VMware vCloud Blog

Matthew D. Sarrel, Sarrel Group

Lately I’ve been experimenting with vCloud as it is offered through Terremark. Although I’ve been testing software on virtual machines since 1999, this is my first foray into running VM’s in the cloud.  And I love it.

I spend most of my day testing software for reviews on blogs, websites, and magazines – plus the testing that we at Sarrel Group do directly for software developers.  Virtual machines play a major role in my test operations.  We have a number of servers running VMware and the VM’s themselves live on a mix of NAS and SAN boxes.  This is a huge leap forward from the old racks and racks of physical machines we used to have in the lab at PC Magazine (at one point we had 512 PC’s in one lab and 128 in another).

Enter vCloud.  Now I don’t even have to consolidate VM’s onto my servers.  I just build them in the cloud, run my tests, and then delete them.  In the past 2 weeks I’ve learned that I can be just as productive with NO hardware as I was with 640 PC’s.  Even I, the jaded battle-scarred tech warrior I am, feel a bit giddy with such power and flexibility at my disposal.

Getting Started with Terremark

The Terremark interface (available via https) is set up to organize virtual machines (or servers) into rows and groups.  Basically, these let you build a grid of VM’s so you can keep track of them.  You can see the options below:

Right now, I don’t have to organize my VM’s in the cloud because I’m just playing around, but I can see how it would be helpful to maybe to create rows for each test project and then group VM’s together by function within each row.

This is the stunningly simple part.  Using drop down boxes I could choose between templates for either a server OS or a server OS plus a database.  Then I could choose between Windows and Linux.  Once I selected Windows or Linux I could choose between a variety of server OS’s.  However, I do a lot of testing on desktop OS’s.  A typical test project might involve only one or two servers and a dozen workstations.  I was disappointed to see that there are no templates for workstation OS’s.  If I want to install a workstation OS I can choose “create a blank server” instead, upload an ISO, and install from that.  I’ll provide more detail about how to do this in a future post.

From here it’s really a matter of a few clicks to deploy my new server VM.  After clicking next I could choose how many VPU’s and how much RAM I wanted.  This plays into billing (your charged for the resources you use) and that’s clearly spelled out in the description.

From here I clicked next, reviewed my settings, and then deployed the VM.  A new VM appeared in my server list.  And that’s it.  In the amount of time it took you to read this (and way less time than it took me to write it) I deployed a new server VM.  And if I wanted to, I could blow it away even faster just by right clicking and selecting delete.

I see a lot of promise here, especially because I have to test while traveling. I have a ton of bandwidth between my lab and the internet and I typically VPN and then RDP or VNC into my test VM’s.  Or if I’m working on a project where performance measurement matters I’ll box up the server and carry it with me.  The remote access is OK, but carrying a server with me is, to be honest, pretty lame.

Please join me in a short prayer that vCloud Express lives up to its claims and I never have to schlep a server across the country again.

Matthew D. Sarrel (or Matt Sarrel if we’re being familiar) is executive director of Sarrel Group, a technology product testing, editorial services, and technical marketing consulting company.  He also holds editorial positions at pcmag.com, eWeek, GigaOM, and Allbusiness.com, and blogs at TopTechDog.