From Virtualization.Info:

VMware finally made the move that everybody predicted and was awaited for a long time: releasing its hypervisor for free.

During the Q2 2008 earnings call the company announced that before the end of July it will release the Update 2 for VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and that will give away the lightweight edition of the product, ESX 3i, for free.

The new 3i edition was introduced at the end of the last year.

It doesn’t change the characteristics of the hypervisor but fundamentally chances a part of its architecture, dropping the Console Operating System (COS) and reducing the overall system footprint to 32Mb.

The change allowed several OEMs to preload this edition of the hypervisor into their servers, through internal USB keys, Solid-State Drives (SSD) or hidden partition in the primary hard drives.

virtualization.info has learned some additional details about the move:

• VI 3.5 and ESX 3i will continue to share a the large majority of the code base (so there will be an ESX 3i Update 2). There will be no delays on the release of both products.


• ESX 3i will continue to have the same features that has today, without additional limitations


• ESX 3i will continue to have the same APIs, allowing anybody to develop free or commercial alternatives to VirtualCenter (despite some features like VMotion cannot be replicated because of the VMware SDK limitations).


• VMware will not require the purchase of any software & support subscription to access the product. Customer will be able to get the code without any restriction.


• The customers that purchased the current version of ESX 3i directly from the VMware online store will be eligible for a rebate.


• The ESX version that includes the Console Operating System (COS) will not be faded out (at least in the short timeframe). Most VMware customers are currently using that version and the company will support them for a long time.


• VMware Server will not be faded out (as many could suppose). The company still sees the product as a valuable proposition for a different kind of audience.

You can read the full post here.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

This is an interesting post Leo Raikhman wrote about the ESX / VC installation best practices:

I get asked this all the time: what is best practice installation procedure?

I don’t know that there is such a thing - every environment is slightly different but here’s my general outline for ESX 3.5 + VirtualCenter 2.5 attached to Fibre SANs.

Installing VirtualCenter 2.5:

• Install SQL 2005 + SQL Native Client
• Patch SQL 2005 to SP2 + associated updates
• Enable SQL clustering if relevant.
• Create SQL DB with SQL-authenticated user as db_owner for the msdb and newly created databases (for VMware VirtualCenter and VMware Update Manager)
• Create an ODBC connection with above information on targeted VC server
• Install VirtualCenter
• Add VirtualCenter server IP to Exchange Relay Access rulesets
• Configure VirtualCenter SMTP settings, alarm definitions and Message of the Day
• Copy/install sysprep/deployment tools files
• Create required customizations
• Create a datacenter object
• Create a cluster object
• Configure HA + advanced HA with VM HA monitoring
• Configure DRS + separation rules
• Install Update Manager - sync ESX host updates with VMware downstream servers
• Configure VirtualCenter certificates as per this article from the excellent VM/ETC

Read the full post here.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

And the winners for this week are:

1. Top 5 things to know about Hyper-V via Windows Virtualization Team Blog
2. Deploying Windows Server 2008 with slipstreamed Hyper-V RTM (Part 2) via John Howard's Blog
3. If A Virtualization Misconfiguration Or Security Vulnerability Exists Within An “ESX Appliance,” Does It Really Exist? via Virtualization Security
4. Virtualising (Domain Controller) Servers via Mark Empson's Blog
5. Virtualization's Impact on IT Operations - Part Two via Virtual Strategy Magazine

From RTFM Education:

"Simon Ruzgar of autonation.com has very kindly sent RTFM a handy little script - based on some post-P2V scripting I did donkey’s years ago - I’m mean back in the ESX2/VC1/P2V2 era. Here’s the problem it fixes: When you P2V you loose your IP settings from your Windows “Local Area Connection”, because Windows hides the old physical NIC, and shows a new vmxnet NIC inside the virtual machine.

Here’s what Simon’s script does: You run it on the physical box prior to conversion, it reads the IP configuration and pipes it to a text file. You then carry out your P2V. Once that’s completed you re-run the script which then reads your “lost” IP configuration from the text file - and puts them back behind you new local area connection."

You can download the script here.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

Another nice article from Eric Siebert:

1-Understanding Performance in a Virtualized Environment: A VMworld 2007 presentation (you will need to sign-in) on understanding virtualization performance and overhead as well as dispelling common myths. 

2-Interpreting Performance Statistics in V13: A VMworld 2007 presentation (you will need to sign-in) on understanding and interpreting VirtualCenter/ESX statistics in the VI Client and esxtop. 

3-Performance Tuning Best Practices for ESX Server 3: A white paper from VMware with performance tips that cover the most performance-critical areas of VI3.

4-Top 12 ways to Improve Guest Server Performance under VMware ESX Server: A VMworld 2006 presentation (you will need to sign-in) with 12 tips for configuring hosts, virtual machines and guest environments for best performance.

5-Performance Monitoring and Capacity Planning: A VMworld 2006 presentation (you will need to sign-in) on performance tuning methodologies and approaches.

6-ESX Workload Analysis, Lessons Learned: A VMworld 2006 presentation on performing workload analysis and performance analysis of virtual workloads. 

7-VMware ESX Server, Best Practices for Performance: A presentation from EMC World 2007 with recommended performance practices and benchmarking guidelines.

8-VM Performance Monitoring and Logging: A VMUG presentation from VMware on performance monitoring and using log files.

9-ESX3 Performance Tuning: A VMUG presentation from Long View Systems on performance tuning ESX hosts and virtual machines.

10-Performance Tuning for VI3: A VMworld 2006 presentation on basic performance concepts, tools, technologies and recommendations.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

Mike Laverick has posted two VMware Site Recovery videos that you may want to check:

"I’ve been working with VMware’s Site Recovery Manager product for sometime,
indeed I’m in the process of completing a book on the product. As a companion to
the book I’ve put together a couple of Microsoft .wmv files that show a test of
a site recovery plan, and the actual run of a recovery plan for really. One of
the reasons for doing this - is a SRM is very dynamic product which automates a
heck of lot of manual procedures - so one click can have multiple actions - and
its good to see that in live action - as you see the changes taking place at the
protected site and the recovery site. Certainly easier to capture a movie of a
recovery plan than describe in painful detail each step with hundreds of screen
grabs - I can tell you"

Back in February I wrote a post about the VMware Tools and Utilities I use to administer our VMware environment. Now, via vmware-land.com we get the following list:

1-Putty - Telnet and SSH client for remotely connecting to the ESX service console
2-WinSCP and Veeam FastSCP - SCP clients for browsing ESX server file systems and transferring files to/from ESX hosts
3-VI3 SnapHunter and SnapAlert - Utilities that can report all running snapshots on ESX hosts including name, size and date. Can also automatically email reports and optionally commit snapshots
4-VI Scripted Backup Utility - A backup utility that is run from the Service Console that provides VMDK level backups of any VM on storage accessible by the host
5-MCS StorageView - A utility that displays all the logical partitions, operating system, capacity, free space and percent free of all virtual machines on ESX 3.x or Virtual Center 2.x
6-SSH Plug-in - A VI client plug-in that integrates an SSH console directly into the client
7-Storage VMotion Plug-in - A VI client plug-in that extends the client’s functionality by providing an integrated, graphical tool that can be used to invoke storage VMotion (SVMotion) operations
8-VMotion Info - A program that will collect Vendor, Model, CPU Types and the CPU feature bits from all hosts to check for VMotion compatibility
9-VMCdConnected - Scans all Virtual Machines and shows if they have a CD connected to it. After scanning the VM’s you can disconnect all the CD’s with a click of a button
10-VMware Converter – (Performs hot and cold conversions of physical and virtual servers to virtual machines. Also converts image formats

Enjoy!

Posted by Gabriel Maciel

And here you have the the best articles for the past week:

1-Significant Networking Problem with Hyper-V via Scottlowe.org

2-The Case For And Against Stretched ESX Clusters via Virtual Geek

3-VMFS Storage Sizing for Maximum Performance via VM /ETC

4-Disaster Recovery in the Datacenter via VMware Podcasts

5-ROI Analysis: Virtualization via InformationWeek

Enjoy!

Posted by Gabriel Maciel