Tag Archives: Intel

Hyper-V Server: Enable Jumbo Frames on Intel NICs

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Hyper-V R2 SP1

If you are using iSCSI as storage connection you can win a lot of performance by enabling jumbo frames. It is important that your Storage, Switch and Network Card do support the use of jumbo frames.

Now if all parts do support jumbo frames you have to enable this on your network adapters.

First you have to enable this for the operating system. This is very simple done with the netsh command line tool.

netsh int ipv4 set subint "Interface Name" mtu=9000 store=persistent

jumboframes2

Now if you are Intel network cards you have to enable jumbo frames in the registry.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Here you can see all of your network interfaces and you can simply change the “*jumbopacket” value to 9014.

If you don’t now which network interfaces are the iSCSI interfaces you can check the interface GUID here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

jumboframes

If you need more information on iSCSI und Hyper-V check out this blog post.

Ordered HP EliteBook 8460w

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HP EliteBook 8460wSome days ago I compared the new HP EliteBook and ProBook series. Now I decided to buy the HP EliteBook 8460w mobile workstation. I think this is the best option between performance and batterylife.

Here the 8460w configuration I ordered:

  • HP EliteBook 8460w Mobile Workstation
  • Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM Processor (2.0 GHz, 6 MB L3 Cache)
  • Mobile Intel QM67 chipset
  • 14.0-inch diagonal LED-backlit HD+ anti-glare (1600 x 900) with 720p HD Webcam
  • AMD FirePro™ M3900 w/1 GB gDDR3
  • 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2D)
  • 500 GB 7200 rpm 2.5-inch hard drive
  • DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL Drive
  • DualPoint (TouchPad and PointStick)
  • Intel Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 (3×3)
  • Bluetooth® Wireless Technology 2.1
  • TPM & Fingerprint
  • HP 9-Cell 100 Wh Li-Ion Battery
  • 56K v.92 high speed modem
  • HP Elite Support with limited 3 year standard parts and labor warranty 3/3/3

As I said the main reasons for me to buy this notebook, are the performance, the form factor, the batterylife and of coure the design. I am sure the EliteBook 8460p would be enought performance for me, but I really like the color of the EliteBook w-series notebooks.

Since HP will not release the EliteBook 8460w in Europe I ordered the notebook directly in the HP Online Store with my myus.com account.

Cisco UCS Hyper-V Cluster – Important Updates for the Hyper-V Cluster – Part 9

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Since we have installed our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster on the Cisco UCS, Microsoft released some patches for Hyper-V, Windows and Clustering.

There are two really important Updates which I would recommend for Hyper-V Clusters.

  • The first is Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Service Pack 1 brings a lot of Hotfixes for Hyper-V, Failover Cluster Feature and other Microsoft Server features. And it brings also a two new features called Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX.
  • The second one is a hotfix for Servers with Intel Westmere or Sandy Bridge and has a large amount of physical memory. Most of the Cisco UCS Blades will meet this configuration. You can get more information on this Hyper-V hotfix here.

This two updates will bring you a much better experience with your Hyper-V Cluster. It will improve performance, stability and it will add new features.

HP Elitebook comparison

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HP-EliteBook-8460w-8560w-and-8760w-header

I thinking about buying a new notebook and since HP, Dell and other vendors released new notebooks based on Intel Sandy Bridge this would be the perfect time to replace my current MacBook Pro with a new Windows Laptop.

So basically I made this HP Elitebook comparison for all Important things for me based on the Swiss data. (In Switzerland not every model is available.) I also took always the best available option for me.

Probook 6460b Probook 6560b Elitebook 8460p Elitebook 8560p Elitebook 8460w Elitebook
8560w
CPU i5-2520M i5-2520M i7-2620M i7-2620M i7-2630QM i7-2630QM
RAM 16GB 16GB 16GB 16GB 16GB 32GB
Graphics AMD HD 6470M 512MB AMD HD 6470M 512MB AMD HD 6470M 1GB AMD HD 6470M 1GB AMD FirePro M3900 1GB AMD FirePro M5950 1GB
Display 14.0 1600×900 15.6 1600×900 14.0 1600×900 15.6 1920×1080 14.0 1600×900 15.6 1920×1080
3G yes yes yes yes yes yes
Glass Trackpad no no yes yes yes yes
USB 3.0 no no yes yes yes yes
Weight 2.02kg 2.46kg 2.07kg 2.73kg 2.22kg 3kg
Thickness 3.4cm 3.4cm 3.4cm 3.4cm 3.2cm 3.45cm
Design good good okay okay awesome good
Battery life okay okay very good good good bad
Battery life+ no no yes yes yes yes
Docking station yes yes yes yes yes yes
incl. warranty 1 year 1 year 3 years 3 years 3 years 3 years
Price good good okay okay okay okay

Maybe there are some mistakes in this chart but the most things should be right. And I don’t say one is better than the other one, clearly they are made for different tasks and workloads.

Other things:

  • I will add a Intel SSD
  • I will use 8GB RAM
  • I will not use an optical drive

What’s important for me:

  • I need long battery life up 6-8h (more would be better)
  • I need fast disk speed. Since I used a SSD I will never use a HDD again.
  • I don’t need a lot of graphic power
  • Resolution should be 1600×900 or higher
  • the notebook should be light and not to think
  • CPU power, should be enough to run Hyper-V for demos (boot from VHD)

Gallery:

Hyper-V Hotfix for Intel Sandy Bridge and Westmere

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If you are using Microsoft Hyper-V with new Intel Sandy Bridge or Intel Westmere processors and our server has over 48GB of physical RAM you may get a performance decrease. Microsoft released a hotfix (KB2517329) for this problem.

This could also be a problem with a lot of Hyper-V installations on Cisco UCS, because the most of them will use more than 48GB of memory.

The performance decrease could show its self in the the following issues:

  • The CPU usage is high and the server responds slowly when you copy large files on the computer. For example, you copy a 10-GB file
  • The disk I/O performance of the virtual machines (VMs) is slow
  • Windows takes a long time to start

The hotfix is not include in Service Pack 1 for Hpyer-V R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

For more information about this you can check KB2517329