Like many other administrators, I started my virtualization experience with VMware products. In server consolidation, one technology that caught my interest early is the VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System (
VMFS
). The concept of a clustered file system was new to me with my Windows background, but it's now something we take for granted in the virtualization world. Those who work with me frequently roll their eyes whenever I get a chance to explain VMFS to someone new, as I make the obligatory comment, "VMFS is the most underrated technology that VMware has ever made."
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/27/20098 comments
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?"
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/23/20092 comments
This is a
big week
for virtualization. But VMware isn't the only company with important news: Marathon Technologies has announced two
new products
for XenServer-based virtualization.
First is the everRun 2G availability solution that protects Citrix XenServer hosts. everRun 2G has a unique approach -- it applies continuous protection to the XenServer host. Brilliant! Why waste all the effort managing the protection of a bunch of Windows VMs? Protecting the host in this fashion is a first for the virtualization space.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/21/20090 comments
One of the more hot-shot features of the Microsoft offering for the very competitive virtualization landscape is the ability to manage ESX hosts with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). This was one of those "sounds great to switch" features, until someone actually starts enumerating the pitfalls for administrators like me who are at least casually interested in the concept.
Let me tell you about my newest addiction. On my Twitter feed, I have been following many comments about managing ESX with SCVMM. Eric Gray's VCritical blog post breaks it down quite simply for us. I like Eric's in-your-face, give-me-the-facts approach to the issues facing virtualization. Eric is a VMware employee, but he brings up some good facts about SCVMM.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/16/20096 comments
Physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion tools are very good nowadays. Beyond the tools, the support network and mechanisms are very well defined. If you are having a problem converting a system, chances are someone else has had the same problem.
This is relevant to me right now for two reasons. The first is that I converted a machine that I never thought could be converted. I did kind of a virtual happy dance in my Twitter feed. Twitter is a good source of all kinds of information fory my virtualization efforts and life, as well as the other virtualization experts I follow. The second reason that conversions are front burner for me now is that I am starting preparations for the TechMentor conference in Orlando, where I will present on advanced conversions for virtualization.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/14/20095 comments
Finding specific products for the cloud is difficult. But I'm an infrastructure guy, so anything that I can really understand as a piece of the cloud appeals to me. I do not like only having arrows on a whiteboard, so anything that comes out as an identifiable part of a cloud has me interested.
FastScale has been an on-premise cloud component before clouds became cool. Their Virtual Manager product was released to enable a fully-automated deployment mechanism with a big twist -- a centralized repository. The repository is effectively an end-to-end de-duplication solution.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/09/20092 comments
With Intel's release of the
Xeon 5500
(Nehalem) processor series, virtually all server equipment is transitioning to new model series. HP, Dell, IBM and others have all started their next line of servers to include this processor series in conjunction with Intel's release. In conjunction with the processor release, VMware
released
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/06/20090 comments
Finally! ESX 3.5 Update 4 has been released. I knew it was coming when vCenter Server had released 2.5 Update 4 at
VMworld Europe
in Cannes. Many administrators, including me, have been waiting very anxiously for this release due to the recent wounds of Update 2 (time bomb) and Update 3 (High Availability (HA) reboots and storage driver issues) in their base releases. There were re-issues or ESX updates posted to address these issues, however.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/02/20096 comments
In June, I will be presenting at 1105 Media's
TechMentor
conference in Orlando. This is going to be an exciting show from the virtualization perspective, as real-world experts will be providing more than 30 sessions on virtualization topics.
One thing that separates TechMentor from other virualization events is that the material is vendor-neutral. I'm happy to be presenting alongside well-known virtualization experts such as Virtualization Review's own "Virtual Advisor" Chris Wolf, along with other gurus like Greg Shields and Edward Haletky and many others.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 03/31/20096 comments
Among the new features of VMware's highly anticipated vSphere platform is the new support for thin-provisioned disks from ESX 4. ESX 3 did not offer thin provisioning by default, but it was possible through the
vmkfstools
command.
Just to be clear, VMware is by no means behind the curve on thin provisioning of virtual disks -- many of their products have offered this for years. But for most VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) administrators, the storage-planning process revolves around full allocation of a VM's disks on the storage system. (Note also that Hyper-V, Sun xVM VirtualBox and XenServer all offer thin provisioning as well.)
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 03/25/20095 comments
Traditional server virtualization has the benefit of being able to adapt quickly to infrastructure changes over fewer physical hosts. So we should naturally be able to adapt new technologies easily, right? Not so fast, virtual server guy! This may be the tone many may face when looking at 10 GB Ethernet, also known as 10-GigE, for virtualization hosts.
10 GB Ethernet will be a fundamental component of the next generation datacenter. In fact, the new Cisco Unified Computing System will have a backend 10-GigE connection for the components.
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 03/23/20091 comments
In many e-mails over the last few days, I simply used a subject line of 'The Benchmark' and everyone knew what I was talking about. Last fall,
Virtualization Review
magazine Editor in Chief Keith Ward and I decided a bare bones hypervisor performance comparison was due, with Hyper-V joining the horse race in the server virtualization space. The end product was the comparative
performance test
More
Posted by Rick Vanover on 03/19/20092 comments