As Posted on VMwareInfo.com:
Joel Ramirez attended the Data Domain Best Practices for VMware session at EMC World and got a little inspired.  So let’s talk backup: (Below are Joel’s thoughts).

DynamicOps, Symantec Backup Exec with OST, and Data Domain together provide the most flexible and efficient backup solution for VMware I’ve seen so far.

DynamicOps provides the ability to retire VMs to archive, or nearline, storage.  It is a right-click operation and when you point the nearline target to a Data Domain NFS share, it invokes an automated PowerShell operation that will Storage vMotion the VM to the appliance.  Now your VM, which could be a reference architecture or a model of a customer environment, but isn’t important or used frequently enough to keep on expensive FC disk, isn’t sapping your tier 1 storage.  And it is still available should you need it in the future.  Not only is it available on lower cost storage, but with a replicating set of Data Domain appliances, you can call back any retired VM at a secondary site for test/dev purposes.  You can even Storage vMotion it back to primary storage in production!

With OST, you maximize the investment in your Data Domain appliances.  Say you have a limited budget but absolutely have a need to make the move to backup to disk and deduplication technology.  You buy a smaller Data Domain appliance and enjoy the magic in a box that simplifies backup and makes it more reliable, in addition to the backup data footprint reduction.  Eventually, you’ll execute the disaster recovery phase and need another Data Domain appliance for the secondary site, and by then, you will be using it as a backup target for your backup infrastructure, an NFS share for your SQL dumps, and as the aforementioned nearline storage for retired VMs.  You want to place a bigger Data Domain for longer retentions and archiving at the secondary site. Because the OST API was jointly developed by Data Domain and Symantec, the backup infrastructure is aware of the secondary Data Domain appliance.  You can account for the remote Data Domain within Backup Exec and apply retention policies to keep data longer on the bigger box.

Use the smaller, local Data Domain appliance for 30-45 days retention and leverage the remote Data Domain for 6-12 month or longer retentions.  Paired with OST and DynamicOps, this is a comprehensive backup solution for any VMware environment that maximizes protection, availability, and cost-effectiveness.  With FC disk at ~$5/GB, Data Domain helps extend the value of that tier 1 storage at 1/10th of the cost.  Even SATA is $2-3/GB, so it has an impact on tier 2 storage savings as well!  This is a reference architecture with many benefits and an incredible ROI, check it out.

-Joel
@JoelJet

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

Tuesday, I had a private mode provisioned vDisk fill up completely and needed to resize it quickly.  A little googling around and not quite finding the right answer (I guess I couldn’t get the right search terms down), I headed off to Twitter.   A couple of tweets later and Jarian Gibson came through with an answer! [BTW: If you are at all interested in Citrix, be sure to follow him on twitter (@jariangibson)]

Jarian pointed me to a Citrix KB article : How to Resize a Provisioning Server 5 Virtual Disks.

The KB article details the steps needed to resize the VHD but I thought I’d post this to help highlight the legitimate cases for using Twitter at work.

Thanks Jarian!

As Published on VMwareInfo

If you haven’t had the opportunity to check out the Citrix Netscalers, do it.  They are some pretty neat devices.  The Tech Dev team at IPM has really, in my opinion, shown how cool and flexible these appliances can be with some of the customizations that they are baking into the Netscalers.  Check out the screenshot below.

The IPMer Chatter Scrollbar scrolls Twitter and Facebook status updates from all of the IPMers. 

The Scrollbar is an excellent example of pulling external information into the portal page.  Although our scrollbar flashes through Twitter and Facebook data, any standard or aggregated RSS feed could be fed into this widget.

There is the Support Information tab which allows a user to give all the important Support information to a help desk support person over the phone if they experience any issues connecting to published applications or network resources.

  and of course the  Weather hover!

Not to mention the Single Sign on pass-through for our INTERNAL Timesheet application, our VoIP Portal and Exchange OWA.

I hope this doesn’t come across sounding all marketing and SALESy but did want to post something that highlights some of the enhancements that can be put right into the Netscaler boxes themselves.  I think they are pretty cool and I wanted to see if anyone else was doing anything outside the box on their own Netscalers.

Don’t forget that you can try out a Virtual Edition of the Netscaler @ https://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1857216
Both ESX and Xenserver/Hyper-V editions are available for free download.

-Carlo

As posted on VMwareInfo.com:

Today my NAS emailed me.  It was pretty great.  A short little reminder that a new update to the firmware was now available.  I was lucky enough to receive this in the mail from Chad Sakac around Christmas time and it has been great to work with in my home environment.  I currently have 2 ESX servers connected to it via NFS and all the VMs perform like champs (for my home use).  No complaints from the wife or kids! (Thanks again for the NAS Chad!).

Back to the email.  A quick jump to the web based dashboard of the NAS and there is a nice and easy link to download the new firmware.

A quick shutdown of the Virtual Machines running and I was off to the races on my update.  I’ve said it before but if you are looking for a great inexpensive addition to your Home Lab, check out the IX4.

Literally a couple of clicks later and my firmware was updated.  Check out the release notes below for information on the update.

General Description: This firmware update provides performance improvements for your StorCenter ix4-200d. Iomega recommends this update for all units.

What’s New:

Version 2.1.30.8298

• Improved folder permissions, including AFP
   
• Fixed iSCSI segment length
   
• Improved Video Surveillance integration
   
• Fixed minor security issue with external USB devices
   
• Improved Active Directory integration
   
• Improved content indexing performance
   
• Fixed an issue with RAID arrays
   
• Improved performance when discovering multiple devices on network
   
• Restricts thumbnails to files less than 15 megapixels

Virtual Disks.  They are single file containers that hold entire file systems within them (think of the Galaxy Marbles in Men in Black!)  Operating systems blissfully run within them without any knowledge of the outside hypervisors. Very nice from a management perspective.  Need a quick backup, just copy the file and you are good to go.  Need an exact byte by byte copy of that server’s C drive, just copy the file and you are good to go.  Very useful and tidy in their current form.

One of the more annoying things for me that has come out of the Hypervisor Wars between Microsoft, VMware and Citrix is the 2 different standards of Virtual Disk file formats.  Microsoft and Citrix have standardized on Virtual Hard Disks(VHDs) while VMware was first to release their Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs).  In my opinion, there is no real difference between the two formats.  Operationally though, they are incompatible.  I think in most other scenarios, this might be acceptable since most users would choose a hypervisor and run with it.  Even changing between the hypervisors isn’t too difficult with the availability of various conversion tools and methods.  I take issue with the whole situation when I am using solutions that run various products concurrently which are now leveraging the different (and incompatible) formats. 

Take for example a common VDI solution leveraging Citrix Provisioning Services with Citrix XenDesktop running on top of VMware’s vSphere platform.  Citrix Provisioning leverages vDisks (VHDs) to stream an Operating System to a XenDesktop target running as a vSphere Virtual Machine (VMDK).  Everything is fine until you realize how GREAT it would be to mount that VHD directly in ESX to make some modifications to it (Update VM Tools or a NIC driver).  Can’t do it unless you go through a kludge process of converting the VHD to VMDK and then back again.  Under Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, mounting that VHD is a simple supported process.  Even Windows 7 can now directly boot VHDs!

As I create a mental tally in my head, I am currently counting more products out there that are leveraging the VHD format than the VMDK format.  VHDs are and will continue to be an excellent way to evaluate the newest Microsoft Back Office software.

I’m definitely not advocating that VMware change it’s file format from VMDK to VHD but would love to see them begin to support VHDs natively.  It’s not enough to convert them on the fly to VMDKs since sometimes I need to bring them back to their original programs (i.e. Citrix Provisioning Services).

Come on VMware!

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

In case you missed them this month, Citrix published 2 KB articles detailing the End Of Life support plans for their current XenDesktop products. 

XenDesktop 3 is end of life at the end of this year, and there won’t be patches after 10/28/10.  XenDesktop 4 however, will be supported through 5/2014.

XenDesktop 3 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124351 
XenDesktop 4 – http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124352

It’s interesting to me that XD3 which was released in February 2009 will have it’s support pulled so soon while XD4 is slated to have support until 2014.  From my perspective, it seems that most of the XD3 implementations where still in Test/Dev while XD4 has made inroads into production environments making support of the product more critical and requiring the customers to upgrade more of an issue.  I would imagine that from now to 2014, at least 2 more major revisions will be released to the public. XenDesktop 6 anyone?

As published on VMwareInfo.com:

Even though the iPad will not hit the streets until Saturday, iTunes is starting to show iPad applications.  One of interest is the GotoMeeting application.  Jump on that webinar from wherever!

Although released on April Fools, Chris Hahn has verified that the download and application are in fact real.
Check it out for yourself @ http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gotomeeting/id363452804?mt=8

Originally Published on VMwareInfo.com:

If you are reading this post and your machine keeps shutting down every 2 hours, you might be running a Beta version of Windows 7!

That was almost me about 3 weeks ago.  I got this notification from my system tray followed up by an official email from Microsoft (** on the bottom) letting me know that my beta version of Windows 7 (that I had been running gleefully for about 7 months) was about to EXPIRE.  Oh and yeah, beginning March 1st, the machine would shut down every 2 hours!  Nice!  To further complicate matters, there is no LEGIT way of upgrading from a Beta copy to a Released version of Windows 7.  It is recommended to wipe the machine and start from scratch.  Although there were some hacks to upgrade the Beta version, I took the opportunity to wipe the machine and go from a 32 bit Beta straight to 64 Bit Production!

I personally am always nervous to wipe my laptop and start from scratch in fear of screwing up my productivity.  As a consultant, I use my laptop as my primary machine and use it everyday.  I have tons of little tweaks and programs that I never remember until I need them.  Here are three solid practices I used this time around for a successful wipe and rebuild.

1) I P2V’d my laptop to an external USB drive. This worked out great for me.  I had a 320 GB passport USB drive that was fully capable of storing my 250GB Laptop image.  After P2Ving the machine, I wiped the laptop, installed the new OS and immediately installed VMware Workstation.  With the base OS and Workstation running, I was able to fire up my P2V’d Laptop Virtual Machine directly from the USB drive and copy things from the VM to the REAL laptop.  This also gave me an opportunity to ‘remember’ how I had everything set up and what programs I had installed.  A great reference for me to use while rebuilding the machine.

2) I bookmarked all the cool utilities/programs/tweaks I found using Delicious.com. Although I started this practice a little too late, I had been bookmarking all the neat things I installed on my laptop with Delicious with the tag of REBUILD.  The idea behind this one is clear.  After rebuilding my machine, sign into Delicious and begin downloading all the programs again.

3) I never used the Windows Settings Transfer Wizard. Rather than having all the junk from my old build dragged into my new build, I leveraged the P2V’d image.  For many applications, I took the defaults for the installations and then just overwrote the Program Files Application directory with it’s equivalent from the Virtual Machine.  This worked great for many applications that I had done a lot of customizations on.  Firefox is a perfect example.  All the Add-ons and tweaks are stored in the file structure so after the initial install and copy, the application was back exactly the way I wanted it.

So after a couple of days of reinstalling programs, copying down documents, and changing things around, I am now 100% back to my 80% productive self. 64 Bit no less!

On a side note, I don’t really notice much difference between my old 32bit version of Win7 and my new 64Bit Win7 – Even with the FULL 4GB RAM now.

** Here is the Microsoft Email I received prior to my upgrade.

It’s time to upgrade from the Windows 7 Release Candidate

While most people who tested Windows 7 have now moved to the final version, some are still running the Release Candidate. If you haven’t moved yet, it’s time to replace the RC.
Starting on March 1, 2010 your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Your work will not be saved during the shutdown.

The Windows 7 RC will fully expire on June 1, 2010. Your PC running the Windows 7 RC will continue shutting down every two hours and your files won’t be saved during shutdown. In addition, your wallpaper will change to a solid black background with a persistent message on your desktop. You’ll also get periodic notifications that Windows isn’t genuine. That means your PC may no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads requiring genuine Windows validation.

To avoid interruption, please reinstall a prior version of Windows or move to Windows 7. In either case, you’ll need to do a custom (clean) install to replace the RC. As with any clean installation, you’ll need to back up your data then reinstall your applications and restore the data. For more details about replacing the RC, see the Knowledge Base article KB 971767. For more information, visit the Window 7 Forum.

Thanks again for helping us test Windows 7.

As Published on VmwareInfo.com:

It’s a pretty solid best practice to create a separate virtual disk or VMDK/VHD for each volume in a virtual machine.  The alternative is to create 1 vDisk and then partition the drives within it.   Single volumes per virtual hard drive allow for much easier management in my opinion.  Growing, shrinking and otherwise manipulating a single volume when it is 100% of the virtual disk becomes a trivial thing with most hypervisors.  Situations where a single virtual disk is partitioned to multiple volumes and manipulating the first partition on the disk, becomes an exercise in data block juggling.  Sometimes preventing the operation from occurring at all.  Of course for new VMs, I still tend to favor a single partition approach but when multiple partitions are in play, separate virtual disks are the way to go.

From within the Windows’ Disk Manager/Administrator, multiple VMDK/VHDs will just look like separate Hard Disks within the Operating System.  Hopefully, these Virtual Disks will also be located on a SAN storage LUN somewhere!

One of the new features of Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2 is DirectAccess.  The promise of DirectAccess is the ability for corporate laptops and machines to connect to the corporate LAN seamlessly without the need for a VPN. (Or rather, DirectAccess will be your VPN).  The machine will be connected whenever it is connected to internet access.  All of your internal resources will be available to the client machine whenever it has internet access.  Marcos Velez summarized some of the requirements and challenges clients may face when looking to implement the new Windows DirectAccess feature.

… as with everything that is too good to be true, the requirements [for DirectAccess] are enormous.  I will try to summarize some of those right now:

1. DirectAccess requires Windows 2008 R2
2. DirectAccess requires IPv6
3. DirectAccess clients need a client certificate in order to be able to connect to the network
4. DirectAccess requires deploying a DirectAccess server
5. DirectAccess STILL requires users to log in, but
6. DirectAccess client laptops (or computers) are ALWAYS connected to the corporate network (even before the user has logged on)

By the way, DirectAccess is a very cool idea, and it really is worth considering, but the list of pre-requisites is long.  Daunting, even.  DirectAccess requires a large investment (of time and money) by clients into technologies that they might not be able (or willing) to undertake at this time.  That is a discussion that needs to be taken up with the client, of course.

As published on VMwareInfo.com: