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SRM, it’s just too easy » Yellow Bricks

2008-11-22T01:38:00+00:00

SRM, it’s just too easy » Yellow Bricks Duncan over at Yellow Bricks has some words of wisdom for your BCDR project. SRM, it’s just too easy » Yellow Bricks. There a whole bunch of SRM projects going on globally where VMware PSO, the department I work for, is assisting. These projects typically have a duration of 3 to 9 months, while it seems that with the ease of VMware Site Recovery Manager this should be a matter of days. People tend to forget that the most important thing about Distaster Recovery / Business Continuity is the business. You need to know the organisation and IT environment very well before you can even start ... The fact that SRM is so easy to setup makes it really hard to actually explain to a customer why a BCDR project will take much longer then he expected.

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Platespin Power Convert - Installation problem - Error Running a Custom Action

2008-11-21T21:07:36+00:00

I’m working on a post around Platespin Power Convert, if you encounter the “Error running a custom action” message during installation (below) this post explains how to fix it. first, make sure you have installed IIS and then .NET 2.0 (in that order, you will break it otherwise). then if you get the above error you will [...]

Virtual Platform Security in the VDC Article

2008-11-21T19:26:20+00:00

It’s been a while; content has been calling my name. I recently wrote an article for Virtualization Magazine titled Security Implications of Virtualization Platforms in the Virtual Data Center (I know, a crazy long title, but that’s how it was published ). WARNING: That page auto-launches flash video with audio enabled – gave me a bit of a pause when I heard some guy talking and interrupting my current playlist.

I like this piece because I introduce three concrete steps that IT departments can take today to help guard against security attacks tomorrow. These aren’t necessarily revolutionary ideas but they are tangible, tactical steps that can be implemented today during the planning, architecture, and roll-out phases of virtual platform installations and migrations. From the article:

In general, IT departments should focus on three virtualization areas as part of their entire virtualization security architecture:

1. Segmentation of VMs by location
2. Segmentation of VMs by service type
3. Proactive security management throughout the VM lifecycle

These three areas will help IT departments protect their virtual infrastructure against current threats as well as help mitigate the threat of future attacks.

You all know me: I’m all about baby steps and management. I don’t talk about specific threat vectors in this piece intentionally. Right now I’m very much in the design and planning stages of virtsec for IT departments. Remember my 4Ds: Define, Design, Develop, Deploy? This piece is all about the first two: know your risks and design an architecture that be used to manage those risks. Sure, if you’re keeping score, the 3 solutions above are actually in the Deploy category but I want to emphasize the planning portions of those solutions.

Start by planning today for whatever the virtsec world will throw at you tomorrow.

Hyper9 private beta invites, come get the first 10 ones!

2008-11-21T16:28:00+00:00

This is a private beta and I will push the email forward to Hyper9 staff personally. So hurry! And email me at tarry.singh@gmail.com NOW!

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 has just been released

2008-11-21T14:08:47+00:00

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 has just been released, so start your engines and download:

With this release of VMware Workstation, the following new features and support have been added:

Japanese localization — A localized version of Workstation is now available in Japanese for Windows hosts.
Note: Technical Support services for Workstation are currently delivered in English. Japanese-speaking support engineers are available in a limited capacity during the operating hours of the local support center. For more information, see VMware local language support.

Smart card support for Linux guests — Smart cards are now experimentally supported with Linux guests.

Unity mode on Linux guests — Although support for Unity mode on Linux guests is still experimental, repainting of application windows is much improved.

3-D graphics — Additional improvements have been made to improve 3-D performance on Windows XP guests.

I will be testing Unity Mode on Ubuntu tonight, so expect a couple screenshots to appear! The full release notes can be found here.

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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VMware loses another high profile executive; Security Chief Nand to run openDNS

2008-11-21T12:10:00+00:00

The head of VMware's security group has left to join San Francisco's OpenDNS, a startup that provides Internet infrastructure services.
Nand Mulchandani took over as CEO of the DNS (domain name system) service provider on Nov. 5, replacing founder David Ulevitch, who will remain as the company's chief technology officer, according to a company spokeswoman.
Mulchandani is the latest VMware executive to depart after company co-founder and CEO Diane Green was ousted in July of this year. In September another VMware co-founder, Chief Scientist Mendel Rosenblum, resigned. Richard Sarwal, who led the company's research and development efforts, also left around the same time.
Mulchandani had been with VMware just over a year, after the virtualization software vendor acquired his security company, Determina. As VMware's senior director for security products, Mulchandani was in charge of VMware's security strategy, considered critical to the company's future success. VMware is publicly traded, but the majority of the company is owned by storage vendor EMC.

Security

New version of the NetApp NFS best practices doc!

2008-11-21T09:42:42+00:00

I just noticed that there’s a new version(4.3) of the NetApp on NFS best practices document online. This document has a new best practice in there that I discussed a couple of weeks ago about the “/NFS/LockDisable” and the “prefvmx.consolidateDeleteNFSLocks” settings(Page 14).

As far as I can judge at this point in time the document seems to be also following the VMware guidelines. NetApp suggests running several commands directly on the Service Console to do the desired changes. Although I do agree with their suggested changes, I don’t agree with the order of the procedure.

On page 14 in both “procedures” NetApp suggests that you enter maintenance mode before applying the changes. Which is definitely something I would also suggest. But they also suggest to exit maintenance mode right before you reboot the server. In theory this could lead to VM’s being VMotioned to the host you’re about to reboot. When this happens the VM’s will be killed without any notice, which could lead to all sorts of problems as you can imagine.

So if you’re about to make the changes NetApp suggests, please change the order and do a reboot first and exit maintenance mode when the reboot is completed.

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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Verifying the integrity of downloaded installer files (1537)

2008-11-21T08:00:00+00:00

Verifying the integrity of downloaded installer files (1537) · Verifying that the downloaded file from www.vmware.com is not corrupted. · Unable to mount the .DMG image file in Mac OS · The following error appears: is not a valid win32...

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Links for 2008-11-20 [del.icio.us]

2008-11-21T08:00:00+00:00

SEOmoz Blog | Search Engine Marketing News & Tips

What happened to my Gmail?

2008-11-21T07:13:46+00:00

This morning I started my browser to check my Gmail inbox but something was different. I was staring at a beautiful mountain. Annie Chen, Gmail engineer reports:

Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred. We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

My personal favourite is the terminal theme.

Firstservis to Offer Cloud Computing Solutions in Australia and New Zealand

2008-11-21T00:46:00+00:00

Firstservis, one of Australia’s most cutting edge technology integrators, and 3Tera ® , Inc., the leading innovator of cloud computing technology and Read more at VMblog.com.

Open Source Storage Management with Aperi, an IBM driven project

2008-11-20T23:21:00+00:00

With U.S and many other nations in deep recession, we should not fool ourselves and our consumers. We ought to also help them also take a look at the storage management capabilities and strengths of industry leader sponsored initiative. Surprisingly enough, HP and EMC aren't yet on the board.

Check out their demos here and here and also the installation demo is here

I do see that their blog is not frequently maintained, the project schedule says that it should be going RTM by Jan 2009.

Symantec Does _NOT_ Support Vmotion... WTF!?!?!

2008-11-20T21:05:02+00:00

Make sure you're sitting down before reading this Symantec KB article which is only 1 month old and clearly states they do _not_ support any current version of their product on ESX if Vmotion is enabled. No, it's not a joke. It's a _fucking_ joke. Symantec have essentially pulled together a list of random issues that are almost certainly intermittent in nature and could have a near infinite

Symantec reverts to normal, well done. And well done community!

2008-11-20T21:04:08+00:00

Unfortunately I couldn't break the news when I heard it as I was at work (no way I'm blogging from there, my boss reads this - hi Mark :D), but Symantec has updated the original KB article to something much, much more reasonable (although it seems to be offline at the minute). No company is immune from the odd premature / alarmist KB article, and however this happened doesn't matter as much as

VMware SRM At A Glance

2008-11-20T20:41:54+00:00

Overview of VMware Site Recovery Manager, its benefits, and its core technology concepts. Part 1 of 3.

My next Cloud Ideation lecture for a University MBA class

2008-11-20T19:55:00+00:00

I will lay emphasis on HPC, Genome, Research and Neural implants. Sergey's wife Anne is on to something which has been my childhood dream , both scary and exciting. One of those heady things that will happen to us and maybe the next generations as we evolve further into super human beings. Ideation Age is upon us. Cloud will be the vehicle that will take us there.

Anyways couple of shots, I may speak about:

I have been asked by several researchers and academics to share some thoughts and in some occasions co-create stuff. There will be many of such activites in the year 2009.

SRM, it’s just too easy

2008-11-20T19:53:48+00:00

You’ve probably also noticed a whole bunch of Site Recovery Manager(SRM) related articles popping up with people installing and configuring it in their home lab:

I love these articles because they are prove of the fact that SRM is really easy to set-up. But, and this actually scares me, it might seem a bit too easy. I said “too easy” because implementing a Disaster Recovery solution isn’t about the tools you are using. The tools, which will make your life a lot easier, are not the most important piece of the puzzle. Indeed PUZZLE.

There a whole bunch of SRM projects going on globally where VMware PSO, the department I work for, is assisting. These projects typically have a duration of 3 to 9 months, while it seems that with the ease of VMware Site Recovery Manager this should be a matter of days.

People tend to forget that the most important thing about Distaster Recovery / Business Continuity is the business. You need to know the organisation and IT environment very well before you can even start:

SLA’s? –> RPO / RTO?
Which services are most important to the business?
Which servers are part of the service?
In which order need these be started?
Which service have the highest priority?
Are there any dependencies between services?
What about the desktops?

And these are just a couple of questions one should normally have to answer before even going down the SRM road. The fact that SRM is so easy to setup makes it really hard to actually explain to a customer why a BCDR project will take much longer then he expected. And remember that although SRM is a great tool you would still need to create a Disaster Recovery Plan, SRM will be part of the plan but it needs to be in place!

I’m not saying that you should not go down the BCDR / SRM road, but be sure to be prepared. (read this e-book, it’s good and it’s free) Get to know your “business”, and be prepared for a long engagement… cause my experience is that normally people have a hard time answering really obvious questions.

You will talk to a lot of people who don’t have a clue of what the core business services / applications actually are. And the same goes for the sys admins, dependencies? Why would you want to know about that and how would I know?

Do you know which questions to ask, do you know how to get the right answers… This is why BCDR subject matter experts are needed for SRM engagements, so before you start give VMware a call, or your local VAC partner for that matter and make sure you get the best out of the SRM product.

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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Get Ready for VMware Partner Exchange 2009!

2008-11-20T19:41:57+00:00

Plans for the second Annual VMware Partner Exchange are underway. Next year's event will be hosted on April 14-16 in Orlando, Florida. VMware is developing this world class partner event to help you accelerate your virtualization business. And with their growing commitment to the partner eco-system, they are now joining all their partners to include the VIP community as well as their Technology Alliance Partner under one roof! You can expect the same outstanding commitment to providing you with the content and training you need to grow your business.

Attend the conference to

• Network with your Peers and Connect with VMware executives and experts
• Gain Insight to VMware roadmap and new sales & marketing tools
• Increase your training to sell more profitably

Clear the VI Client connect box server address list

2008-11-20T17:24:46+00:00

If you’re a consultant you probably connect with your Virtual Infrastructure Client to a dozen different VirtualCenter servers or ESX hosts every week. After a couple of months the drop down list “IP Address / Name” gets all saturated and it’s impossible to find the right server… So it might come in handy to clear the list every once in a while:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences

Just delete all “connections” that are obsolete in the “RecentConnections” value.

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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Thin Client Compatibility Guide For VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM)

2008-11-20T16:24:00+00:00

Thin Client Compatibility Guide For VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) http://vmware.com/pdf/VDM_ThinClient_guide.pdf Last Updated: November 19, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for HP 6720t. See “Hewlett Packard,” on page 4.

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Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

2008-11-20T16:23:00+00:00

Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf Last Updated: November 19, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Modified support information for ASUSTeK RS260‐E4. See “ASUSTeK Server Support,” on page 5. Modified support information for Dell M805, M905. Removed Dell R300, T300. See “Dell Server Support,” on page 8. Added support for HP BL460c G5. Modified support information for HP DL365 G5, DL785 G5. See “Hewlett Packard Server Support,” on page 16. Modified support information for IBM x3650. See “IBM Server Support,” on page 20. Added support for Lenovo TD100x. See “Lenovo Server Support,” on page 36. Added support for MITSUBISHI 200Ed. See “Mitsubishi Server Support,” on page 37.

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I/O Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

2008-11-20T16:23:00+00:00

I/O Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf Last Updated: November 19, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Modified support information for HP QLE2460. See “Hewlett Packard Storage IO Devices,” on page 13. Modified support information for HP unm_nic driver and IBM unm_nic driver. See “Hewlett Packard Networking Devices (Intel, Broadcom, or NetXen OEM),” on page 29 and “IBM Networking Devices (NetXen OEM),” on page 32.

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Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

2008-11-20T16:22:00+00:00

Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf Last Updated: November 19, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Added support for AC&NC JetStor SAS 516F. See “AC&NC,” on page 6 and “SAN Array Model Reference,” on page 71. Modified support information for EMC CX3‐10c, CX3‐20, CX3‐20c, CX3‐20f, CX3‐40, CX3‐40c, CX3‐40f, CX3‐80, DMX‐3. See “EMC,” on page 10. Added support for NetApp FAS6000 Series Data ONTAP 7.2.5.1. See “NetApp,” on page 40. Modified support information for EMC DMX‐4. See “EMC,” on page 51. Modified support information for EVA4400, EVA4400 with Embedded Switch. See “Hewlett Packard,” on page 55. Added support for IBM i 6.1 on Power Systems. See “IBM,” on page 58. Modified support information for NetApp FAS6000 Series Data ONTAP 7.3. See “NetApp,” on page 62.

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Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.0.x

2008-11-20T16:22:00+00:00

Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.0.x http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf Last Updated: November 19, 2008 What’s New Changes since the last edition of this guide include: Modified support information for IBM x3650. See “IBM Server Support,” on page 14. Added support for Lenovo TD100x. See “Lenovo Server Support,” on page 29. Added support for MITSUBISHI FT8600 200Ed. See “Mitsubishi Server Support,” on page 30. Added support for NEC R140a‐4. Modified support information for NEC B140a‐T. See “NEC Server Support,” on page 31.

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links for 2008-11-20

2008-11-20T16:00:12+00:00

Microsoft: We Promise Not To Kill McAfee, Symantec (MSFT)

You know what? Just let McAfee & Symantec figure it out. You have a gaping hole in your products, MS, and you need to fix it. Everybody has known that someday you were going integrate antivirus software. Today is that day. DO IT.

Configuring Active Directory (AD) LDAP authentication for the HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator.

2008-11-20T15:57:50+00:00

Here’s a link to a good article by Joris Soeurton on configuring Active Directory (AD) LDAP authentication for the HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator. This was a topic I was thinking of writing an overview type guide on - but hey, why re-invent the wheel when someone else has done a good job already. Technorati [...]

Symantec Does The Right Thing

2008-11-20T15:45:25+00:00

Mr. Epping over at Yellow Bricks (which looks nice, BTW) has broken the news this morning that Symantec has clarified their stance on VMotion, and it’s not explicitly unsupported now.

This is good. I suspect that folks at VMware had some role in Symantec’s change of course, partner relationships, etc. Whoever was part of this, thank you. And thank you Symantec for not being a typical corporation and staying the course because you don’t want to look foolish. Personally, I always say that I reserve the right to change my mind when I get new information. I’m glad to see others doing the same.

New Design

2008-11-20T14:17:07+00:00

Just completed and uploaded my new design. I spend a whole lot of evenings on increasing the readability and I hope you guys like it.

As you can see I dropped the the two column sidebar and changed it to just one, which seems more than enough. I also dropped some of the widgets because hardly anyone was using them and it increases readability. There are still a few minor tweaks to be done, but I just wanted to get this out on the internet.

So back to business again, and let’s start writing some more Virtualization Articles.

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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DataCore Software, Promise Technology and Microsoft Windows HPC at SC08 Delivers Virtualization "Wow" Factor to Supercomputing Show Attendees

2008-11-20T13:11:00+00:00

DataCore, the leading provider of storage virtualization software, and Promise Technology Inc., a leading supplier of sophisticated RAID subsystems... Read more at VMblog.com.

Compare Your VMware ESX VM’s

2008-11-20T13:01:06+00:00

Here is a new site from the recent startup company VKernel. The site is called CompareMyVM and can be found here. Their site blurb probably best sums what it’s about: “CompareMyVM is a free tool that allows you to compare your VMware ESX Server virtual machine resource allocations with that of the community at large. You can [...]

Data Center Pedictions 2009- Part 2: Cloud Computing, MNSPs and Mobility will have long term impact

2008-11-20T12:07:00+00:00

Today we have some great use cases (possible input for eventual practices) and amazing (Amazoning?) models coming out of the cloud. Clearly we see that the years of crunching experience that firms like Google (search, which I have often called a Query 1.0 Framework), and Amazon (which has moved, or should I say, had foundations laid in the Query 2.0 model), have adopted will be putting them in pioneers role.

So these crunch gods are today leading the show, we do have many players such as Microsoft, IBM, HP etc go after this model , and many may seem to make a quick and an early tie with Google and Amazon, but is it enough for them to succeed as Cloud gods? We know one thing for sure, Amazon, due to its accidental choice of Query 2.0 platform , may have an edge above the rest of the parties. For now. But what does the future hold for data crunching at minimal cost? Obviously there is a dire need to think up of a business model which can seamlessly help eke uit a plan that will help firms from the S-Belly cramp. The shelfware sales will dwindle as time passes by and the SaaS/CloudApps will have to sell cheap or else you don't have a reasonable cloud case.

But this is about to change dramatically as the web matures and as mobile networking and ubiquitous computing stretches the demand on both ends. This stretch will be the real test to the elasticity of both providers and consumers. Consumers will decide eventually.

So who is a MNSP?

A MNSP, Managed Network Service Providers, are the ones who will do everything for you. There is a much larger and refined definition, which Gartners and others define in their own way. but the bottom line is simple: all your cores (networking, storage, operating systems etc) woes will be handled by some third party. And why MNS providers will run with the pie? Just look at this bubble graph, based on user sentiment but also on Revenue, revenue growth, vertical reach, horizontal reach, services portfolio etc.

Source: ButlerGroup

and now lets look at other factors such as Service quality, support, capabilities etc

Source: ButlerGroup

So at some point in time, we will see two major pushes into the market. One is centrally driven, provisioned, CoC-type compliant provisioned centers and the other push that will almost totally eliminate the static consumer computing and move to the mobile computing. This is why vendors are investing madly into the mobile computing and acquisitions.

Just take a look at these graph and you will see where the massive surge of mobile computing will take place.

Source: ButlerGroup

With an ailing economy, which is not about to set free, it will be increasingly hard or traditional vendors and traditional service providers will have to do more than just go on a mad or rapid restructuring spree. Surely, to drive a massive culture change, which is the crux of this whole transformation drive, much of the seared and withered leaves will have to be shaken up. This will lead to all sorts of, not that they are all justifiable, layoffs. You are seeing around yourself.

Although a totally different angle, but just look at the ailing auto industry in the U.S. Do you really think an injection of $25Bn will help them? Will they really be able to drive innovation? Can they really transform? While this is a more sensitive issue where a lot of political/emotional clout will be leveraged to get that lump sum, I am rather skeptical to how it will really help the emerging markets and the increasingly transforming new citizenry. The new generation that consumes differently. That consumes altogether different product.

So the trick is indeed is to transform strategically and tactically. A continuous transformational plan is something many firms will have to simply get used to. Cloud Computing may not necessarily disengage the middle, but it certainly will create a platform where the consumers will be able to choose to either jump straight from their mobile devices to the cloud platform and do their computation OR the enterprise will use the CSER ,which will definitely be driven and controlled by the local state authorities, primarily the "green drive", to encourage mobile computing.

Obviously security will be a burden for quicker adoption and a in-built security checkpoint mechanism will surely enable and certify those MNS providers to assure their consumers and guests of complete protection against any breaches. This would also mean that the MNS will have to pass and share information with the local security authorities, this ensuring that a very well defined policy-driven, secure and compliant environment will have to be established.

Healthcare will be the early adopters/adapters and with the increasing pressures, primarily financial, many organizations will do everything to deploy mobility together with trusted advisers and partners. Mostly may start by doing transactions/purchases through retailers but will/may do business directly with the vendors themselves or in co-hosted/collaborative ways.

For instance, if you look at the players in the market, you will see that enterprise computing, which is chiefly driven by email and other applications, will tend to see Microsoft as a logical leader when it comes to move towards the cloud.

Source: ButlerGroup

As you can see here Microsoft is extremely strong in both Application, like the recently launched Cloudapps Exchange Online and slowly moving horizontally and vertically up the quadrant with other services such as BI (SQL OLAP), Collaboration/Messaging (SharePoint).

So a typical scenario could be that an enterprise decision to move its operations to cloud may be a more phased operation, while for an SME, it might be an easier and logical choice.

Although this may not happen today, but I do predict that within 3 quarters a lot will happen. There will be more contraction within several industries and many will perish as they will not be able to transform swiftly and may also bet on the wrong parties (financial and/or reputational instability) , thus endangering their own sustainability.

Sources: ButlerGroup

VMware does a performance study on AMD's RVI

2008-11-20T11:57:00+00:00

Nice read, this doc.

In a native system the operating system maintains a mapping of logical page numbers (LPNs) to physical page numbers (PPNs) in page table structures. When a logical address is accessed, the hardware walks these page tables to determine the corresponding physical address. For faster memory access the x86 hardware caches the most recently used LPN->PPN mappings in its translation lookaside buffer (TLB).

In a virtualized system the guest operating system maintains page tables just like in a native system, but the VMM maintains an additional mapping of PPNs to machine page numbers (MPNs). In shadow paging the VMM maintains PPN->MPN mappings in its internal data structures and stores LPN->MPN mappings in shadow page tables that are exposed to the hardware. The most recently used LPN->MPN translations are cached in the hardware TLB. The VMM keeps these shadow page tables synchronized to the guest page tables. This synchronization introduces virtualization overhead when the guest updates its page tables.
Using RVI, the guest operating system continues to maintain LPN->PPN mappings in the guest page tables, but the VMM maintains PPN->MPN mappings in a second level of page tables, called nested page tables. When a logical address is accessed, the hardware walks the guest page tables as in the case of native execution, but for every PPN accessed during the guest page table walk, the hardware also walks the nested page tables to determine the corresponding MPN. This composite translation eliminates the need to maintain shadow page tables and synchronize them with the guest page tables. However the extra operation also increases the cost of a page walk, thereby impacting the performance of applications that stress the TLB. This cost can be
reduced by using large pages, thus reducing the stress on the TLB for applications with good spatial locality.

For optimal performance the ESX VMM and VMkernel aggressively try to use large pages for their own memory when RVI is used.

Get the Whitepaper here

PRTG Network Monitor Helps IT Systems and Network Administrators Keep Their Eyes on Virtual Servers and Environments

2008-11-20T11:45:00+00:00

Paessler A.G. today announced an upgrade to its PRTG Network Monitor 7.0.9 that is intended to help IT systems and network administrators and the... Read more at VMblog.com.

VirtualLogix Supports All ARM Multicore Platforms

2008-11-20T11:44:00+00:00

VirtualLogix™, Inc., the Real-Time Virtualization™ company, today announced support for all multicore platforms based on the ARM11™ MPCore™ and ARM®... Read more at VMblog.com.

Update: Symantec and VMotion, Supported or not?

2008-11-20T10:33:42+00:00

There has been a lot of hassle on this one over the last couple of days. Symantec wasn’t supporting VMotion for their anti-virus suite. (Mike D., Lone SysAdmin, VInternals)A little birdie just told me that the article has been updated:

Is VMware VMotion ESX server supported with Symantec AntiVirus and Symantec Endpoint Protection?

Symptoms:
Symantec supports running Symantec AntiVirus, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager in VMware environments.

A few customers have reported problems with Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager with VMware VMotion ESX server. These problems may or may not be related to the presence of VMware VMotion or the presence of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager.

Some the problems include:

Client communication problems

Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager communication problems

Content update failures

Policy update failures

Client data does not appear in the database

Replication failures

Solution:
Symantec is investigating each support case and will update Symantec products where necessary. If you experience a problem that you suspect is related to VMware VMotion, please contact Symantec Technical Support.

So in short, there have been problems which might or might not have been related to VMotion or Symantec EPM. Symantec will support products running in a VMware Environment!

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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MSFT or VMware , Dell/EqualLogic wins anyways!

2008-11-20T09:56:00+00:00

When the decision was made to go with VMware at ManageNet Hyper-V was not ready for production environments.

The company had also considered Virtual Iron, but was not confident in the level of local support compared with VMware.

Dell wins in the end

Despite their differences in virtualisation software selection, both companies at least have one thing in common - Dell.

UXC purchased Dell rack-mounted servers and blades for its new infrastructure build out and ManageNet commissioned iSCSI storage systems from the Dell-owned EqualLogic.

Rick Becker, Dell's vice president for software and Solutions, said internally the company migrated 326 PowerEdge 2650 servers to 21 blade servers saving an estimated US$800,000 in operating expenses.

"We believe by adopting technology and negating the need for server space we will never need to build another data centre," Becker said.

Source

IBM buys Transitive, a multi-platform virtualization vendor

2008-11-20T09:36:00+00:00

ARMONK, NY - 18 Nov 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it plans to acquire Transitive Corporation, a privately held technology company headquartered in Los Gatos, California, with a research and development team in Manchester, United Kingdom. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Transitive is a leader in cross-platform virtualization and a pioneer in developing technologies that allow applications written for one type of microprocessor and operating system to run on multiple platforms -- with little or no modification. As a result, the technology will enable customers to consolidate their Linux-based applications onto the IBM systems that make the most sense for their business needs.

Transitive's breakthrough technology has earned the company 48 worldwide patents and numerous industry awards.

This acquisition is part of IBM's strategy to help clients optimize the efficiency and productivity of their computing infrastructure and improve the utilization of the servers that run them. With this translation technology, along with existing migration capabilities, IBM systems give businesses a faster, easier path for server consolidation to reduce operational expenses, floorspace and energy costs.

Transitive technology is currently included as part of the IBM PowerVMTM software designed to help customers consolidate their x86 Linux workloads onto IBM Systems. IBM is seeing a growing trend of customers migrating from under-utilized servers to IBM Systems, including onto mainframe and Power Systems. The company is committed to developing additional tools and solutions to make migrations even easier, while minimizing the risk and increasing the financial returns for clients as they consolidate and virtualize to achieve significant business benefit.

Press

VCDX Enterprise Exam

2008-11-20T08:17:24+00:00

Just received the following email:

Hello Duncan Epping,

Thank you for your interest in the VMware Certified Design Expert program. I am pleased to inform you that you have PASSED the Enterprise Administration Exam.

For everyone that still needs to take this exam be sure to do the VI3.5: Deploy Secure & Analyze course and read the blueprint before you even start. It be worth checking out Jason’s blog on VCDX and on VirtualTroll you can find links to study material for the Design Exam. (Most of the Design Exam study material are also valid for the Enterprise Exam!)

So for everyone that still has to take the exam, prepare well! Know your esxcfg-* commands, and be sure to know the basics inside out!

This post originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com, author: Duncan Epping.
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VI, SRM in a (Workstation) Box

2008-11-20T07:41:00+00:00

VI, SRM in a (Workstation) Box There are a few sets of instructions floating around the Internet on how to run ESX or ESXi inside Workstation 6.5. (Let me Google that for you or just go to xtravirt) Lots of reasons you'd want to do this -- for training, testing, lab work, demos, POCs, or even just as a parlor trick to impress your friends. You'll need recent hardware. Now David Davis has published a nice 14 minute video tutorial on the topic at Petri IT Knowledgebase. Link: Running VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi in Workstation on your desktop PC. Site Recovery Manager can be hard to evaluate -- you need some shared storage that is going to be replicated and then set up SRM to do all the tricky failover workflow bits. Tomas Ten Dam has laid out a process to set that up in Workstation as well using the NetApp ONTAP simulator: SRM in a Box final release (the complete setup) « Ten Dam. (Looks like you need to be a current NetApp customer to get your hands on it. You should also be able to do this with the EMC Celerra simulator, same conditions apply. Looks like you can do SRM with Lefthand VSA as well, and you can at least do that with a 30-day trial. Has anybody set this up with a free or open source, albeit unsupported, tool? How about a set of virtual appliances?) Completely new to SRM? Check out this new video (parts 2 and 3 coming soon).

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Bailouts

2008-11-20T04:57:35+00:00

Does anybody else think we’re living in Atlas Shrugged?

When can I get bailed out? I’ve made several bad decisions in my life and I’d like to be compensated for them. And by “compensated” I mean “massively compensated, like dump trucks full of cash.” After all, why should I be responsible for my own actions and decisions?

If I were Honda or Toyota I’d be getting my lawyers ready to sue a lot of people.

Latest Updates

2008-11-20T01:13:00+00:00

Latest Updates These are the changes or updates made to the Guest Operating System Installation Guide since it was last published: Added support for 64-bit Windows Essential Business Server 2008 on ESX Server 3.5 Update 3. See “Windows Server 2008” on page 35. Added support for 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on ESX Server. See “SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10” on page 173. Added a note about requiring Windows Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater to view VMware Tools online help in a Windows NT 4.0 guest. See “VMware Tools” on page 61. PDF: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf HTML: http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/

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VMware Planet !

SRM, it’s just too easy » Yellow Bricks

Platespin Power Convert - Installation problem - Error Running a Custom Action

Virtual Platform Security in the VDC Article

Hyper9 private beta invites, come get the first 10 ones!

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 has just been released

VMware loses another high profile executive; Security Chief Nand to run openDNS

New version of the NetApp NFS best practices doc!

Verifying the integrity of downloaded installer files (1537)

Links for 2008-11-20 [del.icio.us]

What happened to my Gmail?

Firstservis to Offer Cloud Computing Solutions in Australia and New Zealand

Open Source Storage Management with Aperi, an IBM driven project

Symantec Does _NOT_ Support Vmotion... WTF!?!?!

Symantec reverts to normal, well done. And well done community!

VMware SRM At A Glance

My next Cloud Ideation lecture for a University MBA class

SRM, it’s just too easy

Get Ready for VMware Partner Exchange 2009!

Clear the VI Client connect box server address list

Thin Client Compatibility Guide For VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM)

What’s New

Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

What’s New

I/O Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

What’s New

Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

What’s New

Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.0.x

What’s New

links for 2008-11-20

Configuring Active Directory (AD) LDAP authentication for the HP BladeSystem Onboard Administrator.

Symantec Does The Right Thing

New Design

DataCore Software, Promise Technology and Microsoft Windows HPC at SC08 Delivers Virtualization "Wow" Factor to Supercomputing Show Attendees

Compare Your VMware ESX VM’s

Data Center Pedictions 2009- Part 2: Cloud Computing, MNSPs and Mobility will have long term impact

VMware does a performance study on AMD's RVI

PRTG Network Monitor Helps IT Systems and Network Administrators Keep Their Eyes on Virtual Servers and Environments

VirtualLogix Supports All ARM Multicore Platforms

Update: Symantec and VMotion, Supported or not?

MSFT or VMware , Dell/EqualLogic wins anyways!

IBM buys Transitive, a multi-platform virtualization vendor

VCDX Enterprise Exam

VI, SRM in a (Workstation) Box

Bailouts

Latest Updates