Recent Articles
#VMworldFun: The VMware ESXi Quiz Show
I want to share a little video shot at the ESXi Quiz Show. @JTroyer is a great quizmaster, and the teams really made an effort to make the quiz show the funniest breakout session at #VMworld.
VMworld 2011 keynote: Engineering the Future with @herrod
Aug 30, 2011 Blogs Leave a comment
I’m liveblogging from the Tuesday technical keynote. Steve Herrod is explaining the VMware product portfolio. He’s concentrating on data and applications instead of devices, VM’s and other technical stuff on the back-end. With the slogan ‘simplify, manage, connect’, he’s now focssing on the second phase in VMware’s strategy: desktop. He breaks it down into services; desktop, app, data services with a unified service broker to connect users from any device.
With the help of View, desktops are broken down and simplified. With ThinApp, the apps are extracted and published. With ThinApp Factory, the process of extracting apps from Windows is automated, so publishing the apps in a catalog is hugely simplified. ThinApp Factory and Horizon are integrated for a full blown user experience.
Project Octopus is a Dropbox-like data service. It’s an enterprise oriented cloud file sharing service with features like policies, public/private cloud integration and more.
There’s a demo showing about the user’s perspective of using View, ThinApp, Horizon and Octopus. It’s showing a user’s first experience, including the Mobile Virtualization Platform. It’s ver cool that MVP is included in the keynote for the first time, it’s been lingering for years… The ‘work’ phone VM is called ‘the magical phone’. That’s just how many users might experience this MVP feature..
With the help of Horizon Mobile, the apps that were installed on the desktop are pushed to the mobile work phone. With partnerships with both LG and Samsung, the MVP will really take off in the upcoming months. I cannot wait to get my hands on this!
Now Octopus is showcased on the iPad. For the first time, VMware AppBlast is showed to the public. How sweet! Very subtle, VMware is showing AutoCad from within a View desktop.
Now shifting to the back-end infrastructure supporting all of this awesomeness, with a little siderack to the vSphere Cient for the iPad, now with vMotion support. Literally just swipe a VM to the destination host 
After highlighting a couple of ‘firsts’ accomplished by vSphere 5′ Steve is talking about accessible innovation with VMware Go, the vSphere Storage Appliance. Bruce is doing a demo on these two products. First, a Windows host is provisioned with ESXi with the help of VMware Go. Both products are targeted towards the smaller shops. For the larger shops, there’s AutoDeploy to provision a group of hosts with ESXi in a repeatable, compliant manner.
Now shifting to some of the features of vSphere: storage pooling, VM placing on storage pools and tiers, storage DRS, storage and networking I/O Control. Next up of IP Adress Management, and specifically the problem with IP-addresses: besides being a unique identifier, it’s bound to a location. With VXLAN, VM IP-addresses can roam amongst different physical locations. Basically, it’s MAC over IP over UDP. With VXLAN, one of the biggest challenges with Site Recovery Manager has been resolved. How cool!
Last subject for this technical sessions is management, subdivided in three sections: monitor, correlate, remediate. In a sneak peak, VMware is disclosing it’s strategy on their manaement solutions. With vServices, applications inside VM’s are discovered automatically ang agentless and shown in the vSphere client. Also, dependencies between apps and VM’s are disovered and monitored.
VMware vCloud Services expands with Global Connect
Aug 29, 2011 Blogs Leave a comment
VMware has announced new and improved offerings in their vCloud initiatives.
VMware vCloud Global Connect
Global Connect offers a global network of VMware vCloud Datacenters consisting of vCloud Datacenter certified VSPP Service Providers. Basically, different providers set up a business agreement / partnership to deliver a standardized global cloud service. All of the vCloud Datacenter program members have standardized on a strict base architecture and SLA to ensure global compatibility. With a single contract, a customer is able to migrate his workload to a different provider. The contracted provider is responsible for the SLA, regardless of the provider actually hosting the workload.
VMware vCloud Portal
vcloud.vmware.com is a gateway to various providers. In this portal, you can find a suitable (be it local or providing the right SLA) vCloud Provider using a map (and dig up detailed information about the provider) and test drive their offering. Initially, VirtaCore Systems, Colt, iland Cloud Infrastructure, Colt and BlueLock will be available from within this portal.
The vCloud is expanding
The vCloud Datacenter is expanding: Colt is expanding massively in Europe and Dell joins the vCloud Datacenter program. The number of vCloud Powered providers has risen to over 40. In total, there are 5600+ partners in the Service Provider program.
vCloud Connector
The vCloud Connector is a piece of software interconnecting different vCloud Providers. With the Connector, you can view, copy and deploy VMs and Templates across your own vSphere environment and the private and public vClouds out there. You can also do some basic interaction with your VMs. At this point, you can perform power operations, access the console and launch the vCloud Director GUI for the more advanced stuff.
The new version of vCloud Connector, 1.5, has had a big overhaul. Transfers now use parallel TCP/IP connections for faster transfers, checkpoints (or resume points) for added reliability and can be point-to-point to avoid staging issues. Also, the architecture has been changed to an agent based (and/or virtual appliance) type situation.
The GUI hasn’t seen much change, although there are multiple points of access now: vSphere Client, Web Access and integration with the vCloud Portal. Because of this integration, you can now transfer your VM’s from vCloud to vCloud from within the portal. Migration, however, is still ‘cold’: your workload will suffer some downtime. Migration between different providers will probably be charged, although there’s no standardization of cost because there’s no standard way the vCloud interconnect.
Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter (Pt. 3)
Aug 25, 2011 Blogs Leave a comment
After a couple of weeks of well-spent time sailing and tinkering about the house (otherwise known as a holiday), I’m preparing for VMworld and finishing up some posts. I promised you the final part in the three-part series on the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter.
In this post I’ll show you how to get a new server into DMPVV’s line of sight and use the Deployment Wizard to configure the host.
Deployment Wizard
The Deployment Wizard gathers the necessary information (server list, Deployment Template, host name/networking information, and Connection Profiles) to build a scheduled job that provisions server hardware and deploys new hosts into a vCenter. Unfortunately, deployment of ESXi to an SD-card or USB-media is not yet supported. I do believe Dell is considering this feature for an upcoming release. Before initiating a deployment task, ensure the system has completed CSIOR and is not in the process of rebooting.
The wizard itself isn’t difficult to work with; getting a new host to play nice with the DMPVV, however, is a bit trickier:
Read More..
Configuring the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module
Jul 25, 2011 Blogs 4 Comments
The EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere is a Path Selection Plugin (PSP) in the VMware Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). It also includes a connection manager (EHCM) to manage iSCSI sessions to the EqualLogic array.
The EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module for VMware® vSphere enhances the native multipathing capabilities of VMware vSphere 4.1 when used with an EqualLogic PS Series SAN.
- Automatic connection management
- Automatic load balancing across multiple active paths
- Increased bandwidth
- Reduced network latency
So, it provides a more knowledgable way (because it communicates with the array and knows about the tiered volumes) to do load balancing, which improves I/O performance. This means that (by using the EHCM in a CIM provider), the PSP routes I/O to the most optimal path.
Read More..
Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter (Pt. 2)
In part two of this three-part series, I’m going to dive deeper into the main components of the DMPVV, which are the various profiles and templates. Also, I’m going to show you an example on how to manage an individual server by updating the firmware.
Off-host back-ups with EqualLogic
Jul 6, 2011 Blogs Leave a comment
A while back, I investigated how to optimize backups in an EqualLogic storage environment. I wanted to make use of all the (EqualLogic) features available to me.
I created a list of ‘must haves’ for this design:
- Zero-cost, zero-impact on production environment while creating backups
- Maintain data consistency and integrity
- Be able to replicate backups to a secondary location (prevent using tapes as a off-site backup and archival tool)
- Separation of back-up creation and processing: production environment should have a very short back-up time frame, all the processing and logic happens ‘behind the curtains’
- Keep the backup server ‘light’ by using the SAN as a backup-to-disk target.
Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter (Pt. 1)
In this three-part series I’m going to dive into the Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter. In the last couple of months, I have used the Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter (DMPVV) in a PoC/pilot environment. I wanted to share my experiences with you.
Today, we’re starting with an introduction to the tool and how to install/configure the appliance. Along the way, I will show how I use this tool to manage my physical environment.
Introduction
First off, what is the DMPVV?
The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is designed to streamline the management processes in your datacenter environment by allowing you to use VMware vCenter to manage your entire infrastructure- both physical and virtual. From firmware updates to bare metal deployment, the Dell Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter will expand and enrich your datacenter management experience with Dell PowerEdge servers.
So, this tool provides a way to monitor, manage and provision physical servers from within vCenter, integrating it not only by using the same interface (the vSphere Client), but also extracting information from vCenter and correlating it with information from the iDRAC and Lifecycle controllers. Because of this integration, you can update a new host with current BIOS and other firmware versions, configure hardware components (like the BIOS and iDRAC) and install a hypervisor. Last but not least, you can clone configuration from one server to another (using, among other technologies, VMware’s Host Profiles). Once installed and configured, you can get an overview from each server, displaying stuff like asset and warranty information, health status and much more.
One of the coolest features I want to highlight is the PXE-less provisioning of the hypervisor to a physical server. This uses a combination of the Lifecycle Controller and iDRAC to deploy an installation ISO to the server. And since it is really tightly integrated with the VMware stack, the host is added to vCenter and configured using Host Profiles automatically, resulting in a true zero-touch deployment of a server. How cool!
Recently, Dell released version 1.0.1.72, which includes a trial version. See what’s new here, or discuss about the DMPVV here. Real release notes are found in the documentation section. Any questions might be answered in the FAQ.
Odd numbers matter (or how I got vExpert 2011)
Jul 3, 2011 Blogs 2 Comments
I just received an e-mail from VMware informing me I made vExpert 2011! This is a great surprise, as I did not expect to make the cut this year. Having missed the boat in 2010, I feel esspecially honoured this year. I would like to thank my fellow bloggers, VMware employees and the VMware community at large for giving me the opportunity to share and contribute.
Of course, special thanks go out to John Troyer and his social media team for recognizing my effort this year.
StarWind goes freestyle
May 17, 2011 Blogs Leave a comment
Back in the day, I used StarWind iSCSI Target a lot in as an instructor in training sessions. I let students configure a simple iSCSI Target to get some storage up-and-running for them to attach to the vSphere cluster they were building, so they could do all the funky VMware-stuff, like vMotion, HA and DRS. StarWind was an ideal solution, because, well, it was free and Windows-based. The effort it took to get the product in working order was minimal enough not to distract the students from focussing on what’s important.
So I was bummed out to see the free version of StarWind disappear. With an equally strong positive reaction, I noticed that the free version has somehow made it back into the wild. As of May 16th, StarWind Free iSCSI SAN has been made available again. It still installs on top of Windows, provides full snapshot and backup capabilities, it even does some dedup and caching magic. Best of all, no license is restricting you from using all this in a production environment.
Download it right here.
