At VMGuru.nl we’ve done a lot of articles on VDI performance and best practices. Recently I’ve done an article on ‘How to improve VMware View video performance‘ and Edwin did an article on ‘Boosting Google maps and video with VMware View‘.

Researching the possibilities and changes with Horizon View 5.2, Eric Sloof pointed me to two new technical white papers.

VMware recently released two white papers, one on the performance and best practices for the new VMware Horizon View 5.2 and the second on the use of hardware accelerated 3D graphics with VMware Horizon View 5.2.

This is must read material for everyone who’s designing, planning and installing a VMware Horizon View 5.2 VDI environment.

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Every time a vendor releases a new hypervisor, it’s always more reliable and stable than all the previous versions and certainly better than the competition. But was the previous version all that bad?

Of course with the addition of more and more advanced features it becomes more and more difficult to create a reliable and stable product simply because of the immense amount of code and the interdependency between all the different components. VMware has always had a dedicated hypervisor and with the release of ESXi they further reduced the code base of vSphere ESXi to minimize the attack surface. This also reduces the amount of code to patch which further improves reliability, stability and security.

Last week I visited a customer who, much to my surprise, still ran some VMware ESX 2.5 servers. According to the customer the servers ran fine and they had never had any problems.

When we opened the console, we found out that these ancient ESX 2.5 servers have had an amazing availability during the last 4 years.

Check this out!

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As I said earlier this week, VMware memory management is still a topic which a lot of VMware administrators don’t understand.

Tuesday I discussed the virtual machine memory allocation graphs. Today we will deal with  VMware vSphere uses transparent page sharing (TPS), memory compression, host swapping and ballooning.

VMware ESXi, a crucial component of VMware vSphere 5.0, is a hypervisor designed to efficiently manage hardware resources including CPU, memory, storage, and network among multiple, concurrent virtual machines. In this article I will  describes the basic memory management concepts in VMware ESXi and describe the performance impact of these options.

ESXi uses several innovative techniques to reclaim virtual machine memory, which are:

• Transparent page sharing (TPS)—reclaims memory by removing redundant pages with identical content;
• Ballooning—reclaims memory by artificially increasing the memory pressure inside the guest;
• Hypervisor swapping—reclaims memory by having ESXi directly swap out the virtual machine’s memory;
• Memory compression—reclaims memory by compressing the pages that need to be swapped out.

So how does it work.

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VMware memory management is still a topic which a lot of VMware administrators don’t understand. I often come across people who have no idea when VMware vSphere uses transparent page sharing (TPS), memory compression, host swapping or ballooning. They even mention disabling or removing the ballooning driver without knowing why.  I also meet a lot of VMware administrators having trouble explaining the virtual machine memory allocation graphs.

Let’s start with the last one.

We all know the nice graphs with all different colors, 9 different memory classifications and reservations and limits.

This screen shows the following values:

Host memory

• Consumed memory;
• Overhead consumption;

Guest memory

• Private memory;
• Shared memory;
• Swapped memory;
• Compressed memory;
• Ballooned memory;
• Unaccessed memory;
• Active memory.

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Yesterday I was busy trying some things in my VMware Horizon View 5.2 environment and after a while I got tired of repeating the same tasks on different desktop pools over and over again. Looking for a way to make things easier I came across the View Pool Manager which is a VMware Fling that allows VMware Horizon View administrators to easily manage multiple desktop pools at the same time.

With this tool VMware solves one of the biggest challenges a VMware View administrators faces in large deployments is desktop pool maintenance. Commonly each desktop pool has an Active Directory security group entitlement with the number of users a given desktop pool will support. As employees leave/join the organization, security groups require maintenance to ensure the number of users in each group correctly match the amount of desktops available. VMware View Pool Manager allows VMware View administrators to easily manage users across desktop pools and security groups for large deployments.

This tool allow administrators to bind an Active Directory connection and specify:

• How many users there should exist per group (based on VMware View pool size);
• Floating or Persistent deployment;
• Source Security Groups (all users to be distributed to pools);
• Destination Security Groups (All groups the users may be assigned to).

The View Pool Manager requires .NET Framework 4.0. The .NET 3.5 SP1 installation might require Internet connectivity to download more files. Verify that you are a member of the Administrators group on on the domain.

I tried this tool in my test environment and it’s a great help. It really saved me a lot of time in a small environment, so in a large VMware Horizon View deployment this tool should help the View administrators to save hours of work adding, removing and maintaining users, desktop pools and security groups.

The View Pool Manager is a development from Andre Leibovici (myvirtualcloud.net).

I really like it, so when you have a View environment and need a lot of time maintaining it, give it a try!

Download View Pool Manager.

Serial Port

While pursuing the 100% virtual mark you once in a while run into trouble with legacy hardware where there is hardware directly attached to the physical server you are going to virtualize. If it is USB equipment you can use USB Anywhere devices to make it happen, but if it is serial port connected equipment it gets harder to tackle that issue.

For instance you want to virtualize a building management system server with reading equipment connected to the serial ports. Is that possible? Yes you can!

It is possible to use a Virtual Serial Port Concentrator, as for instance the Avocent ACS V6000, which is described in this KB article and as mentioned in the vSphere 5 documentation here.

By connecting physical serial ports over the network with a virtual machine you can break the dependency of the physical layer and the OS layer. By solving this puzzle you can protect the organization against legacy hardware failure  and/or from software that nobody knows how it is installed anymore.

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Shortly after the release of vCenter 5.1, VMware released “vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.0″. With this product you as an administrator are able to manage third party hypervisors like Microsoft’s Hyper-V from within your vCenter installment.

This will give companies more flexibility over what hypervisors they are able to use and thus use the hypervisor they need for each specific situation.

Multi-Hypervisor manager can be installed on the server which also contains the vCenter installation or can be on a separate server. The installation process is pretty straightforward (depending on your installation and security profile, you may have to open up some extra ports). After the installation on the server you will only need to download and install the plugin for the vSphere client (installing the plugin). After the plugin is installed you can open a separate inventory from the vSphere client homepage that will show you all 3th party hosts and their virtual machines.

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During a performance optimizing session this week, with a customer, we found some interesting things to boost specific parts of the environment. While playing a high resolution video with clipping where the whole screen turns black and shows a new screen a split second later.

When we started, we saw the video bump and freeze from time to time. Also we experienced ghost lines on the middle of the screen, where the upper part of the screen moved first while the bottom part tried to keep up. We used the Fast & Furious 6 Official Trailer in an 1080p format for testing. The the business news running in an embedded Windows media player on Internet Explorer 9 didn’t perform well either.

The vDesktop is a Windows 7 Enterprise desktop with 2GB memory and 2 vCPU so it can play native 720p videos when necessary as Erik mentioned in his post. We are running the VMware View environment on an Imtech built Flexpod with NetApp storage, Cisco UCS computing power and Cisco Nexus switching for VMware vSphere and VMware View 5.

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Last week I was able to attend a presentation from Whiptail in which they talked about their flash-based storage array. With their product portfolio they offer storage solutions that deliver high levels of speed for applications which produce high loads on storage.

Whiptail positions itself in the marked as a storage solution for applications like VDI, server virtualization and databases that demand high performance. At this moment they are not trying to compete with storage vendors that deliver high amounts of storage space. high numbers on read and write actions, high bandwidth and low latency times are the current key values of the Whiptail storage solutions.

The Whiptail storage family consists of the:

The Accela which is smallest model in the family. This unit uses 2U of rack space and has a power usage below 200 watts. It can deliver a storage capacity from 1,5 TB up to 12 TB at a write speed of 250k IOPS (based on 4K cryptographically random writes) a bandwidth of 1.9 GB/s and a latency value of 100 µs (0,1 ms).

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Last year VMGuru.nl dropped for the 13th to the 19th spot in the top VMware/virtualization blogs 2012. Now, it is time again to vote the top VMware/virtualization blogs for 2013.

Please help us to reclaim the 13th position or even leap into the top 10!

So if you like our blog please vote VMGuru.nl #1.

As in last years poll you can vote in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.

VMGuru.nl also participates in the Top Independent blog for 2013!

For years VMware has been busy creating a range of Horizon-like products. At VMworld 2009 there was already a preview of what the folks in Palo Alto were working on.
Since then a lot has changed, AppBlast was shown, Octopus came (and went again).

30 minutes ago VMware finally launched their new range of end user computing products called the VMware Horizon Suite.

So, what does Horizon consist of? Well, actually Horizon is the new name for the collection of ALL End User Computing (EUC) products VMware has to offer, some of which you already know and love, like VMware View and ThinApp. But now the new cool products are finally here!

So, what is VMware Horizon Suite? It consists of these products:

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Today, VMware announced the acquisition of Virsto Software, a company which creates storage optimization software for virtual environments.

Any administrator will tell you that managing performance and data services for virtual machines can be challenging, especially in I/O-intensive environments like virtual desktops. With Virsto storage optimization software you can accelerate I/O performance for any block-based storage system and deliver data efficiency services like snapshots and clones. With these technologies it is possible to improve the performance and utilization of storage systems.

Paired with VMware vSphere, the Virsto storage hypervisor is a simple plug-in that addresses the storage problems associated with server and desktop virtualization. With Virsto enterprises can:

• Reduce VM disk footprint by 90%
• Unclog I/O bottlenecks and triple VM density
• Increase VM performance up to 10x
• Eliminate 99% of the time spent provisioning VM storage

VMware will continue to offer Virsto’s standalone virtual appliance to help accelerate storage performance and improve efficiency in VMware vSphere environments. But their main use for Virsto is to include the Virsto technology into the VMware products and improve their software defined storage solutions and therefor improving their overall software defined datacenter solution.

More information regarding the acquisition can be found here.

Would like to hear more about Software Defined Datacenters from experts like Frank Denneman, Mike Laverick, Cormac Hogan, Kamau Wanguhu and many others? VMware and IBM are organizing an awesome event in the Benelux. It is a full day event and it is free for everyone, if you just want to sign up… go here. If you need to be convinced keep reading as there are some awesome sessions scheduled.

Schedule

09.00 – 09.30 Registration
09.30 – 09.45 Welcome
09.45 – 10.30 Keynote VMware: Software-Defined Data Center
10.30 – 11.15 Keynote IBM: Converged Systems: beyond NextGen DC’s
11.15 – 11.30 Break and split into parallel sessions
11.30 – 12.15 Parallel track 1 or meet the expert
12.15 – 13.00 Lunch
13.00 – 13.45 Parallel track 2 or meet the expert
14.00 – 14.45 Parallel track 3 or meet the expert
15.00 – 15.45 Parallel track 4 or meet the expert
16.00 – 16.45 Parallel track 5 or meet the expert
16.45 – 17.30 Networking drink

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This week Teradici, creator of the PCoIP protocol, released a technology preview of their new product named Teradici Arch. Teradici Arch is asoftware-based solution that enables the use of the PCoIP protocol for Microsoft  RDS as an alternative to Microsoft RDP.

This should provide better user experience and access to the entire PCoIP ecosystem, PCoIP thin clients, APEX accelerator cards, etc.

Teradici has been forced to delay the release of Arch due to a scalability issue but a new tech preview will still allow enterprises to familiarize themselves with the product. The final product release is expected in Q3 2013.

This solution should be an ideal solution for enterprises with mixed environment of VMware View VDI and Microsoft RDS. I wonder how many of these mixed environments exist. The only mixed PCoIP/RDP environments I have seen in my work are View environments where both protocols are used to connect to the same View desktops to use MMR instead of PCoIP acceleration.

The PCoIP protocol is now available for use with terminal services for more performance over any network type and access to the PCoIP ecosystem of products including low maintenance, ultra-secure zero clients. Teradici Arch enables customers to:

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Trend Micro released Deep Security 8.0 Service Pack 2 on January 21, 2013.

Next to a couple of bugfixes this version supports even more Operating Systems. With this release Trend Micro Deep Security supports Windows 8 and Windows 2012 (agent) and VMware vSphere 5.1 (DSVA).

Click more for a complete list of supported operating systems.

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During the last weeks we’ve been busy implementing a large VMware View deployment for one customer and planning an even larger VMware View deployment for another customer. At the first site we ran into some video performance issues which we definitely want to avoid during the second project.

In our quest to solve and avoid the video performance issues we ran into a number of ways to improve the video performance in VMware View that I would like to share.

First of all, we used the information below from the VMware Architecture Planning Guide:

480p-formatted video You can play video at 480p or lower at native resolutions when the View desktop has a single virtual CPU. If the operating system is Windows 7 and you want to play the video in high-definition Flash or in full screen mode, the desktop requires a dual virtual CPU.

720p-formatted video You can play video at 720p at native resolutions if the View desktop has a dual virtual CPU. Performance might be affected if you play videos at 720p in high definition or in full screen mode.

1080p-formatted video If the View desktop has a dual virtual CPU, you can play 1080p formatted video, although the media player might need to be adjusted to a smaller window size.

3D If you plan to use 3D applications such as Windows Aero themes or Google Earth, the Windows 7 View desktop must have virtual hardware version 8 and turn on the pool setting called Windows 7 3D Rendering. Up to 2 monitors are supported, and the maximum screen resolution is 1920 x 1200. This non-hardware accelerated graphics feature enables you to run DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 applications without requiring a physical graphics processing unit.

These are the settings we used to size the first solution, so we use a Windows 7 desktop image with dual vCPU, 2GB memory, a VMXNET3 adapter and hardware version 8.

This is good for playing 720p in native video resolution but when scaling to full screen this setup does not run smoothly.

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Last week I got a tip on a new book on VMware vSphere 5 I would like to share. It’s a VMware Press book which is called ‘Building a virtual Datacenter’ and it has been published in 3 different language : English, Spanish and French which is uncommon for a book on VMware.

The book provides an understandable and global view of vSphere 5, with a ton of information and advice from real world examples. It describes the necessary design choices in a way which is accessible to most readers, not only to a select group of experts.

The book has a nice buildup, the first chapters are devoted to understanding VMware vSphere 5’s functionalities and in the following chapters the links between this technology and the datacenter’s various elements are described such as servers, storage, network, backup and service continuity. In the last chapter, a case study of a migration to a virtualized environment within a large company’s datacenter is discussed, with objectives clearly defined by the corporation’s management.

This book is intended primarily for those in charge of infrastructure projects within information systems like system engineers, VMware and storage administrators, project managers, consultants, architects, sales specialists, evangelists etc.

You can find more information on Amazon.

VKernel, now under the Dell flag, just released version 6.3 of the vOPS Server Explorer freeware suite.Next to the already present tools Environment Explorer, SearchMyVM Explorer, and vScope Explorer  they added two new utilities: Storage Explorer and Change Explorer.

Using the same analytics and advisory engine from the paid vOPS Server Standard product, all five of these utilities provide virtual administrators with a rapid assessment of the state of their environment, for free!

So what is Storage Explorer?

Storage Explorer assesses storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs that helps VM admins to get better visibility of their storage environment.

It has the following features:

• Identify critical datastore issues such as overcommitment, low capacity, high latency, VMFS version mismatch.
  Storage Explorer collects inventory and performance data from datastores and apply rules based on best practices to highlight if any critical conditions are found. Such examples includes overcommitment, low capacity and high latency. Other useful information includes VMFS version, storage path policy and number of VMs.
• Identify critical VM issues such as low available disk space, high latency and throughput
  Storage Explorer collects inventory and performance data from VMs and apply rules based on best practices to highlight if any critical conditions are found. Examples includes low available disk space, high latency and throughput.

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