VMGuru.nl – I choose (a virtual) life!

Today was the first day to become a VCP on VMware vSphere 4. I wanted to become one of the first VCP’s on vSphere 4 within our company and tried to schedule the exam last week  but due to voucher problems I didn’t succeed.

A colleague did manage to schedule and take the exam today and he became the first Centric VCP on vSphere 4. Congratulations Johan!

Just now, I was able to schedule the exam and just to put the pressure on, I expect to be a VCP on vSphere 4 coming Friday at 11:30 AM.

In the last week these items are added or edited in VMware’s Knowledgebase at http://kb.vmware.com

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Last week Iomega  announced a new NAS appliance called the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d. It is based on  EMC storage technologies and contains four SATA-300 drivebays. With a storage capacity of 2, 4 and 8 TB it is the ideal NAS appliance for small businesses, distributed offices and home office networks that require advanced data storage and protection features without the need for a dedicated IT staff.

By default the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d is configured as a RAID 5 array but RAID 10 or JBOD is also possible. Free disk space can be monitored on the front LCD display.

The Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d is equipped with two gigabit ethernet ports which support link aggregation, network failover and subnetting. It also supports various protocols like iSCSI, NFS, DLNA, uPnP, Bonjour, SNMP, FTP, HTTP and Samba so it can be used with Mac-, Windows- or Linux hosts.

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For all off you who liked the techno-porn I described in my earlier post on all hardware which is flown in for VMworld 2009, which starts next week, here’s some video footage.

On the site www.vReference.com I came across a post announcing the “vSphere 4 reference card”. Wondering what this was I started reading the post.

It seems that Forbes Guthrie made a document containing hard limits for the vSphere 4 products. I found the list of items very wide and should come in handy when looking for limits of the vSphere 4 products.

The reference card is refreshed every now and then, so check out the site periodically. Or subscribe to the RSS feed of the site.

Hopefully this card can help you as future reference. I found it to be very helpful.

Many people have already traveled to America to attend VMworld 2009 which starts Monday September 31th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

We’ve already seen the ‘Ultimate Gabe & Babe US Road Movie‘ and a Gabrie’s New Orleans site-seeing clip.

But today, Virtual Geek, Chad Sakac posted some pictures frm inside the Moscone Center where the VMworld crew is busy setting up all hardware for next weeks VMworld 2009.

There will be 3 datacenters which will support all the hands-on labs, e-mail stations, booths, etc. The largest datacenter consists of 16 racks, each containing 4 Cisco UCS blade chasis, with 8 blades each. This totals 512 blades(!) so computing power won’t be a problem.

Do you want a peek? Check more.

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Eric Sloof just reported on NTPro.nl that next year VMworld Europe 2010 will be held at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen.

This was revealed onthe last page of the VMworld 2009 conference guide.
So Copenhagen here we come!

hello 2010

VMworld Europe 2010
October 11 – 14
Bella Centre, Copenhagen

Last weekend VMware launched a new course called ‘VMware View: Design Best Practices’. It’s a hands-on training course which explores the foundations of designing VMware View architectures and is meant for System architects, system administrators, IT managers, and individuals responsible for designing VMware View architectures.

It addresses:

• the recommended design process;
• the layered architecture design model and the reference framework for a View design;
• design considerations to meet business needs;
• VMware’s best practices for a View deployment.

Before you can attend you should have completed the VMware View: Install, Configure, Manage course or have equivalent experience with VMware View.

Interested? More information can be found here.

We’re now 1 week from the start of VMworld 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Fransisco. Unfortunately the VMGuru.nl-crew won’t attend but many of our fellow blogger will. According to our info, Gabrie van Zanten from Gabe’s Virtualworld and Eric Sloof from NTPro.nl will attend as will many others.

We will be monitoring all the VMworld 2009 news next week and will try to keep you informed as much as possible.

Filtering through my e-mail after a short, one week, holiday I ran into an e-mail from one of my colleagues pointing me to VMware KB Article 1013013. This KB article describes one of the first patches for vCenter Server 4.

The problem is that High Availability in a vSphere 4 virtual environment may not work when a host failure occurs and the node failure detection algorithm fails when using certain IP addresses. VMware found out that this is due to the fact that all of the Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on an ESX host fall within the following range:

3.x.x.x – 9.x.x.x
26.x.x.x – 99.x.x.x

Note: You are not affected if one of Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host falls outside of this range.

The problem can obviously be solved by changing (one of the) Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) or install vCenter Server 4.0 Patch 1.

More information can be found here.

In the last week these items are added or edited in VMware’s Knowledgebase at http://kb.vmware.com

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To get a new project funded is often hard work. You have to calculate how much it costs to build your virtual infrastructure and how fast you can save money so you can justify the investment. Even after you started the project and you are building the infrastructure you still have to keep an eye on your wallet.  The same goes for virtualizing desktops. We calculate what it costs to create the virtual infrastructure for the virtual desktops.

But what do we do when the infrastructure is in place? We simply put the total cost for maintaining the infrastructure on the IT budget. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to let the ‘user’ pay for the resources he is using, like in the old days with shared computers/mainframes?

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In the last week these items are added or edited in VMware’s Knowledgebase at http://kb.vmware.com

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‘Virtualization increases risk of data loss?‘ Let it be very clear that this is not my opinion but a quote  from an article published today by the ‘Automatiserings Gids’ (NL) in which it quotes James Lyne, security specialist at Sophos. Lyne made his statements during this podcast.

Normally I don’t respond to articles like this but this one is too ridiculous not to.

First of all, James Lyne is working for a Security/Antivirus manufacturer making these claims? Not very trustworthy. Do they have a new product to promote? The situation is identical to what Anne Jan wrote about on March 24th, ‘IT personnel lack communication skills‘.

Second of all, the claims made in the article do not show a very good understanding of reality.

I will try to translate and quote as precise and realistically as possible.

‘There is a bit of an unrecognized risk with the shift to virtualization that is compromising the security model that was traditionally in place. When you had a physical server, it was locked down in the data center and you controlled access to that resource using the operating system. You define access control lists that said that HR had access to this resource here or sales had access to these portions of data. With that physical system those access controls were very much a gate to getting access to the data because the only you could access it was over the network. With a virtual system we’re taking that physical hard drive and you’re putting it in a convenient file and that file, as it is the normal design of virtualization infrastructure, is placed on a SAN or some kind of shared storage, where people go to access data. And people are now not thinking about how they define controls over access to that file system. They’re not thinking about the fact that anyone who has access to the virtualization infrastructure now has raw access to the files that contain their most sensitive data.’

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Usually everybody is on holiday during this period and because of that we lack new projects and great news. ‘Komkommertijd‘, as we call it in the Netherlands. Fortunately (for us) Duncan Epping, known from Yellow-Bricks, isn’t  on holiday (yet) and he pointed me to some great new VMware whitepapers.

So,do you want to get educated on VMware now?

Then you should definitely visit Duncan’s blog or directly download and read the following whitepapers:

• VMware vSphere 4: The CPU scheduler in VMware ESX 4;
• Virtual Machine execution modes in VMware vSphere 4;
• VMware vSphere 4 Fault Tolerance: Architecture and Performance.

And to top it of, yesterday Duncan posted an addition to his ‘HA deepdive‘ discussing HA and slot sizes.

So that’s four documents which will help you through your day.

Across the room Anne Jan is working on an article discussing his first vCenter Chargeback implementation. So after you have read the four documents get back here as soon as possible.

‘ello Folks!

Today we’ve updated Wordpress to its latest version. There was a serious bug in a previous version and we already had some nice people testing our security. So, from this spot, I’d like to thank them all for their work of probing our site about 5 to 10 times on a daily basis for securityholes, as well as testing our spamfilter for postings for 1.836 times.

Anyway, we’re up-to-date again and we hope to stay safe!

Cheers,

Froos

VMware announced yesterday that they are into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held SpringSource, a leader in enterprise and web application development andmanagement.

SpringSource is the innovator and driving force behind some of the most popular and fastest growing open source developer communities, application frameworks, runtimes, and management tools. In just five years, SpringSource has established a presence in a majority of the Global 2000 companies, and is rapidly delivering a new generation of commercial products and services. VMware plans to continue to support the principles that have made SpringSource solutions popular: the interoperability of SpringSource software with a wide variety of middleware software, and the open source model that is important to the developer community.

Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers. These solutions will allow customers to rapidly build new enterprise and web applications and run and manage these applications in the same dynamic, scalable and cost-efficient vSphere-based internal or external clouds that can also host and manage their existing applications, providing an evolutionary path to the future. Forrester Research expects the emerging and rapidly growing PaaS market to expand to $15B by 2016. (Platform-As-A-Service Market Sizing, July 13, 2009)

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/springsource.html

It’s almost time: One of the biggest, if not the biggest virtualization event in the world is starting, VMworld 2009. From August 31st till September 3rd the Moscone Center in San Fransisco will be the home of everything virtualized.

This year at VMworld 2009, discover how virtualization is revolutionizing the next generation of computing—providing efficiency and flexibility at a time when both are critical to the future of IT.

If you are going and are still not sure what to see, go visit the Solutions Exchange. A lot of vendors are presenting their top notch virtualization products. Also be sure to go the

Unfortunately the VMguru.nl crew won’t be there, but don’t worry, we will be monitoring all the new things they will present there and keep you informed.

Also keep an eye on vmworld.com for more information arround the whole event.

In the last week these items are added or edited in VMware’s Knowledgebase at http://kb.vmware.com

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The rumors were already on the internet, but last week it was confirmed: VMworld Europe is scheduled after VMworld in the US. So now it will be held in Q4 of 2010.

The official statement:

We are pleased to announce that VMworld Europe will be held in October 2010. The VMworld Europe conference will follow our Global VMworld conference, scheduled for San Francisco in September 2010, to ensure that we are able to roll out key initiatives to customers and partners more quickly and consistently worldwide. As the leading virtualization conference, VMworld will continue to offer its diverse global audience the latest information on how virtualization is revolutionizing the next generation of computing.

I wonder if this is the first step in shutting down VMworld Europe in total. Two big events like this will make the attendees choose between them. All news will be presented first on the US edition, so it will be out in the open before VMworld Europe.

What will be left then for VMworld Europe?

• networking
• touch & feel / labs

That’s it I think. If I had to choose I would then go to VMworld in the US as attendee. If I had to show my products I probably would also go to VMworld in the US. Why spend twice the money..

I hope they reconsider the date, or that this is just one time.

http://www.virtualization.info/2009/08/vmware-postpones-vmworld-europe-to.html

http://www.vmworld.com/blogs/vmworld/2009/08/06/an-update-on-vmworld-europe

Moments after Erik posted about vCenter vs VDI,  I got problems with the VMware View 3.1.1 environment I’m setting up. I wanted to adjust the quality settings of Adobe Flash in a certain desktop pool. I started to edit the settings for the desktop pool and when I clicked finish I got a error that the Virtual Center didn’t had Sysprep running!!!

So I change a settings about the quality for Adobe Flash and suddenly Sysprep is broken?

The suggestion made to resolving this error was to set the customization specification to “none”. Since I used the desktop pool in question for almost 2 days now with the specified customization, I wasn’t about to put that option to “none”.

Things I tried to resolve the problem where:

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It sounds a bit strange, ‘vCenter vs VDI‘, as both are VMware products but it’s true. As usual a twitter contact pointed me to a VMware KB article which states the following.

‘VirtualCenter tasks that conflict with VMware Virtual Desktop functionality‘

My first thought was ‘Ah finally, an explanation why vSphere 4 has no support for VMware View 3‘. But when I looked at the affected product versions it appeared that this was not the case.

The VMware KB article provides a list of VirtualCenter 2.5.x actions that conflict with VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure functionality (Virtual Desktop Manager 2.x and View 3.x) and cause VDI Desktops to become inaccessible. These action are:

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Today Virtualization.info published the news that VMware View 4.0 went into private beta with the Teradici PCoIP software implementation. I was unable to verify this but I assume it’s correct.

So why am I so excited about the upcoming version?
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In the last week these items are added or edited in VMware’s Knowledgebase at http://kb.vmware.com

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Scouting the Internet on information about the new G6 evolution of HP servers I ran into a valuable article from Martijn Lohmeijer’s blog.

In a lessons learned article he warns about the new memory management in the new HP ProLiant DL360/380 G6.

We all know what happens when new hardware is delivered (at least I do). Techies as we are, we start unpacking the servers, flip the cover and inspect the new Intel Nehalem CPUs, fiber channel HBAs and SSDs murmuring about GHzs, GB, IOPS and FSBs with some additional ‘oh’, ‘ah’ and ‘cools’. Then put in the memory, disks and other toys we ordered and rush it to the server room or test area, plug it in, install an operating system or hypervisor. We then find out that the server is not performing as expected and start screwing up BIOS settings and pulling out components.

All you should have done after unpacking your new present is reading the manual and the quick specs of the server (which we (as techies (and men) never do).

The following is a enumeration of the most important items from the quick specs of the HP ProLiant DL360 G6.

DDR3 memory population guidelines

Some DIMM installation guidelines are summarized below:

• DIMM slots that are white should be populated first
• Do not mix Unbuffered memory (UDIMMs) with Registered memory (RDIMMs)
• If only one processor is installed in a 2CPU system, only half of the DIMM slots are available
• Do not install DIMMs if the corresponding processor is not installed
• To maximize performance, balance the total memory capacity between all installed processors
• You can only install two quad-rank DIMMs per channel
• You can only install two UDIMMs per channel; if available, the third slot in the channel must remain empty

A full list can be found in Martijn’s article or on the HP website.