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

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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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 ‘bit’ of history

Some of you might know me as a dedicated MS Exchange junkie. Ever since Microsoft launched version 5.0 of Exchange, I’ve been working with it and I must admit I never found a collaboration suite quite like it. I’ve had numerous discussions with Lotus Notes or Novell  Groupwise folks but they never conviced me (believe me, I tried all suites hands-on). And yes, I am aware of all the problems Exchange had in the past, including being a spamrelaying nuisance, a memory hog, a disk killer and so on (most errors were caused by faulty configurations, btw).

About 8 years ago some folks in, I think it was Germany, started a project with opensource software to create an Exchange equivalent with nothing but opensource software. Actually, it is pretty logical. If you strip down everything around Exchange, you are left with a (pretty ancient) database system (Jet), a webserver (IIS) and an SMTP engine. So, why can this not be done with MySQL, Apache and Sendmail or Postfix? It should be possible.

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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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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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Since Microsoft introduced Windows 2008 back in 2007, there is the opportunity to install a Core Server. It was the first time Microsoft introduced a lean-and-mean server, where a lot of the Linux and Unix admins always complained that the GUI on a server eats so many resources where nobody ever really uses it.

Core server installations have a big advantage above the full installation of windows: it uses up less resources on your (virtual) infrastructure. (more…)

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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At a client site we came upon a problem with Windows 2003 VM’s. They would get low network performance when we moved them to a newly formed ESX cluster consisting of HP 460c G6 blades. In some cases logging on to the server with a remote session took about 20 minutes.

As I mentioned this only occurred when we moved a VM to the new cluster, but also VM’s that where newly installed would get the same problem when running on the new cluster. As we are using Altiris to install and configure new VM’s a colleague decided to install a new VM by going through the steps manually which normally would be done by Altiris and found out that after the activation of a security template the performance dropped significantly.

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Hello Folks!

Today Erik celebrates his 36th birthday. We’re happy to have his party today and we all wish him many happy returns!

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!

This month Dell released their  firmware for EqualLogic iSCSI SANs.

A couple of things that caught my attention:

• vStorage API support. Things like snapshot, storage vmotion etc are now handled by the array, instead of the ESX host
• you can create seperate volume administrators. No more need to create group admins if you only need to create volumes
• 2TB disk support for the 4000 en 6000 series. The 6500 series already had support for 2TB disks
• You can mix 5500/6500 in a pool. This is still not recommended

Features like this makes it even a better storage system than it already was in my opinion.

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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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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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.

[Updated 12-06-2010]

Not all VMware products return their version number nicely. They often come in a long build number. Edwin has done a nice job collecting various build numbers of the VMware products. Now it is possible to view these build numbers online.

Check out the Build numbers page.

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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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Today, Gartner published the first-ever Magic Quadrant for the x86 Server Virtualization market, naming VMware as the only vendor in the leadership quadrant, with a sizeable advantage over all competitors. Simply put, from the most trusted voice in the IT market, VMware is the only market leader.

According to this VMware is “clearly ahead in”:

• understanding the market
• product strategy
• business model
• technology innovation, product capabilities
• sales execution (more…)