Eric Sloof

Dear ESX 3.5 Customer,

Our records indicate you recently downloaded VMware® ESX Version 3.5 U3 from our product download site. This email is to alert you that an issue with that product version could adversely effect your environment. This email provides a detailed description of the issue so that you can evaluate whether it affects you, and the next steps you can take to get resolution or avoid encountering the issue.

ISSUE DETAILS:

VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 U3 I/O failure on SAN LUN(s) and LUN queue is blocked indefinitely. This occurs when VMFS3 metadata updates are being done at the same time failover to an alternate path occurs for the LUN on which the VMFS3 volume resides. The effected releases are ESX 3.5 Update 3 and ESXi 3.5 U3 Embedded and Installable with both Active/Active or Active/Passive SAN arrays (Fibre Channel and iSCSI).

PROBLEM STATEMENT AND SYMPTONS:

ESX or ESXi Host may get disconnected from Virtual Center
All paths to the LUNs are in standby state
Esxcfg-rescan might take a long tome to complete or never complete (hung)
VMKernel logs show entries similar to the following:
Queue for device vml.02001600006006016086741d00c6a0bc934902dd115241 49442035 has been blocked for 6399 seconds.
Please refer to KB 1008130. Continue reading "VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 Alert" »

Lostcreations.com has been relaunched with the hot-off-the-build-server release of the first beta for Virtualization Manager Mobile! Monitor and manage your VMs from the palm of your hand. Well, as long as there is a mobile device in your hand. But what has happened to the old software section and where's the sVMotion Plugin?

This picture is (C) Viktor van den Berg. Story via Carlo Costanzo over at VMware Info

Update : I received an email from Andrew, the plug-ins are back online. :-)

SAP provides a range of enterprise software applications and business solutions to manage  and run the complete business of a company. Companies that have deployed such products  depend on information and processes managed by SAP solutions, and continuous availability  of the SAP system is essential. An integrated architecture of VMware® Site Recovery Manager  with NetApp® storage and data management solutions provides an effective disaster recovery  (DR) solution to address these business continuity requirements.
 
This paper documents the configuration and validation of an SAP DR architecture using Site Recovery Manager and NetApp storage and tools. The infrastructure was installed and verified at the SAP Co-Innovation Lab (COIL) in Palo Alto, CA and was jointly deployed by NetApp, SAP and VMware staff. Continue reading "Technical Whitepaper DR Validation for SAP..." »

Finally I had some time left (no training at the moment) and took the opportunity to build a decent WhiteBox. This bare bone system contains an Intel QuadCPU and 8 GB of memory and still stays under $500 USD. I’ve installed the future version of ESX and it works like a charm. The first virtual machine I created is acting as my vCenter Server and I installed it while I was cooking dinner, great performance. The next step is installing Windows 7 (64 bit), but my good old friend Mike Laverick has beat me to it. He’s already showing some really cool VMware View stuff.  I’m still going to try out some of the new features anyway.

Here’s my shopping list:

Bare bone Asus V2-P5G33
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33 GHz
Memory GeiL 8 GB DDR2-667 Kit
Storage  Samsung HD501LJ 500GB Internal SATA 16MB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Network Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
DVD-ROM Asus DVD-E818A3T

Two side notes. You can use a normal network card. It doesn’t have to be an Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter, as long as it’s an Intel PRO, the onboard Marvel adapter isn’t supported. Besides that, I’ve bought the wrong DVD-ROM. There’s little support for IDE or PATA DVD-ROM devices so you better choose a SATA DVD-ROM, otherwise the setup will crash,  asking you for the install media. My list is no guarantee, maybe the final ESX release isn’t working on this configuration. Have fun with it.

              

   

At January the 15th Edward Haletky, President - AstroArch Consulting. will air his first Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast. This TalkShou podcast will address the virtualization security issues over the weeks its runs. Send a Tweet to Texiwill to add your own discussion ideas to this list.



I know Edward for quite a while. Pearson was kind enough to send me a review copy of the Vmware ESX Server in the Enterprise book. This book is written by Edward and all I can say is that he really did a great job. Besides that I also recorded an Interview with Edward Haletky about Securing Virtualization Servers and I got him on Video at the third installment of the VMTN Community Experts LIVE panel.

I stumbled on a forgotten video I recorded at the VMworld 2008 community lounge. What I remember is while visiting the Solutions Exchange, I stopped by to mix and mingle with other community members. I’ve completely forgotten the video until it surfaced this afternoon. What you’re about to see is John Troyer’s home base, yes, you can see him too, a lot of bloggers, some footage from the solution exchange and the fountains at the Bellagio.

VMworld 2008 Community and Blogger Lounge from Eric Sloof NTPRO.NL on Vimeo.

Perti Purho over at Kloonigames released Crayon Physics Deluxe. This is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics. This is the coolest game I’ve seen since Pac-Man. Make sure you watch the video and let me know if you also experienced the WOW. Also the Playground (which hosts user generated levels) is now open for the public.

Crayon Physics Deluxe trailer 2 from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

Petri Purho is a student at Helsinki Polytechnic, studying computer science. Game development has been a his hobby for at least ten years now. His gaming interests don’t just limit to video games, but also include pen & paper role-playing games, strategy games, board games and card games.

Update : Just played my first game and made a mess of it, dam I suck. Have to create bigger blocks.

My good old friend Jeroen van der Kamp, Chief Technology Officer at Login Consultants brought me up-to-date about their newest release. The Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) is a free and platform independent benchmark for Virtual Desktop Infrastructures and Terminal Services. This 1.0 release has been fully tested, the workload has been carefully tuned, and now publication of your own results is allowed. As usual, Login VSI 1.0 is a free download from www.loginvsi.com.

Changes for Login VSI 1.0:

• Publication of Login VSI results is now allowed when the Login VSI publication guidelines are used;
• The workload is now tuned and can be categorized to be medium/heavy load of a typical knowledge worker (this is in comparison to average Terminal Server deployments);
• The CPU workload may be categorized as medium/heavy (above average);
• The Memory workload is now medium (slightly above average);
• Many typical beta bug fixes, Login VSI is now battle proven in the benchmarking project: “Virtual Reality Check” by PQR and Login Consultants;
• Improved schema to calculate the optimal performance index;

Login VSI 1.0 at 200% speed from Jeroen van de Kamp on Vimeo.

NetworkWorld created a list with the 10 tech people you should know. These power-brokers’ decisions could shape enterprise IT for years to come. Paul Maritz is one of them.

It's a good time to be an innovator - or in a position to encourage, recognize and reward innovation. And it's a good time to pay attention to the technology agendas of such people. Your company's viability may ultimately be ensured by the innovation these 10 people are driving from the labs to the enterprise.

Hostway has launched its cloud computing infrastructure FlexCloud, adding cloud computing functionality to all its hosting packages. The new service includes automated allocation of CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth for individual websites. The company states that the first to benefit will be its North American customers' websites, which will be hosted on the new cloud computing infrastructure. All new customers' websites will also be placed on FlexCloud. It further states that FlexCloud includes automated allocation of CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth for individual websites.

While Hostway did not specify the technology behind its new cloud computing infrastructure, Hostway uses VMware's server virtualization technology for its virtual dedicated servers, suggesting that Hostway may have incorporated the VMware platform into this offering. Via David Hamilton over at thewhir.com.