Entries from Eric Sloof

Thursday, June 7. 2012

Technical Paper - VMware vSphere Storage DRS Interoperability

Virtual machine storage provisioning historically has imposed operational challenges. Monitoring datastore capacity and I/O load has proven to be very difficult and as a result is often neglected. During the provisioning process for virtual machines, virtual disk datastores are often randomly selected, leading to hot spots and over- or underutilized data-stores. Storage DRS is a new feature introduced in VMware vSphere 5.0 that provides smart virtual machine placement and load balancing mechanisms based on I/O and space capacity.

It will help decrease operational effort associated with the provisioning of virtual machines and monitoring of the storage environment. This document presents an overview of best practices for customers considering the implementation of VMware vSphere Storage DRS in combination with advanced storage device features or other VMware products.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vsphere-storage-drs-interoperability.pdf

Wednesday, June 6. 2012

Why Choose VMware vSphere 5 for VDI? Comparison to Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer

Today, Virtualization Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a key initiative for many organizations looking to reduce administrative overhead while providing a more secure, flexible and reliable desktop computing environment for end users. Proper planning and good decision making are required to ensure a successful deployment. Choosing the right virtualization platform to host the virtual desktop implementation is often the first major decision and— to a large degree— can make or break the entire transformation. Important considerations when choosing the best VDI platform include:

Does the platform provide the features, reliability, and high availability to meet the business requirements?
Is the platform reliable and proven?
Does the platform provide a secure foundation for all the virtual desktops?
Can the infrastructure be standardized on the same platform as the existing server virtualization?
How will the choice made today impact future migration to a cloud environment?
How does the VDI platform choice impact options for a VDI solution?

Based on the above criteria, the best choice for most VDI deployments is vSphere because:

vSphere is the leading virtualization platform and provides unbeatable reliability, high availability, business continuity, and fault tolerance.
Customers can standardize on a common cloud infrastructure platform from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud.
VMware View and vSphere integration maximizes the benefits of the leading virtualization platform for VDI.

This paper takes a look at each of these attributes in the context of the unique needs of the VDI market.

Tuesday, June 5. 2012

vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 reference app for iPhone and iPad

This tool is to be used for referencing the VMware vSphere 5 PowerCLI cmdlets. VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a powerful command line tool that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM, guest OS and more. PowerCLI is distributed as a Windows PowerShell snapin, and includes more than 300 PowerShell cmdlets, along with documentation and samples.

Cool Tool - VM Aware Database Performance - Completely FREE

CONFIO SOFTWARE has just released a new version of their IgniteVM software that is completely free. IgniteFreeVM takes the core feature, multi-layer visibility of databases running on VMware, from application through the storage layer, and makes it available in a free-of-charge tool for unlimited use. It differs from the paid version in a few respects – it does not have the advanced enterprise features such as reporting and alerting, and it is limited to a two hour rolling window, rather than seeing months of history.

IgniteFreeVM will be of interest to Oracle and SQL Server DBAs who have databases running on VMware. It will also be useful for VMware administrators who need to ensure success of databases on their platform and want low impact, easily understood views of how the database is using VMware resources.

http://www.ignitefree.com/

Get the VMware vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive for free

Now available for FREE, 4.1 HA/DRS and 5.0 Clustering Deepdive Kindle version! Frank and Duncan have written “vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive” to give you a better understanding of all the new clustering features vSphere 5.0 offers and how these integrate with each other.

VMware vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive zooms in on three key components of every VMware based infrastructure and is by no means a "how to" guide. It covers the basic steps needed to create a vSphere HA and vSphere DRS cluster and to implement vSphere Storage DRS. Even more important, it explains the concepts and mechanisms behind HA, DRS and Storage DRS which will enable you to make well educated decisions. This book will take you in to the trenches of HA, DRS and Storage DRS and will give you the tools to understand and implement e.g. HA admission control policies, DRS resource pools, Datastore Clusters and resource allocation settings. On top of that each section contains basic design principles that can be used for designing, implementing or improving VMware infrastructures and fundamental supporting features like (Storage) vMotion, Storage I/O Control and much more are described in detail for the very first time.

This book is also the ultimate guide to be prepared for any HA, DRS or Storage DRS related question or case study that might be presented during VMware VCDX, VCP and or VCAP exams.

Coverage includes

HA node types
HA isolation detection and response
HA admission control
VM Monitoring
HA and DRS integration
DRS imbalance algorithm
Resource Pools
Impact of reservations and limits
CPU Resource Scheduling
Memory Scheduler
DPM
Datastore Clusters
Storage DRS algorithm
Influencing SDRS recommendations

Be prepared to dive deep!

Sunday, June 3. 2012

VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator v1.1 Demo Overview

Ben Scheerer, Sr. Product Manager at VMware, provides a demo, use cases and functionality of VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) v1.1.

Saturday, June 2. 2012

vSphere 5.0 Hardening Guide - Official Release

This is the official release of the vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide, v1.0. The format of this guide has changed from previous versions. The guide is being released as a Excel spreadsheet only. The guideline metadata from earlier guides has been greatly expanded and standardized. CLI commands for assessment and remediation of the guidelines is included for the vCLI, ESXi Shell, and PowerCLI.

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-19605

Thursday, May 31. 2012

New Training - VMware vCenter Operations Manager: Analyze and Predict [V5.0]

This course, for experienced VMware vSphere personnel, teaches skills for the use of VMware vCenter™ Operations as a forensic and predictive tool. The course is based on VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0, VMware vCenter Server 5.0, and vCenter Operations Manager 5.0.

• Understand major and minor badges and their underlying metrics.

• Use these badges to find root causes of common operational issues in a vSphere environment.

• Perform capacity management and what-if analyses.

• Use the Operations tab, the Planning tab, the Alerts tab, the Analysis tab, and the Reports tab.

• Navigate the vCenter Operations Manager 5.0 user interface.

• Use heat maps and create a custom heat map.

• Use smart alerts to detect system issues.

Course Datasheet

Tuesday, May 29. 2012

VMworld 2012 - Call for Papers Public Voting is Now Open

This year you can have a say in what sessions you would like to see at VMworld 2012. Public Voting ends at June 8th. You can vote for the sessions you would like to see. I’ve submitted 4 sessions which are available for public voting. If you are intrested in SQL 2012, Windows 8, Snapshots or the famous Mythbusters - Please put "Sloof" into the filter options and Click on the “Thumbs Up” symbol next to the Session ID. You will receive confirmation that your vote has been counted - Thanks in advance. Here's a list of the sessions. The first two are solo, the other two are duo presentations with Mattias Sundling and Michael Wilmsen.

1478 Hosting Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on vSphere 5 – Best Practices
This session provides best practice guidelines for properly preparing the vSphere 5 platform to run SQL Server 2012.
1479 Tuning Windows 8 for Best Performance in VMware View 5
This session provides guidelines on configuring Windows 8 to be used within a VMware View 5.1 Infrastructure.
1616 Mythbusting Goes Virtual (with Mattias Sundling)
Based on the successful concept of fun, different and educational, the Mythbusting team is back with new virtualization myths! We have collected a series of hot topics that have been widely discussed in virtualization communities, on blogs and on Twitter. Now, we have put these topics to the test in our lab to determine if they are a myth or not.
1871 Snapshots Deepdive (with Michael Wilmsen)
Creating virtual machine snapshots is one of the most common tasks for an administrator Making a snapshot of a virtual machine is one of the most common tasks an administrator can do with a virtual machine. Snapshots make our life must easier by providing a robust roll-back scenario when performing a upgrade or when we change the configuration of a virtual machine. Snapshots are quest independent and easy to use. Snapshots can also be a real nightmare when used wrong. Datastores can fill up resulting in a virtual machine (suspension) crash., you’re unable to delete snapshots and backup programs leaving unmanageable snapshots behind. These are all common issues that can occur when using snapshots. What about the size of a snapshot file, how large can a snapshot file grow? This session will give you a deepdive in how snapshot actually work in the different version of vSphere and how you can solve common problems when working with snapshots.

Friday, May 25. 2012

VMware Diagram & Icon Library (2012)

These are the official icons and diagrams of VMware. VMware allows the use of these icons and diagrams in derivative works by VMware Community members to illustrate virtualization concepts and IT architectures.

VMware PowerPoint Icons and Images - 2Q12

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