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

Last Wednesday VKernel released a new free tool which delivers capacity alerts to the desktop.

Capacity View provides quick visibility and alerting to the storage and server capacity issues in your VMware virtualized infrastructure. I downloaded the toolto give it a testdrive and it is very easy to setup, the download and install took only a few minutes and in no time I had it up and running and connected to vCenter.

Capacity View identifies capacity based performance issues such as virtual machine I/O latency or under-allocated CPU, memory or storage. Additionally, it monitors your available capacity for new VM deployments and shows you which over-provisioned VMs can be rightsized to free up wasted capacity.

Capacity View also provides you with key virtualization deployment statistics such as:

• Numbers of VMs, hosts, data stores, clusters and resource pools
• Total available physical resources (CPU, memory and storage)
• Total allocated virtual resources as a % of physical

More information can be found on the VKernel website and VKernel Capacity View can be downloaded here.

When it comes to storage, the EqualLogic PS-series amazes me every time.

Last Tuesday I was at a client site investigating performance issues but when I opened SANHQ and the web interface on the PS 6000E one thing stood out. The performance issues were not caused by the storage device. The PS 6000E is hosting 12 virtualized Citrix XenApp servers en 8 supporting VMs and during heavy load the average latency is 1,2ms with a read/write ratio of 28%/72% and a max of 1100 IOPS.

But yesterday we had to swap SANs, a PS 5000XV for a PS 6000E and the ease with which this can be done amazes me every time. The hardest part was the process of endless firmware updates on the PS 5000XV to get it to a respectable level to get it to join the PS 6000 in the same storage group.

We had to upgrade from firmware version 3.3.0 to 4.3.4 but this is no simple task because you cannot directly apply 4.3.4. First we had to upgrade to 4.0.7, then to 4.1.7, to 4.3.4. Every time uploading the firmware using FTP, updating both controllers, restarting. This took us almost 2 hours to complete.

When this was done, all that was left was to join the PS 6000 in the existing storage group and evict the PS 5000 and this is the process that amazes me every time.

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VMware has just released the new 4.0.1 version of their VMware View VDI suite.

VMware View 4.0.1 is a maintenance release that fixes some known issues in the previous releases.

So, what’s new in version 4.0.1?

• Support for vCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5;
• Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol.
  • PCoIP now supports the following features:
    Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.
  • Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.
  • View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.

According to news reports a small plane has crashed in Palo Alto this morning, causing a power outage.

At 7:50 AM, shortly after take-off a small plane crashed into the power lines and exploded on impact, killing all three people onboard which were  all employees at Tesla Motors.

The power outage caused a phone outage at VMware headquarters. Currently VMware Support is still available – phones working – 1 877 4VMWARE.

VMware Support is currently accepting ONLY Production Down Service Requests through supportvmware@gmail.com with:

1. Company
2. Contact
3. Phone#

For critical License issues please email vmwarelicensesupport@gmail.com with the same information.

Due to the power outage and the phone outage todays VMware community roundtable is canceled.

Regularly I receive question from worried colleagues who have passed their VCP410 exam but haven’t received their certificate and welcome kit yet.

The only answer I had until now was the one I picked up on the VMware communities website stating that VMware had delayed the shipment of certificates and welcome kits due to the introduction of their new logo.

But this weekend I finally received my VCP 4 certificate and the long awaited Workstation 7 license after passing my VCP410 exam on September 4th 2009.

So If you have passed your VCP410 exam and haven’t received your certificate yet, it’s on it’s way (I hope ).

Today VMware organized the vForum 2010 in Nijkerk, the Netherlands, and during this day Dutch VMUG-er Viktor van den Berg interviewed Richard Garsthagen. Richard is one of the organizers of VMworld and during this interview he revealed some news about VMworld 2010.

First of all VMworld 2010 USA will be held from August 30th until September 2nd  in the Moscone Center in San Fransisco. The European version in the Bella Center in Copenhagen will take place from October 12th until October 14th.

Talking with colleagues and community members the issue which is immediately brought up is ‘Can we expect any news in Europe or is all news presented one month earlier?‘ Richards response is that VMworld is not primarily meant for product news but it’s a three day training event.

The biggest news Richard bring is that VMware is going to promote the experts. How? During VMworld 2010 you can get educated in four different ways. First of all you can attend breakout sessions or attend the self passed labs. A new item is that a you can attend smaller, more private group sessions. But when this is not private enough you can register for a 10 minute one-on-one private session with one of the VMware experts! Very cool!

A second great new feature …..

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May 21th VMware released their new flagship product VMware vSphere 4 which should bring us tons of new features and performance improvements.

But how is the vSphere experience almost 9 months later?

Starting with the installation and setup experience, my personal experience with vSphere is very good. During the installation and setup of VMware ESX or ESXi 3.x I experienced a lot of issues like BIOS settings causing HA issues, HA issues when changing the ESX IP addresses, Problems with VMware Update Manager and faulty HP USB sticks. We even created a HA checklist for you to easily address HA issues.

Once up and running ESX(i) 3.x ran fine with the occasional HA error which 99% of the time could be fixed by reconfiguring HA from Virtual Center.

Now with vSphere the installation and setup is simple, error free and straight forward. Setup HA in the cluster properties wait for all progress indicators to reach 100% and you’re done.

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January 3rd, Eric Siebert, started the Top 25 VMware/Virtualization bloggers contest. During two weeks everybody in the community could vote for their favorite Top 10 and the challenge was to get VMGuru.nl into the Top 25 and to knock Duncan Epping from the top spot . This last challenge proved to be very very difficult and again, Duncan took the top spot. So until July 2010 Yellow Bricks is the #1 blog in the community.

And how did VMGuru.nl do? Due to all your votes we finished at a respectable #18 in the Top 25 VMware/Virtualization bloggers and we’re very proud of it.

So, for everyone who voted for us, thank you very very much!

You can check out the complete score list here.

It was a rumor for some time but 45 minutes ago Steve Herrod, CTO of VMware, acknowledged that VMware has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zimbra from Yahoo.

First of all, for those of you that don’t know, Zimbra delivers open-source email, calendaring, and collaboration software for deployment within companies of all sizes, as well as to cloud and hosting providers offering mail services over the web.  From a business perspective, Zimbra is one of the most popular collaboration software offerings, with more than 55,000,000 users and a subscriber base that is growing rapidly.

So, why does VMware buy their own e-mail. calendering and collaboration platform? This has nothing to do with virtualization, right?

According to Steve Herrod there are two main reasons for the acquisition:

1. Zimbra will further VMware’s mission of simplifying IT.
   

   VMware’s mission is to simplify IT, and every VMware product focuses on attacking the complexity and rigidity that has crept into this world. In many ways we see the excitement over cloud computing to be a longing for a simpler, more flexible way of doing computing. The VMware strategy is to help customers achieve cloud-like efficiency and operational improvements across the major IT infrastructure investment areas.

2. Zimbra will add to the portfolio of offerings VMware provides to the VMware vCloud partner.
   

   This second motivation is very much related to the above point. We launched our VMware vCloud™ initiative just over a year ago to develop an ecosystem of telecom, hosting, and service providers that offer cloud solutions based on VMware technologies. This ecosystem has grown by leaps and bounds, quickly surpassing 1,000 members. Today we offer this ecosystem VMware vSphere-based compute and storage infrastructure upon which they can offer what is commonly referred to as “infrastructure-as-a-service” (IaaS). With the acquisition of SpringSource, we can enable our partners to offer a higher level of cloud-based service; one where programmers can write their code and let the cloud handle the details of how and where it runs. This is commonly referred to as “platform-as-a-service” (PaaS). And with Zimbra, we will now offer our partners an even higher level of cloud capability; one where customers can simply use an application without worrying about the details of how and where it runs. This top layer of the hierarchy is known as “software-as-a-service” (SaaS).

With the coming acquisition of Zimbra I think VMware is trying to fight of their link with Microsoft and deliver a total package without being bound to a Microsoft operating system or Exchange implementation. This might be a smart move in the ongoing hypervisor battle because the Microsoft marketing machine is coming weather we like it or not.

For the complete article from Steve Herrod look here.

Eric Siebert over at vSphere-land is running a new blog contest which let you decide who the most favorite blogger is. Can anyone knock Duncan Epping from the top spot? With the last elections VMGuru.nl entered the voting list so make us proud and kick VMGuru.nl into the Top 25. Your votes will decide the winners and help decide the Top 25 bloggers.

You can pick your 10 most popular bloggers based on your points Eric Siebert will create a vSphere-land blogger top 25.

Please cast your vote and make a change to win a copy of the TrainSignal vSphere DVD training course.

Here’s how it works, you pick your top 10 favorite blogs, to vote simply number your 10 favorite blogs from 1 to 10 with 1 being your most favorite blog (VMGuru.nl of course ).

The VMGuru.nl-crew wishes all of you a very happy new year!

A brand new year to perform your virtual fireworks!

November 4th we published an article on Virtual Infrastructure best practices and the response was overwhelming. During the last month we received a lot of questions regarding best practices on VDI/VMware View. When I then read a comment from VMware’s evangelist, Richard Garsthagen, that the attention on blogs for VMware View was minimal I thought well let’s extend our View articles/knowledge base.

So, VMware View best practices. First of all check the article on Virtual Infrastructure best practices to create a good understanding for the underlying virtual infrastructure challenges.

So hereby my list of best practices which I gather from VMware KB articles, instructor led VMware View design training and the VMware community:

• CPU sizing;
• Memory sizing;
• Storage sizing;
• Network sizing.

If you have additions or new insights please reply.

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The last breakout session we attended the XTG vCenter Server Heartbeat workshop, a quick way to get familiar with a new VMware product.

The instructor first introduced us to the product and discussed some installation and configuration hints and tips.

After that we quickly started with preparing and cloning the vCenter Server and installing and configuring the vCenter Server Heartbeat product.

The workshop certainly was useful but in a different way you would probably expect.

After the workshop Anne Jan and I discussed our experiences with the product and we quickly agreed that VMware could have spent more time OEM-ing the former Neverfail product to give it a VMware-like interface instead of the 1980’s Windows 3.11 interface it has now. Besides that the configuration of the product has a very high tweaker-level. In our opinion this is a 0.9 version and in the 1.0 versionVMware should definitely address the interface and configuration look and feel.

Nevertheless VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat does what it is supposed to as we saw during the lab exercises where we did a clean failover and finally caused a BSOD which vCenter Server Heartbeat handled perfectly.

I wonder if customers are willing to pay so much money for a product which isn’t worthy the VMware name based on its ancient interface. I know I will be having a very hard time to convince customers to use this to achieve a very high vCenter protection level even when it’s clear that the use case is definitively there.

Joep Piscaer just finished his VMware Lab Manager 4 presentation at the Dutch VMUG and he he shared it at his website, VirtualLifestyle.nl.

Our blogging colleagues at Virtualistic.nl are busy recording it so it should be online soon on their video blog.

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At the fifth Dutch VMUG Event, I’ve given a presentation on VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4. I’ve uploaded the slidedeck of this (Dutch) presentation to SlideShare, a nifty way to share your presentations.

Our blogging colleagues at Virtualistic.nl keep a video blog on their site.

You can watch VMUG keynote and presentation ‘live’ from Nieuwegein (Netherlands) on their website.

Pictures from Breakout session 2 by Bouke Groenescheij (Jume.nu) can be found here.

Breakouts in sessions 2:
- Virtualiseren van Exchange by Jan Willem Lammers – VMware
- How to monitor, manage & optimize a virtual environment by Danny Claproth – Vizioncore
- Project VRC by Ruben Spruijt – PQR/Jeroen van de Kamp – Login Consultants

Pictures from Breakout session 1 by Bouke Groenescheij (Jume.nu) can be found here.

Breakouts in sessions 1:
- VMware’s latest Virtual Desktop Infrastructure by Rory Clements – VMware
- Managing VMware vSphere 4 m.b.v. de Virtualization EcoShell by Eric Sloof – NTPro.nl
- Why the Virtual Data Center Starts with Compellent by Steven Dahlin – Compellent

Keynote pictures by Bouke Groenescheij (Jume.nu) can be found here.

Today is the fifth Dutch VMUG event and the interest is overwhelming with 600 attendees.

VMGuru.nl attends for the first time this year, helping out with the event build up and attendee registration.

The first pictures can be found at the website of Bouke Groenescheij (Jume.nu).

9:30
The event is opened by Viktor van den Berg, followed by a video  message from VMware CTO, Steve Herrod.

9:45
Our third speaker is Richard Garsthagen, VMware’s Evangelist, talking about the road VMware has travelled in the last 11 years. As always Richard’s speeches are very enthusiastic and full of energy. He explains that VMware’s future is not all about virtual machines any more which is illustrated by their new logo where they stripped the three squares which represent virtual machines. VMware is becoming more and more about enabling companies to addept their IT to their business needs. So it’s not all about hypervisors and virtual infrastructure anymore it’s about enabling companies to becoming more flexible and thereby improving profit, quality and client satisfaction.

10:20
One way to do this is VMware’s implementation of the cloud and as Richard quotes Paul Maritz, ‘The cloud is not a destination but a way to do computing‘. At this moment it’s not possible yet to move a VM from your private cloud to a public cloud by a simple mouse click but it is already possible to run a VM in a service provider’s datacenter where you pay by use. But VMware is doing everything to make this possible in the future. One of the products VMware has released their first products to support this cloud idea namely vSphere 4 and CapacityIQ. The last products enables the pay by use model which is one of the prerequisites for the public cloud.

10:30
Richard finished with some nice tech news.

• VMware started with VMware Knowledge base TV
• Every Friday VMware NL launches an online webinar with every Friday new, different and interesting topics.
• VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen will be much more oriented on networking.

Next up for me, the Scripting breakout session by Eric Sloof from NTPro.nl and Scot Herold from Vizioncore/VMGuru.com

Tomorrow is the big day for more than 600 VMware enthusiasts in the Netherlands with the start of the annual dutch VMUG event.

Anne Jan, Arjan  and I will be attending the VMUG event, you can follow us on VMGuru.nl or follow us using twitter.

If you’re not attending and want to follow the latest news you can also follow the #DutchVMUG tag or one of the attendees below. (Thnx to NTPro.nl)

More info on the Dutch VMUG can be found at www.vmug.nl (dutch).

Are you having trouble consolidating servers?

Having troubles achieving the consolidation ratios you wanted?

Maybe Intel has got the solution! Yesterday, Intel has presented a 48 core CPU!!

Let’s do the math, 4 virtual machines per core, 48 cores that’s 192 virtual machines per CPU. Take a dual socket server, add two of these CPUs and you have 384 virtual machines per host. That was the good news, the bad news is that this 48 core CPU is only available to research institutes.

The CPU which is developed and produced in Europe has 48 cores which are grouped in pairs of 24 all with their own L2 cache. The 45nm CPU contains 1.3 billion transistors on area of 567 square millimeter. Communications between the core pairs is handled by a message buffer and router and a 256GB/s mesh network. Six pairs share one memory controller and can maximally address 32GB of memory. Energy consumption is between 25 and 125W.

As mentioned before this 48 core CPU is only available to research institutes but some of the techniques used will eventually be used in CPU we use for our virtualization magic. Let’s wait and see.

At the end of May of this year we wrote a article concerning Hypervisor comparisons and we got a lot of positive feedback on it. The downside to that is that people want an update as soon as one of the companies launches a new version of its product, and who can blame them. However the issue is that this takes a lot of research and because of that, a lot of time. And because two of us are ill and in bed wearing a sombrero and the other two are extremely busy, we simply don’t have that time right now.

However, Scott Lowe has written an excellent article on the feature comparison between VMware vSphere 4 and Microsoft’s Hyper-V R2 which is a must read for everybody who’s advising customers on hypervisors.

It’s not as extensive as the Enterprise hypervisor comparison we did earlier but it gives you a good image how both products relate to each other. To extend the picture I added a list of supported operating systems.

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It has been a public secret that some of the great minds in the virtualization community had joined forces to write a vSphere 4 quick start guide.

The idea was simple, provide an easy to use reference guide for all level administrators, consultants and architects.

Together Dave Mishchenko, Duncan Epping, Bernie Baker, Thomas Bryan, Stewart Radnidge and Alan Renoufhave write a great quick start guide which is available from Booksurge. Booksurge is an Amazon company which means Amazon sells it as of November 23rd for $15,99.

So what is the vSphere Quick Start Guide? 256 Pages of tips and hints on how to get around with vCenter, the Service Console and Powershell.  Recently VMware introduced many new features in vSphere 4.0 and with this handy pocket guide you will learn about each of these new features. With each chapter, the pages in this essential guide will answer common questions while giving you unprecedented insight into: Expert tips & tricks, pitfalls to avoid, RemoteCLI & PowerCLI scripts, Configuration how to’s and Virtualization best practices.”

Judging the reputation of the authors, I think it’s $15,99 well spend. As soon as I’m home again I’m going to order a copy.