Archive for April, 2007

According VMware Converter 3.0.1 contains bug fixes and new features including import of VMware Consolidated Backup images, import of certain StorageCraft ShadowProtect images, and an experimental command line interface for migrations.

Link:

http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/

Some of the presentations slides from VMware’s recent TSX in Nice have now been released. They are downloadable from this location:

Link:

http://www.vmware-tsx.com/index.php?page_id=10

Eric Sloof is a VMware Certified Instructor and blogger. He has an interesting post on how use VB and VirtualCenter SDK together. He’s written a PDF on how to get this SOAP communication working… 

Link:

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/130-Building-VMware-Visual-Basic-Applications.html

from Paul Thurrott, Windowsitpro.com

This week, Microsoft alerted me to a delay in the delivery of a beta version of its Windows Server virtualization technology (code-named Veridian and Hypervisor). The company had originally planned to ship a public beta of Veridian in the first half of 2007, but that release has been pushed back to the second half of the year. However, Microsoft said that the delay of the beta won’t affect the final release, which is still due within 180 days of Longhorn Server. Microsoft also noted that Longhorn Server is still on track to be released in the second half of 2007. Also, another Microsoft virtualization technology release–Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1–has been delayed to the second quarter of 2007.

Sorry to those visitors who came recently and found rtfm-ed.co.uk was unavailable. Apparently this was a problem with my ISP who hosts the site. As you can see this issue has now been resolved.

Brian Madden has written an interesting articule about the merits of VDI and how this fits in with the acquisition of company called Ardence by Citrix. It’s worth 5mins of your time if VDI floats your boat

Link:

http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?id=682

Presenter: Shridhar Deuskar

This was the last and the most important session I attended. Why? Well, for the last 4-6 weeks I have been working with Virtual Appliance builder, Carl Thijssen. I’ve been assisting Carl in redeveloping his “Ultimate Deployment Appliance” to also support deploying ESX from PXE Appliance. I feared someone had beat us the process. Fear not! It was just an “idea”. Asked at the end of the presentation where this virtual idea of an appliance could be downloaded, Shridhar said it didn’t exist. Well, it does!

Carl and I hope to release the next version of UDA version 1.4 soon. With a kickstart builder which creates an unattended script to install ESX. It will come in a Workstation and ESX virtual machine format. There will be a sample of CFG files for deploying ESX to IBM, DELL and HP equipment.

Watch this space

Presenter: Yu-Shen Ng, Group Product Manager – ESX server, VMware

This presentation was very much a replay of Steve Herold’s keynote address at the start of this weeks TSX. The subject matter was therefore very familiar content. It was about how VMware leverages CPU enhancements such as

• AMD-V and Intel-VT
  For most work loads VMware’s “Binary Translation” system is more efficent. But the hardware assist does help in 64-bit guest operating systems
  
• Memory enhancements like “Nest Page Tables” and “Extended Page Tables” (NTP/ETP)
  Currently the VMkernel must map the VMs memory pages to the physical pages of the ESX host. These new memory features due next year – will reduce this work load
  
• Device I/O Virtualization
  VMware will be supporting Intel VT-D and AMD’s IOMMU projects – which allow for a more virtualized presentation of devices such as fibre-channel

It’s clear that VMware see the immediate future as hybrid model of a couple of different types of virtual machine that is customised on the guest operating systems requirements. This would include various combinations of VMware Binary Translation, CPU Vendors Hardware Assist and Paravirtualisation. The term they are using is “transparent paravirtualisation”. Where the definition of the VM seamless is changed based on the requirements. The message is customer choice. The last couple of years of innovation has been about making x86 virtualisation work – the future is about making it perform better.So far very familiar territory.

So you might wonder why I attended this session. Well, as Group Product Manager if there is anyone who know what VMware will be doing in the future – it was this guy. This was a chance to take the speaker “off topic” and ask about VMware innovations rather than VMware merely reacting to hardware improvements.

VMware have been typically very reluctant to disclose any information about new features for Vi-3. The argument given is they are prevented from doing so because of legal restrictions in the US – you can’t talk up your product in effort to raise your stock value. Additionally, would only be helping the competition by giving their big ideas away. However, myself and the group were able to “put the squeeze” on and were able to get a few hints from him. Here they are:

Live data migration
Currently available to sys-admins to move data of a running VM from ESX 2.x/VMFS2 to a ESX3.x/VMFS3 volume. The natural extension of this is as a tool for data management for ESX 3.x as well
Third Party Virtual Switches
Allowing other companies to develop virtual switches in the ESX host to have properties and features you would expect to see in conventional physical switches. So rather the unmanaged switches of ESX currently (except for vLAN support, security settings and load-balancing settings). The switch would be more like a conventional Cisco Catalyst switch
Better Management of Virtual Switches
The ability to create switches across many hosts – and being able to store the vSwitch information in an XML file for portability
HA non-stop
VMware HA without the crashing of the VMs. VMs continue to run else where on another ESX host. I would expect VMware to redevelop the “replayer” feature currently in VMware Workstation 6
Improved Hardware Support
Currently we dependent on VMware writing VMware drivers for devices. This means validating any hardware purchases against a VMware HCL. It looks like VMware wish to open this out further to allow other vendors to speed up the process by having a programme to validate third party drivers

Improved VM Virtual Hardware
Asked if we will get improvements inside the VM the answer was yes – pressed further we were promised 8 virtual CPUs in a VM

Presenter: Yvo Wiskerke, Senior Consultant PSO, VMware.

I arrived late to this presentation after doing a brief video interview with Richard Garsthagen, Scott Herold and Alessandro Perilli. However, I was in time to see Yvo demonstrate how to make the ESX Service Console authenticate to an Active Directory system. Now I guess you might know about esxcfg-auth and Steve Beavers “ldap_search”. Yvo went for another approach which I was very impressed with. Using “Winbind” which does ship as an RDM on the ESX cd. WinBind allows you to join a ESX host to the domain from the command-line and will create “trusted” computer account objects in Active Directory. Yvo was able to setup authentication to ldap without creating users on the ESX host at all. As well as servicing SSH/puTTy style connection he was also able to prove that WinBind would allow the Vi Client to work with AD without VirtualCenter.

The approach is not without dangers if not correctly configured. In its basic format anyone with a valid AD account could log on to the ESX host. This is easily fixed by modifying the processing order of the main PAM files – and using tools like Sudo to control access to commands at the ESX host.

Presenter: Cormac Hogan

I know Cormac from the forums where he has helped me especially in the command-line guide I wrote earlier last year. He did not disappoint us. Cormac very simply explained the “Path Thrashing” issue that can affect active/passive arrays that have been incorrectly configured. Additionally, he outline the scenarios associated with “VMFS Resignituring” which affects ESX hosts that have both the original LUN, and the snapshot LUN presented to them at the same time. I know about these issues already – but Cormac certainly did give me the pen-drop-moment. He also pointed out the dangers of using Fixed-Preferred policies against a Active/Passive SAN Array – basically if you do this you will find the 3-conditions checked by ESX to detect a failure are reduced to just one. So while it will work it’s not in best interests.

Lastly, Cormac outlined the diskpart command used on a VCB proxy (automount disable and automount scrub) which will stop a VCB proxy from assigning driveletter and signitures to the VMFS volumes it has access to.