Chad Sakac, EMC RockStar extraordinaire, is helping to launch a new VMware focused portal site at EMC.com and is hoping everyone out there will stop by and check it out.  The “Everything VMware at EMC” site is www.emc.com/vmwarecommunity.  This community is open to everyone and will give you access to the EMC vSpecialists, forums, discussion groups, events and other relevant Virtualization information EMC is hard at work creating. 

Of course you can also check out Chad’s Blog @ Virtual Geek or follow his Tweets @ Twitter.com/sakacc.

Originally Published on VMwareInfo.com 

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

So there were a bunch of unconfirmed plans last year (2009!) that VMware might be getting rid of the Enterprise edition of vSphere in favor of the more expensive feature rich Enterprise Plus.  I think there was a lot of push back from customers and VMware issued a stay of execution for Enterprise licensing.  Sort of.  Looks like the current stance is that EXISTING customers with up to date subscriptions for VMware 3.5 Enterprise licenses can renew/upgrade to VI4 Enterprise licenses but NEW customers or NEW licenses only have the Enterprise Plus option.  Enterprise without plus is not an option for new licenses.  If you are confused, then this chart probably won’t help much.

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

Finally got a chance to play with the vDR appliance a little more in depth at my last engagement.  I have to say that I am pretty impressed. 

After the installation and configuration process were completed, I set up a quick job to back up all 20 or so VMs in the environment.  Most of the VMs were based off of a 25GB VMDK clone machine.  I had high hopes for the De-Dupe!   I set up the backup windows to happen over night and headed home.

We had decided to create the De-Dupe store on a LaCie NAS device using a simple share. (10.10.10.10\Public).  vDR created a subfolder called VMDataRecovery and put all backups into this directory.  The resulting backup of all 20 or so machines took up only 55 GBs of space on the LaCie.  Very Impressive! 

One thing to note, Unlike Veeam or Vizioncore, vDR does not create individual packages for each backed up VM.  Rather it creates a type of backup catalog where it stores ALL backed up machines and restore points together.  Be sure to replicate or backup the entire store to tape. 

Some additional items to note about vDR.

• You can’t really set up a schedule of when to backup Machines.  You basically create windows for the appliance to backup the machines.  You could create separate jobs for each VM and stagger very small windows but I think over the long haul it would become too tedious to maintain effectively.
• There is an option to Backup Now that you can click to perform just in time backup requests.

VMware Data Recovery is included with vSphere for any customers running Advanced or higher.

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

In environments where you might be so inclined to run XenApp Published applications over your XenDesktop sessions, the default behavior for the ICA protocol is to map a client’s local drives all the way through the sessions. (Pass-through ICA)  See image below :

This may not be the desired user experience if the XenDesktop session is the user’s Main desktop.  Users might need to access files saved to the local XenDesktop drives from within their published XenApp applications.

Changing a quick registry value on the XenDesktop machine will correct this issue.  From the Support article : http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX238200

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA Client\Engine\Configuration\Advanced\Modules\ClientDrive
Create the Reg Value: NativeDriveMapping
Reg Type: REG_SZ
Add the Value: True

This value will yield the desired results illustrated below :

For me, New Years is a chance to look forward to the new year ahead (Goals, To-Do lists, Resolutions) and reflect a little on the ones that have past.  Inspired by a tweet I saw referencing the 1996 Citrix Web Page, I took a trip of my own to see the 1996 version of our Website using the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine.  This was pretty much the time when I started working here.  Good Times, Good Times.

Hoping you have a Happy Holiday Season and a Great 2010!

-Carlo

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

I seem to run into this over and over again.  Clients that are confused about whether to put VirtualCenter (now called vCenter) on a physical server or a virtual machine.   It has always been my practice to create vCenter as a Virtual Machine within the VI environment.   I have always felt that one of the goals of virtualization is server consolidation and management and to allocate a physical machine to manage it all seems almost hypercritical.

When speaking with customers I often site the advantages of virtual machines over their clunky metal counterparts with the following :

1. High Availability – Most clients do not realize that HA will function after initial setup without VirtualCenter and as a result will protect VirtualCenter from hardware failure.  If the Host that is servicing the Virtual VirtualCenter crashes and burns, HA (running on all ESX hosts in the cluster) will direct one of it’s members to power the VirtualCenter VM back up.  Crisis averted.
2. Portability – Once a VM, VirtualCenter can be replicated and become part of your backup and DR strategy.  With Storage vMotion and “vanilla” vMotion, you can now even use VirtualCenter to move itself from LUN to LUN or Host to Host without having the universe implode on itself.
3. Manageability – upgrading vCenter, no problem, just take a quick snapshot and go.  Need more memory or CPU cycles, just move the sliders up!  Hard drive filled – Glad it’s not a physical box.
4. Policy – VirtualCenter is an IT server and if it manages to go down, the rest of the environment continues to function.  Administrators can always revert back to attaching to individual hosts to perform basic management tasks on the environment until someone powers the vCenter back up.
5. Support – VMware fully support either configuration in any environment.
6. The VMware roadmap is to release a Linux based VirtualCenter Appliance.  Might as well stay ahead of the curve!

In LARGE environments with dozens of hosts and 1000s of virtual machines, physical VirtualCenter servers might have their place but for the majority of my clients, a vCenter VM makes a lot of sense.

As posted on VMwareInfo.com:

Here is a quick little comparison of the options available to implement Vizioncore’s vRanger product for backing up Virtual Machines to a Data Domain device.   I am sure there might be other ways to accomplish this but these are all the one’s I thought of! This assumes you are running Fiber to your SAN based datastores.

NFS Export

Using Data Domain’s ability to create an NFS mount, you  can configure the ESX hosts to use the Data Domain as a DataStore. This will allow the VizionCore vRanger machine to direct the individual ESX hosts to backup the VMs over a vKernel port group to the Data Domain server.

Pros:

1. The NFS export will be available to ALL ESX hosts so multiple ESX hosts could transmit backup traffic simultaneously increasing throughput and shortening the backup window.
2. Full backups would be taken each night which would make restores a little easier.
3. Vizioncore server could be virtualized since it would only manage and NOT PASS traffic.

Cons:

1. Virtual Machine backup traffic from the vKernel to the Data Domain will be transmitted over TCP connections.
2. NFS does not support incremental backups which mean that every night full backups would have to be transmitted over TCP to the Data Domain possibly increasing backup window times.

CIFS Share

Using Data Domain’s ability to create an CIFS mount, you can configure the Vizioncore vRanger Server to use the Data Domain as a Windows Share. This will allow the Vizioncore vRanger Server to directly backup the Virtual Machines over TCP to the Data Domain Server.

Pros:

1. Windows CIFS mounts are the only destination supported by vRanger for incremental backups. This will allow for much smaller backup windows.
2. Vizioncore vRanger server could be virtualized.

Cons:

1. vRanger server could prove to be a bottleneck in throughput and lengthen backup windows.
2. Backup traffic would be transmitted from the ESX server and to the Data Domain server over TCP connections.

VCB proxy with NFS Mount

A physical VCB proxy server with vRanger installed could be fiber connected into the SAN fabric allowing VCB/vRanger to perform LAN free backups from the SAN to a local NFS mount provided by the Data Domain device.

Pros:

1. The physical VCB server could perform incremental backups over the Fiber directly shortening backup times.
2. The NFS export could be mounted through the VCB Windows server supporting incremental backups.
3. The Backup Proxy would shoulder the processing load of the backups allowing the backup window to possibly extend into work hours.

Cons:

1. vRanger / VCB proxy would need to be a physical server connected via fiber into the fabric.

If you are running fiber in your environment, I think this last option would be the best.  What do you think?

Most companies now have plans to investigate and use the latest form of virtual desktop in the very near future.  There are many POC’s (proof of concepts) going on as we speak and many more are planned. Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and others are all vying for a piece of this large market potential.

Let’s consider the following situation for a company: 8,000 users, 1,200 servers. Virtualizing the 1,2000 servers in the datacenter  saves money, power, is easier to manage etc. So with a consolidation ratio of 20:1 (to make the math simple) we would then have to manage only 60 servers as opposed to 1,200.

On the other hand, if the plan were to take ALL 8,000 users and virtualize their desktops into the datacenter, even with double the consolidation ratio of 40:1, this would mean managing another 200 servers. Add to this the additional expensive datacenter storage, power, electricity, real estate, etc. “plus” still having to work with end user devices. While the hosted vdi solution does work in many cases, a complimentary solution is on the horizon.

So what’s a company to do? Stay Physical with Virtual.

We would suggest that companies begin to deploy the virtual desktop on a server hypervisor to gain experience, conduct their POC and understand the end user experience first hand. However, once the desktop hypervisor is available and tested for scalability and reliability, and with the use of provisioning technology,  a company can begin to deploy their provisioned and secure virtual desktops  throughout the organization by using existing PC’s or instituting BYOP (bring your own PC) with the proper PC configuration.

The BYOP model, with a client hypervisor (e.g. XenClient from Citrix – available Q1 2010) allows IT to provision a secure corporate desktop to an end user’s device, while at the same let the end user have complete control and freedom to conduct his personal business on the same desktop.

It‘s a great time to be in the thick of things and as always “If It’s Virtually Possible, We Do it!!

by Myron Bari – November30, 2009 (mbari@ipm.com)

As posted on VMwareInfo.com:

Here is a quick one page Visual Guide to help discern the differences between the various licensing models of VMware’s vSphere.  For one, they have switched licensing back to SINGLE processor licenses and have scrapped the FlexLM license database and went to easier 25 digit license codes.  The four editions of vSphere 4 will be Standard, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. 

For the past several quarters when my colleagues meet with CIO’s and their team, they are confronted with the statement “I don’t have any money!”.

Upon further analysis that statement usually means that the client does not have any money for CAPEX (capital expenditures).

However, all companies spend considerable dollars every year on OPEX (operating expenses).

OPEX normally includes maintenance for current hardware & software, staff compensation, utilities, rent, courier services, supplies (tapes,paper etc.)

IPM has  found considerable opportunity to lower OPEX for clients by investing in new technologies. Comparing the status quo cash flows  to the new solution cash flows, adding in a NPV (net present value) and ROI calculation usually results in an an opportunity for the CIO (with or without IPM) to present a legitimate and reasonable proposal to a client’s CFO in his/her language.

This methodology assists us to focus on insuring that a project has a realistic benefit for the client. Summarizing this analysis in a simple to understand spreadsheet allows for valuable discussion and partnership.

It‘s a great time to be in the thick of things and as always “If It’s Virtually Possible, We Do it!!

by Myron Bari – November 8, 2009 (mbari@ipm.com)