Lab Time for vSphere
This month has been a big one for the virtualization community as a whole. With the
news of VMware announcing vSphere, vSphere setting performance
records and recent release of the
Nehalem processor, a logical question is "Where do I start?"
For many VMware administrators, it's time to head into the lab to test this stuff out, and the vSphere beta program has been a good way for me to do that. The associated products (ESX, vCenter) are similar enough to make you comfortable, yet different enough to get you in trouble. This is why adequate lab time would be a good idea, as well as looking for other resources for vSphere.
Speaking of resources, I can't wait until Scott Lowe's new book is available; he's been working hard on it, and it should be good. vSphere training resources from VMware Education Services are still in beta and don't start until next month, so official material is still a ways off. Like virtually everyone else, my obstacles are going to be time to test, time to read, and time to train.
I'm particularly interested in VMware's announcements about the increased performance of vSphere. This started during a recent briefing call with VMware where Virtualization Review editor Keith Ward and I were made privy to the upcoming performance news.
Virtual environment performance is incredibly important to me, as I embrace virtualization fairly progressively in my datacenter. In our briefing and VMware's news about the performance gains, there is no specific mention of what facilitated the gains in performance. Because a lot has changed with the underlying ESX version 4, there is no silver bullet explanation to why the performance is better. Again, this is another call to test the new product for your needs.
How are you going to go about checking out vSphere? What are the issues that make it a challenge for you? Let me know or share a comment below.
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/23/2009 at 12:47 PM