Archive for March, 2011

This week chinwaggie is Rick Vanover. He’s a Software Strategy Specilist at Veeam Software, and in a previous life worked as a Systems Engineer at Siemens Dematic.

Like many folks in the virtualization community he’s very active on his BLOG and on TWITTER.

Our discussions were very wide ranging – and we discussed Rick’s thoughts about Bring-Your-Own-PC (BYOPC) models, Legacy & Older software, Setting up his Hyper-V lab – and finally we discussed the rate of change and churn in VMware in terms of new software.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

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Well, those chaps over in Palo Alto are at it again. A new Aye-PAD application – this time its for managing vSphere. Anyone would think that VMware had shares in Apple – or vice-versa. Sadly, this won’t put a stop to a thread on the VMTN Forums where Apple MAC users continually belly-ache about the lack of Apple Mac vSphere Client. I rather foolish made a comment on the post – which means I get endless emails about how VMware doesn’t care about its customers… Occasionally it slips into the whole Windows-Mac-Linux debate – I mean aren’t there more important things to worry about.

Anyway, I digress – for those with the might tablet of hope – you can now download the vSphere Aye-PAD Client from the Apple Store.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-vsphere-client-for/

VMware has already put together a Community Forum for those looking to troubleshoot and ask questions here – http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/ipadclient

The UI of the vSphere Aye-PAD client looks like this:

Don’t expect the Aye-PAD vSphere app to have all the features and functionality of the fully blown vSphere Client for Windows. Expect to find that that the 80% of the most common vSphere Admin tasks are there such as:

• Search for vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Monitor the performance of vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Manage virtual machines with the ability to start, stop and suspend
• View and restore virtual machines’ snapshots
• Reboot vSphere hosts or put them into maintenance mode
• Diagnose vSphere hosts and virtual machines using built-in ping and traceroute tools

There’s a couple of requirements for the App to function. Firstly, you need an Aye-PAD (OK, I’m joking) but more importantly you need the vCMA virtual appliance from VMware. If you have ever read my vSphere4 book – I covered it there – Basically its Mobile Access appliance that in its standard form presents a web-page of vSphere that’s viewable to most smartphones. The Aye-PAD App connect through the vCMA to then connect to your vSphere environment which then populates the UI of the Aye-PAD application.

The IPAD 2 is available in Europe from the 25th March. Rumors are already circulating that there will be heavy delays caused by excessive demand. When the first IPAD was released they delayed the world-wide launch in order to first deal with a backlog in the US. I’m not sure if that will happen this time around  – there may be some existing IPAD users who happy with the G1, and will carry on using it until it breaks (which is what I would I do if I had IPAD 1).  But there should be plenty of folks like me who decided the functionality of IPAD 1 made it a non-starter, and decided to wait for the IPAD 2…

This weeks vendorwag is with company called Browsium, who have a product called “UniBrows” (if you listen closely I fluff my ‘lines’ and almost get these the wrong way round!) – and I will be speaking to Matt Heller who is the CEO & Founder. Unibrows has been in development for sometime – and today they formally released the product for general availability – so it’s a bit of scoop for me to have them on my site on the very same day!

This starts a new theme in the vendorwags which is all about application compatibility and application virtualization. Things seemed to get really fired up recently when I wrote an article about Microsoft’s policy towards using tools to run Internet Explorer 6 on the new Windows 7 platform. I must have touched a raw nerve because it generated a lot of traffic on twitter, and inspired a number of vendors to approach me to explain their technologies.

UniBrows focus is on IE6 “problem” and may offer an interest route out of the compatibility issue – without flouting Microsoft support statement. Of course, the companies plans don’t begin and end with IE6 – and future product functionality and plans are discussed towards the end.

Anyway, here’s a bit background on Matt Heller from Browsium’s website (that’s where I grabbed this picture too – which makes a change from the normal corporate photos!)

Matt  founded Browsium, Inc. after spending several years working with Microsoft customers on Internet Explorer. There he recognized the need for browser related tools and solutions to enable business customers to more effectively manage the browser environment. He started his work with Microsoft during the release of Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP SP2, and has gained extensive knowledge of Internet Explorer as well as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera. Prior to Browsium, Matt founded Text’d, LLC a technical services firm building wireless search platform tools, as well as technical product management and marketing services.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

These are the questions I asked Matt

Q. It’s often been said that problem with making IE6 run on new OSes is because it was so tightly coupled to WinXP. Would you agree?
Q. Microsoft seems to be hostile to supporting IE6 as almost a matter of faith – why might that be?
Q. Can Unibrows deal with multiple website with multiple demands for different plug-ins
Q. …and does it support RDS on Windows 2008 for Terminal Services style users?
Q. What are the downsides of using conventional Application Virtualization (ThinApp, Spoon etc) to fix this IE6 problem?
Q. Unibrows seems quite a niche product, fixing a particular issue at this point time – what secures the long-term future of Browsium, Inc?

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Registrations are now open for the Northern UK VMUG event. I will be there – talking about the future of SRM – along with other luminaries in the industry. The event is at the Leeds Marriott Hotel, 4 Trevelyan Square, Boar Lane, Leeds, LS1 6E. It kicks off at 9.15am and finishes up at 5.00pm…

You can register here: http://www.vmug.org.uk/events

Here’s the outline of sessions:

• Paul Brown, IT Director at Cordant Group PLC with a customer’s case study into laptop level 1 hypervisors
• Alan Renouf, VIRTU-AL blog, special interest group and workshop on PowerCLI and automation scripts
• Andrew Fryer, Microsoft’s IT Pro Evangelist with public cloud and our vision of the IT Professional’s role as adoption of the cloud increases
• Mike Laverick, RTFM Education blog with Future of VMware SRM
• Chris Kranz, Senior Consulting Architect at B2net Ltd with the required skills of future admins and why VCDX is the current gold standard
• Ricky El-Qasem, Private Cloud expert and Director of Global Education Services at Veeam software with how to Save & Optimise wasted virtual storage for FREE
• VMware – VMware Zimbra is an enterprise-class, open source email, calendar and collaboration platform.
• EMC – Why EMC is the leader in storage, disk-based backup and security
• Microsoft – Building the bridge to cloud computing
• B2net – Technical deep dive, Tier 1 applications {Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint} – Advanced theory and design best practices
• Virtual DCS – Cloud Computing Services and Cloud Hosting
• Veeam –Backup & Recovery
• Riverbed – Branch office WAN
• CommVault – Backup & Recovery
• Vision Solutions – Virtualisation and DR: while business continuity overall has benefited from virtualisation, disaster recovery has bred some more challenges for businesses
• 10Zig – VDI hardware
• Virtual Sharp – Data centre failover and monitoring
• Quest – Customer’s case study
• vKernel – Capacity management

It was my recent good fortune to get the loan of two Dell EqualLogic system from Dell. There mainly for use in my work in VMware SRM. I’m ramping up to write my 3rd book on SRM. But along side that it gives me a chance to look at the integration with VMware that Dell have been working for sometime. This follows a recent theme of mine on RTFM covering the various plug-ins from the storage vendors including EMC’s VSI and NetApp VSC.

I’ve made a decision that where a storage vendor has these kind of datastore provisioning tools – is to cover them along side the standard method of creating a new volume/LUN in their fully-blown management systems. I think in short-term we might see these plug-ins evolve to allow even higher management functions such as actually configuring replication for storage with vCenter. Imagine that – you right-click a datastore in vCenter, you see a Dell/EMC/NetApp menu, and underneath that you see link that says “Configure DataStore for use with VMware SRM”

For the moment the Dell HIT-VE does allow you to setup replication of a volume once the appropriate “partner” relationships have been configured between two or more Dell EqualLogic Groups. So I will be including that in chapter on Dell in my SRM book.

I was really quite taken with how easy it was to setup the Dell EqualLogic – it took very little time, and found the management tools easy to follow. That’s always helpful when you’re taking on a new technology. Once set-up I had chance to play with the Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for VMware (HIT/VE) which includes the

• EqualLogic Datastore Manager – Allows administrators to provision new Datastores, expand existing Datastores, and monitor storage usage in the VMware Datacenter
• EqualLogic Virtual Desktop Deployment Tool – VMware View aware desktop provisioning wizard which allows the deployment of manual virtual desktop pools using array based space efficient thin clones and also allows the refresh of these pools.
• Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware Edition 3.0 – Creates and restores Smart Copies of Hypervisor consistent Virtual Machines (VMs). Utilizes snapshots, clones, and replicas within PS Series group allowing for fast restoration or disaster recovery

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Note of Explanation: For some reason I’ve got into the habit of saying Aye-PAD, Aye-Phone, Aye-POD with thick Geordie accent. It’s silly and I will soon grow out of such juvenile behaviour. For the Americans out there – this is an impression of a Geordie accent – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1zfG9No12Y We do talk funny here in the UK sometimes…

Well, they have finally gone and done it. VMware have released an View Client for the Aye-PAD. Personally, I don’t have one of these devices so I wasn’t able to take advantage of playing around it before the release. I’ve been holding off from getting my Aye-PAD until the G2 release. Sadly, it looks like the US will get the first chance of that on the 11th, as the RoW don’t get the chance to order until the 25th. I’m sure my life will be changed by having one [I'm joking by the way!]

And before you make them those jokey comments, no I wasn’t able to persuade anyone to give/lend me an aye-PAD before the release!

The VMware View client for Aye-PAD can be downloaded for free from the App Store here – and is a great way to get Windows running on a £579 tablet… Sorry, I couldn’t help that…

As of yet there’s no multi-tasking support in the View Client for IPAD – that’s likely to change in the future… The other issue to be aware of is that in “order for the View desktop display to autofit the iPad screen when you rotate the iPad, you must power the virtual machine off and then power it on. That is, after the desktop pool is created, the administrator must use vSphere Client or some other means to power off and then on the virtual machine that will be used as a View desktop on an iPad”. So I imagine that could be an issue for folks toggling between using View with conventional desktop computer or laptop – and then later switching to the iPAD.

It’s difficult to say really, as I DON’T HAVE AN aye-PAD…YET!

Here’s a couple of screen grabs to whet your appetite. What will they think of next at VMware, and IPAD app for………….

And there’s also some videos of thing here as well – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vmwarepr/

My fellow blogger, Eric Sloof actually has an iPAD and did this video!

There are so a user guide and release notes as well

This weeks vendorwag is with Frank Musacchia of PHD Techologies – the virtual machine back up specialists. Here’s a little bit about Franks background which I found online.

Frank is a High-Tech industry veteran with over 20 years in technology sales, management, and operations, including vice president-level roles for software and storage vendors as well as various professional services organizations. Frank is currently the Director of Technical Services for PHD Virtual, a virtualization backup software vendor. Before PHD Virtual, Frank was a Sr. Director for VMware’s sales organization in the Americas, which consisted of the United States, Canada and Latin America, where he led a team of approximately 200 sales engineers which focused on technical pre-sales and channel enablement for all market segments and verticals in the Americas. Prior to joining VMware, Frank was Vice President of Sales & General Manager at Callisma and International Network Services (INS), both professional services organizations specializing in technology services. Prior to INS, Frank held various sales positions starting as a sales engineer for Infonet. Frank also held various positions for Wall Street Brokerage firms where he was responsible for Architecting, Designing, Implementing and Operating Enterprise-wide, mission critical data and voice networks. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Pratt Institute and currently lives in Red Bank, NJ.

We covered wide range of topics – but of course we don’t stray much away from the world of backup. Here’s the questions/areas we covered:

Q. I wasn’t aware that PhD Tech had funding from Citrix. What’s the goal of this funding for you and for Citrix? Given the competition between Citrix and VMware – will this funding affect your support for VMware?

Q. Some folks think that vDR is a threat to 3rd party backup eco-system (You, Veeam, VizionCore), do think this is the case?

Q. Given that all the 3rd party backup vendors are using the same VMware APIs (CBT) is there less scope for developing a unique selling point.

Q. The bane of virtual machine backup is orphaned VMware snapshots – how do you check and manage this issue?

Q.  Describe to me how the restore of individual file from a virtual machine backup would work in PhD?

Q. Some vendors backup to an NFS target, and allow you to mount the backup remotely and just run the VM from the backup NFS target – is that something PHD does, or intends to do in future?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

Podcast Video Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s been a while since I played with the latest plug-ins from NetApp. Yesterday, I was very fortunate to have one of NetApps specialists (Luke Reed) come up to my collocation – and do a controller and OnTap update to my FAS2040s. So I’m now cooking on OnTap8, with access VAAI.

Things have moved on the plug-in side of things from NetApp since I last looked them this time last year. Back then the plug-ins were each a separate install – now they are bundled all together in a single installer – and NetApp have adopted the Virtual Storage Console as the moniker to cover a whole range of functionality. To some degree this shows in the plug-in with each bit of functionality having its own independent controller configuration (where you type the name/ip/username/password) of your NetApp system – rather than doing this centrally from one location.

Some of this stuff is not new, and some it is new. But this is kind of stuff you can do with the NetApp VSC:

• Enhanced Storage Views – above and beyond the standard VMware vSphere Storage Views
• Rapid Cloning for VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop
• Backup and Recovery
• VSC CLI

What’s new here to me is the addition of the ability to create, mount and revert – NetApp Snapshots of VMs. This used to be called “Snap Manager for Virtual Infrastructure” – and had a separate (not together pretty) UI. This has now been integrated as right-click option within vCenter once NetApp VSC has been installed and configured. For me this is the biggest improvement in NetApp’s plug-in. The next thing I would love to see them (and their rivals) do is add the ability to configure SnapMirror from the plug-in – with that I would never need to touch FilerView or Systems Manager when setting up a basic VMware SRM environment. But as the great man said, all in good time – all in good time.

The other thing that’s new to me, is the VSC CLI. That’s right, the plug-in that adds new GUI enhancements to the vSphere Client, has its own CLI. That might strike you as a bit odd, but I do see value there for folks who want to use the vCLI/PowerCLI to script events in VMware, whilst at the same time scripting storage events too… without the need to PuTTy into the NetApp Filer and run commands there.

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This year I will be writing a third edition of my book on VMware SRM. As part of that process I moved back into a new collocation facility near where I live, and started the process of getting my begging bowl out looking for help and support from the storage vendors. I’m pleased to say that a long side EMC and NetApp – Dell have agreed to support my project. So the new book will cover all three vendors.

Of course integration with VMware from these storage vendors doesn’t begin and end with VMware SRM. It extends to all matters related to storage and the way that resource is consumed by VMware. So that includes advancements such as VAAI, but also includes tools that allow you manage your storage directly from vCenter. This isn’t anything “new” by the way – these plug-ins must have been around for at least 18 months – and for many of the storage vendors they are on to their 4th or 5th iteration. What I’m getting at is these plug-ins are well-known and trusted. So whilst the features might be “new to you” as they say on Ebay, they are robust to be used in any datacenter.

So whilst I have access to this enterprize storage, one of the things I want to do this year (along side writing a SRM book and writing articles for TechTarget) is to keep myself and my readership up to date with any new storage vendor goodies that add-value to your VMware investment (does that sound too much like marketing speak? Sorry about that…)

So first up is EMC VSI (Virtual Storage Plug-in) for vSphere. It automates four main tasks – and this each article is going to look at all of them…

• Provisioning New Storage
• Enhanced Storage Views
• Full and Fast Clone (of interest to VDI and VMware View users)
• Managing Mulit-Pathing Policies (to make things interesting I’ve added how to deploy PowerPath via VMware VUM)

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