What I’ve learned from BC2961, “VMware Fault Tolerance Architecture and Performance”
Sep 21, 2009 Blogs
I’m going through the immense archive of sessions from VMworld ’09, and am amazed by session BC2961 about VMware Fault Tolerance. There are a couple of things about FT that I did not know before.
Krishna Raj Raja, a Senior MTS at the Performance Group of VMware explains what FT is, what it does and how it works in layman’s terms, so that even I can understand it:
VMworld ’09 – Long Distance VMotion (TA3105)
Sep 3, 2009 Blogs
I’ve attended the breakout session about long distance VMotion, TA3105. This sessions presented results from a Long Distance VMotion Joint Validation research project done by VMware, EMC and Cisco in the form of Shudong Zhou, Staff Engineer for VMware, Balaji Sivasubramanian, Product Marketing Manager for Cisco and Chad Sakac, VP of VMware Technology Alliance for EMC.
What’s the use case?
With Paul Maritz mentioning the vCloud a lot, I can see where WMotion can make itself useful. When migration to or from any internal or external cloud, there’s a good chance you’d want to do so without downtime, i.e. with all your virtual machines in the cloud running.
VMworld ’09 Wednesday Keynote
Sep 2, 2009 Blogs
After a wake-up call that got to me way too early, I was ready-and-waiting for the keynote on the second day. With a funny Blue Man Group-like intro, they got my attention, and I woke up somewhat.
Stephen Herrod took the stage for a hopefully more technical talk. He’s talking about View, RTO Virtual Profiles in combination with ThinApp. Nothing new, but it gave me enough time to fire up The Flip for his next demo. He went on about PCoIP over the WAN, and how it will continue to rock our world. Wait, what? Maybe VMware should do an actual demo of the product first, before including it in the bullshitmarketingbingo. No wait, they’re “Shipping this Year!!!!”… Right. Steve went into ByoPC again, he explained to us why we need two identities on one laptop. He did show an Intel laptop loaded only with a small type 1 client hypervisor, so without a general purpose OS. The VMware View client was preloaded. But wait, there actually was a demo! They showed PCoIP over the WAN, LAN and through a mobile device.
Like they showed us in Cannes at VMworld Europe ’09, they did a little demo of the Mobile Virtualization Platform, showing Windows CE and Android running at the same time. Coupling MVP with management, telling us to manage the phone as a thin client, and manage your datacenter from that thin client. This hooks into the vMA nicely.
In the VMworld ’09 datacenter, 776 servers power all VMworld’s needs for labs. They’re running all labs as virtual ESX servers on those 776 servers. As we all know, this is no new functionality, but it is good to hear about it from VMware. I’d like to see them doing VMotion of vESX machines while VMotioning a nested VM. And see all 30K+ VM’s VMotion at once. That’s sure to stress the heck out of the equipment!
Steve’s introducing VMware’s interest in long distance VMotion to enable greater flexibility, for ‘follow the sun/moon’ scenario’s (keep VM’s close to employees or keep VM’s in cheap power areas) and better Disaster Recovery. Some examples (by Cisco and F5) of current long distance VMotions were given, but none were actually doing any long distance or were of any importance.
As many talked about yesterday, the acquisition of SpringSource is enabling VMware to extent the use of vApps. With vApps, application frameworks simplify the different layers within a set of VM’s. The OS, middleware and framework are being pulled apart and made available, where the frameworks can communicate with the lower layer (i.e. the framework inside the VM can talk to the vSphere environment). So what else is new?
VMworld ’09 Live Streaming Communities TV by John Troyer
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
At VMworld ’09, John Troyer is keeping the flow of information, activities and other stuff for and by the community coming. He’s streaming live TV from the Solutions Exchange, at the Communities Lounge. Come by the booth to check it out, and maybe John will invite you for an interview!
Check out the live feed here:
Check out an interview John did with Sven Huisman, Jase McCarty, Johan van Zanten and myself. We talked about day 1, vCloud APIs, VMware View and VMware Go.
VMworld ’09 Tuesday Keynote
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
Straight from the keynote, I’m videotaping and taking notes. I’ll update this post over the upcoming hours with new information. First, I’ll let you enjoy a small video impression of the keynote:
An interesting fact whooshed by without any mention on stage, but Gabrie noticed it: the IBM power management demo on stage was using VMware ESX 4.1. As the download section of VMware.com is down (as is the patch section), I have a hunch that ESX 4.1 will launch anytime soon.
A small demo about VMware vCloud Express was given, which, under the vCloud Initiative, will enable customers to create and manage virtual machines in the (internal or external) cloud with one of the VMware vCloud Partners. Check it out over at http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/
Be sure to check out Viktor’s photos of the event on Flickr:
VMworld ’09 Tweetup
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
There’s no way known to mankind to thank John Troyer enough for his tremendous effort in organizing the VMworld ’09 Tweetup. After meeting at the VMware Communities Lounge at the Solutions Exchange, we headed over to B Restaurant on top of the Moscone centre.
It was loads of fun meeting all of my co-bloggers, enjoying a free beer and seeing John make announcements:
VMworld ’09 Partner Day
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
I’ve been hanging out at VMworld ’09 a bit today, and have attended some of the Partner Day sessions.
Surely, I needed to get some footage of the registration hall and datacenter below:
See below for a video impression of Paul Maritz’ presentation during the Partner Track General Session:
VMworld 2009 Sunday Night Extravaganza Aftermath
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
I’d like to thank Theron Conrey, Michael Keen, Sean Clark and John Avery for hosting a great party at the Thirsty Bear last night. I think their party overwhelmed everybody, because there were way more people than originally anticipated, which made the effort harder, but more rewarding! Check out the sponsors for this event, too:
I’ve stirred up a small impression of the evening:
Scott Lowe had brought his new book, ‘Mastering VMware vSphere 4‘. As a surprise, his VMwife, Crystal, had brought him a little something to celebrate:
Oh, and by the way:
Check out some photos from last night at Latoga.
I passed the VCP4 exam!
Sep 1, 2009 Blogs
Last July, I took part in the VMware VCP411 beta exam. I answered all 270 questions, and needed to wait, and wait, and wait until today to get the final judgement. I received an e-mail from the VMware Certification Team that I passed the VCP411 exam!
I’m shamelessly stealing Rick‘s photo of the swag that a VCP4 Certified VMworld attendee receives:
Here’s my official button as well:
