Chicago VMUG meeting on July 28th 2010 are you coming

Posted by Brian on Jul 13, 2010 in VMUG, VMware | View Comments

If you are in the Chicago area or will be visiting on July 28th you should visit the Chicago VMUG meeting. This meeting will be held in downtown Chicago and open to all that register. I have included the agenda below and a link to register. You can also post any questions to the Chicago VMUG forum page here. This meeting will be focused on the transition to ESXi which is the focus of VMware for future releases.

Free lunch will be provided.

10:00 a.m. Welcome
10:15 a.m. VMware Updates
10:45 a.m. Storage Virtualization and VMware
11:30 a.m. Lunch and Discussion Groups
12:15 p.m. Migrating to ESXi
1:00 p.m. ESXi Q/A and Tips/Tricks
1:45 p.m. Raffle Prizes and Closing

Location:
TechNexus
ECC Floor 15
200 South Wacker
Chicago, IL 60606

Register here:Chicago VMUG

VMware pushing its management tools into 64bit arena

Posted by Brian on Jul 13, 2010 in VMware, vCenter Server | View Comments

With the release updates last night its clear that VMware continues to move its management applications into the 64bit area. With vCenter 4.1 and SRM 4.1 updates now requiring 64bit operating systems its clear that VMware is moving in this direction for everything. While this is a good move for the enterprise there are going to be a lot of Home Labs that will need to be upgraded before they can run these new releases. I know that its time for me to get some upgraded servers for my home lab as most will run vSphere but do not allow me to run 64bit virtual machines.

A quote from the SRM 4.1 release notes

SRM 4.1 server software can be installed only on 64-bit host platforms. The SRM 4.1 server is incompatible with 32-bit hosts. The SRM 4.1 client plug-in remains compatible with 32-bit hosts. Regardless of the database server you are using, you must install a 32-bit database client (ODBC driver) on the SRM server host. The SRM server is not compatible with 64-bit database clients.

New features in vSphere ESX 4.1

Posted by Brian on Jul 13, 2010 in VMware, vCenter Server, vSphere | View Comments

With the Big news that broke late last night and early this morning that vSphere 4.1 was released and available for down. Many of my fellow bloggers have written articles about the great new features that are included with this release. I am going to just offer a summary of some of the high points of the release that I find as the biggest impact. I was not part of the Beta testing for this release so I am just not getting to play with this version. The group of Beta testers have been enjoying and playing with the latest features for sometime now and thats why there has been a sudden explosion of articles that people have been holding until the official realease of the product.

• Scripted Install for ESXi. Scripted installation of ESXi to local and remote disks allows rapid deployment of ESXi to many machines. You can start the scripted installation with a CD-ROM drive or over the network by using PXE booting. You cannot use scripted installation to install ESXi to a USB device.
• vSphere Client Removal from ESX/ESXi Builds. For ESX and ESXi, the vSphere Client is available for download from the VMware Web site. It is no longer packaged with builds of ESX and ESXi. After installing ESX and ESXi, users are directed to the download page on the VMware Web site to get the compatible vSphere Client for that release. The vSphere Client is still packaged with builds of vCenter Server.

• Boot from SAN. vSphere 4.1 enables ESXi boot from SAN (BFN). iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported. Refer to the Hardware Compatibility Guide for the latest list of NICs and Converged Adapters that are supported with iSCSI boot.
• Hardware Acceleration with vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). ESX can offload specific storage operations to compliant storage hardware. With storage hardware assistance, ESX performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.
• Storage Performance Statistics. vSphere 4.1 offers enhanced visibility into storage throughput and latency of hosts and virtual machines, and aids in troubleshooting storage performance issues. NFS statistics are now available in vCenter Server performance charts, as well as esxtop. New VMDK and datastore statistics are included. All statistics are available through the vSphere SDK.
• Storage I/O Control. This feature provides quality-of-service capabilities for storage I/O in the form of I/O shares and limits that are enforced across all virtual machines accessing a datastore, regardless of which host they are running on. Using Storage I/O Control, vSphere administrators can ensure that the most important virtual machines get adequate I/O resources even in times of congestion.
• Network I/O Control. Traffic-management controls allow flexible partitioning of physical NIC bandwidth between different traffic types, including virtual machine, vMotion, FT, and IP storage traffic (vNetwork Distributed Switch only).
• Lockdown Mode Enhancements. VMware ESXi 4.1 lockdown mode allows the administrator to tightly restrict access to the ESXi Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and Tech Support Mode (TSM). When lockdown mode is enabled, DCUI access is restricted to the root user, while access to Tech Support Mode is completely disabled for all users. With lockdown mode enabled, access to the host for management or monitoring using CIM is possible only through vCenter Server. Direct access to the host using the vSphere Client is not permitted.
• Improved Support for Handling Recalled Patches in vCenter Update Manager. Update Manager 4.1 immediately sends critical notifications about recalled ESX and related patches. In addition, Update Manager prevents you from installing a recalled patch that you might have already downloaded. This feature also helps you identify hosts where recalled patches might already be installed.
• ESX/ESXi Active Directory Integration. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory allows seamless user authentication for ESX/ESXi. You can maintain users and groups in Active Directory for centralized user management and you can assign privileges to users or groups on ESX/ESXi hosts. In vSphere 4.1, integration with Active Directory allows you to roll out permission rules to hosts by using Host Profiles.
• Memory Compression. Compressed memory is a new level of the memory hierarchy, between RAM and disk. Slower than memory, but much faster than disk, compressed memory improves the performance of virtual machines when memory is under contention, because less virtual memory is swapped to disk.

You can see the full feature list on the VMware page, the list is pretty long.

Let’s talk EVA!

Posted by mike on Jul 12, 2010 in VMware | View Comments

I’d like to start discussing the storage I have at my work. I’ve had some good experiences in learning and working with it, and I’d like to share! I haven’t found alot specifically regarding working with the EVAs like I do daily, so I hope some folks find this useful!

So, as an overview for the environment, we currently have 3 8100 series and one 4400 series. EVAs arrays use two controllers, and our models are active/active. Our VMware environment at work is currently a VI3 schmorgesborg and we are planning an update (well migration) to vSphere. For SAN switches, we have older Mcdata’s that are workhorses! We manage them using EFCM software (also java, sigh).

HP provides Command View for EVA as the management tool for the EVAs. This installs and runs on Windows, and is now supported running in a VM as of the current release (9.2). Replication is handled with Business Copy and Continuous Access (separately licensed features). Automation of replication is handled using Replication Solutions Manager, which is a java-based App. :-/

For my next post, I’ll be giving a walkthrough of Command View and discuss how the EVAs we have are configured. Lots of screenshots too!

VMware Lab Manager how to videos

Posted by Brian on Jul 8, 2010 in Lab Manager, VMware | View Comments

Unless your lucky enough to user Lab Manager on a regular basis then your probably like must Admin’s. When talking with people everyone seems to have a solid idea of what Lab Manger can do but they have little experience in setting up and supporting a LM environment. The team over at VMware KB has created a few videos to showcase and explain some of the core features. You can view them from VMware KB1020915.

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

Posted by Brian on Jul 6, 2010 in Citrix, Hyper-V, VMware | View Comments

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

Remote Desktop Connection Manager updated from Microsoft

Posted by Brian on Jun 30, 2010 in Hardware | View Comments

I’ve used the previous version in small amounts in the past. But this new version I think will get used more, especially in my home lab. The update allows you to create groups of servers that you can view thumbnails of what is happening on the server from the group view. So if you were running updates, migrating data or something else that required multiple connections. It will remember your logon credentials or allow you to connect with a different ID. You can connect or disconnect from an entire group with one click.  Now if I could find something like this for putty would be cool.

Get it free here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4603c621-6de7-4ccb-9f51-d53dc7e48047&displaylang=en