So apparently this actually *IS* the year of the desktop!   Forget about when you heard it last year or the year before.  This is REALLY it.. Or maybe next  year.    In any event, Citrix and VMware have both had plans for a bare metal Client Hypervisor for a while now and with Citrix’s Synergy announcement, they are now the first to actually release it.  XenClient was announced and a public release candidate of it is available for download on Citrix.com.  VMware had also announced plans a while back for its own CVP (Client Virtualization Platform) but has not released anything to the public yet.  VMware has had offline experimental support for VDI though leveraging it’s VMware Workstation application for a while now.

The basic idea behind these client hypervisors are to give users the option of running a secure corporate image alongside a not so secure personal image. This choice of personal and work images is suppose to allow companies to blindly encourage employees to purchase whatever hardware they like so long as they can run the client hypervisor.  From there, the corporate image will get pushed down and the user can do whatever they like on the personal image without putting corporate assets at risk.  Sounds good I guess but I am not sure I am sold on the hypervisor aspect of it.  My work and personal life are so blended at times (from an application and daily workflow standpoint) that booting to and from different images would be an incredible loss of productivity. Inevitably, I would begin to break the basic rules of having the two distinct images by merging applications and functions to whichever one would gravitate to become the dominant image in my life.  This of course would put support and security back to the same state as when I had just one image on my laptop.  So I’m just not sure it would work for me personally. 

Offline desktop access might just be a red herring anyway since almost everything is becoming blanketed in WiFi.  Planes, Trains and Automobiles are just becoming moving hotspots.  These spots were the traditional barriers for mobile professionals to relinquish their data.  ‘How do I access my Hosted Desktop/App/Doc while on a plane?’  That question is quickly becoming irreverent.  Assuming latency and performance will be overcome, why not just access it all remotely from whatever device you happen to have in your hands at the moment.  iPad, NetBook, Laptop, Kiosk, Phone, whatever.  Although Citrix was first to release the XenClient, I think they had the right message all along.

For me, Access Anytime, Anywhere, Any device was on the money.

As Published on VMwareInfo.com

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

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:

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!

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 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.