July 2011 archive

Happy Birthday to VMware’s Head Cheerleader!

It’s John Troyer’s birthday, for those that do not know John he’s VMware’s dynamic, social media and community person who will give you the shirt of his back if you ask. For those who do know him, well you probably already know this. I know John very well and he has graciously written the foreword on both my books. Two years ago I arranged a special surprise involving dozens of bloggers and community people for John in appreciation for everything he has done for the community, be sure and check out the videos to see his reaction to the surprise.

jtroyer1

Share This:

Interesting recent VMware KB articles

I subscribe to the weekly VMware Knowledgebase updates and regularly go through the new articles to find interesting posts. The VMware KB has more than just solutions to problems, it also has a lot of great information and how-to articles as well. There are a lot of great nuggets of information posted on a regular basis there so I would suggest going there periodically to see whats new. Here’s some recent notable articles that I saw that are a good read.

Share This:

HP’s new acquisition: Eric Siebert

It’s time to start a new chapter in my life. I’ve been at my current job since Sept. of 1993, almost 18 years. My job is at a small restaurant company (Boston Market) as a senior systems admin who has responsibilities for many areas including VMware, Lotus Domino, IBM WebSphere, Windows Server and much more. I’ve done a lot in those 18 year sand have a pretty diverse background in many different areas. I’ve never really had an area that I wanted to specialize in, security & web technologies is what interested me most until I got bitten by the VMware bug 5 years ago. When it came to virtualization, for the first time in my life I found a technology that I was passionate about. I started getting very active in the VMware VMTN community forums where I made Guru status in less than a year. My exposure in the forums lead to other opportunities, publishers wanted me to write books and I actually had competing offers from different publishers to sign with them.

I also started writing for Tech Target, on a whim I had sent them an email seeing if they were interested in having me write for them. I had never really thought of myself as a writer before then, but I thought I would give it a try and see how I liked it. I found that I really enjoyed it and I was actually pretty good at it. Writing isn’t as easy as you might think, it takes dedication, patience and a skill to be able to present your thoughts to readers in a manner that they can easily understand and follow. I’ll admit I was a little green in the beginning but over time and with the help of editors I learned how to become a much better writer. I’ve been writing continually now for over 3 years and I still find that I enjoy it and continue to improve my skills at it.

I also started this little website originally called vmware-land.com about 4 years ago, my goal was to share information and collect links that would help others find the information that they need. I used to find a common theme in the VMTN forums, the same questions got asked over and over so rather than answer them in full all the time why not send them to links where they were already answered. Hence my beginning with link collections, I’ve kept up with it continually since then, but instead of focusing more on links from the VMTN forums I moved to gathering links from all the sources available on the internet from the many VMware related blogs and websites.

I’ve enjoyed being a freelance writer over the years which is basically my night job and haven’t really been looking to changing my day job, I’ve had offers that were pretty attractive but I was comfortable where I was at and for me to change jobs it really had to be the perfect job. I’ve known Calvin Zito from HP for a while now and have attended several HP blogger events, Calvin has been pretty tenacious for a while now in trying to convince HP that they really need to hire me and finally at the recent HP Discover conference he got me in front of one of HP’s storage executives to discuss an opening they had. I heard them out and told them I’d be interested in hearing more about the position. For me to change jobs I had two basic criteria, one I had to believe firmly in the company and two I had to make sure I would thoroughly enjoy the position. Both HP and the job position met that criteria, one thing I really liked about HP is that they cover everything in the data center, servers, storage, networking and much more. So long story short after many interviews with people at HP like Craig Nunes, Marc Farley, Mike Kokopen, Vish Mulchand and Steve Crimi they offered me the position.

So I’ll be joining HP at the end of the month in the position of Solutions Manager – Storage for Server Virtualization. HP has a strong presence in Colorado with big campuses in Ft. Collins, Boulder (LeftHand) and Colorado Springs. I’ll be able to work out of my house and also have space available in Boulder when needed. I’m excited about the position, I’ll be dealing with many areas inside HP including product development, strategic relationships and sales & marketing and cover everything related to storage and virtualization. I’m really looking forward to getting started with HP and making as much as impact as I can with my years of experience with virtualization.

I wish to thank Calvin as the driving force for pushing both myself and HP together and to the VMware community that has driven me to be the person that I am today that made this opportunity possible.

Share This:

vSphere Fault Tolerance will soon support SMP

Came across this session in the VMworld 2011 lineup – (BCO2874 vSphere High Availability 5.0 and SMP Fault Tolerance – Technical Overview), according to the description the Fault Tolerance feature which previously only supported VM’s with a single vCPU will soon support vSMP. Providing this support has been a major development challenge for VMware as it is not an easy task to keep multiple CPUs in sync via lockstep. In fact I talked to VMware about it at the vSphere 5 launch and they said they were working with the CPU vendors to see if they could make it easier for them to do this. Well looks like they finally found a way, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, sign up for the VMworld session to find out more including a live demo. Since it’s not currently in vSphere 5.0 I’m guessing it may make it into a point release like vSphere 5.1.

2011-07-19_204530

Share This:

Biggest collection of vSphere 5 links on the planet!

As usual I’m putting together my mega-list of every link I can find related to vSphere 5. So head on over to my vSphere 5 link page and check it out. This list is continually growing so be sure and bookmark it and keep checking back.

vsphere5

Share This:

vSphere 5 Links

Books

Announcing Mastering VMware vSphere 5 (Scott Lowe)
Hot of the press: vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive (Yellow Bricks)
New Book – VMware vSphere 5.0 Clustering Technical Deepdive (video) (NTPro.nl)
SRM 5.0 Book “Rough Cut” Available on Safari (RTFM Education)

Certification & Training

vSphere 5 – New Training Courses: What’s New [V5.0] and VCP5 (NTPro.nl)
New Training Course – VMware vSphere: Overview [V5.0] (NTPro.nl)
New VCP 3 to VCP 5 Upgrade Path (NTPro.nl)
VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.0] Training Course by VMware Education (ESX Virtualization)
VMware vSphere 5 Video Training – Now Available (Petri IT)
VCP 5 Beta Exam – a Pass – but it aint easy (Technodrone)
VCP5 vs VCP4: Comparing exam blueprints (vmDK)

Command Line Interface (CLI)

ESXi 5.0 Command Line Part 1 – Introduction to the new ESXCLI (ESXi Chronicles)
Does the new 5.0 ESXCLI eliminate the need for vCLI? (ESXi Chronicles)
Major Enhancements in esxcli for vSphere 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
What’s New in VMware Vsish for ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
How to Format and Create VMFS5 Volume using the CLI in ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 1 (Virtually Ghetto)
New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 2 (Virtually Ghetto)
New vSphere 5 CLI Utilities/Tricks Marketing Did Not Tell You About Part 3 (Virtually Ghetto)
How to Add a Splash of Remote Color to ESXi Shell (Virtually Ghetto)
Host Profiles Free in ESXi 5? (Virtually Ghetto)
Tips and Tricks for vMA 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
How-to fix vMA 5.0 password complexity issue (vReality)
vSphere 5.0: ESXCLI (Yellow Bricks)

Documentation

vSphere 5.0 Documentation Center (VMware)
vSphere Documentation Main Page (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 (VMware)

Downloads

ESXi 5.0 Installable
vCenter Server5.0 and modules

ESXi

What’s New with ESXi in vSphere 5.0? (ESXi Chronicles)
What’s in a VIB? (ESXi Chronicles)
Setting up the ESXi 5.0 Dump Collector (ESXi Chronicles)
Setting up the ESXi Syslog Collector (ESXi Chronicles)
ESXi and Lopsided Bootbanks (ESXi Chronicles)
Sample Scripts for Automating Auto Deploy (ESXi Chronicles)
Tech Support Mode Warnings Revisited In vSphere 5 (Boche.net)
mem.minfreepct Sliding Scale Function (Frank Denneman)
vSphere 5 – How to run ESXi stateless with vSphere Auto Deploy (Gabe’s Virtual World)
Create a bootable VMware ESXi 5 USB stick in Windows and perform a scripted installation (Ivo Beerens)
Create a VMware ESXi 5 PXE unattended scripted installation using Windows (Ivo Beerens)
Virtual HD Audio Hardware in vSphere 5 (Kendrick Coleman)
vSphere 5 Hardware Version 8 & New vCPU Config for Licensing Trickery (Kendrick Coleman)
Introducing Virtual NUMA in vSphere 5 (Krystaltek)
ESXi 5.0 Enhanced Security Profile (My Virtual Cloud)
vSphere 5 What’s New – Image Builder and Auto Deploy (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 Video – EFI the Extensible Firmware Interface (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 Auto Deploy Demo (NTPro.nl)
3 Design Considerations for Your vSphere 5 Auto Deploy Environment (Paul Richards)
Running VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 on the HP Proliant Microserver (TechHead)
How to enable & disable ESXi Host SSH via the vSphere Client in vSphere 5 (TechHead)
Connecting a USB device to an ESXi 5.0 VM (Technodrone)
VMware ESXi 5 Interactive PXE Installation Improvements (vCritical)
VMware ESXi 5 Scripted Install to USB Flash (vCritical)
Getting Started with ESXi 5 (Part 1) (Virtualization Admin)
Getting Started with ESXi 5 (Part 2) – Create your first virtual machine (Virtualization Admin)
Automation with ESXi and vSphere 5.0 (Virtualization Practice)
Automating ESXi 5.x Kickstart Tips & Tricks (Virtually Ghetto)
SSH Keys & Lockdown Mode Caveat in ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
Free Linux & Windows Syslog Alternatives to depercated vi-logger in vMA 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
ESXi 5.0 Supportability Features (VMware Support Insider)
Punch Zeros! (Yellow Bricks)
ESXi 5.0 and Scripted Installs (Yellow Bricks)
ESXi 5: Suppressing the local/remote shell warning (Yellow Bricks)
Cheat sheet – Auto deploy (Yellow Bricks)
Understanding Memory Management in VMware vSphere 5 (VMware)

Feature Demo Videos

vSphere Storage Appliance Installation and Configuration Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Auto Deploy Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Storage Appliance Resilience Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Profile-Driven Storage Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Storage DRS Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Web Client Demo (VMware TV)

General

VMware Cloud Infrastructure Launch – VMware vSphere 5 (VMware TV)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5 and vCenter Heartbeat 6.4 (VMware TV)
VMware Unveils vSphere 5 and the Cloud Infrastructure Suite (The Console Blog)
Sessions for VMware vSphere 5 and Cloud Infrastructure Suite (VMTN Blog)
VMware vSphere 5 digs deep into infrastructure pie (SearchVMware)
Five big changes in VMware vSphere 5 to consider before updating (SearchVMware)
Five vSphere 5 features that flew under the radar (SearchVMware)
Virtualization Wars: Episode V – VMware Strikes Back (Boche.net)
vSphere 5 and Cloud Infrastructure Suite introduced (ESX Virtualization)
Five vSphere 5.0 enhancements you may have missed (Infoworld Virtualization Report)
Slide Deck from the vSphere 5 / SRM 5 Presentations (Jason Nash)
VMware vSphere 5 (Knudt Blog)
My first vSphere 5 “Monster VM” (My Virtual Cloud)
Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to vSphere 5 (Pivot Point)
Running Apple OSX Lion on vSphere 5 (Pivot Point)
Unclear future for the free vSphere Hypervisor (Rickard Nobel)
VMware’s Launch Event (Scott Lowe)
VMware vSphere 5.0 – What’s New & Exciting (TechHead)
VMware vSphere 5: The BIG feature list (The VM Guy)
VMware vSphere can virtualize itself + 64-bit nested guests (vCritical)
The Arrival of VMware vSphere 5 (vDestination)
Raising the Bar V = vSphere 5! (Virtual Geek)
vSphere 5 (Virtualised Reality)
vSphere 5 – New vSphere Web Client (Virtualised Reality)
5 Features of vSphere 5 That You Should Care About (Virtualization Admin)
What’s new in vSphere 5 (Part 1) (Virtualization Admin)
What’s new in vSphere 5 (Part 2) (Virtualization Admin)
5 Design Considerations for vSphere 5 (Virtualization Review)
vSphere 5 – Virtualize Business Critical Applications with Confidence (Virtualization Practice)
How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
When Can I Run Apple OSX on vSphere 5? (Virtually Ghetto)
VMware vSphere 5.0 Overview (VMackem)
Liveblogging the VMware vSphere 5 Launch (vmDK)
VMware announces vSphere 5 (VMGuru.nl)
Live Blog: Raising The Bar, Part V (Yellow Bricks)
5 is the magic number (Yellow Bricks)

High Availability (HA)

vSphere 5.0 is released with new HA features! (VMware Uptime Blog)
vSphere HA 5.0 Best Practices Guide Now Available! (VMware Uptime Blog)
Supported vSphere 5.0 Advanced Options (VMware Uptime Blog)
vSphere 5 – New High Availability Agent Introduced – FDM (ESX Virtualization)
vSphere 5 What’s New – High Availability (HA) (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 Release-HA Improvements (Virtual Bill)
VM HA – Laying a foundation for today and tomorrow (Virtual Geek)
There’s a new mob in town, FDM MOB for ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
New vSphere 5 HA, DRS and SDRS Advanced/Hidden Options (Virtually Ghetto)
How Fast is the New vSphere 5 HA/DRS on 64 Node Cluster? FAST! (Virtually Ghetto)
New Application Awareness API in vSphere 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
HA Architecture Series – FDM (1/5) (Yellow Bricks)
HA Architecture Series – Primary nodes? (2/5) (Yellow Bricks)
HA Architecture Series – Datastore Heartbeating (3/5) (Yellow Bricks)
HA Architecture Series – Restarting VMs (4/5) (Yellow Bricks)
HA Architecture Series – Advanced Settings (5/5) (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.0 HA: Changes in admission control (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.0 HA: Application Monitoring intro (Yellow Bricks)
Partitioned Cluster with HA vSphere 5, who owns what? (Yellow Bricks)

Home Labs

Will the HP Proliant ML110 G5 & ML115 G5 work with VMware vSphere 5? (TechHead)
VMware ESXi 5 whitebox supported motherboard (Ivo Beerens)

Licensing (post 8/3/11)

VMware has a change of heart on licensing (vSphere-land)
Official: Revisions to VMware vSphere 5 Licensing (The Lone Sysadmin)
Changes to the vRAM licensing model introduced on July 12, 2011 (VMware’s Rethink IT)
Adjusting the New vRAM Model with vSphere 5 – We Heard You! (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMware relents, changes license model for vSphere 5. Here’s a new analysis of the desktop pricing (Brian Madden)
VMware listens to customers, changes vSphere 5 licensing again (InfoWorld Virtualization Report)
VMware Announces Revised vRAM Licensing! (Jason Nash)
VMware Listened: vSphere 5 Licensing Changes (Latoga Labs)
vSphere 5 License Entitlement changes (Virtu-al)
VMware Licensing Debate Post-Mortem (Virtual Insanity)
Impact of Latest vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Model upon Data Center Virtualization and Virtualization Management (Virtualization Practice)

Licensing (pre 8/3/11)

VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging (VMware)
vSphere 5 Purchase Advisor (VMware)
vSphere 5 Entitlement Mapping (VMware)
Upgrading to VMware vSphere License Keys (VMware)
vSphere Desktop – vSphere Edition to host Desktop Virtualization FAQ (VMware)
Understanding the vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing Model (VMware – Rethink IT)
Why VMware licensing changed in vSphere 5 and what it means for you (SearchVMware)
How VMware can fix the vSphere 5 licensing mess (SearchVMware)
VMware vSphere 5 licensing sets virtual RAM limits (SearchVMware)
VSphere 5 licensing furor calms down, but problems remain (SearchVMware)
VMware vSphere 5 pits scale-up against scale-out (SearchVMware)
VMware shops search for savings on vSphere 5 licenses (SearchVMware)
VMware users suggest changes to vSphere 5 licensing model (SearchVMware)
VMware CTO explains vSphere 5 licensing changes (SearchCloudComputing)
Scale Up with VMware vSphere 5: “I’m Not Dead Yet!” (Aaron Delp)
Will VMware’s new licensing scheme open the door for Microsoft? (Ars Technica)
Dear VMware … (AuTechheads)
vSphere 5 Licensing – Not Quite So Bad? (Blue Shift)
Is VMware screwing the non-View VDI community with the vSphere 5 licensing changes? (Brian Madden)
Confirmed: VMware will introduce a new “vSphere Desktop” license for vSphere 5. But should you use it? (Brian Madden)
Opinion: What you need to know about vSphere 5’s new pricing model (Computer World)
VMware Customers Fuming Over vSphere 5 Licensing Changes (CRN)
How to Save With New vSphere 5 Licensing Model (DoubleCloud)
vSphere 5 licensing with vRAM isn’t that bad at all (Gabe’s Virtual World)
#vTax FUD real life example (Hans DeLeenheer)
vSphere 5 Licensing – Enterprise Viewpoint (It’s Just Another Layer)
VMware vSphere 5 licensing explained (Ivo Beerens)
vSphere 5 Licensing – Are We Overreacting? (Jason Nash)
Is VMware Killing Itself? (Motley Fool)
vSphere License Changes Bring Out Pitchforks (Network Computing)
The new vRAM license model in vSphere 5 (Rickard Nobel)
vSphere 5 Licensing is (some kind of) per-VM licensing (Technodrone)
Yes, VMware’s License Change Is That Bad: It’s A Trap! (The Data Center Overlords)
The Five Stages of VMware Licensing Grief (The Lone Sysadmin)
A Look at VMware Licensing & Environment Growth (The Lone Sysadmin)
VMware Scale Up vs. Scale Out: The Big Picture (The Lone Sysadmin)
VMware pricing changes add cost to cloud (The Troposphere)
VSphere 5 licensing: VMware also considered… (The Virtualization Room)
How to determine your vRAM footprint in vCenter (The VM Guy)
Licensing in VMware vSphere 5 (ThinkCloud)
VMware licensing : vRAM entitlement explained (ThinkCloud)
vSphere Licensing : Desktop edition (ThinkCloud)
vSphere 5 Licensing: A few things to consider ($blogname)
vSphere 5: What’s in Enterprise Plus? (Virtual Future)
vSphere 5 for Desktops license (Virtual Future)
The calm after the storm – My take on vRAM (Virtual Insanity)
Calculated Cost Implications of vSphere 5 Licensing (Virtual VCP)
A Deeper Look Into VMware vSphere 5 Licensing (Virtual VCP)
vSphere 5 License Entitlements (Virtu-al)
Understanding vSphere5 Licensing (Virtualised Reality)
vSphere 5 – Did VMware Misjudge its Licensing Changes? (Virtualization Practice)
Licensing: Pools and Architecture Changes? (Virtualization Practice)
VMware vSphere 5 vRAM Pricing and Taxes (Virtualization Practice)
Could the new vSphere vRAM Pricing Slow Down Virtualizing Business Critical Applications? (Virtualization Practice)
7 reasons why VMware vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing is not as bad as it Look at First Glance (Virtualization Team)
New VMware licensing explained (VMGuru.nl)
vRAM licensing with VMware View (VMGuru.nl)
vSphere 5 Licensing thread (VMTN forums)
VMware Enterprise or Enterprise Plus? (VMware Info)
vSphere 5 and new licensing – Good or bad? (vNinja)
vSphere Licensing – Doing Some Math (vTesseract)
Scale Up/Out and impact of vRAM?!? (part 2) (Yellow Bricks)

Licensing Calculators

vSphere Licensing Advisor (VMware)
Simple VMware vSphere 4 & 5 License Calculator (Virtual VCP)
VMware vSphere 4 versus vSphere 5 for VDI desktops licensing cost calculator (Brian Madden)

Licensing Scripts

Download License Validator Script (Virtu-al)
Query vRAM (LucD)
Discover Memory Overallocations (LucD)
Calculate vSphere 5 Licenses with Powershell (PeetersOnline)

Networking

Configuring the ESXi firewall in VMware vSphere 5 (SearchVMware)
vSphere 5 New Networking Features – Introduction (VMware Networking Blog)
vSphere 5 New Networking Features – NetFlow (VMware Networking Blog)
vSphere 5 New Networking Features – Port Mirroring (VMware Networking Blog)
Multicast Performance on vSphere 5.0 (VMware VROOM Blog)
vSphere 5 new Networking features (My Virtual Cloud)
LLDP support added in vSphere 5 (Rickard Nobel)
Multi-NIC vMotion Support In vSphere 5.0 (Frank Denneman)
Leveraging the vSphere 5.0 NetFlow support to monitor and report traffic data in a Service Provider vCloud environment (Hypervizor)
vSphere 5 How To Series: vDS Port Mirroring (Jason Nash)
vSphere 5 Brings VMKernel Port Binding To The GUI (Kendrick Coleman)
Configure iSCSI port binding in VMware vSphere 5.0 (Krystaltek)
vSphere 5 Video – ESXi Firewall Configuration (NTPro.nl)
Video – How to setup a vSphere 5 Port Mirror (NTPro.nl)
Video – Enabling NetFlow on vSphere 5 Distributed Switches (NTPro.nl)
Video – vSphere 5 User Defined Network Resource Pools (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 and the new vSphere Distributed Switch – NetFlow (Virtual Insanity)
How to Create Custom Firewall Rules in ESXi 5.0 (Virtually Ghetto)
vDS Netflow explained (vroem.co.za)

Performance

Achieving a Million I/O Operations per Second from a Single VMware vSphere 5.0 Host (VMware VROOM Blog)
Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5.0 (VMware VROOM Blog)
vMotion Architecture, Performance, and Best Practices in VMware vSphere 5 (VMware VROOM Blog)
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Performance on vSphere 5 (VMware VROOM Blog)

Release Notes

Scripting

How to Automate Host Cache Configuration in ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
2 Hidden Virtual Machine Gems in the vSphere 5 API (Virtually Ghetto)
New vSphere Health Check 5.0 & ghettoVCB Script (Scripting)
PowerCLI 5.0: New cmdlets and PowerShell snap-ins for vSphere (SearchVMware)
What’s new in PowerCLI 5? (vmDK)
PowerCLI Poster 5.0 (vSphere PowerCLI Blog)
PowerCLI 5.0 – Better than ever before (vSphere PowerCLI Blog)

SRM

Look what’s new with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager v5.0! (VMware Uptime Blog)
Failback? Where is the button!? (VMware Uptime Blog)
SRM 5 and Scripts (VMware Uptime Blog)
Bulk IP Customization in SRM 5 (VMware Uptime Blog)
SRM 5 Evaluator Guide (VMware Uptime Blog)
VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.0 Overview (Around the Storage Block)
SRM 5 vSphere Replication – how to install and configure (Fred van Donk)
What’s New in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 (NTPro.nl)
Site Recovery Manager 5: The BIG Feature List (The VMGuy)
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 Demo (Vimeo)
HBR (Host Based Replication) CLI for SRM 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
New SRM 5 APIs (Virtually Ghetto)

Storage

vSphere Blogs Series

vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 1 – VMFS-5 (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 2 – Storage vMotion (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 3 – VAAI (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 4 – Storage DRS – Initial Placement (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 5 – Storage DRS – Balance On Space Usage (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 6 – Storage DRS – Balance On I/O Metrics (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 7 – VMFS-5 & GPT (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 8 – Handling the All Paths Down (APD) condition (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 9 – Snapshot Consolidate (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 10 – VASA – vSphere Storage APIs – Storage Awareness (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 11 – Profile Driven Storage (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0 Storage Features Part 12 – iSCSI Multipathing Enhancements (VMware vSphere Blog)

General

VMware vSphere Replication breaks disaster recovery storage barriers (SearchVMware)
VMware vSphere 5 storage management features pique interest (SearchVMware)
Enhanced Storage vMotion in vSphere 5 with Mirror Mode (Deinos Cloud)
Configuring FCoE for VMware ESXi 5.0 (Intel)
How vSphere 5 Challenges Storage Design (Krystaltek)
vSphere 5.0 Datastore Clusters & VDI (My Virtual Cloud)
vSphere 5.0 New .vswp file & Storage Tax on VDI (My Virtual Cloud)
vSphere 5 What’s New – Storage DRS (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 Video – iSCSI User Interface support (NTPro.nl)
ESXi 5.0 partitions (Rickard Nobel)
Setting up Software FCoE on vSphere 5 (Scott Lowe)
Storage Changes in VMware vSphere 5 (Stephen Foskett)
vSphere 5 – APD gets a new friend… PDL (Virtual Geek)
NFS changes in vSphere 5 and true scale-out NAS (Virtual Geek)
vSphere 5: Storage Chum Chum (Virtual Tacit)
How to Trick ESXi 5 in seeing an SSD Datastore (Virtually Ghetto)
Virtualized Exchange Storage: VMDK or RDM or…? (VMware Business Critical Applications Blog)
Guest OS Partition Alignment (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMware’s Software FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) Adapter (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage vMotion, Storage DRS & Virtual Machine Snapshots Interoperability (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage vMotion, Storage DRS & Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Interoperability (VMware vSphere Blog)
Storage vMotion, Storage DRS and vSphere Replication Interoperability – Revisited (VMware vSphere Blog)
Performance Implications of Storage I/O Control-Enabled NFS Datastores in VMware vSphere 5.0 (VMware White Paper)
vSphere 5.0: Storage vMotion and the Mirror Driver (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.0: Storage initiatives (Yellow Bricks)
Swap to host cache aka swap to SSD? (Yellow Bricks)

vStorage APIs

Overview vSphere Storage API for Storage Awareness (VASA) (Around the Storage Block)
The new vSphere 5.0 VAAI primitives (Around the Storage Block)
vSphere 5.0 – Optimized storage efficiency (VAAI phase 2) (Hu’s Blog)
vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) (Pivot Point)
A Deeper Look at VASA (Scott Lowe)
Hidden VAAI Command (Scott Lowe)
A Complete List of VMware VAAI Primitives (Stephen Foskett)
vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) -vSphere 5 edition (Virtual Geek)
Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA (Virtualization Practice)
A sneak-peek at how some of VMware’s Storage Partners are implementing VASA (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere 5.0: UNMAP (vaai feature) (Yellow Bricks)

Storage DRS

Upgrading VMFS datastores and SDRS (Frank Denneman)
SDRS out of space avoidance (Frank Denneman)
Datastore unable to enter SDRS Maintenance mode (Krystaltek)
vSphere 5 Video – Storage DRS (NTPro.nl)
Happy World: VMware SDRS or Auto-Tier? (Virtual Tacit)
NetApp & Storage DRS (Virtualization Arcade)
VMware vSphere v5 and Storage DRS (Virtualization Practice)
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Technical Whitepaper (VMware)
VMware vSphere Storage DRS Interoperability (VMware Tech Paper)
vSphere Storage DRS Demo (VMware TV)
Storage DRS Demo (VMware Videos)
vSphere 5.0: Storage DRS introduction (Yellow Bricks)
Storage DRS interoperability (Yellow Bricks)
SDRS and Auto-Tiering solutions – The Injector (Yellow Bricks)
VMware vSphere 5: Feature Spotlight – Storage DRS (vSamurai)
Harnessing vSphere 5′s Datastore Clusters and SDRS (Wahl Network)

Profile Driven Storage

Profile Driven Storage Demo (VMware Videos)
vSphere Profile-Driven Storage Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere 5 What’s New – Profile Driven Storage (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5.0: Profile-Driven Storage, what is it good for? (Yellow Bricks)

VMFS5

2TB VMDKs on Upgraded VMFS-3 to VMFS-5. Really? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Exactly how big can I make a single-extent VMFS-5 datastore? (VMware vSphere Blog)
Upgraded VMFS-5: Automatic Partition Format Change (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMFS-5 VMFS-3, What’s the Deal? (Boche.net)
VMFS-5 introduced in vSphere 5 (ESX Virtualization)
VMFS-5-what you need to know in a nutshell… (Virtual Geek)
VMFS-5 LUN Sizing (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.0: What has changed for VMFS? (Yellow Bricks)

vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC)

VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster Case Study (VMware Tech Paper)

vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)

vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) – Introduction (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) – A Very Nice Resilience Feature (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) – Installed & Configured in under 10 minutes (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) – Even More Resilience (VMware vSphere Blog)
vSphere Storage Appliance – Can I run vCenter on a VSA cluster member? (VMware vSphere Blog)
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance – How does it work? (VMware TV)
vSphere Storage Appliance Resilience Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere Storage Appliance Installation and Configuration Demo (VMware TV)
vSphere 5 What’s New – Storage Appliance (VSA) (NTPro.nl)
VMware Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) v1.0 – The Facts & The Features (The VM Guy)
Getting Starting with the vSphere 5 vCenter Server Appliance (Virtualization Admin)
VMware: Install & Configure vCenter Server Appliance (vmDK)
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Evaluation Guide (VMware)
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance FAQ (VMware KB article)
General vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) licensing information (VMware KB article)

Upgrade

VMware vSphere Upgrade Center (VMware)
VMware vSphere 5.0 Upgrade Best Practices (VMware Tech Paper)
vSphere 5 – upgrading vCenter Server video (ESX Virtualization)
My Thoughts on Upgrading to vSphere 5 (The Lone Sysadmin)
vSphere 5 video – Migrating from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0 (NTPro.nl)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The hardware part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The View 5 part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The vSphere part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The VM part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The storage part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The backup part (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – Conclusions (vInfrastructure Blog)
Upgrading to VMware ESXi 5 (Virtual IEF)
How to Automate the Upgrade of Classic ESX 4.x to ESXi 5 (Virtually Ghetto)
VMware: Upgrading ESXi 4.1 U1 to ESXi 5 with Update Manager (vmDK)
How to: Upgrade to vSphere 5 (VMguru.nl)

vCenter Server

General

vSphere 5 – vCenter as a linux VM (ESX Virtualization)
Configure a vCenter 5.0 integrated Syslog server (Boche.net)
vCenter Server 5.0 and MS SQL Database Permissions (Boche.net)
VUM – VMware Update Manager installation Video from my Lab (ESX Virtualization)
vSphere 5 – Installing web client (ESX Virtualization)
Demo Video of the new snapshot consolidation feature in vSphere 5 (ESX Virtualization)
vSphere vCenter 5 Design Considerations (Kendrick Coleman)
Update Manager Changes on vSphere 5 (Malaysia VM)
vSphere 5 Video – The vSphere Web Client (NTPro.nl)
vSphere 5 Web Client Demo (NTPro.nl)
Video – Running vMotion on multiple-network adaptors (NTPro.nl)
Easy installations for vCenter and VMware Update Manager (Mike Laverick)
VMware vSphere 5 and Update Manager Bliss (Virtual Insanity)
Creating a vSphere Update Manager Depot (VMware Tech Paper)
No more Windows Patching via VMware Update Manager 5 (VMware Info)
The design options grow with vCenter 5 (Forbes Guthrie)
vSphere 5:0 vMotion Enhancements (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5.0: vMotion enhancement, tiny but very welcome! (Yellow Bricks)
vSphere 5 – Metro vMotion (Yellow Bricks)
Multiple-NIC vMotion in vSphere 5 (Yellow Bricks)
VMware vCenter Design and Installation Options (Virtualization Admin)
VMware vSphere vMotion Architecture, Performance and Best Practices in VMware vSphere 5 (VMware)
Getting Started with vSphere 5: vCenter Server 5 Basic Installation (VMware KB TV)

vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

vCenter Server Appliance. Part 1 – Configuration and deployment (Juanma’s Blog)
vCenter Server Appliance. Part 2 – vCenter associated services (Juanma’s Blog)
vCenter Server Appliance. Part 3 – Managing the embedded DB2 database (Juanma’s Blog)
vCenter 5 – To Appliance or Not? (Kendrick Coleman)
VMware vCenter Server Appliance and vRAM Reporting (vCritical)
How to Configure the vSphere 5 vCenter Server Appliance (Virtualization Admin)
vSphere 5 vCenter Server Virtual Appliance Quick-Start Guide (VMwire)
VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (VCSA) features and benefits (VMwire)
vCenter Appliance (Yellow Bricks)

vCloud Director

What’s New in VMware vCloud Director 1.5 (NTPro.nl)
Installing vCloud Director 1.5 With SQL Server 2008 (Kendrick Coleman)
VMware vCloud Director 1.5 Config Maximums (Virtual-blog)
Automating vCloud Director 1.5 & Oracle DB Installation (Virtually Ghetto)
Cool Undocumented Features in vCloud Director 1.5 (Virtually Ghetto)
What’s New in VMware vCloud Director 1.5 (VMware TV)

Videos

VMware Unveils vSphere 5 and Cloud Infrastructure Suite (VMwareTV)
VMware vSphere 5 Licensing & Pricing (VMware)
vChat – Episode 19 – LIVE from the VMware vSphere 5 Launch in San Francisco (VMware Videos)
Interview of Ed Hsu, VMware VSA Product Manager by David Davis (VMware Videos)
Duncan Epping Interviewed by David Davis about vSphere 5 and his New Book! (VMware Videos)
Overview of VMware’s July 2011 Products (Wikibon)
Breaking Down the VMware Announcement (Wikibon)
David Floyer Breaks Down the VMware Announcement (Wikibon)
What’s Missing from the VMware Announcement? (Wikibon)
The Services Angle on VMware’s July 2011 Announcement (Wikibon)
The Storage Angle on VMware’s Announcement (Wikibon)
New VMware Licensing Confuses Users and the Ecosystem Alike (Wikibon)

vShield

Updated VMware vShield App 5 includes sensitive data discovery (SearchVMware)
What’s New in VMware vShield 5.0 – Trust Your Cloud (VMware TV)
What’s New in VMware vShield 5 (NTPro.nl)
vShield App with Data Security … my favorite part of vSphere 5 (Common Denial)
vShield App 5 Data Security = awesomesauce and free to try… (Virtual Geek)

What’s New Whitepapers

What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Platform (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Performance (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Networking (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Availability (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vCloud Director 1.5 (VMware)
What’s New in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 (VMware)
What’s New in VMware Data Recovery 2.0 (VMware)

Share This:

VMware’s vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI): How they work and which arrays support them

In a virtual server environment, the interaction between hypervisor and the storage hardware that supports it is complicated. In an effort to simplify that interaction and make it more efficient, VMware developed the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). The APIs create a separation of duty between the hypervisor and its storage devices, enabling each to focus on what it does best: virtualization-related tasks for the hypervisor and storage-related tasks for the storage arrays.

With VAAI, storage array vendors can directly integrate their storage hardware and applications with vSphere. VAAI enables certain storage tasks, such as cloning, to be offloaded to the storage array, which can complete them more efficiently than the host can. Rather than use host resources to perform the work (which was required prior to VAAI), the host can simply pass the task onto the storage array, which will perform it while the host monitors the progress of the task. The storage array is purposely built to perform storage tasks and can complete requests much faster than the host can.

Read the full article at searchvirtualstorage.com…

Share This:

Patching VMware ESXi Installable

ESXi 4.1 brought changes to the patching process. Previously, the Host Update utility — an application included with the vSphere Client — could patch ESXi 4.0 hosts. VMware removed Host Update from ESXi 4.1, presumably to encourage users to upgrade to paid versions that are managed and patched with vCenter Server’s Update Manager. As a result, the only method left to patch the free version of ESXi is with the vihostupdate command-line utility, which is included in the vSphere Command-Line Interface (CLI).

Before using this method, it’s important to understand how the patches work and where to find them.

Read the full article at searchvmware.com…

Share This: