Entries from Eric Sloof

PALO ALTO, Calif., Apr 21, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced VMware vSphere(TM) 4, the industry's first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service. With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way - delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice. Continue reading "VMware Unveils the Industry's First Operating..." »

April 21 is coming closer and I’m sure, you’re all very curious what the upcoming VMware event will bring us. As sort of a promotion, I recorded a couple of ringtones you can use on your mobile phone. :-) These ringtones are royalty free and can be copied as much as you want, have fun with it.

VMware_Ringtone_1.mp3
VMware_Ringtone_2.mp3
VMware_Ringtone_3.mp3
VMware_Ringtone_4.mp3

I’ve downloaded the Iometer utility and ran some tests on my new Iomega StorCenter ix2 NFS server. The icf file I’ve used to configure Iometer can be found in the “Open unofficial storage performance thread”. This VMware community thread also contains test results from lots of other people. It’s a great place to compare different storage solutions with each other. My tests aren’t representative, they ran to short but will give you a quick insight into the StorCenter’s NFS/ESX performance. Here are the screen shots.

   

• Max Throughput-100% Read
• RealLife-60%Rand-65% Read
• Max Throughput-50% Read
• Random-8k-70% Read

Continue reading "StorCenter NFS performance measurements" »

After Duncan Epping posted the “Home Lab Storage” article on Yellow-Bricks this week, I thought let’s give it a try. 

VMware Infrastructure 3 supports NAS storage devices using the NFS protocols. Iomega StorCenter NAS devices can present NFS-exported shares to VMware ESX Server to create Datastores for virtual machines and virtual disks. An Iomega StorCenter NAS offers greater reliability, ease of use, and ease of management characteristics that are designed specifically for the needs of small businesses.

 

NFS is a compelling option for VMware ESX for many reasons. With NFS, VMWare ESX Server supports advanced features including VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), high availability (VMHA), and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). NFS offers a highly simplified management model that reduces cost and management complexity. VMware encapsulates virtual machines into a small number of .vmdk files. NFS is an optimized file-serving protocol with operational granularity at the file level as opposed to the LUN level. Iomega StorCenter NAS satisfies requirements for storage on VMware ESX Server and is certified in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) with certifications in the NAS category. A StorCenter NAS device is a proven storage platform for small businesses that want to deploy VMware ESX Server.

Iomega has released a white paper last month explaining how to configure the ix2 and your ESX server. Both my ESX servers are connected to the real shared storage now :-) Next week I’ll post a "performance finding" article.

Many users are looking for ways to maximize their investment and want to leverage the advanced features available in ESX, but cant do so without making a significant investment in a shared storage system. Why spend thousands of dollars when you can leverage the internal storage available in your ESX server?

VMware users deserve a more flexible, robust and cost effective shared storage solution for their virtual server environment. Shared storage systems are needed in order to leverage the real benefits of ESX (such as VMotion), but are often seen as out of reach, too complicated or too expensive for mid-sized organizations. Until now!

The past few days I’ve been very busy with building my second future proof ESX server. I still had an unused (repaired) Asus V2-P5G33 Bare-Bone, and decided to buy some CPU and memory to get this host up and running. Here’s my shopping list.

• Bare bone Asus V2-P5G33
• Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66 GHz
• Memory OCZ 8 GB DDR2-800 Kit
• Storage  Samsung HD501LJ 500GB Internal SATA 16MB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• Network Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
• DVD-ROM Samsung SH-D163
• Diet Coke

The first thing I did was a vMotion migration of a virtual machine with it's disk on an Openfiler Virtual iSCSI Appliance. The second thing I tried was, enabling Fault Tollerence, but that didn’t work because my CPU’s aren’t supported. The third thing I did was enabeling VMware HA.
When you enable a cluster for VMware HA, you specify the number of host failures to be able to recover from. If you specify the number of host failures allowed as 1, VMware HA maintains enough capacity across the cluster to tolerate the failure of one host, so that all running virtual machines on that host can be restarted on remaining hosts. By default, you cannot power on a virtual machine if doing so violates required failover capacity. In the HA Advanced Runtime Info, you can check how many “Available slots” are left, and what resources on “Slot size” takes.

Eric Sloof has been in ICT for 15 years, with a recent focus on virtualization. He has been declared a VMware vExpert and is a VMware Certified Instructor. Eric's blog, NTPRO.NL, covers everything from Training to PowerShell to vSphere.

Virtual Strategy Magazine launched in 2005 as the first news and information portal focused exclusively on virtualization technologies. VSM engages industry experts to provide the most compelling content, making it a dynamic resource for those who need the latest information to ensure reliability, stability, flexibility and scalability in virtualization implementations.

You can stay one step ahead of the competition with Virtual Strategy Magazine's private "Members Only" site, the web's premier resource for infrastructure virtualization strategies. As a member you also get the VSM Newsletter - Their monthly e-newsletter provides a sneak peek into virtualization infrastructure trends, best practices and revenue generating implementation methodologies.

Demonstration of VMware virtualization solution for mobile phones. VMware MVP allows a corporate phone environment to run along side an employee's personal environment on the same physical device, each in complete isolation from each other.

Jon Hall, a Technical Certification Developer over at VMware says a "Master VCP" certification is something that VMware is working very hard on being able to provide soon.

The VCDX, as cool as it is, is specifically targeted at a solution architect level.  It is not for everyone.  What should be for all of you is a "next" level.  This "Master VCP" certification is something that we are working very hard on being able to provide soon.  It would involve being a VCP, then taking the Enterprise Administration Exam, which is part multiple choice, part practical.  That exam has limited scalability at this point, and we can't roll out this certification until we resolve that issue.  Of course that is only one factor, but it is the main limiting factor at this point.

So for all of you wanted the next level of mastery, just stay tuned and VMware will have it for you soon...

The Virtualization EcoShell provides administrators with a free toolkit which allows them to build their own powerful virtualization systems management consoles. In addition, they can also benefit from the hundreds of members associated with the online community-driven website, The Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI™) – www.thevesi.org. Scott Herold, author, virtualization expert and chief architect of the Virtualization EcoShell and VESI commented “While we are promoting the implementation of automated systems management and providing for free what many vendors still charge for, we know every single administrator managing a virtual infrastructure can take this freeware desktop application and wrap many value-added services around it for the benefit of their organizations.”

The beta release of the Virtualization EcoShell can be downloaded from here. The Virtualization EcoShell provides several key features and out-of-the-box use cases for administrators. These capabilities will allow them to get a strong sense of how to optimize, streamline, manage and automate their multi-platform virtual environments.

Continue reading "Vizioncore Announces the Beta Release of the..." »