Archive for November, 2006

My friend Richard Garsthagen (Technical Marketing Manager EMEA) is hosting another cool utility designed to make all our admin lives easier. The tools is actually written by Flores Eken from ITQ Consultancy in the Netherlands. From what I can see it allows a “bulk-method” of setting up vSwitches and vLANs on ESX 3.x.x

Link: 

http://www.run-virtual.com/?p=159

Richard Garsthagen (Technical Marketing Manager EMEA for VMware) has written a cool VMotion CPU Compatiability Tool for ESX 3.x using the SDK for VirtualCenter. As Richard puts it:

“This application gathers information from all physical hosts about the CPUs installed and what features they have. This is then reported in one single overview (that you can copy-and-paste into excel) and know easily if you have any vmotion problems” 

Link:

http://www.run-virtual.com/?p=153

Early last week I blogged about the sessions I attended at VMworld. I would just like to make a few brief comments about the stuff that goes unnoticed at VMworld.

For me the sessions this year were a small part of the deal – although they took up most of my time – for me the big benefits were the people I met and discussions that the sessions sparked.

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Sorry, if you have been trying to email at this domain name recently. If you have you will have recieved postmaster replies. The email address is correct. My ISP (at my request) has impleamented a new anti-spam policy. Unfortunately, its a little bit too aggressive – erm, like I am not recieving any email at all.

Normal service will be resummed very shortly!

This was a very fun session. It was the last of the day. I mean the VERY last. So the atmosphere was very laid back and chaty amongst both the attendees and the presenters. I got some time to chat informally to Paul G. Hann who is Director of Corporate Development at Citrix. I hope to arrange an interview with Paul and Co – specially addressing Citrix’s stance on VDI, MFPS under a VM and the thorny issue of CAG as VMware Appliance (Sorry, Paul for turning the heat on you twice in the session on this very topic)

The actual session turned up no surprises from what we have all gathered from the Forum’s and experience. Single CPU VM’s for MFPS are the way to go; Turning off hyper-threading is still recommended; ESX 3.x offers much better user concurrency than ESX 2.x…. with ALL usual cavats that it depends on your APP and your user activity.

One thing I was suprised by was the very impressive user loads in their R&D for ESX 2.x used compare/contrast the effect of changes in the ESX 3.x kernel. To be honest I don’t buy them. I’m not questioning the integrity of these guys one little bit. But for the apps that most people run (not MS Word) the 15-user load-barrier is commonly experienced and noted in the forums.

Now, let me admit something here. Forums are full of people who have problems – not full of people for whom life is rosy in the garden.

One of the outstanding session of my time here at VMworld. I really couldn’t fault either content or the guy who delivered the stuff. He really knew his stuff – and some more. I will be definitely taking some of this stuff and re-working it into the classes I teach (time permitting)

When you get the chance to download the PDF of this session – make sure you do.

My only gripe – was some of my top questions, this guy wasn’t able to answer. Like clunkiness of the iSCSI setup when you have CHAP authentication; how you can’t reliably and effectively create vmkernel switches with that X in the box to enable VMotion and so on. We were treated to some “pat” answers on that which I just don’t buy.

But gripes aside – a true session worthy of technical people – and reminder to me to that all that Layer2/3 stuff I thought I don’t need – is still very, very relavant

Well, this is my 2nd or 3rd “troubleshooting” style sessions, and unfortunately they are beginning to form a pattern. With very obivious recommendations (such as document, be logical, read log files). This one was a cut above the average session of this type. With a REAL engineer talking about the REAL problems he has faced. Hey, what a novel idea! Troubleshooting based on real experiences (plenty of irony intended!)

 The trouble with session was that it wasn’t “snappy” enough – it kind of laboured the point. I could sense a kind of restlessness in the audience who felt it should have been more hare, and less tortoise (hey, I just check – I can spell tortoise – shame about all my other words!)

So in short – for future reference. More examples. More war-stories. Keep it snappy…

This was a very interesting session. It took my already good knowledge about some of the processor compatiablities to a new level. I would strongly urge those who were unable to attend this years VMworld to review the PDF of PPT when you have time (I’ll make an announcement when that happens so you hear about it ASAP)

So I didn’t know there was such as thing SSEE3 (yes, that’s right not just SSE3 but SSSE3). Some of the AMD processor incompatiabilites were new to me.

On the downside – whilst we were given some insights into that mysterious “Advanced” button for CPU masking – and pointed to a KB article. I still think there isn’t enough information out there for people to seriously to give-it-a-go. This is kinda of deliberate on VMware’s part. It’s like they don’t trust us to NOT to screw it all up. Hence the pat recommendation of “contact VMware Support for assistence”

But hey, your a confident guy aren’t you? And you just love screwing things up and getting burned, dontcha?

Anyway, Americanisms aside – you will be glad to know that I have taken the decision to try and galvanise some of the Forum members who have been intelligentally experimenting with this feature. Because of the hardware involved this can’t be a one-man-rtfm-effort. It’s going to take a community response. If VMware won’t or can’t give us all info we need – we’re going to figure out for ourselves.

Were not so dumb after all, huh?

This session was all about the future of, and value of the VCP certification. Biggest problem? Every member of the panel were pro-VCP and pro-certification. So this lead to very poor intra-panel discussions – when everyone agrees with each other! Fortunately, there were plenty of very skeptical guys in the audience (I include myself amongst them) who were prepared to make sure this session didn’t become a yes-man/ma’am exercise.

So first up. That’s old chestnut. Q. Why do you have to an authorised VMware course to get VCP? The problem for a lot of people is getting this expensive course signed off by management – and irratation created when people who have been impleamenting VMware for 2-3 years – have to attend a training course. These guys have my unremitting sympathy!

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I’m a scripting novice. That’s why I steered clear of contributing to the new Syngress book on Scripting (released just in time for the VMworld). So I thought I would give one of these labs ago. As instructor I thought I might well do one I know zilch about.

So a couple of things – the scripting was against ESX, not VirtualCenter. I guess that was in the other lab on the SDK. Anyone serious about scripting is going to do it against VirtualCenter not an ESX host – especially we have automated VMotion in the shape of DRS – and “fault-tolerence” in the format of VMware HA. Put simply – where your VM is today, it will be somewhere else tommorow – and only VirtualCenter is going to know where your little VM’s are gonna be.

There was 4 slides – what is scripts, why script, what is com and what is perl. Now go ahead and code. Well, I guess I had unrealistic expectations – as someone who just about understands the ideas of objects, properties and attributes – and how these com libraries are “called” in a script – it was over my head. I really needed more guidence.

Fortunately, that came in the shape of my lab partner – former Scot who now works in Switzerland. He had some ADSI and vbscript experience that he was a little rusty on. Together we worked out line-by-line what was going on. Had I been on my own – I probably would have left in the first 30 mins – because it would have been “whoooosh” way over my head!!!