White Papers

Saturday, March 31. 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

VMware Technical Journal

Friday, March 23. 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

Wednesday, March 21. 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.

Wednesday, March 14. 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.

Friday, March 2. 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

(Page 1 of 1, totaling 5 entries)

Entries from March 2012

Saturday, March 31. 2012

VMware Technical Journal - March 2012

Friday, March 23. 2012

Xsigo Server Fabric Performance Test Results

Wednesday, March 21. 2012

Technical Paper - Stretched Clusters and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Wednesday, March 14. 2012

VMware View 5 - Technical Papers

Friday, March 2. 2012

Technical Paper - Cloud Infrastructure Architecture Case Study

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