More from Mike Laverick at RTFM Education on the last day of VMworld:
Performance on Citrix:
The actual session turned up no surprises from what we have all gathered from the Forum’s and experience. Single CPU VM’s for MFPS are the way to go; Turning off hyper-threading is still recommended; ESX 3.x offers much better user concurrency than ESX 2.x…. with ALL usual cavats that it depends on your APP and your user activity.
Networking Scenarios & Troubleshooting:
One of the outstanding session of my time here at VMworld. I really
couldn’t fault either content or the guy who delivered the stuff. He
really knew his stuff – and some more. I will be definitely taking some
of this stuff and re-working it into the classes I teach (time
permitting)When you get the chance to download the PDF of this session – make sure you do.
My only gripe – was some of my top questions, this guy wasn’t able
to answer. Like clunkiness of the iSCSI setup when you have CHAP
authentication; how you can’t reliably and effectively create vmkernel
switches with that X in the box to enable VMotion and so on. We were
treated to some “pat” answers on that which I just don’t buy.
Well, this is my 2nd or 3rd “troubleshooting” style sessions, and
unfortunately they are beginning to form a pattern. With very obivious
recommendations (such as document, be logical, read log files). This
one was a cut above the average session of this type. With a REAL
engineer talking about the REAL problems he has faced. Hey, what a
novel idea! Troubleshooting based on real experiences (plenty of irony
intended!) … So in short – for future reference. More examples. More war-stories. Keep it snappy…
VMotion between Apples & Oranges:
This was a very interesting session. It took my already good knowledge
about some of the processor compatiablities to a new level. I would
strongly urge those who were unable to attend this years VMworld to
review the PDF of PPT when you have time. …[Y]ou will be glad to know that I have taken the decision to try and
galvanise some of the Forum members who have been intelligentally
experimenting with this feature. Because of the hardware involved this
can’t be a one-man-rtfm-effort. It’s going to take a community
response. If VMware won’t or can’t give us all info we need – we’re
going to figure out for ourselves.
