Gerben's Blog on Virtualization

VMware introduces the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDOS)

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:52:58 GMT

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:

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

Tags van Technorati: VMware,Virtualization,VMworld,vCloud,vService,vCenter,Cloud computing

Vizioncore made 4 announcements @VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:14:02 GMT

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.

Tags van Technorati: VMworld,Vizioncore,vOptimizer,vRangerPro,vFoglight,vAutomation

ESXi on DELL Poweredge T105 with upgraded VMworld Europe's usb stick

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:16:30 GMT

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.

Tags van Technorati: ESXi,VMworld,DELL,PoweredgeT105,USB

Catching up...

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:45:06 GMT

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.

Tags van Technorati: VMware,ThinApp,Hypervisor,ESXi,bug,Veeam,nworks,powershell,OVF,Diane Greene,Citrix,Xtravirt,VCDX,Whitebox,Labmanager,fix

VMware Labmanager Pricing changed

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:53:36 GMT

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.

Tags van Technorati: Vmware,Labmanager,Pricing,Virtualization

Release: VMware Stage Manager 1.0

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:17:58 GMT

Yesterday VMware announced the General Availability of her product VMware Stage Manager.

VMware Stage Manager is a product intended to control an application during the shift from staging into production. VMware Stage Manager solves the problem of server sprawl, configuration drift, and repetitive system testing in pre-production by running IT services and business applications as virtual machine configurations that can be easily transitioned through the release process. VMware Stage Manager allows IT to roll out new and updated applications into production more quickly, avoid the risk of unplanned downtime, and accelerate change requests to production systems.

VMware Stage Manager is available for VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard or Enterprise and can be purchased as part of the VMware Management and Automation and IT Service Delivery bundles, or a-la-carte.

For more info and screenshots of the Beta product take a look at a previous post I made about Stage Manager: Beta Release- VMware Stage Manager 1.0 Beta and on the VMware site: www.vmware.com/products/sm

Tags van Technorati: VMware,Virtualization,StageManager,testing,pre-production

VMworld Europe 2009 - on Feb 24-26 2009

Thu, 29 May 2008 11:24:14 GMT

Vmware is already busy planning the second VMworld Europe, the event will be held on Feb 24-26 2009 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes . That is the same location as the previous VMworld Europe event in 2008.

If you want to be kept informed about the event you can already pre-register here or click on the picture below.

Technorati Tags: VMware, Virtualization, VMworldEurope, VMworld, 2009, Cannes, Preregister, Event, Conference

Get full control over your ESXi Server

Tue, 27 May 2008 12:49:41 GMT

Richard Garsthagen from VMware at www.run-virtual.com posted a nice article about ESXi and the ability to get full control over it.

an excerpt from his post:

As you probably know ESX 3i is the embedded version of ESX, mainly run from usb flash disks build-in servers from HP, Dell, IBM and FSC, but you can also install this on your own servers.
...
The main thing about 3i is that the Red Hat service console has been removed and replaced by a small busybox linux version.
...
By default the 3i server gives us no access to this small service console, but there are some down sides to this, as certain things can only be done from the service console and until VMware builds those missing functionalities into the VC interface you still need to get yourself console access. In the beta versions of 3i there was an option in the advanced settings, but this has been removed in the final releases. Luckily the service console is based on a open source product, so VMware has to publish this source code.. after some lovely source code reading, I found the new backdoor to still get console access.
...

Hit ALT-F1
type: unsupported

and viola you will get a password prompt and after typing the root password you have a console

So what can you do with (why you need) this service console:

enable SHH access to your server remotely
change HBA driver options
make use of thin-provisioned disks (disks will start small and only grow when you need the space)!!

Richard also posted an animated gif with which he shows the screenshots of the process to access the small console.

Read the full article here

Technorati Tags: ESXi, VMware, Virtualization, console, ssh, thin-provisioned, backdoor

Release: Xtravirt Virtual SAN (XVS)

Thu, 22 May 2008 11:21:05 GMT

The Xtravirt Virtual SAN (XVS) appliance for VMware ESX3 Server, is a free solution to provide the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN – this allows the utilisation of otherwise unused local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA normally only available through the use of a shared storage device. All volume data is synchronously replicated between hosts, providing full fail-over capability with data integrity in the event of host, disk or appliance failure. The appliance is menu driven and has been designed to be as easy to configure as possible, and full documentation is provided.

Its features include:

XVS is a SAN and local Disaster Recovery all-in-one
It provides enterprise level functionality such as vMotion, DRS, and HA, all using direct attached storage
All volume data is synchronously replicated between hosts providing full failover capability with data integrity in the event of a host, disk or appliance failure

Download it here

Technorati Tags: VMware, Virtualization, Storage, SAN, Virtual Storage, DR, appliance, Release

VMware announces availability of new products and bundles

Tue, 20 May 2008 10:11:43 GMT

Today I received an email from VMware in which the company made some announcements about the general availability of two products and a new softwarebundle.

On May 12, 2008, the company announced VMware Stage Manager, VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware IT Service Delivery Pack, and the Management and Automation bundle.

VMware Stage Manager is a breakthrough product for accelerating and automating the delivery of applications from staging to production.

VMware Site Recovery Manager, which is part of VMware’s suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

The VMware IT Service Delivery Bundle includes all the products necessary to automate the entire lifecycle of IT services, from initial request to final retirement: VMware Lifecycle Manager and either VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager. These products use virtualization to provide a more cost effective and powerful way to manage the entire software lifecycle.

The VMware Management and Automation Bundle provides a single package for addressing both IT Service Delivery and Business Continuity. It includes VMware Lifecycle Manager, VMware Lab Manager, VMware Stage Manager, plus the disaster recovery product VMware Site Recovery Manager, a significant improvement over traditional tools for disaster recovery configuration, testing, and management. All products are available for purchase as of May 19, 2008.

Technorati Tags: Release, VMware, Virtualization, VMware Stage Manager, VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware IT Service Delivery Pack, Management and Automation bundle

How to Create Your Own Bootable ESXi USB Stick

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:05:05 GMT

Arnold Veenema a colleague of mine wrote an interesting item on his website about how to create your own bootable USB stick with ESXi (Previous called ESX 3i) using the download of the ESXi installable ISO-image. In twelve easy steps you will be able to use your own USB stick with ESXi!

Take a look at it here:

http://www.veenema.net/index.php?Virtualization:HOW_TO_Create_your_own_bootable_ESX_3i_usb_stick

Technorati Tags: VMware, ESXi, USB, HOWTO

VMUG (NL) Meeting at NetApp

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:00:40 GMT

During the Dutch VMUG Meeting in December 2007 the VMUG team announced that it would organize smaller meetings focussing a specific subject.

The first meeting of this kind will be held on Thursday June 5, 2008 at NetApp.

Important! To attend you will have to sign up because the number of attendees is limited.

During this VMUG Meeting NetApp will present and demonstrate their possibilities and solutions focussed on their relationship with VMware technologies. NetApp is a specialist in networked storage and delivers a broad scale of storage solutions.

The language will be Dutch and this is the Agenda (in Dutch):

Het onderwerp van de presentatie is: “Data protection binnen een VMware omgeving”.

Het programma is als volgt:
- 16:00-16:30 Welkom/Ontvangst
- 16:30-16:40 Ontvangst namens VMUG (Viktorious)
- 16:40-18:00 Technische presentatie NetApp incl. Demo (Tim Waldron)
- 18:00-18:30 Pauze incl. pizza en versnaperingen :)
- 18:30-19:00 Vervolg presentatie / Q&A (Tim Waldron)

De volgende onderwerpen zullen tijdens de presentatie aan bod komen:
- Snelle backup / recovery van VM's
- DR binnen Vmware omgevingen
- De-duplicatie binnen Vmware omgevingen

Technorati Tags: VMware, Virtualization, VMUG.NL, VMUG, NetApp, Storage

VMware announces the VCDX Certification

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:00:21 GMT

The VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) on VMware Infrastructure 3 is an advanced certification developed for design architects of VMware enterprise deployments.

There are four core validation components to achieve VCDX.

(1) Must be certified as a VMware Certified Professional (VCP) on VMware Infrastructure 3.

(2) Pass the VMware Enterprise Administration Exam. Includes live labs and tests a higher level of skill set than the exam for VCP on VMware Infrastructure 3.

(3) Pass the VMware Design Exam. This exam focuses on actual design scenarios and contains simulations and situational questions.

(4) Submit, present and defend a successful VMware Infrastructure design and implementation plan.

The Enterprise Exam (first exam required) is available from April 30, 2008 (so that is now!). See the blueprint here ...more info

To prepare make sure you complete your VCP on VMware Infrastructure 3 requirements complete. You may take one of three courses as a prerequisite: VMware Infrastructure 3: Install & Configure; VMware Infrastructure 3: Deploy, Secure & Analyze; or VMware Infrastructure 3: Fast Track

Learn More

Think you might qualify as a VCDX?
Check your skills here! Follow this link to our qualification review. This is a required first step for those who want to pursue the VMware Certified Design Expert certification. Only those who meet qualifications will continue on to take the exams. You will need to login to take this review:Skills Review

Technorati Tags: VMware, Certification, VCDX, VCP, Enterprise, Exam, VI3, Virtualization

Service Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 announcements at MMS2008

Mon, 05 May 2008 13:57:46 GMT

It was announced earlier and I showed some pictures in an entry some time ago, but Tuesday it was announced at Microsofts Management Summit (MMS) 2008 by Bob Muglia during one of the keynotes: SCVMM 2008 will manage a heterogenous virtual datacenter. SCVMM will be capable of managing Hyper-V, VI3 and Xen side by side. Together with this message also the public beta of VMM 2008 was announced. Thanks to my collegue and friend Omar (http://oehoeven.spaces.live.com), who is attending the MMS event and wrote an item on it Tuesday evening (European timezone that is..).

I also stumbled upon a post of Geert Baeke at beake.info :: SCVMM 2008 and VMware integration. In his post he describes his efforts installing SCVMM and integrating Hyper-V, VI3 (virtual center) and MS Virtual Server. He also put some screenshots in his post so check it out!

Technorati Tags: SCVMM2008, Microsoft, VMware, Virtualcenter, Hyper-V, VMM, Virtualization, MMS2008

April 1st joke about SUN buying Parallels

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:35:10 GMT

Last Tuesday I read about this announcement and while reading I got this feeling there could be something wrong about this message. What was I right.

Thanks guys for the pratical joke.

I had a good laugh...

Here is the link at virtualization.com again:
Permanent Link to Sun Microsystems To Acquire Parallels For $ 205 Million (Updated)

Make sure you get the updated part.

Technorati Tags: joke, merger, virtualization, virtualization.com, parallels, sun

Release: VMware Workstation 6.5 & ACE 2.5 Public Beta

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:03:49 GMT

This week VMware announced their public beta program for VMware Workstation version 6.5 and VMware ACE 2.5. With the release of these BETA products VMware also introduced a new Beta Portal for these two products (click on the picture for the link to the Beta Portal):

What's New in VMware Workstation 6.5:

Use Unity to integrate your guest apps with your host
More Powerful VM Record and Replay
Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
Enhanced ACE Authoring
Link State Propagation Networking
Improved 3D graphics Support
and more... click here for the release notes

After the introduction of "Unity" in the Apple world - Unity is part of VMware's Fusion product - the concept is now also available in VMware's Workstation product. So what is Unity? With Unity you can:
Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. Open the application window, enter unity mode, and then minimize the Workstation window. The guest application windows look just like host application windows. You can access the virtual machine's Start menu (for Windows virtual machines) or Applications menu (for Linux virtual machines) by placing the mouse pointer over the host's Start or Applications menu.

Link state propagation is especially useful for mobile users running virtual machines. When changing from wired to wireless the ip-addresses are automatically renewed when using the bridged networking for your VM's.

VMware ACE authoring features are now fully integrated with Workstation, and no special ACE Edition is required.

This new version also has support for additional host and guest operating systems such as CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Asianux, and newer editions of operating systems already supported. Windows Server 2008 is experimentally supported as a guest.

The new version of virtual hardware now supports adding or removing some virtual devices while the virtual machine is powered on ("hot-plug"). E.g. hot-add virtual cpu's and memory to a Windows 2008 guest.

What's New in VMware ACE 2.5:

Seamless Applications
Network Mobility
Smart Card Authentication support
Enhanced Pocket ACE Performance
Usability Improvements

Previously, ACE-specific user interface controls were available only in Workstation ACE Edition. In VMware ACE 2.5, these controls are available to all VMware Workstation customers. The ability to use ACE instances on computers where Workstation is not installed still requires an ACE license, as does the ability to manage ACE instances with the ACE Management Server.

Usability improvements — The process of creating virtual machines for end users is now simpler and more intuitive. The required tasks are clearly ordered and made available on the summary view for an ACE-enabled virtual machine. The concept of an ACE master has been removed in favor of simply enabling ACE features for a virtual machine.
New Pocket ACE cache and exit behavior settings — You can now configure runtime settings so that Pocket ACE files are always kept on the USB device and never cached on the host computer. This feature is convenient if disk space on the host is very limited or if the files must remain only on the USB device for security reasons. You can also configure exit behavior so that when users power off a virtual machine, changes are automatically synchronized with the host.
Improved Pocket ACE performance — The time it takes to synchronize a Pocket ACE with the host during power off has been greatly reduced.

In addition to these ACE-specific features, VMware ACE includes all the new features of Workstation 6.5, including unity mode, link state propagation, smart card support, and full screen switching in VMware Player.

Check the VMware ACE 2.5 release notes for more information.

Technorati Tags: VMware, Workstation, 6.5, ACE, 2.5, beta, unity, hot-add, Virtualization

Release VMware Lifecycle Manager 1.0

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:54:17 GMT

Today I was noticed that VMware Lifecycle Manager (LCM) 1.0 (build 360) is available for evaluation download (60 days evaluation).

VMware Lifecycle Manager is the rebranded Dunes VSO/Lifecycle product which was acquired through the acquisition of Dunes by VMware at the end of 2007.

VMware Lifecycle Manager enables the VI administrators to track and control virtual machines through a consistent approval and deployment process across the entire virtual machine lifecycle. From provisioning to operation to ultimate decommissioning of the virtual machine, VMware Lifecycle Manager addresses the need for compliance with existing IT and business procedures. Responding to one-off requests in addition to using manual procedures to deploy virtual machines can be eliminated and replaced by a consistent process that can be followed across the entire business. Lifecycle Manager can also be customized to work with existing IT operational tools such ticketing or change management systems.

The trial includes:

VMware Lifecycle Manager 1.0
Note: VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware VirtualCenter software must be running in order to evaluate Lifecycle Manager. Neither VMware ESX 3.5 or VMware VirtualCenter software is included in this trial. If you want an evaluation version of either of these products, please evaluate VMware Infrastructure 3 separately to obtain those products.

VMware Lifecycle Manager comes in two different delivery options standard and customized (names may differ in the future).

Standard (boxed) vs Customized:

As you can see in the image below the Standard product will be a packaged product with the platform locked down (customization is NOT enabled). In this edition the workflows are standardized, if you want to fully customize your workflows to meet the workflows of your enterprise you will need to switch to the Customized product. However some limited (presentation) customization is possible, the web front-end can be customized to include your company logo and you can even customize the css-file for it.

Pricing will be per 2 -sockets (ESX hosts) for the standard edition.
For the customized version you will have the same pricing as Standard plus a fixed fee for the customization option (and probably some consultancy fees).

When registered for evaluation, on the the download page you will see three different downloads available.

Windows installable
Linux installable
Virtual Appliance (OVF + three (vmdk) disk-files) (vService compatible?)

Go and Try Lifecycle Manager (http://www.vmware.com/go/trylifecyclemanager)

Technorati Tags: VMware, LifecycleManager, LCM, Release, 1.0, Workflow

NetApp Storage Session

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:22:32 GMT

This evening I attended a company session hosted by NetApp in their office in Schiphol-Rijk, the Netherlands. It was quit a trip, due to all sorts of reasons I decided to go by train. At first I was somewhat sceptic about going by train, but by the time I was half way there I felt it was quite nice, I even closed my eyes for a couple of minutes.

Looking out the window on the motorway lying just next to the railroad track I was even more pleased with my decision taking the train. I saw a major traffic jam near Amsterdam which I probably had to deal with when I travelled by car.

The traveling time by train was significally longer (when the railyway track was build there was no motorway where there is now, back then it was all water.) almost two and a half hours and that was one of my reasons not to take the train. But when a collegue offered a ride half way the trip home I was eventually pursuaded to take the train.

If I travelled by car you probably did not get to see this message due to lack of time, I'm actually writing this offline in the train.

Ok, enough travel talk.

Back to NetApp, they are located at the businesspark at Schiphol-Rijk which is next to Schiphol International Airport. Nice to know a lot of major US-based technology firms also have an office here e.g. Microsoft, Juniper etc. Because it is so close to the airport it is an attractive location for firms that do have employees who travel a lot between different locations by plane.

The evening started with a dinner in the restaurant which appeared to be the session room also (my compliments to the catering it was excellent!). The building is relatively new and well equipped as far I could tell of course (only been at the restaurant). And believe me dinner came at the right time for me because after taken the train... - now that was a slip of the tongue.

After being welcomed by our collegue Marcel and our host Bram of NetApp it was time to get rolling. Amzar kicked off with a outline of the proof of concept (POC) he did at a large international customer with NetApp storage. Goal for this POC was to determine if VI-3 at remote sites (10-25 servers) could rely on ISCSI and NFS storage compared to the FC connected SAN storage used at the large sites. The interesting conclusion of the POC was the advice of using NFS for storage at remote sites. The nice thing in that situation is that they already use NetApp solutions at remote sites. As NetApp explained later on the boxes can present almost every kind of storage to a client from NFS,ISCSI FC and even CIFS for example homedirs. The desicion to advise NFS was based on flexibility (re-use of existing hardware and simple expansion of NFS volumes), cost effects and simple file based restore. Performance was not an issue.

The next presentation by Mark from NetApp covered the NetApp products and solutions as there are differentiated in Store, Manage, Protect, Retain and Secure. I'm not going to deliberate on that for more information I would like to refer to the channel guide which outlines NetApp Products and Solutions.

One thing which I think is important to adress is the uniform managebility across all storage products levels. There is no difference in management of entry level systems compared to mid and high-end level, so no training issues when you decide to upgrade to higher (or lowel) level systems. The determining factor choosing the system level most likely will be the amount of IO's per second you need.

Also very important is the deduplication of data which is now free of charge (announced last week) and delivered out of the box, this can reduce your storage space up to 50%. It works at block level and searches for duplicate blocksets and uses pointers to adress the data, also usable for homedirs (e.g. CIFS).

Not covered in the session but to give you an idea about the power of deduplication take a look at the video I found on youtube: a nice demo of deduplication in a virtual infrastructure in combination with VDI:

Also announced is Snapmanager for Virtual Infrastructure; quote from same article: "which lets users take snapshots of VMware virtual machines. "It's fully integrated with VMware and it allows you to use NetApp snapshot and restore capabilities in a VMware environment," says Rogers. "[Before] there wasn't a simple, non-disruptive way to snapshot a VM." ". Snapmanger will be released for the public in May 2008.

The last presentation of the evening was from Jan also from NetApp taking a deep dive in technology. Interesting was the comparison of VMFS (on FC) and NFS showing lower (better) latencies with NFS and higher throughput (400 mb/s) compared to vmfs (180mb/s). Also nice was their Raid configuration called RAID DP (default 14 + 2 ) which is 200 times as reliable as 2 times RAID 5 (7 + 1disk) for RAIDgroups.

Concluding: A very nice Session at a nice setting and lots of information.

At April 3 2008 NetApp organizes an annual one day (free) event called "Innovation 2008" at Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. For more info and registration look at www.netapp-innovation.nl .

Technorati Tags: VMware, Virtualization, Storage, NetApp, performance, ISCSI, NFS, CIFS, FC, SAN

Microsoft Acquires Kidaro - a Desktop Virtualization Management Company

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:42:53 GMT

Microsoft Presspass (microsoft.com):

Microsoft Corp. today announced its intended acquisition of Kidaro, a leading provider of desktop virtualization solutions for enterprises. In combining Kidaro’s virtualization technology with its suite of desktop management tools, known as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, Microsoft will enable IT professionals to optimize their desktop infrastructure by providing management capabilities for Virtual PCs, streamlining deployments and easing application compatibility issues.
“The acquisition of Kidaro is an important component of our virtualization strategy, and it delivers a powerful new tool to help enterprise customers optimize their desktops,” said Shanen Boettcher, general manager of Windows product management at Microsoft. “Virtual PCs can help businesses address a number of challenges around application compatibility, mobility and business continuity. Kidaro’s seamless user interface and management capabilities allow enterprises to more easily use and manage Virtual PCs. Incorporating Kidaro’s innovative solutions into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack further enables virtualization across the enterprise, and is another example of how we are helping customers keep up with the changing needs of their business.” ...

VMware VI Toolkit (for Windows) will Beta this month (march 2008)

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:27:03 GMT

Carter Shanklin from the VI Powershell team at VMware published an item on the VI Powershell Blog about the Powershell lab at VMworld Europe 2008 in Cannes two weeks ago. In this item he announces the public Beta of the VI Toolkit (for Windows) to become available in march 2008.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to attend the hands on lab with the VI Toolkit. Luckily for you and me the hands-on manual is available through a link at the VI Powershell BLOG item, click here.

Enjoy...

Technorati Tags: Powershell, VMware, VI Toolkit, Beta, Automation

Photo Album: Blog Images

Thu, 22 May 2008 11:21:04 GMT

Blog Images

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Photo Album: Blog Images

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:29:23 GMT

Blog Images

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Photo Album: TSX 2007

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:13:58 GMT

TSX 2007

The conference center

The weather was nice in Nice

Community

VMware Lab Manager 1

Lab Manager Architecture

Provision VDI Blocks

Provision Networks 1

Provision Networks 2

Provision Networks 3

Blog list: Blog list

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:39:08 GMT