Enabling SSD cache on SoftLayer Bare Metal Servers

The official SoftLayer blog recently did an article on using 1 or 2 SSD drives in a bare metal that use all SATA drives to considerably boost IOPS.  It highlights that using just SATA you will not get great speeds, but adding a couple of SSD’s can see improvements from 970 IOPS to 9000 IOPS.  Please check this out.

http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/enable-ssd-caching-bare-metal-server-10x-iops-improvements

New SoftLayer calculator

SoftLayer has released a new calculator tool to help customers build a quote / configuration quickly and easily.  The quote is not official so prices aren’t actionable like the SoftLayer.com site.   You can’t provision / order from this site so it is safe to play around.

  • Sample templates
  • Allows you to save the config for modification later
  • Export to PDF, XLS and CSV
  • Allows you to quote items not possible on regular site such as storage, firewall, etc
  • Compares against traditional on-premises capex models

The website is http://www.softlayer.com/total-cost

You will land at the following page where you can chose from 3 options

“No preset data” – you will start with a blank configuration.

“Load a sample configuration…” – Will load a predefined configuration hopefully close to what you need.

“Restore saved input” – Use this option if you have previously save a config (They hold your configure for 2 months), you need to remember the 15 digital code you were provided when you saved your last config.

TCO tool home page

You can also watch a couple of videos from this page that help guide you on how to use this tool, just click the blue “See how” links.  Here is the video:

 

It is much easier and faster to configure up a server, especially if you are adding a lot.  You can add one configured server (bare metal or virtual) and then duplicate, edit, delete, change quantity.

TCO tool server page

 

You get a nice one page summary, that can be exported in a couple of different formats.  Please note the “Save your input” button at the top, this is how to save your config onto the server and get your 15 digital code.

TCO tool summary page

 

You can even have to the tool perform a basic Total Cost Ownership comparison, the nice bit here is you can change the figures for your on-premises gear and services.

TCO tool comparison page

Live Vmotion 13,800 km between Softlayer Sites

Just got sent a linked to a video that shows what you can do with VMWare and SoftLayer.

These guys performed a live migration of a 5 GB vm from Sydney to Dallas in roughly 2 and a half minutes.  They have pre-prepared the VSAN and NSX to facilitate the data center change, but it’s pretty impressive for such a distance.

Vyatta Help

For anyone looking for help with a Brocade Vyatta your first port of call is the Softlayer helpdesk/chat/ticket they can help with most issues where the Vyatta is misbehaving.

If you need to understand how to manage and configure the device your self I’d suggest you start with the Brocade Vyatta documentation.

http://www1.brocade.com/downloads/documents/html_product_manuals/vyatta/vyatta_5400_manual/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

Netapp AltaVault to serve up Object Storage

I’m currently investigating the use of Netapps’ Virtual appliance “AltaVault” Cold Storage, formally Steelstore.

I want it to serve up Softlayer Object Storage as CIFS and NFS volumes to Virtual servers in Softlayer.  This product (If it works as I think it is going to) can carve up Object storage to provide cheap, slowish, elastic shares to servers.  It provides cache to help boost performance, provides encryption, deduplication and compression.

Check it out here NetApp AltaVault I’ll keep you informed of how I go with this investigation.