Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops Test Drive, Part 1

What exactly would you do with a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)? I can roll through a lot of scenarios in my head where it may make sense. Recently, I've been given a time-limited evaluation account for the iland workforce cloud and can see where this could be beneficial.

The workforce cloud is in most cases a VMware View-based VDI solution that is hosted in the cloud. The connection broker is done with a VMware View client, including support for devices without a full operating system. This includes terminal devices that support VMware View for their connection broker.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 11/02/200913 comments

Cloud-Based VDI, Part 2

Earlier in the week I mentioned that I would be evaluating a hosted VDI solution from the iland workforce cloud. So far in to the experience I can say that while it works well, there are many considerations that we need to factor into a decision like this.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 11/02/20090 comments

VMware Licensing Downgrade Notes

Generally speaking, I don't like any licensing mechanisms that require a lot of interaction. VMware's licensing is unfortunately one of these mechanisms. If you are like me with at least one environment that is still running VMware Infrastructure 3, you may find it difficult to increase the licensing if you need to add a host or piece of functionality. At this point in time, only vSphere license are sold. I recently went through a licensing downgrade, and it wasn't seamless yet it wasn't that bad.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/28/20092 comments

P2V Timesaver: Block Level, Then Storage VMotion

Converting systems with large amounts of storage has always been a tricky task. Frequently, there are limited amounts of quiet time to convert these systems. This can be made even more difficult when a raw device mapping (RDM) cannot be used. Here is a trick that will open up your playbook a little.

When converting a physical machine in VMware environments, it is generally good practice to resize the volumes to an appropriate geometry. This usually means making application or data volumes smaller to avoid disk space consumed for free guest operating system space on the virtualization storage system. When using VMware vCenter Converter, you have the option to size down the disks, but that makes the conversion process use a file-level copy -- much slower. If the disks retain their size or are made larger, a block-level clone of the source disk will be used. The latter configuration is noticeably faster; my experience puts it at around a factor of twice as fast.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/27/20094 comments

Rely on Storage System for VM Partitioning with ESXi

Recently, I was rebuilding my primary ESXi test environment and I landed on Jason's material and can't agree more with what he has said. Partitioning is one of the virtualization debates that can quickly become a religious issue, like deciding on a storage protocol or whether or not to virtualize vCenter. Jason goes into the details of what partitioning is done based on various disk geometry configurations, and to Jason's point -- we don't yet know if they are adequate. Changes to ESX partitioning are the norm, but without a service console in ESXi the biggest offender is removed from the partitioning criteria.

An important additional configuration point is the default VMFS volume created on the local partition. For organizations that want to utilize the free ESXi hypervisor and want to use local storage, a little forward thought on logical drive configuration can protect the VMFS volumes entirely from any partitioning with ESXi. Ideally, shared storage would be used in conjunction with the free hypervisor to remove this potential partitioning issue that can cause burdensome copy operations or backup operations. Be sure to check out this How-To document explaining how ESXi works with shared storage configurations. For (unmanaged) free ESXi installations, try to put VMFS volumes on different disk arrays than the ones that contain the ESXi partitioning. This can allow you to protect the VMFS volume from a reinstallation if necessary. VMFS volumes are forward and backward compatible within ESX and ESXi versions 3 and newer.

A lot of the local partitioning issues as well as potentially wasted space can be removed if a USB flash media boot configuration is appropriate for your ESXi installation. Here is a VMware Communities post on how to create a USB bootable flash drive for ESXi. This configuration of course is unsupported but may be adequate for a lesser tier of virtualization or a development environment.

Storage management is always one of the biggest planning points for virtual environments. Do you have any pointers for managing storage with the free ESXi hypervisor? If so, please share your comments below or send me an e-mail .

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/22/20091 comments

Virtualization Events of Interest

Virtualization is one of those areas that you need to stay sharp, as things will change on you very quickly: getting information on how to do certain tasks, what new features are now supported and a myriad of other points that compose the larger virtualization landscape. Even with all of the quick moving news from blogs and Twitter feeds, there still is value for in-person events that can provide a transfer of knowledge.

There are potentially two events in my future that I am getting excited about. The first is Gestalt IT Field Day. This is a new-concept event inspired by an HP-sponsored event, StorageWorks Tech Day. This is basically a blogger roundtable where we kick the tires on various technologies and tell you what we think. The Gestalt IT Field Day will be different in that it is not directly organized by the companies whose products are represented. I hope to attend this and provide a good virtualization slant, which I will share here of course. The current makeup of the event will provide a good perspective for end-to-end virtualization administration and management, as well as hitting on other top IT topics.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/20/20096 comments

Virtualization Has Changed My Life

The Windows Server platform is a strong contender for the biggest impact technology in my career thus far. I've worked with Windows Server products since I started my career, and it has shaped parts of my career throughout. Virtualization, however, fundamentally changes everything. Just like the technology infrastructure is fundamentally impacted with virtualization, a career can be impacted in the same way.

Virtualization allows us to on focus things such as cost savings for your technology infrastructure, which will give you the ear of management and those above in almost any organization. To be well-rounded and effective with virtualization, you will also have to be aware of the costs and associated savings of virtualization. This is a natural step in career development, and virtualization makes it an easy transition.

Another point that virtualization has developed my career is that I've had to become more of a storage and network expert than I was before. Virtualization's broad reach in the datacenter pulls these key areas together as part of a comprehensive infrastructure strategy. From a career development perspective, managing storage and networking are critical skills to add to one's repertoire.

Virtualization also develops one's ability to manage topics such as licensing, critical hardware decisions, and disaster recovery. These topics are directly relevant to executive-level decisions, and developing virtualization skills allows us to succeed in these areas.

How has virtualization impacted your career? Share your comments below.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/15/20091 comments

Virtualize Telecom System? Not Yet...

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/13/20095 comments

P2V Conversions: Always Something New To Learn

Network issues: When it comes to conversions, you do not always have the time to investigate the source system outside of the operating system. Older physical systems may be on older network segments that are configured differently or, more frequently, on slower (100 MB) segments. Take some time to get the system on a quicker network if possible, and clean up anything that may inhibit access to your virtualization platform to perform the conversion. I had a recent situation where certain drive letters on the physical system were not enumerated in the conversion until the network was configured correctly.

Best tools: Using the right tool will aid the conversion process. I am fan of the vCenter Converter Standalone for VMware conversions. I prefer it because it has some additional service management and synchronization options, as well as the ability to go to the unmanaged ESXi platform as a destination. As a side note, Microsoft released a new version of the Microsoft Disk2Vhd tool. With all conversion tools, it is a good idea to always use the most current version.

Cross-zone conversion trick: You can get stuck when trying to convert a physical system on a network that has virtual machines but is on a network that is not accessible to ESX hosts or vCenter. In this situation and where security policies permit, you can enable a service console IP address on the network that has the virtual machines. You can then run the conversion task directly to this temporary service console to allow the conversion to communicate with the physical system and the hypervisor directly. This would not generally work with the plug-in conversion tool -- again, the standalone tool may work better.

You can never stop learning about conversions, and surely there will be more lessons to come. If you have had any tricks on P2V conversions that have come around recently, please share them with your fellow readers here.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/08/20091 comments

Site Recovery Manager Updated

SRM is a boon for many situations, as it allows this failover to occur much quicker under the right circumstances. I've mentioned both the PlateSpin Forge device and Vizioncore's continuous protection options for vConverter as solutions for remote data center protection of workloads, but these don't offer as broad of a reach as SRM. The differences revolve primarily around the fact that SRM will literally fail the whole data center over versus failing over individual workloads.

SRM version 4 introduces the following new features:

• Support for vSphere: This is a natural progression that allows the current version of vCenter (version 4) to be supported with SRM. This can allow many organizations to proceed with the upgrade to vSphere with this support.
• Support for NFS-based storage: Fibre channel or iSCSI systems were previously the only supported storage options. The NetApp community will rejoice in this news.
• N:1 failover: This is a big point, as SRM can now provide managed failover for a number of hot sites to a single cold site or single shared recovery site. Previously, each managed site needed a cold site.

SRM still misses the distinction of being the one-size-fits-all solution for site failover in my opinion. The first shortcoming is the magical arrow on the whiteboard that goes from one datacenter to another for the storage replication. SRM doesn't manage the storage replication for the virtual environment.

The other shortcoming (likely related to my first point) is that SRM does not have a managed fail-back option. This means that if your disaster recovery site becomes fully production-class, you may have to stay there for a while.

SRM still is a pretty good offering for the scope of its protection, and the new features will be a welcome addition to the installations that use the feature.

Are you using SRM or going about it another way? Drop me a note or write a comment below.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/06/20091 comments

VMware Tools Has Perfmon Integration

With the new versions of VMware Tools (or the standalone update for older versions of Tools), two new performance objects appear: VM Processor and VM Memory. These have access to host stats for the VM, and make it incredibly easy to centrally collect information. Some of the new counters include:

Posted by Rick Vanover on 10/01/20098 comments

Checking Out Veeam Business View

Posted by Rick Vanover on 09/28/20097 comments