Entries from Eric Sloof

VMware (NYSE: VMW ) today opened for trading on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "VMW".  Diane Greene, President and Chief Executive Officer of VMware, is joined by other co-founders and members of the virtualization leader's executive team as she rings the NYSE's opening bell on August 14, 2007 to celebrate VMware's IPO on the NYSE.

A VMWare cofounder says virtual appliances that run apps alone could threaten operating systems.The virtual appliance model could be a major threat to operating systems from major vendors such as Microsoft Corp., says a cofounder of VMWare Inc. Mendel Rosenblum told an audience at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco last week that a virtual appliance, which bundles a software application with only the operating system code needed to make it run, can then be deployed on a virtualized server regardless of the host operating system. Rosenblum is also chief scientist of virtualization at VMware.

washingtonpost.com

This release of VMware ESX Server offers the following improvements:

• Wyse Multimedia Support can now be installed into compatible guest operating systems using the VMware Tools Installer. Installing Multimedia Support enables supported devices to receive encoded video streams via RDP/ICA. Only Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 guest operating systems are supported when using Wyse Multimedia Support and ESX Server 3.0.2. Please refer to the KB 1001699 for information on installing Wyse Multimedia Support in a supported guest operating system.
• Support for additional backup software from third-party vendors including:
  • CA BrightStor ArcServe 11.5 SP1
  • CommVault Galaxy version 6.1 SP4
  • IBM TSM Storage Agent version 5.3.3
  • Legato NetWorker 7.3.2 Jumbo Update 1
  • Symantec Backup Exec version 11d
  • Veritas NetBackup Exec version 6.0

Normally you would enter your Virtual Center server host name when logging in with the Virtual Machine MKS Client. But in some circumstances it may be necessary to logon to your ESX server directly. Bypassing the Virtual Center is never a good idea because you can make your cluster instable, but on the other hand if you don’t have a Virtual Center Server anymore and still want to use the Virtual Machine MKS Client you received an error. Until now, with version 1.8 you can both logon to your VC server and directly to your ESX host. Keep in mind that when you logon to the ESX server directly you have to use the service console Linux account instead of your Windows account. When you want to visit the Paypal sponsor page, please use this link. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.8 in the software menu item of my blog.

Another new version of the Virtual Machine MKS Client is released. This new version contains a link which can be used to become a sponsor. Why is sponsorship important ? When you become a sponsor I have the opportunity to add new functions and fix bugs. This way we can keep the quality of the Virtual Machine MKS Client at a high level. When you want to visit the Paypal sponsor page, please use this link. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.7 in the software menu item of my blog.

Today I added two new features to the Virtual Machine MKS Client. Richard suggested to ad a menu item to  send Ctrl+Alt+Delete to the virtual machine and Philippe would be very happy with a borderless window mode. Their wishes are my command and in the 1.6 version you can find both menu items under View. Just some figures, the Virtual machine MKS Client is downloaded over 600 times and the internal version is 1.0.0.11. On an average day my blog is visited by more than 800 people. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.6 in the software menu item of my blog.

I added another really cool feature to the Virtual Machine MKS Client. When you click on the menu item Virtual Machines you will see a list of all your virtual machines. On the left of the virtual machine you see a little bullet. This bullet is an indicator of the overall status of the virtual machine. When the bullet is green there is nothing wrong. When it’s grey the virtual machine is powered down. When it’s red there is an alarm and when it’s yellow there is a warning.You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.5 in the software menu item of my blog.

When you are running the Virtual Machine MKS Client on a system that never visited Web Access than the MKS Client won’t start. This problem is caused by the absence of the ActiveX Control that is used by the MKS Client. I created a workaround for this problem. Download vmware-mks.cab, unpack the files, right click the quickmksax.inf and choose install. After this short procedure the Virtual Machine MKS Client will function correctly.

Peter van den Bosch over at PQR has created a nice PDF document. The Virtualization capacity sizing and planning solutions feature comparison matrix. This matrix compares the features of the industry’s most popular virtualization sizing and planning products.

I installed the Virtual Machine MKS Client on a Workstation where the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client 2.0 wasn’t installed yet and the Virtual Machine MKS Client didn’t work. I still have to find out what’s causing this behavior. I received some real  good feedback and was able to implement some of the feature requests. In this new version I added some icons and I fixed a few typo’s. You can find the download link for the Virtual Machine MKS Client v1.4 in the software menu item of my blog.