Gerben's Blog on Virtualization

On Monday September 15 VMware introduced the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDOS). Is it a new product? No it is not a product on itself, it is more like a concept which shows a roadmap where VMware is aiming at in the near future. It VMware's new name for the Virtual Infrastructure formerly known as VI3 now called VDOS.

As reported earlier by VMware during VMworld Europe back in February of this year, VMware is aiming at the cloud computing concept. With the introduction of VDOS VMware made a big step into that direction. According to VMware the main properties of such a cloud computing environment should involve:

• hardware independency
• location independency
• a self-healing mechanism
• guaranteed service levels
• secure
• scalable
• manageability

If you look at the VDOS-concept as introduced by VMware it contains four main building blocks mainly populated with currently available features and topped off which a couple of new features. Let's take a closer look.

I will start with a diagram VMware created which shows the components (building blocks) and their relation to each other.

The four components are:

1. Application vServices - Aimed at the application level, ensures the operation of those applications with availability features like vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, DRS;
2. Infrastructure vServices - Aimed at the infrastructure 'on-premise' (cpu: vCompute, network: vNetwork, storage: vStorage)
3. Cloud vServices - Aimed at the infrastructure 'off-premise' (third party infrastructure interfacing)
4. Management vServices - Aimed at the manageability of the virtual infrastructure and the applications running on it.

Summary of new features announced in the roadmaps (to be available in 2009):

Application vServices

• VMware Fault Tolerance (continuous availability)
• vCenter Data Recovery
• VMware VMsafe integrated products
• Hot add of CPU's
• vApp - a standard way of describing applications in a way that it can operate as a self-managed entity it leverages the industry standard OVF (Open Virtual machine Format).
• VMware vStudio - an authoring and configuration tool, enables ISVs and enterprises to construct Virtual Appliances and vApps

Infrastructure vServices

vCompute

• paravirtualized virtual storage device (200.000 I/O's per second)
• VMDirect (to be able to directly access hardware)

vNetwork

• Distributed switches
• Network vMotion (movement of network statistics and history)
• third party virtual switches (CISCO?)

vStorage

• vStorage Thin Provisioning (virtual disks only allocate space when needed)
• vStorage Linked Clones
• vStorage API's (to enable storage array software to manage individual VMware virtual machines)

Management vServices

Simplified Applications Management

• vCenter AppSpeed (better performance management)

Simplified Infrastructure Management

• vCenter Linked Mode (with multiple vCenter instances)
• Monitoring and automated remediation (compliance control for hosts)
• vCenter ConfigControl (compliance control for virtual instances)
• vCenter Orchestrator (customized workflow's to automate operational tasks)
• vCenter CapacityIQ (capacity analyzer)
• vCenter Chargeback (charge back utility)

Simplify End-to-End Management Across Virtual and Physical Infrastructure

• VMware Ready (a management solution validation program)

Cloud vServices

This vService is introduced with VDOS. This enables companies to use capacity on-demand at external sites/third parties and for others it can be useful in a outsourcing strategy.

At monday 15th september 2008 Vizioncore (a Quest Software division) made four announcements involving their product portfolio at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas.

vAutomation suite which consists of a combination of three products will be available from Q4 2008 through 2009:
- vControl (a webbased management tool to manage and control your virtual datacenter(s))
- vWorkflow (a workflow management tool to automate processes)
- vLifecycle (a tool to manage and  control the lifecylcle of a VM from "the cradle to the grave", available mid 2009)

vRanger Pro 4.0 the newest version of the award winning backup/restore tool with some new extra features build in. vRanger Pro 4.0 now supports incremental backup resulting in smaller storage requirements.

vFoglight (formerly known as vCharter Pro) changed her name in order to make clear a redesign of the architecture took place. The product now looks like the existing product Quest Foglight. Also monitoring for a couple key applications (AD/SQL/Exchange/etc) will be included as well as chargeback functionality (end of 2008)

vOptimizer Pro will be used to optimize performance of and storage in use by vm's by automating several activities to optimize storage consumption by those vm's.

I like it when two things come together.

A while ago I posted a link to an article about creating your own ESXi usb-stick. There are several people around who have written something about this subject. Not much people around though, who had problems with the procedure that was described. It looks like a lot of people copied each other because in many of them a step was missing (not a very important step but hey it shows how data is copied around). So lets start describing my little experiment.

The experiment started with the purchase of a server for testing at home. I came across a server in the DELL PowerEdge range. Now you probably think that I'm loaded with money to be able to buy a Poweredge server. Wrong, some time ago DELL had a promotion I took advantage of. I purchased a PowerEdge T105, a starter model which can be placed underneath your desk. The model is very silent; my laptop makes more noise. For about 150 Euros (shipping included) I ordered myself a genuine PowerEdge with a AMD Opteron processor. All parts I selected were the minimum possible because I found out it is cheaper to buy them separately.

After a couple of day's and two unsuccessful delivery attempts I received my Server. After checking the system with a live-cd of Ubuntu (worked perfect), I gave it a try with ESXi of the VMworld Europe USB memory stick (the one every attendee got). ESXi started but was very limited, no network was found because the onboard nic (Broadcom) was not recognized and besides the lack of network capabilities also local storage was unavailable because it did not recognize a compatible SATA controller.

After googling on this problem I found out more people suffered from this problem (after all the product as a system is not on VMware's HCL). I gave it a rest and installed Ms Windows 2008 on it.

A couple of weeks later VMware announced the new pricing of ESXi (free!). I decided to give it another try but now with the 3.5 update 2 version of ESXi. In order to do that I needed to upgrade my VMworld Europe version of ESXi with the latest version available. Now we reach a point where I got a bit frustrated because the method to build your own USB-stick with ESXi which was everywhere described did not work for me. When trying to write the image to the usb-stick I repeatedly got an empty error message in winimage. I kept trying until I found out the problem was some sort of a protection issue with the current data on the stick.

The solution of this issue was fairly easy, just clean up the entire usb-stick (after backing up the current data, yes reading wasn't an issue, only writing). To do so I used a utility I already had installed by Western Digital which normally is used to write zero's to a external harddrive. After I cleaned the stick (no partitions left on the stick) I was able to write the image to the stick.

Next step of course was testing the ESXi 3.5 Update 2 with the PowerEdge T105 server. I plugged the stick in one of the slots on the back of the T105 and fired up the BIOS-utility and changed some settings in order to boot from the usb-stick. While I rebooted the system I kept my fingers crossed. The system booted from the stick and ESXi was started. Looking at the monitor I could not believe my eyes, it worked! I now have a system running ESXi with network connectivity and using local storage.

Now I even think of buying a second T105 to be able to use vMotion and other features at home.

It has been a while since I posted here. In the meantime the world moved on and so did I.

To catch up I prepared a little summary of what I think were important or appealing news facts in the period between now and the last time I posted.

• VMware released VMware ThinApp 4.0
  The installation of the product is covered here, and the new feature called "application link" that VMware added on top of the Thinstall product is explained here. Thanks to Baeke.info
• The Open Virtual machine Format (OVF) standard is now adopted by Citrix and Microsoft
• Veeam Software known for its FastSCP file management software rapidly expanded in the last twelve months announced the acquisition of nworks. nworks delivered solutions (Enterprise Management Connectors) to integrate the monitoring of the virtual environment in your legacy monitoring product like Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM 2005) / Service Center Operations Manager (SCOM 2007) and HP Operations Manager. More...
• Microsoft releases Offline Virtual Machine Servicing tool (power on/power off virtual network)sysprepped vm's ?!
• Diane Greene leaves VMware, Greene was immediately replaced with a Microsoft veteran, Paul Maritz, just arrived at EMC
• VMware price increase by 10% starting sep 2 2008
• After VMware also Citrix announced a price increase with 10% starting September 1 2008
• VMware to offer it's Hypervisor for free (ESXi)
• VMware now officially announces new training and certification program (VCDX)
• VMware launched a Powershell scripting contest "VMware Powershell Scripting Contest" to promote the VI Toolkit; Grand Prize is a free trip (yes airfare included) to VMworld 2008 Las Vegas
• The guys at Xtravirt released another whitepaper about VI 3 in a box, the whitepaper contains the instructions on how to install ESX 3.5 Update 2 on Workstation 6.5 BETA, Build 99530 and run a fully working Virtual Infrastructure. Whitepaper can be found here
• Eric Sloof at NTPRO.nl published about Danny Kort launching the website ultimatewhitebox.com. Danny publishes all sorts of configurations and parts that are 'willing' to run ESX in order to be able create an affordable playground/test environment at home for VI3/ESX.
• Virtualization.info published most of the agenda of the Virtualization Congress event
• VMware released the long awaited new version of Lab Manager, version 3.0. This new version integrates with Virtual Center (no LM agents anymore on the hosts). And works very well so no worries about conflicting agents anymore. With the previous version of Lab Manager you were bound to ESX 3.02 because ESX 3.5 wasn't supported (It simply did not work!) With Lab Manager version 3.0 the latest version of ESX (3.5) now is supported.
• Platform Computing, the global leader in High Performance Computing (HPC) management software, has announced the next version of its virtual environment management product for the enterprise data center, Platform VM Orchestrator (VMO) 4. Platform VMO 4 provides faster delivery of virtual computer environments to end users while optimizing resource utilization, availability, and power consumption, to improve an enterprise’s return on investment from its virtualization environment.  The solution offers a cost-effective enterprise virtualization management solution for Citrix® XenServer™, with support for virtualization platforms from other vendors to be delivered in the coming months.
• VMware crawl's through the dust after a major license bug popularly called the "Time bomb" was exposed. This bug causes the license of ESX to expire on 12 August 2008. It affected the recently released version of ESX(i) 3.5  Update 2 (and update 1 with certain specific updates). More info here
• The immediate fix (update) for the 12 August/Timebomb bug was made available on August 13, the correct versions of ESX 3.5 update 2 will not be available for download until August 14 said VMware.

I hope I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to post more regularly from now on.

From virtualization.info:

So far VMware sold its virtual lab automation product, Lab Manager, charging the customers for the server product and each agent installed inside the ESX hosts.

Such model has been completely changed in mid-May as virtualization.info has learned: the new pricing scheme only counts the total number of CPUs inside the ESX hosts managed by Lab Manager.

The price per CPU is fixed at $1,295.
The server component is now free and customers can install in multiple instances.

This is good news to the relatively small businesses. With a small vi3-environment you can have an affordable labmanager setup. Since the server part is not being billed anymore you only have to pay per CPU. Lets say you have a small company which has a virtual infrastructure with a minimum of two ESX hosts (typical two-CPU with dual or quad cores) you will be paying half the price as the minimum before the pricing model was changed.

The previous model was of course based on Labmanager 2.x which had it's own agent installed on each host. With the upcoming Labmanager 3.0 it is expected to use VirtualCenter instead of the separate agents (Stage Manager which uses the same technology concepts as Labmanager already uses VirtualCenter). In that case there aren't any agents installed and VMware obviously cannot bill you for something you are not installing. Lets hope the changing in pricing will lead to a higher penetration in the SMB market.