Auszug
VMware, Hersteller von Virtualisierungslösungen für Desktopsysteme bis hin zum Rechenzentrum, hat seinen branchenweit führenden ESX Hypervisor innerhalb des Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SWP) qualifiziert. VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) ist der erste Hypervisor, der in diesem Programm erscheint. Seine Qualifizierung eröffnet VMware-Kunden, die Windows Server und Microsoft-Applikationen nutzen, den Zugriff auf kooperativen Support von Microsoft und VMware. Mit der Option der Kunden, Support für alle bedeutenden Microsoft-Applikationen in virtualisierten Umgebungen zu erhalten, schafft VMware die Voraussetzung für die Ausweitung virtueller Infrastrukturen.

VMware heeft update 1 van de VI Toolkit vrijgegeven. Hieronder zie je een quote van de blogpost op vmware.com:

Some users had reported slowness when using the Get-VM cmdlet. The reason turned out to be an odd quirk in querying some types of network adapters, so many people weren't affected at all. On the other hand, if you were affected, it was pretty annoying. To address this we've released Update 1 of our toolkit. If you've had trouble with Get-VM, download it things will go a lot smoother. One user reported that his queries went from more than 5 minutes to just over 10 seconds -- a world of difference!

This is the only change we made to the toolkit, so don't expect lots of new functionality when you download, you'll have to wait a bit longer for that. If you haven't had any trouble with 1.0 it's perfectly fine to keep using it until the next release.

 

Download update 1 hier: http://vmware.com/go/powershell

Bron: http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/2008/09/vi-toolkit-for.html

This part of the series is featuring... a screen saver. I know what you're thinking. You were expecting a huge powerhouse app that was going to rock the very foundation you stand on. Well, not every app is groundbreaking and fantabulous. The screensaver is called twitsaver.

This isn't your ordinary screensaver, packed with copious amounts of spyware/malware. Instead, it's a screensaver showing what pictures that Twitter users are sharing in real time. Definitely a cool way to find new twitter-folk. Yes, you may get an occasional picture of a random guy eating a cheesburger or a crazy lolcat, but it's definitely fun to watch. Give it a try, you'll like it.

I've passed a few hours at work just watching the screensaver. Good times. :)

If you have any Windows apps you think are worth checking out, send me an email over at igerard8@gmail.com.

For those interested, the lab environment is easy to set up and a great way to learn about SRM.  I have used both VMWare Workstation 6.5 Beta 2 and Fusion 2.0 Beta.  You can also use an ESX host if you want.  The most complex piece of configuring the lab is the SAN environment.  You can either use EMC's Celerra Simulator or LeftHand Network's VSA.  The lab environment consists of two Windows Servers running Virtual Center and housing the VC database, two SANs, and at least two ESX servers.

Next week I will try to do a more in-depth writeup on configuring the lab environment.  In the mean time there is some good information available online to help anyone that wants to set this up.  Mike Laverick has posted a sample chapter from his upcoming book on SRM that covers the configuration of LeftHand's VSA for snapshot replication.  His final book is due very soon and is excellent.  Mike also has some SRM videos as well.  I have mentioned Xtravirt before.  They offer some whitepapers on configuring VMWare Workstation to run ESX as a virtual machine.

Links to the videos:

• Screencast (Highest Quality)
• YouTube (Part 1)
• YouTube (Part 2)

This is the first part in creating a virtual image with PeopleSoft HR installed.  We will use VMWare Server for the virtual machine and the host machine is a linux machine.  The PeopleSoft server will be Linux too so that everything is installed from downloads.  Of course, this will not be a production ready machine, but it should work great for learning and testing purposes.  You can always deviate from the instructions enough to use Windows or other supported tools if you wish.

VMWare server can be installed easily enough using these instructions:

Install VMware Server 1.0.6 on Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy"

Installation on other host operating systems is not difficult.  You should be able to use any host operating system you like assuming that it is supported by VMWare.  You can download VMWare Server directly from here:

VMWare Server

Once installed, log in and click the create a new virtual machine -- click the "Create a new virtual machine" button.

This will open the wizard to create the new machine.

Next, choose a typical image.

Next, choose Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the version.

Next, choose a name for the new virtual machine.

Next, choose a networking option.  If you wish to transfer files using Windows File Sharing, you may want to choose bridged.  This gives you the ability to access files from other computers/servers on the network.  If you are on a computer with multiple ethernet cards like a laptop with a wired and wireless card, you might want to choose NAT so that you don't have to worry about which one should be mapped to the machine.

Next, choose a hard drive size.  It works best/easiest if you choose a huge size like 100G and don't allocate now.  This makes the hard drive flexible, and you don't have to worry about trying to make it larger later.  The image will take as much as it needs without crashing.  If you need to delete files and conserve space later you can and then shrink the hard drive to free up the space on the host.

Finally, click Finish, and you should have a new empty virtual computer.

The other update is Virtualbox, which has today seen the release of version 2. Again, a lot of updates which are listed at the Virtualbox web site. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, so it's next on the install list. It's nice to see the free option progressing well along with the comercial offerings, and I'm wondering how long it will be before Parallels has a big announcent.

Para os que necessitam virtualizar Windows XP, Windows Vista ou qualquer distribuição Linux no Mac, existem múltiplas e conhecidas aplicações capazes de fazê-lo como Parallels ou VMWare Fusion, mas há uma alternativa gratuíta e de código aberto chamada VirtualBox, cuja versão 2.0 acaba de ser lançada.

Com esta nova versão, temos por fim uma interface nativa para os usuários do Mac OS X Leopard, um notificador para as novas versões, suporte para sistemas operacionais de 64 bits, compatibilidade com imagens de discos em formato VHD (isto é, podemos guardar uma imagem de disco rígido virtual) e um aumento geral da estabilidade.

Creio que para os usuários que necessitem do Windows XP de forma pontual, VirtualBox pode ser uma solução, sem dúvida, uma alternativa a levar em conta perfeita, mas se preferir e não tiver pena de desembolsar dinheiro, pode comprar o Parallels ou o VMWare.

Site Oficial: VirtualBox

Fonte: Applesfera

This design is almost a mirror image of the first where it may not be necessary to have the TimeData repository locally where retrieval isn’t performed often but still available if need. The TimeData repository is now located at the disaster recovery facility so operational recovery is still an option should the primary site go down and Double-Take is still used to provide high availability to the DR facility.

Either of these solutions is perfectly acceptable to provide disaster recovery in combination with operational recovery and each will help eliminate the length of time associated with tape restorations. The decision will come down to where you want to have your TimeData repository and that will depend on couple of variables:

q  How often will you need to recover lost or corrupted files? If this is a regular and common occurrence in your environment then it may make sense to have the repository local. Otherwise having the repository at the disaster recovery facility add protection from a site failure and still provides the ability to retrieve lost files.

q  What type of data will need to be retrieved? If you are only restoring an e-mail or word document now and then that is fine to transmit over a WAN but if you have retrieve regular CAD or other large image files then it may make sense to also have the repository local and on the same LAN.

The other option that isn’t displayed in these diagrams is having Double-Take at both local and remote facilities to provide both High and Remote Availability while at the same time protecting the revisions of the server data for that additional operational recovery.

For more information Marc LaFlure, TimeData Product Manager, will be presenting an in-depth look on how to use TimeData for operational recover and how to reduce tape restoration for business critical servers. Register here for Sept 4^th webinar at 11am EST.

Entre los cambios más destacados:

• La interfaz gráfica ha pasado de Qt3 a Qt4.
• Se ha incluido un notificador de versiones nuevas.
• Soporte para imágenes de disco VHD
• Integración de clipboard para OS/2 Guests

Zoals de meeste Bloggers heb ik ook een e-mail gehad van VKernel met de aankondiging van hun nieuwe appliance SearchMyVM.

SearchMyVM instantly deploys exactly like each one of VKernel’s virtual appliances. With a “Google-like” search interface, you can find virtual machines, hosts, clusters, storage, resource pools, files, snapshots, VMware tools, applications and configuration information. Over 75 different types of attributes are fully indexed and available for you to search.

Please download the SearchMyVM Beta today and give it a try. I'm personally looking forward to your feedback.

In de rest van deze post lees je hoe je de appliance importeerd via de geweldige OVF standaard.

Log in op je VirtualCenter server. Ga naar File - Virtual Appliance - Import.

Voer in het volgende scherm de URL in van de OVF. Daarna loop je de wizard verder door.

Zodra je de wizard hebt doorgelopen word de OVF file ingelezen.

Nadat de import klaar is start je de VM op. Nu moet je alleen nog de NTP server configureren, de timezone goedzetten en het ip-adres wat van je DHCP server komt onthouden.

Open daarna je browser en voer het ip-adres van de appliance in.

De volgende stap is het toevoegen van je VirtualCenter Server of je ESX Server. Ik probeerde dit op naam (FQDN) te doen maar dat werkte nog niet goed. Toen ik het op ip-adres deed ging het prima.

Nadat de VC of ESX server is toegevoegd, word de inhoud ingelezen in de appliance.

Zodra alle data is ingelezen kun je een query starten. Dit kun je doen via de Query builder:

Of je doet het als volgt: VM:<VMNaam>

Ik denk dat deze appliance zeker wel nuttig kan zijn in een omgeving met honderden VM's. Zo kun je d.m.v. een snelle query snel zien waar de VM staat.

Christiane Amanpour: Christiane is a reknowned and accomplished news reporter. Her take on reporting has gained her some of the most prestigious awards in journalism, including 9 Emmys.  She’s extremely insightful and talented, and well, I’d like to follow her around the world and learn a thing or two.

Barbara Walters: Now here is a woman who really fought the old school attitudes, who started out on “The Today Show” as a researcher and writer.  She has a knack for getting people to tell their stories and she’s an interesting and seemingly approachable character.  I admire her gift in drawing out people’s stories,

 

 

Indira Gandhi: Irrespective of your political views, you have to hand it to Indira.  She served unofficially as a personal assistant to her father Jawaharlal Nehru, who had a prominent role in India's Independence movement. Imagine that for experience! 

  

Kate Hutchison:  I have seen Kate in action.  She’s is hands down, a very smart marketing executive – having served as SVP of Marketing at both BEA and Citrix . VMWare has been lucky enough to snatch Kate up as SVP of Worldwide Corporate Communications.  Not only is she smart, she’s approachable and encouraging –and a working mom! We need more Kate’s in the high tech world to serve as a source of inspiration in a male dominated industry! Kate, thanks for the inspiration!

 

Betty Suarez: I know this is a bit odd, to call out a fictional character as someone to look up to. But I honestly love Betty Suarez – the confident, intelligent and hardworking personal assistant to the editor-in- chief of Mode Magazine.  It’s refreshing to see her in action. She is not what the main stream considers the attractive, she's wardrobe challenged – but has so much more going for her. She is very  intelligent and possesses a high emotional IQ. Betty is a breath of fresh air compared to the superficial, devious types who run around Mode Magazine trying to make their mark.

 

So, what do you think of these picks, and who are yours? We'd love to hear who inspires the other siliconsistas out there!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The news is a few days late, but just in case you found out as late as I did...

By the way, even if you aren't a VMWare Fusion licensee, betas and release candidates are free for download after registration.

I found the best thing about it from 2.0 beta 2, and now release candidate 1, is that CPU utilization has become very low compared to VMWare Fusion 1.x. Also, for those of you who want to run 3D software in a VM, it has better 3D support; though I disable it since I use a Mini. It also, I think, offers Unity for Linux.

(Though I don't mess with that much because OS X's Unix support for command line and X11 progams is fairly complete, at least for the applications I use at present. Though some people have problems with X11; I don't though since I run xquartz, which is the latest open-source branch of what gets folded into the X11 code used for Leopard occasionally.)

Virtual appliances are bundles of software and "just enough operating system," as rPath chief evangelist Marty Wesley puts it, to make them run. Software destined for an appliance comes in the form of distributions (such as Red Hat's RPM format) that contain the code and related libraries. rPath's tool first teases apart these distributions and identifies their components.

Armed with a list of what needs to go into the appliance, the tool then tailors it to the target cloud or virtual machine. "We grab the contents [of the distribution] and add them to a cart," said Wesley. For example, if the appliance is destined for VMware, rPath adds code specific to that environment; for EC2, it leaves out the kernel and requests EC2 credentials. Finally, the system publishes the results to a variety of environments.

The Raleigh, N.C.-based startup is filled with Red Hat alumni, including CTO Erik Troan, who authored the Red Hat software packaging system RPM. rPath is seeing modest growth from its enterprise offering, claiming 58 customers since its launch in 2006, many of whom are large enterprises or ISVs who want to ship VM-ready versions of their software. The company has taken in a total of $25 million in funding, with a $15 million round completed this April, and has 25 engineers. Both CohesiveFT and FastScale are competitors, although they don't support as many target environments; JumpBox, meanwhile, makes pre-built appliances for many popular applications.

But rPath is at a crossroads. If it wants to own the enterprise release management cycle, it needs more than just Linux RPM distributions. Here, Microsoft is just around the corner with its suite of virtualization, operating systems, and applications.

On the other hand, if rPath wants to focus on clouds with its catalog of appliances, it needs to move beyond individual machines and into scalable, multimachine application clusters. Wesley says the company is already pursuing this, but cloud management firms Elastra, 3Tera and Enomalism have a head start, offering management, scaling and licensing tools for virtual machines.

Whatever the bumps ahead, rPath's portal and new EC2 support is a reminder of just how easily and quickly companies can move applications into an on-demand environment and free software from its underlying platform.

“Microsoft established the Server Virtual Validation Program to help ensure customers have a consistent and productive support experience when using validated non-Microsoft virtualization software, regardless of the vendor. We are pleased that VMware has joined the Server Virtual Validation Program and along with the other participants can bring the benefits of interoperability to our customers."

De officiele lijst van gevalideerde hypervisors wordt door Microsoft op KB article 944987 bijgehouden.

Zie VMware's persbericht.

UPDATE: Het lijkt toch wel degelijk om de validatie zelf te gaan, zie Microsoft's Virtualization Team Blog.

Why Do I Need It?

Over the years I have had to many customers ask me questions about operational recovery.

• What if I corrupt a database table?
• What if I get a virus? 
• What if I only need one file or a revision before the final version?

The truth is that business continuity does not translate into operational recovery or necessarily provide the option to recover at a very granular level. Business continuity is designed to resume business operations to a functional level in the event of a site wide disaster. You wouldn’t be implementing your BCP plans if you had a server failure or met the requirements from one of the questions listed above. In that case you would probably be restoring from your local back up copy which would likely be on tape if anything. And we all know what that restoration process looks like. Roll the dice, and ask yourself the questions.

•  Is the data there? 
• Can it be restored?
• And how long before I have that server up and operational?

Tape does what it is designed to but the effort involved with actually acquiring the tape and then restoring it is often tedious work at best. However, it does serve a purpose for those extensive archiving requirements defined by industry regulations such as HIPPA, SEC and or other Sarbanes Oxley requirements.

Here are a few options that you have available using TimeData to provide that TiVo® like operational recovery at a granular scale with out needing to restore from tape for everytime a user deletes a file.

TimeData Local Recovery Design

The first design includes the TimeData repository at the primary facility to easily retrieve data whenever needed. Double-Take is then also used to replicate the primary servers offsite to the disaster recovery facility. This solution design gives you the best of both worlds with local operation al recovery as well as offsite availability in the event of a site wide disaster. Below is an example of the design configuration:

For more information Marc LaFlure, TimeData Product Manager, will be presenting an in-depth look on how to use TimeData for operational recover and how to reduce tape restoration for business critical servers. Register here for the Sept 4^th webinar at 11am EST.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this TimeData Operational Recovery post.

Sprawl happens because, unlike their physical cousins, virtual machines aren't unique. Physical machines have ports, addresses and interfaces to identify them. But a copy of a virtual machine is identical to the original. And if you can't identify something uniquely, you can't track it, which means you can't attach metadata about its owner and lifespan and you can't enforce policies about it.

Embotics has been working on this problem for a while; although the company was founded in 2006, it gained five years of intellectual property when it acquired autonomic computing startup Symbium. Embotics' core IP uniquely tags a virtual machine, then provides tools to report and manage machines across multiple virtual data centers -- even when that machine is copied. Currently supporting only VMware, the company is working on integration with Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager due out early next year.

Many system administrators rely on spreadsheets to keep track of machines, but these invariably grow stale, leading to "orphaned" VMs. Embotics is hoping they'll switch to the free VScout and ultimately upgrade to the company's V-Commander product, which not only tracks machines but also sets policies to control where machines can live, how long they can last, and who can access them.

The interesting conflict of interest for VMware, Xen and Microsoft is that if they help people corral virtual machines, they may sell less of them, and that would be bad for their business, since they make money on the sale of VM licenses. As a result, a whole ecosystem of companies like ManageIQ, Embotics and Fortisphere have emerged to fill a need that many people feel should be addressed by tools that are built right into VM tools themselves, rather than sold by third-party vendors.

This isn't so true for Microsoft, which plans to ship its System Center Virtual Machine Manager early next year -- an act that may force Xen and VMware to build or buy their own management tools.

As Embotics' VP of Marketing David M. Lynch pointed out when I spoke with him, VM management tools are conspicuously absent from VMware's own offerings. Lynch isn't surprised by this: "Their focus has been on encouraging people to deploy new machines. But this is a space that absolutely requires management."

By Deni Connor

For Munder Capital Management, server virtualization was all about improving their disaster recovery operations and ensuring that failed servers could be brought back online quickly.

"One of the biggest things we focused on with virtualization was disaster recovery between disparate locations," says Mike Dufek, director of information systems for Munder Capital, a $30 billion financial services firm based in Birmingham, Mich.

"Virtualization gave us the availability to recover very quickly from physical to virtual machines and virtual back to physical machines," Dufek says. The process of recovering a failed server, which used to take days or weeks of manual work now is managed by provisioning a new virtual server and restoring the failed one with data from a storage area network (SAN), Dufek says.

"We've been able to drop back the number of physical boxes we have and the time we spend maintaining those boxes," Goerlich says. "Along with that, we save on cooling costs by about $1,000 a month. That's huge."

Picking the Platform: Three Requirements

Munder began their virtualization project in June, 2007. The project, which ultimately eliminated 42 physical servers, was developed using three criteria:

It had to match or enhance the skills of the company's existing staff; it had to fit well with the ecosystem of operating systems, applications and hardware available to the company; and it had to deliver the best mix of features and performance for the price, according to Wolfgang Goerlich, network operations and security manager for Munder Capital.

To bolster the company's disaster recovery plans, Munder Capital Management installed two dual-controller Compellent Storage Center SANs, one in Birmingham and the other at a remote site seven miles away. The setup relies on snapshots that back up the company's data, and replication that shuttles the snapshots among sites in order to keep the data safe. (For more advice on storage virtualization planning, see CIO.com's How to Do Storage Virtualization Right.

Starting in 2007, the company evaluated VMware, Microsoft's HyperV, Microsoft Virtual Server and Xen, Goerlich says. They also looked at Virtual Iron and Parallels' Virtuozzo before choosing Microsoft's HyperV.

"We started with HyperV when it was first a release candidate," Goerlich says. "Right away we were impressed with its performance."

"VMware comes with a couple of features that HyperV doesn't have—VMotion being the main one and memory allocation being the other," Goerlich says. "One of the discussions we had was 'were those feature sets going to give us enough return for the extra price.' After looking at those features, we decided we could probably forgo them. And, Microsoft has been saying all along they are going to catch up the feature set anyway."

Goerlich says Citrix XenServer also performed well, but that it didn't have the support of its backup and storage partners and that those partners were not developing for it.

New SAN Plays Key Role

HyperV also allowed native access to the disk—another advantage over the other systems Munder evaluated.

"We boot virtual servers from our Compellent SAN," says Goerlich. "Since we have multiple sites, if we lose disks at a site, we can bring them back up from images stored on the SAN. And HyperV supports replay or snapshot capability."

"While VMware does replay phenomenally, from our perspective we'd like to keep the replay on the SAN," Goerlich says. "HyperV takes a snapshot the same way VMware does. If you are using HyperV, you can use and recover those snapshots and design your workflow around those snapshots in the same way for both physical and virtual servers."

http://www.cio.com/article/445923/How_Microsoft_Hyper_V_Helped_My_IT_Shop_Revamp_Disaster_Recovery?page=2

Saya menggunakan distro slackware disini, harusnya dapat diterapkan di distro lain tanpa ada masalah, karena instalasi vmware sudah berupa wizard yang mudah dimengerti, anda hanya tinggal mengikuti default settingan wizard yang ada.

Berikut adalah langkah - langkahnya :
1. Download VMWare Workstation versi terbaru, jika mungkin dapatkan versi full versionnya :D

2. Extract file tersebut.
# tar -xzvf VMWare-XXX-XXX.tar.gz

3. Masuk ke direktori hasil extract tadi dan jalankan script untuk instalasi
# cd [path]/[to]/vmware-distrib
# ./vmware-install.pl


4. Ikuti saja settingan default (tinggal menekan enter), mungkin anda perlu perhatikan sewaktu wizard menanyakan letak init script dari slackware

5. Setelah selesai VMWare anda telah siap digunakan, tetapi sebelumnya, anda harus mempunyai serial number untuk menggunakan VMWare, agar anda bisa menggunakan vmware tersebut. Jika anda mendapatkan file yang sama dengan punya saya maka langkah berikut juga bisa anda ikuti.
# chmod 755 /[path]/[to]/keygen
# ./keygen


Setelah semuanya selesai, selamat mencoba VMWare anda, dan selamat menikmati berbagai macam OS, di dalam mesin slackware anda.

As part of a larger project I've been working on a set of scripts which configure a freshly-installed ESX (or ESXi) system into Virtual Center (after first attempting to remove previous VC state and clean state from the host). Currently they follow a typical post-boot configuration pattern:

1. Set ESX password
2. Add to Virtual Center cluster
3. Configure Virtual Switches
4. Configure Port Groups
5. Add NFS partitions
6. Add iSCSI partitions
7. Configure NTP
8. Configure VMotion

Before trying, modify esx-master.ps1 and esx-profile.ps1 to local conditions (or your password will be set to "CHANGEME").
Command: esx-autoconfigure.ps1 "hostname|ip-address"

 

check out zijn post op http://communities.vmware.com/thread/161304

Bron: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/09/02/esx-vs-esxi/

Duncan heeft het net op zijn blog geplaatst. VMware heeft nu een duidelijk overzicht van de verschillen tussen ESX en ESXi. Je kunt het overzicht vinden in KB1006543

Bron: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/09/02/esx-vs-esxi/