VMTN Blog

At VMworld, we talked about how we think you'll be managing your VMware Infrastructure in the future. Through programs like the VMware Ready Management Initiative and the APIs and services on the platform, the management vendors you're already using will be able to extend their tools you're already using to better manage your virtual resources.

SAP is already ahead of the game today by integrating their Adaptive Computing Controller with VirtualCenter. One of the benefits of this integration is you can manage (start, stop, resume, VMotion) your virtual machines from inside the application-aware SAP tool, so that you can see your VMs not as black-box compute workloads, but also by the SAP services they are running. Hmm, the future of virtual management is looking interesting.

Joachim gives us the details: Virtualization for SAP Solutions: News on the SAP Adaptive Computing Controller: Integration with VMware Infrastructure.

What does the integration entail? Let me start with a few customer questions that I frequently get. “With VMware ESX there is a new component in the stack. How do I do the monitoring then?”, “I am an SAP Basis Administrator and I need to see what else is running in my ESX servers. But I do not want to learn a new tool!”, or “My infrastructure manager does not want to give me access to VirtualCenter, so how can I see what is going on in my SAP landscape?” are some of the more common ones.

The upcoming integration addresses all of these points. The AC UI will feature a new tab called “Virtualization”, adding core virtual machine functionality to the existing AC functionality (which basically treats a virtual machine as a physical system). In the “Virtualization” tab you can see which application service is running on which virtual machine on which ESX host, and you get information about ESX hosts and virtual machine usage data. You can also execute core VMware commands like start/stop/suspend/resume for a VM, and trigger a migration using VMotion through the SAP UI. Very cool is also the following feature: If you click on “shutdown” for a VM, the AC Controller displays a pop-up window listing which SAP services are running in the VM and asks you whether it is still ok to proceed with the shutdown. This is clearly new stuff and a great interaction between virtual infrastructure and application. ...

If you click on a specific ESX host you get some usage statistics for that server as well as a list of all SAP services running on each virtual machine on that host.

Alessandro at virtualization.info notes that he's seeing a lot of "cautionary tales" about virtualization following this year's VMworld, despite the crowds and energy of IT managers with budget at VMworld. My perception is that these kinds of articles have been on the rise for the last six months or so, and are simply

1. a reflection of greater interest and widespread adoption in virtualization -- the bell curve means that some folks are going in unprepared, so with more column-inches devoted to virtualization there are certain to be more stories of projects gone off the rails, which for the journalist are a nice change of pace to writing the 1000th "100% ROI in 5 months" story; and that
2. virtualization is complex, being infrastructure that works with your whole data center and forms the foundation for the next generation of IT. It's deep stuff -- even if you can dip your toes in with an 86-page book and skip the weighty tomes, the essentials are still pretty deep. There's a reason that there were over 200 vendors at VMworld selling you tools to help with deployment and management, a vast network of professional services and training from VMware and its partners, and the best online community and forums I've ever seen -- this is deep stuff. (Have you asked for a raise yet?)

Still, though, we have more happy customers than anyone else -- too many to even write about. That's the best part about working at VMware. It seems like we're in for an economic stormy ride, but real-world evidence around virtualization ROI, TCO, and agility resonate even more strongly when times are tight.

What are you seeing in your workplace? Do tough times call for more virtualization?

Link: VMware fixes VirtualCenter 2 bugs with VirtualCenter Update 3 - Virtualization Pro: A SearchVMware.com blog.

On Friday, VMware released the latest version of VirtualCenter, Update 3 (no update 3 for ESX yet). Unlike Update 2 (which contained some great new features), this version is mainly focused on fixing bugs. VMware administrators may be a little leery of installing this update after the time-bomb debacle that occurred several months ago with Update 2, but there are a few fixes (including many for HA) outlined below that make it worth installing. ...

This one caused some issues with HA because of a network compliance check that was introduced in Update 2. A new HA advanced setting has been added to bypass this check. ...

This one has caused a few people who upgraded to Update 2 some grief — thankfully VMware has quickly addressed it. In HA-DRS cluster, the enter maintenance mode task stalls and VMs do not migrate ... In this release, the issue has been resolved by allowing the evacuations if HA admission control is disabled.

Thanks, Eric!

Mike @ RTFM Education ran out of bandwidth over VMworld, but he's back on the air. A few recent highlights, and I especially want to point out Mike's VMworld session notes, since he went off the air before I had a chance to point to them.

• Why Virtualize? [Mike comments on a note from Dave @ VMblog about a virtualization survey. Biggest driver? Still consolidation. Desktop virtualization? You're still the early adopters as seen through the global IT population, although VDI was very mainstream indeed at VMworld -- all the desktop sessions and BoFs I saw at VMworld were heavily attended. -jt]
• VMworld 2008 PowerShell Session Videos
• Leverge your Microsoft skills, erm really?
• VMotion Warnings
• VMware VDC-OS

  Clearly, the last couple of years have questioned what we mean by the term “Operating System”. It is a kernel that handles memory, cpu, storage and network or is envolving into merely a “space” within which developers can write useful bits of code called programs.

• VD2345: Going Deep on Capturing Applications using ThinApp
• SRM: Lessons learned in the First 90-days
• VMworld Keynote: Automating DR with VMware SRM
• VMworld 2008: Distributed vSwitches
• VMworld 2008: VD2422: Offline VDI
• VMworld 2008: BC2783: Virtual Business Continuity Site

On with the show. VMware Principal Systems Engineer Mike DiPetrillo joined us this week for an open topic roundtable. Our subjects ranged quite a bit, from Mike's observations on Linux vs Windows shops, the VMware Linux strategy, Mike's recent hacking projects, such as a proof-of-concept VI Client for the iPhone and new "quick migration" PowerShell script, the myth of 'unsuitable workloads' for virtualization, and more.

Listen with the widget on the right or download the mp3 (63 minutes). More info on feeds/notifications.

• Mike DiPetrillo's blog: From the VMware Field
• Rich Brambley's liveblog of VMware's session TA3201 on our Linux strategy and article on Partitioning ESX
• Mike on his Quick Migration script
• Distributed Power Management
• Eric Siebert: Configuring Distributed Power Management
• VMware's Energy Efficiency Solutions page
• More on Enterprise Application workloads for virtualization

Next week, our guest will be Leena Joshi and our topic the Virtual Datacenter OS. You can listen live online or on the phone and we welcome questions.

Mike DiPetrillo is on a roll. (Our podcast with Mike will be up tomorrow; it was delayed because the podcast provider was not posting audio for 24 hours; coincidentally, this blog provider just went out for 45 minutes. There's a cloud and availability post there somewhere.)

Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Virtual Server Sprawl. He gives 4 reasons for server sprawl, from underestimating how many servers you have to begin with (did you count Jim's two test servers in the old closet?) to now being able to set up some redundancy.

I've seen this topic come up over and over again on panels, in the press, on blogs, and in customer conversations. What's virtual server sprawl? It's the theory (or fact) that because virtual machines are so easy to create that once you virtualize your servers will start to multiply like rabbits. I'm here to tell you there's a lot of fact behind that statement. After doing virtualization for 6 1/2 years here at VMware I don't think I've seen one customer reduce their server count ever. Sure, they've gotten rid of a lot of physical hardware. I guess you could call those servers. However, I've never seen the actual server count (OS/App stack) go down. Usually it starts to ramp up rather quickly.

Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Building a $500 VMware ESXi Host.

See also Dave Mishchenko's excellent www.vm-help.com and the ESXi forum and the Community Hardware Software Forum.

Team Fusion shoots ... and scores. Link: VMware: Team Fusion: Walt Mossberg: “VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on the Mac…”.

Having pushed VMware Fusion 2 out into the world a little over two weeks ago, we here on Team Fusion have been waiting with bated breath for the reviews to start showing up.

 

We had a great surprise tonight, when Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist for the venerable Wall Street Journal posted his review of VMware Fusion 2 with the headline “One Way to Turn a Mac into a PC Just Got Better.” ...

Walt is a very brass tacks reviewer, and is evenhanded in how he tests, praises, and dings various products.  His takeaway was that as of his review, VMware Fusion is the best way to run virtual Windows on the Mac.

 

Our favorite quotes, for the fridge here at the Team Fusion compound? “VMware Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on a Mac virtually.”  And with respect to our biggest competitor out in the market, “VMware Fusion edges it out as the better product.”

Mike DiPetrillo (who was on our podcast this morning - link to come) had a nice post this morning that showed off the power of the VMware platform, the VI Toolkit (for Windows), and came up with a very useful script for folks that need to move VMs and don't have VMotion. I'll let him tell the story: Quick Migration for VMware - The Power of PowerShell.

I thought I'd try to create something with the script and show it off during my talk at VMworld on Deploying VMware in a Microsoft Shop. The question is what do I create? Well, there has been some great debate of Microsoft's Quick Migration and VMware's VMotion and are they equal or not, do they solve the same problems, etc. ... One of the things that was also brought up over and over again in the debate was the fact that Quick Migration was free and came with Hyper-V since it was based on Microsoft Clustering whereas VMware VMotion was only available in the most expensive Enterprise SKU of VMware Infrastructure. So there it was - I need to create Quick Migration for the lower priced and free VMware solutions. I went off, built my little script, and showed it off at VMworld. There was a GREAT response to it ...

The script works just like Microsoft Quick Migration - the virtual disk is stored on shared storage, the VM is suspended to disk, and the VM is then resumed on the destination. Presto!

Interesting to me as a blog watcher is that the virtualization blogosphere's antennae all started twitching as they recognized a Very Cool Idea. (I'll also be interested to see how the guys on the podcast this morning spread the news to VMware Communities -- because part of my job is to get the word out about stuff like this. How to do that best in all the highways and byways of the Internets, including our own Communities?)

Rich Brambley talks about the need for shared storage and VirtualCenter Quick Migration PowerShell script for VMware VI Foundation | VM /ETC.

Tools like this are one reason why Bob Plankers recommends skipping VMware Server and going straight to ESXi.  Solutions to Match Your Problems : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin.

One of the big things I like about virtualization is that you can find or build solutions that match the size of the problem you have. Need live workload migration? Buy VMotion. Need dynamic load balancing? Buy DRS. But if you only need to move your workloads around once in a while maybe you can get by with something like Mike DiPetrillo’s quick migration script. Cheap, easy, right-sized, and it has a well-known path for growth when you decide you really do need VMotion or DRS.

Duncan Epping (VMware Quick Migration » Yellow Bricks) and Eric Sloof (A poor men’s VMotion - NTPRO.NL) also were on point.

I'll finish with Carter Shanklin from the Toolkit team Migrating VMs without VMware VMotion.. Carter also notes that we could tweak this so that you don't need VirtualCenter.

Mike has quite a lot of industry experience and has done a lot of custom development like this before. However, until recently Mike had never seen the PowerShell or the VI Toolkit at all, yet he still was able to put this script together in the span of roughly a weekend. So I'm not trying to imply that Mike's not a smart guy but there's no question in my mind that the simplicity of the VI Toolkit made it possible for this really interesting script to get developed in record time.

With the power of the SDK and the VI Toolkit (for Windows) showing that you can build this kind of thing easily, and the announcement of the VirtualCenter Server and VI Client both becoming cross-platform and full of LInuxy goodness, this is going to be a damn fun year if you are a creative developer or sysadmin.

Update #2: Leena can't make it, but will be here next week. VMware's own blog firebrand and SE extraordinaire Mike DiPetrillo will be joining us instead to talk about what's on his mind.

We're honored to have Leena Joshi with us in our second half to talk about the Virtual Datacenter OS. Her session was a big hit at VMworld, so please join us for this Q&A session.

Coming this Wednesday -  VMware Communities Roundtable #19

No guest this week (although I have a few calls out  -- if you have something interesting to say tomorrow, drop me a line or just give us a call), but we always have a good time. Have VMworld withdrawal? Then think of this like you were having a pint with the guys at the V-bar after a day of labs and sessions in Vegas.

See you tomorrow!

I saw this demoed a while back and didn't realize it was in the newest Workstation, as I have become a Mactard who uses my VMware Fusion to run Windows on the Mac. But here it is in all its released glory -- the very very cool feature Virtual Machine Streaming joins Record/Replay, Unity, Better 3D, Easier VM Creation, and more. If you've ever had to download (or even move from a fileserver) 5 or 10 gigs of heavy virtual machine down to your desktop, you'll appreciate this feature.

Link: ChipLog » Blog Archive » VMware Workstation 6.5 released!.

Virtual Machine Streaming

Ever want to preview a downloadable virtual machine without having to grab the entire zip file or tarball? VMs can be quite big and it’s a pain to download one only to find out that it doesn’t meet your needs.

The new VM Streaming feature gives users the ability to point Player or Workstation to a remote VM (if provided in the proper format). It will then download the bits as needed, and allow users to pause or restart the stream. It’s important to note that this will be slow at first until it has enough data to smoothly run files off the disk. When finished with the VM, the user can choose to keep what they have, or delete the cached VM from disk.

Link: VMware: VMware: Virtual Reality: Hyper-V with Server Core -- Too Dry and Crunchy for our Taste.

Is Hyper-V with Recommended Server Core, In Fact, Easy?

So, how does the Hyper-V and DOS -- err, I mean Server Core -- combination stack up when compared to the user experience of VMware ESXi?  To try it out, we did side-by-side installations of Microsoft Server Core/Hyper-V and VMware ESXi 3.5 on identical servers.  To let you see the details of each setup process, we recorded the entire sequence in a pair of videos.

This first video shows every step required to install Hyper-V and ESXi on a fresh machine. We kept count of the elapsed time, reboots, mouse clicks and keystrokes each product needed and it clearly shows the huge advantage the truly thin and OS-free ESXi architecture has in installation speed and simplicity.  ESXi goes from bare-metal to fully installed in one-third the time, half the mouse clicks, hundreds fewer keystrokes and just one reboot vs. seven compared to Hyper-V.  The simplicity of the ESXi wizard-driven installation is striking compared to the arduous process needed to first get the Server Core OS installed and then configure Hyper-V in a command line environment.

And here's the end score:

This is the kind of lazy man's blogging I like: Eric Siebert has just painted my fence with this comprehensive list of VMworld 2008 links. I still have a few bookmarks in my back pocket, but Eric's page will be a great clearinghouse for the year ahead. He's got sections on all the keynotes, session blogging, audio/video, VDC-OS and other vWords, vendors, and more.

Note that Eric spends a great deal of time curating these links, so please don't grab them wholesale and reprint them without attribution. You'll often see Eric with ready-made collections of resources that he uses to answer FAQs on the VMware Communties and you'd increase your karma by either dropping him a note of appreciation at esiebert7625@yahoo.com or clicking on the big donate button over at vmware-land.com.

So now I present to you the official VMware-land.com VMworld 2008 Links page.

Eating lunch at your desk again and wishing there was just a few more videos coming out of VMworld 2008? Well then, settle in and get another bag of chips, because it's time for the VMworld Video Roundup:

SearchServerVirtualization and/or SearchVMware

• SearchServerVirtualization's VMworld coverage

• SearchServerVirtualization Video Library There are many interesting videos there -- notice the tabs on the top of the video player. Check out this year's Bag of Schwag video. (SSV, your articles and videos are great, but not being able to link to individual videos is lame. I can come by and give you my "everything on the web must be a social media object" tutorial, but the short version is "if you don't give it a url, I can't point people to it or embed it here on the blog.")

Virtual Strategy Magazine

• Virtual Strategy Magazine's VMworld coverage

• VMworld Book Signing with the authors of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center (VMblog/InfoWorld/Hyper9's Dave Marshall, and our own community guys Jase McCarty and Steve Beaver)
• virtualstrategy channel on YouTube - 11 videos from the VMworld 2008

The prolific Eric Sloof:

• Interview with LucD the VI Toolkit Scripting contest winner (audio only)
• VMworld 2008 | Interview with Carter Shanklin (audio only)
• VMworld 2008 | Interview with Dmitry Sotnikov (audio only)
• VMworld 2008 | VMware PowerShell session video
• Designing the Next Generation Data Center - Cisco and VMware (keynote where they introduced the new virtual switch)
• VMworld 2008 | Question and Answer Session with Paul Maritz
• VMworld 2008 | VMware Fault Tolerance Video
• Interview with Edward Haletky about Securing Virtualization Servers (audio only)
• VMTN Community Experts Video
• VMworld Party Las Vegas Motor Speedway Video
• VMworld 2008 | VMware Site Recovery Manager Video
• Brian Madden | VDI versus Terminal Services Video (this session got high marks)
• Andrew Kutz | VMware Infrastructure Plugins Video
• VMworld 2008 | Interview with Scott Herold (just audio)
• Eric Sloof is signing off

Toon Vanagt from virtualization.com was omnipresent at the conference with his tripod, but is still uploading. He did publish this great interview with Winston Bumpus about Open Virtualization Format 1.0 and the virtualization Management Initiative (vMAN).  I can't get the video there to load right now, so you can also go straight to the source at Vimeo.

VMworld at YouTube

VMworld at vimeo (note a lot of keynote video this year)

I hear we'll be getting some of the professionally-shot video as well, and everyone can contribute over at vmworld.com's Video Spot and Photo Wall.

Lunch all done? Wipe off those crumbs and get back to work.

We're back in the saddle again. Last week we recorded a few podcasts in Vegas under the moniker VMworld Live. This week we were pleased to have as our guest VMware's own Guy Brundson, who normally blogs at our VMware Networking Blog. Our main topic of discussion was the newly announced Cisco Nexus 1000V, the new virtual switch that will be coming to a future version of VMware Infrastructure and will allow your network team to control your virtual network just like they control your physical network.

We also recapped some of our VMworld experiences. Listen via the widget to the right or via mp3 (51:19 duration). The TalkShoe page has the feeds, etc.

• VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco Network Environment
• VMware Networking Blog
• www.vmware.com/go/networking
• Chris Hoff "The Network Is the Computer...(Is the Network, Is the Computer...)"
• TechTarget's Best of VMworld awards
  • Best in Show: Reflex Security Virtual Security Center

Next week, same time, but I have no idea about our topic or guest. After a week in Vegas, that's about as much living on the edge as I can deal with... (Suggestions for topics welcome.)

Just back from VMworld, and we're at Oracle OpenWorld this week. Here's the schedule of presentations in our booth. Here are a few sessions that look good and give you an idea of the content, but we're going all day, so check out the whole thing. Link: OpenWorld Speakers - VMware.

10am Tuesday
Running Oracle Databases on VMware Infrastructure: It's Time! - by House of Brick
This session updates the current state of virtualizing enterprise-class Oracle environments through the experiences of an independent Systems Integrator. E-Business Suite customers and all Oracle core technologies customers (especially of Real Application Clusters) can come away with down-to-earth deliverables relating to system stack scalability, performance, support, and the virtualization effort.
(Level: Beginner/Intermediate, Category: DB Technical Deep Dive)

1pm Wednesday
EMC Partner Presentation: Virtualization for Oracle: Extension of System Infrastructure Optimization
Learn how VMware and EMC technologies work seamlessly together to optimize Oracle App 12 landscape, to enhance flexibility and to decouple Oracle App from the hardware infrastructure.
(Level: Intermediate, Category: Storage, Partner)

2pm Wednesday
Virtualizing the Oracle Database with VMware ESX 3.5 and Beyond
Attend this talk to learn about best practices for virtualizing Oracle databases. Specifically, we outline the characteristics of typical Oracle workloads, and give a brief primer on performance optimization for virtualized systems. We then combine these two topics by showing how to tune a database for virtualization, and what features of ESX can help provide maximum value once you've virtualized your Oracle database. We also highlight some of the changes coming in future versions of VMware Infrastructure, and how they will affect database virtualization techniques.
(Level: Beginner/Intermediate, Category: Database, Technical Deep Dive)

11am Thursday
Oracle on VMware: Manage Your Applications Dynamically to Accelerate Service Delivery and Maximize QoS
Learn why customers are increasingly running Oracle DB, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Applications on VMware. This talk covers the outstanding performance improvements realized in the latest release of ESX that enables more than 95% of applications to match or even exceed physical performance.  Hear also how customers are leveraging VMware Application vServices to accelerate service delivery, scale dynamically to ensure service levels, and protect all applications with simple availability solutions.
(Level: Intermediate, Category: Applications, Technical Deep Dive)