Virtualization Tips » Hyper-V

Microsoft updates Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 3.0 Beta

Brian — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:10:12 +0000

This tool continues to interest me for one main reason, the ability to patch offline virtual machines. That feature is something that has come up in a couple of projects recently. I look forward to this technology evolving into a final product. The latest Beta version of VMST is out and available here.

If you’ve used version 2.1, you know that it offers free, tested guidance and automated tools that let you safely service offline virtual machines in your SCVMM library. VMST 3.0 builds on this functionality, adding powerful new features designed to streamline the process of keeping your offline virtual machines, templates and VHDs up-to-date with the latest operating system and application updates, without introducing vulnerabilities into your IT infrastructure. VMST 3.0 helps you effectively manage the workflow of updating your offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. One feature that will not be included in this beta refresh is the servicing of Hyper-V host failover clusters.

Using new features in VMST 3.0, customers can now service:

Offline virtual machines in a SCVMM library.
Stopped and saved state virtual machines on a host.
Virtual machine templates.
Offline virtual hard disks in a SCVMM library by injecting update packages.

VMST 3.0 works seamlessly with other Microsoft technologies.

VMST 3.0 is designed to work with Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 or SCVMM 2008 R2, and with the following technologies:

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 SP1 or WSUS 3.0 SP2.
System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 SP1, SCCM 2007 R2, or SCCM 2007 SP2.
VMST 3.0 also provides the option to manually copy updates to service offline VHDs.
The tool works with Windows Task Scheduler to enable scheduling the servicing job.

VKernel accounces Chargeback 2.0 for vSphere and Hyper-V shops

Brian — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:42:24 +0000

The team at VKernel have announced the release of Chargeback 2.0. The new release extends chargeback support to both Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and VMware ESX environments. While I don’t know of many mixed environment shops yet, but I know that people will continue to move this direction. It’s nice to see vendors begin to update tools to support multiple vendors. I have not had a chance to look at this product yet but plan to test it in the future and will write up something about my experience. You can read more at their site http://www.vkernel.com/products/chargeback

Some text from their press release

The release also adds support for mixed chargeback models. VKernel Chargeback 2.0 now supports both allocated and actual resource consumption models. By reporting on both measures, infrastructure teams can chargeback for actual resource consumption, allocated resources, or simply show application teams the difference in real dollars between their allocated capacity and actual usage. This cost visibility is critical to capacity management, reducing VM spral and supporting private cloud initiatives.

Announcing the launch of The Virtual News – Get your Virtualization fix

Brian — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:08:07 +0000

I’ve been building a list of blogs and news sites that I read on a regular basis for sometime now. To this point I have been using a RSS reader that sync’s with Google reader to keep things centralized and backed up in case I have an issue. This works pretty well for myself but in talking with peers about what I’ve been reading lately there seemed to be a need for something the community could use as a central point to find good articles. There are obviously other sites like this for different topics but to my knowledge nothing for the Virtualization segment existed.

So today I would like to introduce The Virtual News to the public. Its in a public Beta phase I would say for now. My dream for the site is to become a central location where the community can share good articles with others interested in Virtualization related information. I look forward to the day that others are sharing great links via the site and I will discover bloggers and others writing content that I am interested in.

I welcome any suggestions or comments on the function, look and idea of the site.

http://www.thevirtualnews.com

Memory over commit or Dynamic Memory coming to Hyper-V soon

Brian — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:30:52 +0000

In typical Microsoft fashion they are changing their stance on a very popular feature that Hyper-V could not support yet. Dynamic memory or memory over commit will be coming soon to Hyper-V. You can read the MS release here. It talks about the requests from clients to be able to achieve higher density of VM’s on servers.

Use physical memory as efficiently and dynamically as possible without impacting performance. Customers investing in virtualization hosts are purchasing systems with larger memory configurations (32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and more) and want to fully utilize this system asset. At the same time, they’re purchasing this memory to provide superior performance and to avoid paging.
Provide consistent performance and scalability. One frequent comment from virtualization users is that they don’t want a feature with a performance cliff or inconsistent, variable performance. That’s makes it more difficult to manage and increases TCO.