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

This week VMworld 2010 is held but unfortunately VMGuru.nl is not there to bring you the latest news from San Fransisco.

But of course we scan the Internet, follow twitter and have close contact with VMware personnel on-site.

First of all, if you can not attend VMworld like us but want to stay up-to-date check out:

VMworld 2010 buzz and the VMworldTV Channel.

VMware vCloud Director

The biggest news from VMworld today is the introduction of the VMware vCloud Director, formerly known as project Redwood. With the VMware vCloud Director enterprises can build secure, multitenant private clouds by grouping infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters and publishing them to users through Web-based portals and other software interfaces as fully automated, catalog-based services. This solution provides a clear path to cloud computing by giving customers the power to leverage existing investments and the flexibility to extend capacity among clouds.

For more information go here.

Or watch the video on VMware KB TV.

VMware View 4.5

The other big announcement was the VMware View 4.5 release in the beginning of September.

For more information see yesterdays blog post.

iPad VMware View client.

Besides the VMware View client for the Mac, which is part of the VMware View 4.5 package, a very nice addition to VMware View will be the upcoming VMware View client for the iPad. VMware is going Apple! Great news in my opinion because now I have an extra excuse to get myself an iPad .

For more information and a short demo visit VMworld TV.

Bye bye ESX.

Another public secret is the end of life for VMware ESX. With the release of vSphere 4.1, VMware announced that this will be the last version which will have an ESX version. At VMworld this seems to be one of the primary messages besides all the new products, features and announcements. New releases of VMware ESX will only come as ESXi.

Visit VMworld TV for an interview with Sean and Charu fro.m the ESXi team about what this will mean for customers. Is ESXi up to the challenge? I don’t think so! Almost all my implementations in the last two years have been based on VMware ESXi and I have never encountered any problem regarding back-up-, UPS- or monitoring agent which couldn’t be solved. So I’m happy, one less choice to make.

VMware acquires Integrien and TriCipher.

Another announcement done at VMworld 2010 is the acquisition of Integrien and riCipher to expand VMware’s stack of cloud enabling software. Integrien is a company which specializes in performance analytics and TriCipher is a federated-access-management software provider.

Integrien’s real-time performance analytics software, called Alive, can be combined with VMware’s vCenter virtualisation products, allowing organisations to derive performance summaries of their infrastructure and virtualised applications.

TriCipher’s software will provide VMware infrastructure with a single set of authentication and security controls that can be used to bridge public and private clouds.

Today, at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, VMware announced the launch of VMware View 4.5.

VMware View 4.5 is packed with loads of new features which increases VMware View use cases and definitively narrows the gap with Citrix XenDesktop.

In fact, Chris Wolf from Gartner has declared View 4.5 as an enterprise ready desktop virtualization solution.

I’ve attended the View 4.5 beta program and I can honestly say that View 4.5 is a huge improvement. In the past, we had to deploy XenDesktop for VDI deployments with specific customer demands but with the release of View 4.5 these scenarios have decreased significantly.

General availability for VMware View 4.5 is set for early September.

Here are some of the improvements/features in View 4.5:

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A few weeks ago I got an assignment to review a colleague’s infrastructure design based on VMware.
The design was fine (because they used my design document as template ) but one thing triggered me.

There was a special port group on one of the virtual switches names ‘MSCLUSTER’. No problem so far but I heard the client recently migrated to iSCSI storage.

The combination Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) combined with iSCSI triggered  my alarm bells. As I recalled Microsoft Clustering on iSCSI is not a problem but Microsoft Clustering on VMware with iSCSI is not supported (by VMware).

So, I rejected the design based on this support issue.

This message was not well received, as it turned out they had just migrated their clustered Exchange servers and had been running this way for a while now. Proposing to the client to migrate again was no option. So they tried to  question my findings. They had been running this setup without any problems and Exchange CCR clustering wasn’t real Microsoft Clustering because no disks were clustered, only the Exchange services.

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Last year we published an Enterprise Hypervisor comparison and we got very positive comments and feedback on it.

During the last few weeks I received many update requests so I decided to update the old hypervisor comparison but this time I changed the setup a bit.

Changes:

• No beta or pre-release versions are used. In the last document we also compared Hyper-V R2 beta which wasn’t officially released.
  This time all software is available and no features are subject to change due to beta-test, etc.;
• The versions used are the platinum/ultimate/fully-featured versions of the hypervisors. Product features can be limited by lower license versions;
• No free versions have been used in this comparison.

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We’ ve been doing quite a few VMware View POC’s and the question that colleagues keep asking me is:
‘How do I optimize my Windows guest OS for use with VMware View?’.

First of all, I primarily use x86 versions of Windows XP and 7. The disk usage is much less, I seldom need more than 4 GB of RAM and application compatibility is still an issue on x64 systems.

After installation of the guest operating system in the template virtual machine I do the following to optimize the operating system for use with VMware View.

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There was an issue discovered earlier today that prevents View Composer from working with vSphere 4.1.

VMware apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

With yesterdays release of vSphere 4.1 comes the challenge to upgrade your existing installation to this new version. Because I have been testing the beta for a while now, I couldn´t wait to try it in our new testing environment.

However, there are a few caveats:

• VMware released a KB article with the supported upgrade methods for ESX(i) 3.0.x, 3.5 and 4 full, embedded or installable;
• Do NOT upgrade vCenter server to version 4.1 if you are using VMware View Composer 2.0.x. Check out this VMware KB article for more information.

Before you start the upgrade process, back-up the vCenter- and Update Manager databases.

After downloading the needed ISO´s, I started with the upgrade of the vCenter server.

But first of all, I had to uninstall all incompatible vCenter components, in this case Guided Consolidation 4.0.

When this is done, it´s time to update the vCenter server.

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A few minutes ago VMware has released the new version of VMware vSphere, version 4.1.

This new vSphere version contains 150 new features and has improved scalability, memory management, DRS, etc.

Besides all the new features the greatest news is that vSphere 4.1 is the last version which will have an ESX version (with service console). As of the next version there will only be two versions, ESXi embedded and installable.

Below you will find a detailed list of features that are include with the vSphere 4.1 release:

• Scalable vMotion;
• Wide VM NUMA;
• Storage I/O can be shaped by I/O shares and limits through the new Storage I/O Control quality of service (QoS) feature;
• Network I/O can be partitioned through a new QoS engine that distinguish between virtual machines, vMotion, Fault Tolerance (FT) and IP storage traffic;
• Memory compression will allow to compress RAM pages instead of swapping on disk, improving virtual machines performance;
• Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) now can follow affinity rules defining a subset of hosts where a virtual machine can be placed;
• Virtual sockets can now have multiple virtual CPUs. Each virtual CPU will appear as a single core in the guest operating system;
• Support vCenter on 64 bit operating systems only;

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With the release of vSphere 4.1, VMware has released a new licensing model.

The management products below change from a CPU-based pricing model to one that is VM-based.

• VMware vCenter CapacityIQ;
• VMware vCenter AppSpeed;
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager;
• VMware vCenter Chargeback.

Until December 15th these product can be offered both ways, CPU-, or VM-based.

As of today VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager is end-of-sale.

This new licensing model has no impact on VMware vSphere licensing!

Update: The problem seems to be solved! We will continue to monitor the web server but it looks like we’re back in business.

Since last week we are experiencing problems with the stability of our web server.

Sorry for the inconvenience, we’re working hard to find and correct this problem.

Until then, we will restart the web server manually once or twice a day.

Again, sorry! We hope to be up, running and reliable as soon as possible.

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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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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During the last month I have been very busy building a new infrastructure at a client site. I’m responsible for the overall technical solution and the basis, a VMware vSphere infrastructure build on five Dell PowerEdge R805’s, Dell EqualLogic PS5000 and 6000 storage and Cisco switches for LAN, DMZ and IP storage networking.

Just before the customer initiated their functional test period we discovered that the overall Windows network  performance was slow. We did several test like copying an 8 GB file from local vmdk to local vmdk and VM to VM and found that the storage performance was no issue but the network performance was very slow.

In the last few years that I have been working with virtualization I have always been a fan of a static network configuration. Meaning, when I configure ESX networking I like my network interfaces and physical switch ports to be configured at 1000MB full duplex if the switch/network interface combination allows it. The idea is that if you purchase gigabit network interfaces and switches you know the maximum speeds. So you configure it to run at it’s maximum capacity, eliminating overhead and using as much bandwidth as possible purely for data transfer.

So when we experienced slow network performance I had a colleague check the Cisco LAN switches for errors, drops, packet loss or any other flaw which might indicate a speed or duplex mismatch. None were found so I assumed that the network configuration was not the issue. But as we know by now, ‘Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups!‘.

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After attending the dutch Citrix Partner Exchange 2010 I realized that there is a lot of FUD out there:

• in the Citrix community with regards to VMware View and PCoIP;
• with me personally with regards to XenDesktop (no F, but a lot of UD)

This is also what we saw when Alex shared his experience with Citrix XenDesktop, which was not so positive, and we got a lot of comments comparing XenDesktop to VMware View.

But the Citrix Partner Exchange got me interested in XenDesktop and XenClient and I decided to do a little research. Then I came across Brian Maddens site to find that he had just finished his ‘Geek week VDI‘ in which he did a ‘real life’ lab-test with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft VDI. They tested all three vendor in their lab environment but added a WAN ’simulator’ to create real life and worst case scenarios by introducing packet loss and latency.

And honestly I was surprised by some of their their conclusions. Not because I have no faith in Brian Madden but because I know Brian Madden to be a real Citrix enthusiast and a PCoIP critic. At the end he was very honest by admitting that Citrix XenDesktop looks like a mash-up of a bunch of different things, he was surprised by the simple, straightforward installation and configuration of VMware View and the good performance of PC-o-IP.

So bottom line?

• VMware View shines because of simplicity and has good user experience even with PC-o-IP over a WAN connection.

• XenDesktop is, at the moment, certainly the more mature and complete product but it’s complexity is a drawback.

• And Microsoft ‘in box’ VDI? Well as expected, it’s complex, not enterprise ready and it’s no match for Citrix or VMware.

So as always, there is no clear winner, it all depends on the customer’s wishes.

Special thanks to Brian Madden and his team for creating this great VDI test!

I won’t summarize the total VDI test, you can read it yourself here but I will quote some of the conclusions which I found to be very interesting.

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Yesterday VMware has released the new version of their application virtualization product, ThinApp 4.5

ThinApp 4.5 includes the following new features to improve usability, performance, and updates:

• Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, 32-bit Windows 7, and 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems.
• ThinApp version updates to incorporate the latest features or support enhancements without rebuilding packages. The relink.exe utility updates existing packages.
• Compression of MSI packages that uses the MSICompressionType parameter to improve the ThinApp SDK performance.
• Reduced memory consumption and page file usage to improve startup performance. The OptimizeFor parameter works with the CompressionType parameter to customize memory performance and startup time.
• Anonymous collection of statistics to expand the support for applications. You can use the Setup Capture wizard or the QualityReportingEnabled parameter to help VMware build support for applications and help you migrate more native applications to a virtual environment.
• Loading of DLL files as virtual DLL files without using API functions. The ForcedVirtualLoadPaths parameter loads external system DLL files that depend on DLL files inside the package.
• Product interface updates to improve usability and link to video and documentation information. German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User’s Guide are available.

You can find more information here, here or in the release notes. You can download ThinApp 4.5 here.

Last week I have been struggling with  the installation of a vSphere 4 infrastructure on Dell hardware at a Belgium client site.

I have done many many many VMware installations and encountered my fair share of issues but apart from the HP USB sticks the hardware never gave me this much trouble.

It all started with a very difficult BIOS/firmware upgrade which, after various downloads and trials, ended with an old-school DOS boot USB and a DOS based BIOS update. Real 1980’s stuff.

With this fixed I installed all ESX hosts and left for the hotel, ready to start the configuration the next day. However, when I started with the first ESX host and wanted to configure the network, I noticed that I only had eight NICs when I should have had twelve. We use Dell PowerEdge R805 servers with two Intel quad port 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the first card was already in the server, the second card we added just before the installation.

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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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