User-configurable Number of Virtual CPUs per Virtual Socket: You can configure virtual machines to have multiple virtual CPUs reside in a single virtual socket, with each virtual CPU appearing to the guest operating system as a single core. Previously, virtual machines were restricted to having only one virtual CPU per virtual socket. See the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.

VMware multicore virtual CPU support lets you control the number of cores per virtual CPU in a virtual machine. This capability lets operating systems with socket restrictions use more of the host CPU’s cores, which increases overall performance.

Using multicore virtual CPUs can be useful when you run operating systems or applications that can take advantage of only a limited number of CPU sockets. Previously, each virtual CPU was, by default, assigned to a single-core socket, so that the virtual machine would have as many sockets as virtual CPUs.

You can configure how the virtual CPUs are assigned in terms of sockets and cores. For example, you can configure a virtual machine with four virtual CPUs in the following ways:

• Four sockets with one core per socket (legacy, this is how we’ve always done it prior to vSphere 4.1)
• Two sockets with two cores per socket (new in vSphere 4.1)
• One socket with four cores per socket (new in vSphere 4.1)

VMware defines a CPU as:

The portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program and is the primary element carrying out the computer’s functions.

VMware defines a Core as:

A logical execution unit containing an L1 cache and functional units needed to execute programs. Cores can independently execute programs or threads.

VMware defines a Socket as:

A physical connector on a computer motherboard that accepts a single physical chip. Many motherboards can have multiple sockets that can in turn accept multicore chips.

One of the benefits of multicore which physical computing had was increased density of the hardware.  VMs do not share this advantage as they are virtual to begin with and have no rack footprint to speak of.

VMware’s benefit statement for this feature is a legitimate one and is the primary use case.  It’s the same benefit which applied when multicore (as well as hyperthreading to some extent) technology was introduced to physical servers.  What VMware doesn’t advertise is that the limitation being discussed usually revolves around software licensing - a per-socket license model to be precise which is what many software vendors still use.  For example, if I own a piece of software and I have a single socket license, traditionally I was only able to use this software inside of a single vCPU VM.  With Multicore Virtual CPUs, Virtual Machines have now caught up with their physcial hardware counterparts in that a single socket VM can be created which has 4 cores per socket.  Using the working example, the advantage I have now is that I can run my application inside a VM which still has 1 socket, but 4 cores for a net result of 4 vCPUs instead of just 1 vCPU.  I didn’t have to pay my software vendor additional money for the added CPU power.  To show how this translates into dollars and cents, let’s assume a per socket license cost of my application to be $1,000 and then extrapolate those numbers using VMware’s example above of how CPUs can be assigned in terms of sockets and cores:

Now, all of this said, the responsibility is on the end user to be in license compliance with his or her software vendors.  Just becasue you can do this doens’t mean you’re legally obliged to do so.  Be sure to read your EULA and check with your software vendor or reseller before implementing VMware Multicore Virtual CPUs.

Implementation of Multicore Virtual CPUs was quite straightfoward in VMware Workstation.  Upon creating a new VM or editing an existing VM’s settings, the following interface was presented for configuring vCPUs and cores per vCPU in VMware Workstation.  In this example, a 2xDC (Dual Core) configuration is being applied which results in a total of 4 CPU cores which will serve the VM’s operating system, applications, and users. Note that here, the term “processors” on the first line translates to “sockets”:

Making the same 2xDC CPU configuration in vSphere 4.1 isn’t difficult but nonetheless it is done differently.  Configuring total vCPUs and cores per vCPU is achieved by applying configurations in two different areas of the VM configuration. The combination of the two configurations produces a mathematical calculation which ultimately determines cores per vCPU.

First of all, the total number of cores (processors) is selected in the VM’s CPU configuration.  This hasn’t changed and should be familiar to you.  The number of cores (processors) available for selection here is going to be 1 thru 4 or 1 thru 8 if you have Enterprise Plus licensing.  I’ve purposely included the notation of the VM hardware version 7 which is required. An inconsistency here compared to VMware Workstation is that the term “virtual processors” translates to “cores”, not “sockets”:

Configuring the number of cores per processor is where VMware has deviated from the VMware Workstation implementation.  In ESX and ESXi, this configuration is made as an advanced setting in the .vmx file.  Edit the VM settings, navigate to the Options tab, choose General in the Advanced options list. Click the Configuration Parameters button which allows you to edit the .vmx file on a row by row basis.  Click the Add Row button and add the line item cpuid.coresPerSocket. For the value, your going to supply the number of cores per processor which is generally going to be a value of 2, 4, or 8 (Enterprise Plus licensing required).  Note, using a value of 1 here would serve no practical purpose because it would configure a single core vCPU which is what we’ve had all along up until this point:

As a supplement, here are the requirements for implementing Multicore Virtual CPUs:

• VMware vSphere 4.1 (vCenter 4.1, ESX 4.1 or ESXi 4.1).
• Virtual Machine hardware version 7 is required.
• The VM must be powered off to configure Multicore Virtual CPUs.
• The total number of vCPUs for the VM divided by the number of cores per socket must be a positive integer.
• The cpuid.coresPerSocket value must be a power of 2. The documentation explicitely states a value of 2, 4, or 8 is required, but 1 works as well although as stated before it would serve no practical purpose.
  • 2^0=1 (anything to the power of 0 always equals 1)
  • 2^1=2 (anything to the power of 1 always equals itself)
  • 2^2=4
  • 2^4=8
• When you configure multicore virtual CPUs for a virtual machine, CPU hot Add/Remove is disabled (previously called CPU hot plug).
• You must be in compliance with the requirements of the operating system EULA.

This feature rocks and I think customers have been waiting a long time for it.  Duncan mentioned it quite some time ago but obvioulsy it was unsupported at that time.  I am a little puzzled by the implementation mechanisms, mainly the configuration of the .vmx to specify cores per CPU.  I suppose it lends itself to scriptability and thus automation, but in that sense, we lack the flexibility to configure cores per CPU with guest customization when deploying VMs from a template.  Essentially this means cores per CPU needs to be hard coded in each of my templates or cores per CPU needs to be manually tuned after deploying each VM from a template.  When I take a step back, I guess that’s no different than any other virtual hardware configuration stored in templates, but with the cores per CPU setting being buried in the .vmx as an advanced setting, it’s that much more of a manal/administrative burden to configure cores per CPU for each VM deployed than it is to simply change the number of CPUs or amount of RAM.  It would be nice if the guest customization process offered a quick way to configure cores per processor.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

vSphere 4.1: Multicore Virtual CPUs

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• October 23, 2009 -- TrainSignal vSphere Training DVD 1 Completed
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• April 20, 2009 -- A random collection of what’s new vSphere eye candy

Ping statistics for w.x.y.z:
Packets: Sent = 8650, Received = 8573, Lost = 77 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 107ms, Maximum = 3220ms, Average = 205ms

I was easily able to upgrade a vCenter Server and build an ESXi host to vSphere 4.1, as well as process a bunch of email I had fallen behind on.  The cost was $9.95 and given my satisfaction of the service and what I was able to accomplish, it was well worth the price.  I wish more flights offered this service.

Two Thumbs Up!

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

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Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

GoGo Inflight Internet

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• July 25, 2010 -- vSphere 4.1: Multicore Virtual CPUs
• June 24, 2010 -- vSphere Cluster Showing Noncompliant on the Profile Compliance Tab
• May 27, 2010 -- vSphere Upgrade Prerequisites Checklist
• May 21, 2010 -- Happy Birthday vSphere!
• April 7, 2010 -- No Failback Bug in ESX(i)
• March 28, 2010 -- Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on vSphere
• March 13, 2010 -- vpxd.cfg Advanced Configuration
• March 12, 2010 -- Perf Charts Service Experienced An Internal Error
• February 12, 2010 -- VMkernel Networks, Jumbo Frames, and ESXi 4
• February 10, 2010 -- Train Signal Releases vSphere Pro Vol 1

Direct link to the letter (MS Word format)

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

VMworld 2010: An ROI Message for Your Manager

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• April 19, 2010 -- Two Quick Announcements
• March 22, 2010 -- Meet the VMware Certified Design Experts
• February 27, 2010 -- Thank You
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Gestalt IT Tech Field Day 2 begins with Compellent, a storage vendor out of Eden Prairie, MN.  Compellent has been around for about eight years and, like other well known multiprotocol SAN vendors, offers spindles of FC, SATA, SAS, and SSD via FC block, iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS.

Compellent’s hardware approach is a modular one.  Many of the components, such as drives and interfaces (Ethernet, FC, etc.), are easily replacable and hot swappable, eliminating the need to “rip and replace” the entire frame of hardware and providing the ability to upgrade components without taking down the array.

In April of 2010, Compellent introduced the new zNAS solution:

Compellent introduces the new zNAS solution, which consolidates file and block storage on a single, intelligent platform. The latest unified storage offering from Compellent integrates next-generation ZFS software, high-performance hardware and Fluid Data architecture to actively manage and move data in a virtual pool of storage, regardless of the size and type of block, file or drive. Enterprises can simplify management, intelligently scale capacity, improve performance for critical applications and reduce complexity and costs.

Fluid Data Storage is Compellent’s granular approach to data management

• Virtualization
• Intelligence
• Automation
• Utilization

Volume Creation

• Thin provisioning (by default), thin write & space reclamation
• Automated tiered storage & fast track

Volume Recovery

• Snapshots (Replay)
• Boot from SAN
• Thin replication
• Live volume

Volume Management

• Enterprise Management

Integration 

• VMware
  • Leveraging many of the features mentioned above
  • HCL compatibility although I don’t see ESXi in the list which would be a major concern for VMware customers given that ESX is being phased out.  Compellent responded they believe their arrays are compatible with ESXi and will look into updating their VMware support page if that is the case.  VMware’s HCL also shows Compellent storage is not currently certified for ESXi. Significant correction to the earlier statement: VMware’s HCL for storage is inconsistently different than it’s HCL for host hardware in that the host hardware HCL lists explicit compatiblity for both ESX and ESXi, whereas the storage HCL explicitly lists ESX compatibility which implies equivilent ESXi compatibility. Compellent arrays, as of this writing, are both ESX4 and ESXi4 compatible.
• Microsoft
  • PowerShell (for automation and consistency of storage management)
  • Hyper-V

Compellent performed a live demo of their Replay (Snapshot) feature with a LUN presented to a Windows host.  It worked slick and as expected. Compellent’s Windows based storage management UI has a fresh, no-nonsense, 21st century feel to it which I can appreciate.

We closed discussion answering the question “Why Compellent?”  Top Reasons:

1. Efficiency
2. Long term ROI, cost savings through the upgrade model
3. Ease of use

Follow them on Twitter at @Compellent.

Thank you Compellent for the presentation and I’m sure I’ll see you back in Minnesota!

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Compellent

Related Posts

• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Seattle
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• December 3, 2008 -- LAN party!
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• October 19, 2008 -- The Lab – Then and Now

We’re on to our 3rd and final presentation here at Gestalt IT Tech Field Day.  After a short road trip into beautiful downtown Seattle, we’ve arrived at F5.  At 1,800 employees strong, F5 was named one of the best places to work in the Seattle area.  From a high level, F5′s business goal is to optimize the end user experience.

Today, F5 showed us simulated long distance vMotion.  F5 enables this with mid-range BIG-IP appliances stretching a Layer 2 network between two geographically disbursed datacenters along with providing WAN Optimization to access IP based storage between datacenters.  In addition, the hardware appliances expose APIs which VMware Orchestrator uses to assist the F5 into directing traffic between sites.  F5 has tested at up to 300ms round trip latency and a 10Mbps link.  This is what it looks like:

Another thing I learned today is that just a few months ago, in March 2010, F5 released the BIG-IP LTM VE.  This is a virtual appliance that falls in the BIG-F5 family of products.  Today that appliance is supported on only one virtualization platform and it should come as no surprise that the hypervisor of choice is VMware.

BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM) Virtual Edition (VE) takes your Application Delivery Network virtual. You get the agility you need to create a mobile, scalable, and adaptable infrastructure for virtualized applications. And like physical BIG‑IP devices, BIG-IP LTM VE is a full proxy between users and application servers, providing a layer of abstraction that secures, optimizes, and load balances application traffic.

Speaking of F5 and VMware, Why would you want F5 for VMware vSphere?

•F5 Management Plug-In for VMware vSphere
The F5 Management Plug-in simplifies common BIG-IP LTM administrative tasks in a vSphere environment, reduces the risk of error and enables basic automation.

•Integration with vCenter Server
Respond automatically to changes in the infrastructure with seamless integration between VMware and F5.

•Increased VM density by up to 60 percent
Free up server resources by offloading CPU-intensive operations to achieve maximum utilization and consolidation.

•Long-distance vMotion
Enable fully automated long-distance VMotion and Storage VMotion events between data centers without downtime or user disruption. 

•Acceleration of VMotion and Storage VMotion
Accelerate VMotion events over the WAN up to 10x by compressing, deduplicating, and optimizing traffic.

•Other virtualization considerations with F5
File Virtualization
Infrastructure Virtualization
Server Virtualization

 •F5 and VMware Solution Guide

What about F5 and Cloud Benefits?

•Reduce Complexity
With a reusable framework of services that can be leveraged across static, dedicated servers as well as across multi-site cloud deployments, you immediately gain value that grows as your applications grow.

•Increased Control
By integrating traffic management, dynamic provisioning, access control, and management, you can more readily outsource the processing of applications and data without giving up ownership and control.

•Context Awareness
Having a complete picture of the user, network, application, and services gives you a unique ability to use context to determine how applications and data are delivered.

•Reduced Switching Costs
With a centrally controlled method of delivering applications and data, you can move resources anywhere at a moment’s notice without worrying about the capabilities of host locations.

This was a great session where I think I picked up the most information so far.  F5 is one of those technologies I see a lot in the datacenter but I’ve not worked intimately with.  I like their value-added integration with virtualization and adoption of a cloud vision.

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – F5

Related Posts

• July 16, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Compellent
• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Nimble Storage
• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Veeam
• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Seattle
• June 11, 2010 -- NFS and Name Resolution
• May 27, 2010 -- vSphere Upgrade Prerequisites Checklist
• May 19, 2010 -- Top 10 Free vSphere ESX Tools and Utilities by KendrickColeman.com
• May 15, 2010 -- P2V Milestone
• May 13, 2010 -- NetApp disk replacement – so easy a caveman and his tech savvy neighbor can do it
• May 10, 2010 -- NetApp Deduplication

The secret sauce is in Nimble’s CASL (pronounced “castle” Cache-Accelerated Sequential Layout) Architecture which can be thought of as a reincarnation of VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum’s Log-Structured File System.

• Inline Compression
• Large Adaptive Flash Cache
• High-Capacity Disk Storage
• Integrated Backup

Resulting advantages provided are:

• Inline compression (2:1 – 4:1 ratio)
• High performance
• Low cost SATA disk stores both primary data as well as 90 day snapshot retention
• WAN-efficient offsite replication for cost-effective DR
• Storage and Backup Optimized for VMware/Microsoft environments
• Benefits for Sharepoint, SQL, and Exchange as well

From the Nimble Storage website:

Storing, accessing, and protecting your data shouldn’t be so complicated and expensive. Nimble’s breakthrough CASL™ architecture combines flash memory with high-capacity disk to converge storage, backup, and disaster recovery for the first time. The bottom line: High-performance iSCSI storage, instant backups and restores, and full-featured disaster recovery — all in one cost-effective, easy-to-manage solution.

Benefits for VMware Deployments

•Dramatic VM Consolidation and Cost Reduction
Groundbreaking CASL architecture includes innovations that enable dramatic consolidation of Virtual Servers and desktops. The hybrid flash and low-cost HDD-based architecture deliver very high random performance for demanding workloads at very low cost. Built-in capacity optimization and block sharing capabilities provide large capacity savings for both flash and disk. The net result is a single array that can easily serve the performance and capacity requirements for hundreds of high performance virtual servers, dramatically reducing cost, rackspace, power, and management expense. Further consolidation and cost savings come from the built-in capacity optimized backup capability, which eliminates dedicated disk backup devices, while enabling 90 days of efficient backup.

•Backup and Restore VMs Instantly
Nimble arrays enable instant Hypervisor consistent backup and restore of datastores and VMs, while eliminating backup windows. Nimble Protection Manager integrates with vCenter APIs to simplify management of Hypervisor-consistent backups, replicas and restores for VMware environments by leveraging Nimble’s instant, capacity optimized array-based snapshots. This converged solution enables dramatically better RPOs and RTOs compared with traditional solutions.

•Automated, Fast Offsite Disaster Recovery
WAN-efficient replication and fast failover enable quick, cost effective disaster recovery. Combined with instant backup capabilities, this enables rapid restore and very granular recovery points in the event of a site disaster. The entire failover process can be automated via management tools such as VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) which leverages a Nimble SRA to control the storage level failover capabilities.

•Simplified Virtual Infrastructure Management
Using predefined ESX performance and data protection policies, storage for new datastores can be provisioned and protected in just three steps. The Nimble Protection Manager integrates with vCenter APIs to simplify management of Hypervisor-consistent backups, replicas and restores for VMware environments, by leveraging Nimble’s instant, capacity optimized array based snapshots. A vCenter plugin simplifies and accelerates the task of cloning datastore or VM templates, by leveraging Nimble’s instant, high space efficient zero copy clones.

Two 3U capacity offerings available, both of which are served by an identical configuration of Active/Passive controllers, large flash layer, multicore Intel Xeon processors, and 2x quad GbE NICs (10GbE ready and available soon):

1. CS220: 9TB primary + 108TB backup
2. CS240: 18TB primrary + 216TB backup

Follow them on Twitter at @NimbleStorage.

Introduction to Nimble Storage at Tech Field Day Seattle from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Nimble Storage

Related Posts

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• November 4, 2008 -- SSL integration with VirtualCenter
• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – F5
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Free Products

• Veeam FastSCP
• Veeam Business View
• Veeam Monitor Free Edition
• Veeam Reporter Free Edition (announced today, available within 30 days)

Pay Products

• Veeam Backup & Replication
• Veeam Reporter
• Veeam Monitor
• nworks

The Veeam Product Strategy Alignment:

1. Past and Present: VMware vSphere
2. What’s next: Hyper-V

Today’s focus: Veeam Backup and Replication

Virtualization introduces a paradigm shift in our datacenter processes surrounding data protection and business continuation planning.  Traditional tools don’t fit any more.  Veeam provides the right tools for the virtualized datacenter.

Veeam has also introduced vPower: Virtualization-Powered Data Protection.  vPower is not a single product or technology in and of itself, it’s a suite of existing and new technologies.  What are the key components of vPower?  SureBackup, InstantRestore, and SmartCDP.  Let’s take a look in more detail:

• Run a VM directly from a backup file
• Automatically manager isolated virtual lab
• Instant VM recovery
• Universal application item recovery (U-AIR)
  • Wizard driven recovery for technologies such as MS AD, MS Exchange, and MS SQL
  • User directed item recovery from any application or database
• Recovery verification
• Rapid execution keeping RTO to a bare minimum

Veeam proceeded with a live lab demo using alpha code.  There was plenty of enthusiasm in the room from the delegates about the technology as it relates to virtualization.  The delegates revealed a strong foundation in virtualization concepts.  Generally speaking, this is cool and revolutionary technology, however, there were concerns expressed in a few areas:

1. Networking:  How do we ensure an isolated lab environment to avoid the pitfalls of duplicate machine identities or unintentional routing on the network?
2. Performance:  How well does the VM run which is tied to archive files?  Is there measurable, and more importantly, predictable overhead for common workload types?
3. Understanding:  This data protection and recovery approach, while innovative, is nonetheless new. Is there a with an inherent learning curve for datacenter operators or administrators?  Enabled with a wizard driven interface, I’d argue no, not really.  So long as the product works as designed, should we care how it ticks?  Like Lab Manager or Willy Wonka, you don’t ask how it works, “it just does”.

Veeam already has solid products but it is clear they aren’t content with resting on their laurels.  They continue to push the envelope in backup, replication, and disaster recovery, making the lives of data administrators and lowering RTO.

Availability: Q3 2010 (VMworld launch?)

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Veeam

Related Posts

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• July 15, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Nimble Storage
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• February 21, 2010 -- RVTools 2.8.1 Released
• January 25, 2010 -- Service Console Directory Listing Text Color in PuTTY
• July 27, 2009 -- New Cisco Nexus 1000v Video
• July 22, 2009 -- Hyper9 version 1.4 to be released July 22nd
• June 22, 2009 -- In search of an application migration solution
• June 8, 2009 -- Tripwire Launches vWire, A Virtualization Management Solution

We kicked things off tonight with dinner, discussion, and door prizes at Cedarbrook Lodge in Seatac, WA.  There are a lot of new faces in this group of delegates.  I don’t know most of the guys but that makes for a great opportunity to meet new people and network.  In a word, Cedarbrook is gorgeous.  It has more of a resort feel to it than a hotel.  It’s too bad I won’t be spending more time here but the show must go on.

Tomorrow (Thursday), the other delegates and I will be meeting with Veeam, F5, and a stealth company which officially launches in our very presence tomorrow.  I’m familiar with most of Veeam’s offerings but as a virtualization guy, I’m hoping to see more about their SureBackup technology.  I’ve known of F5 for many years but just recently I’m seeing them push their way into the virtualization arena.  Just last week they have expressed interest in participating in the Minneapolis VMUG.  I’m anxious in seeing what value they bring to the virtualized datacenter.  We cap off the day with a party at the Museum of Flight which should be really cool.

Moving into Friday, we’ll hear from Compellent on what they have been up to in the storage arena and how they are doing things differently than other storage vendors such as EMC, NetApp, Hitachi, HP, IBM, 3PAR, Dell, FalconStor, Pillar, etc.  We’ll also be spending some time with NEC.  I’m real curious as to what they are going to present.  Talk about a diverse portfolio of products (as well as professional services).  Whatever it is, I’ll be looking for virtualization relevance.  Not only that, but will we see a landscape that continues to cater to cloud agility?  Cloud has picked up a lot of momentum.  It’s real.  Adopt, adapt, integrate, or get run over by it.  There may be one more vendor on Friday… that remains to be seen at this point.  We end Friday with dinner in the evening and then some of us will start our journey back home.

I’m looking forward to a couple of great days.

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Seattle

Related Posts

• July 16, 2010 -- Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Compellent
• May 15, 2010 -- P2V Milestone
• March 25, 2010 -- Configuring disks to use VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters
• January 19, 2009 -- KB1008130: VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 U3 I/O failure on SAN LUN(s) and LUN queue is blocked indefinitely
• January 8, 2009 -- How VMware virtualized Exchange 2007
• December 3, 2008 -- LAN party!
• November 11, 2008 -- Live migration between CPU vendors demonstrated by AMD and Red Hat
• November 6, 2008 -- VMware adds additional thin client support for VDM 2.1
• October 27, 2008 -- Connect a fibre attached tape device to a VM on ESX
• October 19, 2008 -- The Lab – Then and Now

1. Lab Manager Introduction and Product Overview
2. Organizations within vCenter Lab Manager
3. Workspaces within vCenter Lab Manager

VMware states that the next videos in the series will be:

• Managing Users and Groups within vCenter Lab Manager
• Networking within vCenter Lab Manager

The videos are authored by Graham Daly who works for VMware out of the Cork, Ireland office.  The videos are short at well under 10 minutes each and provide introductory level information on Lab Manager components and administrative containers.  If you haven’t used Lab Manager before, it’s enough to get you curious.

KB article (1020915) is going to act as a central location or a “one-stop-shop” for tutorial style videos which will discuss and demonstrate the various different topics/aspects of the Lab Manager product. As new videos become available, they will be added to the article.

I haven’t seen any books to date on use of Lab Manager.  From a training and education standpoint, the Lab Manager installation guide and the Lab Manager user’s guide actually isn’t too bad.  Someone last night was looking for advice on Lab Manager training and I recommended printing these two .PDF documents out and sticking them in a 3-ring binder like I did.  You’ll be able to whip through them in a few hours as much of the content is repeated time and again in the user’s guide.  Beyond that, the best Lab Manager training is continuous use of the product.  As I stated last night, Lab Manager is a bit of a different animal, even for a VMware junkie (like me).

Boil down the complexity and black magic of the Lab Manager product by looking at it as a tiered application consisting of

• virtual infrastructure (ESX(i) and vCenter, you know this already),
• a web front end (that’s the Lab Manager server, which by the way runs great as a VM),
• and a database (which also runs on the Lab Manager server and only on the Lab Manager server – yep, it’s local MS SQL Express, and yep, it has scaling and migration issues).

The Tomcat on Windows web interface is the front end where Lab Manager environments are built and managed.  The web interface sends tasks to the vCenter Server which in turn commands the ESX(i) hosts (ie. build this VM, register it, power it on, make a snapshot, now clone it, etc.)  State information and other configuration items are stored in the database.  For obvious reasons, the database and vCenter always need to be on the same page.  When they get of sync is where hell begins but I’ll save that discussion for a distant blog post entitled “Lab Manager: fun to build and play with, no fun to troubleshoot”. It’s a lot like Citrix Presentation Server in that respect.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

New VMware vCenter Lab Manager Video Tutorial Series

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• April 19, 2010 -- Two Quick Announcements
• March 22, 2010 -- Meet the VMware Certified Design Experts
• February 27, 2010 -- Thank You
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• February 14, 2010 -- My VCDX Defense Experience

So if there’s one standard, why is it that when I choose to create an OVF (Export OVF Template in the vSphere Client), I’m prompted to create either an OVF or an OVA?  If the OVF is an OVF, then what’s an OVA?

Personally, I’ve seen both formats, typically when deploying packaged appliances.  The answer is simple: Both the OVF and the OVA formats roll up into the Specification defined by the DMTF.  The difference between the two is in the presentation and encapsulation.  The OVF is a construct of a few files, all of which are essential to its definition and deployment.  The OVA on the other hand is a single file with all of the necessary information encapsulated inside of it.  Think of the OVA as an archive file.  The single file format provides ease in portability.  From a size or bandwidth perspective, there is no advantage between one format or the other as they each tend to be the same size when all is said and done.

The DMTF explains the two formats on pages 12 through 13 in the PDF linked above:

An OVF package may be stored as a single file using the TAR format. The extension of that file shall be .ova (open virtual appliance or application).

An OVF package can be made available as a set of files, for example on a standard Web server.

Do keep in mind that which ever file type you choose to work with, if you plan on hosting them on a web server, MIME types will need to be set up for .OVF, OVA, or both, in order for a client to download them for deployment onto your hypervisor.

At 41 pages, the OVF Specification contains a surprising amount of detail.  There’s more to it than you might think, and for good reason:

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) Specification describes an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software to be run in virtual machines.

Open, meaning cross platform (bring your own hypervisor).  Combined with Secure and Portable attributes, OVF may be one of the key technologies for intracloud and intercloud mobility.  The format is a collaborative effort spawned from a variety of contributors:

Simon Crosby, XenSource
Ron Doyle, IBM
Mike Gering, IBM
Michael Gionfriddo, Sun Microsystems
Steffen Grarup, VMware (Co-Editor)
Steve Hand, Symantec
Mark Hapner, Sun Microsystems
Daniel Hiltgen, VMware
Michael Johanssen, IBM
Lawrence J. Lamers, VMware (Chair)
John Leung, Intel Corporation
Fumio Machida, NEC Corporation
Andreas Maier, IBM
Ewan Mellor, XenSource
John Parchem, Microsoft
Shishir Pardikar, XenSource
Stephen J. Schmidt, IBM
René W. Schmidt, VMware (Co-Editor)
Andrew Warfield, XenSource
Mark D. Weitzel, IBM
John Wilson, Dell

Take a look at the OVF Specifications document as well as some of the other work going on at DTMF. 

Have a great and safe July 4th weeekend, and congratulations to the Dutch on their win today in World Cup Soccer.  I for one will be glad when it’s all over with and our Twitter APIs can return to normal again.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

OVF? OVA? WTF?

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1. I had gone too far and was one step away from being clinically insane.
2. As my volume of mail to process grew, including SPAM, I honestly never had any intention to go back and read SPAM, not even from a humor or posterity point of view.

So tonight I’m processing some items in my inbox at home.  In the back of my mind, I’m again reminded of the fact that I’ve got loads of old mail saved in my .PST file.  As a result, my curiosity suggests taking a break and locating the oldest piece of Email.  Since I have several folder catagories for Email I receive and in the interest of time, I decide not to bother searching each folder containing Email I which I have received.  The best bang for the buck here is to choose the folder which contains sent items, and then choose the oldest piece of Email based on sent date.  Who did I write to?  What was the subject?  When did I send it?

Would you believe this?

The oldest recorded Email in my possession was sent in August 2003 to my friend Dawn in California, with the subject of VMWARE.  Well, I’ve provided the screenshot above; you can read it for yourself. 

I couldn’t have staged the results any better.  I guess this constitutes my first recorded act of VMware evangelism.  Mind you, it’s about a year before my account creation and first post on the VMTN forums, and two years before I started using ESX, sat the ICM class, and became VCP 2712 on VI2.  There had never been a VMworld yet, and John Troyer was still a self employed consultant in the computer software industry (I would later meet John for the first time in 2006 at a bar in Los Angeles, but I digress).  In this particular point in time I’m still using VMware Workstation and probably experimenting with VMware GSX in the lab and formulating a plan for using GSX at the DR/BCP recovery site.

In case you’re curious, I received a reply from Dawn less than an hour afterwards:

You have told me about it and we have it here at work. If I ever add another machine at hole I’ll get it from you, but I don’t see that happening too soon, I just don’t have room for more computers…

Dawn

To which I replied five minutes later:

With VMWARE, you add more virtual computers on your existing machine. It doesn’t mean you have to go buy more computers. That’s what VMWARE is all about, doing more with what you have. Only thing is that the computer you run you VMs on should have lots of memory and hopefully a decent CPU (P3 or better)

Jas

If I get real ambitious, I could add a second post to this later where I mount my .PST files from my previous job which go back to 1998.  Sometime in the 2000/2001 timeframe is when I was introduced to VMware by a former co-worker Paul.  Some of my earliest conversations could be great fun to look at.  I remember having extreme curiosity about how this VMware could possibly work.  In addition, I was totally nervous about installing Windows as a VM as I thought it would wipe out the boot record on my workstation.

And there you have it.  A little history about VMware and my early beginnings with it.  I’m sure everyone has a story to tell.  I’d like to hear yours in the comments below.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

A piece of my VMware history

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Open the file /etc/vmware/firewall/services.xml
Scroll to the bottom & note the last Service ID #
Copy an existing service section as a template (ie. faultTolerance)
Paste as new following proper XML formatting
Increment the Service ID # by 1 ensuring it’s unique
Customize to fit your new inbound/outbound port rule
Save and exit
Services do not need to be restarted

As an example, I took :

<service id=’0031′>
    <id>faultTolerance</id>
    <rule id=’0000′>
      <direction>outbound</direction>
      <protocol>tcp</protocol>
      <port type=’dst’>80</port>
    </rule>
  </service>

and created a new service like so:

<service id=’0033′>
    <id>CoolFirewallRule</id>
    <rule id=’0000′>
      <direction>outbound</direction>
      <protocol>tcp</protocol>
      <port type=’dst’>12345</port>
    </rule>
  </service>

The result is a firewall rule named CoolFirewallRule which can be toggled via the vSphere Client:

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Make an ESX Firewall Rule Manageable in the vSphere Client

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FT logging NIC speed is at least 1000 Mbps
At least one shared datastore exists
FT logging is enabled
VMotion NIC speed is at least 1000 Mbps
All the hosts in the cluster have the same build for Fault Tolerance
The host hardware supports Fault Tolerance
VMotion is enabled

Read more at: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017471

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

vSphere Cluster Showing Noncompliant on the Profile Compliance Tab

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isolation.tools.copy.disable = true
isolation.tools.paste.disable = true
isolation.tools.setGUIOptions.enable = false

Read more at: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vi35_security_hardening_wp.pdf

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

Disable Copy and Paste for a VM

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So the good news is that there will be a vCalendar 2.0 and I’m planning on an anniversary launch around VMworld 2010 San Francisco.  Some data which is not so relevant any longer will be pruned.  Some of the data which is still currently relevant or of historic value will be carried over from the previous version.  Then there will be quite a bit of new content added which I have been working on since the fall of last year.  The next few blog posts you see from me will provide examples of upcoming vCalendar 2.0 content.  The posts will be rather short and to the point – because for the most part they are in vCalendar format which is limited to a finite number of rows and 425 characters total.

The not so good news surrounding vCalendar 2.0 is that it will only be available for purchase by continental U.S. peeps online at The Printed Owl. I will do my best to get some vCalendars into the VMworld store as I did last year but I cannot make any promises as it is quite expensive to do so and the budget is tight this year.  Veeam did a fantastic job of distributing vCalendars over the past year, however, they will not be carrying the vCalendar this year.  I wish to extend my thanks to Veeam for their partnership.

I’d like the vCalendar tradition to continue, be successful, and maybe leave its mark in VMware lore.  I’m excited for the upcoming launch and I hope you’re able to get your hands on one.

Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Learn how to utilize VMware so you can save your company money this year from Train Signal! Click here for details!

Copyright (c) 2009 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on another web page or web site without prior written permission.

vCalendar 2.0

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