparently this is a not the suggested configuration for the MSA1500 as even though it has the v7.00 Active/Active firmware on it, ESX doesn't see it as a true Active/Active setup. So I changed the path setup to Most Recently Used (MRU) and left it to run.

The second time it happened was shortly after upgrading to v3.5 which caused High Availability (HA) on one of the hosts to go nuts and fill up the log partition.

Last night it happened again but nothing had been changed on the setup for weeks. Basically, the VMs grind to a halt and then become unavailable and then some or all of the LUNs presented to the hosts disappear. The only way I've found to fix it is to shut the ESX hosts down (which takes about 30 minutes each as it is trying to gracefully flush the cache to the LUNs but they aren't there) and then power down the MSA1500 controller shelf and bring everything backup again in the correct order.

I opened a ticket with HP about it today but they couldn't see anything from the CLI show tech_info dump I sent them (which I guess they wouldn't as the thing had been power cycled!) and suggested that it could be the drivers or firmware in the BL480c servers that we are using or a firmware upgrade may be needed in the Brocade fiber channel switches.

As I had the time last night, I also applied the last batch of v3.5 patches.

So far it has happened after about 50-60 days of uptime so I think for now we will be proactive and do a manual shut down of everything on a weekend every 6 weeks or so.

Bow equipment for me

Here is the setup that I am looking at for my bow. The limbs and the sight are subject to change as I'm not sure what is going to be better to spend the money on. I want to get something that Adan can move up to once he outgrows the T-Rex. After that I may move to a compound bow.

KAP Winstar II 25" Black Riser
KAP 70" 30# Winstorm Craft Limbs
Sure-Loc Contender-X Target Sight or Shibuya Dual Click Standard
2 Dynaflight '97 70" 14 Strand bowstrings (one black, one white)
Spigarelli Bow Stringer
Aurora Techno Jazz Quiver
Aurora Dynamic Take-Down Recurve case
Win & Win 360 Perfect Finger Tab
Arco Sport Spigarelli Z/T (Zero Tolerance) Rest for W&W - Now that I look into things a bit more I'm seeing that there have been some people having problems with this rest on UK Archery Interchange
Cartel Midas Cushion Pressure Button

KAP T-Rex has arrived

Adan's bow and equipment arrived last week from Alternative Sports in the UK and we had George from the Victoria Bowmen club set it up for us. George had to make a few last minute substitutions for us as the arrow rest and cushion plunger I ordered weren't suitable for the T-Rex. This was my fault for not running it by George first but they should work fine with the KAP Winstar II riser that I want to get for me.

Adan used the bow for the first time on Saturday and seemed pleased with it. The weight of the bow and pull weight of the limbs is a bit heavier than the wooden recurves we had been using during the lessons and this is causing him to be a bit shakier. I'm sure after a few weeks of use he will be fine.

Basic Target Archery Setup

My oldest son and I are coming to the end of a set of 6 archery lessons with the Victoria Bowmen Club. We have both joined the club so that he can carry on doing lessons in the club's Junior Olympic Program (JOP). Up until now we have both been using basic wood bows that the club provides for lessons but to carry on we must get our own gear. Since my son will grow out of whatever we purchased him now I wanted to balance the cost against getting him a good setup that now hold him back from shooting well.

Unfortunately, there are only two shops (Island Outfitters and Bucky's in Duncan) that sell archery equipment on Vancouver Island and both of those mainly cater to the hunting side of archery instead of the target side. The are two online stores in Canada, The Bow Shop and The Archer's Nook as well as Lancaster Archery in the US. All of these have a good selection of equipment but their prices are kind of high. The best pricing I have found so far is Alternative Sports Services in the UK. Even with the shipping charges it is still cheaper than the North American stores. When I've order stuff from abroad in the past it has always been hit or miss if I got charged customs duty so we will see what happens with this order.

After some looking around on archery sites and forums we came up with the following setup:

KAP T-Rex 23" riser
KAP T-Rex 66in 22# limbs
Cartel Midas Cushion Pressure Button
Cartel K-Sight
Arco Sport Spigarelli Z/T (Zero Tolerance) Rest
2 Cartel Dacron Fast Strings
Cartel Bowstringer
Cartel Dynamic 501 Quiver
Cartel CR-3 Arm Guard

The only thing left to get are some aluminum arrows and a case. Both of these we should be able to get from the local suppliers without any problems.

As for myself, I'm going to wait awhile and try some club members bows out but I'm currently looking at a KAP Winstar II and Winstorm limbs but it depends on how much I want to spend.

Backpacking Trips that I would like to do

I've been finding out about some backpacking trips that I would like to do at some point in the near future.

The North Coast Trail - this is the one I'm most looking forward to. 61 KM around Cape Scott at the north end of Vancouver Island. Various people are describing the NCT as like the West Coast Trail when it first opened. I think it is currently scheduled to be open for hikers in the spring/summer of 2008. I planning on doing this in the spring of summer of 2009.

The John Muir Trail - 211 miles of California ending at the top of the highest peak in the lower 48 states. Yikes! I think I've got a bit of training to do before I'm ready to attempt this one.

The Pacific Crest Trail - The big brother to the John Muir Trail. 2650 miles from the Canadian border down to Mexico. I doubt if I'll ever get a chance to thru-hike it but hopefully I'll be able to do some of the more interesting bits.

The Wonderland Trail - 93 miles around the base of Mount Rainer in Washington State.

BC Leg of the Trans Canada Trail

I would also like to enter (and finish) a MOMAR race

Citrix Secure Gateway Certificates

Just ran into an interesting problem at work. We use the Citrix Secure Gateway (CSG) to allow remote users to access Citrix through the web. This tunnels the Citrix ICA traffic (which is normally on TCP port 1493) through port 443. Our certificate on the IIS server was expiring soon so I had renewed and installed it a couple of weeks back and everything appeared to be working.

Today we started getting calls from users who were getting SSL errors after they had authenticated on the Web Interface page and tried to launch a Citrix session. After quickly verifying that the IIS certificate was indeed the new one and doing an iisreset to no effect I did a quick Google search and discovered that not only do you have to install the certificate on IIS, you also have to configure CSG to use the new certificate.

Planned hikes for 2008

So far I've booked time off work to do the following hikes:

West Coast Trail - May 15th to 22nd.
Juan de Fuca Marine Trail - June 29nd - July 2nd

This is the second time around that I will have attempted both of these trails. I did the WCT when I was 15 with a group organised by the Y. I was a real hoot. We spent a couple of days out at Cape Beale and then did the North half of the WCT. This time I'm doing it solo and will be doing the whole thing. I don't think I'll have time to get out to Cape Beale but I'll see what happens. I'm going in May so I don't have to make a reservation and to beat some of the crowds. The weather may be a bit problematic but I don't mind hiking in the rain.

I also attempted to do the JDFT last summer and got from Mystic Beach to Sombrio Beach but I brought way to much stuff (about 60lbs!) which killed my back and feet. This is what got me into Lightweight Backpacking in the first place as I wanted to finish the JDFT this year but don't want to take that amount of stuff.

I may do another in the summer depending on how things work out, not sure which yet at this point.