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Posts Tagged ‘vmworld 2009’

Download The VMworld 2009 Presentation on IO DRS

A common question from those that did not get to attend VMware Partner Exchange 2010 has been “So, tell me about what you saw that you can’t tell everyone about!” Unfortunately, like Maverick in the movie Top Gun said, “It’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

On the other hand, more and more information is starting to surface on the web. I can neither confirm or deny that all features and version numbers will be available or released as reported, but the TechTarget folks have put together a couple of good summary articles for those who interested in a little more information on a possible future roadmap of VMware vSphere and VMware View. Check the following articles for a round up of general speculation and reaction during and after the PEX 2010 conference. Most of the sources used are credible. (That last comment will make more sense to you after you follow the links)

VMware to add memory compression, I-O resource management to next vSphere

“The next release of VMware’s vSphere will add memory compression, I/O resource management and better VMotion performance, according to attendees of last week’s VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas. If the company architects these features as promised, they could improve performance and resource utilization of VMware environments.”

VMware vies for virtual desktop dominance with View 4.5

“The upcoming version of VMware’s VDI software will better integrate its desktop and server virtualization software and expand the role of its ThinApp application virtualization software, all in an effort to extend its server virtualization dominance to the desktop.”

The above quotes are just the opening paragraphs of each TechTarget article. Read the rest for the details.

To use another quote from the movie Top Gun, Read the rest of this entry »

During VMworld 2009 I talked to Trend Micro about their virtualization protection solutions. Some of which are based in part on VMware’s VMSafe APIs. Trend told me about their protection against virus and malware attacks, network intrusion, firewall integrity, and application threats in VMware virtual machines (VMs). After researching some more about what I heard in the Trend booth at the conference, I discovered Trend also offers a free product, VM Protection, for a maximum of 100 guests.

Antivirus and Malware

At the Trend Micro booth I was introduced to Core Protection for VMware Virtual Machines, and I learned that although virtual machines still require Trend Real Time Agents (RTA) installed in each VM, the protection workload is now isolated to a dedicated “scanning virtual machine”.

The virtualization RTA on each guest is a specialized version responsible only for scheduling and status monitoring, and is not the same agent installed if using Trend’s physical server protection. The volumes and files of each guest are actually scanned directly on the VMFS datastore by the scanning VM, and not performed by the RTA running on each virtual server.

The following diagram was copied from the Trend Core Protection data sheet and shows the logical design of the solution. Read the rest of this entry »

By now you’ve seen the pictures, video (VMworldTV), and posts about the hardware in the datacenters that hosted the VMworld 2009 Labs. You should already know about the staggering number of virtual machines ( > 37,000 ) running on the ESX 4 servers ( > 770 ). But enough about the hardware.

If you are like me you probably would have loved to get the opportunity to use the vSphere client to connect to a vCenter server managing that entire virtual infrastructure (VI). Although I did not get to do just that, I did get the opportunity to do the next best thing – talk to the manager of the team that does. My VMworld ended by talking to Randy Keener, Group Manager of VMware’s GETO team (Global Engineering Technical Operations). Keener explained to me some of the VMworld 2009 virtual infrastructure design details that VI administrators would be interested to know.

Nested ESX in the Lab Manager Cloud

What Keener revealed somewhat surprised me. Although vCenter 4 server was a piece of the design, the true magic that supported the self paced labs, instructor led labs, and the Solutions Exchange was (arguably) an example of a private cloud created by

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After talking with NetApp at their booth on the VMworld 2009 Solutions Exchange floor I came to the conclusion that the Rapid Cloning Utility (RCU) does way more for VDI implementations then the tool’s name implies. Available for free to customers that already own NetApp’s file and volume cloning  features, RCU can create automated and customized virtual desktops more quickly and with better storage efficiency while still integrating the administrative convenience and control available in vCenter and VMware View. RCU has been elevated in my mind as a “must use” tool for VDI implementation using NetApp storage.

I went to their booth with a purpose. It was obvious to me that RCU would automate the mass creation of virtual desktops by cloning a volume that contained a template desktop image. Although that’s a great time saver available when you deploy a solution based on NetApp storage,
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This VMworld 2009 session took place Thurs at 9:30 am in room 134

Points made by the presenter worth remembering.

• Physical failure is unavoidable, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
• There is a 50% chance that pieces of an ESX Cluster will fail and take down critical services and servers.
• You’re not usually staring at a monitoring screen, and you want to be notified as the hardware degrades not afterwards.
• You want as much hardware info about a host, from multiple different vendor platforms, and on a single screen
• Physical failure is a fact of virtual life
• Be proactive about hardware failure and use DRS + hardware monitoring + Alarms

An interesting demo in this session showed the use of  the built in vCenter 4 host hardware temperature status alarm generating SNMP traps as well as automatically putting a host in maintenance mode so an administrator can investigate. This action instigated a VMotion evacuation of the VMs on the impacted host and effectively isolated the hardware issue in the environment with minimal or zero impact.

My key take away of this session is that numerous “out of the box” vCenter event based alarms can be leveraged during the warning phase of hardware failures. This includes alerts covering power, fans, cpus, memory, batteries, etc. The ESX host hardware monitoring feature is detected and available automtically in vSphere 4.

My notes: Read the rest of this entry »

I will still be uploading more photos over the next few days, but here is a slide show of some of my photos so far.

Enjoy!

I’ve also created a Tweetdeck after the page break that filters all of my Twitpics from the week.
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I will be live blogging the VMworld 2009 Wednesday Keynote from the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA this morning. This post will be frequently updated with my notes and impressions once the Keynote begins.

Keynote 2 Live Blog

5:14 am PST – I will begin the live blog when I’m set up in my seat in the Keynote Hall. More then. #vmwkn2 Tweetgrid is up.

7:49 am – in same seat as yesterday. Doors have been open to the hall for about 20 mins. Keynote filling up. Music is playing …

7:57 am – announcement made to silence cell phones. Here we go. Looking forward to Steve Herrod’s demos in this session.

8:01 – lights went down right at 8 am and Herrod is already on stage. No intro today!

Steve is going to build on yesterday’s talk about the journey to virtualization. he says he has 2 goals today – learn about the future and have fun doing it. He emphasizes that with the legal forward looking statements slide.

He begins with VDI and VMware View. He calls out vSphere as the right platform for desktop virtualization. He says Windows desktops were key focuses for making sure performance enhancements in vSphere. Commonality, Security, Availability, and Efficiency are key pillars of VMware’s desktop solution and are displayed the monitor now.

Steve is explaining that centralized image and policy management are keys in the View solution. How to share images, simplify patching, and backup desktops, data and user personalities are key concerns.

Side note : “tentacles must be the new buzz word at VMware. I’ve heard Maritz mention it repeatedly, and now Steve is using it to describe the dependencies to provide the integrated features that meet the focus points on VMware View.

Steve now wants to talk about PCoIP and the best user experience to all endpoints. VOIP, 3D graphics, offline usage, and hardware accelerators in clients are some of the highlights of virtual desktops leveraging the PCoIP protocol. Steve has announced it will be shipping this year, but he did not give a GA date.

Starting to talk about VDI client scenarios, Steve is now talking about hosted desktop solutions such as Fusion, workstation, and Ace. He calls this employee owned IT. The future is bare metal client hypervisors and what Steve calls “corporate owned IT” in  the centralized data center.

The first demo is a VMware View demo. We see a CVP connected to a VMware VIew Windows 7 VM. The demo shows the 3D chess game, you tube videos, and the Windows 7 effects. This is all posisble because of the virtualized GPU using the CVP client’s hardware. Next the demo moves to show a remote connection to a View desktop via a View client on a Windows PC. Google Earth is demoed with full graphic functionality via the PCoIP protocol. Finally the Wyse pocket cloud is demoed on an iPhone. The remote connection is shown on the monitors and the iPhone gestures features are used to move around, shrink, and expand the desktop. That gets some spirited applause.

Steve then quickly talks about the VMware CMA available for the phone. This is the ability to manage vSphere and the VMs from a web interface on a mobile phone. Steve also reveals that they are working on a similiar phone admin tool for VMware View Manager too.

Keeping with the mobile phone theme, we’ve moved to a discussion and a demo on MVP – VMware’s effort to virtualize the OS on mobile devices to allow multiple platforms to run on a single device. The demo is a VISA app on a mobile device running MVP. The VISA app keeps track of your transactions and sends you offers. Then a locator function is shown for using Google Maps to find an ATM. We are told this VISA apps is actually an Android app and then shown that both Windows CE and Android are running simultaneously on the device and MVP enables seamless integration between the OSes (like Fusion and Workstation). Nice!

Steve begins to talk about efficiency in vSphere solutions.

Steve shifts to VMotion and how partners are developing products with VMotion built in? VMware has been talking about and offering VMotion for 6 years now, and in that honor “I Like to Move It” from the movie Madagascar is played over the loud speakers.  The crowd got a laugh out of that, and Steve declares we won’t be able to VMotion VMs without thinking of that song from now on. He also shows a graphic with estimated marriages saved because of VMotion. The number is a modest 74 and counting …

Steve is now pitching the “ready to virtualize all applications” message and the giant computer example. This leads to a discussion about DRS. The message is that vSphere and DRS make possible a higher peak capacity for workloads. He mentions that disk I/O will be a future factor in the automated VMotion of VMs via the DRS feature. Shares for disk I/O per virtual disk will help make this possible.

He briefly discussed vSphere DPM and the reduction of power consumption in the virtual datacenter.

Expanding on a “control” bullet point of VMware solutions and bridging from the any application theme, Steve is discussing VMware AppSpeed and the ability to drill down in the application stack to determine how applications are performing.

From control we move to security and compliance with VMsafe APIs. Steve mentions that people have been asking why have we not seen any products using this. He mentions that the API is in the shipped versions of vSphere and products are being developed. He mentions looking for announcements from RSA, Symantec, and Trend Micro in a slide.

Next is VMware vCenter Config Control. This is the first time this is shown on stage. The demo begins with an email that one of the Exchange servers is down. There is also another email from Config Control saying that there was a VI configuration change earlier to the Exchange problem. Config Control is used to compare the difference of the Exchange VM between the current problem state and an earlier baseline config. It is determined that the VLAN ID of the portgroup was changed.

Now the topic turns to Choice.

VMware Lab Manager and the ability to generate self-service portals is used as an example to help let get IT out of the way and give customers the choice to quickly provision their own servers.

Steve takes some time to mention the VMworld 2009 infrastructure setup, number of VMs, and number or ESX hosts used. he also talks about how the labs are actually using ESX and vCenter instances that are really VMs themselves, and using technologies such as network fencing they are able to duplicate setup for a large number of hands on labs. This would not be possible without VMware’s virtualization technologies.

Time to talk about the cloud.

SRM is the first product discussed, and it’s usage is emphasized as a means to move between internal and private clouds.

Next is Long Distance VMotion. VMware is working with partners to develop this. Steve mentions a theory about VMotion of VMs from datacenter to datacenter that would effectively follow the sun so that the VMs were always running in a part of the world where it was generally cooler (or at night) to conserve power needs. He admits that’s a bit far fetched but interesting.

Steve is discussing interoperability of the vCloud API and ISV integrations to help manage the cloud.

He mentions open standards and that OVF formats help enable a vCloud end goal of portability of workloads between any providers hosted clouds – whether running on vSphere or not.

Steve starts explaining some cloud terms that have been confusing:

Platform as a Service (Paas)

• vSphere – Infrastructure as a Service – Iaas
• Apps Services and Tools with Management  – Paas
• Apps and SLAs – Software as a Service – Saas

VMware has a Paas vision of the development of applicaions that run on ope APIs that can be hosted on internal or external clouds.

Steve welcomes the CTO of SpringSource on stage to show us how to use these concepts. This demo is simlar to the demo I saw yesterday where the SpringSource Tools Suite is used to move the application coding to a cloud environment that is suited to running the necessary load expected. This is all selected via the web interface wizard and the application is created on a cloud based server. The example ends with a live web page at www.code2cloud.com that lets you register for free backstage passes to Foreigner at the VMworld paty tonight. Check it out now, I just entered!

9:14 am – Steve thanks us for coming and says he looks forward to seeing us at the party tonight.

I also have a Tweetgrid set up for my Tweets from the conference hall. Watch my live tweets from the second page of this post.

Please click the read more link to see the Tweetgrid

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