NPP Training series – Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
To give credit due, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it and have updated the graphics for Hyper-V.

Data Structure on Nutanix

The NDFS (Nutanix Distributed Filesystem) is composed of the following high-level structs:

Storage Pool

Key Role: Group of physical devices
Description: A storage pool is a group of physical storage devices including PCIe SSD (Solid State Drive), SSD, and HDD (Hard Disk Drive) devices for the cluster. The storage pool can span multiple Nutanix nodes and is expanded as the cluster scales. In most configurations only a single storage pool is leveraged.

Container

Key Role: Group of VMs/files
Description: A container is a logical segmentation of the Storage Pool and contains a group of VM (Virtual Machine) or files (vDisks). Some configuration options (eg. (RF) Resiliency Factor) are configured at the container level, however are applied at the individual VM/file level. Containers typically have a 1 to 1 mapping with a datastore (SMB Share(s)).

vDisk

Key Role: vDisk
Description: A vDisk is any file over 512KB on NDFS including VM hard disks. vDisks are composed of extents which are grouped and stored on disk as an extent group.

Below we show how these map between NDFS and the Hyper-V:
SP_structure Data Structure

Extent

Key Role: Logically contiguous data
Description: A extent is a 1MB piece of logically contiguous data which consists of n number of contiguous blocks (varies depending on guest OS block size). Extents are written/read/modified on a sub-extent basis (aka slice) for granularity and efficiency. An extent’s slice may be trimmed when moving into the cache depending on the amount of data being read/cached.

Extent Group

Key Role: Physically contiguous stored data
Description: A extent group is a 1MB or 4MB piece of physically contiguous stored data. This data is stored as a file on the storage device owned by the CVM (Controller Virtual Machine). Extents are dynamically distributed among extent groups to provide data striping across nodes/disks to improve performance.

Below we show how these structs relate between the various filesystems:
NDFS_DataLayout_Text Data Structure Here is another graphical representation of how these units are logically related:
NDFS_DataStructure3 Data Structure Next up, I/O Path Overview

Until next time, Rob…

Understanding Windows Azure Pack – Deployment Scenario’s on Nutanix – Part 2

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue the Windows Azure Pack series, here is my next topic: Deployment Scenario’s on Nutanix

If you missed part 1 – see link below
Part 1 – Understanding Windows Azure Pack

Windows Azure Pack – Deployment Scenario’s

Terminology

Ok, Let’s start with some terminology used when talking about WAP(Windows Azure Pack). Here are two key terms you need to know:

Administrator – Someone who deploys, configures and manages WAP and makes cloud services available to tenants.
Tenant – Someone who subscribes to and uses cloud services made available through WAP.

When WAP is deployed by a hoster (service provider) the administrator refers to IT staff at the hoster while the tenants are the customers to which the hoster is selling cloud services. And when WAP is deployed in an enterprise datacenter, the administrator will be your own IT department; the tenants in this case will be the other departments, divisions, or business units within your organization that want to take advantage of the cloud services your IT department is offering.

Admin Portal

User Signin Portal

User Main Portal

Required components

WAP currently includes eight components. Two of these components are portals:

Management Portal for Administrators – A web-based portal that lets administrators configure and manage user accounts, resource clouds, tenant offers, and so on.
Management Portal for Tenants – A web-based self-service portal that lets tenants provision, monitor and manage the following cloud services: Web Sites, Virtual Machines, and Service Bus.

The self-service capabilities of the Management Portal for Tenants enables tenants to deploy and manage the cloud services they need when they need them without having to go through the slow procurement processes of the traditional approach to enterprise IT.
Authentication is another key feature of WAP to ensure that only properly authenticated administrators have access to the Management Portal for Administrators and only properly authenticated users have access to the Management Portal for Tenants. By default, the Management Portal for Administrators uses Windows authentication (Kerberos or NTLM) but you can optionally use Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) for authentication purposes. The Management Portal for Tenants on the other hand uses the ASP.NET Membership Provider for authentication purposes. WAP includes two authentication sites, an Admin Authentication Site and a Tenant Authentication Site, for these purposes.
WAP also includes components that provide the following application programming interfaces (APIs):

Windows Azure Pack Admin API – Enables administration tasks to be performed using the Management Portal for Administrators and Windows PowerShell.
Windows Azure Pack Tenant API – Enables tenant-specific tasks to be performed using the Management Portal for Tenants and Windows PowerShell.
Windows Azure Pack Tenant Public API – Provides additional tenant-specific functionality primarily for hosting provider environments.

All of the above components are required in any WAP deployment.

Optional components

The following components of WAP may be deployed in order to offer additional forms of cloud services and other resources to tenants:

Web Sites – Provides you with a managed web environment you can use to create new websites or migrate your existing business website into the cloud.
Virtual Machines – Provides you with a general-purpose computing environment that lets you create, deploy, and manage virtual machines running in the Windows Azure cloud.
Service Bus – Allows you to keep your apps connected across your private cloud environment and the Windows Azure public cloud.
Automation and Extensibility – Allows you to automate and integrate custom services into your services framework using runbooks.
SQL and MySQL – Allows you to provision Microsoft SQL and MySQL databases for tenants to use.

Windows Azure Pack – Deployment Scenario’s

There are two basic deployment scenarios for WAP:

Express architecture – Recommended for proof of concept testing only.
Distributed architecture – Recommended for production environments.

In addition, the distributed architecture can be implemented in various ways depending on the scale and degree of availability needed. Let’s briefly examine each of these scenarios.

Express architecture

In an express deployment of Windows Azure Pack, you install all of the required components on a single server and any optional components needed on one or more additional servers. This is the deployment I will be doing in the next part of the series. Specifically, the following required components must all be installed on your first server:

Windows Azure Pack Admin API
Windows Azure Pack Tenant API
Windows Azure Pack Tenant Public API
Admin Authentication Site
Tenant Authentication Site
Management Portal for Administrators
Management Portal for Tenants

In addition, your first server must host the SQL Management Database used by the required components. This means you must install a required version of Microsoft SQL Server on the first server.

Distributed architecture

In a distributed deployment of WAP, you spread out the required components across multiple servers. There are many ways you can do this, but the following recommendations should generally be adhered to in order to ensure optional performance and supportability for your deployment:

Install a management portal and its corresponding authentication site on the same server. For example, install the Management Portal for Administrators and the Admin Authentication Site on the same server.
If you will be providing cloud services to tenants over the public Internet, install the following components on the same public-facing server:

Management Portal for Tenants
Tenant Authentication Site
Windows Azure Pack Tenant Public API

If Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) is to be used for authentication purposes, install it on a separate identity server.
If Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is to be used for authentication purposes, install it on a separate identity server along with an ADFS
For greater scalability and high availability in large deployments, install the SQL Management Database on a separate failover cluster. In addition, use failover clustering for your public-facing servers and for the servers hosting your other required components.
For even higher scalability, install each required component on a separate failover cluster and the SQL Management Database on another failover cluster. In other words, use eight failover clusters to deploy the seven required components plus the SQL Management Database. Check out Nutanix Best Practices guide for deploying SQL

In the next blog post in this series, we will begin our walk-through of installing and configuring WAP. I will focus primarily on the express deployment scenario in this series along with two types of cloud services: Virtual Machines and SQL Databases…………..Let’s build a cloud……

Until next time, Rob…

NPP Training series – Cluster Components with Hyper-V

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Cluster Components

If you missed other parts of my series, check out links below:
Part 1 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Part 2 – NPP Training series – Nutanix Terminology
Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V
Data Structure on Nutanix with Hyper-V
I/O Path Overview

To give credit, most of the content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.

Cluster Components

The Nutanix platform is composed of the following high-level components:

NDFS_Cluster Components

Cassandra

Key Role: Distributed metadata store
Description: Cassandra stores and manages all of the cluster metadata in a distributed ring like manner based upon a heavily modified Apache Cassandra. The Paxos algorithm is utilized to enforce strict consistency. This service runs on every node in the cluster. Cassandra is accessed via an interface called Medusa.

Medusa

Key Role: Abstraction layer
Description: Medusa is the Nutanix abstraction layer that sits in front of the cluster’s distributed metadata database, which is managed by Cassandra..

Zookeeper

Key Role: Cluster configuration manager
Description: Zeus stores all of the cluster configuration including hosts, IPs, state, etc. and is based upon Apache Zookeeper. This service runs on three nodes in the cluster, one of which is elected as a leader. The leader receives all requests and forwards them to the peers. If the leader fails to respond a new leader is automatically elected. Zookeeper is accessed via an interface called Zeus.

Zeus

Key Role: Library interface
Description: Zeus is the Nutanix library interface that all other components use to access the cluster configuration, such as IP addresses. Currently implemented using Zookeeper, Zeus is responsible for critical, cluster-wide data such as cluster configuration and leadership locks.

Stargate

Key Role: Data I/O manager
Description: Stargate is responsible for all data management and I/O operations and is the main interface from Hyper-V (via SMB 3.0). This service runs on every node in the cluster in order to serve localized I/O.

Curator

Key Role: Map reduce cluster management and cleanup
Description: Curator is responsible for managing and distributing tasks throughout the cluster including disk balancing, proactive scrubbing, and many more items. Curator runs on every node and is controlled by an elected Curator Master who is responsible for the task and job delegation. There are two scan types for Curator, a full scan which occurs around every 6 hours and a partial scan which occurs every hour.

Prism

Key Role: UI and API
Description: Prism is the management gateway for component and administrators to configure and monitor the Nutanix cluster. This includes Ncli, the HTML5 UI and REST API. Prism runs on every node in the cluster and uses an elected leader like all components in the cluster.

prism1 Cluster Components prism2 Cluster Components

Genesis

Key Role: Cluster component & service manager
Description: Genesis is a process which runs on each node and is responsible for any services interactions (start/stop/etc.) as well as for the initial configuration. Genesis is a process which runs independently of the cluster and does not require the cluster to be configured/running. The only requirement for genesis to be running is that Zookeeper is up and running. The cluster_init and cluster_status pages are displayed by the genesis process.

Chronos

Key Role: Job and Task scheduler
Description: Chronos is responsible for taking the jobs and tasks resulting from a Curator scan and scheduling/throttling tasks among nodes. Chronos runs on every node and is controlled by an elected Chronos Master who is responsible for the task and job delegation and runs on the same node as the Curator Master.

Cerebro

Key Role: Replication/DR manager
Description: Cerebro is responsible for the replication and DR capabilities of DFS(Distributed Storage Fabric). This includes the scheduling of snapshots, the replication to remote sites, and the site migration/failover. Cerebro runs on every node in the Nutanix cluster and all nodes participate in replication to remote clusters/sites.

Pithos

Key Role: vDisk configuration manager
Description: Pithos is responsible for vDisk (DFS file) configuration data. Pithos runs on every node and is built on top of Cassandra.

Next up, Data Structures which comprises high level structs for Nutanix Distributed Filesystem

Until next time, Rob….

Understanding Windows Azure Pack – Part 1

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Robert Corradini

With Azure Stack coming early next year….Windows Azure Pack is still of great value currently for service providers to organizations wanted to provide IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service). I get asked all the time “What is Azure Pack”, “How do you deploy and what do I get started? etc…This blog series will give you the fundamental rundown on Windows Azure Pack and how it compares to Windows Azure Public Cloud…Deployment Scenarios on Nutanix and a how to deploy step-by-step Azure Pack express edition on Nutanix. So sit back and enjoy the show…

What is Windows Azure?

To understand what Windows Azure Pack is, you first need to be familiar with Windows Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud platform. To understand what Windows Azure is all about, check out the Azure website, but here are some key points of Windows Azure:

Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud.

As a cloud platform from Microsoft that provides a wide range of different services, Windows Azure lets you build, deploy, and manage solutions for almost any purpose you can imagine. In other words, Windows Azure is a world of unlimited possibilities. Whether you’re a large enterprise spanning several continents that needs to run server workloads, or a small business that wants a website that has a global presence, Windows Azure can provide a platform for building applications that can leverage the cloud to meet the needs of your business…
So now, Let’s look at the definition that Microsoft uses for describing Windows Azure:
Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
This definition tells us that Windows Azure is a cloud platform, which means you can use it for running your business applications, services, and workloads in the cloud. But it also includes some key words that tell us even more:

Open – Windows Azure provides a set of cloud services that allow you to build and deploy cloud-based applications using almost any programming language, framework, or tool.
Flexible – Windows Azure provides a wide range of cloud services that can let you do everything from hosting your company’s website to running big SQL databases in the cloud. It also includes different features that can help deliver high performance and low latency for cloud-based applications.
Microsoft-managed – Windows Azure services are currently hosted in several datacenters spread across the United States, Europe, and Asia. These datacenters are managed by Microsoft and provide expert global support on a 24x7x365 basis.
Compatible – Cloud applications running on Windows Azure can easily be integrated with on-premises IT environments that utilize the Microsoft Windows Server platform.

Windows Azure provides businesses with four basic categories of cloud-based services:

Compute services
Network services
Data services
App services

At the core of the Windows Azure platform is its ability to execute applications running in the cloud. Windows Azure currently provides four different models for doing this: Web Sites, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and Mobile Services. Together these four approaches comprise the compute services portion of the Windows Azure platform, and they can either be used separately or combined together to build more complex solutions that can meet specific business needs.
Now, let’s go though some the main options on Windows Azure….
Windows Azure Web Sites is a scalable, secure, and flexible platform you can use for building web applications that run your business, extend the reach of your brand, and draw in new customers. It has an easy-to-use self-service portal with a gallery of the world’s most popular web solutions including .DotNetNuke, CakePHP, DasBlog, WordPress, and many others. Or you can simply create a new website from scratch and then install a tool like WebMatrix—a free, lightweight web development tool that supports the latest web technologies such as ASP.NET, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, and Node. You can use WebMatrix to create websites and publish applications for Windows Azure. And if you use Microsoft Visual Studio as a development environment, you can download and install a Windows Azure SDK so you can build applications that can take advantage of the scalable cloud computing resources offered by Windows Azure…
Creating a new website with Windows Azure is so easy we have to show you how to do it. Begin by logging on to the Windows Azure Management Portal at https://manage.windowsazure.com using your Microsoft Account username and password. Then select the Compute, Web App tab on the left and either click Quick Create or click the from Gallery button on the command bar as shown here:
Windows Azure Pack The command bar then expands, as shown in the next figure, and allows you to quickly create a new website with no additional configuration, a custom website with either a new or existing database, or a new web application based on an application framework, blog engine, template, or any other app available in the Windows Azure gallery…
Windows Azure Virtual Machines is a scalable, on-demand IaaS platform you can use to quickly provision and deploy server workloads into the cloud. Once deployed, you can then configure, manage, and monitor those virtual machines, load-balance traffic between them, and connect them to other Windows Azure Cloud Services running web roles and worker roles. You can copy virtual hard disks (VHDs) from your on-premises environment into Windows Azure to use as templates for creating new virtual machines. And you can copy VHDs out of Windows Azure and run them locally in your datacenter.
You can create new virtual machines from a standard image available in the Windows Azure gallery. Standard images are included for current versions of Windows Server and for different flavors of Linux. Standard images are also available for Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft BizTalk Server pre-installed on Windows Server. Standard images are a great way of quickly provisioning new virtual machines, but you can also use images you created on-premises to deploy new virtual machines.
Creating a new virtual machine in Windows Azure is easy. Just open the Windows Azure Management Portal and select Compute, and then Virtual Machine tab on the left. The command bar expands and displays two options for creating virtual machines: Quick Create or From Gallery.
The Quick Create option lets you create a new virtual machine which you can configure later. As shown below, all you need to specify for this option is the DNS name for your virtual machine, the image to use as a template for your virtual machine, the size of the virtual machine (number of cores and memory), a user name and password for administrative access to the virtual machine, and the region or affinity group to which the virtual machine should be assigned:
Windows Azure Pack
The other option, called From Gallery, lets you create a virtual machine by specifying advanced options presented in a series of pages. The first page shown below allows you to choose an image to be used as a template when creating your virtual machine…

Windows Azure Pack vs. Windows Azure

Let’s again review the definition that Microsoft uses for describing Windows Azure:
Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
Now let’s examine how Microsoft describes Windows Azure Pack. First, here’s how they define Windows Azure Pack on their Server and Cloud Platform site:
The Windows Azure Pack is a collection of Windows Azure technologies available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost. Once installed in your datacenter, the Windows Azure Pack integrates with System Center and Windows Server to help provide a self-service portal for managing services such as websites, Virtual Machines, and Service Bus; a portal for administrators to manage resource clouds; scalable web hosting; and more.
Next, here’s how Microsoft defines Windows Azure Pack in the TechNet Library:
Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server is a collection of Windows Azure technologies, available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost for installation into your data center. It runs on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 and, through the use of the Windows Azure technologies, enables you to offer a rich, self-service, multi-tenant cloud, consistent with the public Windows Azure experience.
Comparing these various definitions and reading the linked resources enables us to conclude the following about how Windows Azure Pack compares to Windows Azure:

Both platforms provide a set of cloud services that allow you to build and deploy cloud-based applications using almost any programming language, framework, or tool. But while Windows Azure provides a broad range of several dozen different cloud services, Windows Azure Pack provides only a subset of these services, primarily Web Sites, Virtual Machines and Service Bus.
Cloud applications running on either platform can easily be integrated with on-premises IT environments that utilize Windows Server to enable you to build hybrid solutions.
While Windows Azure is hosted in globally distributed datacenters managed by Microsoft, Windows Azure Pack is something you can deploy within your own datacenter.
And lastly the upcoming Azure Stack will be in full parity with Windows Azure…See my Azure Stack Article

To summarize, Windows Azure Pack lets you bring some of the capabilities of the Windows Azure public cloud platform right into your own datacenter by leveraging your existing infrastructure based on Windows Server and System Center.
In the next article of this series we’ll examine different deploying scenarios with Nutanix for Windows Azure Pack in your datacenter.

NPP Training series – Cluster Architecture with Hyper-V

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Robert Corradini

To continue NPP training series here is my next topic: Cluster Architecture

To give credit, some of this content was taken from Steve Poitras’s “Nutanix Bible” blog as his content is the most accurate and then I put a Hyper-V lean to it.

Cluster Architecture

The Nutanix solution is a converged storage + compute solution which leverages local components and creates a distributed platform for virtualization aka virtual computing platform. The solution is a bundled hardware + software appliance which houses 2 (6000/7000 series) or 4 nodes (1000/2000/3000/3050 series) in a 2U footprint. Each node runs an industry standard hypervisor (ESXi, KVM, Hyper-V currently) and the Nutanix Controller VM (CVM). The Nutanix CVM is what runs the Nutanix software and serves all of the I/O operations for the hypervisor and all VMs running on that host. For the Nutanix units running VMware vSphere, the SCSI controller, which manages the SSD and HDD devices, is directly passed to the CVM leveraging VM-Direct Path (Intel VT-d). In the case of Hyper-V the storage devices are passed through to the CVM. Below is an example of what a typical node logically looks like:

NDFS_NodeDetail2 Cluster Architecture

Together, a group of Nutanix Nodes forms a distributed platform called the Distributed Storage Fabric (DFS). DFS appears to the Hyper-V like any centralized storage array, however all of the I/Os are handled locally to provide the highest performance. More detail on how these nodes form a distributed system can be found below. Below is an example of how these Nutanix nodes form NDFS and then presented up to Hyper-V via SMB 3.0 Share(s):

DFS uses a software-defined, shared-nothing, scale-out approach to storage that eliminates the need for you to deploy a separate SAN along with its performance bottlenecks and scalability limitations. DFS leverages local SSD for fast VM performance and consolidates high capacity HDDs for cost-effective storage capacity.

The application data is intelligently placed in the appropriate storage tier, balancing storage performance and capacity needs. The environment’s noisy VMs on different hosts won’t impact the performance for any workloads—fulfilling key performance requirements for hybrid deployments.
Here are the key points with Hyper-V on Nutanix:

Hypervisor sees the Distributed Storage Fabric (DFS) as one or more SMB 3.0 file shares
Supports features like snapshots, dedupe, compression web-scale out, and disaster recovery
Locally shared storage is comprised of both flash and spinning disks
Variety of models (compute heavy, storage heavy, etc.)
Mix and match models within the same cluster
Pay as you grow – Start small and linearly scale your Microsoft infrastructure in minutes without the scalability shortcomings of traditional servers and storage.

Next up in the NPP Training series – Cluster Components

Microsoft Ignite 2015 – Week in Review…

Gallery

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Robert Corradini

Microsoft Ignite 2015 – Week in Review Well, it was a great show and finally recovering with some sleep under my belt. Here we go… Microsoft Ignite 2015 is where I had a chance to meet and talk with the industry leaders … Continue reading →

Nutanix Community Edition – Deploying and Configuring – Part 1

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Robert Corradini

nutanix-community-edition_w_500 Another very exciting announcement was Nutanix Community Edition (CE) on June 9th, 2015 at our Inaugural .NEXT conference. So, what is it?…..Our website describes it the best “Community Edition is a 100% software solution enabling technology enthusiasts to easily evaluate the latest Hyperconvergence technology at zero cost.”

In other words, you can use your own hardware to test out Nutanix. Very cool. This is great for building a lab and just gaining understanding of Hyperconvergence hands on.
Nutanix is offering a hardware compatibility list (HCL) to users that includes the minimum requirements to run the software; essentially, any standard x86 server can be used….

And to quote our CEO and co-founder Dheeraj Pandey:

“From our very first software release in 2012, Nutanix has been dedicated to open architectures and technologies, offering unprecedented customer choice and flexibility,” “Community Edition is the next step in democratizing HyperConverged infrastructure technology, enabling anyone to experience the transformative benefits of our software. Only by eliminating the requirement for proprietary hardware and embracing off-the-shelf platforms can the next revolution of datacenter technologies be fully realized.”

As the name implies, the support for the CE will come from the community through Nutanix’s NEXT online portal. Users will be able to log in, ask questions and get answers from the community.

CE also allow you to also check our new Acropolis hypervisor based on KVM. Check out Josh Odger’s Blog to learn more about Acropolis.

Join the beta…And don’t forget my NPP training series that helps you with all the concepts around Hyperconvergence.

Currently, I am getting started with Nutanix CE installation and will be posting my experiences in a later blog post with how I build my Nutanix Lab @ Home. 🙂

Until next time….Rob

Heads down….;) Life and Times of a Microsoft Technology Evangelist

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Robert Corradini

Life and Times of a Microsoft Technology Evangelist

Hello all…It’s been a few weeks since my last blog post…I have been to my HQ twice in San Jose, California for week at a time. You would be surprised how 3 hour time differences and coming back east messes up your day. Still working on a system for that, but what works so far is to stay on your schedule…Last time I went to Cali, I let myself slip into the Cali schedule and coming back east was brutal for a week. ;(
So far my schedule that seems to work, but always evolving, is to run the entire west coast workday.

Continue reading →