Dennis Bray's Virtual Place

VSI vs VDI part 1

vminstructor — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:10:55 +0000

Virtual Server Infrastructure vs. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Part 1
I have been working almost exclusively on virtualization projects for most of the past 5 years. Before that I spent a lot of time on Citrix/terminal services projects with the associated profile, application delivery and Windows OS optimizations. During that whole time, there has been a constant drum beat from vendors about users sessions per server, users per CPU, users per core; then VM’s per server, VM’s per CPU, VM’s per core, etc. I come from a background in retail sales and single proprietor businesses and their IT operations and I “get” the lure of these ratios and the ROI calculations and purchase price justifications they facilitate.
So many of the server based computing lessons I learned in the 1990’s have served me well in the virtualization arena particularly in the early stages when existing server system “best practices” had resulted in the often stunning lack of correlation between the amount of resources being committed to a particular application and the actual measured resource utilization. Remember all those single role/application servers running on whole physical servers. As the “virtualization journey” progressed with customers, my experience with getting a lot of production out of a fixed set of resources has certainly paid dividends for me and my customers.
When we are dealing with servers and the back office applications that run on virtual servers, the reduction in assigned resources as the physical servers are virtualized and “right-sized” has generally had little negative effect on the user’s experience. In fact it allows us to deploy additional virtual servers to scale out and load balance server applications while still increasing the overall utilization of the available resources in our server rooms and data centers. I submit that in addition to the wide spread over provisioning of resources to applications, the general user community’s lack of connection to or understanding of the various components in our server closets, server rooms and data centers has given us an incredible margin for error as we correct some of our collective sins of the past. When a typical user is using an email system, they rarely consider whether the message they send to five colleagues is stored in one place or five places, they rarely have any understanding of the impact the quantity of deleted items they keep “just in case” has on the network or storage systems nor the roles of the various servers involved with authenticating users, routing messages, scanning the message contents, archiving messages for legal requests, etc. What they care about is whether or not messages are being sent and received and that their email client feels responsive.
Recently, I find myself returning to the customer desktops and the personal productivity applications associated with them. Just like my experience starting the 90’s with NT 4 terminal server, Citrix MetaFrame, Presentation Server and XenApp, the individual user experience is the key to success. I have Citrix installations that I designed and built 5-6 years ago that are as solid now as they were when they were deployed. The key then was to standardize the server builds, standardize the application builds, separate the user profiles from the terminal servers as best as possible and eliminate unnecessary files, services, applications, recurring background network traffic, and to optimize every component involved to get the right balance of reliability, performance and customer experience. We would go to great lengths to optimize OS and application features to gain very small incremental improvements. At that time, the user interfaces provided by Windows NT and Windows 2000 were much more like Windows 95 than they were like Windows Vista allowing a lot of room to optimize the systems for performance rather than individual customer taste and personalization. We also had the constant concern about multiple users sharing the same operating system instance and often this concern justified the highly managed (you know, “locked down”) user environment as a requirement for stability. Often, users that needed (probably more correctly expected or demanded) more flexibility or individual control of their computing environment were given a “personal” computer where they could have much more freedom to customize and change things without the restrictions imposed by the “shared” environment.
So, now we are in the “year(s?) of desktop virtualization” and expected to provide the consolidation ratios and the centralization of supporting resources associated with virtualization that are touted by vendors and their salespeople, but the game has changed. This time the costs are harder to offset. We can’t repurpose recent vintage desktop pc’s as hosts for the virtual desktops and transfer their operating system licenses, like we may have been able to do with server virtualization. If we install our virtual desktop client software on the user’s traditional desktop, then we don’t have to account for the cost of a replacement physical endpoint device, but we will still have to maintain, manage and license whatever operating systems and applications remain. If, on the other hand, we decide to replace the traditional desktop pc with some dedicated thin client device, the cost of these devices will be judged against the replacement cost of the traditional desktop pc’s. In either case, the cost of the virtual desktop connection brokers, the operating systems and applications running on the virtual desktops and the underlying virtualization platform including compute, networking and storage systems has to be considered. With server based applications the actual network and storage requirements for an individual user are aggregated with the other users of the various applications. For many customers (and they don’t really have to be very large) the sheer volume desktop pc resources in terms of CPU cycles, RAM in GB, network bandwidth per desktop NIC port and storage capacity in GB and throughput in IOPS versus their server infrastructure can be staggering. As a result, the resources required per user to deliver virtual desktops can be much greater than the per user resources required for server apps. Think about the requirements for an Exchange system with 500 mailboxes vs. the requirements for 500 virtual desktops with Outlook clients. While we can increase the user mailbox count on the Exchange system by using client-side features like cached mode in Outlook; when we do, we transfer some of the resource requirements, like the storage space for the cached mailbox copy, to our client systems, now running as VM’s that require resources in our server room or datacenter, not just out on the office floor with the users. In the example of Outlook cached mode consider that we now have an additional copy of a (or each) user’s mailbox being stored on our centralized storage systems. Now mailbox quotas could effectively cost twice! Get used to this kind of calculation – the desktop resource requirements are transferred from the individual dedicated computers to the shared infrastructure.

To be continued…

Filed under: Thoughts

VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 2 is released

vminstructor — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:33:23 +0000

This evening VMware released Update 2 for ESX/ESXi 4, vCenter Management Server 4, vCenter Update Manager 4 and VMware Data Recovery.
A quick scan of the ESX 4 Update 2 release notes shows expanded support for FT on Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale, Xeon 34xx Clarkdale and Xeon 56xxx processors. Support for IOMMU on AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx processors. Guest OS support for Ubuntu 10.04 and improvements to esxtop and resxtop to include NFS performance statistics Reads/s, Writes/s, MBRead/s, MBWrtn/s, cmd/s and gavg/s latency. Included in the resolved issues is a change in the way the Snapshot Manager “Delete All” operation works. In previous versions the snapshot farthest away from the base disk was committed to its immediate parent, then that parent would be committed to its parent until the last remaining snapshot is committed to the base. The release notes report that this operation will now start with the snapshot closest to the base disk and work toward the farthest. This should reduce the amount of disk space required during the “delete all/commit” operation and reduce the amount of data that is repeatedly committed. I think this is a great change. I have seen customers run out of space in datastores when the failed to keep track of active snapshots and didn’t understand the “delete all/commit” process.

The vCenter Management Server 4 Update 2 release notes list support for guest customization of:

◦Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
◦SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
◦SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
◦RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
◦RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
◦RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
◦Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
◦Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
◦Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

Among the resolved items, there is an update JRE (1.5.0_22) and number of fixed related to Host Profiles, support for vSwitch portgroup named longer than 50 characters, advanced settings to allow the use vDS connections as additional HA heartbeat networks, the addision of a parameter in vpxd.cfg to set a greater timeout value for VMotion operations involving VMs with swap files on local datastores, among many others. In the known issues section is astatement that while USB controllers can be added to VMs, attaching USB devices is not supported and that vSphere Web Access is experimentally supported.

The vCenter Update Manager 4 Update 2 release notes list improvement of operations in low bandwidth, high latency and slow networks, including a reference to KB 1017253 detailing the configuration of extended timeout values for ESX, vCenter and Update Manager Update 2.
The compatability matrix shows that Update Manager 4 Update 2 is only compatible with vCenter Management Server 4 Update 2.

VMware Data Recovery Update 2 includes the following new items:

The following enhancements have been made for this release of Data Recovery.

•File Level Restore (FLR) is now available for use with Linux.
•Each vCenter Server instance supports up to ten Data Recovery backup appliances.
•The vSphere Client plug-in supports fast switching among Data Recovery backup appliances.
•Miscellaneous vSphere Client Plug-In user interface enhancements including:
◦The means to name backup jobs during their creation.
◦Additional information about the current status of destination disks including the disk’s health and the degree of space savings provided by the deduplication store’s optimizations.
◦Information about the datastore from which virtual disks are backed up.

The support for up to 10 Data Recovery appliances per vCenter will allow up to 1000 jobs (100 per appliance x10), this is a significant increase in backup capacity.

The build numbers for the various items are:

ESX 4.0 Update 2 Build 261974
ESXi 4.0 Update 2 Installable Build 261974
ESXi 4.0 Update 2 Embedded Build 261974
VMware Tools Build 261974
vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 Build 258672
vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 2 Build 264019

vSphere 4 Update 2 components can be downloaded here.

Filed under: ESX, Security, Updates, vCenter, VMware, vSphere

VMware Workstation 7.1 is here!

vminstructor — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:23:05 +0000

VMware released VMware Workstation 7.1 Fusion 3.1 today. From VMware’s Workstation 7.1 Release Notes:

New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems

This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System
Ubuntu 8.04.4 Host and guest
Ubuntu 10.04 Host and guest
OpenSUSE 11.2 Host and guest
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 Host and guest
Fedora 12 Guest
Debian 5.0.4 Guest
Mandriva 2009.1 Guest

New Features in VMware Workstation
•OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests — Improves the ability to run graphics-based applications in virtual machines.
•Improved Graphics Performance — Enhanced performance with better benchmarks, frame rates, and improved rendering on Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests allows you to run various graphics-based applications. In addition, major improvements in video playback enable you to play high-resolution videos in virtual machines.

•Automatic Software Updates — Download and install VMware Tools and receive maintenance updates when available.

•Direct Launch — Drag guest applications from the Unity start menu directly onto the host desktop. Double-click the shortcut to open the guest application. The shortcut remains on the desktop after you exit Unity and close VMware Workstation.

•Autologon — Save your login credentials and bypass the login dialog box when you power on a Windows guest. Use this feature if you restart the guest frequently and want to avoid entering your login credentials. You can enable Autologon and use direct launch to open guest applications from the host.

•OVF 1.1 Support — Import or export virtual machines and vApps to upload them to VMware vSphere or VMware vCloud. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility bundled in the VMware Workstation installer. Use this tool along with VMware Workstation to convert VMware .vmx files to .ovf format or vice versa. VMware recommends that you use the OVF command-line utility. For more information, see the OVF Web site and OVF Tool User Guide.

•Eight-Way SMP Support — Create and run virtual machines with a total of up to eight-processor cores.
•2TB Virtual Disk Support — Maximum virtual disks and raw disks size increased from 950GB to 2TB.
•Encryption Enhancements — VMware Workstation includes support for Intel’s Advanced Encryption Standard instruction set (AES-NI) to improve performance while encrypting and decrypting virtual machines and faster run-time access to encrypted virtual machines on new processors.
•Memory Management — User interface enhancements have simplified the handling of increased virtual memory capacity.

•User Experience Improvement Program — Help VMware improve future versions of the product by participating in the User Experience Improvement Program.

VMware Fusion 3.1 was also released today. The following excerpt from the release notes list new features in this release:

VMware Fusion 3.1 has a large number of new and improved features, including:

New Features

•8-way SMP
•2 TB Virtual Disks
•OpenGL 2.1 for Vista
•OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
•Support for overlapping Unity windows in Exposé and Dock Exposé
•USB “EasyConnect” to easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
•OVF Tool for Mac OS X now included as optional install with full download or CD install
•OVF Tool 2: Import and export OVF packaged virtual machines and upload to vSphere with bundled OVF Tool
•Drag a disk image or virtual disk to the installation media pane of the assistant
•Add shortcut for opening a virtual machines configuration file in default text editor for VMware Fusion (Hold down option and right-click in Virtual Machine Library)
•User Experience Improvement Program

Graphics Improvements

•Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
•Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with latest Mac OS X release
•Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
•Improved performance and better compatibility for both DirectX 9 and OpenGL 3D applications

Boot Camp Improvements

•Up to 5x disk performance in Boot Camp virtual machines
•New option to minimize prompting for password (authentication dialogs) when using Boot Camp virtual machines
•Handle Mac OS X disk changes better to avoid multiple references to Boot Camp partition in the Virtual Machine Library

PC Migration Improvements

•Improvements to Migrate Your PC assistant, including better validation of names and better location prompt
•Prompt user if Mac OS X guest account prevents guest access to shared folders instead of failing
•Open new virtual machine on successful migration
•Enhanced user interface on PC being migrated including:
◦New progress dialog on the PC being migrated as well as in VMware Fusion
◦Option to show converter logs and troubleshooting steps on PC if PC migration fails
•Avoids port conflicts with Web server software installed on PC such as IIS, Tomcat, and Apache

New Guest Operating Systems Supported

•Ubuntu 8.0.4.4: 32- and 64-bit
•Ubuntu 10.04: 32- and 64-bit (currently in Beta)
•SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
•SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
•RHEL 5.4: 32- and 64-bit

My copy of Workstation 7.1 is downloading now. I have been using workstation since the original alpha and beta of “VMware” and can’t wait to get this latest version of installed!

Filed under: VMware, Workstation

New VMware Advanced Certifications announced

vminstructor — Tue, 25 May 2010 06:05:05 +0000

VMware Education has announced their new VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) Certification specialties VCAP4-Datacenter Administrator (VCAP4-DCA) and VCAP4-Datacenter Design (VCAP4-DCD).

VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 -Datacenter Administration (VCAP4-DCA)
The VCAP-DCA is directed toward System Administrators, Senior Consultants and Technical Support Engineers who work with large and more complex virtualized environments and can demonstrate technical leadership with vSphere technologies. Successful candidates are able to use automation tools, to plan and design virtualized solutions and to administer all vSphere Enterprise components. Registration opens July 12. Learn more about this VCAP specialty.

VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4-Datacenter Design (VCAP4-DCD)
The VCAP-DCD is directed toward IT Architects and Consulting Architects who design VMware solutions in a multi-site, large enterprise environment. They have a deep understanding both of VMware core components and their relation to storage and networking as well as datacenter design methodologies. They also possess knowledge of applications and physical infrastructure, as well as their relationship to the virtual infrastructure. Registration opens in August. Learn more about this VCAP specialty.

Advanced Courses Created to help you Achieve Your New Certification Goals
VMware has designed several courses to help VCPs ramp their skills in preparation for VCAP certification exams.

VCAP-DCA Recommended Training
VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting [V4]
VMware vSphere: Manage for Performance [V4]

VCAP-DCD Recommended Training
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V4]

I have participated in “Train the Trainer” versions of each of the three courses listed above and heartily recommend them. Even if you do not anticipate pursuing advanced certification, these courses will greatly enhance your virtualization skills. If you later decide to pursue the advanced VMware credentials, you will be well on your way. These new specialties follow on after the VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) exam and define the prerequisites along the path to VMware Certified Design Expert 4 (VCDX4) VMware premier certification. For more information on the VCDX4 Certification follow this link.

Filed under: Certification, training, VMware Tagged: VCAP4-DCA, VCAP4-DCD, VCDX4

VMware Partner Exchange 2010

vminstructor — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:24:24 +0000

I just booked my flight to Las Vegas for VMware’s Partner Exchange. I will be attending the partner “Post-Sales Accreditation Bootcamp” on the weekend and staying for a couple of VMware View 4 design session on Tuesday. I have a cousin who lives in Las Vegas and Friday is his birthday. If I can locate him I will look him up! Thanks to my boss for picking up the tab! I will make sure he and the rest of our company gets a great return on the investment!

Filed under: ESX, training, View, VMware Tagged: training, View, VMware

San Francisco Renegades 2010

vminstructor — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:41:31 +0000

This weekend was my third rehearsal weekend with the San Francisco Renegades. The Renegades are an “all age” Drum and BUGLE corps. Once upon a time, I marched in “Junior Corps” Valley Fever from Modesto and later the Santa Clara Vanguard. I enjoyed myself tremendously, learned from some incredible instructors about marching, music, brass playing, being a member of a larger group, respect for others (both within the corps I marched in and our competition) and most importantly I gained confidence in myself (and others) and learned to be a much better person. I have always credited my drum corps experiences for much of the success I have enjoyed personally and professionally.
Since I “aged out” of junior corps, I have enjoyed being a fan and have had some incredible opportunities through alumni groups to perform with some of the people I respect and admire most in drum corps. In 2007, I was part of the combined Santa Clara Vanguard and Concord Blue Devils alumni corps. I had laid off my horn for about 10 years by that time. After spending months getting back into playing and performing, I made a decision to keep playing. My son was starting to pick up the trumpet and I remembered that my dad was supposed to have have been a very good trumpet player, but I never got him to play more than a couple of notes for me. I was determined that I would play with my son if he wanted and have since participated in a couple of local trumpet clinics with my son and had a blast! I returned to play with the MJC Community Concert Band, where I was greeted by a 20 yr old flute player with “I don’t know you!” Long story short, I am a drum and BUGLE corps nut and while I am occasionally embarrased when I make rookie mistakes 23 years after aging out, I wouldn’t trade the aches, pains, adrenaline rushes and goosebumps for many things. I am not in top physical shape, but I am working on it. I do feel like I am being a bit selfish with my time, but I know my kids (and I even suspect my wife) love it when I perform.
Whoever you are, if you have marched in a drum corps in the past, or even just wanted to, come try out the San Francisco Renegades. Especially you folks who marched with me in the 80′s, come on down to the camp at Del Mar High School, February 20-21 and the Chinese New Year Parade. Follow the Renegades on Twitter and look us up on Facebook! If you don’t march with us this year, then please support us at shows. I will post information on upcoming events as they approach!

Filed under: Drum Corps

vSphere Update 1 released

vminstructor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:08:03 +0000

VMware ESX 4.0, Patch ESX400-Update01
From the release notes:

VMware View 4.0 support – This release adds support for VMware View 4.0, a solution built specifically for delivering desktops as a managed service from the protocol to the platform.

Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support –This release adds support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as well as 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 as guest OS platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Enhanced Clustering Support for Microsoft Windows – Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) for Windows 2000 and 2003 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering is now supported on an VMware High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster in a limited configuration. HA and DRS functionality can be effectively disabled for individual MSCS virtual machines as opposed to disabling HA and DRS on the entire ESX/ESXi host.

Enhanced VMware Paravirtualized SCSI Support – Support for boot disk devices attached to a Paravirtualized SCSI ( PVSCSI) adapter has been added for Windows 2003 and 2008 guest operating systems. Floppy disk images are also available containing the driver for use during the Windows installation by selecting F6 to install additional drivers during setup. Floppy images can be found in the /vmimages/floppies/ folder.

Improved vNetwork Distributed Switch Performance – Several performance and usability issues have been resolved resulting in the following:

Improved performance when making configuration changes to a vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) instance when the ESX/ESXi host is under a heavy load
Improved performance when adding or removing an ESX/ESXi host to or from a vDS instance

Increase in vCPU per Core Limit – The limit on vCPUs per core has been increased from 20 to 25. This change raises the supported limit only. It does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core depends on the workload and specifics of the hardware.

Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series – Support for the Xeon processor 3400 series has been added.

ESX 4.0 Update 1 requires a host reboot and VM shutdown.

Note that several of the upgrade methods that were available with past ESX editions are not available. These include the GUI or text mode upgrade from CD, scripted upgrade from CD or PXE boot and upgrade with a tarball via the service console. Only the vSphere Host Update Utility and VMware Update Manager are supported for performing upgrades from ESX 3.x to ESX 4.0 Update 1

Cisco Nexus 1000v
VEM-4.0.0-update01-v100

VMware vCenter 4.0 Update 1
From the release notes:

This update release of VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 1 offers the following improvements:

IBM DB2 Database Support for vCenter Server — This release adds support for IBM DB2 9.5 as the backend database platform for VMware vCenter Server 4.0. The following editions of IBM DB2 are supported:

IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.5

IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.5

IBM DB2 Express 9.5

IBM DB2 Express-C 9.5

VMware View 4.0 support — This release adds support for VMware View 4.0, a solution built specifically for delivering desktops as a managed service from the protocol to the platform.
Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support — This release adds support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as well as 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 as guest operating system platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform.
Pre-Upgrade Checker Tool — A standalone pre-upgrade checker tool is now available as part of the vCenter Server installation media that proactively checks ESX hosts for any potential issues that you might encounter while upgrading vCenter agents on these hosts as part of the vCenter Server upgrade process. You can run this tool independently prior to upgrading an existing vCenter Server instance. The tool can help identify any configuration, networking, disk space or other ESX host-related issues that could prevent ESX hosts from being managed by vCenter Server after a successful vCenter Server upgrade.
HA Cluster Configuration Maximum — HA clusters can now support 160 virtual machines per host in HA Cluster of 8 hosts or less. The maximum number of virtual machines per host in cluster sizes of 9 hosts and above is still 40, allowing a maximum of 1280 Virtual Machines per HA cluster.

vCenter Server 4.0 Update 1 includes updates to VMware Converter Enterprise, VMware Update Manager, VMware Guided Consolidation and VMware Orchestrator

VMware Data Recovery 1.1

The following enhancements are included in Data Recovery 1.1

File Level Restore Functionality is Officially Supported
File Level Restore (FLR) provides a way to access individual files within restore points for Windows virtual machines. In previous versions of Data Recovery, FLR was provided as an experimental feature. File Level Restore feature is now officially supported.

Integrity Check Stability and Performance Improved
The integrity check process is faster and more stable. Note that integrity checks are computationally intensive processes and can take significant periods of time. The exact amount of time integrity checks take varies based on of the size of the deduplication store. Even with these enhancements, integrity checks that take several hours are not unexpected.

Integrity Checks Provides Improved Progress Information
When an integrity check is running, a progress indicator is displayed. This progress indicator has been improved, although it does not provide the optimal level of detail.

Enhanced CIFS Shares Support

Patches are available on the downloads page.
One of the locations that VMware lists updates is on the VMware Knowledge Base Blog.

Posted in Uncategorized

VMware View 4 Beta/POC

vminstructor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:54:36 +0000

Today, I had the good fortune to work with Todd Dayton, A VMware specialist on all things VDI/View related. The client I am working for had been accepted into the View 4 beta and Todd was onsite to help with the install and config of View and some thin clients.
We relearned a pretty common lesson in IT that a clean install is generally better than an upgrade. In an effort to save a few minutes, we decided to upgrade existing View 3 components. The connection server worked well, and the View composer worked, but the View 3 agent and the VMware tools from ESX 3.5 caused us to have problems with PCoIP connections. After removing the new agent, then removing the old VMware tools, we reinstalled the VMware tools for ESX 4 and finally the View 4 agent. After this remediation things worked like a charm!
If you haven’t tried PCoIP, you must! It blows the doors off RDP. I can’t wait to get the released bits and get this into production. Thanks Todd for the assistance!

Posted in Troubleshooting, View, VMware

Licensing VMware ESX 4, ESXi and vCenter 4 Video KB article

vminstructor — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:59:14 +0000

This week VMware posted KB article 1010839 on licensing ESX 4, ESXi 4 and vCenter 4. I get many questions in class about the new license assignment process for vSphere. This KB article has a nice video demonstration and very concise text direction for assigning licenses.

Posted in Troubleshooting, vCenter, VMware, vSphere Tagged: KB ESX vCenter

EMC Storage resources

vminstructor — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:48:55 +0000

Earlier today I saw an exchange between Scott Lowe and Chad Sakac on twitter regarding a post on learning about EMC storage. I teach as a contractor for VMware and storage is routinely identified by students a topic for more and more in-depth discussion. I follow both Scott Lowe‘s and Chad Sakac‘s blogs with interest as they both have provided me with insight and very useful information. In this case, I found the comments to be very helpful and in particular the comment from Chad Sakac of EMC to be a succinct and helpful quick start for learning more about EMC storage and VMware and will be referencing it in future classes.

Posted in EMC, training, VMware Tagged: blogs, EMC, training