VMFS-5 VMFS-3, What’s the Deal?

July 21st, 2011 by jason No comments »

New in vSphere 5 is the VMFS-5 file system for block storage.  VMware customers who upgraded from VMFS-2 to VMFS-3 will likely remember the shell game which had to be played in order to migrate VMs from VMFS-2 to VMFS-3.  It worked but it wasn’t the easiest process, particularly if spare storage was not available in order to move VMs around.

VMware has drastically improved the VMFS upgrade process with vSphere 5.  Not only can existing VMFS-3 datastores be upgraded to VMFS-5 in place, but the upgrade can be performed with running VMs on the storage being upgraded.  Now you might be asking yourself a few questions:

  1. If ESXi 5.0 hosts can run VMs on VMFS-3 or VMFS-5 (there’s a flexible improvement right there), then why even bother upgrading to VMFS-5?
  2. Is there any technical difference or advantage between net new VMFS-5 datastores  and upgraded VMFS-5 datastores which were once VMFS-3?

By now, you may understand what new features VMFS-5 offers.  A unified block size, 64TB datastores without using extents, improvements surrounding sub block allocation (SBA), support for many more files on a datastore, and a new partition type which is what enables datastores larger than 2TB.  These new features should answer the first question of “VMFS-5: what’s in it for me?”  But what about the 2nd question of “Does it matter which migration path I take to get my datastores to VMFS-5?

The tactical approach differences are subtle but nonetheless could be impactful depending on the environment.  I’ve compiled information from vSphere 5 beta documentation and VMware blogs.  I then categorized the information into two bulleted lists to compare similarities and contrast the differences.

Similarities between upgraded and newly created VMFS-5 datastores:

  • Both upgraded VMFS-5 and newly created VMFS-5 support the new 64TB datastore limit. Obviously you’ll need an array which supports growing the existing datastores beyond their original size which would have been 2TB-512B or less.
  • Both upgraded VMFS-5 and newly created VMFS-5 support the new 64TB passthru (physical) RDM limit.
  • The maximum size of a non-passthru (virtual) RDM on VMFS-5 is still 2TB -512 bytes.
  • The maximum size of a file (ie .VMDK virtual disk) on VMFS-5 is still 2TB -512 bytes.
  • The VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 conversion is a one-way process. After you convert the VMFS-based datastore to VMFS-5, you cannot revert back to VMFS-3 without creating a new VMFS-3 datastore (which by the way vSphere 5 supports along with the legacy 1, 2, 4, 8MB block sizes).

Differences between upgraded and newly created VMFS-5 datastores:

  • VMFS-5 upgraded from VMFS-3 continues to use the previous file block size which may be larger than the unified 1MB file block size. Copy operations between datastores with different block sizes won’t be able to leverage VAAI.  This is the primary reason I would recommend the creation of new VMFS-5 datastores and migrating virtual machines to new VMFS-5 datastores rather than performing in place upgrades of VMFS-3 datastores.
  • VMFS-5 upgraded from VMFS-3 continues to use 64KB sub-blocks and not new 8K sub-blocks.
  • VMFS-5 upgraded from VMFS-3 continues to have a file limit of 30,720 rather than the new file limit of > 100,000 for newly created VMFS-5.
  • VMFS-5 upgraded from VMFS-3 continues to use MBR (Master Boot Record) partition type; when the VMFS-5 volume is grown above 2TB, it automatically switches from MBR to GPT (GUID Partition Table) without impact to the running VMs.
  • VMFS-5 upgraded from VMFS-3 will continue to have a partition starting on sector 128; newly created VMFS-5 partitions start at sector 2,048.

Based on the information above, the best approach to migrate to VMFS-5 is to create net new VMFS-5 datastores if you have the extra storage space, can afford the number of Storage vMotions required, and have a VAAI capable storage array holding existing datastores with 2, 4, or 8MB block sizes.

For more information about vSphere 5 storage enhancements and VAAI, take a look at the following links:

 

Make-A-File – File Creation Utility

July 20th, 2011 by jason No comments »

Part of being successful it your role is having the right tool for the job.  If you work a lot with storage, storage performance, tiering, snapshots, or replication (ie. some of the new storage related features in vSphere 5), this tool might come in handy: Make-a-File.  A colleague introduced me to this Windows based utility which creates a file at the size you specify, up to 18 ExaBytes.

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Using the tool is simple, launch Make-a-File.exe

Configurable Parameters:

  • Filename: Specify name and path for the file to be created.
  • Size: Specify a file size between 1 Byte and 18 ExaBytes.
  • Random content: Fills the file with actual random data rather than all zeroes.  Analogous to creating a “thick” file.  For effective storage tests, enable this option.
  • Quick Create: Creates a thin provisioned file using the specified file size to mark the beginning and end geometry boundaries. Doesn’t actually fill the file with data.  Utilizes the SetFilePointer() function to set the end of the file.

Download Make-a-File_src.zip (23KB)

Make-A-File home page

Virtual Bridges Slashes VDI Storage Costs with Latest VDI Gen2 Solution

July 20th, 2011 by jason No comments »

Press Release:

Virtual Bridges Slashes VDI Storage Costs with Latest VDI Gen2 Solution

VERDE Adds New Features Including Cache I/O Storage Saver and Integrated Endpoint Management

 

AUSTIN, Texas (July 20, 2011)Virtual Bridges, Inc. today announced enhancements to VERDE, the industry’s first “VDI Gen2″ solution. Key additions include a new cache I/O storage saver that removes CAPEX hurdles long associated with VDI, and integrated endpoint management that delivers on the promise of desktop management infrastructure solutions.

Industry analysts have cited storage costs as one of the top 10 inhibitors for organizations looking to implement VDI. Unlike competitive solutions that focus on storage capacity (terabytes needed), VERDE StorageSaverTM uses cache I/O technology to reduce the number of Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) required, the single most important metric in VDI desktop performance. Additionally, Copy-on-Write and Copy-on-Read features reduce external storage requirements by using local disks. On average, VERDE’s storage-related costs are one-third of other VDI solutions.

VERDE also now integrates PC Life Cycle Management (PCLM) policy and patch management into the virtual desktop. This includes integration with IBM’s PCLM solution, Tivoli Endpoint Manager built on BigFix technology, to ensure consistent policy across both physical and virtual desktops. VERDE is also now a management component within BigFix and other PCLM vendor frameworks including Novell zCM, Microsoft SCCM and more.  The result is smarter, faster endpoint management that also reduces risk and complexity.

Other VERDE highlights include:

  • Integrated Third-Party Application Management streamlines the deployment of applications inside the Gold Master with unified policy management and improves overall manageability; works with application virtualization solutions, including VMware ThinApp, Novell SPOON/ZenWorks, Cameyo and InstallFree.
  • Enhanced HA Clustering increases high availability of VERDE with automatic ClusterMasterTM (CM) failover in less than two minutes for any candidate without manual intervention; improves manageability by simplifying installation updates and eliminates the need for third party tools; adds cluster-wide licensing and unattended cluster-wide install/upgrade, offering native CM fail-over.
  • Enhanced Desktop Use Case Coverage extends support beyond traditional productivity/power users who do not need to install their own images, to cover a wide range of users scenarios including:
    • Long Life Dynamic Desktops – Improves security of the virtual desktop for VERDE LEAF users, such as traveling sales executives, who sporadically connect to the corporate network but often use public networks in airports or coffee shops.
    • Static Desktops – Provides greater control for fully persistent users, such as developers or engineers, who need to manage their own applications.
    • Non-Persistent Desktops – Provides ease of use without the need for customization for those who do not persist user data, such as workers at call centers or kiosks.
    • Dynamic Desktops – Continues to deliver robust user experience for productivity and power users who do not need to install their own images, but expect to have persistence for personal settings and documents.

“This release of VERDE is a true collaboration with our customers, tackling their biggest challenges including storage, endpoint management and third-party application management,” said Jim Curtin, CEO of Virtual Bridges. “VDI Gen2 continues to deliver significant advancements to make VDI easier and more cost effective than ever.”

As the first VDI Gen2 offering, VERDE features core capabilities that include online, offline and branch VDI, a Gold Master provisioning model, a Distributed Connection brokering architecture, flexibility to run both Windows and Linux desktops, branch-level VDI at LAN speeds, the ability to span both on-premises and hosted deployment modes and desktop portability on a USB stick.

Virtual Bridges has been named a “Major Player” in desktop virtualization by IDC, a “Cool Vendor” in Personal Computing by Gartner, an MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovation Showcase finalist, and one of 15 desktop virtualization vendors to watch in CRN’s Virtualization 100.

For more on VERDE visit http://www.vbridges.com/products/.

 

About Virtual Bridges

Virtual Bridges VERDE is the industry’s most comprehensive desktop management and provisioning solution that leverages virtualization to deliver desktops either on-premises or in the cloud. The VERDE solution lets enterprises transform their desktop TCO by simplifying desktop management, improving security and compliance by centralizing the administration of desktop images and data, and increasing the organizational agility by quickly providing desktop and application access to users on any client machine (PC, Macintosh, Linux, thin client, home computer or on a portable drive) at any time.

StarWind Software Releases their iSCSI SAN Software with Asynchronous HA

July 19th, 2011 by jason No comments »

Press Release:

StarWind Software Releases their iSCSI SAN Software with Asynchronous HA

New StarWind iSCSI SAN Software release, version 5.7, with asynchronous HA, improved performance and Data Deduplication.

Snagit CaptureBurlington, Mass. – July 19, 2011StarWind Software, a global leader in storage virtualization and a pioneer in iSCSI storage, today announced the release of StarWind 5.7, an iSCSI SAN software platform which turns any industry-standard x86 or x64 Windows server into a fail-safe, fault-tolerant storage device that will be continuously available even in the event of failure.

The latest software release is the first step to turn HA (High Availability) to a new architecture. The main innovation of StarWind 5.7 is that HA targets are now working in asynchronous mode and this greatly affects its performance. Also, HA targets can be grouped together for greater convenience.

A second substantial addition is the implementation of QoS. Now, users have the ability to choose any traffic and give it the priority status directly from the interface. Data Deduplication that allows substantial disk space savings, reduces storage requirements, and improves bandwidth efficiency, was also modified. Now, it is possible to use blocks from 512b up to 256kb.

Other StarWind 5.7 innovations include: a performance monitor that allows a view of the total server load, the number of IOPS and MB per second, a snapshot manager that allows management, delete, and split snapshots directly from the interface.

In addition, it is possible now to use multiple iSCSI sessions to optimize channel utilization.

“The release of StarWind 5.7 is a sequential step in development of iSCSI SAN solution,” said Artem Berman, Chief Executive Officer of StarWind Software. “Nowadays our customers require cost-effective solutions for high availability and continuous data access. StarWind 5.7 meets these requirements while providing optimized performance and efficiency to organizations regardless of their size and demands.”

About StarWind Software Inc.
StarWind Software is a global leader in storage management and SAN software for small and midsize organizations. StarWind’s flagship product is SAN software that turns any industry-standard Windows Server into a fault-tolerant, fail-safe iSCSI SAN. StarWind iSCSI SAN is qualified for use with VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, Linux, and Unix environments. StarWind Software is focused on providing small and midsize organizations with affordable, highly availability storage technology which previously was only available in high-end storage hardware. Advanced enterprise-class features in StarWind include Automated HA Storage Node Failover and Failback (High Availability), Replication across a WAN, Snapshots, Thin Provisioning, and Virtual Tape management.

Since 2003, StarWind has pioneered the iSCSI SAN software industry and is the solution of choice for more than 30,000 customers worldwide in over 100 countries, from small and midsize companies to governments and Fortune 1000 companies.

For more information on StarWind Software Inc., visit: www.starwindsoftware.com

VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive

July 18th, 2011 by jason No comments »

Snagit CaptureThe authors of this new book really need no introduction.  Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman.  Both hail from the Netherlands and that company I talk about from time to time – VMware.  The title of the book is of course VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive and is available in three formats:

Kindle

Paperback (B&W)

Paperback (Color)

I’ve ordered the color paperback version and I also picked up the Kindle version for my iPad and iPhone 4 the day the book was announced – Tuesday July 12th, 2011.  It’s quite ironic that this vSphere 5 book was debuted the same day VMware made its public announcement about vSphere 5, SRM 5, vCD 1.5, and the new vSA.  I’m guessing VMware timed the release of its new cloud platform with Duncan and Frank’s new book.  Steve Herrod didn’t get to where he is today without a solid background in strategy and tactics.

This is not a comprehensive book review.  I’d be lying through my teeth if I said I had already finished this book.  The fact is, having only the Kindle version right now, I’ve only glanced at it.  I much prefer my books in hard copy format.  I like to write a lot of notes and discussion points in the margins.  However, the Kindle version makes a great searchable reference tool and I’ll almost always have the electronic copy with me on one of my Apple products.  Add to that I’m currently a TE on another book project which keeps me busy along with the blog, my day job, and my vSphere 5 lab.  There are seriously not enough hours in the day for a VMware enthusiast.

Duncan and Frank’s previous collaboration was the authoritative source on HA and DRS (as well as DPM).  As you might have guessed from the title, this book covers more than just HA and DRS.  The authors have built on the success from the previous edition by refreshing the HA, DRS, and DPM sections.  From there they added additional content relevant to vSphere 5 clustering such as EVC, SIOC, and SDRS.  At the moment, I don’t see much in the way of networking but in fairness, I’ll save the final review until after I have finished the book.  348 pages of vSphere 5 clustering technical deepdive is going to be thoroughly enjoyable.  I’m really looking forward to digging in!

Virtualization Wars: Episode V – VMware Strikes Back

July 12th, 2011 by jason No comments »

Snagit CaptureAt 9am PDT this morning, Paul Maritz and Steve Herrod take the stage to announce the next generation of the VMware virtualized datacenter.  Each new product and set of features are impressive in their own right.  Combine them and what you have is a major upgrade of VMware’s entire cloud infrastructure stack.  I’ll highlight the major announcements and some of the detail behind them.  In addition, the embargo and NDA surrounding the vSphere 5 private beta expires.  If you’re a frequent reader of blogs or the Twitter stream, you’re going to bombarded with information at fire-hose-to-the-face pace, starting now.

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vSphere 5.0 (ESXi 5.0 and vCenter 5.0)

At the heart of it all is a major new release of VMware’s type 1 hypervisor and management platform.  Increased scalability and new features make virtualizing those last remaining tier 1 applications quantifiable.

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Snagit Capture

ESX and the Service Console are formally retired as of this release.  Going forward, we have just a single hypervisor to maintain and that is ESXi.  Non-Windows shops should find some happiness in a Linux based vCenter appliance and sophisticated web client front end.  While these components are not 100% fully featured yet in their debut, they come close.

Storage DRS is the long awaited compliment to CPU and memory based DRS introduced in VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.  SDRS will coordinate initial placement of VM storage in addition to keeping datastore clusters balanced (space usage and latency thresholds including SIOC integration) with or without the use of SDRS affinity rules.  Similar to DRS clusters, SDRS enabled datastore clusters offer maintenance mode functionality which evacuates (Storage vMotion or cold migration) registered VMs and VMDKs (still no template migration support, c’mon VMware) off of a datastore which has been placed into maintenance mode.  VMware engineers recognize the value of flexibility, particularly when it comes to SDRS operations where thresholds can be altered and tuned on a schedule basis. For instance, IO patterns during the day when normal or peak production occurs may differ from night time IO patterns when guest based backups and virus scans occur.  When it comes to SDRS, separate thresholds would be preferred so that SDRS doesn’t trigger based on inappropriate thresholds.

Profile-Driven Storage couples storage capabilities (VASA automated or manually user-defined) to VM storage profile requirements in an effort to meet guest and application SLAs.  The result is the classification of a datastore, from a guest VM viewpoint, of Compatible or Incompatible at the time of evaluating VM placement on storage.  Subsequently, the location of a VM can be automatically monitored to ensure profile compliance.

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Snagit CaptureI mentioned VASA previously which is a new acronym for vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness.  This new API allows storage vendors to expose topology, capabilities, and state of the physical device to vCenter Server management.  As mentioned earlier, this information can be used to automatically populate the capabilities attribute in Profile-Driven Storage.  It can also be leveraged by SDRS for optimized operations.

The optimal solution is to stack the functionality of SDRS and Profile-Driven Storage to reduce administrative burden while meeting application SLAs through automated efficiency and optimization.

7-10-2011 7-34-31 PM

Snagit CaptureIf you look closely at all of the announcements being made, you’ll notice there is only one net-new release and that is the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA).  Small to medium business (SMB) customers are the target market for the VSA.  These are customers who seek some of the enterprise features that vSphere offers like HA, vMotion, or DRS but lack the fibre channel SAN, iSCSI, or NFS shared storage requirement.  A VSA is deployed to each ESXi host which presents local RAID 1+0 host storage as NFS (no iSCSI or VAAI/SAAI support at GA release time).  Each VSA is managed by one and only one vCenter Server. In addition, each VSA must reside on the same VLAN as the vCenter Server.  VSAs are managed by the VSA Manager which is a vCenter plugin available after the first VSA is installed.  It’s function is to assist in deploying VSAs, automatically mounting NFS exports to each host in the cluster, and to provide monitoring and troubleshooting of the VSA cluster.

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Snagit CaptureYou’re probably familiar with the concept of a VSA but at this point you should start to notice the differences in VMware’s VSA: integration.  In addition, it’s a VMware supported configuration with “one throat to choke” as they say.  Another feature is resiliency.  The VSAs on each cluster node replicate with each other and if required will provide seamless fault tolerance in the event of a host node failure.  In such a case, a remaining node in the cluster will take over the role of presenting a replica of the datastore which went down.  Again, this process is seamless and is accomplished without any change in the IP configuration of VMkernel ports or NFS exports.  With this integration in place, it was a no-brainer for VMware to also implement maintenance mode for VSAs.  MM comes in to flavors: Whole VSA cluster MM or Single VSA node MM.

VMware’s VSA isn’t a freebie.  It will be licensed.  The figure below sums up the VSA value proposition:

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High Availability (HA) has been enhanced dramatically.  Some may say the version shipping in vSphere 5 is a complete rewrite.  What was once foundational Legato AAM (Automated Availability Manager) is now finally evolving to scale further with vSphere 5.  Some of the new features include elimination of common issues such as DNS resolution, node communication between management network as well as storage along with failure detection enhancement.  IPv6 support, consolidated logging into one file per host, enhanced UI and enhanced deployment mechanism (as if deployment wasn’t already easy enough, albeit sometimes error prone).

7-10-2011 3-27-11 PMFrom an architecture standpoint, HA has changed dramatically.  HA has effectively gone from five (5) fail over coordinator hosts to just one (1) in a Master/Slave model.  No more is there a concept of Primary/Secondary HA hosts, however if you still want to think of it that way, it’s now one (1) primary host (the master) and all remaining hosts would be secondary (the slaves).  That said, I would consider it a personal favor if everyone would use the correct version specific terminology – less confusion when assumptions have to be made (not that I like assumptions either, but I digress).

The FDM (fault domain manager) Master does what you traditionally might expect: monitors and reacts to slave host & VM availability.  It also updates its inventory of the hosts in the cluster, and the protected VMs each time a VM power operation occurs.

Slave hosts have responsibilities as well.  They maintain a list of powered on VMs.  They monitor local VMs and forward significant state changes to the Master. They provide VM health monitoring and any other HA features which do not require central coordination.  They monitor the health of the Master and participate in the election process should the Master fail (the host with the most datastores and then the lexically highest moid [99>100] wins the election).

Another new feature in HA the ability to leverage storage to facilitate the sharing of stateful heartbeat information (known as Heartbeat Datastores) if and when management network connectivity is lost.  By default, vCenter picks two datastores for backup HA communication.  The choices are made by how many hosts have connectivity and if the storage is on different arrays.  Of course, a vSphere administrator may manually choose the datastores to be used.  Hosts manipulate HA information on the datastore based on the datastore type. On VMFS datastores, the Master reads the VMFS heartbeat region. On NFS datastores, the Master monitors a heartbeat file that is periodically touched by the Slaves. VM availability is reported by a file created by each Slave which lists the powered on VMs. Multiple Master coordination is performed by using file locks on the datastore.

As discussed earlier, there are a number of GUI enhancements which were put in place to monitor and configure HA in vSphere 5.  I’m not going to go into each of those here as there are a number of them.  Surely there will be HA deep dives in the coming months.  Suffice it to say, they are all enhancements which stack to provide ease of HA management, troubleshooting, and resiliency.

Another significant advance in vSphere 5 is Auto Deploy which integrates with Image Builder, vCenter, and Host Profiles.  The idea here is centrally managed stateless hardware infrastructure.  ESXi host hardware PXE boots an image profile from the Auto Deploy server.  Unique host configuration is provided by an answer file or VMware Host Profiles (previously an Enterprise Plus feature).  Once booted, the host is added to vCenter host inventory.  Statelessness is not necessarily a newly introduced concept, therefore, the benefits are strikingly familiar to say ESXi boot from SAN: No local boot disk (right sized storage, increased storage performance across many spindles), scales to support of many hosts, decoupling of host image from host hardware – statelessness defined.  It may take some time before I warm up to this feature. Honestly, it’s another vCenter dependency, this one quite critical with the platform services it provides.

For a more thorough list of anticipated vSphere 5 “what’s new” features, take a look at this release from virtualization.info.

 

vCloud Director 1.5

Snagit CaptureUp next is a new release of vCloud Director version 1.5 which marks the first vCD update since the product became generally available on August 30th, 2010.  This release is packed with several new features.

Fast Provisioning is the space saving linked clone support missing in the GA release.  Linked clones can span multiple datastores and multiple vCenter Servers. This feature will go a long way in bridging the parity gap between vCD and VMware’s sun setting Lab Manager product.

3rd party distributed switch support means vCD can leverage virtualized edge switches such as the Cisco Nexus 1000V.

The new vCloud Messages feature connects vCD with existing AMQP based IT management tools such as CMDB, IPAM, and ticketing systems to provide updates on vCD workflow tasks.

vCD originally supported Oracle 10g std/ent Release 2 and 11g std/ent.  vCD now supports Microsoft SQL Server 2005 std/ent SP4 and SQL Server 2008 exp/std/ent 64-bit.  Oracle 11g R2 is now also supported.  Flexibility. Choice.

vCD 1.5 adds support for vSphere 5 including Auto Deploy and virtual hardware version 8 (32 vCPU and 1TB vRAM).  In this regard, VMware extends new vSphere 5 scalability limits to vCD workloads.  Boiled down: Any tier 1 app in the private/public cloud.

Last but not least, vCD integration with vShield IPSec VPN and 5-tuple firewall capability.

vShield 5.0

VMware’s message about vShield is that it has become a fundamental component in consolidated private cloud and multi-tenant VMware virtualized datacenters.  While traditional security infrastructure can take significant time and resources to implement, there’s an inherent efficiency in leveraging security features baked into and native to the underlying hypervisor.

Snagit Capture

There are no changes in vShield Endpoint, however, VMware has introduced static routing in vShield Edge (instead of NAT) for external connections and certificate-based VPN connectivity.

 

Site Recovery Manager 5.0

Snagit CaptureAnother major announcement from VMware is the introduction of SRM 5.0.  SRM has already been quite successful in providing simple and reliable DR protection for the VMware virtualized datacenter.  Version 5 boasts several new features which enhance functionality.

Replication between sites can be achieved in a more granular per-VM (or even sub-VM) fashion, between different storage types, and it’s handled natively by vSphere Replication (vSR).  More choice in seeding of the initial full replica. The result is a simplified RPO.

Snagit Capture

Another new feature in SRM is Planned Migration which facilitates the migration protected VMs from site to site before a disaster actually occurs.  This could also be used in advance of datacenter maintenance.  Perhaps your policy is to run your business 50% of the time from the DR site.  The workflow assistance makes such migrations easier.  It’s a downtime avoidance mechanism which makes it useful in several cases.

Snagit CaptureFailback can be achieved once the VMs are re protected at the recovery site and the replication flow is reversed.  It’s simply another push of the big button to go the opposite direction.

Feedback from customers has influenced UI enhancements. Unification of sites into one GUI is achieved without Linked Mode or multiple vSphere Client instances. Shadow VMs take on a new look at the recovery site. Improved reporting for audits.

Other miscellaneous notables are IPv6 support, performance increase in guest VM IP customization, ability to execute scripts inside the guest VM (In guest callouts), new SOAP based APIs on the protected and recovery sides, and a dependency hierarchy for protected multi tiered applications.

 

In summary, this is a magnificent day for all of VMware as they have indeed raised the bar with their market leading innovation.  Well done!

 

VMware product diagrams courtesy of VMware

Star Wars diagrams courtesy of Wookieepedia, the Star Wards Wiki

Watch VMware Raise the Bar on July 12th

July 11th, 2011 by jason No comments »

On Tuesday July 12th, VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod are hosting a large campus and worldwide event where they plan to make announcements about the next generation of cloud infrastructure.

The event kicks off at 9am PDT and is formally titled “Raising the Bar, Part V”. You can watch it online by registering here.  The itinerary is as follows:

  • 9:00-9:45 Paul and Steve present – live online streaming
  • 10:00-12:00 five tracks of deep dive breakout sessions
  • 10:00-12:00 live Q&A with VMware cloud and virtualization experts
    • Eric Siebert
    • David Davis
    • Bob Plankers
    • Bill Hill

In addition, by attending live you also have the chance to win a free VMworld pass.  More details on that and how to win here.

I’m pretty excited both personally and for VMware.  This is going to be huge!