VMTN Blog

Link: VMware: VROOM!: VMware Update Manager Performance and Best Practices Paper Posted.

VMware Update Manager (VUM) is a component of VMware Infrastructure that automates patches and upgrades of ESX hosts as well as Windows and Linux virtual machines. A new white paper, VMware Update Manager Performance and Best Practices http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vum_1.0_performance.pdf, is now available.

In this paper we discuss VUM 1.0 host deployment, latency, resource consumption, guest OS tuning, high-latency networks, and the impact of on-access virus scanning. We also provide performance tips to help customers tune the system for better performance.

Link: VMware ESX is the Industry’s First Hypervisor to be Validated by Microsoft, Offers Customers Expanded Support Options for Microsoft Applications - VMware.

VMware Lays Foundation for Broader Market Penetration by Giving Customers Access to Support for Software For All Major Microsoft Applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Server and others across Virtualized Environments

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Sept 3, 2008 -- VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced it has qualified its industry-leading VMware ESX hypervisor under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) is the first hypervisor to be listed under the program, providing VMware customers who run Windows Server and Microsoft applications with access to cooperative support from Microsoft and VMware. ...

Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program enables VMware and other software providers to test and validate their virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. Under this program, Microsoft offers cooperative technical support to customers running Windows Server on validated, non-Microsoft server virtualization software, such as VMware ESX 3.5 update 2. Customers with support policies in place, and running Windows Server-based applications on VMware ESX 3.5u2, can receive cooperative technical support from Microsoft. VMware also offers an extra layer of protection for customers, outside of Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, who work directly with VMware for support. The additional protection is a part of the VMware Premier Support contract with Microsoft that enables VMware to escalate application issues rapidly and work directly with Microsoft engineers to expedite resolution.

VMware's own Mike DiPetrillo surveys the current state of patching virtualization platforms and it's not pretty. Link: VMware Patch Tuesday from Mike's blog A Little Truth.

Microsoft’s new hypervisor based product called “Hyper-V” requires a Windows operating system in the Parent Partition. Given that you’ll need to patch that Windows OS just like any other Windows OS I decided to look at the history of Microsoft patches for Windows Server 2003. ...

Virtual Iron actually uses the Xen open-source hypervisor. There are a lot of other vendors out there that use that same hypervisor (Red Hat, SUSE, SUN, Citrix/XenSource, and Oracle to name a few). While the hypervisor itself is pretty good the architecture still requires a general purpose operating system in Domain 0 (the Parent Partition in Microsoft land). What does this mean? Well, you’re back to having to patch a general purpose Linux operating system which introduces downtime for you system. ...

Last, we’ll go into a totally different architecture for the last vendor - Virtuozzo. ... you to install the patch once on the host and everyone inherits it. Guess what? It works! ... Let’s say you deploy that patch and it blows up one of the VMs on the host. If you’ve never had a patch blow up something in your environment then I want to meet you. Anyhow, something blew up so we’ll need to back that patch out. Oh wait...all of the other VMs are inheriting that same patch. ...

Mike isn't shy about sharing from his long experience in virtualization, and in my experience he knows what he's talking about. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike. I hope we see more of you around here.

From the new VMware Security Blog, Nand Mulchandani responds to the article by Ron Oglesby and Dan Pianfetti at virtualization.info about the number of patches that VMware has released for VI3.

Link: VMware Security Blog > ESX patching questions.

Recently there was an article on “Patch Tuesday for VMware” over at Virtualization.info. It is an interesting article that raised some questions that we thought we might be able to shed some light on. The article was more focused on patching and not security alone, but since patching has now been so closely associated with security, so I'll jump in and provide a response on our security blog.

As the article points out, "patching is a necessary evil" - and that the existence of ESX patches should not come as a shock to anyone. So let’s talk about the sinister plan behind the increase in ESX patches. ...

You should read the whole thing. (Seriously. Nand explains it well.) One gee-whiz part for me is with the new Update Manager -- and even pre-3.5 with just DRS and VMotion -- how the end-user and admin experience for VI patches is very much not like MS Patch Tuesday. The other gee-whiz is the percent of patches that have been going to the Red Hat-derived Service Console, which of course with 3i is now  gone.

Today we announced that SAP is now providing support for their Windows applications in production on VMware. Here's further commentary from our new SAPsolutions blog:

Link:SAP and VMware: Global Technology Partners. Support for Windows in production!.

We are very happy to be able to announce this news. The negotiations took some time to complete because both companies wanted to create a framework that would have the systems and processes in place to guarantee the relationship would mean a better experience for our joint customers. Finalizing the contract is gratifying for me especially as the alliance director, but the whole team celebrated together last week in Walldorf where we were gathered to talk about our plans for 2008.

What this agreement means is that, with NO limitations, SAP supports

• SAP Netweaver-based applications, industry solutions, components, and add-ons (Linux for NetWeaver 2004 and NetWeaver 7.0, and Windows for NetWeaver 7.0)
• running in any environment (dev, test, or production)
• running on Linux or Windows 64-bit on VMware Infrastructure, as
  long as the hardware on which the stack runs has been certified by SAP.

 

Talking with customers we’ve heard about multiple pain points that
VMware Infrastructure is a great solution for, such as server and
infrastructure sprawl in the multiple SAP component landscape,
impending upgrades to 64-bit, provisioning dev and test environments
that sometimes require more hardware than production environments,
availability (“job one” for the SAP administrator), and integrating new
technologies like NetWeaver, ESOA and xApps.

In September we gave a webinar called “The benefits of deploying SAP Enterprise Applications on Virtual Infrastructure” and if you’d like to replay it you can find it on the VMware-SAP web page (www.vmware.com/sap) or you can go directly to it here.