Creating group of VLANs and assign ports to it

Creating Vlans should not be a problem. Try this:

interface group vlan 120-125, vlan 130-135

Once you created the VLANs, you can use the following command to tag a port to all VLANs you want:

int range vlan 1-4000

tag <port#>

Emulex OCm14102-u2-d in M620 and vSphere 5.5 Issue

If you use the latest 5.5u2 DELL iso from our ftp, boot up the host with either NPAR on or off, the nic’s in iDRAC will show up/up, the switch will say up/up, however vSphere will say Down, half-duplex.

To resolve this issue run esxcfg-vnics –a <vnic> to set it to auto-negotiation (the driver seems to have overridden this). This will make the nic’s come online. It seems to survive reboots.

Biggest challenges with most of the service providers are facing today

Biggest challenges with most of the service providers are facing today :
- No way / poor feedback capturing
- Lack in Product Management experience to improve based on the 3 party feedback (Internal, Customer and Partners/investors/vendors)
- Competing with Big fishes/crocs i.e. Azure and Amazon against their strongest game i.e. IAAS and PAAS and still trying to be competitive
- Not realizing which market to target or which one to avoid
- Considering Technology as the game changer for their offerings
- Forgetting the importance of Enterprise Architecture / SOA within this environment which will become the important part to innovate later
- Poor analytics on the market requirements, their marketing campaigns, long term market shift
- Doing large CAPEX instead of considering Partner model (use companies i.e. ServiceNow etc which can provide SAAS based Service Management Solution instead of investing money from their pocket)
- Lacking domain expertise and lacking domain and country regulations
- Lacking architecture experience in such a massive and complex environments
- Resources capabilities and Roadmap
- Running operations in a similar fashion the way they run in single organization. Lacking understanding of ISO 27000:7
- Forgetting International Standards and importance of them to bring competitiveness : ISO 27001/2 , ISO 27005, ISO 22301, ISO 24762, ISO 27031, PDPA, SSAE SOC 1 / 2, Data Sovereignty, Auditing, Pan Tests
- Losing Governance internally
- Forgetting importance of Domain and IT Compliance : SOX, HIPAA, PDPA, MCTS, PCI DSS etc.
- Missing BCP and DR as key backbones for their business
- Weak Marketing 

Few ways you can impress your customers:

1. Architecture
Pulling back the curtain on the architecture of the vendor’s cloud hosting platform will help you evaluate if it is right for your business. For companies looking to host business-critical applications, the cloud vendor’s underlying datacenter, network, storage, and compute infrastructure should mirror the features of a typical enterprise-class computing platform as well as offer the advanced capabilities associated with cloud computing, such as elastically scalable computing resources.
Key Datacenter Infrastructure should include:

• Fully Independent “A” and “B” Power Systems to all Physical Devices
• Fully Redundant Cooling Systems

Key Network Infrastructure should include:

• Complete Network Redundancy to the Physical Host
• Dedicated Public, Private, Backup, Administrative Networks
• SWIP and RWhois Support (i.e. ability to re-assign IPs to Customers)
• Network Layer Load Balancing
• Network Layer Intrusion Detection and Prevention
• Network Layer Firewalls
• MPLS and Virtual Private Networking Support
• Geographically Redundant DNS Service
• Edge Caching and Routing Service Options (i.e. CDN Services)

Key Storage Infrastructure should include:

• Elastically Scalable Tier0, Tier1 and Tier 2 Enterprise SAN Storage
• Fully Redundant Multi-Gbps Fibre Network
• Proven Ability to Handle High I/O Applications

Key Compute Infrastructure should include:

• Elastically Scalable CPU and Memory Resources
• Live Migration Across Physical Hosts
• Automated Recovery from Failed Physical Hosts
• Support for Oracle, SQLServer, and MySQL Clustering

Commodity cloud offerings – such as Amazon and RackSpace – lack many (if not all) of these building-blocks necessary to support enterprise-class hosting environments.Without these fundamental building blocks, the ability of the vendor’s cloud platform to adequately address core ITSM requirements and satisfy the IT requirements of medium to large organizations over the life of the project is compromised. For example, the ability to schedule application-level backups or accessing persistent data storage without impacting network performance and causing application latency is a straight forward requirement of most business-critical applications but are not supported in Amazon’s mono-network EC2 architecture.
Integrated policy and workflow engines and other advanced service management toolsets are another way enterprise cloud hosting platforms set themselves apart from their consumer-oriented counterparts. 
2. Tools
Do far more, far better, and with far less IT resources! To realize this universal goal, an enterprise-class cloud hosting platform must reinforce the integrity of ITSM best practices around application development, staging, production, and disaster recovery while streamlining the necessary IT resources required to support these best practices. This requires an advanced administrative toolset to drive efficient and effective service delivery (e.g. capacity, continuity, and availability management) and support (e.g. incident, change and release management). Key ITSM tools that should be part of an enterprise-class cloud hosting offering include:

• Web Based Control Panel/Customer Service Center
• Web Based Incident, Change, and Request Management System
• Integrated Change Auditing and Control Systems
• System Templates for Rapid re-deployment of your Application and OS Configuration
• Incremental System Snapshots with Roll Forward and Back Capability
• VM and Application Level Data Backup and Archiving
• System and Application Performance and Availability Monitoring and Reporting Tools
• Local and Remote Data Replication Tools
• Benchmark Performance and Security Testing Tools
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management Tools
• Web Services APIs for integration with Cloud Tools and Resources

Few cloud hosting offerings currently include all of these ITSM tools. And while it is possible to combine the services of multiple vendors to create an equivalent suite of management tools, as we saw with Amazon’s mono-network architecture, it is not always certain the underlying architecture of the vendor’s cloud will support them. 
ITSM best-practice also dictates that production systems are replicated to a disaster recovery site to ensure business continuity. Although very important, the cost of implementing and maintain this best practice is extremely high. 
3. Security
Information security is the most significant barrier CIOs see to adopting cloud hosting services. While this is a multi-faceted issue, from a technology point of view there are no inherent security risks or benefits associated with cloud computing relative to other Internet accessible computing platforms. The same principles and toolsets apply. CIOs must do the same due diligence with a cloud hosting platform as they would with their own internal IT departments or traditional IT outsourcer to make sure their Information Security Management System (ISMS) is being supported. In fact, a trustworthy enterprise-cloud vendor should enhance an organization’s ability to protect the integrity of its business information and navigate ever rougher regulatory waters. Ways this can be achieved include:
A. Requiring the cloud vendor to be certified against internationally recognized information security standards, such as SAS 70/SSAE 16, ISO 27001 and PCI. Certification against one or more of these standards is normally required of IT outsourcers to meet the regulatory requirements governing Ecommerce transactions or the management of personal and financial information.
B. Requiring the Cloud vendor to have a multi-layered information security infrastructure integrated into its cloud hosting infrastructure to protect against data intrusion, corruption, and loss. These systems include:

• Flexible Service Agreements that address Risk and Accountability
• Integrated Vulnerability and Compliancy Assessment Tools
• Integrated Change Auditing and Control Systems
• Local and Off-Site Data Backup and Archiving Services
• Integrated Network Layer Intrusion Detection and Prevention
• Integrated Network Layer Firewalls
• Integrated Virtual Private Networking (VPN)
• Support for Private MPLS Network Connections
• Strict Access Control and Acceptable Use Policies
• DDOS Mitigation Tools and Policies

C. Avoiding mass-market Cloud services. At some level, every cloud hosting service, like the Internet itself, is a shared network. As a result, what others do on that network can and will, at some point, affect your business. The risk increases exponentially if the cloud vendor is targeting the mass-market with cheap prices and automated sign ups. On this type of cloud hosting platform you can be certain that network abuse is a significant issue and customers are routinely sideswiped by Denial of Service (DoS) type attacks and blacklisted IP blocks. This is a well-publicized problem on Amazon EC2 but the problem is universal.[5] The best protection is to choose a vendor who caters to businesses and organizations conducting real business over the Internet and subscribing to sound ISMS principles.
Hosting facilities must be SSAE 16 SOC 1/2 certified with security status
5. Support Services
The majority of the cloud hosting offerings on the market are essentially self-help services. At best, organizations can subscribe to a “live” help desk service that is reactive and focused on request and incident management. This may be enough for organizations with solid web hosting experience and adequate IT staffing. However, many organizations need much more. They need a partner who is an expert in the delivery of business-critical applications over the Internet. They need someone to understand their business and application requirements in detail and work proactively through the entire IT lifecycle to achieve their goals. If this is your organization then key things to look for in a managed cloud hosting vendor, include:

• Support for all aspects of service delivery, including the application stack
• Ability to work proactively through the complete IT lifecycle
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) with end-user centric performance objectives
• Adoption of ITIL best-practices, particularly around change management
• Technical Account Managers dedicated to your account
• 24x7x365 Service Desk coverage
• Feedback collection team
• Feedback Processing Team

As one would expect, the shape of cloud hosting computing is fuzzy and changing rapidly. It is still early days and new vendors are entering the market regularly with different service philosophies, target markets, and solutions all under the same cloud hosting banner. In this environment, it is particularly important for CIOs to analyze carefully the underlying objective, architecture, tools, security, and support behind a vendor’s cloud hosting platform. Only then can they evaluate if a particular cloud can achieve the optimal balance between affordability and system availability, capacity, security, scalability, and manageability that is right for their business requirements in the short and longer term.