Archive for April, 2009

I’ve recieved an email from VMware Education which outlines the T&Cs for VCP status for vSphere4 given the fact that people will coming from different experiences and may also have be mid-way thru a Vi3.5 certification.

• If you are NEW to VMware
  • Attend the VMware vSphere 4: Install, Configure, Manage course OR attend the VMware vSphere 4: Fast Track
  • Take and pass the VCP on vSphere 4 exam
• If you are currently a VCP on VMware Infrastructure 3
  • Take and pass the VCP on vSphere 4 exam.  This option will only be available until December 31, 2009.  Beginning in 2010, VCPs on VI3 must attend the VMware vSphere 4: What’s New class in order to upgrade.
• If you are currently a VCP on ESX 2.x
  • Take and pass the VCP on VMware Infrastructure 3 exam
  • Take and pass the VCP on vSphere 4 Exam. This option will only be available until December 31, 2009.  Beginning in 2010, VCPs on VI3 must attend the VMware vSphere 4: What’s New class in order to upgrade.
• If you are not a VCP on VI3, but have attended one of the prerequisite classes (Install & Configure; Deploy Secure & Analyze; or Fast Track).
  • Take and pass the VCP on VMware Infrastructure 3 exam OR attend the VMware vSphere: What’s New course.Take and pass the VCP on vSphere 4 Exam.

BBC Radio 4′s evening current affairs programme is called “PM”. And every evenin they have an up shares, down shares (with theme tune from Upstairs, Downstairs) covering the economy and markets in general. Well, the same tune should be playing for VMware’s Stock. Having reached a high of about $31 its now dropped back down to more like $26. This is despite this week vSphere4 launch – the drop has probably been caused by the market reaction to VMware’s round of results – and warning that VMware’s growth may dip in the next quarter set of results.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=VMW

Well, as I’m getting very elderly – I’m 40 next year – I find myself oddly drawn to the music of my past – re-interpreted by the present. I first picked up on the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah on Jools Holland’s “Later”. I tell you what I like that this vocal line is that it reminds me of Soux Sioux of the Banshees and Chrissy Hynde…

If you missed it here’s the VMware vSphere4 Launch in full. As you would expect there was a lot of talk about clouds. Such as vSphere4 being a “Bridge to the cloud” (which seems to suggest its just an intermediary step) or that vSphere represents part of the “journey to the cloud” (which seems to suggest we haven’t arrived/made it yet). My other favourite was “clouds in the datacenter”, at which point I twittered about looking for my umbrella.

Anyway, I guess this cloud thing represents the big mission statement that most organizations feel they must have to inspire thier staff and the customers – that a new product is more than just a couple of extra features. My only concern is with all this emphasis on the cloud, the actual product might be obscured by fixation over clouds. If you like vSphere is trying like the sun, to peek out behind the cloud.

So, let me give you a brief summary of the new features – because this some hard (not soft & fluffy like a cloud) to hang on to. When you buy vSphere4, as with Vi3.5 you will be buying not just ESX4/vCenter4 but raft of new features, new functionality and better management tools. Just like Vi3 made Vi2 (a retrospective naming convention I’ve just adopted!) seem somewhat care-worn – once your on vSphere4 you’ll wonder how you ever managed with vi3.5.

Virtual Machines:

• 8xvCPUs & 256GB RAM
• Hot-add of memory/cpu
• Thinly-provisioned disks
• New Guest OS – including more legacy OSes
• Record & Replay – You now have a PVR for a VM!
• VMCI – VMs can communicate directly to each other without the use of a NIC!
• vApp – collections of VMs which like virtual appliances can be downloaded/uploaded to make suite of applications

ESX4:

• 64-bit
• Support for 512GB RAM
• 64 cores
• Native SATA support
• Service Console is a VM with a virtual disk

vCenter4:

• Linked-Mode – Link 2 or more vCenters into a single management window
• Massively increase alarms/alerts – alarm to warn you about snapshot size! YEAH!
• No more license server – just license strings!
• Optional: vCenter Hearbeat Service (aka NeverFail)
• Optional: Mobile Access – manage VMs from your smartphone/pda

Networking:

• Native IPv6 support for the Management and VMkernel IP Stacks
• Distributed Virtual Switches – One switch to rule them all!
• Easy Migration from Standard vSwitches to the new DvSwitch

Storage:

• Improved UI – Visability from virtual down to the physical
• Increase – IF LUNs are made bigger so can the VMFS
• Plugable Storage Array – Vendors like EMC add plug-ins to vCenter
• Organize datastores into folders – set permissions – folks put their VMs in the RIGHT location
• New UIs to handle multipathing
• New CLIs to handle VMFS resignaturing

Access Control:

• New roles – “Datastore Consumer” and “Network Consumer”

Moving the VM:

• New simplier wizard – Change Host, Change Datastore, Change both
• Storage VMotion now integrated into the UI
• Linked with DvS and Port State Migration – zero packet loss on VMotions

Distributed Power Management:

• Now fully supported
• Based on ILO authentication, rather than Wake-On-LAN Magic Packets

Uptimes:

• Old Advanced HA Options – now available from the UI
• New advanced optionsHA to control memory and CPU alerts
• VMware Fault Tolerence (FT) – neverfail a VM even on death of an ESX host

Advanced Configuration Tools:

• All the main management tools get an upgrade – so new version of the RCLI, VIMA, PowerShell
• VMware Orchestrator – built-in to vCenter
• Host Profiles – Attach you configuration to an ESX host, and apply – the end of scripted builds???

Backup:

• On its way – a new version of VCB
• In Beta – The Data Recovery Appliance. A virtual appliance to backup VMs pitched at SMBs…

VUM and Upgrade:

• Stage an ESX host – download all patches to it first, then later trigger the install process
• Collect baselines into baseline groups – and apply to ESX host/VMs
• Upgrading Baselines – Upgrade ESX and VMs using VUM

vSphere4 Launch Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (5)

This isn’t in the press release – but here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/overview.html

At first this post has “GA Date”. But read more closely. You will be ORDER by the 21st May, the delivery of the product will be sometime afterwards…

Well, the everyone has gone nuts today blogging about vSphere – with articles and videos – all from the BETA/RELEASE CANDIDATE… not the GA, because no-one has access to that until the end of Q2 2009…

All this fun stuff is linked to here:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/04/21/vsphere-linkage/

Well, it seems to be out of the bag anyway…

http://www.van-lieshout.com/2009/03/new-vmware-certifications/

Seriously, I wonder why bother signing and obeying NDAs like I do, when no-one else seems to pay a blind bit of attention to them. I wonder why should try to be such a good little boy…

Well the offical press release is out… 

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vsphere-launch.html

The important part of which states “VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be generally available later in Q2 2009.”

In the meantime the press release does contain all important pricing. Free upgrades to the same level that you are now with Vi3.5, with charges if you want to change type – say change from Foundation to Advanced that kind of thing.

“VMware vSphere 4 Pricing Starts at $166 per Processor
VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be generally available later in Q2 2009 and will be available in six editions meeting the requirements, use cases and budgets of customers of all sizes. In the current tough economic climate, VMware vSphere 4 offers unbeatable value to customers with up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios, up to 50 percent storage savings, and up to 20 percent power savings over the previous generation of VMware Infrastructure 3. 

• VMware vSphere 4 Essentials, priced at $995 for three physical servers, or $166 per processor, provides an all-in-one virtualization solution for the small office IT environment. VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus, priced at $2,995 for three physical servers, or $499 per processor, adds high availability and data protection capabilities that are otherwise out of reach for the small office IT environment. VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus is the only virtualization offering that provides integrated, built-in availability, data protection, patch management, and customizable alerts and reports at this price point.
• For datacenter deployments requiring the ability to scale and grow, VMware vSphere 4 provides four editions for four distinct use cases:
  • VMware vSphere 4 Standard priced at $795 per processor provides significant server consolidation ROI with new cost saving capabilities including thin provisioning for up to 50 percent lower storage costs and performance optimizations for up to 30 percent higher consolidation ratios than the previous generation of VMware software.
  • VMware vSphere 4 Advanced priced at $2,245 per processor provides application availability and protection.  Live migration with VMware VMotion, and the addition of VMware Fault Tolerance for continuous availability, VMware Data Recovery for backup, and VMware vShield Zones for security uniquely deliver Always on IT in one integrated package.
  • VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise priced at $2,875 per processor adds automated resource management with VMware DRS and VMware Storage VMotion.
  • VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus priced at $3,495 per processor includes the full range of VMware vSphere 4 features for transforming datacenters into internal cloud computing environments including VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and VMware Host Profiles for simplifying the operational management of large deployments.
• Special Upgrade Promotions for Existing VMware Infrastructure Customers. Existing VMware Infrastructure 3 customers with valid support and subscription contracts are automatically entitled to VMware vSphere 4 editions. (For more information, visit the VMware vSphere 4 upgrade center at:http://www.vmware.com/go/vsphere-upgrade-center.) VMware is offering limited time promotions for existing VMware Infrastructure 3 customers wishing to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4 editions over and above what they are entitled to under their support and subscription contracts:
  • VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard to VMware vSphere 4 Advanced: At less than 50 percent of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as live migration with VMware VMotion, continuous availability, network security zoning, and data protection.  Suggested US list price: $745 per processor
  • VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise to VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus: At less than 50 percent of the upgrade list price, customers can add key features such as dynamic resource allocation, power management, live migration, the distributed switch, and host configuration controls.  Suggested US list price: $295 per processor”

You will be pleased to here that the vSphere forums are now publically open:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere

In anticipation of the announcement this evening (if your in Europe) or this morning if your in Pacific Time.

Also available is the registeration for technical webcasts on features of the product:

http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/index/program/179617

Come in a join the fun, the waters lovely.

Apparently, its come as a surprise to some…

http://www.virtualization.info/2009/04/vsphere-40-may-not-support-some-other.html

That when vSphere4 is released (ESX4/vCenter4) ALL THE OTHER PRODUCTS that VMware makes my not be instanously compatiable with it. So products like 

• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
• VMware vCenter Lab Manager
• VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager
• VMware vCenter Stage Manager
• VMware View

May not be immediately compatiable with the new version – and it may take a short time before they are. Mmm, think about that for second. Is that really, that surprising or shocking? Erm, not really. Of course, its far from ideal. But how is that different from ANY OTHER SOFTWARE VENDOR you have ever dealt with. So if Microsoft bring out Windows 2008, do we expect ALL THE OTHER PRODUCT they make to be re-released at the same time? 

Well, if M$ can’t do it with all there development resources – who could?

After all even within a release some of the bulleted products have their own requirements – for example when SRM 1.0 was released… you need Vi3.5 U1 or higher… that was tough luck for those who were still on ESX3.0.2 and vCenter 2.5.2.

NOW. In fairness I do think this raises an important issue. What do the product in the bulleted list all share??? Yes, that’s right they all must speak to vCenter, therefore they must be tested and QA against that new version. Do you think the Product Managers of View/SRM/LHC and so on have been twiddling there thumbs – no you see they work for the SAME COMPANY, and have access to the development builds too. 

Just so you know – View3 DOES work with vCenter4. I tried it. There are some features which I couldn’t get working (Composer and Linked Clones) but I don’t think it would take too much for the View Product Team to resolve those. As for the product close to my heart – SRM. This morning the PM said I would be on the programme that will start in the Summer – and yes, that build will be compatiable with vSphere4. Like me you might have felt a little bit overwelmed with the dizzying number of releases of vCenter (3.5/ U1/ U2 / U3 / U4). Personally, I think what’s gonna have to happen is for vCenter to become much more stable. And by that mean not just in terms of reliability, but reliable as code base that doesn’t change so frequently, because every time it does it’s gonna create QA nightmare further up the management stacks. It’s becoming a bit of dependency and development issue. Those QA resources do seem to be might precious as my recent work with the VMware Data Recovery Appliance has shown…

BUT anyway, lets NOT make a storm in a tea cup. If you are using one of the high-level management products you just wait a short while and everything will be alright