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

Project Virtual Reality Check finally posted a new document about previous results and possible clock drift when using the “Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI)”.  Previous test setups and results didn’t take into account how different hypervisors handle passing time.

In my opinion this is a serious setback to Project VRC which is considered an institute in the virtualization world. People will start questioning the results when no new tests will be performed.

Below is a description from the Project VRC website explaining the new whitepaper they published on September 14th 2009. This is a must read for people that already did some testing as well as new tests. In short: ‘Because of Windows clock behavior in virtual machines the results were affected and some hypervisors may come out better than they really are.

This whitepaper is a review and reflection on previous Project VRC publications, the benchmark: “Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI)” and Windows clock behavior within virtual machines.  This discussion is fueled by the fact that results from the individual Project VRC whitepapers are set side-by-side to compare hypervisors. Project VRC has been in discussion with both vendors and community, and performed additional research in this context. Before Project VRC can publish new results, it is important to address any questions, review the impact of this discussion and improve VSI where possible.

You can download it at www.projectvrc.nl

The major conclusions in this Whitepaper are:

(more…)

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?

(more…)

After some hard pushing and nudging with Oracle sales the last couple of months I almost became a Oracle licensing guru. Not what I had in mind and was aiming for to be honest. While completing some business cases about virtualization for several customers, Oracle products became a hot issue again.

The Oracle Soap

I advised the customer to be careful about mentioning that they were striving for virtualizing the Oracle servers on VMware. The Oracle account manager could smell blood and would jump on the band wagon to let them pay for their attempt to make the infrastructure flexible and ready and supportive for a fast changing business. So the first thing what happened when the Oracle account manager heard the word virtualization was that he mentioned to the customer that it would cost at least 200K Oracle licensing costs even without knowing what the customer was pursuing.

(more…)

The world of licenses and subscription models is a complex whole, by adding a virtual component it even got more complex. Virtual machines aren’t bound to one physical server and can move freely across several physical servers or even in and out of a cloud. Fortunately more and more software vendors are changing their license and/or subscription models in favour of virtualization. Giving companies back their freedom of choice how they would like to arrange their infrastructure to support their business.

Also Red Hat changed their subscription plans in favour of virtualization. Red Hat Enterprise Linux often abbreviated to RHEL doesn’t have a license model because it’s based on open source Linux and has a GPL license. What you will not get if you do not pay a subscription fee to Red Hat is any updates and support. As a professional business you would like some insurance so I would advise to get a valid subscription on Red Hat products.

To save money on RHEL subscriptions on a VMware infrastructure there are three options to subscribe a virtual machine running RHEL. You can:

1. Subscribe 1 virtual machine running RHEL, also called 1 on 1 subscription;
2. Use Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server with 2 Socket – 4 Guest for VMware subscription to subscribe 4 virtual machines with 1 special subscription.
3. Use Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with Unlimited Socket – 10 Guest for VMware subscription to subscribe 10 virtual machines running RHEL.

(more…)

I am just writing an observation report about a virtual infrastructure based upon VMware ESX and was wondering which version the customer is running Virtual Center at the moment. After asking my vExpert colleagues 8-)  they pointed me to the help menu and the about VMware Infrastructure item in the virtual infrastructure client. It nicely shows me what software is running as Virtual Center in build numbers.

After googling around the big library they call internet I found a nice knowledge base article from VMware explaining how to get version and build numbers. You can also use a command to get the version number of VMware vCenter Server by using:

To identify which version of VirtualCenter Server you are running, type (including the quotes):
“C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\vpxd.exe” –v

It still keeps showing me build numbers too, not what I need. The customer just wants to know which update they are at in terms of readable stuff like Update 1 or Update 2 and so on. Not a build number like 16458932279.

(more…)

I get more and more the question does vendor x with application y support their software running in a VMware environment.

There are several questions to ask:

1. Can the application be virtualized? or in other words does the application run without problems in a VMware environment?
2. Does the vendor support running in a VMware environment?
3. Does the vendor give full and/or unconditional  support when running the application virtual?

(more…)