VMware Planet !

After 10 years, in 2008, virtualization is finally starting to mature in most people's eyes. Despite all of the efforts made and additional... Read more at VMblog.com.

F5 Networks, Inc. Alane Moran, 206-272-6850 a.moran@f5.com or Connect Public Relations Holly Hagerman, 801-373-7888 hollyh@connectpr.com F5 Networks, Read more at VMblog.com.

Web host Hostway has conducted a survey that suggests that the growth in virtualization has increased adoption of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)... Read more at VMblog.com.

Lance Berc, Corporate Architect  over at VMware created some PowerShell scripts to automate the ESX configuration.These scripts automate much of the drudgery needed to incorporate a fresh ESXi or ESX Classic Server into a Virtual Center DRS cluster. Automation is the backbone of scalability. Via Vinternals.

Lance Berc : Configure freshly booted ESX with PowerShell

Intel’s The Server Room blog has an interesting tidbit of information for those of us thinking about servers with the Intel 7400 series of CPUs in it:

As mentioned before, an MP Xeon 7400 series server will provide four channels of FBD memory. There are a couple of considerations here. First, latency to memory increases for every DIMM added to the system. This is important to note because you can keep the memory latency to a minimum by adding fewer high capacity DIMMs. Second, be sure to evenly distribute the DIMMs across all the channels. In other words, don’t fill up all the slots on one channel and then lightly populate the rest.

Some systems get faster when you have more DIMMs, some get slower, and it’s information like this that can sometimes push us from sixteen 2 GB DIMMs to eight 4 GB DIMMs. On the other hand, there’s always the price. A DIMM that has double the capacity often costs more than twice as much. Then again, if you only use half as many DIMMs it means you get expandability later, though now obviously at the cost of some performance. It’s always about the tradeoffs, isn’t it?

While there wasn't a lot of concrete details that came out of VMworld, one thing is for certain - VMware are working on a _lot_ of new functionality for their next major release. Of particular relevance to us at vinternals is the host profiles feature, as it provides the same functionality as Statelesx, but is done in a much more user friendly way. Which is fine - it's not like we threw in out

One of the lures to get people into your booth at a trade show is to have a good booth giveaway, or chachki. During VMworld 2008, Falconstor had such Read more at VMblog.com.

“With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, we are focused on the core pillars of developer experience, support for the latest platforms spanning client, server, services and devices, targeted experiences for specific application types, and core architecture improvements,” said S. “Soma” Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. “These pillars are designed specifically to meet the needs of developers, the teams that drive the application life cycle from idea to delivery, and the customers that demand the highest quality applications across multiple platforms. You can expect to hear a lot more about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 in the coming months.”

Democratizing Application Life-Cycle Management

Today, much of application development remains siloed throughout the enterprise, leading to decreased productivity and lengthy product development cycles. With VSTS 2010, Microsoft is taking the next step forward in giving individuals and development organizations an advanced solution that enables them to integrate effectively and build and deliver high-quality applications.

This includes new capabilities that make it easier for all contributors on the software team to participate throughout the life cycle — from the core developers and testers to the wider team of project managers, designers and business analysts. Highlights include the following:

•	Modeling tools. With VSTS 2010 Architecture, Microsoft will enable both technical and nontechnical users to create and use models to collaborate and to define business and system functionality graphically. The new version supports both Unified Modeling Language and Domain Specific Language support, so development organizations will have the right tool for right job. The new modeling capabilities in VSTS 2010 are a core part of the larger Microsoft modeling platform, which will also include the “Oslo” repository, tools and language.
•	Improved efficiency throughout the test cycle. With VSTS 2010, Microsoft has made a significant investment in testing features and dramatically simplifying the tools required to integrate testing across the life cycle. New features include the ability to eliminate nonreproducible bugs, fast setup and deployment of tests to ensure the highest degree of completeness of test, focused test planning and progress tracking, and ensuring that all code changes are properly tested.
•	Substantial improvements in collaboration capabilities. Microsoft has made major investments in the capabilities and scalability of Team Foundation Server (TFS) including significant improvements that allow teams to configure and adopt any flavor of Agile development processes. Teams can track and trace work more easily with richer linking of work items enabling hierarchical work item relationships. In the source code management system, TFS now provides visualization tools for tracking changes across branches and into the production build. VSTS 2010 also introduces workflow-based builds that catch errors before they have a chance to affect the rest of the team or, worse, enter production. Finally, administrators will find dramatically simpler TFS deployment and management.

“The application life cycle is an integral part of today’s business. Regardless of core competencies, all organizations are driven by software that is created and customized to deliver a competitive advantage,” said Theresa Lanowitz, founder of voke, inc. “Enterprises that invest in an ALM solution can decrease their total cost of ownership of applications in their IT portfolio, and bring about a global approach that is an integrated and expansive system consisting of people, processes and technology. This global approach to ALM facilitates collaboration and takes the risk out of software development to produce predictable and reliable results for an optimized business outcome. Solutions such as VSTS are poised to take advantage of market opportunity by offering an application life-cycle platform to help enterprises realize this ROI benefit.”

Microsoft Press

Are you going to be there. I'll be meeting some industry friends there, do let me know if you can make it. Give me a call or mail me at tarry.singh (AT) gmail.com so we can meet up.

Agenda:



Flip through their online brochure

Sign up to the VirtualizationAdmin.com Monthly Newsletter, written by David Davis, containing news, tips, links of the month and much more. Subscribe today and don't miss a thing! David Davis is Director of Infrastructure at TrainSignal.com. He has a number of certifications including CCIE #9369, MCSE, CISSP, & VCP. Additionally, David has authored over three hundred articles and a number of video training courses including Windows XP, Wireless Networking, Linux+ Administration, ISA Server, A+ Certification, Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware Server & Workstation, & VMware ESX Server. The intention of this blog is to share with readers the most relevant and important information, news, tips and tweaks for all aspects of Virtualization, focusing on Microsoft Hyper-V. VMware, and Citrix. He will discuss topics such as high availability, migration, performance, recovery, product add-ons, and more. He will also cover practical information to help with administration and management of your virtualization infrastructure.

Visit David Davis' Virtualization Blog

DataCore Software announced today its new “Step Up to DataCore” program for LeftHand Networks’ resellers. The program, which includes discounted... Read more at VMblog.com.

It’s going to be a weird Wisconsin/Ohio State football game without the University of Wisconsin - Madison band, seeing as how they all got suspended:

Leckrone suspended the band Friday night from performing in today’s home football game against Ohio State because he said the allegations were serious enough that they required immediate action… There will be no replacement act at tonight’s Badgers football game to fill the absence of the UW Marching Band.

Of course, it’s the one football game a year I actually make it to. I’m not going to make any in-depth comments, except to say that the band has been rowdy and fun for decades, and if people don’t like it, well, all the members are adults (well, they’re over 18) and can make their own decisions. Welcome to life. Personally, I always enjoyed the band parties I went to.

Perhaps I can suggest some replacement halftime activities:

• interpretive dance by randomly-selected fans (or all the seniors taking the band’s tickets tonight).
• contests like those that happen between periods at a hockey game, like “who can score the highest on the breathalyzer and still make a field goal.”
• a high school football game.
• a deathmatch between mascots, or at least a swordfight or jousting with the team flags.
• get Donald Lipski, artist who created the sculpture “Nail’s Tales,” on the field to talk about what the hell he was thinking.

Just a thought. We’ll see what they actually do.

The Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) is an infrastructure that provides fast and efficient communication between a virtual machine and the host operating system and between two or more virtual machines on the same host. The VMCI SDK facilitates development of applications that use the VMCI infrastructure.

The VMCI SDK has the following components:

• A datagram API to exchange small messages
• A shared memory API to share data
• An access control API to control what resources a virtual machine can access
• A discovery service for publishing and retrieving resources

Without VMCI, virtual machines communicate with the host using the network layer. Using the network layer adds overhead to the communication. With VMCI communication overhead is minimal and different tasks that require that communication can be optimized.

Easgs has created a video tutorial about how to install VMware 6.5 Workstation in OpenSuse 11.0, the video is available here.

This video shows how to install Vmware 6.5 workstation with the bundle file in OpenSuse 11.0, to accomplish this you must install first the following packages: binutils, gcc, gcc-c++, kernel-source and make and after that execute the command “sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.i386.bundle” as root, all this is show in the video, it is assumed that you have inserted the opensuse 11.0 DVD and the Vmware installation file is located at your home directory.

1105 Media, Inc. announces the conference program for its ITVirtualizationLive conference on Dec. 9-11, 2008, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel and... Read more at VMblog.com.

My prediction series on ITToolbox were very well received. I will be starting off with the 2009 predictions and will cover:

• Security, Ethics and Ownership issues
  
• Regulatory Compliance
• Globalization
• Visualization Methods (Dashboards, Toolkits)
• Consumerization
• Industrialization (Data Center, Practices, etc)
• Operational Excellence within IT: SCM, Sales automation, Marketing automation, Bid Management, Project Management etc
  

and lots more.

I will also be linking back to my articles and will continue from there.

Today, VMware released a new version of VirtualCenter, VC2.5 Update 3, a new version of Virtual Consolidated Backup, VCB 1.1 Update 1, and patches for ESXi and ESX 3.5. These and the recently released versions of VMware's hosted products and patches for ESX 3.0.1, 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 address several security issues. The issues are described in a new and an updated security advisory published today.
One of the fixed security issues is a privilege escalation on certain 64-bit guest operating systems, CVE-2008-4279. It allows an attacker with a login account on a guest operating system to elevate their privileges on that system. The flaw doesn't allow for compromising the host system. The other security issues involve password disclosure and an update to JRE.
On a side note, we like to thank everyone that completed our questionnaire on security advisories during the VMworld 2008 Security Lab. Expect a blog post on the results soon

Expect more explanation in a seperate blog.

I wrote about a new patch for ESX(i) 3.5 yesterday and the fact that VirtualCenter 3.5 Update 3 was mentioned. Well today VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 has been released! You can pick it up here.

I think the most important fixes are the ones for HA. With Update 2 VM started checking the subnets of the heartbeat network for HA. If these weren’t compatible than HA bailed out. With Update 3 a new advanced option has been introduced ,”das.bypassNetworkVerification”. When this setting is set to “yes” the Network compatibility check isn’t done and thus it’s possible to have an incompatible but routable HA heartbeat network.

Another important one is that as of U3 it’s possible again to delete HA advanced options, this problem was introduced in U2 and has been fixed.

An error that was also much talked about on the VMTN forum was the fact that VM’s weren’t vmotioned when maintenance mode was entered even if the admision control was disabled. This error has also been fixed.

These are three most important fixes in U3 in my opinion. Be sure to update and read the release notes for more info and fixes. Please not that the plugins for Update Manager and Converter has also been updated.

• sanbarrow.com - ESX Bandit project
• jkkmobile: Meet Asus Eee PC 900HA with 160GB HDD

Communities Podcast #19 with Mike DiPetrillo On with the show. VMware Principal Systems Engineer Mike DiPetrillo joined us this week for an open topic roundtable. Our subjects ranged quite a bit, from Mike's observations on Linux vs Windows shops, the VMware Linux strategy, Mike's recent hacking projects, such as a proof-of-concept VI Client for the iPhone and new "quick migration" PowerShell script, the myth of 'unsuitable workloads' for virtualization, and more. Listen with the widget on the right or download the mp3 (63 minutes). More info on feeds/notifications. Mike DiPetrillo's blog: From the VMware Field Rich Brambley's liveblog of VMware's session TA3201 on our Linux strategy and article on Partitioning ESX Mike on his Quick Migration script Distributed Power Management Eric Siebert: Configuring Distributed Power Management VMware's Energy Efficiency Solutions page More on Enterprise Application workloads for virtualization Next week, our guest will be Leena Joshi and our topic the Virtual Datacenter OS. You can listen live online or on the phone and we welcome questions.

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I’m not sure how many times I’ve been asked by coworkers, friends, and random people if I know how to fix a problem. The conversation always goes something like:

“Hi Bob. I am getting error XYZ when I try to use scp with public keys to copy a VMDK file from one ESX host to another. Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?”

“Hi Joe. It could be one of thousands of things. You might try looking at /var/log/messages or /var/log/secure to see what SSH thinks the problem is.”

“Bob, thanks! It was a permission problem for my authorized_hosts file.” Neato.

The nice thing about logs is that they often give you information that helps you solve a problem[0]. Like today, I’m trying to use VMware’s Update Manager to patch an ESX host but it keeps reporting that “VMware Update Manager had a failure.” Digging in a little, it turns out that it’s complaining about patch metadata being missing, which doesn’t make any sense because all of my other hosts work just fine. It’s just this one customer’s ESX hosts that are being difficult.

So I “tail -f /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log” to watch what happens when I tell it to scan for updates. Sure enough, I see the error, and it becomes painfully obvious what the problem is:

[2008-10-03 11:26:06.714 'App' 106433456 info] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR task-47870 --  -- vim.host.PatchManager.Scan: vim.fault.PatchMetadataNotFound:
(vim.fault.PatchMetadataNotFound) {
   dynamicType = <unset>,
   patchID = "Unknown",
   metaData = (string) [
      "http://vcserverhostname:80/vci/hostupdates/hostupdate/esx/esx-3.5.0/contents.xml.sig"
   ],
   msg = "Metadata for patch missing."
}

Sure, the metadata can’t be retrieved because, to this host, ‘vcserverhostname’ isn’t resolvable[1].

About 15 seconds later I’d updated the DNS configuration to include my Update Manager server’s domain (as part of the “Look for hosts in the following domains”). Problem solved.

Thanks /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log!

————

[0] This seems obvious, but given how many times I’ve had that same conversation, it doesn’t seem like a place people usually remember to look.

[1] Which is also easily checked, at least from ESX’s CLI: “host vcservername”. If it tells you “Host vcservername not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)” you know what the problem is.

After the 3.0.X updates the 3.5 updates couldn’t be far away, and here you go… And if you have a close look at the KB article of the patch you can see that VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 is also coming soon.

Today the Dutch market leader in virtualization training XTG delivered the Dutch virtualization event. The Xpert Training Group V-Event is the key virtualization event of the year. At this event attendees received the latest product updates and information, they saw live demos and got a deep level of understanding required to turn their infrastructure challenges into a competitive advantage through server, desktop and storage virtualization solutions and technology. I was one of the attendees and recorded some Dutch video footage which is viewable at XTG’s Vimeo page.

We are really curious what this project's outcome will be. I'd love to conenct to any of the above mentioned parties.

A handful of Silicon Valley's biggest tech names are teaming up on a cloud computing project.

HP, Intel and Yahoo are pooling their resources to create a half-dozen new cloud computing centers for researchers. These centers will be powered by massive computers, big enough to support data-intensive research into cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a Silicon Valley buzzword that essentially refers to software that exists and is managed online, like Salesforce, Yahoo Maps and Google Documents, for example.

HP, Intel and Yahoo have already poured millions of dollars into cloud computing.

No word yet on how much this latest collaboration will cost.

Source

This little advertisement managed to escape my SPAM filter.  I guess with every vendor in the world jumping into the Virtualization game and every company in the world at least testing the...

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So I don't post a link round up that often but we had a bunch of good ones come through the system today.

This one is a bit older but if you are looking for a short intro video to XenCenter (think Xen's version of VirtualCenter).

VKernel's tools (Capacity, Chargeback, Modeler and Search) are all built on the VIM API.

So we move on to the XEN API (vs. the XenCenter API).

Finally kudos to Roger Levy for pointing out the Mono project - where folks can run .NET applications on non-Windows (i.e. Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. ) hosts/vms.

For fun, imagine a use case scenario where you to run .NET on Windows using MONO vs. Windows.

On to other Hypervisors (well Hyper-V's) - Microsoft announces a free download of Hyper-V servers - thats Microsoft-based Virtual Machines without any Windows 2008 in the way.

Lenovo announces their server lineup.

“With ThinkServer Lenovo delivers exceptionally engineered hardware and easy-to-use software all developed specifically for the SMB customer,” said Marc Godin, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Business Unit, Lenovo.

I love when a VP of Enterprise Business is the quote used for SMB customers.

Here are some screenshots compiled by Chris Hahn for a typical no nonsense installation of XenDesktop 2.1. Desktop Delivery Controller prerequisites: MS XML 6.0, Visual J# 2.0, .Net Framework 3.5...

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Chris Hahn has sent me an updated version of the Fix-VMSCSI plugin to support servers with the QLogic 40xx iscsi HBA based on my post to extend the FIX-VMSCSI plugin.               ...

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A couple of days ago I wrote about the Quick Migration script that Mike D wrote with Powershell. Like I said, it should be possible to integrate the script with VC. Well this has been done by Dennis of Icomasoft. Icomasoft recently released the Powershell Plugin for VirtualCenter. And with this plugin you can easily integrate your scripts into VirtualCenter which makes it even more easy to run your scripts. You can find the altered script here, it includes a nice progress bar…

Thanks Thomas, for pointing me out! And great work by Dennis!

Everyone installing more than 2 or 3 ESX hosts at a time should start with scripting their installation in my opinion, why?:

1. it will save time
2. consistent installations
3. no need anymore for doing backups of the ESX host

vinf.net pointed out a video clip from GigaOm.tv which gives an insight to the capabilities and design behind HP’s Performance-Optimized Data Center or POD for short. The HP POD is basically a shipping container containing a row of high density servers, power and cooling.  The POD contains 50U racks which if used with HP’s 10U [...]

I'm going to be at Reflections|Projections 2008 this weekend. I'll be talking about the role virtual machine monitors can play in systems research, using VProbes as both an example and exploratory tool. It's an honor to have my name on the same web page as some of my fellow speakers. Curious parties should swing on by UIUC's1404 Siebel at 4pm Saturday.

Two more from MikeD: 4 reasons for server sprawl; build an ESXi box for $500 Mike DiPetrillo is on a roll. (Our podcast with Mike will be up tomorrow; it was delayed because the podcast provider was not posting audio for 24 hours; coincidentally, this blog provider just went out for 45 minutes. There's a cloud and availability post there somewhere.) Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Virtual Server Sprawl. He gives 4 reasons for server sprawl, from underestimating how many servers you have to begin with (did you count Jim's two test servers in the old closet?) to now being able to set up some redundancy. I've seen this topic come up over and over again on panels, in the press, on blogs, and in customer conversations. What's virtual server sprawl? It's the theory (or fact) that because virtual machines are so easy to create that once you virtualize your servers will start to multiply like rabbits. I'm here to tell you there's a lot of fact behind that statement. After doing virtualization for 6 1/2 years here at VMware I don't think I've seen one customer reduce their server count ever. Sure, they've gotten rid of a lot of physical hardware. I guess you could call those servers. However, I've never seen the actual server count (OS/App stack) go down. Usually it starts to ramp up rather quickly. Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Building a $500 VMware ESXi Host. See also Dave Mishchenko's excellent www.vm-help.com and the ESXi forum and the Community Hardware Software Forum.

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So everybody and their mother has a virtualization product now. Too bad all the vendors could not standardize on the same key (or key combinations) that releases the mouse from a virtual machine’s (VM) console window. Until that day happens (don’t hold your breath) this post will be my listing of known host key or [...]

(Aliso Viejo, CA — October 1, 2008)— 3Tera®, Inc., the leading innovator of cloud computing technology and utility computing services, announces beta availability of AppLogic™ 2.4 which includes support for virtual appliances running Microsoft® Windows Server™ incorporated in all infrastructure components necessary to run Web applications including storage, networking and load balancing. The new functionality is available immediately both as a service in the cloud and as private clouds in enterprise datacenters. For the first time, a cloud computing platform enables virtual datacenters that exceed the capabilities of traditional datacenters in commercial enterprise environments.

Complete Cloud Computing Solution
Adding Windows to AppLogic’s existing support of Linux, Sun’s Open Solaris™ and Solaris™ 10 follows 3Tera’s Cloudware™ architecture for open cloud computing, announced earlier this year. Users of AppLogic can now utilize the most popular datacenter operating systems in their applications, and even mix and match operating systems within applications as needed. This advance opens cloud computing to the ever growing number of users seeking IT scalability and flexibility beyond what is possible today in traditional datacenter environments.

“Windows support is an important requirement for an open cloud computing environment robust enough to take on any Web or enterprise application,” said Bert Armijo, senior vice president of sales and marketing, 3Tera Inc. “Solutions like .net, IIS, SQL Server and Exchange have made Windows a critical part of IT infrastructure.”

“3Tera’s announcement is ground-breaking news from both technology and business perspectives,” said Todd Abrams, President and COO, Layered Tech. “Enterprise datacenters today are heterogeneous, and now AppLogic allows customers to use their preferred operating systems when running their applications in the cloud. As a hosting provider, having a unified cloud platform simplifies our operations and opens new markets.”

Strong Customer Acceptance
Today, AppLogic delivers world-class, highly scalable infrastructure to small companies and major enterprises alike. As the AppLogic user base has grown beyond Linux, support for Windows has been the most requested enhancement.

“As a service provider we are extremely pleased with the flexibility and operational efficiencies we have enjoyed with AppLogic,” shares Dante Orsini, Managing partner, CorePLUS, Inc., a turnkey on-demand service for enterprise class collaboration and productivity solutions. “While businesses continue to search for new ways to cut costs, we are seeing a tremendous demand to outsource the management of Microsoft environments. It is extremely exciting to work with 3Tera and be able to deliver both Windows and open source applications as a managed service over one instantly scalable platform.”

“Inovaware evaluated a number of service providers to find a cloud computing platform that could support our billing and customer management SaaS business,” said Bruce Kim, CTO, Inovaware Corporation, a recognized leader in online billing and customer care solutions with over 600 customers in more than 30 countries. “3Tera’s AppLogic platform gives us the flexibility we need and the availability of Windows is a significant factor for our business.”

World-wide Reach
3Tera is currently the only company offering cloud computing solutions on a global scale by partnering with datacenters on four continents. As the only provider that enables others to build clouds and offer cloud computing solutions, 3Tera ultimately allows customers to choose their locations and expand or move to a different location as the business demand requires, without having to change a single line of code in their online applications.

"Hybrid infrastructure solutions will have a key role in the new cloud computing and SaaS markets," explains Stephen Hurford, communications director, DNS Europe, a pan-European hosting and outsourcing business and 3Tera partner. "We are already seeing demand for OS-agnostic solutions, combined with the need to reduce infrastructure costs and increase the volume, complexity and global reach of the Web service offerings that our customers are building.”

Availability
AppLogic 2.4.5 is available immediately to preferred partners and customers. For more details, visit www.3Tera.com.

About 3Tera, Inc.
3Tera, Inc. is the innovator of cloud computing technology and utility computing services, simplifying the deployment and scaling of Web applications. Named “Cool Vendor in IT operations, 2008” by Gartner Group and one of the “Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008” by Linux Magazine, 3Tera‘s AppLogic™ grid operating system enables the first true utility computing services to completely remove the cost and complexity associated with infrastructure. AppLogic converts commodity servers into scalable grids on which users can visually operate, deploy and scale transactional Web applications without any modification of code. Software-as-a-Service providers, Web 2.0 companies, enterprises and open source developers can now get new online services quickly to market by utilizing resources from commodity hosting providers on a pay-as-you-go basis, while maintaining complete control of applications including visual operation, scaling and on-demand resource provisioning. For more information, visit www.3Tera.com.

SEATTLE, WA — October 2, 2008 — Xenocode, the leader in application virtualization technology, today introduced the industry’s first application virtualization products designed for software developers and publishers. Xenocode Virtual Application Studio ISV Edition allows developers to package their Windows, .NET and Java-based applications into self-contained virtual executables that run instantly on end-user desktops – without installation, setup, dependencies or conflicts. Xenocode Virtual Application Studio ISV Edition is available immediately at www.xenocode.com/Products/StudioIsv.

Virtual Application Studio ISV Edition allows developers to package applications for delivery by capturing a “snapshot” of the application in a ready-to-run state. Xenocode then builds a lightweight, self-contained virtual executable that runs instantly on any Windows desktop, regardless of operating system version or privilege restrictions. Xenocode’s unique, high-performance virtualization technology adds negligible space and performance overhead and, unlike traditional hardware virtualization, does not require a copy of any host operating system to be included in the deliverable. Virtual applications can be run instantly off the Web, file shares, and CDs, saved into legacy MSI packages, or deployed on portable USB devices.

"Application virtualization will reshape the way software publishers deliver products to their customers. Unlike legacy deployment technologies such as MSI, Xenocode technology provides end-users with an instant, reliable experience while dramatically reducing development, test, and support costs,” noted Kenji Obata, Xenocode founder and CEO. "With Xenocode Virtual Application Studio ISV Edition, software publishers and their customers will never again experience a failed setup or wait hours for applications to install.”

Xenocode Application Virtualization: Frees Applications from the Underlying OS
Application virtualization is a sophisticated technology that separates applications from the underlying operating systems on which they execute. Unlike traditional hardware virtualization solutions that require an entire copy of the host operating system, Xenocode's lightweight application virtualization technology emulates core operating system features required for application execution. “Xenocoded” applications require no setup, configuration, clients, or device drivers, are isolated from external DLL and dependency conflicts, and run properly on Windows Vista and locked-down desktops. Xenocode-virtualized applications can be easily deployed on USB devices, corporate intranets, the Internet, or existing desktop management infrastructure software such as Novell ZENworks, Microsoft SMS, LANDesk Management Suite, and BMC Configuration Management.

The Xenocode Virtual Application Studio authoring environment allows software developers and IT professionals to easily convert their existing Windows, .NET, and Java-based applications into virtualized applications ready for instant deployment.

Pricing and Availability

Xenocode Virtual Application Studio 2008 ISV Edition is available today in Startup, SMB, and Enterprise license packs. The Startup license, available to organizations with up to five developers, is available for purchase on the Web for $1,599. SMB and Enterprise site licenses are available for larger organizations. For more information or to download a free evaluation version, please visit www.xenocode.com.

About Xenocode

Xenocode develops next-generation virtualization technologies that make applications available instantly and reliably, anywhere. The Xenocode Virtual Application Studio authoring environment and Xenocode Virtual Operating System allow IT professionals and software developers to deploy applications in lightweight, pre-configured virtual executables that run instantly on any Windows desktop via intranets, the Internet, USB keys, or existing desktop management infrastructure. Xenocode was founded in 2002 and consists of a team of veteran Microsoft engineers and academic researchers. Today, its customers include thousands of industry-leading consulting, financial, government, military, and technology companies, and tens of thousands of independent IT professionals. Xenocode is based in Seattle, Washington.

First announced at the Microsoft getVirtualNow launch event on Sept 8, Microsoft’s stand alone, bare metal installable Hyper-V Server 2008 is now available for free download. Go to the Microsoft Hyper-V Server page to get your copy. Patrick O’Rourke’s Windows Virtualization team Blog post Bare metal hypervisor is here, along with new training, services announced the availability [...]

VMworld 2008 Sessions & Labs will be made available this week. All paid attendees of VMworld 2008 will be able to view flash videos (audio over slides) of the breakout sessions, download PDFs or listen to MP3 podcasts. PDFs only will be made available for manuals and presentations from hands-on labs.
As an added bonus, all attendees will get access to all sponsor keynotes as PDFs, MP3s and streaming flash presentations as well. Check the site Friday for the release of this content. Via the forum and Holy VM!

I have received a free copy of “VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center” from one of the authors, Jase McCarty this morning. I’m speed reading trough it and believe that these guys have covered everything you need to know when setting up your ESX environment. Finally an alternative to the VI3 install and configure course guide.

The VMware ESX server is vital to virtualization methods used to perform server consolidation, software development, test automation, legacy Windows migration, and more. VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center is an extremely valuable and distinctive resource. The authors present surprising new ways of using virtualization to accomplish tasks now performed at the physical level. All areas of business are examined, with text that features technical information and best practices, including business challenges and technology breakdowns to expedite effective allocation of time and resources.

VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
CRC Press | 2009 | 237 pages | David Marshall, Stephen S. Beaver, Jason McCarthy

One Way to Turn a Mac Into a PC Just Got Better

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• U.S. Voter Info Map
  This is super cool. Mad props to Google for setting this up.
• Microsoft will soon release 'Windows Cloud' OS, Ballmer says
  "The operating system, which will likely have a different name…" Maybe it's just me, but I have a few ideas for what they could call this thing. Microsoft Windows Smog, Fog, Gas…
• Standalone Sysadmin: Introduction to LVM in Linux
  Good intro. I'm going to go so far as to say that if you aren't using LVM under Linux you're way behind and should get your act together.
• 15 Tips to Properly Setup Your Own Hosting Racks | The Matchbox
  Good information here, even if some of it seems pretty obvious. Do it right and keep it organized FROM THE BEGINNING. Things get really out of hand real quick, and then you spend five to ten years fighting cable tangles, etc.
• How to Persuade People With Subconscious Techniques - wikiHow
  For when Jedi mind tricks fail. "You want to go back to the data center and rethink your SAN."
• YouTube - dan le sac VS scroobius pip "Thou Shalt always Kill"
  This is a cool video. I subscribe to a couple of "song of the day" podcasts from places like Minnesota Public Radio, etc. and this song showed up a couple months ago. Neat song.

VMware just released a new PDF called “VMware VDI Storage Considerations“. This PDF contains some “good to know” facts about protocol behaviour. Just check it out…

Stock markets taking a beating, companies cringing at the thought of investing in newer technologies and applications/systems/storage in desperate need of a "refresh" makes it all very hard to decide who will "Go to the market". Well Netapp is doing its part here, and pretty good though.

Enthusiasm for virtualisation has dipped slightly of late, and NetApp wants reinforce the benefits of its storage-efficiency technologies, saying they will reduce overall storage usage while improving performance.


“The pressure for cost reduction has led to the rapid adoption of storage-efficiency technologies such as thin provisioning, deduplication, RAID-DP, and Snapshot, which come standard on NetApp systems,” says Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer of NetApp.

Source

Speaking to Computer Weekly earlier today at the VM08 show at Earls Court, Zane Adam, senior director at Microsoft responsible for virtualisation, said, "For virtualisation to become mainstream we need to train IT people in the best practices for managing both virtual and physical systems."

He expected the training programme, which is being made available as Microsoft certified training courses, over the next 60 days, will help IT directors manage complex datacentres.

The training programme is part of Microsoft's Dynamic IT strategy, which stipulates the use of virtualisation in the datacentre to enable IT managers to adapt and scale the performance of datacentre applications, based on the demands of the business. If the business needs more computing power, such as to support a boost in traffic on the company's website, virtualisation can be used to provision extra servers automatically.
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Adam predicted IT departments would begin hiring datacentre staff who understand virtualisation. He said the Microsoft training scheme would help IT directors find staff with the right mix of skills to support virtualisation and Dynamic IT.

Source

Norman , the exec who quit last month did say something about "an exciting news". Obviously that makes more sense now as our friend Greg too left the boat. A typical acquisition means, employees cash out and find other things, if they do not wish to continue with the merged parties.

Catbird would have been my obvious choice but anyways, we'll hear about that sooner or later. BlueLane had some good stuff going, its just that I didn't hear them sell as much.

Although the knickknacks have long since been packed up from VMworld earlier this month, one rumor continues to make the rounds. Several sources have indicated that VMware, the host of VMworld in Las Vegas, has acquired startup Blue Lane Technologies for about $15m. The two companies have been technology partners for more than a year, with Blue Lane’s VirtualShield integrated with VMware’s VirtualCenter.

Security and virtualization in general have been major concerns for VMware. To help shore up the hypervisor and broader virtual environment, VMware in March introduced VMsafe, a set of APIs that third-party security vendors can use to write interoperable programs. Blue Lane was one of about 20 initial partners in VMsafe, as were the security industry’s heavyweights.

Source

Here’s a link to a good Vmware ESX Command Line reference guide put together by Taupo Consulting. It’s clearly displayed and makes for a useful online reference for when that certain service console command eludes you.   Technorati Tags: VMware,ESX,Command Line,reference,guide

Walt Mossberg: “VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on the Mac…” Team Fusion shoots ... and scores. Link: VMware: Team Fusion: Walt Mossberg: “VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on the Mac…”. Having pushed VMware Fusion 2 out into the world a little over two weeks ago, we here on Team Fusion have been waiting with bated breath for the reviews to start showing up.   We had a great surprise tonight, when Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist for the venerable Wall Street Journal posted his review of VMware Fusion 2 with the headline “One Way to Turn a Mac into a PC Just Got Better.” ... Walt is a very brass tacks reviewer, and is evenhanded in how he tests, praises, and dings various products.  His takeaway was that as of his review, VMware Fusion is the best way to run virtual Windows on the Mac.   Our favorite quotes, for the fridge here at the Team Fusion compound? “VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on a Mac virtually.”  And with respect to our biggest competitor out in the market, “VMware Fusion edges it out as the better product.”

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• Vmware how to - OSx86

Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for ASUSTeK Computer RS260‐E4. See “ASUSTeK Server Support,” on page 5. Added support for Dell R300, T300. See “Dell Server Support,” on page 8. Added support for Intel ESAA Modular Server MFSYS25 HCL DCIB Infiniti Global Line 2700 MF, Insite Technology Ltd HE5000, USA Computers Helion MX6, Wipro NetPower Z2601. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000PAL/SR2500 Delphin Data EDV Dienstleisungs GmbH Delphin DQ2500. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000PSL Seneca Data Nexlink Stableflex IP‐54PSL2. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000XALR SNC RACTORY RX2HS‐DQ. Added support for Intel ESAA S7000FC4UR WinFirst winfire WFS7000FC4URE. Added support for Intel ESAA SR1560SF/S5400SF Wipro NetPower Z2109. Removed Intel ESAA Compute Blade SBXD132 Digital Henge Revo AS1500, Revo AS1550, Revo AS2500. Changed Sonex to Sonex Technologies. See “Intel Server Support,” on page 24. Modified support information for Sun X2200 M2, X4140, X4450, X6450 Server Module. See “Sun Server Support,” on page 42. Added support for Supermicro SBI‐7125C‐S3, SBI‐7125C‐S3+, SBI‐7425C‐S3+, SYS‐6025B‐TB. Modified support information for A+ Server 2021M‐UR+V/B, AS‐2021M‐32R, AS‐2041M‐32R+B, SuperServer‐6025B‐URV/B, SuperServer‐6025W‐URB, SuperServer‐6035B‐8R+V/B, SuperServer‐6025W‐NTR+, SYS‐6015C‐M3B, SYS‐6015TWINF, SYS‐6025C‐URB, SYS‐8045C‐3RB, SBI‐7125W‐S6. See “Supermicro Server Support,” on page 43. Modified support information for Tyan Computer B5397T26W8H. See “Tyan Computer Server Support,” on page 45.

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I/O Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for Brocade 815, 825. See “Brocade Storage IO Devices ‐ Fibre Channel HBA,” on page 24. Modified support information for unm_nic driver. See “Hewlett Packard Networking Devices (Intel or Broadcom OEM),” on page 29 and “IBM Networking Devices (NetXen OEM),” on page 32. Added support for IBM 2/4 Port Ethernet Expansion Card (Cffh) for IBM BladeCenter. See “IBM Networking Devices (Intel OEM),” on page 31. Added support for Sun X1106A‐Z, X1107A‐Z. See “Sun Networking Devices,” on page 36.

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Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for 3PAR T‐Class. See “3PAR,” on page 6 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for Dot Hill Systems 5730. See “Dot Hill Systems,” on page 9 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for Hitachi SANRISE 9500V Series. See “Hitachi,” on page 16 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for HDS Thunder 9500V Series. See “Hitachi Data Systems (HDS),” on page 18 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Modified support information for NetApp FAS6000 Series. See “NetApp,” on page 21. Added support for EMC Invista‐Cisco. See “EMC,” on page 28 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for 3PAR T‐Class. See “3PAR,” on page 43 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for Cybernetics miSAN D8. See “Cybernetics,” on page 46 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for Dot Hill Systems R/Evolution 2330. See “Dot Hill Systems,” on page 48 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for Pillar Data Systems Axiom Storage System 300. Changed Axiom 500 to Axiom Storage System 500. See “Pillar Data Systems,” on page 63 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69. Added support for IBM DS3200. Modified support information for DS3300. See “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 69.

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Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.0.x http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for Intel ESAA Modular Server MFSYS25 HCL DCIB Infiniti Global Line 2700 MF, Insite Technology Ltd HE5000, USA Computers Helion MX6, Wipro NetPower Z2601. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000PAL/SR2500 Delphin Data EDV Dienstleisungs GmbH Delphin DQ2500. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000PSL Seneca Data Nexlink Stableflex IP‐54PSL2. Added support for Intel ESAA S5000XALR SNC RACTORY RX2HS‐DQ. Added support for Intel ESAA S7000FC4UR WinFirst winfire WFS7000FC4URE. Removed Intel ESAA Compute Blade SBXD132 Digital Henge Revo AS1500, Revo AS1550, Revo AS2500. Changed Sonex to Sonex Technologies. See “Intel Server Support,” on page 17.

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Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.0.x http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for 3PAR T‐Class. See “3PAR,” on page 6, “3PAR,” on page 46 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 67. Added support for Dot Hill Systems R/Evolution 2330. See “Dot Hill Systems,” on page 50 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 67.

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SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 2.x http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_SAN_guide.pdf Last Updated: October 1, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for 3PAR T‐Class. See “3PAR,” on page 19, “3PAR,” on page 39, “3PAR,” on page 56, “3PAR,” on page 73, “3PAR,” on page 88.

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