VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘beta’ Category

Previously, all we knew about Veeam’s Surebackup was there was a public countdown in process. That countdown reached 0:00 early March 22, 2010 (this morning). Veeam sent emails to those who preregistered and then provided a press release shortly after. The countdown was for the introduction of a unique feature for verifying VM restores that will soon be introduced in the next version of Veeam Backup and Replication.

Here’s the information from my email for those that did not sign up to be notified:

Breakthrough Technology: Test and Verify the Recoverability of EVERY Backup

Veeam is enhancing the SureBackup™ capabilities in Veeam Backup & Replication™ with a breakthrough technology that overcomes the final obstacle of image-level backups. IT professionals will have the ability to verify the RECOVERABILITY of EVERY backup of EVERY virtual machine EVERY time. It’s never been possible before.

SureBackup introduces a new patent-pending technology that allows IT professionals to run a virtual machine directly from a compressed backup file.

By publishing the content of backup files directly to ESX hosts, you can:

• Eliminate the need to extract backup files
• Test and verify EVERY backup in a matter of minutes, without affecting backup windows
• Perform recoverability testing without additional hardware or staff

The same technology also allows for item-level restore for any virtualized application, on any OS (patent-pending).

This exciting new technology will be made available in version 5.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication, scheduled for release this summer.

Sound too good to be true? Join us for a free webinar on Wednesday, March 24 at 2:00pm EDT to find out more. Live Webinar – Register Now!

Can’t wait? Go to www.veeam.com/surebackup NOW!

I was actually invited to Veeam’s pre release blogger briefing over the weekend, and the rest of this post is my notes and thoughts about what I learned during briefing.

Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has recently announced the public availability of the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta, a tool to create virtual appliances and distribute them in OVF format, and today’s VMTN Roundtable Podcast provided a lot of discussion about the possible scenarios for using this new version. I’m still struggling to get my mind around the potential of Studio 2.0, but I did come away from today’s podcast with a few ideas that make me think I have either blurred the functions of several existing products or I have suddenly realized there may be some great “outside the box” use case scenarios for this new VMware software.

Before continuing, it is most clear that VMware Studio’s designed intent is for ISVs and developers to package their applications as preconfigured, ready to import virtual appliances. Now with version 2.0 even multi tiered applications can be wrapped up as a vApp in vSphere and exported as an OVF containing several VMs and then imported by any VMware virtualization host (free, hosted, or bare metal). If you are not already familiar with VMware Studio check out the Studio 2.0 Beta Overview web page for a complete listing of features, but the primary topic of interest (to me and the others on today’s podcast) seems to be centered around how enterprises can leverage VMware Studio, vApps, and OVF templates.

This is where the lines get blurry to me, and I’ll outline potential Studio / OVF usage that may be “outside of the box” from the VMware software’s intended purpose. Or is it? You tell me. Read the rest of this entry »

Monitor and Manage VMs on the Go with Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM) now available in beta from Hyper9. VMM Sound familiar? That’s because Andrew Kutz previously released VMM on his lostcreations.com web site before he joined the Hyper9 team and became responsible for H9Labs. However, this latest version has broadened it’s support to include not only VMware ESX and ESXi, but also VMware Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5. If I am not mistaken, that makes VMM the first multi vendor virtualization management tool in existence (mobile phone or otherwise) that can administer and monitor guests on all the major platforms.

The VMM beta is now available to the entire virtualization universe at the link above, but Hyper9 has a special offer for VM /ETC readers that comes with some exclusive perks:

• automatic entry to win a mobile device in a contest starting in June
• a limited edition Hyper9 t-shirt (in exchange for some VMM feedback)
• 50% discount should you choose to purchase

Be one of the first 15 readers to comment on this post to take advantage of this invitation. Be sure to use a valid email address so that Hyper9 can contact you about the beta download, your shirt, and more.

What is VMM? Hyper9 describes the product and it’s features as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

With all the recent talk about the software from Rove and VMware that provides mobile device access to managing VMware Infrastructure, administrators now need to consider how they will actually connect mobile phones to vCenter and ESX hosts behind the firewall. Fortunately, a thread from the VMware vCenter Mobile Access Technology Preview Community sheds some insight on how VMware actually tested the vCenter Mobile Access virtual appliance (vCMA) with several different mobile devices.

From The official “how will I connect to this thing” thread: Read the rest of this entry »

VMware announced an upcoming technology preview will be available in April for vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA). Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Product Management and Market Development for VMware, provided a guest post on the VMTN Blog with news about new project. Introducing VMware vCenter Mobile Access describes vCMA as a virtual appliance that will allow admins to monitor and manage their VMware virtual infrastructure from a mobile phone with what appears to be most of the same functionality available from the VI Client.

Here’s some details from Srinivas’ post about vCMA:

“Did you ever get paged when you are in a meeting about some virtual machine that needed to be restarted?  Or, did you ever get an alert when you are at your kid’s soccer game or at the movies that a particular server is overloaded?  Actually, imagine any scenario where you need to actively manage your datacenter but you are nowhere close to a PC.  Wouldn’t it be nice to act on the notification from your mobile phone?  After all, we are now a generation that doesn’t leave home without a mobile phone…

Introducing VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA).  vCMA allows you to monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices. Specifically, it allows you to:

• Search for virtual machines in your data center
• Migrate virtual machines from one host to another using vMotion
• Execute recovery plans using VMware Site Recovery Manager
• Access Scheduled Tasks, Alarms and Events
• And much more…”

This YouTube video shows off the vCMA on a Blackberry. Read the rest of this entry »

Duncan over at Yellow-Bricks.com just a posted about a technology preview of the new VMware vCenter 2.5 for Linux available for beta testing. The virtual appliance can be downloaded from the VMTN forums in both .zip and .ovf format.

This early edition is for beta testing only, and VMware strongly suggests not to use this edition in a production environment. There is also a vCenter on Linux install guide .pdf available for download.

I’m looking forward to my current download completing so I can explore vCenter on Linux. I will not be able to post anything immediately as verbiage from the download page clearly states this technical preview is “highly confidential”.

Hopefully this is the start of some exciting new product announcements and features to coincide with the opening day of VMworld Europe 2009 tomorrow!

SB said BS so I had to show that installing Hyper-V Server 2008 in a VM is possible! Hopefully he/she will allow a VM hosted  on the free VMware Server 2.0  as acceptable proof. My virtualization host is a 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 desktop running VMware 2.0. I created the VM from my Vista notebook using the VMware Server web interface. Once again, it’s a very simple, straightforward process.

I’m not claiming to be able to run virtual machines on the Hyper-V VM. Fact is I have not tried. My intent is testing and learning the remote administration for now. I am planning on joining this VM to an Active Directory Domain along with my Windows 7 Beta install. Hopefully joining the server and client to a domain won’t be as frustrating as trying to figure out the configuration for a workgroup! I’ll probably post that process too when I get around to it.

So, the rest of this post shows the build in a table formatted steps with images. SB, this one’s for you! Read the rest of this entry »