The vSphere 5 countdown continues and at number 8 is Profile-Drive Storage. It's a new feature of vSphere 5 that allows you to easily profile the capabilities of your datastore in order to deploy your VMs on the most appropriate storage.
Today, most virtualization administrators gather a lot of information about what the VM’s function will be and what kind of load it could potentially generate against the datastore. Is this a database server? Is this a Microsoft Exchange server? And so on. After that, we scramble to find the most appropriate datastore. We later also try and follow up to make sure that those virtual disks have not moved from this datastore.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 07/26/20111 comments
Last time, I started counting down the top 10 best features of vSphere 5. VMware View Accelerator was number 10. This time, at number 9, is AutoDeploy and Image Builder. Technically, AutoDeploy and Image Builder are two distinct features, but I find that they are very complimentary to one another, so I converged them.
Let's start with Image builder, now that ESXi is the only version of the OS that is available and ESX has officially been retired, there is a lot more that goes into installing the hypervisor than was the case with ESX. ESXi has a smaller footprint and is a very thin install. As a result, drivers and software packages for the different hardware that you may be using is not baked into the image.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 07/21/20112 comments
VMware vSphere 5 is packed with great new features, many more than we are about to cover in this feature countdown. I have chosen the top 10 features that I believe most people will be most interested in, and this time we kick it off with number 10 slot: VMware View Accelerator.
At first glance one would think the VMware View Accelerator is a licensing package, since VMware currently has Accelerator packages. But make no mistake: The View accelerator is one of the coolest features in vSphere 5 and since I am particularly focused and interested in desktop virtualization, I could not help it but start with this feature.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 07/19/20118 comments
I have been fortunate enough to be part of the beta program testing and evaluating VMware vSphere 5 for the past few months, one of the many perks of the VMware vExpert program. During this entire time, I have been very excited about all the features that I was testing and evaluating and had been very excited, counting the days to this big announcement, and now that this day is here, I can very happily say, "The best just got better." vSphere 5 is definitely a very feature rich upgrade to its predecessor satisfying most of the features on our wish list.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 07/12/201123 comments
If you are like me, you were probably dragged kicking and screaming into understanding and learning storage as you started your journey on "Route Virtual." Had you asked me six years ago about storage, I would have answered, "You mean the the LUN I ask the storage guy to provision?" Really, that would have been it. I knew nothing of Fiber Channel Arbitrated Loops, SAS, NAS/NFS or iSCSI, for that matter; I just understood, "I need a LUN for my Windows servers."
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 07/05/20111 comments
While managing your Citrix XenApp 6 farm from the comfort of the Citrix Delivery Services Console GUI tool is a very powerful thing, you should know that XenApp 6 also has a subset of command-line tools that are at your disposal and can help with advanced farm management and troubleshooting:
1. Altaddr: If you're a Citrix old timer, you probably remember using this tool before secure gateway was available, in order to extend the published applications to users outside the secure network. In essence, what Altaddr allows you to do is give your XenApp server an alternate IP address. Traditionally this was an outside facing public IP address or some kind of a NAT. Of course, the down side is if you have 100 XenApp servers, you would need 100 public IP addresses. Altaddr is not in use or popular anymore, but it is still there if you have the distinct situation where it makes sense.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/30/201110 comments
The answer to that question is, "Perhaps." Let's go through the benefits and then I would love to hear your comments and insights.
But first, why I'm writing this blog: About a year ago I blogged about Windows 8 and Hyper-V 3 in InformationWeek. I was discussing news that leaked from a French source about upcoming features. And then last week, more news was leaked about Windows build 7989, which showed Hyper-V 3.0 in the Windows Features section of the product. This is exciting on many levels, and it reinforces the excitement I and others have been “drumming” about for a while now that type-1 client hypervisors will change the desktop and laptop market for better and forever.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/28/20114 comments
One of the many benefits of server virtualization is that it makes BC/DR easier by transforming physical servers into files that can then be easily transported over different media. Well, that takes care of the DR portion of the acronym. But, if organizations want to address the BC (business Continuity) portion, they would then need some form of replication and while many solutions exist on the market today, all of these solutions were never designed for virtualization. Instead, almost all were built for an era of physical machines or LUN-based storage replication.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/23/20114 comments
I have been working with Citrix products for a very long time and while I appreciate the technology in most of the products, I can't help but look at EdgeSight and wonder: At what point will Citrix make a change?
EdgeSight is a good monitoring tool, but it is a very complex and difficult tool to work with. Frankly, it's past its time. There are software packages on the market today that can do everything that EdgeSight does without requiring an MBA in software development to get things done.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/21/20117 comments
When you examine the landscape of desktop virtualization solutions that are being implemented at organizations, two such solutions immediately stand out: Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View. I have written a lot on XenDesktop and I most certainly love the product, but I also have a secret love affair with VMware View.
In this article, I will show you how you can tweak VMware View and its PCoIP remoting protocol for optimal performance and the best possible user experience. Let's get started:
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/14/20113 comments
More and more mobile devices are being used in enterprises everywhere, from tablets, to phone, all the way through netBooks and laptops. This mobility frenzy comes with the added hassle of having to support the miscellaneous components of day-to-day computing. A good example of this is printing: When users are roaming through the enterprise with their cool devices, it is only when they try to print or do other similar tasks that IT takes a step back and says, "Oops, I did not think of that...." For this reason and many more, I always stress that is crucially important when choosing a desktop virtualization solution to pick one that is flexible, enterprise-driven and can accommodate user computing.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/09/20114 comments
When I first heard that VMware was acquiring Socialcast, I quickly dismissed it and went on with my day. Still, it stayed in the back of my mind and it did not really hit me until I was preparing a presentation on the Consumerization of IT (CoIT) for a client. Then it hit me: How could I have missed that? And now, it makes perfect sense to me what VMware is doing.
The problem is, no matter how much you want to evolve, the knee-jerk reaction is always a technical one until you take a step back and see the larger picture. With that in mind, think about this: Global companies spend millions of dollars every year on collaboration and team-building activities. Their belief is that if employees knew one another, and understood what each did, that would automatically lead to increased productivity as a consequence. Knowing who your colleagues are and being able to contact them directly without having to go through the process of introductions and the awkward moments and the he/she-look-unapproachable kind of scenario, all such wasted time and expense for the business--if we could avoid that through team-building activities, could we improve and increase productivity? This approach is valid and companies that encourage these activities are usually among the best companies to work for and seem to always be among the most successful ones.
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Posted by Elias Khnaser on 06/07/20114 comments