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Archive for the ‘vmware’ Category

WUPaaS first. Ask questions later!

Tune in here around 6 PM PST for the tweets, photos, interviews, videos, and general mayhem associated with the VMUnderground VMWorld 2010 Warm UP Party as a Service Event at the Thirsty Bear.

The Twitter game
Back once again.
A little challenge
For VMWorld 2010.

Started last year.
Some thought strange
At VMworld 2009
And Partner Exchange.

Here’s the rules.
Hope you play.
Use three words
Whatever you say.

Hashtags are allowed.
Apostrophes are free.
Always use tag #vmworld3word.
above = 3.

Count symbols, numbers,
as word substitutes.
punctuation doesn’t count.
emoticons I’ll excuse

RTs are encouraged
to link conversations.
Here’s an example
“RT @twittername(s): to link conversations #othertag #vmworld3word>” note various exceptions

Slang is permitted
if commonly used.
There’s lotsa grey
gotta carefully choose.

The contest begins
On WUPaaS Sunday.
Join, you must
Yoda would say

Tweet when inspired.
Not every time.
Make it fun
without the rhymes

I was told
around the Moscone
screens will display.
Honest, no bologna.

If they do
Look for mine.
Tweet your own.
try to outshine!

This little ditty
shows game intent.
Clear as mud?
Leave a comment!

For those attending VMWorld 2010 in San Francisco, CA, On Wednesday September 1 at 1:00 PM PST take a break from the sessions and stop by to meet VIRTUMANIA and Infosmack personalities Marc Farley, Rick Vanover, and me in person on the VMWorld 2010 Solutions Exchange floor. The Veeam and 3PAR booths are adjacent to each other, so this tweet up will be in the general area at both booths from 1 PM to 2 PM PST.

RSVP at twtvite.com/vmworld2010smackup and then add to your calendar:

Outlook Google iCal Yahoo!

Be sure to follow (and use) the hashtag #smackup during the event on that Wednesday. The twtvite.com page will be collecting tweets and photos using this tag!

Looking forward to seeing everyone then!

See the full twtvite after the page break.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am in Seattle, WA for the third GestaltIT Tech Field Day (TFD). This time I am part of the presenting team for Veeam Software, and we are first up on the agenda. As with other recent events, I am using Cover It Live (CiL) to provide real time coverage and of our presentation and the reaction of the delegates (bloggers) attending. The best part about using Cover It Live is the event can be played back in the future, so check it out even if you missed it live.

I’m automatically pulling in the tweets of all involved, so I should have a good stream of both bloggers and sponsors represented here.

I’m using the following twitter lists:

• @TechFieldDay/tfd3-sponsors
• @TechFieldDay/tfd3-delegates

Look for my occasional commentary as well, but I’m not sure how much time I’ll actually have to participate. I’ll end the coverage when our time is up, which should be roughly 3 to 4 hours.

Click through the page break for the CiL widget and tune into the fun!

By the way, we are providing the first ever public demo of Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0 SureBackup!

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VMware engineer Michael White’s post 64 bit is almost here – are you ready? on the Uptime (VMware and Business Continuity) Blog foretells of the future 64 bit requirement of both vCenter and SRM (Site Recovery Manager). White writes:

“I wanted to remind everyone, of what I have already seen floating around the internet, but still important enough to remind.  Our next release of SRM is going to require a 64 bit OS.  This is the same as our next release of VC as it too will require a 64 bit host OS.  This change is required to support the increased capabilities of our products.  As we scale our products to match our customers needs, generally 1 – 2 years in advance of where they will need all the capabilities of a given product we have had to use a 64 bit OS.  This will show itself in increased numbers in things like more simultaneous vSphere client connections.”

To me these new operating system (OS) requirements mean we will see even more instances of vCenter as a VM (virtual machine). It only seems logical that a least path of resistance is to virtualize the management server in order to upgrade, especially considering all have already invested in 64 bit hardware for their hypervisors if they decided to upgrade to vSphere 4 in the first place. To go a step further, I’m willing to argue that it will be more common for an IT Department to justify the cost of additional ESX hosts, even if only dedicated for management, then it will to deploy new servers for physical instances of vCenter.

The looming transition to a console-less ESXi eventually means more management virtual appliances in the future too. Solutions which will continue to need a ESX console or similar will have to substitute their own appliance to operate with ESXi. This means even more justification for additional ESX/ESXi hosts and thus greases the decision to virtualize vCenter as well. I expect to see management clusters of ESX hosts become more common in the future than even the use of management networks today.

ESX hosts have bigger and badder hardware now than ever before allowing for higher consolidation ratios and larger applications to easily run in virtual machines, but it will be interesting to see if the vCenter as a VM best practices change over time. I personally feel that continuing to separate the database from the virtualized vCenter will continue to be a smart choice. Running a separate, and even virtualized, SQL instance ensures not only better performance of vCenter as a VM but enhances DR scenarios. In fact, those that already have the vCenter database on a remote instance will likely have a safer upgrade to the 64 bit vCenter.

The new 64 bit requirements will no doubt make for an interesting migration scenario, and I’m sure we will see some positive and negative opinions. Let me know your thoughts on a 64 bit vCenter as a VM in the future!

David Davis (@davidmdavis vmwarevideos.com) recorded the 2:30pm vExpert Panel session from the recent Carolina VMware User Group (VMUG) Summit 2010. The session occurred on Friday June 11, 2010 in the Charlotte Convention Center and featured the following vExperts:

@sakacc Chad Sakac

@vstewed Vaughn Stewart

@scott_lowe Scott Lowe

@mike_laverick Mike Laverick

I was lucky enough to get to moderate the discussion, and along with excellent help in the form of several questions from the VMUG crowd (my co host for the event), I am extremely pleased with the conversation that resulted. We touched on VCE vBlock architecture, Secure Multi Tenancy, vStorage API for Array Integration, FCoE, and a few other virtualization related storage topics

in the 60 minutes we were given. In fact, the end result turned out much like a live version of both the Virtumania and Infosmack podcasts.

One of my personal goals for this session was that the everyone in the audience did not have be storage gurus in order to get benefits from listening. I’m proud to say that I feel we achieved this goal, and so I am embedding Davis’ video below so more VI admins can tune in to what these guys have to say about the future of storage and virtualization!

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VMware announced the U2 (update 2) release of ESX 4.0, and unfortunately early adopters quickly discovered VMware View virtual desktop connections using the PCoIP protocol were failing. This post provides some quick info on both the new release and the new VDI problem it creates.

UPdate 2 Info

VMware ESX 4 Update 2 is available for download here. The following is a cut and paste of What’s New from the Release Notes:

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
• Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
• Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
• Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
• Resolved Issues – In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

PCoIP Connections Issue

The following cut and paste is from the VMware KB Article Upgrading VMware Tools in a virtual desktop causes PCoIP connections to fail: Read the rest of this entry »