Usually everybody is on holiday during this period and because of that we lack new projects and great news. ‘Komkommertijd‘, as we call it in the Netherlands. Fortunately (for us) Duncan Epping, known from Yellow-Bricks, isn’t  on holiday (yet) and he pointed me to some great new VMware whitepapers.

So,do you want to get educated on VMware now?

Then you should definitely visit Duncan’s blog or directly download and read the following whitepapers:

• VMware vSphere 4: The CPU scheduler in VMware ESX 4;
• Virtual Machine execution modes in VMware vSphere 4;
• VMware vSphere 4 Fault Tolerance: Architecture and Performance.

And to top it of, yesterday Duncan posted an addition to his ‘HA deepdive‘ discussing HA and slot sizes.

So that’s four documents which will help you through your day.

Across the room Anne Jan is working on an article discussing his first vCenter Chargeback implementation. So after you have read the four documents get back here as soon as possible.

It sounds a bit strange, ‘vCenter vs VDI‘, as both are VMware products but it’s true. As usual a twitter contact pointed me to a VMware KB article which states the following.

‘VirtualCenter tasks that conflict with VMware Virtual Desktop functionality‘

My first thought was ‘Ah finally, an explanation why vSphere 4 has no support for VMware View 3‘. But when I looked at the affected product versions it appeared that this was not the case.

The VMware KB article provides a list of VirtualCenter 2.5.x actions that conflict with VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure functionality (Virtual Desktop Manager 2.x and View 3.x) and cause VDI Desktops to become inaccessible. These action are:

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The post frequency on VMGuru.nl has been a bit low because I have been on ‘holiday’ for the last three weeks. During these three weeks I’ve been very busy moving to my new house.
Now I’m back and the first thing to do is to plough through my Inbox and check all interesting RSS news to discover what has happened in the world of virtualization during my absence.

I decided to create a small and concise update in chronological order.

July 7th – VMware ESX Configuration Maximums Matrix:
In between packing, flooring and cabling I came across a great ‘VMware ESX Configuration Maximums Comparison Matrix‘ on Daily Hypervisor.com.  A great documents which sums up the maximums of ESX 3, ESX 3.5 and 3.5 U1, ESX 3.5 U2 and up and of course vSphere. Very handy when studying for your VCP exam or when designing a new virtual infrastructure.

July 10th – vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5 released:
As of July 10th vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5 (English and localized) is available for download. Virtual Center 2.5 Update 5 fixes some important known issues and includes significant performance and scalability improvements to VMware High Availability. Use or update to vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5 when you have more than 35 virtual machines per host in an HA cluster.

For more information read the release notes. For details regarding compatibility check this out. vCenter Server 2.5 Update 5 can be downloaded here.

July 13th – New VMware Partner Central ONLINE:
On July 13th the new VMware Partner Central came online. VMware Partner Central now has some new/improved features like customized content on your program, partner level, and role. Improved Partner Locator that allows customer and prospect searches on your locations, competencies, partner levels and partner types. Dedicated pages for products & solutions, promotions, sales & marketing tools to help you develop your virtualization practice.

So go to http://www.vmware.com/partnercentral and check out the new features. I think it is definitely worth it.

July 13th – VMware View 3.1.1 released:
On July 13th VMware also released an important update for VMware View 3 which update to version 3.1.1. This maintenance release addresses some customer issues and eliminates some known bugs. It also addresses the following: ‘View clients might unexpectedly disconnect from the desktop when tunneled‘ described in knowledge base article 1012388.

More information regarding this release can be found in the release notes. The new version (3.1.1) can be downloaded here.

July 14th – vSphere Sales reference sheet:
Today I received a very handy vSphere Sales reference sheet from our VMware Reseller Manager. The sheet shows the different version of vSphere and associated support options with the (European) prices. So if you want to compare vSphere version and pricing, check out this vSphere Sales reference sheet. Maurice thanks!

July 15th – New vCenter Management products:
VMware picked my birthday to release their new vCenter Management products, vCenter Lab Manager 4, vCenter AppSpeed and vCenter Chargeback.

VMware Lab Manager 4 .0 automates management of internal cloud resources for development and test environments, providing self-service access for end users while ensuring IT control.

vCenter AppSpeed enables virtual infrastructure administrators to ensure performance levels for virtualized-multi-tier applications.

vCenter Chargeback provides cost modeling, accounting and reporting/billing for virtual resources.

July 16th – vSphere upgrade exam material:
Today I received an e-mail from a colleague which some nice information to prepare for the vSphere 4 upgrade exam. The VSP 4 Upgrade guide and the VMware vSphere Software compatibility matrix combined with the VMware ESX Configuration Maximums Comparison Matrix is a good foundation for the upgrade exam. Edwin thanks!

So far the 7 most important VMware/virtualization facts from the last 3 weeks out of my Inbox.

I have had several customers asking me for advice on what to do with new ESX hosts who should be joined into the VMware cluster, but after adding to the cluster problems with vMotion arose. It just didn’t work anymore because of some minor CPU differences.

One of the customers had bought the exact same HP DL380 model with same product number and revision with the same type of Intel CPUs inside. But unfortunately the stepping on the old CPUs is 6 and on the new ones its 10. The HP machines contain Xeon CPUs from Intel type 5450 3 Ghz stepping 6 (existing) and stepping 10 (new).

I asked them the following questions so I could give them advice on what to do next:

Question: How many new ESX hosts are you adding to the cluster?
Impact: If you are just adding 1 or 2 ESX hosts as extra capacity it is good to look into reforming the VMware cluster to an EVC cluster., because the more ESX hosts (up to 32) in a DRS cluster the better DRS can do its job. If you have more than 2 hosts to add to the cluster it can be a solution to build a dedicated cluster with the new ESX hosts.

Question: Do you need the new features added to the CPUs or do you just need more power in the VMware cluster?
Impact: If you look at the latest range of CPUs it can make a total difference of up to 25% speed, because of new added features.

Question: What are the plans for the future with the clusters and do you suspect significant growth?
Impact: If you suspect significant growth it can be useful to build up a new ESX cluster with new functionality but always weigh carefully the pros and the cons.

Question: Are the used servers and CPU’s capable of switching on the VT or AMD-V option and can the XD or NX bit be enabled in the BIOS? (Intel markets the feature as the XD bit, for eXecute Disable. AMD uses the name Enhanced Virus Protection.)
Impact: If the machine and the CPUs are capable, you can start using an VMware EVC cluster.

After answering the above questions I recommended some clients to build up an EVC cluster in vCenter Server, most answers I get after suggesting such a move are:

“uhhh build an EVC cluster, what’s that?”

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As it is VMware View season I ran into a new problem deploying new virtual desktops in the virtual infrastructure I presented to you in this article.

The people who read it know that the infrastructure serves various clients/customers so I have to deploy various virtual machines varying from Windows XP to Vista. Last week I deployed a virtual machine and asked a colleague to install all software and tools needed for this client site. It took him a day to get the virtual machine ready, after that I tweaked and tuned it to run in a VMware View environment and converted it to a template.

When I created a desktop pool with this template the fun started. The deployment went great but when the virtual machine powers on, guest customization should kick in and it didn’t. At first I investigated the obvious things, like correct sysprep version, check the customization specification, vmware tools, etc.

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Yesterday we did an upgrade from an ESX 3.5 host to ESX 4.0 using the VMware Upgrade Manager. I must say it’s cool to see how you can upgrade your ESX hosts and after that you can schedule the updates for your virtual machines with a virtual hardware upgrade version 7 and new VMware Tools.

There are some prerequisites for upgrading ESX 3.5 hosts to ESX 4.0 by using the VMware Upgrade Manager. Make sure you upgrade your vCenter server to vCenter Server 4.0 and make sure you have updated vCenter Update Manager 1.0 to version 4.0 before attempting to upgrade your ESX hosts.

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With the launch of VMware vSphere this week there are some new features to play with. One of the most interesting features, I think, is VMware FT (Fault Tolerance). Implementation of this features introduces some new caveats, in the case of FT you can not use all CPU’s and you can only apply FT on virtual machines with 1 vCPU. 1vCPU limits the implementations but is very easy to check in contrast to finding more compatible CPUs.

To check which CPUs are compatibel Gabrie van Zanten from Gabes Virtual World published a great article with a matrix of compatibel and incompatibel CPUs.

You can check the list and read the article here.

For the project I’m doing now I had to add VMFS volumes to eight servers. Not that I’m lazy, but with a couple of ESX hosts and still adding volumes it kinda gets nasty to do a rescan on all systems. Thankfully I remembered a post by Eric Sloof about a plugin from Icomasoft to do a SCSI scan.

This really saved me a lot of work and irritation

http://www.icomasoft.com/downloads/rescan.html

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.

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Update April 22th 2009: Today the rumor mentioned below was confirmed during the vSphere 4 launch.

Rumor in the VMware community has it that the next version of VMware ESX, vSphere, has very limited support for the VMware management and automation suite. vSphere will of course be available with vCenter for basic management and automation tasks but the rest of VMware’s great product suite is not supported in the initial release of vSphere.

So there won’t be support for:

• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
• VMware vCenter Lab Manager
• VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager
• VMware vCenter Stage Manager
• VMware View

In my opinion this is a mistake. I understand the pressure is on and VMware should  release a new version fast to challenge the competition. But releasing a product which does not support the majority of your former product suite is not a clever move.

From what I understand this is also a discussion within VMware so let’s hope VMware gets wiser and postpones the release or add support for the VMware Management & Automation suite soon.

Title: Technical Track: Demo of DR Testing with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
Location: online
Link out: Click here
Description: In this webcast, we will provide a live demo of the disaster recovery (DR) testing features of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. This solution makes DR testing much more reliable and realistic by automating testing in a way that is non-disruptive to the production environment.

Start Time: 19:00 (GMT+2) / 11:00 (PST)
Date: 2009-04-08
End Time: 20:00 (GMT+2) / 11:00 (PST)

Note: Please double check the time on the VMware webcast page. Timezones, daylight saving differences etc makes it hard to get the time right.

Title: Webcast: Sneak Peek: VMware vCenter AppSpeed
Location: online
Link out: Click here
Description: Due for release in 2009, this Application Performance Monitoring product will provide unparalleled insight into the performance of multi-tier applications. In this webcast, we will cover both how the technology can be used to perform an “Assured Migration” of an application from physical to virtual, as well as how VMware Infrastructure administrators can guarantee quality of services to an organization’s application owners.
Start Time: 19:00 (GMT+2) / 09:00 (PST)
Date: 2009-04-02
End Time: 20:00 (GMT+2) / 10:00 (PST)

Note: Please double check the time on the VMware webcast page. Timezones, daylight saving differences etc makes it hard to get the time right.

Yesterday I ran into VMware HA problems again. With my past HA troubleshooting experiences I thought configuring HA wouldn’t be a problem any more but unfortunately it bit me in the ass again.

We all know VMware ESX implementations where not all information, access, etc is available when you start with the installation. Exactly this was the case at this project. I only had 4 ESX hosts connected to the network and an EqualLogic SAN and the network was limited to the rack so only the ESX hosts and the SAN were connected. The network guys had to establish a connecting to the HQ but to do that the had to change IP addresses.

I installed the complete VMware Infrastructure with the new addresses waiting for the connection to be made so I could add the servers, like vCenter, to the corporate Active Directory.

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As every morning I was browsing on the internet and read an amazing article about controlling your virtual infrastructure by logging into vCenter mobile access from your mobile device. I think almost everyone knows the situation in which you are occupied in a personal situation and all of a sudden you receive a call from work. Something is going wrong with your IT infrastructure and they need you to fix it. During the years a lot of remote access programs where made for IT administrators which can help you in a similar situation.

For these situations VMware is working on a program for remote access. The “VMware vCenter Mobile Access” or “vCMA” software makes it possible for an IT administrator to access your ESX infrastructure for remote management.

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You probably noticed the last couple of weeks that everybody is talking about the next generation of virtualisation software from VMware.

In about an hour VMware is going to do a live webcast about vCenter Server.
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XenServer Enterprise for free?

Anne Jan and I were asked last week ,while doing work at our companies  Headquarters, how we thought about Citrix giving away XenServer Enterprise for free and positions it as “XenServer a complete free Enterprise Virtual Infrastructure solution”. So I asked them what is considered “free” and what are the needs of the customer with a complete data center/enterprise virtual infrastructure?

The question arose because they wanted to know if they made the right choice for a very big company to choose VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Enterprise above  Citrix XenServer.

So looking at what customers answer me when I ask what their requirements are, are for me the best route to go, because customers are the only one who know their organization’s virtualization requirements.

Most given answers I get when I ask for the requirements are:

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Erik pointed me to an article from Eric Grey (must be the name that makes it good ) on VCritical about using System Center Virtual Machine Manager for the management of your VMware virtual infrastructure.

Although Microsoft is advertising this as one of the good things of the product Eric thinks otherwise. I must admit, I was already biased, but after reading the articles I totally agree with him. I mean, You don’t wanna use a hammer to open bolts or using a screwdriver to change channels on your TV.

Link to the article: http://www.vcritical.com/2009/03/managing-vi3-with-scvmm-considered-harmful

This morning my twitter beeped and showed a message form Eric Sloof. The message read VMware vCenter heartbeat released.Finally VMware released their new product to ensure high availability for the VMware vCenter Server which they presented at VMworld Europe 2009 at the end of February.

vCenter Server Heartbeat is an important addon which creates high availability for vCenter Server. vCenter Server Heartbeat monitors and protects VMware’s management platform against network, hardware, OS or application issues. This fully protects the infrastructure which helps VMware users to deploy critical applications on VMware.

If you want to know more about this read our previous post, download this Powerpoint presentation or go to the VMware site

With the release of ESX 3 and VirtualCenter 2 we got a lot of new features but we lost ‘vmkusage’, a graphical interface which was a great help in solving problems. But today I read the release notes of vCenter 2.5 update 4 and now ‘vmkusage’ is back again! It is not available in the normal installation procedure but it is well worth the hassle.

Check this VMware article to see how to install ‘vmkusage/performance overview’ and mind the three notes at the end of the article.

After the installation you will see a Performance Overview tab, on host, resource pool or VM, which displays a single view of key performance metrics for CPU, memory, disk, and network without navigating through multiple charts. Just like the old days

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VMware uses the name vSphere for their Virtualisation Infrastructure product also known as ESX. Here in Cannes in the hands on labs I have used the new interface and some of its nifty features. You have to get used to the new interface, but when you are used to it it works nicely and you can find your way around quickly. Did you have to search for some deep hidden options in the VI3 suite, here with the new look and feel around vSphere its almost effortless.