About me

I created this blog with the intention of sharing tips, experiences (good and bad) and personal reviews that the everyday IT Admin may find useful.

My name is Brett Sinclair, and I’m a Systems Engineer/Architect/Advisor based in Melbourne, Australia.

Specialising in all modern Datacenter Technologies for over 10 years (and of course ALL things Cloud), I’ve tried to follow a pragmatic and practical approach to IT.

Circumstances don’t always follow the runbook, so being able to think outside the box, adapt and act quickly are attributes I’ve always tried to utilize.

Awards:

  • DELL EMC Elect 2017
  • EMC Elect 2015 & 2016
  • VMware vExpert 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018

Current certifications:

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Developer Associate, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate
  • EMC Proven Professional (Cloud Architect Expert):
    • EMCCAe (IaaS Expert)
    • EMCCAs (Virtualized Infrastructure Specialist), EMCISA
  • VMware: VCP-DCV6.5, VCP6-DCV,VCP5-DCV, VCA-NV,VCA-DCV, VCA-WM, VCA-Cloud
  • Imprivata: Imprivata Certified Engineer
  • iGEL Certified Engineer
  • CommVault: CCA 9

Acclaim Page: https://www.youracclaim.com/users/brett-sinclair

Older certifications:

  • Cisco: CCNA 2.0
  • Microsoft: MCP, MCSA 
  • LPI: Linux +

I’m also a husband, father, coffee aficionado, hobby photographer and enthusiast car detailer 🙂 So read on, drop me a line or say ‘Hello’ !

Comments are my own, yada, yada, yada !

17 thoughts on “About me

  1. Hello Brett… Liking the blog!. Almost about to purchase a VNX 5200 but I don’t trust some of the information i’m getting and I thought I’d reach out to someone who knows their stuff but has nothing to gain by misleading me. If I fail SPA (or B) on one of these boxes, is that going to be disruptive or will the back end ownership fail over within my host timeout period (defaults to 60 seconds).

    Sorry to trouble you.

    Mark

    1. Hi Mark, thanks the comment 🙂 Losing an SP either gracefully or because of failure isn’t going to be disruptive. The caveat is to make sure you’re multi-pathing config is solid and the load is not over each SP’s threshold.
      LUNs are trespassed to the surviving SP and everything will keep on running nicely until the failed SP is fixed. Hope this helps.

  2. Hello Brett… Liking the blog!. Almost about to purchase a VNX 5200 but I don’t trust some of the information i’m getting and I thought I’d reach out to someone who knows their stuff but has nothing to gain by misleading me. If I fail SPA (or B) on one of these boxes, is that going to be disruptive or will the back end ownership fail over within my host timeout period (defaults to 60 seconds).

    Sorry to trouble you.

    Mark

    1. Hi Mark, thanks the comment 🙂 Losing an SP either gracefully or because of failure isn’t going to be disruptive. The caveat is to make sure you’re multi-pathing config is solid and the load is not over each SP’s threshold.
      LUNs are trespassed to the surviving SP and everything will keep on running nicely until the failed SP is fixed. Hope this helps.

  3. Hi Brett,

    We had recently added a new RPA Gen5 cluster to our existing infrastructure (3 other clusters), EMC has provided us with a temporary EX license to redistribute CGs, now that we have finished, I’d like to change the temp EX License with SE, I didn’t find any article about this, how whould this affect the clusters, the new cluster is connected to the other ones by FC for some and Ethernet for others.

    I appreciate your help.

    Regards.

    1. Hi Abdel,

      You can remove and add a new license without affecting anything, but you won’t be able to make any changes while there is no license, so make sure you have everything ready to go. You won’t lose CG’s or journals or anything and there won’t be a requirement for a full sweep. Note though, you can’t use SE with more than 2 clusters, did you mean you are installing a permanent EX license ?

      Cheers, Brett

  4. Hi Brett,

    We had recently added a new RPA Gen5 cluster to our existing infrastructure (3 other clusters), EMC has provided us with a temporary EX license to redistribute CGs, now that we have finished, I’d like to change the temp EX License with SE, I didn’t find any article about this, how whould this affect the clusters, the new cluster is connected to the other ones by FC for some and Ethernet for others.

    I appreciate your help.

    Regards.

    1. Hi Abdel,

      You can remove and add a new license without affecting anything, but you won’t be able to make any changes while there is no license, so make sure you have everything ready to go. You won’t lose CG’s or journals or anything and there won’t be a requirement for a full sweep. Note though, you can’t use SE with more than 2 clusters, did you mean you are installing a permanent EX license ?

      Cheers, Brett

  5. Hello Brett,
    Ton of useful information on your website. I have a block VNX and looking for few steps how to power down using CLI method so I can see the screen the power down process. I know only though GUI, but we will not be able to see what is going on after that!.

    1. Hi John,
      VNX Block powerdown process is very simple, but not very verbose.
      naviseccli -h spa_address shutdown
      You’ll have to answer a confirmation (unless you specify a -o)
      If all goes well you’ll see nothing. If it doesn’t succeed you’ll see some error info.

  6. Hello Brett,
    Ton of useful information on your website. I have a block VNX and looking for few steps how to power down using CLI method so I can see the screen the power down process. I know only though GUI, but we will not be able to see what is going on after that!.

    1. Hi John,
      VNX Block powerdown process is very simple, but not very verbose.
      naviseccli -h spa_address shutdown
      You’ll have to answer a confirmation (unless you specify a -o)
      If all goes well you’ll see nothing. If it doesn’t succeed you’ll see some error info.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: