The time has come for virtualization admins to take a step back and re-evaluate their environments. We have been on a virtualization mission for the past few years and some of us haven't stopped to take a breath and fine-tune or refine these new environments that we're building and that we believe will yield all the benefits that come with virtualizing our servers.
We have done a great job of taking our existing physical environments and virtualizing them, but with that many of us have also imported the same processes, procedures and approaches that were used to build our physical server environments. One of the things I want to focus on this time is the agent-based approach to anything virtual.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 11/15/20111 comments
If I was to summarize it in a few words, I would say it this way: VMware ThinApp Factory is the P2V for applications. The idea behind the ThinApp Factory is simplifying the application virtualization process -- specifically, the annoying, cumbersome and somewhat complicated sequencing process.
ThinApp Factory is dubbed to be an appliance that you install in your VMware infrastructure. You can then point an installed application or an MSI package to this appliance and it will "auto-magically" spin up the right VM with the right operating system based on a set of pre-qualifying questions you've answered. ThinApp Factory will then sequence the application properly, presenting you with a fully packaged EXE file which you can then use.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 11/03/20113 comments
Up in the "cloud" it's all about services. A service is defined as an application with all its dependencies and requirements. For example, if you are deploying Microsoft Exchange, you will need a certain number of servers to play different roles. You may or may not be deploying Outlook Web Access, etc. The collective pre-requisites for Exchange to work properly for enterprise users are called a service.
In the cloud era, it is all about deploying services, managing services and monitoring services. We don't want to manage a server as a standalone entity but rather we want to manage it in context with the service that it belongs to.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 11/01/20110 comments
Lately I have been getting a lot of questions on how to determine if vSphere APIs for Array Integration is actually functioning on all datastores. There are tons of articles on how to check if it is enabled, but I could not find one on checking if it is functioning.
VAAI is always enabled by default. So, unless you have explicitly disabled it, there is little value in checking whether or not it is enabled. However, checking if it is functioning is something I find useful. With that, I decided to share this with everyone in case you had not seen it.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/27/201110 comments
Microsoft Hyper-V 3 is shaping up to be an impressive release with a feature lineup worthy of a standing ovation. I am sure you have heard by now about the major features of Hyper-V 3, especially around virtual networking and Cisco's support of Hyper-V 3 via its Nexus 1000V. However, a feature that has not been given its true credit is Hyper-V 3's support of SMB 2.2, the latest newcomer to the IP storage arena and a direct challenger of the increasingly popular file-level protocol NFS.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/25/20113 comments
Mark Templeton's shopping spree continues. The latest company to pop up in the Citrix shopping cart is Dropbox-like company ShareFile. From a strategic standpoint, this acquisition is a great move for Citrix. If integrated correctly, Citrix can turn ShareFile (I hope they don't call it XenFile or XenShare or XenSomething) into an enterprise cloud storage play. Every company I am talking to likes the Dropbox approach for storage for its users. The caveat, however, is that companies want to offer a Dropbox-like service on premise, not on someone else's cloud. So, if Citrix gets it right, the acquisition can be a home run for the company.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/20/20110 comments
While recording my VMware vSphere 5 Training course this past summer, I made mention that I developed a process for building an effective naming convention for enterprises. Server and desktop virtualization significantly increases the number of named objects within our enterprises, so an effective naming convention that describes what an object is, its location, function and purpose is critical. Doing so allows us to identify objects in a speedy way, but it also provides a structured way of searching for objects using keywords in a logical manner.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/13/201111 comments
Some of you wrote some interesting comments -- some with questions -- to my last post, "Why vSphere is King of Hypervisors." Instead of isolating the discussion to the comments section, I figured I would reply here, as those questions merit some answers that everyone should see. Without further ado...
Does VMware vSphere provide enough value for the price?
The answer is a resounding "Yes!" VMware vSphere 5 provides enough value for the asking price. I think what many IT professionals are still struggling to come to terms with is that virtualization is not just another piece of software, it is not just another application. Virtualization is the new infrastructure, so carefully selecting it is not a matter of price -- it is a matter of flexibility and agility. Selecting a virtual infrastructure is a decision you make after examining the supporting products for this infrastructure, after designing your strategy and where you are trying to go from a business standpoint. It is not about IT, it is about which infrastructure to deploy that allows IT to respond to the business's needs effectively.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/11/20111 comments
Every now and then a report surfaces comparing vSphere to its hypervisor competitors. Everyone focuses on performance and how fast a live migration takes and how many concurrent live migrations can be run at the same time. But that's not enough, so they move on to memory management and "monster" VMs.
Before I continue, it is worth noting that I love VMware products and am a recipient of the VMware vExpert award. Even then, I also appreciate products from Citrix, Microsoft and others. In fact, I am an old time XenApp fellow and a huge supporter of XenDesktop. I also think Microsoft App-V and Hyper-V are fantastic products.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 10/03/201110 comments
The cloud has most certainly perplexed folks -- I have never seen a disruptive technology cause so much confusion in the IT world. Today, I want to discuss the different faces of the cloud, not just public clouds, but also private clouds and internal clouds. Wait, what is an internal cloud now? So let's get on the same page shall we?
We are going to break them down into 3 categories and then go into sub-categories:
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 09/29/20117 comments
Here's a PowerShell tip using the Set-BrokerDesktopGroup cmdlet to make sure the disconnect power state for VM desktop groups doesn't go right into Suspend mode.
PowerShell fever sweeping through the industry. I don't know who convinced Citrix, VMware and others that PowerShell fashion is now "in." It seems there is a race among the vendors to see who can add more in PowerShell -- if you ask me, the idea behind a GUI is that it should automate and simplify my life, so going to a command-line-based scripting interface is counterproductive and very distracting.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 09/26/20114 comments
I was recently helping a customer troubleshoot an issue they were having with XenDesktop 5.5 (yes, this also applies to XenDesktop 5) not registering with the controller fast enough.
Here is the scenario: My customer is a school district that has deployed VDI using XenDesktop 5.5 in their labs. The labs consist of 30 workstations, typical of lab environments.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 09/22/20113 comments