If you haven’t upgraded to VMware vSphere 4 by now, you should consider it and rethink your strategy. VMware has removed all but the most recent versions of their Virtual Infrastructure product binaries from their download page on June 17th. As of May 2010, the following Virtual infrastructure products have all reached end of general support according to the published support policy:

• ESX 3.5 versions 3.5 GA, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4
• ESX 3.0 versions 3.0 GA, 3.01, 3.02, 3.03
• ESX 2.x versions 2.5.0 GA, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.1.3, 2.5.3, 2.1.2, 2.5.4
• Virtual Center 2.5 GA, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5
• Virtual Center 2.0

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When we are selling, designing and/or building a virtual infrastructure, we brag about consolidation ratios we can accomplish.

But what’s a consolidation ratio of 8 to 1 or 10 to 1? In this case a picture says more than a thousand words ……..

On the right a part of the servers we collected during a recent VMware implementation.

28 servers, 4 more are placed on the left (out of sight), 7 are stored on an alternate location and 7 will be decommissioned when the WAN issues are solved.

A grand total of 46 servers which do NOT need power, cooling, support contracts, space, etc.

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VMware has given out a VMware Alert for customers who are using VMware View in combination with PCoIP and ESX 4.0 to NOT update with ESX Update 2 yet.

After upgrading ESX 4.0 hosts with Update 2 VMware View clients are unable to connect to the virtual desktops. VMware is currently investigating a workaround for customers that have installed ESX 4.0 Update 2 and are affected see for more information and update the following KB Article: KB Link

This Knowledge Base article will be updated as new information becomes available. If you have been affected by this, please read the KB.

Symptoms are:

• Connections to virtual desktops using PCoIP fail
• You are no longer able to connect to virtual desktops using PCoIP
• You have recently updated VMware Tools

For example, you have installed ESX 4.0 Update 2, which updates VMware Tools, and you are no longer able to connect to virtual desktops using PCoIP.

[Updated 12-06-2010]

Not all VMware products return their version number nicely. They often come in a long build number. Edwin has done a nice job collecting various build numbers of the VMware products. Now it is possible to view these build numbers online.

Check out the Build numbers page.

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We recently received an update about the new stuff that is coming from Dell EqualLogic. Because a lot the information was under NDA so I can’t go into details or give you release dates.

What’s here already?

Last year Dell released the 10GB connections for the PS series. This 10GB connection speeds are mostly done because the marketing asked for it, because the customers asked for it. There are rarely used cases where the 10GB connections make sense but in 95% of all cases it doesn’t give you extra performance.

The bottleneck is often not the connection speed but the spindle speeds limits of the disk themselves. Because of the adaptive load balancing of the PS series the 1GB connections are used very efficiently. When used with the MPIO drivers from Dell EqualLogic you can gain a lot extra performance from the network connections.

So what is coming this year:

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Yesterday I already reported on Edwin being awarded vExpert 2010!

Today Anne Jan and myself received the identical e-mail from John Troyer, so we’re excited to tell you that we extended our vExpert 2009 and are also VMware vExperts 2010!

This weekend Edwin received an e-mail from John Troyer (VMware) confirming his 2010 VMware vExpert award!

Edwin congratulations!

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book authors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts have gone above and beyond their day jobs to share their technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to their colleagues and community.

Last year Anne Jan and myself got the honour of becoming a 2009 VMware vExpert and this year Edwin defends the VMGuru colours.

Congratulations to Edwin and all the other vExperts.

Last week VMware released the new 3.1 version of their Mac workstation virtualisation application and according to VMware it is better, stronger, and faster than ever before and it is a free update for all VMware Fusion 3 customers.

When I started my VMware Fusion 3 application it immediately offered to automatically download VMware Fusion 3.1.

The VMware press release states that VMware Fusion 3.1 provides 35% better end-to-end application performance compared to VMware Fusion 3.0. Windows applications launch faster and scrolling and 2D graphics in Windows Vista and 7 is almost 4x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0. Virtual machines suspend and resume faster and virtual machines are more responsive on resume.

As a relatively new Mac user I could not wait to try and indeed I can certainly confirm the ‘faster than ever‘-statement. Damn what an improvement.

So what else is new?

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