Thursday, 26 April 2012

Technical Paper - Multipathing Configuration for Software iSCSI Using Port Binding

This paper provides an overview of how to enable vmknicbased software iSCSI multipathing, as well as the procedure by which to verify port binding configuration.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-multipathing-configuration-software-iSCSI-port-binding.pdf




Configuring vmknic-based multipathing for the software iSCSI adapter will help vSphere users enable failover at the path level as well as balance I/O traffic between the paths.
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Technical Paper - Storage Protocol Comparison

The objective of this white paper is to provide information on storage protocols and how they interoperate with  VMware vSphere and related features. Not all supported storage protocols are discussed. Some notable  exceptions are ATA over Ethernet (AoE) and shared/switched SAS. However, the protocols that are included in  this paper are the ones that VMware is most frequently asked to compare.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Storage_Protocol_Comparison.pdf

VMware frequently is asked for guidance regarding the best storage protocol to use with VMware vSphere®. vSphere supports many storage protocols, with no preference given to any one over another. However, many customers still want to know how these protocols stack up against each other and to understand their respective pros and cons.This white paper looks at common storage protocols from a vSphere perspective. It is not intended to delve into performance comparisons, for the following two reasons:

  • The Performance Engineering team at VMware already produces excellent storage performance white papers.
  • Storage protocol performance can vary greatly, depending on the storage array vendor. It therefore does not make sense to compare iSCSI and NFS from one vendor, because another vendor might implement one of those protocols far better.

If you are interested in viewing performance comparisons of storage protocols, the “Conclusion” section of this paper includes links to several such documents.
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Thursday, 19 April 2012

VMware has released the public draft of the vSphere 5.0 Hardening Guide

When implementing virtualization technology, organizations must ensure that they can continue to maintain a secure environment and meet their compliance obligations. To do so, you will have to evaluate risks that might affect protected information and mitigate those risks through risk-appropriate standards, processes, and best practices.

The draft version of the vSphere 5.0 Hardening Guide provides guidance on how to securely deploy VMware vSphere 5 in a production environment. The focus is on initial configuration of the virtualization infrastructure layer, which covers the following:

  • The virtualization hosts 
  • Configuration of the virtual machine container (NOT hardening of the guest operating system (OS) or any applications running within)
  • Configuration of the virtual networking infrastructure, including the management and storage networks as well as the virtual switch (but NOT security of the virtual machine’s network)
  • VMware vCenter Server, its database and client components

Please provide your feedback in the comments field here.
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Monday, 16 April 2012

Technical Paper - Integrating VMware View and VMware ThinApp with Citrix XenApp

If you have a Citrix XenApp implementation and are making a decision about taking further steps with virtualization, this discussion is for you. You probably already use VMware vSphere to virtualize your servers, including your XenApp Servers. The next steps would be to virtualize applications and desktops. If you like the concept and performance of XenApp application presentation, you can expand that functionality by adding View and ThinApp to the mix. 

This solution preserves the investment you have made in time and money in the XenApp implementation. Your staff expertise in successfully running XenApp will continue to be useful in this combined implementation. Furthermore, the expertise you have accumulated in running a vSphere environment will be leveraged with a View and ThinApp implementation.

This paper describes the strengths and flexibility of VMware View virtual desktops and VMware ThinApp virtual applications, and how they can be used to enhance Citrix XenApp application presentation. If you already have a XenApp implementation, you can greatly enhance it by adding ThinApp and View to the environment.

Implementing View and ThinApp are the first steps toward embracing the next-generation technologies to access your data, your desktops, and your applications from the cloud. VMware’s vision for End User Computing in the cloud starts with virtualizing the applications and desktops that you use today and extends to include a secure catalog of data, desktops, and applications from many sources, with access from any mobile device.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/Citrix-XenApp-VMware-View-ThinApp.pdf
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Saturday, 7 April 2012

Technical Whitepaper - Creating a foundation for Oracle as a Service

Migrating from a physical Data Center to a virtual Data Center creates challenges in terms of determining the best practices for deploying virtualized Oracle databases. This white paper illustrates EMC IT's framework for deploying virtualized Oracle databases. EMC IT's Oracle virtual deployment models are the foundation for the "as-a-Service" cloud deployment model.
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Saturday, 31 March 2012

VMware Technical Journal - March 2012

The VMware Technical Journal is a new online publication. VMware is looking forward to producing future journal issues at regular intervals to highlight the R&D efforts taking place in several different areas of engineering. Their first issue includes papers related to distributed resource management, user experience monitoring, and statistics collection frameworks for virtualized environments, along with several other topics. In future issues they will highlight other areas of VMware R&D, including Cloud Application Platform and End User Computing, and research collaborations with academic partners.

  • Introduction by Steve Herrod, CTO
  • VisorFS: A Special-purpose File System for Efficient Handling of System Images
  • A Software-based Approach to Testing VMware® vSphere® VMkernel Public APIs
  • Providing Efficient and Seamless Desktop Services in Ubiquitous Computing Environments
  • Comprehensive User Experience Monitoring
  • StatsFeeder: An Extensible Statistics Collection Framework for Virtualized Environments
  • VMware Distributed Resource Management: Design, Implementation, and Lessons Learned
  • Identity, Access Control, and VMware Horizon
  • VMworld 2011 Hands-On Labs: Implementation and Workflow

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Friday, 23 March 2012

Xsigo Server Fabric Performance Test Results

The folks at Xsigo have done some performance benchmarking  -- on their own server fabric but still, in this emerging space, numbers are still hard to come by and these illustrate some of what’s possible as the industry moves in this direction.  

This is a really short write-up they did with info on the test bed, the tests performed and some graphs and screenshots, but the summary results show that compared to 1G and 10G Ethernet, the Xsigo ServerFabric delivered: 

  • 2.4X the Ethernet traffic of a 10G Ethernet connection (throughput to a single virtual machine)
  • 20Gbps throughput measured to a single NIC on a single virtual machine
  • 15X faster vMotion than1G Ethernet 
  • 67% faster vMotion than 10G Ethernet

In performance benchmark testing, the Xsigo Server Fabric demonstrated significantly higher network device throughput as compared to 1G Ethernet and 10G Ethernet server connections.

XsigoServerFabricPerformanceTestResults.pdf
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Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Technical Paper - Stretched Clusters and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

This paper is intended to clarify concepts involved with choosing solutions for vSphere site availability, and to help understand the use cases for availability solutions for the virtualized infrastructure. Specific guidance is given around the intended use of DR solutions like VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager and contrasted with the intended use of geographically stretched clusters spanning multiple datacenters. While both solutions excel at their primary use case, their strengths lie in different areas which are explored within.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify some of the concepts involved with vSphere site availability, and to help understand the use cases for these availability solutions in the vSphere landscape. The intent is to provide guidance not in terms of purchasing decisions or products, but in terms of what various technologies intend to do and how to best achieve availability goals for your environment.

When designing for availability, in many instances the solution architect will have to choose between these technologies. Stretched clusters are incompatible with Site Recovery Manager and therefore, the architect is faced with a decision whether to choose active non-disruptive site balancing with unmanaged crash recovery via a stretched cluster or choose a robust disaster recovery solution that will restart failed services in a controlled and known fashion but is predicated on service outage.

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Wednesday, 14 March 2012

VMware View 5 - Technical Papers

The Business Case for Desktop Virtualization

In this mobile user- and device-centric environment, IT must protect data security and control user access to data at the same time as it manages the range of applications and devices for all users. The single operating system and single device per user is a model of the past. VMware offers an end user computing solution that meets the challenges of providing for a mobile workforce, without compromising IT control or the operational efficiencies of existing management processes. VMware products incorporate the needs of both IT and end users.

Secure Printing with VMware View

The first step in implementing Secure Print Release is to acquire the Secure Print Server solution from a printing partner. The Secure Print Control software will be installed on the same machine as your existing Print Server. The Secure Print Control software can use Active Directory for authentication or will integrate with an existing single sign-on solution. The Secure Print Control vendor solutions have modular SSO architecture and can work with you to integrate any existing SSO solution in your current infrastructure. Companies that do not want to use Active Directory or that have an existing SSO solution can alternatively use local lists or user input to a SQL database. The single sign-on and user login data are aggregated for compliance auditing purposes.

Security Solution Architecture for VDI

This brief provides an overview of the desktop security vulnerabilities which exist in both virtual and physical environments that must be addressed throughout the typical connection sequence, along with the VMware and thirdparty products that remediate the issues. Together, VMware and VMware technologies comprise a security solution architecture for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)—an architecture that goes beyond the viruses, worms, and phishing attacks mostly commonly addressed in desktop security technology to include data loss, system management, and compliance monitoring.

Antivirus Practices for VMware View 5

This paper focuses on the best practices for protection against viruses in the VMware View 5 virtual desktop environment. Antivirus software is one of the largest segments in today’s computer security market. Nearly every enterprise deploys antivirus software on every desktop. As services such as security, mobility, access  control, and line-of-business applications are all rolled up into the datacenter or cloud, antivirus practices need to be rolled up as well.
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Friday, 2 March 2012

Technical Paper - Cloud Infrastructure Architecture Case Study

The VMware Cloud Infrastructure Suite (CIS) consists of five technologies that together expand the capabilities and value that customers can realize from a virtualized infrastructure. CIS is designed to help organizations build more intelligent virtual infrastructures. It does so by enabling highly virtualized environments with the automation, self-service and security capabilities that customers require to deploy business-critical applications, respond to business demands more quickly and move to a secure cloud model. The CIS is based on the VMware vSphere platform as its foundation in pursuing any type of cloud infrastructure. In addition to vSphere, the CIS also includes VMware vShield App, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Server (SRM Server), VMware vCloud Director, and VMware vCenter Operations Manager.

The VMware Cloud Infrastructure Architecture Case Study Series was developed to provide an understanding of the various components of the CIS. The goal is to explain how these components can be used in specific scenarios, which are based on real-world customer examples and therefore contain real-world requirements and constraints. This document is the first in a series of case studies, with each case study focusing on a different use case with different requirements and constraints.

This document provides both logical and physical design considerations encompassing components that are pertinent to this scenario. To facilitate the requirements of this case study, these considerations and decisions are based on a combination of VMware best practices and specific business requirements and goals. Cloud infrastructure–related components, including requirements and specifications for virtual machines and hosts, security, networking, storage, and management, are included in this document.

Technical Paper - Cloud Infrastructure Architecture Case Study
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Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Technical Paper - VMware vCloud Director Infrastructure Resiliency Case Study

VMware vCloud Director 1.5 (vCloud Director) gives enterprise organizations the ability to build secure private clouds that dramatically increase datacenter efficiency and business agility. Coupled with VMware vSphere (vSphere), vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling vSphere virtual resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services. vCloud Director helps build agile infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud environments that greatly accelerate the time to market for applications and increase the responsiveness of IT organizations.

Resiliency is a key aspect of any infrastructure—it is even more important in infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. This case study was developed to provide additional insight and information as to how to increase availability and recoverability of a vCloud Director–based infrastructure using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) as well as common disaster recovery methodologies and tools. SRM facilitates fast and reliable recovery and enables you to meet your recovery time objectives (RTOs) by automating the failover process of your vCloud Director management environment.

Technical Paper - VMware vCloud Director Infrastructure Resiliency Case Study

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Sunday, 19 February 2012

Technical Whitepaper - Network I/O Latency on VMware vSphere 5

Network I/O latency is an important measurement, especially in latency-sensitive applications like those found in industries such as finance and trading, healthcare, transportation, and telecom (in particular, applications using Voice over IP). The end-to-end latency requirements of these applications vary from microseconds to milliseconds. And some of these applications, such as those utilizing Voice over IP, are more sensitive to jitter than end-to-end latency. So an important measurement to consider for vSphere performance in this scope is latency and jitter added due to virtualization.

Packets sent or received from a virtual machine experience some increase in network I/O latency compared to a bare metal (native) environment. This is because packets need to traverse through an extra layer of virtualization stack in the case of virtual machines. The additional latency due to the virtualization stack can come from several different sources. The most commons ones include:

- Emulation Overhead
- Packet Processing
- Scheduling
- Virtual Interrupt Coalescing
- Network Bandwidth Contention
- Halt-Wakeup Physical CPU
- Halt-Wakeup Virtual CPU

VMware designed and ran several performance experiments to show under what conditions the different sources of latency become dominant and how they affect end-to-end latency. The results will help you make proper design choices for your environment such that it fulfills your end-to-end latency requirements.

Network I/O Latency on VMware vSphere 5
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Monday, 6 February 2012

Technical Whitepaper - VMware vSphere VMFS-5 Upgrade Considerations

VMware vSphere 5.0 introduced a new version of the flagship vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) known as VMFS-5. VMFS-5 offers a variety of new features, including:

• Larger single extent volume (64TB)
• Larger Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs): 2TB – 512 bytes with a new unified 1MB block size
• More and smaller sub-blocks (8KB) to reduce the amount of stranded/unused space
• Improvements in performance and scalability via the implementation of the vSphere vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) primitive ATS (Atomic Test & Set) across all datastore operations.

vSphere 5.0 supports both VMFS versions 3 and 5. Therefore, it is not necessary to upgrade your VMFS volumes. However, customers can move to VMFS-5 to benefit from these features. A complete set of VMFS-5 enhancements can be found in the What’s New in vSphere 5.0 Storage white paper.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMFS-5_Upgrade_Considerations.pdf
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Technical Whitepaper - VMware vSphere Distributed Switch Best Practices

This paper provides best practice guidelines for deploying the VMware vSphere® distributed switch (VDS) in a vSphere environment. The advanced capabilities of VDS provide network administrators with more control of and visibility into their virtual network infrastructure. This document covers the di!erent considerations that vSphere and network administrators must take into account when designing the network with VDS. It also discusses some standard best practices for configuring VDS features.

The paper describes two example deployments, one using rack servers and the other using blade servers. For each of these deployments, di!erent VDS design approaches are explained. The deployments and design approaches described in this document are meant to provide guidance as to what physical and virtual switch parameters, options and features should be considered during the design of a virtual network infrastructure. It is important to note that customers are not limited to the design options described in this paper. The flexibility of the vSphere platform allows for multiple variations in the design options that can fulfill an individual customer’s unique network infrastructure needs.

This document is intended for vSphere and network administrators interested in understanding and deploying VDS in a virtual datacenter environment. With the release of vSphere 5, there are new features as well as enhancements to the existing features in VDS. To learn more about these new features and enhancements, refer to the What’s New in Networking paper.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10250
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Friday, 3 February 2012

Technical Whitepapers - SAP and VMware

VMware has released several technical white papers and reports regarding hosting a SAP enviroment on vSphere.


This paper describes how SAP NetWeaver running in a Linux environment on VMware vSphere 4 can be protected. It provides good details on the key capabilities of SUSE Linux and VMware vSphere as it pertains to protecting a Tier 1 business critical application.


This report shows the results of the SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark on a Fujitsu Primergy RX300 S6 system, running VMware vSphere 5.0


Virtualizing Tier-1 applications such as SAP allow end users to reap the benefits of virutalization such as improved server utilization, reduced maintenance costs, easier administration, higher levels of business continuity and faster response time to changing business needs. Read this paper to understand how to virtualize SAP on IBM System x3850 X5 servers


This report provides the results of performance and scalability of the HP ProLiant DL980 server running SAP on VMware vSphere 5. The tests were done by ESG labs, which confirmed that vSphere 5 was able to effectively virtualize a CPU-intensive SAP workload and achieve scale as number of users grew.
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Friday, 16 December 2011

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Technical Deep Dive

In the release of VMware vSphere 5.0, VMware also released a new software storage appliance called the VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). VMware VSA provides an alternative shared storage solution to our Small to Medium Business (SMB) customers who might not be in a position to purchase a Storage Area Network (SAN) or Network-Attached Storage (NAS) array for their virtual infrastructure. Without shared storage configured in a vSphere environment, customers have not been able to exploit the unique features available in vSphere 5.0, such as vSphere High Availability (HA), vSphere, vMotion and vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). The VSA is designed to provide “Shared Storage for Everyone”.

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Technical Deep Dive.pdf

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Recent Entries

vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 1.1 - What's New
Tuesday, May 1 2012
Technical Paper - Multipathing Configuration for Software iSCSI Using Port Binding
Thursday, April 26 2012
Technical Paper - Storage Protocol Comparison
Thursday, April 26 2012
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Tuesday, April 17 2012
Technical Paper - Integrating VMware View and VMware ThinApp with Citrix XenApp
Monday, April 16 2012

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