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This checklist is intended to optimize a Windows XP VM for VDI deployments and keep it as small as possible.
The configuration steps were taken from the VMWorld 2007 lab “Using VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for Hosted Computing”. The Appendix of the lab materials .pdf was copied to create this table and most of the steps are copied as they appear in that document.

It is recommended that a VM that has been optimized by performing the steps in this checklist be used as a template or gold image for all other XP VMs.

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Like all bloggers, I have accumulated a bunch of links in my drafts that are sitting there collecting dust. In an effort to clean some of those drafts out I have combined several online calculators into this post. Each of these calculators can help administrators and IT departments understand and budget for a virtualization project. Enjoy!

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It is a saying made famous by former talk show host and comedian Arsenio Hall. It is the title of a C + C Music Factory dance hit. Now “Things that make you go hmmmm” will be a series of posts on VM /ETC that provide links and news related to virtualization, but that’s humorous, strange, or entertaining in nature. I’ll try to collect links and post them every Friday. Help me out if you find something that makes you go “hmmmm”.

So, without any further delay, pump your fist and say “Woof! Woof! Woof!” for the first set of links:

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When I was linking to RTFM Education from my post Combining multiple VMware .lic files is a thing of the past I noticed Mike wrote a quick post about discovering the new LAN based backup features of VCB. I had to get my own copy of the VMware Consolidated Backup Improvements in Version 3.5 .pdf and understand the new LAN-based backup feature. In short, the requirement for a storage area network, and therefore the installation of VCB on a physical server with HBA(s) has been removed. Installing VCB on a Windows 2003 virtual machine is now possible. Maybe not recommended for larger environments, but possible and a achievable design for smaller infrastructures.

The .pdf also reveals that there are several other new features of VCB that were previously restrictions of the older versions.

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RTFM has become a common acronym among IT professionals. An administrator having a good day will tell you it stands for “Read The Fine Manual.” On a bad day the expression can become a little more colorful. The point of bringing it up is that I actually read the ESX Server 3 Installation Guide and was surprised to find out that the VMware FLexlm License Server no longer needs to use a single .lic file. In VC 2.x you can simply place multiple .lic files in the Licensing Server’s directory.

In the ESX 3 Guide mentioned above page 59 starts out:

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Compared to VMware ESX Enterprise Edition, business continuity and high availability features are lacking when deploying Citrix XenServer “out of the box.” Specifically, XenServer does not have the built in equivalent to VI3’s HA feature. Also missing is a solution similar to VMware’s soon to be released Site Recovery Manager (SRM). However, Marathon Technologies and XenSource (now a division of Citrix) have worked together to develop everRun VM as a enterprise class answer to fault tolerant availability for Windows virtual machines hosted on Citrix XenServer. According to Marathon’s Director of Products, Michael Bilancieri, at a recent Atlanta “Virtualization for the Real World” event, the integrated solution will be generally available sometime in the 2008 Q2/Q3 time frame.

Quoting from the Best of VMworld (more on this award later in this post) white paper downloadable from the everRun link above:

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First reported by theinquirer.net in the March 14 article Dell set to absorb price of ESX3i hypervisor, it appears Dell will be offering ESX 3i for free when purchasing PowerEdge servers. Virtualization.info posted Dell to give VMware ESX Server 3i for free? the following day which was then followed by a few other blogs reacting to the news with similar posts. Although the announcement of this possibility was, and still is, exciting, the comments posted by readers and bloggers have been very insightful and interesting.

Comments from theinquirer.net’s article:

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What could be better to blog about on Easter Sunday then virtual Easter Eggs? Not the brightly colored eggs your kids have been finding for the past few days, but the hidden features, programs, and surprises in software, games and popular products. I was hoping to uncover some eggs in some popular virtualization products, but other than an egg in Virtual PC 2004 that no longer exists in the current version, I was unable to find any. If you know of any virtualization related eggs please leave a comment.

Regardless, EggHeaven.com is a great web site for finding Easter Eggs and is the site I am quoting for this post. 2 of the 3 eggs I am listing are easily found online without installing any software, and the third, an egg in Google Earth, is a popular enough program that a lot of readers probably already have it installed.

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I previously posted an email I received that provided a hardware shopping list for building cheap AMD or Intel ESX servers for home testing. There is also a few good recent discussions in the VMware Community Forums that provide more suggestions for compatible ESX hardware.

Cheap ESX Solution (Tests) discussion contains a table of motherboards and officially unsupported but working servers provided by Dave Mishchenko. Read the post for even more systems and parts to build working ESX servers.

ESX 3.5 test lab lists several desktop systems on which forum users have been successful in installing ESX.

Cheap ESX server, onboard SATA - Working !! starts off providing a parts list of a working ESX system, and then continues with tips and tricks to get ESX working.

Of course, all of the discussions as well as my previous post do not cover the cost of anything except the hardware for ESX. You also need to consider how you will build the complete VI3 environment. For example, you can run VC as a VM, and use Openfiler for your shared storage

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If you’ve used any of VMware’s products you’ve probably been frustrated by trying to boot a VM from CD. Not when you install the OS, but after the VM has been operating. For example when you need to grow the size of the virtual disk and you try to boot the VM from the GParted LiveCD. The VM’s BIOS is set to boot from disk first, so you need to change the boot device order. The problem is that the boot process is so fast it seems you have less than a second to hit F2 and enter Setup, and you have to be really quick with your mouse getting the cursor inside the VM. I bet you never thought you could get aggravated over a server booting too fast! Here’s the two methods I know of to catch the VM during boot so you can enter Setup.

The first method is to

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Over the past several weeks I have attended VMware’s latest VMLive web seminar about VDI as well as a local partner training session. Both the web seminar and the training session provided some great information about the new Virtual Desktop Manager product or VDM 2. The following post is a summary of my notes and some of the slides from the web session. Click on the slides to view a larger version.

VDI & VDM Architecture

With VDM 2 the VDI architecture is scalable and flexible. Multiple installations of VDM allow for larger numbers of users and desktops. Securing virtual desktop access from the Internet is also possible.

When you install VDM 2 you have three choices for the Desktop Manager installation type:

• Standard (first Connecton Server),
• Replica (copies of first server) servers
• Security Server - ssl tunneling, 2 factor authentication - can be installed in DMZ

VDM installs

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VMworld 2008 will be at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV September 15 - 18. You can go to the VMworld 2008 Pre-Registration page to sign up to be notified when official registration is open.

VMware is expecting more than 12,000 attendees this year!

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