VMware

November 24, 2008

Blogs to watch out for: the VMguy

Blogs are a great way learning more about virtualization, getting the best technical tips, and keeping up with the news. (See my last post on Virtualization Alltop.)  One of the nice developments of this year is that we're seeing more VMware employees blogging.

One of our newest blogs is from Dave Lawrence, a VMware senior systems engineer. He asked for advice as he was starting his blog, and both Mike and I both told him that people come back if you provide value -- writing about what you know, so it's interesting, and posting every day, so there's something to come back for.

Well, Dave evidently took our advice to heart, because the result is his new blog The VMguy, "Virtualization for the little guy." Dave's focus is SMB, and I hope he keeps going in that direction, because there's a dearth of virtualization resources for small business out there, but really the topics so far will be of interest to everybody. Some recent posts:

Which storage protocol is best?

This question is definitely one of the most common that I receive. "We’re thinking of building a new infrastructure for our virtual machines, which storage protocol should we use?"  There are two things to remember for this decision.  Performance and functionality.

HCL Update Recap for the week (btw, new feeds will be coming in that area)

Notable KB Articles from the week

What does 80-cores mean to you?

When you're running 32-cores in a server how many apps will utilize that hardware?  Virtualization is the only one.  AMD and Intel’s "arms race" of processors has left the average software application in the dust. Most applications in customer’s environments don’t even remotely push the CPU capacity in the datacenter.  One of the few remaining ways to utilize these types of processors is virtualization.  If you have not virtualized as much as you can, keep working towards it.  Remember that the 4 or 6 core CPU you purchased this year will be end-of-life in 3-5 years.  Perhaps the replacement machine might just have one of the 80-core powerhouses in it.  Then you will be able to migrate all of your virtual machines to it, without having to modify a thing inside them.

VMware Converter 4.0 now in beta White Paper: RVI Performance

Redmondmag.com Reader’s Choice Awards announced

What is Enhanced vMotion Compatibility anyway?

One important factor to note.  In order to enable EVC for a cluster, you cannot have any virtual machines running on that cluster.  All of the virtual machines must be powered down (or a clean cluster with no VMs.)  This protects the stability of the existing VMs.  If you had a VM running on a host and it changed it’s CPUID while a VM was running, it would appear to the OS and app that the CPU changed while the VM was running, thus adding instability just like our original problem above. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster, there are no more VM outages required to add additional hosts to that cluster.  ...

Another thing to be aware of: the FlexMigration (Intel) and Extended Migration (AMD) features do not block the actual instructions themselves.  They only mask what the CPUID instruction reports.  Back in the 486 days, application programmers would figure out what CPU they were on by trying different instructions.  Intel formally added the CPUID instruction in the first Pentium processors in the early 1990’s. They also recommended that developers use this standard method going forward to determine CPU functionality.  This is a much better method as it is much more consistent and reliable.  The point is that it is possible that there could be code in use today, from the early 1990’s, that has not been upgraded and does not use the standard CPU checking with CPUID and tries to determine CPU capability by "trying functions."

Should I buy blades or standalones for my virtualization platform?

VirtualCenter, run it on physical or virtual?

Dave already has it down -- a mix of news, tech tips, commentary, and discussion, all inspired by his day job interacting with hundreds of small businesses -- and his blog is very worth keeping up with. Please welcome Dave to the virtualization blogosphere.

Continue reading "Blogs to watch out for: the VMguy"

Posted at 11:34 PM in VMTN | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) |

Another sip from the virtualization firehose

Picture_1 You should already be aware of Planet VMware and Planet V12n for all your virtualization blog needs -- technical tips, industry news, commentary.

But now there's a new way to scan the best virtualization blogs -- virtualization.alltop.com. The Planets present a "river of news" linear reverse chronological aggregation, which is a great way for getting a sense of the last week's zeitgeist or catching the day's breaking news, but if your favorite blogger hasn't updated in the last few days their latest post may get lost in the noise.

Alltop takes a different strategy -- their sites give you a grid of blogs and the latest 5 post titles from each. That makes it a good way to check out what's going on with a particular news source, and since it just includes titles, you can scan pretty quickly. Hover over a topic to get an excerpt.

They also had the good taste to steal liberally from the blogroll at Planet V12n, which shows they have taste. I do think they probably aren't virtualization experts, because they are definitely missing some feeds. (Like Alessandro at virtualization.info -- probably the best-known of all the virtualization blogs...)

Guy Kawasaki was one of the founders of the company, which they liken to a "magazine rack." I thought it was a stupid idea when I saw the first set of topics, but they're growing on me. The range of Alltop sites are quite wide, but since you're reading this you might also be interested in the sites covering enterprise and cloud computing.

Posted at 11:04 PM in VMTN | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |

October 28, 2008

More blog roundup

Bochebanner Jason Boche is new to blogging, but has been working with ESX for years and has been a great resource and user moderator of the VMware Communities for years as well. (And he had a giant picture hanging by the bookstore at VMworld, but I don't think that counts towards your VCP.)

He's hitting the ground running with his new blog, boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Duncan Epping has also been in a technical tip frenzy lately

Eric Gray also had a good snarky one today: Storage vendors unanimously applaud SCVMM innovation

As usual, you find more reading material on Planet V12n.

Posted at 09:19 AM in VMTN | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) |

October 24, 2008

Weekend reading: new blogs

New blogs for your weekend reading enjoyment. I should be adding some of these to Planet V12n in the near future.

New VMware ThinApp Blog from Travis Sales. Recent posts include:

VMware's Erik Gray has a new blog, VCritical. His latest post: What would things be like without VMFS?

Jason Boche, who you may recognize as a VMware Communities moderator, has started a new blog at boche.net/blog. His latest post: ESX partitioning a lost art form in ESXi

ESX administrators evolve from varying backgrounds where they dealt with a range of operating systems. Each administrator brings their best ideas, experiences, and nightmares the he or she would probably like to forget, to the table. With the ESX Service Console (Console Operating System or COS for short) based on a version of Red Hat, Linux and Unix administrators were natively the best equipped to carry on an intelligent conversation of Linux partitioning “Do’s and Don’ts”. However, ESX did add a few twists in how it used the COS and the file system. Taking into account the native behavior of Red Hat in addition to the ESX specific characteristics, partitioning best practices evolved. While not every administrator will agree on the exact size a given partition should be, a pattern in how ESX is properly partitioned is fairly evident, plus or minus the partition size variance that fits the personal taste of the administrator or perhaps company baseline policies or standards. ESX partitioning strategy was an art form; maybe something to brag about when getting your geek on in a circle of peers.

SeanClark.us, who was also one of the instigators of vmworldunderground. Recent posts:

Rodney Haywood's Musings of Rodos. Rodney has been getting up early to be a regular on the podcasts, and he's well worth reading about cloud and other topics. Recent posts:

It's Just Another Layer from Ian Koenig. Recent posts:

2 VCPs and a Truck. I don't know Jon Owings, but I love the blog name. (Around here, Jon, it's One Big Man & One Big Truck.)  Recent posts:

VM Squad from Jeromy. Recent posts:

Leo's Ramblings from Leo Raikhman. Some recent posts in the VMware category:

And I'll leave you to wander off and go check out VMware Tips from Rick Scherer. Off to a very nice start

Posted at 06:37 PM in VMTN | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) |

October 09, 2008

Blogs on www.vmware.com

Picture_1 They've been there for a while now, but did you know that you can check out the latest blog posts from VMware on the vmware.com front page? Just look over there on the lower right -- the latest News is visible when you arrive; just click on the Blogs tab to get the good stuff. They update automatically throughout the day. Clicking on View All Blogs takes you straight to the motherlode, Planet VMware. The four posts from yesterday are all good stuff:

I especially recommend the blog post on memory overcommit. More on that later.

Posted at 08:33 PM in VMTN | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |

August 28, 2008

Once again, more blogs to read on Planet V12n

The virtualization world keeps growing, and in an attempt to keep up with our little corner of it, we've added some great new blogs to Planet V12n.

It's been a while since we've had an update, so I had to hunt through my inbox and bookmarks to make sure I hadn't forgotten anybody, and I'm sure I have. If you've contacted VMware or me about being included here and you still aren't, drop me a line (jtroyer@ ...). Here are some ground rules, though:

  • I'm looking for material that is "bloglike" -- either commentary/opinion or technical content. I haven't included great news/feature sites like virtualization.com and Virtual Strategy Magazine, but I'll be pulling the existing news feeds out into a separate section soon and these kinds of sites can all go there. In the meantime check out Eric Siebert's Top 10 news and information websites that VMware administrators must visit.

  • You should be creating original content, not just excerpting other blog articles, press releases, or kb articles. (And in no case should you be reprinting entire pieces of content if you don't have permission. Read about Fair Use if you're not familiar with the concept.)

  • You should update regularly and have a track record of consistent activity on your blog. Wait a month or two to see if job duties or kids or simply inclination interferes with you keeping your blog going.

  • Official corporate blogs are OK, but the blog should be of general interest and not just devoted to your commercial activities. Two new corporate blogs I've added are from partners Tripwire and Dell, but if you take a look you'll see that they talking about more than just their products.

  • The content should be primarily about virtualization. It can absolutely mention non-VMware virtualization, but VMware should be in there somewhere because that's what our readers are interested in. If you talk about general technical topics or non-technical topics, please create a feed that contains only your virtualization or VMware category. I'm actually very interested in your fishing trip or even your tips on setting up a firewall, but the amount of content is overwhelming as it is, so we have to stay focused. If a little non-virtualization stuff creeps in, well, no worries. We are talking about blogs, after all.

  • Linking to you and aggregating your content implies no endorsement of you or your company by VMware, and only the editorial judgment of one human who is trying to create an interesting resource for virtualization practitioners. I reserve the right to remove you at any time for any reason, and I promise I will remove you promptly if you ask.

And I'd like to give a special shout-out to our friends in Redmond for the brand spankin' new VirtualizationFeed.com, which aggregates virtualization feeds (obviously with a little more emphasis on the Hyper-V side of the scale). Aside from having a nicer URL than we do, this is also a place to view what's going on over at Twitter. And Patrick linked to us, which was nice. I'm going to have to step up my game here now that there's competition in town!

Posted at 06:54 PM in VMTN | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) |

July 14, 2008

New blogs in Planet V12n

New blogs are now appearing on Planet V12n, our collection of virtualization-related news and views.

  • Also new from VMware are:

    • I've also added Dugie's Pensieve from Andrew Dugdell to the VMware employee blog list as well as moved  Duncan Epping's Yellow Bricks over there as well. Welcome aboard!

    Enjoy.

    Posted at 05:44 PM in VMTN | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) |

    April 18, 2008

    Planet V12n is expanding

    Planet V12n, our collection of the world's best virtualization bloggers, is expanding to include 12 new sites . Check out the list below.

    We're also planning a redesign of the blog pages here, including a better way to find VMware blogs (a blog and feed directory) and an update to the planet aggregators.

    If you have any suggestions, let me know. Here a few questions that have been on my mind.

    • Is the current 300 character summary ok?
    • Do you need better filtering (keywords/tags, search, etc)?
    • Is it enough of a fire hose that we need to display just titles only like Planet Lotus?
    • Should we display fewer entries like blogs.sun.com?
    • Would you like a separate planet with just virtualization news (as opposed to blog commentary and tech talk)?

    Without further ado, here are  new inhabitants of the planet. See sample posts from each at last week's entry: Bloggers to watch out for. So to all the bloggers and potential bloggers out there: remember to blog what you know; remember to link to each other (giving credit gives good karma); and go forth and virtualize!

    *Stu still has some opinions about the direction VC should go (which he should post), but he has also weighed in again: VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1 Upgrade Process - Not So Sucky After All!

    Posted at 05:25 PM in VMTN | | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) |

    April 14, 2008

    Bloggers to watch out for

    Virtualization bloggers to watch out for.

    vmwarevideos from David Davis. Sample post: VMware’s Official Free E-Learning Video sites (yes, that's a scoop):

    VMware has a couple of free video training sites that have been brought to my attention and I want to share both of them with all the VMwareVideos.com readers.

    These videos have some good tips in them. There are about 13 videos at the YouTube site and at least that many over on Blip.tv. ... I applaud VMware for posting these free videos and I hope to see more!

    Virtual Enthusiasm by Clint Eschberger. Sample post: Can Virtualization Help My Small Business?

    The first question is easy, yes! You can quickly add some features to a small business that has only been available to enterprises before. Depending on the needs you can really gain some benefits and savings from virtualizing a small group of servers.

    • Backup and Disaster Recovery – You quickly gain the ability to have full backups and disaster recovery for your server. Since the servers are essentially files, they are more portable and easier to build a process for DR around.
    • Gain Resources – This sounds funny since you are essentially consolidating multiple physical servers into a few physical servers running a virtualization technology on it. However small businesses generally do not have as large of a budget for buying a lot of physical servers to handle new tasks. This leads to consolidating many apps on each server and causing potential problems or not getting the needed application. Now adding an additional server is much cheaper.

    VMware World by Jack. Sample post: Legacy of Teaching.

    (Hey, folks, be careful about using VMware in your name. Someone could be confused that you are a VMware employee or otherwise speaking for us. I don't even speak for VMware. We'd prefer you pick some other V-word when starting your new blog.)  

    If you pass on your knowledge of VMware to those you work with, they in turn will be better able to support the environment and assist those who may need help. Also, they can begin to serve as “ambassadors” of VMware to management and non-management which can come in very useful when you are attempting to prove the concept of a new VMware implementation. We all know some companies are resistant to changes. Therefore, anything you can do to increase understanding of a new system will benefit you. By taking the time to teach those around you about the VMware you widen the knowledge and acceptability of the platform.

    One of the biggest challenges I faced starting out at the organization I am with now was gaining the trust in VMware from upper management. ...

    vmhero by Ryan. Sample post: The Time is Now

    For decades, we have launched new ventures and moved forward with a malignant carelessness for the sustainability of it all.  I believe that one of the biggest challanges ahead of us is to keep the momentum of this innovation going while simultaneously fueling a revitalization of the environment and creating sustainable practices in IT.

    With Virtualization maturing and penetrating data centers worldwide, the time is now!  I urge you to consider the “Green” aspects of your virtualization initiatives and make it part of your plan.

    virtualization stuff by Mark Mac Auley. Sample post: Actual ROI of Virtualization

    The cost savings moved the discussions along from ‘What is this virtualization thing everyone is talking about’ to ‘How do we build a plan to virtualize parts of our infrastructure?’. I will say that in my personal experience, the impacts were pretty dramatic in a data center move I was a part of. Here are the numbers:

    Overall Consolidation ratio: 20:1

    1,000 Wintel boxes into 50 Sun Blades running VMWare
    8,000 square feet to ~200 Square feet
    Cooling is 1/10 of what it was
    Power is 1/10 of what it was

    Virtualization Pro by a team of bloggers brought together by SearchVMware.com. Sample post: Use the VMware Converter bootable CD for the difficult conversions

    Depending on the scope of your virtual environment, it is likely that physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions have taken place. The P2V process truly enables VMware administrators to put physical systems into virtual environments. However, you may have come across a system that for some reason will not go through the normal conversion. In such cases the VMware Converter bootable CD may be an option. It provides a zero-transaction state that may be a favorable environment to perform P2V conversions.

    Good candidates for using the VMware Converter bootable CD include:

    • Systems that run a database engine,
    • have real-time systems that may not convert correctly,
    • or systems where the VMware Converter agent otherwise fails.

    x86 virtualization is no newcomer. Sample post: New Job Title: Virtual Network Administrator

    Potential future job posting:

    Virtual Network Administrator

    Responsibilities: A virtual network administrator oversees virtual computer networks to ensure that they function smoothly. A virtual network consists of a grouping of virtual machines that communicate with each other on a physical computer known as a virtual machine host server, on which computer files, programs, and other information are stored. A network may be as small as two or three virtual machines or as large as hundreds when paravirtualization is used.

    InformationWeek's Virtualization Blog by Joe Hernick. Sample post: VM Sprawl?

    You were at that wall. You needed a boost. Your business partners needed faster turn around, your budget dollars got crunched. Everyone else was doing it. Maybe you just though it would be cool.

    You virtualized your first production server.

    And it was good. It was great. You repurposed some VMware licenses from your test lab, grabbed some under-utilized hardware and went to town. Print servers? Check. Ten to one consolidation. Secondary domain controllers? Why not put one on the print host? Great. Marketing database running at single-digit CPU loads? Why not guest that on the new eight-way box in the lab; Marketing will never know...

    vinf.net by Simon Gallagher. Sample post: How to Convert Virtual Center from Evaluation to Licensed Version

    I can’t believe I missed this, on a couple of platforms I’ve built I’ve had to start with an eval licence and then move to a proper licence but could never find how to change virtual center from eval to licenced mode.

    ESX itself was fine you can do that via the VC GUI (below)

    image

    But despite a lot of googling I could never find out how to set Virtual Centre itself to use a licence server - so I ended up reinstalling/repairing and then selecting the option to use a licence server, my bad - it’s actually in the VI client GUI d’oh as Homer would say!

    vinternals by Stuart Radnidge is ripping us a new one lately. Sample post: VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1 - Upgrade Process Still Sucks!

    For anyone running VC 2.5 already, it's not worth upgrading IMHO. The release notes really don't provide any compelling reason to upgrade you're running a lot of ESXi and want non-experimental HA (which suggests that the HA code has been moved into the VC agent). For anyone doing fresh installs or upgrading from 2.0.x it would be worth going straight to Update 1 though.

    Desktop Virtualization from an unnamed blogger who is welcome to contact me. Sample post: New features in VMware Server 2.0 beta 2

    - VMware Infrastructure Web Access has gone through truly amazing transformation - it’s very responsive and much more intuitive - I really like it

    - Independent console - I’ve been longing for this functionality since the very beginning. It only makes sense that you can detach your console window from the rest of your browsing environment. Now, that’s a remote console as it should be, definitely!

    VM-Aware by Paul Shannon. Sample post: MCS StorageView

    Alongside a few other cool tools MightyCare Solutions have released StorageView.

    This handy little app will give you visibility of your Virtual Machines’ disk status in a very friendly GUI.

    Read all about it here and download it here.

    Posted at 06:48 PM in VMTN | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |

    December 07, 2007

    New blog roundup

    New blogs of interest, soon to be at a Planet V12n near you. First three new blogs from VMware:

    Virtualization for SAP Solutions

    Welcome to the 'Virtualization for SAP Solutions' Blog

    SAP administrators tell us they are worried about potential delays and budget over-runs. By putting everything into a virtual infrastructure, you can be sure your developers and consultants will have the environments they need to get the upgrade done, because you can provision a new virtual server for them in an hour or even less without the need to have extra hardware allocated. Very useful is also the ability to take snapshots of your virtualized SAP systems in between upgrade steps. This allows you to quickly return to an earlier point in time when a modification has not worked out as well as planned. Check here for the story of one SAP customer who used VMware Infrastructure to do a migration from a proprietary Unix environment to Linux and do an SAP upgrade at the same time. As a result of using virtualization, the project came in on time and on budget.

    Virtual Appliances

    is giving you the latest from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

    VMware Connected

    from yours truly (John Troyer) is not about virtualization per se.

    virtualization.info Vanguards on LinkedIn

    After only a month and with a single announcement, Alessandro has assembled 383 virtualization professionals from across the globe. Not bad! So why do you want to be there, even if you're not looking for a job?

    A wide cross-section of the virtualization industry. There are vendors (from VMware and Microsoft on out), consultants of all stripes, very experienced sysadmins and IT experts, and quite a few names you may recognize from communities.vmware.com.

    You can see and contact everybody in the Group. The contact piece is configurable on a per-group and per-person basis, but Vanguards is set up by default so that we can all contact each other. Interested in finding a virtualization consultant in Norway? Looking for a contact at a vendor -- either the executive or the engineering kind? Want to compare notes with someone else in your industry? You can probably make that happen here with a quick search.

    Are you connected?

    How do you connect with other virtualization users? How will these connections help you learn more and be more successful in your own projects? How do you investigate the various technologies and solutions out there? How do you keep up with new tools, products, and resources here at VMware? And I always keep in mind what I've taken as my personal goal -- how can VMware help you save the day at work and get you fat raises and promotions?

    I'll cover blogs, "Web 2.0" sites (like del.icio.us, Digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon), social networks (like Facebook and LinkedIn), and other communities of interest to virtualization users (say, Stickyminds and SQAforums for you software testing types). I will try to avoid talking about stupid web 2.0 sites, but one man's stupid is another man's cool tool.

    New blogs seem to be springing up every week. Here are three blogs from the VMware blogosphere, one of which is also posted on our recently upgraded communities site. Did you know any member can start a blog on VMware Communities?

    Mister VM

    from Jae Ellers is brand new

    ESX 3i - The End of the World As We Know It

    What's so compelling here?

    • 32 MB footprint (yes, it takes only 32 MB of code to make the entire ESX server run)
    • New hardware will ship with a dual bank flash drive for firmware like redundancy. Blow an upgrade and just switch back to the code you were running 5 minutes ago.
    • Security.  No agents.  No services.  No access without secure authentication.
    • No more customizing installations for new releases.
    • No more drive failures or complicated SAN booting setups.

    System Virtualization & the Market

    However [VMware's] enterprise products will continue to command a premium as long as the value is there (it is) and the competitors are not executing on their current promises (they’re not). Coupled with the strong new product offering in the enterprise space with Site Recovery Manager I think VMware is in the catbird seat for the short term.  Survey says this is the case now

    treesum VM /ETC

    from Rich Brambley has been burning it up since VMworld in September.

    VIZZR.INFO and VIZZR.INFO on VMware Communities

    from the fine folks at osde.info.

    Posted at 11:26 PM in VMTN | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |

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