Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

This is Jasjeet Singh's installation video of Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7.0 on VMware 1.0.1. This video is splitted into three parts.  

Part 1 – The setup

This week I’ve received a test model of the Cisco Catalyst 2960G-8TC-L from the nice people over at  Azlan, the Enterprise Division of Tech Data Corporation. The switch has 8 Ethernet 10/100/1000 ports, one of which is for dual-purpose, besides that it’s very compact in size with no fan. The 2960G-8TC-L is also fully compatible with the Catalyst series and has a LAN Based Image installed, the ideal switch for your home lab. I’m going to write a couple of articles about how to configure trunking between a Cisco Catalyst switch and a VMware distributed virtual switch.

First let’s start with the lab-setup, my home lab consists of two Asus barebones, both with 8 GB memory, some local 500 GB SATA disks and two Quad CPU Q9400 CPUs. For shared storage I’m using the Iomega StorCenter ix2 (Chad ;-)  I’m still waiting for the ix4). I’ve bought a couple of Intel PRO/1000 GT  single port network cards and have placed them in every free slot I could find in the barebones. This leaves me with 4 network cards per server, enough to setup a nice network test environment.

 

On my ESX server I’ve created a single standard virtual switch with two NICs which are connected to the Cisco switch. One Windows XP virtual machine with DHCP enabled. The VM is connected to the newly created Cisco VM Port Group. I’m going to use this virtual machine to do the initial configuration of the 2960.

Continue reading "Creating Ethernet VLANs on Catalyst Switches" »

Xtravirt is about to release another great tool; the vSphere Client RDP Plug-in. Last week Paul Davey has invited me to join the Xtravirt RDP Plug-in beta program. I was feeling very honored with his invitation and started performing some tests on their new RDP extension right away. I works like a charm, the installation is straight forward, after firing up the vSphere client the new RDP Plug–in is available at the vSphere Client plug-in manager.

When you jump to “Home” (I still have to get used to that) you'll find the new RDP plug-in at the Solutions and Applications section.  Here you can configure the RDP behaviour like screen size, username, domain and port. When the setup of the global setting is done, it’s time to put the plug-in to test.

Just right click one of your virtual machines and check-out the context menu, you’ll see an extra option appears called Connect over RDP. Just select the new menu option and your RDP connection will initiate.

Update: I’ve just received an updated version from Paul with the following new features:

Password – you can now set a password to be used for all connections, allowing automatic logon.
Security Warning – Security Warnings can be disabled by ticking the relevant tick box.

Update: vSphere Client RDP Plug-in is released  - http://xtravirt.com/vsphere-client-rdp-plug-in

I’ve created a little Jing movie which shows the new version of the Plug-in in action.

Continue reading "Xtravirt vSphere Client RDP Plug-in" »

Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vSphere 4, by John Arrasjid, Duncan Epping, and Steve Kaplan, is now online for members and available for purchase. Virtualization is recognized as a foundation for Cloud Computing. This book is an overview of the VMware technologies and how they can support the various services and management pieces required for Cloud architecture. Without diving overly deeply into specific design patterns, it provides insight into the tools to fit your design criteria.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/01/28/foundation-for-cloud-computing-with-vmware-vsphere-4/

This is a demonstration of RecoverPoint performing automated failover with VMware Site Recovery Manager. (Recorded by http://www.youtube.com/user/RecoverPoint)

In a previous article I’ve described how to add SSD storage to your ESX server. I’ve also written an article about creating linked clones with the Virtulization Ecoshell. Now I’m going to combine those two techniques and use VMware’s Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC is available for VMware Partners only) to generate some real load in the Windows XP virtual machines.

Desktop RAWC runs on a Windows XP guest operating system (memory 1 GB) and is executed on each desktop virtual machine (VM). Each target desktop VM is equipped to run a RAWC workload that simulates typical user behaviour, running an application set commonly used across a broad array of desktop environments. The workload has a set of randomly executed functions that perform operations on a variety of applications.

I’ve created 20 linked clones which are all stored on the Intel X25-M Postville SSD 80GB drive. During the execution of the workload, multiple applications are opened at the same time and windows are minimized and maximized as the workload progresses, randomly switching between each application. Individual application operations in my test environment that are randomly performed include:

• Microsoft Word – Open, minimize, maximize, close, insert text, save modifications
• Microsoft Word (Random) – Open, minimize, maximize, close, write random words/numbers, save modifications
• Microsoft Excel – Open, minimize, maximize, close, write random numbers, insert/delete columns/rows, copy/paste formulas, save modifications
• Microsoft PowerPoint – Open, minimize, maximize, close, conduct a slide show presentation
• Internet Explorer – Open, minimize, maximize, close, browse page
• Windows Media Player – Open, close, view a video
• Java – Compile a java project comprised of several hundred files using the JDK to create a software engineering type of workload
• Adobe Acrobat Reader – Open, minimize, maximize, close, browse pages in PDF document
• 7-Zip – Open, close, compress a large file

What I wanted to know is how the VMFS on SSD storage would perform under the stress of hosting 20 active XP desktops, writing in their own snapshot and reading from one shared VMDK. I’ve installed HD Tune Pro into one of the virtual desktops and waited for the “Windows Downloading Updates” to kick in, let’s take a look at the maximum read. Seems to perform pretty well.

Nicholas Weaver over at http://nickapedia.com/ has created a nice little tool which keeps you informed of who is on your vCenter server. Nicholas is an architect & geek extraordinaire.

I am a bit of a perfectionist and probably went WAY overboard without much gain.
So without further self flagellation and glorification I present the: vSphere Session Monitor 1.0

Effective May 2010, VMware will remove all but the most recent versions of their Virtual Infrastructure product binaries from their download web site. As of this date, these Virtual Infrastructure products will have reached end of general support according to the published support policy. The downloadable products removed will include both ESX and Virtual Center releases. For reference, the VMware VI3 support policy can be viewed at this location: www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/vi.

By removing older releases, VMware is establishing a long-term sustainable product maintenance line for older ESX product releases which have transitioned into the Extended Support life cycle phase. This enables us to baseline all patches and critical fixes against these baselines. This translates to faster customer turn-around and greater product stability during the extended support phase. Virtual Infrastructure products being removed by May 2010:

• ESX 3.5 versions 3.5 GA, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3 and Update 4
• ESX 3.0 versions 3.0 GA, 3.0.1, 3.0.2 and 3.0.3
• ESX 2.x versions 2.5.0 GA, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.1.3, 2.5.3, 2.0.2, 2.1.2 and 2.5.4
• Virtual Center 2.5 GA, 2.5 Update 1, 2.5 Update 2, 2.5 Update 3, 2.5 Update 4 and 2.5 Update 5
• Virtual Center 2.0

Virtual Infrastructure products remaining for Extended Support: These versions will be the baseline for ongoing support during the Extended Support phase. All subsequent patches issued will be based solely upon the releases below.

• ESX 3.5 Update 5 will remain throughout the duration of Extended Support
• ESX 3.0.3 Update 1 will remain throughout the duration of Extended Support
• Virtual Center 2.5 Update 6 expected in early 2010

Customers may stay at a prior version, however VMware’s patch release program during Extended Support will be continued with the condition that all subsequent patches will be based on the latest baseline. In some cases where there are release dependencies, prior update content may be included with patches.

Partition Manager 10 for Virtual Machines is a special version of Paragon's Linux/DOS bootable environment that contains fully functional Partition Manager 10 Professional. It’s optimized to work with virtual disks of any virtualization software vendor – backup/restore virtualized systems, re-partition and clone virtual disks, fix boot problems, optimize performance of NTFS and FAT file systems, etc. If you do care about effective data organization and speed of your virtual disks – this very tool is exactly what you need. Continue reading "Partition Manager 10 for Virtual Machines" »

A few days ago I’ve hooked-up my newly bought Intel SSD drive to one of my ESX server but didn’t realize it was the one with an ICH9 SATA controller. After some first tests I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, only 150 MB/Sec. After exchanging some email with Simon Seagrave over at techhead.co.uk who also has bought an SSD drive, I realized I was using the wrong ESX server. The SSD drive is now hooked-up to a server with an ICH10 SATA controller. I quickly fired-up the servers to see how fast the SSD drive is running now and it really matters. The difference is significant.

Next week my new Cisco Catalyst 2960G-8TC-L switch will arrive so I went to the store to buy some additional Intel PRO/1000 adapters to get fully prepped. While I was waiting in queue at Informatique an article written by Chad Sakac popped into my mind, in his article he predicted that 2010 will be the year of Solid State Storage. I noticed a real nice offer from Intel; the X25-M Postville SSD 80GB for only 200€ and tough what te heck, let’s buy one.

Model Name Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity 80GB
NAND Flash Components Intel® Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory
Bandwidth  Up to 250MB/s Read Speeds - Up to 70MB/s Write Speeds
Read Latency 85 microseconds
Interface SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s

All the NICS and the SSD drive are build into my two white boxes so I fired up HD Tune Pro in a virtual machine with a 8 GB test disk hosted on the newly created SSD-VMFS. The HD Tune Pro has a real nice feature which enables you to export screenshots of the measurements.

So, here is a quick benchmark comparison between SATA (10 GB) and SSD (8 GB) storage.

                          

During the Tech Data / Azlan partner event I’ve shot some video footage. The interesting part is at the end where Fiona Hering is presenting the new top products accompanied by some models on the catwalk. Fiona is a fashion & lifestyle-pro and one of the hosts at RTL Boulevard, aired at the biggest Dutch Broadcasting company. We agreed to do a little interview but I couldn’t find her after the show.

@FionaHering I’m sorry we couldn't catch up for the interview at the Tech Data event, you did great on presenting the new features.

On January 21th, 2010 the 16th edition of the Tech Data and Azlan partner event took place at the Home Boxx Exhibition Center Nieuwegein.  This Partner Event has become an annual event, with over 60 leading ICT suppliers and over 2000 resellers and is the only ICT exhibition with a unique design, full of information and entertainment. I’ve presented two sessions at this event about how to Accelerate Deployment of the Private Cloud with Vblock Infrastructure Packages. Here’s my slide deck, kudos to Chad Sakac for helping me out with my presentation.

IT is undergoing a transformation. The current ‘accidental architecture’ of IT today increases procurement, management costs, and complexity while making it difficult to meet customer service level agreements.  This makes IT less responsive to the business and creates the perception of IT being a cost center.   IT is now moving towards a ‘private cloud’ model, which is a new model for delivering IT as a service, whether that service is provided internally (IT today), externally (service provider), or in combination.  This new model requires a new way of thinking about both the underlying technology and the way IT is delivered for customer success.

While the need for a new IT model has never been more clear, navigating the path to that model has never been more complicated. The benefits of private clouds are capturing the collective imagination of IT architects and IT consumers in organizations of all sizes around the world. The realities of outdated technologies, rampant incremental approaches, and the absence of a compelling end-state architecture are impeding adoption by customers.

This new ‘private cloud’ model, which is a new model for delivering IT as a service, whether that service is provided internally (IT today), externally (service provider), or in combination.  This new model requires a new way of thinking about both the underlying technology and the way IT is delivered for customer success.
By harnessing the power of virtualization, private clouds place considerable business benefits within reach. 

Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, are putting you on a new road to greater efficiency, control and choice. A faster road to unprecedented IT agility and unbounded business opportunities. With the Virtual Compute Environment’s Vblock experience.

VMware education services will release the Skills for Operators training course around mid February.  This hands-on training course explores configuration and management of VMware vSphere virtual machines. Upon completion of this course, you should have the skills necessary to work effectively with VMware virtual machines. The course is based on VMware ESX 4.0 and VMware vCenter Server 4.0.

Objectives

•  Create, deploy, and manage virtual machines
•  Use vCenter Server to monitor virtual machine resource usage
•  Use VMware vCenter Update Manager to apply patches to virtual machines
•  Use VMware vMotion™ and Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines
•  Troubleshoot problems with virtual machine configuration

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www&a=one&id_subject=18670