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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Back by popular demand, the Enterprise Hypervisor feature comparison.
After the release of our latest comparison I’ve received a lot of requests to include RedHat’s RHEV to the comparison. Although I’ve never encountered it in enterprise environments, I decided to add it as a service to our readers.
I based the RedHat features on their 3.1 version which is in beta right now. This is because I’ve limited knowledge of the product and I received an updated comparison from one of our readers based on this version.
I hope you find the new Enterprise Hypervisor comparison useful and feel free to contact us when you have feedback for us to improve the list.
Last week Nimble Storage announced a new reference architecture with Cisco Systems and VMware for 1.000 simultaneous VDI users, requiring only 3U of rack space, for $43 for storage per desktop. A pre-configured, fully-integrated system – built around the reference architecture, which consists of a Nimble CS220G-X2 array, Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) B-Series Blade server platform, and VMware View 5.1 – enables customers to rapidly provision VDI, realize significant savings over deployment of physical desktops, and achieve high levels of security and central manageability.
Highlights
Fully validated and tested Nimble Storage, Cisco and VMware reference architecture that eliminates the complexities of configuring compute, networking and storage;
Nimble Storage conducted load stress tests, including tests for boot storms and software patches, that optimize the system configuration;
Optimized desktop storage density: $43 per desktop for 1,000 users in 3U of rack space;
The architecture was tested with a moderate profile steady-state workload;
Modular product architecture provides easy scalability and support.
Architecture
Cisco UCS B-Series Blade server platform including six UCS B230 M2 blades, each with dual-socketed 10-core Intel CPU and 256GB RAM;
Dual, redundant 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections between the Nimble Storage array and Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect;
Windows 7 Enterprise virtual desktops with 1.5GB vRAM and one vCPU per desktop;
One Nimble Storage CS220G-X2 array with twelve 1TB hard disk drives and four 160GB flash SSDs;
Licensing Oracle servers in a virtualized environment has always been a difficult issue. Edwin wrote an extensive article on that in the past. At VMworld 2012 in San Francisco an Oracle employee made some statements regarding Oracle licensing on VMworldTV but they were forced to withdraw the video. This is how difficult and complex it can be.
So VMworldTV got a lot of questions on that topic so Eric Sloof interviews a lawyer and a licensing consultant to try to answer this question. A must see if you are virtualizing Oracle workloads.
As we heard in the keynote this morning you can now manage multiple hypervisors with VMware vCenter.
Eric Sloof visited the VMware booth and got a demo.
Is it hard for you to locate the latest VMware documentation? Wouldn’t it be great to have the VMware documentation with you on your mobile device?
Now you can! VMware just published a cool application which just does this all, the VMware Mobile Knowledge Portal. You can now watch videos and read collateral on how to install and use VMware products, stay up to date on what’s new at VMware, and explore best practices for our products and solutions. At home. In the office. On the go. Offline or online.
Today at the keynote at VMworld 2012 in Barcelona VMware announced the expansion of their cloud management software suite and the brand new vCloud Suite with some new updates. VMware also adds a product to the series called VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, and updates it’s VMware IT Business Management Suite which further simplifies and automates the management of the software defined datacenter. VMware also expands the possibilities of VMware vCenter server which enables companies to deliver and manage services from multiple, heterogeneous clouds.
To manage hybrid and heterogeneous cloud solutions, VMware focuses on three important areas:
Cloud Service Provisioning – Automating the allocation and control of the infrastructure, applications and desktops as a service;
Cloud Operations Management – Monitor and analyse the behavior of the cloud infrastructure to guarantee the performance compliance and efficiency;
Cloud Business Management – Control and manage cloud services as a crucial element of the business running IT.
The VMware vCloud Suite gets improved Service Provisioning and Operations Management which connects all the components that customers need to build, operate and manage their cloud infrastructure.
The most important changes to the VMware vCloud Suite are:
The first day of VMworld Europe was, as always, reserved for partners. During this day a lot of partner specific sessions are presented. In the session “How to deliver Services Powered by VMware vCloud (PAR1519)” by Bart Schneider (VSSP manager VMware EMEA).
Some statistics: there are vCloud Powered datacenters in 29 countries and 196 cities. There are more than 150 vClouds with a growth of 169%
In the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Services four of the five built their cloud proposition on VMware vCloud. The only exception is Amazon. According to Gartner there are only two worthy cloud ecosystems growing in the world right now: Amazon and VMware. We’ll see if VMware is satisfied with a second place.
Today was the first day of VMworld 2012 in Barcelona, Partner Day.
After a few lab sessions I attended breakout session PAR2172 – Built to last: Why VMware vCloud should be the corner stone of your (customer’s) Private Cloud by David James. The main question was : ‘What do you want to build your infrastructure on?‘.
If you want a reliable house/infrastructure, you want a solid foundation, the structure on top of the cornerstone/foundation determines the stability of the whole structure. These days many organizations undergo a business transformation through an IT transformation. The ultimate goal they are aiming for is a strong and reliable infrastructure that minizes risks, vulnerabilities and susceptibility.
Tale of two different approaches The first approach is a reliable one, based on trust and a proven track record. The second approach is the one based on announcements 12 months in advance with a refresh-cycle of 2-3 months where the final feature set and delivery date is uncertain. It should be no surprise that the first one is the VMware approach and the second one is Microsoft. Recent example: on September 4th Microsoft released Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V but to manage this you will need Microsoft SCCM 2012 SP1 which is not available yet. Rumor has it that this will be released in Q1 2013, which leaves a 4-7 month timespan in which you cannot manage your Windows Server 2012 SP1.
Nowadays Cloud Computing is the new buzz word. Numerous companies are now offering various new Cloud Computing products. Literature is buzzing and the Internet and blogosphere is exploding from Cloud-fever. For customers this is a very confusing time because what’s cloud, what’s not and how do I use it in my organization?
What is Cloud Computing?
What are the advantages?
Which solutions are available now?
How can my organization use Cloud Computing?
How about cloud-privacy, security, compliancy?
All very justified questions! During the next three weeks VMware Netherlands is organizing the ‘VMware Cloud Computing Roadshow‘ where they will answer the above questions. Not only will you be informed about VMware’s Cloud solutions but they will also show you that the largest third party cloud solutions run on VMware software.
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‘.
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?
hortly 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.
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.
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.
Back by popular demand, the Enterprise Hypervisor feature comparison.
