FCoE end to end and the trough of disillusionment

Current customers with fibre channel environments looking to refresh their infrastructue always ask me one question, can we replace fibre channel with FCoE end to end for my whole environment.
For most customers, 100% virtualisation is a dream that wont be happening in the near future, replacing fibre channel with FCoE is in the same boat.
Unfortately unless you are replacing all of your compute, storage and connectivity end to end FCoE is simply not possible and if you have non-virtualised workloads its even further away!
I have vendors consistently telling me they have customers going 100% FCoE only to find it a small environment where the requirements are specific enough to make FCoE end to end happen.
Unfortunately we are at the stage where hype/vendors/expectations dont meet expectations and that lands us fair and square in the trough of disillusionment.

VMware Storage Canonical Name or Device Identifiers

Making this list to assist me in helping to identify the type of storage by the Canonical name or Device ID for VMware Clusters and hosts where there is more than one type of Storage.

EMC Clariion = naa.6006*
IBM FastT DS = naa.600a*
HP EVA = naa.6001*
NetApp FAS = naa.60a9*

Firmware updating IBM x3650, M2, M3 and other x Series

IBM only provide Windows and Linux update packages for it’s x Series Servers and if like me you run VMware ESX on a large portion of your Servers you need to find another way to perform the updates.

IBM provides two utilities:

Update Express
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/docdisplay?lndocid=SERV-XPRESS&brandind=5000008#uxspinstall

Bootable Media Creator
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/docdisplay?lndocid=TOOL-BOMC&brandind=5000016

Firstly you use Update express to download and build a respository of the updates for the hardware and operating system drivers you will be installing.

Then the bootable media creator can be used to make a bootable ISO that contains those updates. Once you have built the respository you need only pull down the latest updates and re-compile the ISO to keep it up to date.

You can build your responsitory up to cover multiple hardware and operating system types, then use the same CD/DVD for all the different types.