VMworld – Day Zero – Sunday 16th October

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This week our fellow blogger, Sander Martijn, felt he had to vMotion  to a new career opportunity. After working for Centric for 8 years, he has accepted a new challenge and signed a  contract at Nspyre in the Netherlands.

Sander, congratulations from the rest of the VMGuru.nl crew.

Although Sander is going to switch employers, he will continue blogging at VMGuru.nl.

VMware in collaboration with Teradici is working hard to improve the rich user experience even more by adding new features and improving existing ones. The vDesktops running on VMware View can be reached through lots of different devices including Apple iPads or Android-based tablets. The VDI solutions on the market are getting more and more mature in a rapid fashion.

New PCoIP enhancements will be released with the next release of VMware View. PCoIP Optimization Controls will be one of them, with these controls you can tweak the bandwidth usage which can result in a 75% bandwidth improvement. This is huge!

What is in the PCoIP Optimization Controls:

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I often get questions about how to license Microsoft Windows 7 in a VMware View VDI deployment, I will try to elaborate what is needed in general and for specific scenarios. By understanding how they apply to common VMware View scenarios you can calculate and try to get the most out of existing and new licenses needed.

Every device you want to use to access the VMware View environment, with Windows 7 Desktops, needs to be licensed. It does not matter if it is a PC, a Thin or Zero client, an iPad or similar devices, every device accessing Windows 7 via VDI needs to be licensed.

You have two ways to license the environment, you can utilize the Software Assurance Windows Virtual Desktop Access Use Rights benefit at no additional cost; or you purchase Windows VDA subscription. Windows VDA is licensed per access device. There is currently no option to license Windows VDA per user.

VDA through SA or VDA subscription?

Certain devices, such as thin or zero clients, do not qualify for Software Assurance coverage for Windows. To license these devices for use with VDI you will need Windows VDA subscription. The rule of thumb is that if it isn’t a full blown Windows Desktop Operating System with Software Assurance (SA) you will need VDA subscription licenses to access the VMware View vDesktops.

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VMware Next Step in End-User Computing roadshow June 2011 from Ton Hermes, Senior SE VMware on Vimeo.

The Future of End-User Computing goes much further than just delivering a vDesktop and vApplications to users. Users today are demanding more and more that functionality is available 24/7, where new functionality can be immediately obtained when needed and that they can use a device of their choice to work with.

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For putting together a business case costs and revenues are an important part of it. If you want to calculate the direct resource costs associate with hosting a server in  your data center, you want to know the direct power consumption by the server in electrical costs and the costs associated with cooling the environment where the server is situated. To do so you will need a few parameters from the device(s) used. You will need the Watts, BTU/h and the electricity costs per kWh.

Where British thermal unit (BTU)  is used as a unit for air-cooling power of an air conditioning system and refers to the amount of thermal energy removed from an area. A BTU is approximately a third of a watt-hour. 1000 BTU/h is approximately 293W.  Kilowatt hour (kWh) is most commonly known as a billing unit for energy delivered to consumers by electric utilities.

Let’s take for example a HP DL-380 Generation 6 with two Quad core CPUs, 24 GB memory, eight  network ports, two  72GB 15K SAS hard disks with two 460 Watt power supplies. This server uses about 307 Watt and generates 1047 BTU.

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This is the fourth year Imtech ICT is awarded the Premier Partner status by VMware. Where a few years ago server virtualization prevailed, we now see a large increase in projects around the subjects (internal) Cloud, VDI, Security and Collaboration.

Thanks to a lot of dedicated people involved, by training and dedication to the VMware platform, we can accelerate the ongoing virtualization business and projects.

This partnership fits in with Imtech’s strategy for IT operational excellence through innovative solutions to its clients.

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Last week we got a question concerning the licensing options around vSphere and how to choose the correct edition and options from all the flavors and options offered by VMware. So while answering the questions concerning the licensing I thought back to a nice overview picture we had available a few years back from VMware. So that’s why I compiled two overview pictures where there is one for the SMB market and one for the Enterprise market. In the overview the current situation and options are summarized per edition.

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During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Thursday 14 October 2010

Alex working very early

6:30

Time to get up my phone is blinking with a reminder for the Zimbra breakfast meeting in the Scandic Hotel. The ritual stuff to be dealt with, washing, shaving and getting dressed. Damn it is early but everything for a good cause.

7:00

Alex and I leave the hotel to the metro station through a light moist dark morning. A lot of activity along the line. Erik and Anne Jan still firm a sleep. We arrive at the metro station in about 15 minutes. Just missed the one on the platform so just will have to wait for the next one in 6 minutes. I must say transportation is very good in Copenhagen. Yes the metro arrived and we get in along the line more and more folks from Denmark join in and get ready for work.

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During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

7:30

Alarm clock is buzzing far far away….

7:34

A loud bang on the door, Alex moving towards the door so I can turn over again and fall a sleep…

7:50

ohh crap overslept probably the age as some friend and guest blogger Sander pointed out nicely

7:51

Time for a shower pulling the shower curtain around me now to find that water lever again, still not away while the water is plunging on top of my head. Feels good!

8:06

Breakfast time, I see a lot of sleepy heads of people moving through each other in complete chaos around the food and beverage tables. Gets easier and easier to move swiftly through the mass to my goal.

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During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

7:00

The alarm clock is buzzing away happily. Good morning all a nice day ahead again. Time to move away from my bed and get ready. Booting the laptop to check the vmguru.nl stats and see what is happening out there in the world. Stats seem to be frozen so asking Alex if he can check.

7:04

While Alex is checking why the stats aren’t working I start shaving and washing myself. I hear some power words and Alex mumbling loudly that the programmers should make some decent documented manual or troubleshooting guide so you can find out why stats are broken.

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During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Monday 11 October 2010

8:10

Just woke up, maybe that phone that keeps ringing in the distance is the one who caused me to awake from my deep sleep… mmmm no its my own phone but where did I put it. Careful not to sit up and jump out of bed or I will be laying down on my face on the hotel room floor 2 meters below   Ahh it is my lovely wife waking me up Careful to get out of the bunk bed and trying to jump onto the small stairs hanging at the bed.

Alex got some fear in his sleepy eyes maybe because some gorilla just jumped onto a small stairs close to his head, morning mate.

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During VMworld Europe 2010 in Copenhagen I will be keeping a diary to show what a blogger’s life is all about.

Sunday 10 October 2010

7:54

I am awake early today. Maybe because it is the day to go on a vRoadtrip to Copenhagen with the VMguru crew J Time to check my e-mail and twitter flow to get up to speed. More and more bloggers, speakers, partners and VMware personal is moving towards Copenhagen. Just follow the flow of tweets…

8:30

Time for a shower and shave I reckon. Ahh that feels good fresh and fruity! Packing my bag with cloths and such I will need next couple of days. Now time to gather all electronic gadgets I will need. AC  adapters, network cables, laptop, mobile phone, business cards and an alarm clock. The bag feels heavy.

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Today one of my colleagues pointed out some of the changes around the RES Software product suite, which probably will be announced on the Citrix Synergy 2010 in Berlin, tomorrow.

RES Software has restyled there logo and color scheme. They also renamed RES PowerFuse en RES Wisdom into RES Workspace Manager and RES Automation Manager. The new names sound logical to me.

It looks like they pulled out the RES Subscriber feature out of the PowerFuse Enterprise edition and made it an additional product named RES Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX). Also there will be no more different editions to choose from instead you can choose the functionality in modules, based on your needs.

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With the release of vSphere 4.1 it will be the last version of ESX to be released in an ESX and an ESXi version. After this version only the ESXi flavor will be released. We at VMGuru.nl predicted that this would happen a few years back, so we advised our customers to go for the ESXi version, too make it a lot easier to migrate to a newer version in the future.

VMware recommends that customers deploy vSphere 4.1 on the ESXi hypervisor architecture as a best practice.

In the past some features from the ESX architecture weren’t supported on the ESXi platform. As of vSphere 4.0, all the functionality of VMware vSphere is supported on both architectures, including support for Jumbo Frames, Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), NetQueue, and NetFlow.

VMware ESXi is the latest hypervisor architecture from VMware. It has an ultra-thin architecture with no reliance on a general purpose OS, yet still offers all the same functionality and performance of VMware ESX. For a comparision between ESX and ESXi 4.1 see the following article.

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While designing and writing administrator guides, I often use pictures instead of words. In my opinion: a picture says more then 1000 words. When VMware vSphere 4 went live I started collecting pictures from  Sphere and the Virtual Infrastructure client, I combined them in a Microsoft Visio 2007 shape so I could track off them and use them more often in pictures and designs accompanying virtual infrastructures.

Using them in memo style documents to tackle known issues or incorrect handling is quit effective. Also with the new menu driven style of the vSphere VI Client combined with VMware vCenter Server some administrators are looking for the right path to get to the correct content.

This Visio stencil is a combination of different icons, shape and such. You can design a Host and Clusters drill down with it or use components to use in manuals or troubleshooting documents.

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[This is the 2nd part in the sequel. You can find part 1 here.]

We talked about licensing Windows Server on a VMware environment but that’s only one part of the licensing nightmare. You will also need client access licenses also called CALs.

Client Access Licensing

In addition of the Windows Server 2008 License you also need a Windows Server 2008 Client Access License also called CAL. This is required for each user or device (or combination of both) that accesses or uses the Windows 2008 software.

Requirements

Every user or device accessing the Windows Server 2008 needs a CAL. You don’t need a CAL when:

• You access the instance of server software only through the internet without being authenticated or individually identified by the server software;
• You access Windows Web Server 2008;
• If external users are accessing the instances of server software and you have acquired a Windows Server 2008 External Connector License for each server being accessed;
• You only administer the server software with two devices or users;
• You use the Windows Server 2008 solely as a virtualization host.

The last point doesn’t impact us much because we use VMware ESXi solely as our virtualization platform.

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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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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.

Last week I had another nice discussion around the 90 day assignment rule for Windows Server licensing on a VMware environment.  To answer this shortly: You may move running instances between licensed servers without acquiring additional licenses. However you cannot exceed the maximum number of instances each server is licensed to run.

Microsoft Operating System Environments (OSE)

Microsoft defines Operating System Environments for allocating licenses. This is a nice and flexible way to accommodate customer demand.  To understand how licensing works under virtualization, it is important to understand how Microsoft defines an OSE.

An “operating system environment” is:

1 all or part of an operating system instance, or all or part of a virtual (or otherwise emulated) operating system instance which enables separate machine identity (primary computer name or similar unique identifier) or separate administrative rights, and

2 instances of applications, if any, configured to run on the operating system instance or parts identified above.

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