Licensing is by far, the most misunderstood, confusing, and sometimes frustrating part of vSphere and vCenter, and generates a ton of calls into support. And we've noticed. Today the Knowledgebase Team released another video KB: Licensing ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0  We anticipate this KB will become a heavy-hitter before long.

If you are:

• Unable to remove ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 from Evaluation Mode
• Unable to upload the license file for vSphere
• Unable to connect vSphere 4 to vCenter Server
• Unable to activate vSphere

…proceed directly to Licensing ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0 (1010839). The KB guides you through steps to add, assign, and remove the licenses of  ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0, in video form with accompanying detailed test instructions.

You are welcome to leave your Star rating and/or feedback in any KB including this one.  Enjoy!!

The 'item' Elements

Virtual hardware is modeled as a set of devices, such as ethernet card or disk controllers, memory. Each of those devices are described by an element. The  DMTF RASD specifies a set of fields that can be set. We only a subset of those fields in an OVF descriptor. The fields in a RASD must be ordered alphabetically. The following table lists the RASD fields that are used:

Since we get a number of questions on how to use AppSync as well as how it can be utilized, specifically around ThinApp packaged applications such as Office or Adobe CS which are not a single executable like Firefox, Opera, or Adobe Reader, we figured it best to create a video to review how AppSync works, show how to use AppSync in general, show how to use AppSync with packaged apps having separate data container files and/or multiple entry point EXEs, and discuss what is required when needing to have clients download just the differentials vs. the whole updated ThinApp packaged app (i.e. slow links, remote/home users/etc.).

Folks,

We had a great time at the Portland VMUG - the people are friendly and the weather was great.

Links for folks that are interested in using PowerShell, or Perl to pull performance data.

PowerShell, Perl Sample Code Perfomance Sample Code

PowerCLI Community: http://vmware.com/go/powercli

Addition Performance Information http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9840

Folks,

Thanks for attending yesterdays Coffee Talk

Slides

Download MP3 Chargeback Recording

Thanks for your blog entries so far on vStorage Thin Provisioning. For those of you yet to post, you have until 11:59 this Friday to get your entry in for this cycle. Below are our entries to date (nice work folks!):

1. Rich Bramley

http://vmetc.com/2009/11/03/provision-a-thin-provisioned-standby-lun-for-vsphere-thin-provisioning/

Rich brings together a few posts on the topic and relays a number of the key areas of focus for this features (using this in conjunction with storage layer thin provisioning, use cases, etc.).

2.Dwayne Lessner

http://www.itbloodpressure.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52:living-thin-in-a-fat-world&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

Dwayne discusses how to get started and then weighs the pros and cons of the feature.

3. Vaughn Stewart (Entry 1)

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/10/vce-101-thin-provisioning-part-1-the-basics.html

Vaughn's two part entry (see below) lays out the basics and then gets into the tie with Network Appliance hardware. A must read for users that have VMware running on Network Appliance gear. 

4. Vaughn Stewart (Entry 2)

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/10/vce-101-thin-provisioning-part-2-going-beyond.html

5. Scott Sauer

http://bit.ly/88EQg

Scott uses a coffee analogy to discuss Thin Provisioning and layers in a further discussion using principles from Six Sigma.

Don't miss your chance at our $100 prize!

Posted by Steve Herrod
Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D

This week HP introduced their Converged Infrastructure Architecture, which is appropriately described as “a blueprint for chief information officers to create elasticity in their technology environments.” This blueprint unlocks currently siloed datacenter resources (including compute, storage and network components) and, with the help of virtualization, integrates them into a pool of very fluid resources that can be smartly and safely allocated to the applications running on top.

Put another way, HP has unveiled a template that helps customers easily build what many are now calling a “private cloud.” The general idea of a private cloud is to bring many of the good traits associated with today’s public cloud vendors (e.g. elasticity, efficiency, self-service, and usage-based resource charges) to a company-owned and operated datacenter—where IT is often more comfortable with their ability to meet performance, availability, and compliance requirements.

VMware vSphere™ was explicitly designed for building the private cloud, and HP BladeSystem Matrix’s out-of-box experience and well-integrated management will help customers more quickly and more easily realize the full capabilities of VMware vSphere. What’s more, even as customers reap the benefits of their private cloud, they’re also laying the foundation to leveraging public cloud resources. Virtual machines are well-encapsulated and largely location independent. Working with HP, we can offer tools and a complete portfolio of services that help customers continue to maintain the control and security they have in their datacenters as they begin to leverage resources in the public cloud. The resulting “hybrid” cloud is depicted below.

Infrastructure and application management in this new world is incredibly important, too, and HP’s capabilities integrate quite well with VMware vCenter™ to push the envelope on this front. I particularly like the integration work HP has done to bring their Insight software capabilities into VMware vCenter. You have to register to see it, but there’s a great demonstration of this at minute 62 of the VMworld 2009 general session.

I’ll stop here in the interest of keeping this blog short, but I did just want to highlight again the excitement I have over holistic solutions built for the fully virtualized datacenter that help enable the promise of the private cloud. If you would like to see and hear a lot more about VMware and HP’s Converged Infrastructure, be sure to also check out the video from Bogomil Balkansky, VMware’s VP of Server Product Marketing.

• Friday, November 6, 2009 from 6:00 PM – 12:00 Midnight PST
• Saturday, November 7, 2009 from 6:00 AM – 8:30 AM PST
• Sunday, November 8, 2009 from 5:00 AM – 9:00 AM PST

• Sunday, November 8, 2009 from 7:30 PM – 9 PM PST

With the tremendous number of new Workstation 7 customers, I am very excited to announce the availability of a free introductory, self-paced online course.  The course is designed for people who are new VMware Workstation and it will quickly walk you through the steps for installing VMware Workstation, creating virtual machines, installing tools, configuring networks, and much more.  To access the course, you will be prompted to create a VMware myLearn account if you do not already have one.

Start the course now!

Course Outline:

VMware Workstation 7 Overview
•  How does it work?
•  New features
•  Workstation use cases

Getting Started with Workstation
•  Install Workstation
•  Navigate through Workstation window
•  Create a Virtual Machine
•  Install VMware Tools
•  Configure Networking

Working with Workstation
•  Using  USB devices
•  File Sharing
•  Record/Replay a VM
•  Snapshots
•  Add a Hard Drive
•  Unity

Download a free 30 day trial of VMware Workstation 7 today.

Follow us on Twitter.

All VMware Fusion users take note, two new KB articles we just posted today deal with two common problem customers are currently experiencing with upgrades from Windows XP to Windows 7, as well as the creation of new VMs using media. This is generating a spike in calls to our call center. If other customers are running into these problems, there's a good chance you are too.

If you are experiencing this:

• You cannot install Windows on a newly created virtual machine.
• A PXE boot screen displays during the creation of a new virtual machine.
• A newly created virtual machine does not recognize Windows installation media when booting

  then proceed to this KB: Cannot install Windows on a newly created virtual machine (1015406)

On the other hand, if you are experiencing these symptoms:

• Unable to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.
• Errors during or after upgrade process from Windows XP to Windows 7

  then proceed directly to: Upgrading a VMware Fusion virtual machine from Windows XP to Windows 7 (1015396)

The Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition was announced this morning. This is a coalition between Cisco and EMC, together with VMware to accelerate customers’ ability to increase business agility.

Apart from bringing a single point of contact for design, service, and support, the coalition introduces the notion of the “Vblock Infrastructure Packages.” These are ready-to-go infrastructure packages that are fully tested, integrated and validated.

You can find more information (presentations, papers, videos, etc) at:

• Press Release
• Cisco’s VCE Coalition page
• EMC’s VCE Coalition page

As always, Chad Sakac from EMC also has a lot to say over on his Virtual Geek blog.

Let's start week 2 of Thin Provisioning off with a bang! 

Did you know the new Thin Provisioning feature is available with all vSphere 4.0 editions (standard, advanced, enterprise, and enterprise plus)?

See what our engineers have to say about Thin Provisioning.

Here is our monthly update of the Top 20 KB articles for the month of October, based on use by customers.

1. Upgrading to ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices (1009039)
2. Restarting the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server (1003490)
3. Downloading and Installing VMware Fusion (1005466)
4. Uninstalling, reinstalling, and upgrading VMware Fusion (1014529)
5. Best practices for using and troubleshooting VMware Converter (1004588)
6. Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (1003212)
7. Powering off a virtual machine on an ESX host (1004340)
8. Upgrading an ESX 3.x virtual machine to ESX 4.0 (1010675)
9. Increasing the amount of RAM assigned to the ESX Server service console (1003501)
10. Virtual machine does not power on because of missing or locked files (10051)
11. Recreating a missing virtual disk (VMDK) header/descriptor file (1002511)
12. Troubleshooting VMware High Availability (HA) (1001596)
13. Installing ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices (1009080)
14. Decoding Machine Check Exception (MCE) output after a purple screen error (1005184)
15. A CPU of the host is incompatible error appears and VMotion stops working after upgrading to vSphere 4.0 (1011294)
16. Virtual machine memory usage alarms triggered for virtual machines when guest operating system memory usage is low (1013206)
17. Resignaturing VMFS3 volumes from VMware Infrastructure Client (9453805)
18. FAQ: Supported/Unsupported Devices and Configurations (1184)
19. Pegasus (cimserver) memory leaks reported in ESX 3.5 Update 2 and later (1009607)
20. Committing snapshots when there are no snapshot entries in the snapshot manager (1002310)

This was probably one of the toughest Top-5's to write as I had the week off this week. I basically had to catch-up with a whole week of Planet V12n. One of the most annoying things about it is that half of the blogs on PlanetV12n enabled "content summary only". Yes I know you will have a couple of extra visits, but isn't blogging about getting people to read your content instead of being "numbers"(visits) focused? Now that I got that off my chest lets move on to what this article is about. It's about the 5 top articles this week:

• Vaugn Stewart - VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 1 – The Basics & VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 2 – Going Beyond
  Like the thick format, thin VMDKs are not formatted at the time of deployment. This also means that data that needs to be written must pause while the blocks required to store the data are formatted. The formatting operation only occurs on demand at anytime an area of the virtual disk, which has never been written to, is required to store data.
• Chad Sakac - Solid State Disk will change the storage world…
  But surely, if you were looking for performance, you wouldn’t use the SATA disk, right? You would probably use a 15K RPM FC disk. Those cost about $1000. They do about 200 random write IOPs. So, you would need 20 of them to do what that $115 SSD could do. That’s 0.2 IOps per dollar – or 170x more expensive than the SSD on a IOps/$ basis. Oh, you think SAS 15K drives are a better deal? They are – than FC disks. A 15K SAS disk on Pricewatch costs about $210, and they also do about 200 IOps. that’s 0.95 IOps per dollar – or 37x more expense than the SSD on a IOps/$ basis.
• Luc Dekens - dvSwitch scripting – Part 4 – NIC teaming
  The double Service Consoles and vmKernel connection might look confusing at first. But when you select one these connections, the vSphere client will show you to which uplink a specific connection is going. To increase the availability of the dvSwitch, I will show how to add two pNics and how to activate and configure NIC Teaming. When I created the dvSwitch I configured it for two uplink ports (per host). Since I’m adding two pNics, I will first have to change the maximum number of dvUplink ports.
• Gabrie van Zanten - Design tips for VMware vSphere 4
  Recently at the Belgium VMUG I gave a presentation in which I covered some design tips for VMware vSphere 4. I talked about some business decisions that, how boring they may seem, are crucial for your design. I covered some security requirements you should check with the security department of the organisation and of course advised good capacity planning which also is very important for your design. What the average geek found most interesting where topics like: “What size of ESX host will you buy?”, “How to run vCenter in a VM”, “VMFS best practises”, “Understanding queue depth and lun size” and more….
• Simon Gallagher - iSCSI LUN is very slow/no longer visible from vSphere host
  Due to too many SCSI reservation conflicts, so hopefully it wasn’t looking like corruption but a locked-out disk – a quick Google turned up this KB article – which reminded me that SATA disks can only do so much :) Multiple reboots of hosts and the OpenFiler hadn’t cleared this situation – so I had to use vmkfstools to reset the locks and get my LUN back, these are the steps I took.. You need to find the disk ID to pass to the vmkfstools –L targetreset command, to do this from the command line look under /vmfs/devices/disks

Just wanted to share some tips on how to apply updates to a ThinApped package.

There is three ways of applying updates to a ThinApp project.
1. If you just have a couple of updated files then you simply copy them into the project and rebuild.
2. If the application have a built in mechanism for downloading and applying updates (Mozilla Firefox has for example Help – Check for Updates) then you simply run this feature from within the ThinApped application and all updates will be applied to the sandbox (I recommend WriteCopy as the default isolation mode just to be sure everything is sandboxed). Then you run sbmerge to update the project and then rebuild.
3. If the update is a separate downloaded file you need to run this update within the virtual environment of the package. The simplest way to accomplish this is using a CMD entrypoint (just enable it in the package.ini if you do not have it and rebuild) and launch the downloaded update file from within the cmd. All updates end up in the sandbox (default isolation mode should be WriteCopy) and with sbmerge you update the project and then run build.bat.

Running sbmerge:
1. Open a cmd prompt.
2. Place yourself in the project folder (C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\captures\ApplicationName)
3. Run sbmerge, “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\sbmerge.exe” Print this will show all changes that will be applied to your project. “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\sbmerge.exe” Apply will do the actual update to your project. Since there is no reverting sbmerge you should keep a backup of the original projectfolder. The sandbox should be in the default location on this machine. The sandbox will be deleted after the update.

Although, the generally available release is not officially supported.... it appears to be running reasonably well!!!!  Easy Install recognized the .iso and VMware Tools were installed seamlessly.  I saw two CD/DVD drives show up in VM Settings immediately after installation, but it was corrected after a reboot, and "fit to guest" isn't automatically applying... but otherwise it is very usable...

We would really appreciate it if you would please post any issues you find in the Workstation forums.

After moving from working on Workstation to working on the Windows View Client, I try to use Workstation’s Visual Studio plugin as much as I can when debugging the View Client.  Being able to use the remote debugging integration to debug in my VMs is really helpful, but replay debugging takes the cake as the single most helpful feature that Workstation offers me.  I seriously cannot say enough about its power in changing a bug from nearly impossible to fixable in the course of an hour or two.

The most recent example was in the upcoming smart card removal policy feature for the Windows View Client.  Due to the nature of this feature, if a smart card removal policy was also configured on the Windows machine, we were both triggering at exactly the same time.  Most of the time this would be fine; Windows would lock and the View Client would disconnect from the View Connection Server and show the Connect dialog.  But occasionally (anywhere from 10-30% of the time) I would see weird behavior where the dialog was arbitrarily moved to the upper-left corner of the screen and resized to be 100 pixels taller!

As I figured out quickly, debugging using the traditional methods was not an option.  Either I would not see the issue or if I spent too much time in breakpoints I would lose my connection to the View Connection Server.  I could feel replay debugging calling me because it fit so perfectly; I could run the program in the VM and make sure I would reproduce the issue, then attach a debugger and spend however much time I needed to figure it out.  Features like Reverse Run to Cursor and Reverse Continue would make debugging faster as well.

I was all ready to start up on it when I remembered that VMware’s record/replay technology doesn’t support USB devices.  Whether you connect your smart card exclusively to the virtual machine or connect it in shared mode, it is still exposed to the virtual machine as a USB device.  If you start a recording in Workstation, this USB device is immediately disconnected.

The workaround that I figured out was simply to start a recording in a VM then RDP into the VM and use RDP’s built-in smart card redirection to connect the smart card to the VM while recording.  Then in the RDP session, I would run the View Client and reproduce the bug, close the View Client, then stop the recording.  This works because RDP doesn’t actually connect the smart card to the virtual machine as a USB device (seriously, check Device Manager!).  Instead it performs API redirection from the server (in this case the VM) to the client (in this case the host machine) and this certainly still works when recording execution in Workstation.

The only downside of this approach is that when you are replaying execution, you won’t be able to see the contents of the console, as seen below.  So this approach is best for uncomplicated debugging sessions where you generally remember the procession of commands executed in the application.  The reason why you can’t see the console is that when you RDP into a machine, the console session is locked and RDP creates a new session to protect your privacy.  When you replay this recording, there is no actual network traffic (it is just simulated) so there is no way to reattach an RDP client to it.  You are only left viewing the locked console session, but the program still is executing in the virtual machine.

This is the only view you get into the VM when replaying, but the app is running and the smart card activity really is being replayed!

Once I figured out how to get smart cards working with replay debugging, isolating and fixing the bug was extremely easy.  As a parting shot, I want to commend the improvements made in replay debugging for Workstation 7.0.  As an internal dogfooder, I am often one of VMware’s harshest critics.  But when testing replay debugging this time, I was taken aback at the speed improvements and optimizations when doing normal replay sessions and especially when doing reverse operations.  These folks have worked so hard on the product and it really shows.

As a summary, here are the steps to create a recording of your app with smart cards:

1. Start your VM and find the IP address.
2. Start recording execution in Workstation by selecting VM > Replay > Record.
3. RDP into your VM, making sure to enable smart card redirection in the Local Resources tab by clicking More…
4. Run your app in the RDP session, reproducing your bug.
5. Close your app, disconnect your RDP session, and stop your recording.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These issues mentioned in this blog post have already been resolved and they were addressed on Wednesday October 28th. See Improved VMware Fusion Portal Now Open for Business for more details.

------

First off, I want to thank our users for the flood of excitement for VMware Fusion 3.  Because we’ve seen even more demand than anticipated, the VMware Fusion upgrade portal is having problems keeping up with the demand! 

While we have already transacted thousands of upgrades today and many people are able to get the product, I apologize immensely to those of you who are anxious to get the product immediately and are running into issues.

I want to reassure you that we are working on this urgently and expect to be back in action soon.

In the mean time, I want to get you up and running with VMware Fusion 3 while we resolve the issues many of you are encountering.

1. Click here to download the VMware Fusion 3 software
2. Use the following 30 trial license key to get you up and running: JN28P-7UJ8M-H8K33-0202P-9EPH4

I hope this helps you get up and running while we get our VMware Fusion upgrade portal back in order.

If you have questions about your upgrade, subscription, or technology guarantee, please see our original post, here.

Stay tuned to the Team Fusion blog and Twitter feed for the latest updates.

Thanks for your patience and ongoing support.

Pat Lee

Director, Personal Desktop Products

VMware

VMware Fusion® 3 launched just two days ago and we're starting to hear some comments in social media circles. There are tons of accolades and we appreciate everyone saying how much they love the new release!

As with any product however there might be an annoyance here or there that we didn't think about. Here's an example Tweet we heard this morning:

Don't like how VMWare Fusion 3 adds a menu bar item that I can't get rid of

That was enough for the Knowledgebase Team to spring into action to publish a new KB on how to turn this menu bar item off. Some people want the control of whether they want to see this icon or not, and we did put this option into the product. It's just not obvious how to change this setting.

Presenting KB article: Modifying the VMware Fusion 3 menu bar item

We went one step further and also created related KB: Understanding Unity and the Windows System Tray in Fusion 3 (1015362) in case there is any confusion about that change to the product too.

Hopefully these two KB articles will help many of you get Fusion setup just the way you want it, so you can get down to really using it. We are committed to monitoring social networks for customer feedback about our products, and responding. We benefit directly from your reactions to our products – so please keep up the chatter!

Follow us on Twitter!

@vmwareKB
@VMwareCares

Yesterday, I let you know that that we had hit some snags in getting VMware Workstation 7 into your hands.

I want to apologize again for the poor experience many of you had trying to purchase VMware Workstation 7 or a VMware Workstation 7 upgrade yesterday. Bottom line, we saw even more demand than anticipated and the VMware upgrade portal had problems keeping up with the demand!

The VMware team has been working around the clock to troubleshoot and address the issues you encountered yesterday. We made a number of key changes to resolve the problems around purchasing and upgrading to VMware Workstation 7 and the upgrade portal has been improved to resolve the key issues.

Improved Upgrade Portal Open for Business

Upgrades from VMware Workstation 5 or VMware Workstation 6 to VMware Workstation 7 cost $99 and they are available today from the VMware Online Store.

For qualified students and teachers, VMware Workstation 7 Academic Upgrades are priced at $59 and they are available from the VMware Academic Store

Addressing Questions and Fixing the Remaining Issues

I bought VMware Workstation 7 from the VMware Online Store and was promised a free upgrade…

I sincerely apologize for the delay in getting you your free upgrades in time for the launch. We planned to deliver your free upgrades yesterday, but we encountered some problems that delayed this temporarily. We are resolving the issues and it is currently our plan to send out e-mail notifications with free upgrade fulfillment information by the end of the week.

In the meantime, please download the VMware Workstation 7 trial to get up and running today. Once you receive your VMware Workstation 7 free upgrade fulfillment e-mail, you will just need to retrieve your final VMware Workstation 7 license and enter it into your already installed VMware Workstation 7 software.

What if I bought VMware Workstation 6 from a VMware reseller or distributor in October, how do I get my free downloadable upgrade?

If you bought VMware Workstation 6 from a VMware reseller or distributor in October, you need to go to the VMware Workstation Technology Guarantee website, fill out the online form and mail in or fax your proof of purchase of VMware Workstation 6. Free downloadable VMware Workstation 7 upgrades will take up two weeks to deliver after receiving a valid proof of purchase.

In the meantime, please download the VMware Workstation 7 trial to get up and running today. Once you receive your VMware Workstation 7 free upgrade fulfillment e-mail, you will just need to retrieve your final VMware Workstation 7 license and enter it into your already installed VMware Workstation 7software.

I purchased an upgrade but did not receive an e-mail with my VMware Workstation 7 serial number…

Go to the VMware License Portal to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 serial number.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 serial number/activation key.

2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Workstation 7, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing (Help->Enter Serial Number) from the VMware Workstation menu bar.

3. Otherwise, Download VMware Workstation 7. Install VMware Workstation 7 and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

I purchased an upgrade but my e-mail didn’t include a VMware Workstation 7 serial number…

We have fixed this issue for most customers that hit this problem and you can go to the VMware License Portal to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7serial number.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 serial number/activation key.

2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Workstation 7, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing (Help->Enter Serial Number) from the VMware Workstation menu bar.

3. Otherwise, Download VMware Workstation 7. Install VMware Workstation 7and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

We have about 100 more customers left with this problem and we expect to finish those fixes by mid day tomorrow. If you are one of these customers, you should be able to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 upgrade license from the VMware License Portal tomorrow afternoon.

My business bought VMware Workstation 7 with (Silver / Gold / Platinum) Support, when do I get the upgrade?

If you have an active support contract, you will receive a free downloadable VMware Workstation 7 upgrade for your covered licenses. Your VMware account has been updated with your new VMware Workstation 7 licenses and e-mail notifications will be sent out by Friday evening to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 licenses.

You can retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 licenses from the VMware License Portal.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Workstation 7 serial number/activation key.

2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Workstation 7, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing (Help->Enter Serial Number) from the VMware Workstation menu bar.

3. Otherwise, Download VMware Workstation 7. Install VMware Workstation 7and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

Thanks again for your patience and ongoing support

We worked hard to resolve the problems so you can get VMware Workstation 7 now. We are sorry for any issues you may have encountered.

We hope you enjoy VMware Workstation 7 as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Pat Lee

Director, Personal Desktop Products

VMware

.

Yesterday, I let you know that that we had hit some snags in getting VMware Fusion 3 into your hands.

I want to apologize again for the poor experience many of you had trying to purchase VMware Fusion 3 or a VMware Fusion 3 upgrade yesterday. Bottom line, we saw even more demand than anticipated and the VMware upgrade portal had problems keeping up with the demand!

The VMware team has been working around the clock to troubleshoot and address the issues you encountered yesterday. We made a number of key changes to resolve the problems around purchasing and upgrading to VMware Fusion 3 and the upgrade portal has been improved to resolve the key issues.

Improved Upgrade Portal Open for Business

VMware Fusion 3 Upgrades and VMware Fusion 3 Academic Upgrades Available for Purchase

Upgrades from previous versions of VMware Fusion to VMware Fusion 3 cost only $39.99 and they are available today from the VMware Online Store.  

For qualified students and teachers, VMware Fusion 3 Academic Upgrades are priced at $19.99 and they are available from the VMware Academic Store.

Addressing Questions and Fixing The Remaining Issues

I bought VMware Fusion 2 from the VMware Online Store and was promised a free upgrade…

I sincerely apologize for the delay in getting you your free upgrades in time for the launch. We planned to deliver your free upgrades yesterday, but we encountered some problems that delayed this temporarily. We are resolving the issues and it is currently our plan to send out e-mail notifications with free upgrade fulfillment information by the end of the week. 
  
In the meantime, please download the VMware Fusion 3 trial to get up and running today. Once you receive your VMware Fusion 3 free upgrade fulfillment e-mail, you will just need to retrieve your final VMware Fusion 3 license and enter it into your already installed VMware Fusion 3 software.

What if I bought VMware Fusion 2 at a retailer or other online store in October, how do I get my free downloadable upgrade?

If you bought VMware Fusion 2 from a retail or other online store, you need to go to the VMware Fusion Technology Guarantee website, fill out the online form, and mail in or fax your proof of purchase of VMware Fusion 2. Free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrades will take up two weeks to deliver after receiving a valid proof of purchase.

In the meantime, please download the VMware Fusion 3 trial to get up and running today. Once you receive your VMware Fusion 3 free upgrade fulfillment e-mail, you will just need to retrieve your final VMware Fusion 3 license and enter it into your already installed VMware Fusion 3 software.

I purchased an upgrade but did not receive an e-mail with my VMware Fusion 3 serial number…

Go to the VMware License Portal to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number/activation key.
2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Fusion 3, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing “License” from the “VMware Fusion” menu in VMware Fusion 3.
3. Otherwise, Download VMware Fusion 3. Install VMware Fusion 3 and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

I purchased an upgrade but my e-mail didn’t include a VMware Fusion 3 serial number…

We have fixed this issue for most customers that hit this problem and you can go to the VMware License Portal to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number/activation key.
2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Fusion 3, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing “License” from the “VMware Fusion” menu in VMware Fusion 3.
3. Otherwise, Download VMware Fusion 3. Install VMware Fusion 3 and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

We have about 100 more customers left with this problem and we expect to finish those fixes by mid day tomorrow. If you are one of these customers, you should be able to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 upgrade license from the VMware License Portal tomorrow afternoon.

What if I bought VMware Fusion 2 with the 12-month Subscription option?

If you have an active subscription only contract (purchased 12 months ago or less), you receive a free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrade. Your VMware accounts have been updated with your new VMware Fusion 3 license and e-mail notifications are being sent out this evening.

You can retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 licenses from the VMware License Portal.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number/activation key.
2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Fusion 3, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing “License” from the “VMware Fusion” menu in VMware Fusion 3. 
3. Otherwise, Download VMware Fusion 3. Install VMware Fusion 3 and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

My business bought VMware Fusion 2 with the Site Support, when do I get the upgrade?

If you have an active Site Support contract (purchased 12 months ago or less), you receive a free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrade for your covered licenses. Your VMware account has been updated with your new VMware Fusion 3 licenses and e-mail notifications are being sent out this evening to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 licenses.

You can retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 licenses from the VMware License Portal.

1. Log into the VMware License Portal with your VMware account to retrieve your VMware Fusion 3 serial number/activation key.
2. If you are already running a trial of VMware Fusion 3, you can enter your activation key/serial number by choosing “License” from the “VMware Fusion” menu in VMware Fusion 3. 
3. Otherwise, Download VMware Fusion 3. Install VMware Fusion 3 and enter your new license key during installation and you're all set.

Thanks again for your patience and ongoing support

We worked hard to resolve the problems so you can get VMware Fusion 3 now. We are sorry for any issues you may have encountered.

We hope you enjoy VMware Fusion 3 as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Pat Lee

Director, Personal Desktop Products

VMware

If you didn’t manage to make it to the San Diego VMUG you missed a pretty good show. Darin Pendergraft from Quest was there showing off EcoShell and I had cooked up a couple of demos of my own.

One of the more popular topics was a script I wrote to determine LUN latencies and the VMs that are writing to particular LUNs. One of the trickiest challenges when adopting virtualization is the effective use and partitioning of shared resources. Technologies like VMware DRS address exactly this challenge, but it’s safe to say that we’re still nearer the beginning than the end when it comes to automatic resource allocation and leveling.

On the other hand, PowerCLI and the vSphere API give you all the tools you need to monitor your environment, allowing you to proactively move or reallocate VMs away from storage hotspots. In particular I showed off a couple of scripts that tell you what your LUN read and write latencies are, as well as listing all VMs on a given LUN. The best part, the scripts are extremely simple, requiring less than 25 lines of code for both of these things! Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

You can easily adapt Get-VMHostLunLatency to run periodically (say, every night) to tell you if you’re experiencing any storage slowness. If you are you can easily follow that up with Get-LunVM to identify VMs that should be split off to separate LUNs. PowerCLI makes it all really simple.

Note that if you want to run Get-VMHostLunLatency against vCenter you will need to have your stats level set to 2 or higher.

As for the stuff I presented at the VMUG, I’ve posted my slides to slideshare:

And you can also download all the scripts I used here:

On October 27th VMware launched VMware Fusion® 3 as well as Workstation 7. Unfortunately, our servers were not up to the task of dealing with the demand. Not only that, customers were not able to retrieve their serial keys or access the Licensing site. It was like a perfect storm was brewing.

While our IT Teams scurried to resolve the issues, the Knowledge Base Team too responded by creating an up-to-the-minute live document:

Alert: Licensing and upgrading VMware Fusion 3.0 / VMware Workstation 7

This KB article is still being updated as new information becomes available. If you have been affected by this, please read the KB. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

UPDATE: Please read the Fusion Team's Response here…

Hello Uptime Readers,

We have seen a lot of questions lately relating to SRM support for Windows 2008 and there seems to be a lot of confusion out there so it seemed like a good time to maybe write a short blog to try and clear things up.

When you are working with or implementing SRM 4.0 and are asking questions or looking for information on operating system support the first thing you need to understand that will hopefully make things simpler is in what function will the operating system be used, there are two choices really:

1. It will be the operating system we use to install the SRM server (or SRM client plug-in) in to

2. It will be the operating system we use in the virtual machines we want to protect with SRM

Let’s take each in turn.

SRM Server

When deploying SRM you need two SRM servers, one at each site. The SRM server will in nearly all cases be deployed into a virtual machine itself but this virtual machine is not classed as a protected virtual machine as its role is simply to run the SRM server at that site and it will not normally be placed on replicated storage as there is no need to replicate an SRM server as the other site also runs an SRM server.

More frequently customers are now wanting to deploy SRM into Windows 2008 virtual machines. Before you do this you should review the SRM Compatibility Matrix.

Specifically review the section “SRM server operating System Compatibility” in this section you will need to be aware that although both Windows 2008 x86 and x64 are listed you should review the table carefully and understand that at time of writing the following statements are true:

• If you want to use Windows 2008 to host your SRM Server note it is currently ONLY supported on the x86 (32bit) editions of Windows 2008 running SP1 (support for R2 editions will be reviewed on an ongoing basis). UPDATE: SP2 x86 support is now available!

• If you want to use Windows 2008 to run your vSphere client and therefore install the SRM vSphere client plug-in note this is supported on the x86 and the x64 editions of Windows 2008 running SP1 (support for SP2 and R2 editions will be reviewed on an ongoing basis)

Protected Virtual Machines

Now that we have covered the SRM server what about the virtual machines you actually want SRM to protect, those virtual machines running your production workloads and applications that are sitting on your replicated storage.

As with the SRM server if you review the SRM Compatibility Matrix you will find the following section:

If you are looking for clarification for Windows 2008 support (though you could use this example for any GuestOS) you need to understand what each of the above paragraphs is telling you. First I think we could improve the clarity here and this is something we will review internally for the next documentation update. If we start with “Guest Operating System Support” the statement is “SRM 4.0 supports all guest operating systems supported by vCenter 4.0”.

What does this actually mean? From the SRM perspective what this is actually telling you is that SRM can “protect” any guest operating system that is a supported guest operating system on the vSphere 4.0 platform. You can review the full list of supported guest operating systems for vSphere here by setting:

Product Name = ESX

Product Release version = ESX 4.0

OS Use = Guest OS

OS Family = Windows

OS Name = Windows Server 2008

All of the guest operating systems produced in that list could be protected by SRM 4.0 with one additional consideration, do you want to customize the GuestOS (for example network changes using SRM’s ip customizer tool) during recovery? If the answer to that question is NO then any of the Windows 2008 operating systems listed on the HCL page you have just generated could be protected by SRM 4.0.

If you DO wish to customize the protected guest operating system during recovery using SRM 4.0's built in image customization capability (if you know how vCenter VM image customization works then you already understand this technique) then notice in the SRM 4.0 compatibility matrix picture above there is a second paragraph that refers to guest operating system customization support.

Although the section indicates that all of the same guest operating systems can be customized there are some versions of Windows 2008 that are not currently supported by SRM 4.0 for guest customization.

Currently SRM customization support for Windows 2008 does NOT include ANY R2 versions. Windows 2008 R2 is a new release of windows and is considered by many to be the server release of Windows 7. This is really the source of the supportability differences between a Windows 2008 SP1/SP2 edition and an R2 edition.

Customization support for the R2 releases of Windows 2008 will be reviewed as part of our ongoing SRM update program.

hope this helps,

Lee Dilworth

First off, I want to thank everyone for the flood of excitement for VMware Workstation 7.  Because we’ve seen even more demand than anticipated, the VMware Workstation upgrade portal is having significant problems keeping up with the demand! 

While we have already transacted thousands of upgrades today and many people are able to get the product, I apologize immensely to those of you who are anxious to get the product immediately and are running into issues.

I want to reassure you that we are working on this urgently and expect to be back in action soon.

In the mean time, I want to get you up and running with VMware Workstation 7 while we resolve the issues many of you are encountering.

1. Click here to download the VMware Workstation 7 software for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows or 32-bit Linux or 64-bit Linux (Please right click  and do a “save as” to download the file).
2. Use the following 30 day trial license key to get you up and running: M142T-1034J-M8280-0KA8H-A49PC

I hope this helps you get up and running while we get our VMware Workstation upgrade portal back in order. 

Stay tuned to the Workstation Zealot blog and Twitter feed for the latest updates.

Thanks for your patience and ongoing support.

Pat Lee

Director, Personal Desktop Products

VMware

Test driving VMware Data Recovery (vDR)

Friday, October 16, 2009By Antone Heyward 

One of the most important things next to virtualizing all those physical servers is backing them up and restoring them. This of course is not a great feat with virtualization since basically the servers are now a group of files. There are and have been for some time full featured backup/restore products out there in the market but Vmware has released their virtual appliance “Vmware Data Recovery” currently at version 1.0.2 with vSphere4 Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. I was actually impressed at how functional and the ease of setup with the product at version 1.x.

So, I will probably do a video on this but pretty much you will need to:

• Download the appliance and vdrfilerestore.exe from Vmware. 
• Import the product into vCenter. 
• ***Note: Make sure that the bios has the correct time. I ended up with backups in the future because the time was wrong. 
• ***Note: I also updated the virtual hardware to version 7. 
• ***Note: Since the appliance is CentOS5, I changed the guest OS to RHEL5, and resize the appliance to my needs (cpu/mem). 
• Install the VDR plugin. 

Once this is done you will see the new feature button added to the vCenter Home area under “Solutions and Applications “. Click in this area and you will have to add the vDR appliance either using the name or dns name. ***Note: DNS resolution and network connectivity is key. I had a few issues like (error- 3948) which prevented me from doing backups which were all resolved by fixing the network. Make sure that the vDR appliance can communicate with your ESX hosts. The look and feel is no different with your objects on the left and information on the right. At first I thought it was too plan being used to using CA Arcserve.

So before setting up a backup job you’ll need to setup a destination location. This location is were your backups are store in a dedupped and none recognizable format. So don’t expect to see *.vmdk files in plain sight to do restores. The datastore can be either a local volume (vmdk) or NFS location and you can add them as needed. I tested with both the local volume and a windows share with successful results. The network share was slower than the local volume for backups and restores. When backing up to the local volume unless you have a dedicated datestore you have to take into account the added i/o which could affect other vm guests when backups are running.***Note: I haven’t tested this yet but there is no reason you could not replicate the dedup destination to a remote site for disaster recovery purposes since the destination location used by vDR is recognized by the vDR appliance. Your then giving an option to import the information to the new vDR appliance for restore purposes.

Setting up a backup job was simple. You can select the entire environment to backup or just one vm guest then add the destination, backup window, and retention policy. The jobs can be edited later plus you can also right a vm guest and add it to a new or current job plus remove it from a job.

The simple breakdown or process of what happens when a backup is performed is that the vm guest has a snapshot created, the vDR appliance reconfigures itself and attachs the vmdk that it’s going to backup to it’s virtual hardware, the vDR dedups the data and saves it to the destination you choose, then the vmdk is removed from the vDR, and lastly removes the snapshot.

Restores are pretty easy as well. You can either right click the vm guest or use the Restore tab. A good to have feature is that the option for a “Restore Rehearsal” can be performed. This allows you to restore the entire vm guest with the option to rename and reconfigure in vCenter without downtime of the original just to make sure the restore process would really work. You can select the restore point from the gui from different points in time all the back to your retention limits.

There is also the ability to restore at the file level. At this time it is experimental. I have seen post were others have had issues but it works well for me. You have to run the “vdrfilerestore.exe” in a command prompt which the correct switches “vdrfilerestore.exe -a <vdr server>” from the vm guest that you want to do a file level restore from. You are prompted to select the restore point, then it mounts the restore to a drive letter in the OS of the vm guest. Then you basically browse the drive and copy what you need. Once you are done, the drive can be unmounted from the command prompt. See this in action here.

I’d like to see the ability to mount a restore point from vCenter to any vm guest i choose to do a file level restore. Sometimes data is not needed to be restored to its origin. I’d also like to see more reporting information around how much deduplication is saving me or the % of deduplication per job and historically. And the addition of Alerts so that I could either send emails or run a script when a job fails would also be nice. Overall though, I think Vmware has done a good job with this virtual appliance in version 1.x.

vStorage Thin Provisioning optimizes storage costs through the most efficient use of storage in virtual environments. Storage requests more often than not are usually overestimated by users mostly to avoid having to go through the request/approval process. With vStorage Thin Provisioning, IT departments can now assure business users of storage space availability while deferring the actual costs of purchasing storage to when it is really needed. Full reporting and alerting on allocation and consumption ensure that virtual machines don’t really run out of storage, Storage VMotion and Volume Grow ensure that virtual machines can either migrate to datastores with additional storage or volumes can be increased in size when consumption approaches allocation.

We are pleased to announce that VMware Fusion 3, the best way to run Windows on the Mac, is now available.

VMware Fusion 3 makes it easier and faster than ever to run Mac and Windows applications side-by-side without rebooting. VMware Fusion 3 is available in a single, all-inclusive edition that includes everything you need to switch to the Mac for just $79.99.

Buy VMware Fusion 3 NOW!

VMware Fusion 3 is now available at the VMware Online Store, the Apple Online Store® (apple.com), Apple Retail Stores, Amazon.com, and other select US resellers starting today.

I want to upgrade to VMware Fusion 3 NOW…

Upgrades from previous versions of VMware Fusion to VMware Fusion 3 cost only $39.99 and are available exclusively from the VMware Online Store, so you can download and start using VMware Fusion 3 immediately!

When will VMware Fusion 3 be available at online resellers and retail stores in Europe or Asia?

VMware Fusion 3 will be available at authorized retail and online stores in Europe and Asia starting Tuesday, November 4th.

Is there special academic/student pricing for VMware Fusion 3?

For qualified students and teachers, VMware has academic pricing that is available from the VMware Academic Store, so you can download and start using VMware Fusion 3 immediately at an even lower cost!

What if I bought VMware Fusion 2 recently?

Customers who purchase VMware Fusion 2 from October 1, 2009 through end of November qualify for a free downloadable upgrade to VMware Fusion 3.

• If you bought VMware Fusion 2 from the VMware Online Store from October 1st through October 26th, there is nothing for you to do and you will receive a free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrade by e-mail in the next week.
• If you bought VMware Fusion 2 from a retail or other online store, you need to go to the VMware Fusion Technology Guarantee website, fill out the online form, and mail in or fax your proof of purchase of VMware Fusion 2. Free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrades will take up two weeks to deliver after receiving a valid proof of purchase.

What if I bought VMware Fusion 2 with the 12-month Subscription option?

If you have an active subscription only contract (purchased 12 months ago or less), you will receive a free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrade by e-mail in the next week.

My business bought VMware Fusion 2 with the Site Support?

If you have an active Site Support contract (purchased 12 months ago or less), you will receive a free downloadable VMware Fusion 3 upgrade for your covered licenses by e-mail in the next week.

What’s new in VMware Fusion 3?

VMware Fusion 3 has over 50 new features and enhancements including:

• Easiest, Fastest Way To Switch To The Mac. With the new built-in Migration Assistant for Windows, VMware Fusion 3 makes it easy for users to bring their entire PC to their Mac in a few easy steps – wirelessly or with a simple Ethernet or FireWire cable – allowing customers to protect investments in existing Windows software, and to keep using the programs they still need ! More important, VMware Fusion 3 is more than two times faster than other “Switch to Mac” solutions without the 20% price premium of dedicated “Switch to Mac” solutions.

Leverage Apple’s Bonjour for the most Mac like way to migrate your PC to the Mac

• Ultimate Windows 7 Experience. VMware Fusion 3 is the FIRST virtualization product for the Mac to provide the full Windows 7 experience, side-by-side with your Mac, complete with Windows Aero and Flip 3D. Run 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 -- it is your choice.

Only VMware Fusion 3 Supports Windows Aero with Flip 3D

• Optimized for Snow Leopard. VMware Fusion 3 leverages Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s advanced architecture with a new 64-bit core engine and native support for the 64-bit kernel to deliver an even better Windows on Mac experience.

CPU usage running Windows Live Writer on Windows 7 x64 while writing this blog post

• Best-in-Class 3D Graphics. VMware was the first to provide virtual 3D graphics and is the first to support Windows Aero in a virtual machine on the Mac. VMware Fusion 3 is also first to support DirectX 9 Shader Model 3.0 3D graphics and now adds support for OpenGL 2.1 for Windows virtual machines to enable more Windows applications and games.

Playing Left 4 Dead in a Windows 7 VM!

• Run Windows Apps, The Mac Way. VMware Fusion has been designed from the beginning to make it easy to run Windows apps like Mac apps. VMware Fusion 3 makes it even better with the “Always On” Applications Menu that banishes the Windows Start menu from your Mac and let’s you find and launch Windows apps like Mac apps, even when VMware Fusion is not running. Cycle through open Windows apps with “ command ` ”, quit individual Windows applications with “command q”, and use Dock Exposé with Windows apps.

Kick the Windows Start Menu to the curb with the new “Always On” Application Menu  

• Maximum Performance. Finely Tuned. Building on the proven reliability and performance of VMware Fusion 2, the new 64-bit native core engine and 4-way multi-core SMP make VMware Fusion 3 perform even better especially on the Nehalem-based Mac Pro and the new iMacs, especially on the new iMac and Mac Pros. In addition, many smaller refinements increase overall performance from better disk and graphics performance on Snow Leopard, improved 2D interactive performance, faster scrolling in Windows applications, faster to enter Unity view, improved application launch times, up to 2X faster resume time for a suspended virtual machine, and much more. VMware Fusion 3 is finely tuned to make Windows run even better than before on the Mac.

We hope you enjoy VMware Fusion 3!

Team Fusion has been working long hours for almost a year to bring you VMware Fusion 3 and we hope you enjoy it!

We are pleased to announce that VMware Workstation 7, the gold standard in desktop virtualization, is now available worldwide.

The team has been working long hours for almost a year to bring VMware Workstation 7 to you. VMware Workstation 7 features advanced capabilities to help developers, QA engineers, technical sales professionals, and IT administrators get up and running faster and streamline tasks that save time and improve productivity.

Key highlights include:

Best in Class Windows 7 Support. VMware Workstation 7 is optimized for maximum performance when running on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 PCs and works seamlessly with Flip 3D and Aero Peek to show live virtual machine activity.

Only VMware Workstation supports Windows Aero

The Best 3D Graphics. VMware Workstation 7 is the first desktop virtualization product with Windows Aero support. Run even more 3D applications with DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support in Windows virtual machines.

Playing Half-Life 2 in a Windows 7 VM

Development Made Easier. VMware Workstation 7 streamlines software development and testing with new IDE integrations for the SpringSource Tools Suite and Eclipse IDE for Java & C/C++ along with Record Replay Debugging improvements that make it faster to find non-deterministic bugs.

Spring into Java development with VMware Workstation 7

Most Advanced Virtualization Platform. Run 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems with up to four virtual CPUs and 32GB of RAM dedicated to each virtual machine. Secure your virtual machines with AES 256-bit encryption

Run the most demanding applications

Supports over 200 Operating Systems. VMware Workstation 7 delivers the broadest operating system support. Over 20 new operating systems including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Ubuntu 9.04 along with VMware vSphere 4 and VMware ESXi.

The ultimate sandbox to prep for your VCP exam

Check out the release notes for a complete list of new features.

Buy VMware Workstation 7 Now!

VMware Workstation 7 is available for $189 USD (electronic download) in the VMware Store and all authorized VMware Resellers.

Upgrade to VMware Workstation 7 Now!

Upgrades from VMware Workstation 5 or VMware Workstation 6 to VMware Workstation 7 are available for $99 USD (electronic download only) in the VMware Store and all authorized VMware Resellers.

What if I just bought VMware Workstation 6?

Customers who purchased VMware Workstation 6 from October 1, 2009  through November 30th, 2009 qualify for a free downloadable upgrade to VMware Workstation 7.

• Customers that purchased VMware Workstation 6 from the VMware online store during this time period will be automatically sent a free electronic upgrade via email after 10/27. It may take up to 2 weeks to receive your free upgrade.
• Customers who purchased VMware Workstation 6 through a VMware Reseller during this time period will need to fill out a form and provide proof of purchase. The free upgrade form can be found at www.vmware.com/go/freeworkstationupgrade. Customer will be sent the free upgrade via email once verified.  Fulfillment will take up to 2 weeks.

Enjoy VMware Workstation Today!

We hope you enjoy using VMware Workstation 7 as much as we did creating it.  We will share more details about VMware Workstation 7 on the Workstation Zealot blog over the next few weeks. 

The VMware Workstation Team

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This week our focus is on the new thin provisioning capabilities of vSphere 4.0. Please send in your blog entries and take your chance at winning $100.

Don't know the rules? No problem, have a look on our contest page.

Compared to the weeks before this week I had an easy week. A design review and some pre-sales related work, it is something else for a change. Something else that's new and exciting; I started working with John Arrasjid and Steve Kaplan on revising a book. It's not going to be a deep technical book, but it will focus more an introduction to virtualization. More on this later. It's top 5 time again, here we go:

• Scott Sauer - Get Thin Provisioning working for you in vSphere
  So now that we have some of the basics out of the way, I wanted to share my thoughts on thin provisioning.  Like many organizations, we get requests from our customers that err on the side of caution.  They want to plan for the worse case and ensure that their project and/or application isn’t setup for failure.  I don’t blame them really, I do it myself all the time when I make coffee at home.  I always end up making more coffee than I typically drink, just in case I might need that extra charge.  The best way to do that is pad it, request more than what you might really need, just in case something comes up down the road.  Virtual machine disk storage in some cases fits this same profile.  If my coffee maker granted me access to hot coffee on demand, I would stop making extra coffee.  Thin disks can give your end users that capacity on demand so you can gain control of the padding effect that typically takes place in most corporate organizations.
• Rich Brambley - Thoughts and Images of vCloud Express
  When vCloud Express was announced along with the vCloud API at VMworld 2009 in September I decided to sign up and try building VMware virtual machines (VMs) in the Cloud for myself. Being able to provision infrastructure as a service (Iaas) virtually with only a credit card has a certain useful appeal to me, and I wanted to see firsthand exactly what can be done and how much it costs. This post summarizes my experience and touches on Terremark’s various options for building VMware Cloud VMs. I also quickly describe/illustrate the difference in charges for Linux versus Windows Cloud servers. This post contains a lot of screen shots, and at the end I’ll offer some opinions on the usefulness of vCloud Express and where this service might make sense for IT shops.
• Chad Sakac - Cloud Storage - what the hell is EMC building?
  The implications on storage infrastructure of these internal/external cloud models profound. Think of it this way… The vast majority of storage users in enterprises today have a provisioning model where the first step is “tell us whether you want 250GB or 500GB, whether it’s SAN or NAS, and the protection level – then wait a couple weeks as we process the request”. Of course, to fulfill the request, they purchased a wad of storage a year ago. How much did they buy? More than they needed – because god forbid they err with not enough (and in doing that ensure that they err completely in the opposite direction!). And, of course, it’s generally pretty “thickly” provisioned – and even if it is thin, it’s doled out and managed app by app, so the “pools” tend not to be too wide.
• Vaughn Stewart - VCE-101: Oracle On VMware Without Limits
  After a brief hiatus I am very eager to return to the ‘Virtualization Changes Everything’ series, and today’s post is an impromptu addition to our syllabus. Recently fellow VMware vExpert Steve Kaplan of INX published a rather thought provoking post rallying for the acceleration of the transformation to a 100% virtualized datacenter. Steve waxes poetic advocating acquisition decisions spanning compute, storage and network should be driven by their contribution to data center virtualization success and I would encourage everyone to read it.
• Duncan Epping - DRS Deepdive Part 1 and Part 2
  Keep in mind that when you change the “Migration Threshold” the value of the “Target host load standard deviation” will also change. In other words the Migration Threshold dictates how much the cluster can be “imbalanced”. There also appears to be a direct relationship between the amount of hosts in a cluster and the “Target host load standard deviation”. However, I haven’t found any reference to support this observation. (Two host cluster with threshold set to three has a THLSD of 0.2, a three host cluster has a THLSD of 0.163.) As said every 5 minutes DRS will calculate the sum of the resource entitlements of all virtual machines on a single host and divides that number by the capacity of the host: sum(expected VM loads) / (capacity of host)

I’m being asked quite frequently if there is a way to add functionality to the MSI file that ThinApp generates. Yes there is, besides the obvious of modifying the MSI file in a MSI editor you may want to always change its behavior to reflect a company standard.

From the manual:
In the Vmware ThinApp folder you will find the file Template.msi. You can customize this template to ensure the .msi files generated by ThinApp adhere to company deployment procedures and standards. For example, you can add registry settings that you want ThinApp to add to client computers as part of the installation.

Even though it is in the manual not many seems to find it..

You may already be familiar with our popular KB article: VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 Comparison (1006543).  A lot of you weren't quite sure of which product had which specific feature. We know you all love wading through our marketing material but some of you are strangely drawn to just plain facts.

Just for you folks, we have created a new KB which talks about the latest version of VMware ESX and ESXi, that is, version 4. The article provides a detailed comparison of VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0. It is separated into capabilities or features and compared at that level.

Here you go, enjoy!: VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0 Comparison (1015000)

• RDellimmagine (that's me)
• JohnTroyer
• ericni
• Badsah

• - Avatar: Click "Change avatar" in the "Actions" box at the right.
• - Profile Image: Click "Edit Communities profile" in the "Actions" box at the right.

How to Win!

1. Make sure you have both an avatar and a profile image uploaded into your VMware Communities profile before midnight Pacific on Wednesday, October 28. If you already have an avatar, that's great -- you don't need to upload a new one.
2. I will pick one VMware Communities member at random who has both an avatar and a profile image uploaded by the deadline, and I'll send that person a $50 iTunes gift card. Then I'll announce the winner here.
3. There's no need to tell me you've uploaded an image and avatar -- I will find them in your profile. VMware employees are not eligible to win the prize. No purchase necessary to win.

Folks,

We have been having problems uploading these files from Technology Exchange Developer Day. We will also have a Live Coffee Talk Webinar coming up in December.

Regards,

Pablo

MP3 Download VS05

PDF Download VSphere_Client_Plug-ins

We made a huge number of performance improvements in vSphere 4.0. The ESX storage stack was no exception. We ran a wide variety of micro and real world benchmarks to thoroughly evaluate and optimize vSphere’s storage subsystem. It is now even more efficient for the enterprise and ready to support the cloud.

A wide variety of I/O intensive applications will run efficiently on vSphere with all the improvements. You can find details on the architectural changes and storage performance improvements made in this white paper.

Some of the noteworthy improvements are:

· VMware Paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI driver): vSphere ships with this new high performance virtual storage adapter. Bus logic and LSI logic were the only choices so far. PVSCSI is best suited to run highly I/O intensive applications in the guest more efficiently (reduced CPU cycles). This is possible with a series of optimizations explained in the paper.

· iSCSI support improvements: We made significant improvements in the iSCSI stack for both software and hardware iSCSI. The improvements are not just in terms of performance but features as well. Noteworthy among these is CPU efficiency improvements that range from 7-52% depending on the type and size of I/O.

· Software iSCSI and NFS support with Jumbo Frames: vSphere adds jumbo frames and 10Gbit NIC networking support for both NFS and iSCSI. This helps drive bandwidth that is many times faster than previous ESX releases.

· File system improvements for enhanced Virtual Desktop experience and scalable cloud solutions: We made several optimizations in VMware File System (VMFS) with a special focus on enterprise desktop and cloud solutions. File system along with other improvements in different parts of ESX improves performance of several provisioning operations dramatically. An example is “boot storm” performance (where several hundreds of virtual machines are booted simultaneously in a virtual desktop environment). With these improvements time taken to boot a large number of virtual machines simultaneously is many times faster compared to ESX3.5.

ESX supports several different storage protocols such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI and NFS. We published a white paper that compares I/O performance using each of these protocols. Results show that line rate can be achieved with each of the storage protocols for single or multiple virtual machines. The paper also highlights CPU efficiency improvements in vSphere compared to the previous release. This means that more virtual machines can now run on the same hardware. Graph below shows one example (sequential read, 64KB block size) of the relative CPU cost for each of the storage protocols. Results on ESX 4.0 are shown next to ESX 3.5 to highlight efficiency improvements on all protocols.

Hardware configuration and detailed results can be found in this protocol comparison white paper.

Figure: Relative CPU cost of 64 KB sequential reads in a single virtual machine

Folks,

Happy to say that we will have a vSphere APIs for Performance monitoring session at the upcoming Portland VMUG. Ravi and Balaji will be presenting the extremely popular session. We have also invited Mr Scott Herold from the VESI to present.  Should be a great day packed with lots of great topics. Hope to see you there.

Event Information: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmug/us-west/portland

Sessions:

vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring

Extending PowerCLI to Enterprise Applications with Virtualization EcoShell

Regards,

Pablo Roesch

One of the beauties of a thin hypervisor architecture like VMware ESXi is the fact that the entire state of the system can be described in a much more compact fashion than is possible with a general-purpose operating system.  This include areas such as: virtual networking configuration, storage settings, and host infrastructure services such as NTP and logging.  All changes to the system occur through well-defined APIs, so it's easy to know what can be modified.

This fact, among other things, makes it easy to back up the entire state of an ESXi host, in case you later need to restore the system to the same state.  The vCLI (vSphere Command Line Interface) has a command specially built for this purpose: vicfg-cfgbackup.  A recent blog posting on vmwaretips.com goes over a real-life situation where this command proved invaluable.:

Multi Path challenges

In most SAN deployments it is considered best practice to have redundant connections configured between the storage and the server. This often includes redundant host based adaptors, Fibre Channel switches, and controller ports to the storage array. This results in having four or more separate paths connecting the server to the same storage target. These multiple paths offers protection against a single point of failure and permit load balancing.

In a VMware virtualization environment a single datastore can have active IO on only a single path to the underling storage target (LUN or NFS mountpoint) at a given time. The storage stack in an ESX server can be configured to use any of the available paths but only one at a time prior to vSphere. In the event of the active path failing, the ESX server will detect the failure and failover to an alternate path.

The two challenges that VMware Native Multi Path addresses has been the 1) presentation of a single path when several are available (aggregation) and 2) handling of failover and failback when the active path is compromised (Failover). In addition the ability to alternate which path is active was supported through the introduction of round robin path selection in ESX release 3.5. Through the command line one can change the default parameters to have the path switched after a certain number of blocks or a set number of transactions going across an active path. These values are not currently available in the vCenter interface and can only be adjusted via the command line

Another issue which the ESX server storage stack has to address was how to treat a given storage device as some offered and active/active (A/A) controllers and others had active/passive controllers. A given LUN can be addressed by more than one storage controller at the same time in an active/active array. Where as the active/passive (A/P) array may access a LUN from one controller at a time and requires the transfer control to the other controller when access thru that controller is needed. To deal with this difference in array capabilities, VMware had to place logic in the code for each type of storage array supported. That logic defined what capabilities the array had with regards to active/active or active/passive as well as other attributes.

Path selection and failback options included: Fixed, Most Recently Used and Round Robin. The Fixed path policy is recommended for A/A arrays. It allows the use to configure static load balancing of paths across ESX hosts. The MRU policy is recommended for A/P arrays. It prevents the possibility of path thrashing due to a partitioned SAN environment. Round robin may be configured for either A/A or A/P arrays, but care must be taken to insure that A/P arrays are not configured to automatically switch controllers. If A/P arrays are configured to automatically switch controllers (sometimes called pseudo A/A), performance may be degraded due to path ping ponging.

vStorage API for MultiPathing

Pluggable storage architecture (PSA) was introduced in vSphere 4.0 to improve code modularisation, code encapsulation, and to enable 3^rd party storage vendors multipath software to be leveraged in the ESX server. It provides support for the storage devices on the existing ESX storage HCL through the use of Storage Array Type Plugins (SATP) for the new Native Multipathing Plugins (NMP) module. It also introduces an API for 3^rd party storage vendors to build and certify multipath modules to be plugged into the VMware storage stack.

In addition to the VMware NMP, 3^rd party storage vendors can create there own pluggable storage modules to either replace the SATP that VMware offered. Or they could write a Path Selection Module (PSP) or MultiPath Plug (MPP) in that could leverage their own storage array specific intelligence for increased performance and availability.

As with earlier versions of ESX server, the VI admin can set certain path selection preferences via the vCenter path selection preferences. The path selection options of Fixed, MRU and Round Robin still exist as options in vSphere. A default value, set by the SATP that matched the storage array could be changed even if not advised as best practice. But with the new 3^rd party SATP the vendor could set what defaults were optimized for their array. Through this interface, ALUA became an option that could be supported.

The Vmware Native MultiPath module has sub-plugins for failover and load balancing.

§ Storage Array Type Plug-in (SATP) to handle failover and the

§ Path Selection Plug-in (PSP) to handle load-balancing.

o NMP “associates” a SATP with the set of paths from a given type of array.

o NMP “associates” a PSP with a logical device.

o NMP specifies a default PSP for every logical device based on the SATP associated with the physical paths for that device.

o NMP allows the default PSP for a device to be overridden.

Rules can be associated with NMP as well as 3^rd party provided MPP modules. Those rules stored in the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file.

Rules govern the operation of both the NMP and the MPP modules.

In ESX 4.0 rules are configurable only thru the CLI and not through vCenter.

To see the list of rules defined use the following command:

# esxcli corestorage claimrule list

To see the list of rules associated with a certain STAP use:

# esxcli nmp satp listrules -s <specific SATP>

The primary functions of an SATP are to:

o Implements the switching of physical paths to the array when a path has failed.

o Determines when a hardware component of a physical path has failed.

o Monitors the hardware state of the physical paths to the storage array.

VMware provides a default SATP for each supported array as well as a generic SATP (an active/active version and an active/passive version) for non-specified storage arrays.

To see the complete list of defined Storage Array Type Plugins (SATP) for the VMware Native Multipath Plugin (NMP), use the following commands:

# esxcli nmp satp list

Name Default PSP Description

VMW_SATP_ALUA_CX VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports EMC CX that use the ALUA protocol

VMW_SATP_SVC VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports IBM SVC

VMW_SATP_MSA VMW_PSP_MRU Supports HP MSA

VMW_SATP_EQL VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports EqualLogic arrays

VMW_SATP_INV VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports EMC Invista

VMW_SATP_SYMM VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports EMC Symmetrix

VMW_SATP_LSI VMW_PSP_MRU Supports LSI and other arrays compatible with the SIS 6.10 in non-AVT mode

VMW_SATP_EVA VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports HP EVA

VMW_SATP_DEFAULT_AP VMW_PSP_MRU Supports non-specific active/passive arrays

VMW_SATP_CX VMW_PSP_MRU Supports EMC CX that do not use the ALUA protocol

VMW_SATP_ALUA VMW_PSP_MRU Supports non-specific arrays that use the ALUA protocol

VMW_SATP_DEFAULT_AA VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports non-specific active/active arrays

VMW_SATP_LOCAL VMW_PSP_FIXED Supports direct attached devices

To take advantage of certain storage specific characteristics of an array, one can install a 3rd party SATP provided by the vendor of the storage array, or by a software company specializing in optimizing the use of your storage array.

Path Selection Plug-in (PSP).

The primary function of the PSP module is to determine which physical path is to be used for an I/O request to a storage device. The PSP is a sub-plug-in to the NMP and handles load balancing. Vmware offers three PSPs:

To see a complete list of Path Selection Plugins (PSP) use the following command:

# esxcli nmp psp list

Name Description

VMW_PSP_MRU Most Recently Used Path Selection

VMW_PSP_RR Round Robin Path Selection

VMW_PSP_FIXED Fixed Path Selection

Fixed — Uses the designated preferred path, if it has been configured. Otherwise, it uses the first working path discovered at system boot time. If the ESX host cannot use the preferred path, it selects a random alternative available path. The ESX host automatically reverts back to the preferred path as soon as the path becomes available.

Most Recently Used (MRU) — Uses the first working path discovered at system boot time. If this path becomes unavailable, the ESX host switches to an alternative path and continues to use the new path while it is available.

Round Robin (RR) – Uses an automatic path selection rotating through all available paths and enabling load balancing across the paths. It only uses active paths and is of most use on Active/Active arrays. However in Active/Passive arrays, it will load balance between on ports to the same Storage Processor. However, Round Robin policy is not supported in MSCS environments.

3^rd party vendors can provide there own PSP to take advantage of more complex I/O load balancing algorithms that their storage array might offer. However, 3^rd party storage vendors are not required to create plug-ins. All the storage array specific code supported in ESX release 3.x has been ported to ESX release 4 as a SATP plug-in.

MultiPath Plugins (MPP) or Multipath Enhancement Module (MEM)

Multipah Plugin (also referred to as Multipath Enhancement Modules (MEM)) enable storage partners to leverage intelligence within their array to present one connection that is backed by an aggregation of several connections. Using the intelligence in the array with their own vendor module in the ESX server, these modules can increase the performance with load balancing and increase availability of the multiple connections. These modules offer the most resilient and highly available multipathing for VMware ESX servers by providing coordinated path management between both the ESX server and the storage.

A MPP “claims” a physical path and “manages” or “exports” a logical device. The MPP is the only code that can associate a physical path with a logical device. So that path can not be managed by both a NMP and MPP at the same time.

The PSA introduces support for two more features of the SCSI 3 (SPC-3) protocol: TPGS and ALUA.

However, although SCSI-3 is supported for some VMFS functions (LSI emulation for MSCS environments) the volume manager functions within VMFS are still SCSI-2 compliant. As such, the 2TB per LUN limit still applies.

Target Port Group Support (TPGS) - Is a mechanism that gives storage devices the ability to specify path performance, and other characteristics to a host, like an ESX server. A Target Port Group (TPG) is defined as a set of target ports that are in the same target port Asymmetric Access State (AAS) at all times with respect to a given LUN.

Hosts can use AAS of a TPG to prioritize paths and make failover and load balancing decisions.

Control and management of ALUA AASs can operate in 1 of 4 defined modes:

1. Not Supported (Report and Set TPGs commands invalid).

2. Implicit (TPG AASs are set and managed by the array only, and reported with the Report TPGs command)

3. Explicit (TPG AASs are set and managed by the host only with the Set TPGs command, and reported with the Report TPGs command)

4. Both (TPG AASs can be set and managed by either the array or the host)

Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) is a standard-based method for discovering and managing multiple paths to a SCSI LUN. It is described in the T10 SCSI-3 specification SPC-3, section 5.8. It provides a standard way to allow devices to report the states of their respective target ports to hosts. Hosts can prioritize paths and make failover/load balancing decisions.

Since target ports could be on different physical units, ALUA allows different levels of access for target ports to each LUN. ALUA will route I/O to a particular port to achieve best performance.

ALUA Follow-over Feature:

A Follow-over scheme implemented to minimize path thrashing in cluster environments with shared LUNs. Follow-over supported for explicit ALUA only and is not part of the ALUA standard.

When an ESX host detects a TPG AAS change that it did not cause:

o It will not try to revert this change even if it only has access to non-optimized paths

o Thus, it follows the TPG of the array

• Virtualization Basics
• Benefits and Examples of SAP virtualization
• Why SAP SOA requires virtualization ?
• SAP Virtualization workshop
• TCO & ROI Analysis
• Reference Customers

• SAP Virtualization
• How to identify the right platform for SAP on VMware
• Results about the SAP Virtualization project at regio IT Aachen
• See Live Demos

This week was the last week of the VCDX defenses in EMEA. I loved doing it and wished we had these defense panels every week. We certified three people this week and unfortunately some did not pass the exam. I believe we are up to VCDX 028 right now. For those working towards the VCDX Certification, the next opportunity for the Design Defense is Partner Exchange in Las Vegas. But that is not the topic of this article. This article is all about last weeks Planet V12n blog articles. We had numerous excellent articles again and like always it was tough to pick a top 5. This weeks top 5 contains two "new comers" to the blogosphere, welcome Luc Dekens and Andrew Hald. Enough of the small talk here we go:

• Luc Dekens - Scheduled Tasks – MethodAction
  In the PowerCLI Community there was a recent question on how these Scheduled Tasks can be created from PowerShell (see relocate vm’s from csv file and create schedule task in VC). Being able to create a Scheduled Task for a svMotion for several guests from a PowerShell script, instead of clicking away in the vSphere Client, would be another step on the path of vSphere automation. The current PowerCLI 4 (build 162509) unfortunately has no cmdlets for Scheduled Tasks. But the SDK contains the CreateScheduledTask method that can be used for this purpose. The key parameter to this method is the ScheduledTaskSpec object. In the action property of this object you specify which type of action you want the scheduled task to take. If we want to schedule a Task, we will have to select the MethodAction extension object.
• Andrew Hald - The Commodity Hypervisor
  This morning Dan Kusnetsky posted a blog entry discussing how VMware is "Facing Challengers on all Sides." I have followed Dan's blog for some time now and don't always agree with his conclusions. In this post, he outlines each of the players in the virtualization industry and their angle at dethroning VMware as the "King of Virtual Machine Technology." http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1383 Dan states that the hypervisor is becoming a commodity. While this may be true in price (Microsoft, Citrix and VMware all offer their hypervisors for free), this is not true for customers and real world virtualization deployments. The hypervisor is not even close to being a commodity yet. The other players would like you to believe that they are on par with VMware, but they are not in the same league. A commodity is defined as "some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market." Thus all hypervisors would have to provide the same features for the same total cost to be defined as commodities. When comparing the players in the virtualization market, we immediately see that this is not the case.
• Eric Sloof - Massive I/O power increase using EMC PowerPath/VE
  You’re about to enter a world where creating a Virtual Machine hot-clone is done faster than powering it off. My former Capgemini colleagues, Ernst Cozijnsen and John van der Sluis recently implemented EMC PowerPath/VE, here's their story. It took the guys in storage land a long time to deliver.... But finally it's there.... A really great kick-ass plug-in to boost your vSphere 4 storage performance through the roof. In prior versions of ESX the Native Multi Pathing “NMP” plug-in was available for balancing the storage load over different Fiber Channel HBA’s and storage paths to your storage array(s). Beside that it’s not really “Multi Pathing” it had another major disadvantage of being able to stress your storage array in such a way it could crash.
• Eric Siebert - What is virtualization?
  If you work with virtualization for a living, inevitably you’ll be asked what virtualization is. Trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t work with computers can often be challenging, and after you explain it they still may not know what it’s about. So how do you explain it to someone for the first time? I find that using analogies that anyone can relate to is a good way to explain things to people. Before I attempt a virtualization analogy I’ll try explaining it in basic computer terms. Virtualization software, also called a hypervisor, emulates computer hardware allowing multiple operating systems to run on a single physical computer host. Each guest operating system appears to have the host’s processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. The hypervisor, however, is actually controlling the host processor and resources and allocates what is needed to each operating system, making sure that the guest operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt each other.
• Cody Bunch - A Quick PowerCLI Lesson – Digging for Info (Who Powered Off that VM)
  This gives us an idea about the information we’re looking for, as well as provides us a place to start looking. Let’s dip into the PowerCLI: [vSphere PowerCLI] C:\> $vm = Get-VM | where { $_.Name -eq "Wiki" }
  What this does is set the variable $vm to the object that represents our VM. What is an object? For our use an object is anything in your Virtual Infrastructure, and the properties and methods that belong to it. Take a turtle for example (yes… turtle, hang with me). That turtle will have some properties: breed, gender, length, weight, etc.

Folks,

Found some fun videos thought I would share. They are not about the latest APIs or sample code posted - just some fun interesting videos folks have created.

VMware Virtualized Hardware Hotel ... If the server goes down...

VMware vCenter SRM New Features - by Maria B. VMware R&D

Live IT. Love IT. VMware IT

Posted by: Barry | October 3, 2009 

vNetwork Distributed Switches (vDS) an overview

We are now onto the second stage of the VMware vSphere Blogging contest, the winner of week one’s FT subject was Hany Michael from http://www.hypervizor.com/ you can read his post here >> http://www.hypervizor.com/2009/09/vsphere-40-fault-tolerance-architecture-diagram-video-and-use-cases/ you can also get the full run down from VMware on the vSphere blog here >> http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/ Congratulations to Hany for the win it was well deserved. 

Moving onto the next subject vNetwork Distributed Switches, there is already a lot of information regarding the vNetwork Distributed Switches, including a very good white paper by VMware which I have linked to at the end and numerous videos and how to blogs. I have decided to make my blog post more of a guide for potential new users / customers and pass on my thoughts on using vNetwork Distributed Switches. 

The vNetwork Distributed Switches vDS for short allows you to configure a single virtual switch to span multiple hosts, so you would be correct in thinking that this means you no longer need to create your virtual machine port groups on all your hosts, saving you time and taking the risk out of accidently spelling one wrong and causing issues for vMotion / HA. The vNetwork Distributed is a feature that is only available to those with vSphere Enterprise plus licensing. 

vDS also introduces a number of other features these are :-

• Private VLANs
• Network VMotion—tracking of VM networking state, improving troubleshooting and enabling
• 3rd Party Virtual Switch support with the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Virtual Switch
• Bi-directional traffic shaping

You did read that third item right, you can now have a Cisco switch as your virtual switch, the Cisco Nexus 1000V is an optional extra that you can purchase that allows you to have a Cisco switch inside your virtual infrastructure, a must have for any large company with Cisco networking throughout. The VMware administrator can now pass the networking back to the networking team, they can now manage the virtual networking in exactly the same way as they do the physical, much to the relief of the networking team who were always probably a bit concerned with the virtual aspect of the network and possibly open the world of virtualisation to some customers who haven’t been able to proceed for this reason. 

Network vMotion allows counters and statistics regarding the virtual machine to move with the machine when it is vMotion’ed this ensures monitoring and troubleshooting is a lot easier for machines that are being moved by vmotion.

There are two main concepts to understand about vNetwork Distributed Switches these are 

Distributed Virtual Port Groups (Left Side of image below) Much like the port groups on your standard virtual switches, these are port groups on the vDS that specify port configuration. 

Distributed Virtual Uplinks (Right Side of image below) This is a new concept the Distributed Virtual Uplinks contain the physical NICs that will act as uplinks on your hosts, from here you can configure NIC teaming, load balancing and failover policies. 

If the configuration for some reason differs on one of your hosts maybe due to downtime due to a fault or other host issues you will receive a warning making you aware of this issue.

When the host then becomes available again the settings will be automatically updated on that host. 

When deploying a vDS you are able to automate the configuration of your hosts by using host profiles. This will also allow you to check compliance of your hosts at any time and quickly add new hosts in the future. 

My Preference…

My preference when using vDS is to run in a hybrid mode, keeping the service consoles and vmKernel as a standard switch and moving all the Virtual Machine Port groups to a vDS. This means I handle the service console and vmKernel at installation the same as usual then add my host to the vDS, when I then find the need to add a new portgroup to my hosts I have only got to configure it in one place. In large environments this saves considerable amounts of time and the potential for error. 

Although running with the service console and vmKernel as part of the vDS is a fully supported configuration and what a number of people would do, indeed in an environment with less physical NICs this would be what I would choose to do. 

I have updated my VCP in vSphere Cue Cards with some key information on vSphere networking to assist you with studying towards the new VCP. These can be found here >> http://virtualisedreality.wordpress.com/vcp-in-vsphere-4-0-study-notes/

If you are considering using vDS’s or would like more information the following white paper from VMware is a must read! >> VMware® vNetwork Distributed Switch Migration and Con­guration

We are going to re-visit question 2 and 3 from Part 1, hopefully you’ve drawn some conclusions about which applications to stream and which ones to deploy over the last week or so.  Question 2 really deals with the question of where to put the thinapp packages which are your applications.  The options are A.  C: drive of guest VM  B.  User Data Disk or C. Fileshare.  Options A & B are for deployed packages and C is for streamed packages. If you’ve read this paragraph are lost already then make sure you read Part 1 and then come back to this post J 

We have an announcement today!

The VMware Knowledge Base now features Answer Wizards!

What is an answer wizard you ask? An Answer Wizard is an easy-to-use tool that guides you through the process of resolving your problem.  You start by picking the problem that most closely resembles your problem. After that, you are guided through a series of checks and tests in a logical order to help resolve your problem in the simplest way.

Look for the new link to the Answer Wizards on the main Knowledgebase page shown here to get started.

Watch for the number of Answer Wizards available to grow as we roll this out!

• Zero Downtime of SAP Central Services using VMware Fault Tolerance & Efficient
• Automated SAP Disaster Recovery with VMware Site Recovery Manager.

Here is a conceptual figure of the virtual disks in a delta disk compressed OVF package and how it looks when it is deployed:

The OVF package contains two VMs: A Web server and a database. They run the same operating system and delta disk compression has factored out the common parts in a separate parent disk shared by the two VMs. When the OVF package is deployed the tree gets flattened and the Web server and database each get their own copy of the operating system in the parent disk.

In this blog post you will learn all about how to design your OVF package to take advantage of delta disks and how to apply this type of compression to your package using OVF Tool.

• We start out by looking at a brief example of how a typical OVF package with multiple disks could look like and how delta disk compression would reduce the size of it.
• Next we look at what delta disk hierarchies are and how they are expressed in the OVF descriptor. This is important to understand what they are to make delta disk compression work.
• Then we give some advice on how you should construct your OVF package to utilize delta disk compression.
  • Here we also give some tips on how to shrink your virtual disks to reduce the space of your OVF package.
• Finally, we show how OVF Tool can delta disk compress your OVF package.

Example

Let us assume the two VMs run the same Linux OS (for example Ubuntu Server 9). Then much of the data on the two disks would be identical and only the bits concerning the Apache HTTP Server, PHP software, and MySQL would be different. Here is a rough estimate of how much space each component will need when stored on a compressed virtual disk:

• Ubuntu Server 9: 500 MB.
• Apache HTTP Server and PHP: 50 MB
• MySQL: 50 MB

SizeOf(Web server) + SizeOf(Database) = (500 MB + 50 MB) + (500 MB + 50 MB) = 1,100 MB

In this blog post we will explain how this space can be reduced using the delta disk feature supported by the OVF specification and OVF Tool. Using delta disk compression we can extract all the components that are equal in the two VMs (the Linux OS part), only keeping one copy of them. This leaves us with an OVF package that only take up about 600 MB of space.

Technical Details of Delta Disks

In the figure parentRefs annotate the arrows that tie the disks together. This is also what the attribute is called in the OVF descriptor which link Disk elements together and it is used on Disk elements in the DiskSection of the OVF descriptor. This is what the disk section with the three disks could look like:

<DiskSection>
 <Info>Meta-information about the virtual disks</Info>
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="disk1" 
       ovf:fileRef="diskFile1" 
       ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" />
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="disk2" 
       ovf:fileRef="diskFile2" 
      ovf:parentRef="disk1"
       ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized"/>
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="disk3" 
       ovf:fileRef="diskFile3" 
    ovf:parentRef="disk2"
       ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" />
</DiskSection>

The LAMP example can be described as this delta disk hierarchy:

For this setup the disk section could look like this:

<DiskSection>
 <Info>Meta-information about the virtual disks</Info>
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="parentDisk" 
       ovf:fileRef="parentDiskFile" 
       ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" />
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="WebServerDisk" 
       ovf:fileRef="WebServerDiskFile" 
      ovf:parentRef="parentDisk"
       ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized"/>
 <Disk ovf:capacity="1073741824" 
       ovf:diskId="DataBaseDisk" 
       ovf:fileRef="DatabaseDiskFile" 
    ovf:parentRef="parentDisk"
    ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" />
</DiskSection>

Preparing an OVF Package for Delta Disk Compression

There are some restrictions of delta disk compression that are important to understand to get the most out of the feature. Firstly, the disks in a delta disk hierarchy must have the same capacity, so if you have two disks in your OVF package with different capacity (for example, one is 4 GB and the other 8 GB) you will not be able to use delta disk compression on the two disks. Secondly, delta disk compression only compares disk content on the same part of the disk at the disk address level. For example, even though the same file is on two different disks but not on the same part of the disk it will not be reduced by delta disk compression. If the file on the first disk is at address 0x00670000 and on the other disk at address 0x02D10000 it will not be detected as a shared block and put in a parent disk – only if it is at the same address (for example, 0x00670000). In other words, for delta disk compression to work there should be a substantial overlap between disks at the disk address level.

The second requirement can be difficult to satisfy if you are not careful in how you construct the OVF package, but there are ways to do it. To explain how, let us first look at the LAMP stack example that we looked at in the beginning of the blog post, to see how we can prepare it for delta disk compression. This LAMP stack had a Linux VM running Apache HTTP Server and PHP and another Linux VM running MySQL. Each VM had a single disk.

To achieve optimal disks for delta disk compression we first create a plain Linux VM with one disk. We clone the VM so we now have two plain Linux VMs. On one of them we install Apache HTTP Server and PHP and on the other we install MySQL. By doing this we satisfy the first criteria that the disks have same capacity (Web server VM’s disk and database VM’s disk come from the same original plain Linux VM) and second criteria that a significant part of the disks overlap each other. The files from the OS part of the plain Linux install are at the same position on both disks, since they were not changed when we installed the Apache HTTP Server, PHP, and MySQL (or at least, the majority of them have not changed).

The above example is rather canonical in how you achieve the best results from delta disk compression when having multiple VMs using the same operating system, so to summarize:

1. Install a plain operating system in a VM;
   
2. Clone the plain VM the number of times you need for your solution;
   
3. Install the remaining software specific to each VM.
   

The reason why we first install a plain operating system and then clone it to the number of VMs we need, rather than installing the same operating system multiple times on each of the VMs we need, is that we cannot in general be sure that the files are put at the exact same location on the disks, even though it is the same operating system.

If cloning is not an option when making the OVF package then perhaps VMware Studio is. It can create VMs well suited for delta disk compression, since it builds the VMs operating system and other software components in a scripted manner that that can be replayed to produce almost identical VMs.

Shrinking the Disks

When you export your VMs in your OVF package you want to make sure that all unused space is zeroed out, since this compresses really well in the VMDK disk format. However, space used by swap disks and deleted files often take up space on disk, since they are not eagerly zeroed out by default by most operating systems. This means that even though your VM says it only uses about 500 MB it may actually take up a lot more space. Even worse, you may have confidential information on, e.g., your swap drive or old deleted files that you do not want to distribute with the OVF package. There are several ways to solve this problem. On most Linux distributions it is possible to do the following things to clean up a disk before you export the VM: 1) Un-mount the swap drive; 2) Write a single file to disk containing only zeroes as large as possible; 3) Delete the file immediately after you created it. On the command line you can do these three steps by invoking these commands:

1. /sbin/swapoff -a (this will un-mount all swap disks)
2. dd if=/dev/zero of=zeroFile.tmp
3. rm zeroFile.tmp

On a Windows system it can be done in various ways. We will consider Windows Server 2008, but it can be applied with modifications on other types of Windows systems.

We start out by installing VMware tools on the Windows Server 2008 VM and when it is installed, open VMware tools and choose “Shrink…”. This will zero out the disk. To zero out the swap disk you need to set an option under Administrative Tools. Go to Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Security Settings -> Security Options and enable the policy “Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile”. When you shutdown the VM the swap disk will then be zeroed out. Please note, however, that enabling this option will increase the shutdown time significantly for large swap disks. One way of working around this problem could be to first delete the swap disk, reboot the VM and disabling the option again (and hopefully no data is written to the swap disk), and then shutting the VM before putting it in an OVF package.

Creating an OVF Package with Delta Disk Compression using OVF Tool

Up until now we have not explained how to actually construct an OVF package with delta disk compression, only what parts go into it. Even though the ideas behind delta disks can seem a bit complicated it is quite easy to use delta disk compression in your OVF package by using OVF Tool. Basically, you use the option –makeDeltaDisks. Source may be an OVF descriptor, a VMX descriptor, or a VIM source (for example, a VM or vApp in vSphere). Target must be a directory. For example, we can use delta disk compression on our LAMP OVF package by invoking this command:

ovftool --makeDeltaDisks LAMP.ovf output-dir/

This will create a new OVF package in the output directory with delta disk compression. That is, both the disk and the OVF descriptor are updated, which means you can take the OVF package written in the output directory and deploy it immediately without any manual post processing. There are no restrictions to the type of input you give OVF Tool in terms of disks. It will try to create delta disk trees of all the disks in the input OVF package and output the optimal OVF package in terms of delta disk compression.

The disks that OVF Tool generates are compressed in the VMDK virtual disk format, but it is possible to apply a second layer of compression which may yield even smaller disks by using the –compress option. Use –compress=9 for the best compression. On a package the size of the LAMP OVF package (about 600 MB) it would yield about 30-40 MB less disk space (in our experience). Delta disk compressing our LAMP OVF package with this extra option would then simply be done by invoking:

ovftool --makeDeltaDisks -compress=9 LAMP.ovf output-dir/

Learn more about what OVF Tool can do by going to the OVF forum at VMware: http://communities.vmware.com/community/developer/forums/ovf. Here you can ask questions about OVF Tool and related products.

If you’re in the San Diego area next week don’t miss the San Diego VMUG because I, your humble servant, will grace you with my presence and the vast stores of wisdom one only obtains through thousands of lonely nights in front of the computer.

I’ll be there to talk about – what else, PowerCLI and how it will help you automate your way to bliss.

As always I’ll be spending a lot of time on hands-on demos that will give you a first hand feel for what PowerCLI is and how it works. I’ll be covering reporting, provisioning and storage management, three of the most popular topics among PowerCLI users, with lots of new tips that are sure to save you lots of time. I’ll even be previewing a few new features from our upcoming release, so there’s something for everyone from beginner to expert.

Most people would call that a full day. BUT WAIT THERE”S MORE! You’ll also get the rare opportunity to see a presentation on the Virtualization Ecoshell. Now how much would you pay?

Hope to see you there.

SRM 4.0 was released on 10/5/09. We hope that you have gotten a chance to evaluate the new features of this SRM release. This release is the result of the hard work of a group of dedicated VMware software engineers and we would like to have them share their perspectives on the SRM features. Maria and Glenn - both SRM software engineers – have shared their insights on the SRM features on videos:

Maria provided her insights on the new features SRM 4.0. In her video, she discussed the following topics:

· vSphere support

o Fault Tolerance

o vDS

o DPM

o Linked Mode

· NFS support

· Shared Recovery Site

· Enhancement in reliability, robustness and scalability

Glenn, on the other hand, focused on the SRM core features. In his video, he discussed the following topics:

· Virtual disaster recovery powered by SRM

· Automated recovery workflow

· Testing of recovery plans

· SRM architecture and components

· Test networks

· Audit Trail

The 2 videos together give you an overview of the SRM 4.0 features and we highly recommend that you watch these videos if you are interested in learning more about SRM. The links are listed below:

Maria: SRM 4.0 Features

Glenn: SRM Core Features

Thank you,

Desmond