VM /ETC

Archive for January, 2009

If you follow virtualization bloggers and experts on Twitter or if you regularly check sites like Planet V12n, you’ve no doubt heard that VMware is announcing a new award for key virtualization community contributors. Some speculated the recognition would be modeled after a successful program like Microsoft’s MVP with perhaps a similar title such as VVP for Valuable VMware Professionals. Well, John Troyer has officially announced the new program tonight with his VMTN Blog post Are you a VMware vExpert? Announcing a new community award.

John explains:

“VMware is very proud to introduce the VMware vExpert Awards. The VMware vExpert Awards will be given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the overall community of VMware users over the past year, either online or offline. You might be contributing online to blogs, forums, wikis, or other online sites. You might be organizing VMUG meetings or otherwise getting the word out to local IT professionals. You’re helping spread the word about virtualization and making people successful in deploying this game-changing technology. [omitted]

Here is the nomination form. You can nominate yourself or someone else. We’re also taking nominations from people and programs within VMware, so you actually don’t even have to nominate yourself and you still could wake up one day with an award. [omitted]

Awardees will get an award certificate and a little gift, but the real award is being able to call yourself a VMware vExpert for the year, getting listed in a public directory, and getting access to our private community. The vExpert award is not any sort of technical certification like VCP, and in fact vExpert isn’t really about your raw technical expertise at all. However, the people who get this kind of award tend to both (1) display a lot of technical expertise as they help others; and (2) work their tails off in the community on top of their day jobs.”

So, here’s your chance to say thanks to those guys that wrote that script that saved you so much time deploying or troubleshooting your VI, or published that “how to” that gave you the missing piece of a configuration you just couldn’t get to work right, or answered your questions quickly on the VMware forums, or even organized a VMware User Group in your area. Say thanks to those that keep you informed on the new products and technologies in the always changing world of virtualization.

There are so many individuals that deserve this award I imagine the VMware committee that has to choose who the 2008 vExperts are will have a very tough time deciding.

updated 01.23.09 – The beta registration period has ended. Thanks to all the readers that signed up!

VM /ETC readers have one last opportunity to get an advanced look at the Hyper9 browser based virtual infrastructure management tool before it is released to the public. According to the Beta newsletter I received, the product launch is scheduled for sometime in February. The newsletter also mentioned additional product functionality, savings for beta testers, and changes to the Hyper9 Community web pages.

Once again I am providing an automated form for interested readers to sign up for a copy. Filling out the form with a valid email address will result in an auto reply containing additional instructions about the program and a link to register. The beta registration form will only be available until midnight January 22.

updated 01.17.08 – I have moved the sign up form to it’s own page. Please click here to fill in the form.

I also discovered that the auto reply was not working properly for all the form entries that have been collected. I manually forwarded all the applicants directly to Hyper9, so if you submitted your information but never received an email reply I have been informed that Hyper9 will now be following up with you.

For more information and screen shots of this awesome VI management tool check out my previous post First look at Hyper9 beta for VM /ETC readers. or check out these additonal Hyper9 links:

• Community
• Hyper9 How-To Videos
• Hyper9.com

Along with the recent Server 2008 R2 Beta release, Microsoft has announced the public beta availability of their free, stand alone Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 server virtualization platform. Along with several other improvements, a most noticeable feature is the inclusion of both Live Migration, the live transfer of a guest between hosts, and Quick Migration, a clustered -like live fail over of a guest between hosts. I have not found a definitive announcement that the latest version will remain free like the previously released version, but I would have to assume this is the case.

If this is so, I am now waiting for the announcement from VMware that the free version of ESXi will provide free VMotion, and at a minimum, the High Availability (HA) feature. VMware, what will be your counter?

updated 01.13.08 – after thinking about it a little more after my rush to publish this post, both Microsoft Hyper-V Server and VMware ESXi require management to enable the Live Migration / VMotion features. So, assuming both products require a licensed version of their management server (SCVMM / VMM on another Server 2008 host vs VMware vCenter), what may be a more realistic announcement for VMware would be to allow ESXi hosts to have free vCenter agents allowing ESXi hosts to join a already licensed ESX Cluster.

I applaud Microsoft for this move as it should be a significant catalyst for a wider, more enthusiastic deployment of their hypervisor. I can only wonder if VMware saw this coming, and hopefully has a quick response, if not immediately, but for at least by VMworld Europe 2009.

The following are several links with more information about this announcement including sources such as Microsoft’s download page for Hyper-V Server 2008 as well as other Microsoft virtualization blogisphere posts. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Linux-based Virtualization Companies to Watch on Ken Hess’s Linux Blog is a post about the 5 main server virtualization platforms based on Linux. Ken also mentions the only non Linux based hypervisor, Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

“There’s only one company that doesn’t use Linux for its server virtualization platform. Can you guess which one it is? If you guessed Microsoft, you’re correct. Microsoft is a newbie in the virtualization space but wants in and may make significant dents in the already well-established market that is significantly owned by VMware. For Windows-only virtualization, there may be some validity to the switch to Hyper-V.

For the rest of us, who are either too stubborn or too smart to make the shift to Hyper-V, what are our choices? The following is a list of 5 of the main players in Linux-based virtualization.”

Use the link above to read all of Ken’s original post for some brief info about each platform, but I am listing the 6 products and the links to their free versions for quick reference here. Ken does not discuss nor am I including free hosted platforms such as Microsoft Virtual PC or VMware Server. Read the rest of this entry »

My recent post Why not VirtualCenter with SQL 2005 Express? explored the possible reasons for and against small and medium businesses (SMB) using the default, free database with VirtualCenter. But what happens if your virtual infrastructure implementation grows beyond 5 hosts and 50 virtual machines (VM), or what if you are close to the SQL 2005 Express database size limit of 4 GB? When it’s time to upgrade to a licensed version of SQL 2005 you can upgrade your VirtualCenter SQL 2005 Express database instance in place.

What happens when I outgrow SQL Express for Virtual Center? is a post from the VMGuy Blog by Dave Lawrence that provides the simple instructions to perform the upgrade in place. Read dave’s entire post, but here is a cut and paste of the VMGuy’s recommended upgrade steps. Read the rest of this entry »

iSCSI – Hardware or Software – How many TOEs do you have? is a post by Carlo Costanzo that really struck a chord with me. Carlo asks:

“More and more of my new implementations of VMware Infrastructure are being connected to iSCSI SANs (EMC, LeftHand, and Equallogic) and the question has come up about whether or not to spend extra dollars on TOE (TCPIP Offload Engine) Network cards.”

This made me realize that I have yet to implement an iSCSI SAN connection to an ESX Cluster with a hardware initiator. My customers have all used the native ESX iSCSI software initiator instead. So it made me wonder why am I not even considering the hardware iniator anymore, and should I present the option to my customers at all? Afterall, as Carlo points out, the number of supported TOE cards has increased from 2 to 16 (a table is provided at the end of this post)

I came up with a short list of reasons why I haven’t been using the iSCSI hardware initiators. Read the rest of this entry »

Although Microsoft’s roadmap for general availability is still 2010, a public beta version of Server 2008 R2 currently available for Technet subscribers enables live migration for Hyper-V guests. Non subscribers will apparently be able to download the R2 beta from the product’s web page on Friday, January 9th.

This post consists of some quick notes primarily about the new virtualization related features. For more information about all the new enhancements be sure to follow the  links.

From Matt McSpirit’s Virtualboy Blog post Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Client Now Available on MSDN/TechNet!

“It’s come round pretty fast I have to say, but Microsoft have announced availability, through MSDN and TechNet (non-MSDN/TechNet subscribers can download them from Friday 9th January), of the beta’s of Windows 7 client, and better still, Windows Server 2008 R2.”

From the Windows Server Division Web Log

“Hyper-V in R2 now has Live Migration, allowing IT admins to move VMs across physical hosts with no interruption of service or network connectivity and significant network performance improvements. VMs in Hyper-V for R2 also get greater access to physical resources, namely support for 32 logical processors.”

From the document Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2

Read the rest of this entry »