VMware Communities : Thread List - Product & Feature Suggestions

Shared writable mmap detection

devzero — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:26:30 GMT

Please consider adding detection for special filesystem capabilities and avoid crashing of vmware, especially when support for shared writeable mmap is missing.

i have seen TONS of reports for this on the web (blogs etc) and quite some fuse filesystem mention the needed workaround "usenamedfile=false".

this could be handled automatically and vmware wouldn`t need to crash and the user wouldn`t need to pull his hair out to find the reason for that.

also have a look at:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/61875
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/243672

VI3: Linux Client, Please

nick.couchman — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:21:04 GMT

Well, I've seen several threads around here asking about VirtualCenter support for Linux, which I think is a great idea. I recently downloaded an evaluation copy of ESX3 (VI3 - whatever you'd like to call it) as a proof-of-concept for my boss. I was floored when I found out that there is no ESX3 Client/Console (or "Virtual Infrastructure Client" if you'd like to call it that) for Linux. Are you kidding?! Please, VMware, take this request seriously - there are quite a few of us Linux guys out here running ESX that don't want to also have to run Windows inside of Player or Workstation on their local PC's just so they can manage ESX3. Please, get a Linux client/console for ESX3 out soon (as well as the Linux VC clients that have already been mentioed).

PETITION - Native Mac version of the VI Client

virek — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:26:42 GMT

Copied from the Fusion forum...here's a better place I think.

I'm going to start this old chestnut again...

I'm here at VMWorld 2008, Cannes and I got talking to a couple of people. Now I'm not claiming any inside knowledge or anything but I'm guessing a petition with enough response will make VMware think seriously about doing a native mac VI Client.

I'm sure, like me, there are many of you who use the mac daily who also deploy, maintain, train and troubleshoot VI3, and booting an XP vm just to do that is well...a PITA.

So please, join in.

VMware is still one of those rare-breed companies that 'actually' listen to their customers, unlike others that say they do, but...don't.

Matthew VCP, VSP

Use LLDP as well as CDP in VI Client's Network Details view

gclinch — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:11:30 GMT

Unfortunately our environment does not support Cisco's proprietary discovery protocol CDP, but all our edge devices do support the vendor-neutral protocol LLDP - it'd be really nice if the VI client's display of networking details could be extended to include details from LLDP as well as CDP.

Graham

Please stop renaming your products with every single release!

hsteinhaus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:19:12 GMT

Could you imagine anybody would know Coca Cola if they had renamed their product with every single truck leaving their factory?

Message was edited by: oreeh

Reason: Offensive language removed

Oliver Reeh
VMware Communities User Moderator

VMplayer 3 is artificially crippled for no apparent reason

continuum — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:30:59 GMT

VMplayer 3 has the nice new feature to create VMs. Fine

On the other hand the must-have-tool vmnetcfg.exe was removed.
A new user will have tremendous problems to setup the vmnetworks as he needs them.

It still is possible to configure the virtual network using vnetlib and registry but both ways are neither documented by VMware itself nor supported.

Also missing : vmware-vdiskmanager.exe

I assume the new feature of creating VMs was added to keep up with the more featuire rich VirtualBOX - which is a good idea.
But this efforts are ruined by leaving two important tools out of the free package.

Ulli

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

please provide vmware-tools iso-files as direct downloads

continuum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:23:46 GMT

please provide vmware-tools iso-files as direct public downloads

This has always been a problem in the past - users had to download other products where the iso-files were included or used obscure torrent-files ....
Now with the new Workstation it is even worse - the automatical download of the tools isos simply does not work as promised.
The buildin feature to detect updated isos does not even detect when the last download failed and so they often state that everything is uptodate even when some of the isos are missing.
To test this - delete one of the iso-files and then click update.

So why is it a problem to make the iso-files available as public downloads - hopefully unobscured - meaning not wrapped in msi-files or tarballs

Nobody can want that the users again start to download this iso-files from the torrent-network ...

Ulli

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

Converter: Schedule a cold migration of a running VM

maxel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:10:31 GMT

Hi!

Converter should be able to schedule a cold migration of a running VM..with scheduled shutdown/power off and then the normal migration process...

Tom

VMotion on Essentials +

dennes — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:19:59 GMT

I still cannot fathom why the Essentials Plus SMB bundle has HA, but not VMotion? IMHO this is a bad marketing decision that will cost VMware dearly in the near future, now Hyper-V's Live Migration (free) is slowly but deliberately elbowing it's way to the virtualization spotlights.
VMware is already beginning to lose ground in the SMB market because of this (SMB clients migrating to Hyper-V) which you could put to a stop by having a low cost SMB (2/3 host) license that includes VMotion (and HA).
Maybe we can make a trade.. You can keep DataProtector which i'll happily give back and Essentials+ gets VMotion instead? Deal??

Please consider this!

Thanks,
Dennes

VirtualCenter Client for Linux

rbreidenstein — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 16:45:43 GMT

How about porting the virutal center client over to linux so i can continue to use my linux partition?

Tool to build custom alers and reports

VJourney — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:41:42 GMT

If anyone has gone into the VC database you have seen the wealth of information stored there. It would be great if we could build reports/alerts with a tool instead of writting a cutom SQL job.

Why store so much data if we cant use it?

Set permissions on portgroups / vlans

Gabrie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:59:45 GMT

I have ran into the situation twice now that I could have mixed business units in one cluster if I would have been able to separate the VLANs based on permissions. When an admin from business unit A is creating a VM, I want him to be able to only add VLANs from business unit A and not those of B. Now I can only create two clusters to prevent this.

http://www.GabesVirtualWorld.com

Have Host available to clusters on demand.

VJourney — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:04:17 GMT

Here is what would be nice.

Have the ability to set a side some hosts that are not part of any cluster. If a cluster starts to run out of resources (or a host dies) then virtual center brings one of these hosts in and applies the profile from that cluster to this host. (Think of storage with hotspares) Once the cluster has no need for this host. Virtual center pulls this host back out of the cluster and puts this system back in the lets call it floater pool: Also VC sends the command to put the ESX host to sleep. (Talk about on demand)

Challenges that business would have to build this around:

Storage zonning and masking

Networking as far as security and location.

Physical hard drive exclusively for virtual machine

Kay Hidde — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:37:17 GMT

It would be great if a physical hard drive connected via SATA or Firewire could be dedicated to a virtual machine so that it can be physically managed by the guest operating system. Of course you can add a USB drive to the guest but that is kind of slower than SATA or even Firewire and not all features are passed through (e.g., S.M.A.R.T. to name just one).

I am using Fusion 3.0.0 for MacOSX on a MacPro. And no, to use a BootCamp partition with Windows installed is no alternative since I want to use the physical disk as a secondary drive to an existing virtual host.

Thanks for considering!

Best,
Kay Hidde

ESX Functional Webinterface (and/or linux vi) PLEASE!

freaky2000 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:37:24 GMT

Hi there,

after talking with support I was told to file a request here. I'm purposely filing a new one, as there are plenty already that appearantly go unnoted .

For those interested, I did file a support request. Removed the personal info, it's not relevant.

1st answer (requested/informed about vi client for linux):

Hi,

thank you for your Support Request. As I work in Support I cannot
comment on future releases or product development. However we here in Support
have logged feature requests with our Engineering department regarding the
possibility of developing a VI Client for Linux. Each time we have received a
negative answer from Product Management. So for the time being there are no
plans to create and VI Client for Linux.

I hope this answers your question.

Regards

After this answer I requested a (almost) fully webinterface, for most of us I think it would suffice + it would support other OS'es relatively easy as well probably (for the guest console you still need (atleast in firefox) a plugin, don't know how much OS specific code is in there). Got this answer back:

thank you for your input. Again I personally agree with you as I am
writing this mail from Outlook running in a Windows Vm whose sole functions
are Outlook and the VI Client.

With regards to developing the Web Interface so it is as functional as the VI
Client might I recommend suggesting that through our "Feature Request" page
at http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/suggest/product, specifically
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/49061?tstart=0

Please let me know if this answers your question.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Appearantly there are atleast some different minded people in the organisation itself, which might help our cause .

Anyways, please atleast consider the webinterface.

Authenticate Virtual Center against Novell or LDAP directories

chisfraser — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:25:30 GMT

Are there any plans to integrate Virtual Center with directory services other than Active Directory, such as a Novell or LDAP directory?

Thanks

Exporting information from Update Manager

DavidRiberdy — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:45:37 GMT

I would like to have an easy way to export the missing patch information from VUM to some kind of delimited file. It would make it much easier from a change management perspective (as well as a few others) to be able to generate something I can bring into Excel to show the patches missing for each virtual server. WSUS and Shavlik already do this with their products.

VI3: Mac OS X client

kg4ysn — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:52:09 GMT

In the same spirit as the thread titled "VI3: Linux client," I'd like to propose a client for Mac OS X, too. At present, I need to VNC from my Mac laptop to a Windows workstation to then console into my VM's. (Needless to say, there's a decent amount of overhead!)

Thanks!

Chris

VI3 Client for Linux - what about WINE ?

devzero — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:03:23 GMT

if you don`t develop a native Linux client, please make your existing client run with WINE.

So please work together with the WINE community to make it compatible or add missing API`s to WINE.

see http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=9993

If M$ Office or Adobe Phototshop can run with WINE, it can`t be that hard to to make VI3 Client run with that, too.

As we have seen so many complaints from linux users, i`m sure you will make a lot of your customers happy with that

Realign VMs during Storage vMotion

fletch00 — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:59:38 GMT

Hi,

I have a whole bunch of misaligned VMs and the Netapp tool requires shutting then all down to align them.
Could VMWare make a SVMotion plugin with the option to properly align on the destination volume?

thanks!

VCP

Disaster Recovery/Direct USB Access From Host system to Guest OS...

Johnysteaks — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:23:49 GMT

Hello,

I am implementing Our Disaster Recovery scenario and come to find out that there isn't any direct support for USB Access Through the Host (ESX 4.0) to the Guest VM. This is an issue as there are many scenario, such as Mine, that have application Validate through a USB Key. Especially, with the movement to VDI, I would think this would be an important feature to include.

I am a new user and disappointed with the Lack of support with this..

VMware Workstation Hangs/Crashes If MS Virtual PC 2007 Is Opened - This Should Stop

WhiteKnight — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:11:09 GMT

Whenever I open Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 while VMware Workstation is opened, Workstation either hangs or crashes. I don't believe this behaviour is necessary nor is it graceful.

I know there are some animosities between MS and VMware, but it should not go that far to chastise users for their choice of software. As long as VMware products are used, money has been earned. There's no reason to fight after the deal has been made.

Axel Dahmen

Increase interval of Data Recovery Integrity Checks (better yet make them manual!)

MarkLomas — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:17:51 GMT

I can't stress enough how crushingly useless Data Recovery is rendered by the integrity checks. Even configured at 7 days (the maximum), checks can often take days to complete, leaving little time for Data Recovery to operate and take backups before it begins all over again!

The integrity check interval desperately needs extending so we can perhaps configure it to run every 30 days? Or perhaps even longer. Better yet, the addition of an option to make the integrity check run only when manually initiated by the administrator would be useful.

I see the need for an integrity check system, but the length of time it takes significantly hampers the products ability to actually do the job it's supposed to do.

VMWare - please help us!

Mark Lomas VCP

Suggestion : Export map to MS Visio

rriva — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:47:51 GMT

Consider to add support for MS Visio formatwhen export map from virtual infrastructure client.

FreeBSD as a Host

GeekGod — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:15:00 GMT

Is it possible for you guys to add support for running vmware in freebsd as a host? Many people use FreeBSD and this is keeping me from eliminating windows altogether. And no, Linux is not an option.

Thanks!!

VMware Data Recovery - Feature Req.

jcwuerfl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:00:06 GMT

I have two features that I am wondering can be built into the VMware Data Recovery Product.

1) When you are adding a new Backup Job, and you are at the "Retention Policy" Step, Can you please add based on your Retention Policy and the VM's/VMDK's selected how much total disk space that policy will require and also notifications if you are trying to select a destination that does not have enough free space.

2) Ability to just turn off the "Dedupe" Feature and the result of the Destination Store be a Copy of your VMDK Files. All I want to see is the "Latest Version" of the *.VMDK, *.VMX Files from my VM that I am Backing up so I can on my Destination CIFS Store be able to backup those files to tape.

Thanks

Proper error message in Update Manager

maxel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:12:00 GMT

If you try to stage patches to an ESX 3 server, VUM 4 brings a "unknown failure" But: VUM 4 does not support staging on 3.5 hosts. You can stage only on 4.0. See VUM Admin guide.

Please add an proper error message in that case...

Remove the resource pool screen from the VMotion wizard

Gabrie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:45:57 GMT

When you right click a VM and select "Migrate" the wizard will ask you what resource pool the VM should land in. This is kind of a strange question and actually only applicable when you have hostbased resource pools.

Why is it a strange question? Normally moving a VM from on to another resource pool can be done much easier through drag and drop. Also the vmotion action is done many more times then a resource pool change.

Two biggest issues however I have with this during daily work:

I mostly just start a VMotion and then when the resource pool screen pops up I think "oh sh&& yeah, eeuh what was it again?"
When moving multiple VMs at the same time (select them in the right hand pane and right click) they can belong to multiple resource pools, but you can't select multiple resource pools in the wizard.

So my suggestion is to either remove this step in the wizard or make it like with SVMotion under the advanced button. You get a list of VMs, behind them their current resource pool and the third column would be the destination pool (default to current)

Gabrie

http://www.GabesVirtualWorld.com

Shared Folders Tree Enhancement

mash — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:57:41 GMT

It would be nice if shared folders could be organized into directory trees.

E.g., by naming the shared folders with backslashes:

Data\Folder1

Data\Folder2

This results in one top-level folder Data with two shared sub-folders whereas only the sub-folders map to host folders. Writing to folder Data must certainly be prohibited.

Thank you for a good product ... with shared folders - hopefully - being improved soon.

Third Party Tools/Applications for VMware Infrastructure

IRQ2006 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:11:50 GMT

Greetings ...
I am interested in your feedback about third party tools/applications available in the market for VMware Infrastructure.
I appreciate it if you could provide a brief about your hands-on experience on the tools you implemented, the purpose behind implementing it & how well it integrates with VMware products.

Thanks for your feedback in advance.

Virtual Infrastructure Client for the Mac OS?

bmak — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:05:33 GMT

Hi All,

Now that Vmware has started including the Mac OS in it's supported OS line-up (with the very nice Fusion product), does anyone know whether there are plans for a Mac OS compatible version of the Vmware Infrastructure Client?

At the moment I have to load up Vmware Fusion, start a Windows OS and then run the VIC from there. Seems a convoluted way of doing it and probably introduces a great deal many more things that can go wrong.

A Mac OS version of the VIC would make this clean, neat and tidy.

Any thoughts please?

Contribute vmxnet source code to the Linux kernel

JosephLam — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:06:23 GMT

Instead of providing vmxnet via a separate vmware-tools install, please submit vmxnet source code to the Linux kernel.

The vmxnet installation on most Linux guest VMs I've used is extremely fragile and a pain to set up and maintain. Almost everytime I do an OS update and reboot, the network will be broken because vmxnet driver is broken and I'll have to go through the hassle of running vmware-config.pl and recompile the vmxnet driver. And not to mention the conflicts with built-in network drivers e.g. pcnet32. This severely degrade the user experience of Linux and VMWare products.

Contributing vmxnet to the kernel will ensure out-of-the-box support in all distributions and better experience for users running virutalized Linux infrastructure.

Increase the 2 TB VMDK size limit!

HenrikElm — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:41:35 GMT

2 TB isn't that big today..

/Henrik

Increase VMFS 3.31 or older datastores from vCenter

HenrikElm — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:43:32 GMT

Today you can do it with 3.33 VMFS only. To be able to increase older VMFS (without extents) you have to connect directly to a host to do it..

/Henrik

Windows apps icons in the Dock in Fusion - please, can we have an option to remove them?

noetus — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:57:10 GMT

I know this has been discussed before, but the last time was quite a while back, and I want to re-raise the issue.

When I run Fusion with the taskbar displayed (which I do on the machine with a large monitor - both the taskbar and the Dock are on the bottom, with the Dock on top - it's perfect, as I can see the left and right parts of the taskbar on either side of the dock, which is all I need, and that way keep track of status stuff in the tray) I would prefer not to have the app icons displayed twice, once in the dock, and once in the taskbar.

There is a clumsy way to get rid of dock icons using built-in tools in Mac OS on a per-app basis (and there are tools that automate, such as Dock Dodger) but it doesn't seem to work consistently with Windows apps in Fusion.

I am guessing this is hard to implement, since otherwise it would have been done already?

VMware VI3, VMware View integration with Novell eDirectory

EricChampagne — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:11:26 GMT

Hi,

We are a IT consultant company and we have a lot of College and University using Novell who look at VMware VI3 and VMware VIew.

1) For VMware VI3 the permissions tabs should be able to connect to an LDAP server instead to Active Directory only.

2) For VMware VIew 3, the VMware Agent should be integrated with Novell Client for Windows ...

We made a few proof of concept with VMware View and each time the Novell Client cause many problems with VMware View Agent. That is bad because these 2 projects was for more than 10000 thin client. They decided to used Citrix XenDesktop instead.

It will be great if you can integrated your product with Novell architecture.

Best regards,

Eric Champagne

IT Director

Adaris Technologies / www.adaris.ca

Improvement Suggestion: Suspend VMs Automatically On Host Log-off/Shut-down

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:29:31 GMT

When logging off or shutting down the host OS (Windows), VMware Workstation should automatically suspend all running VMs (incl. VMs running in the background) immediately.

Currently on Windows 7 Workstation just hangs when a user is logging off at the host OS. At the same time VMs running in the background are simply abruptly shut off. Even though NTFS is a transactional file system, simply cutting off power is something that's never to be regarded a good idea.

Hence, I'd like to suggest to implement a graceful shutdown behaviour of Workstation.

.
(for a previous discussion on this see here)

"Do not show again" for ALL annoying message windows

MaxiVista — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:49:54 GMT

Why is there no option "do not show this window again" for this message which pops up EVERY time I launch a vm:

"The features supported by the processor(s) in this machine are different from the features supported by the processor(s) in the machine on which the snapshot was saved. You may attempt to resume this virtual machine, but doing so may result in unpredictable behavior. Do you wish to try to resume this virtual machine?"

How can I tell vmware to permanently disable this message?

Message was edited by:
MaxiVista

Make the primary hosts in HA selectable and easy visible

Gabrie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:50:01 GMT

In a HA cluster it would be great info to see in the vCenter client which host is primary and which is secondary.

Also when running half the cluster in blade chassis 1 and other half in blade chassis 2, it would be nice to be able to move roles to other hosts and prevent that all primaries are in chassis1. Maybe you could have an option that a host is "prefered primary". When it goes into maintenance mode another host becomes primary, but when it leaves maintenance mode it will become primary again.

http://www.GabesVirtualWorld.com

Lab Manager: Users ability to upload media to media stores

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:03:18 GMT

Lab Manager: Less privileged users ability to upload media to media stores. Please add this permission or feature.

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

ESX automatic partitioning to more closely follow discussed best practices

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:46:22 GMT

VMware’s automatic partitioning schemes over the years don’t seem to follow best practices and lessons learned in the community and in some cases what their instructors teach in the classroom. I think it would help if VMware read the partitioning discussions on their forums or some of the books from the accomplished authors in the community. For instance, creating a mount point for /var/log instead of /var which can contain a subdirectory such as /var/xyz having large core dumps for 3rd party agents or products. I’m all for keeping things simple but not at the price of risking a virtual infrastructure component running 1, 10, or 100+ VMs. From what I’m seeing, manual partitioning is still needed in ESX 4.0 to be in alignment with best practices.

Another example would be creating dedicated partition for /opt. Many people have talked about their experience of 3rd party software dumping their logs in /opt. Without a dedicated /opt partition, these logs fill up /

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

VI: DNS and DG shouldn't be required for guest customization

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:56:07 GMT

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/81401?tstart=0

Why are DNS and default gateway fields required in TCP/IP configuration for guest customization? They shouldn't be.

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

VI: Uptime lost during VMotion

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:53:54 GMT

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/01/11/uptime-lost-during-vmotion/

We lose the uptime statistic during every VMotion. I’m speaking to the uptime performance metric tracked in the VirtualCenter database. It’s a bug that was introduced in VirtualCenter 2.0 and has remained in the code to this day. Here’s how it works:

Sometimes the VIC console will show the uptime counter start over at 0 days, then on to 1 days, etc. Other times the uptime counter will remain blank for days or weeks.

This brings us to an interesting discussion. What would you like uptime in the VIC to mean exactly? Following are my observations and thoughts on VMware’s implementation of the uptime metric in VirtualCenter.

In previous versions of VirtualCenter, a soft reboot of the VM inside of the OS would reset the uptime statistic in VirtualCenter. I believe this was a function of VMware Tools that triggered this.

Today, a soft reboot inside the guest VM does not reset the uptime statistic back to zero.

A VM which has no VMware Tools installed that is soft rebooted inside of the OS (ie. we’re not talking about any VMware console power operation here) does not reset the uptime statistic.

I could see the community take a few different sides on this as there are two variations of the definition of uptime we’re dealing with here. Uptime of the guest VM OS and uptime of the VM’s virtual hardware.

Should uptime translate into how long the VM virtual hardware has been powered on from a virtual infrastructure standpoint?
Or should uptime translate into how long the OS inside the VM has been up, tracked by VMware Tools?
The VMware administrator cares about the length of time a VM has been powered on. It is the powered on VM that consumes resources from the four resource food groups and impacts capacity.

The guest VM OS administrator, whether it be Windows or Linux, cares about uptime of the guest OS. The owner of the OS is held to SLAs by the business lines.

My personal opinion is that the intended use of the Virtual Infrastructure Client is for the VMware administrator and thus should reflect virtual infrastructure information. My preference is that the uptime statistic in VirtualCenter tracks power operations of the VM irregardless of any reboot sequences of the OS inside the VM. In other words, uptime is not impacted by VMware Tools heartbeats or reboots inside the guest VM. The uptime statistic should only be reset when the VM is powered off or power reset (including instances where HA has recovered a VM).

At any rate, due to the bug that uptime has in VirtualCenter 2.0 and above, it’s a fairly unreliable performance metric for any virtual infrastructure using VMotion and DRS. Furthermore, the term itself can be misleading depending on the administrators interpretation of uptime versus what’s written in the VirtualCenter code.

I submitted a post in VMware’s Product and Feature Suggestions forum in January of 2007 recording the uptime reset on VMotion issue. As this problem periodically bugs me, I followed up a few times. Once in a follow up post in the thread above, and at least one time externally requesting someone from VMware take a look at it. Admittedly I do not have an SR open.

VMware, can we get this bug fixed? After all, if the hypervisor has become an every day commodity item leaving the management tools as the real meat and potatoes, you should make sure our management tools work properly.

Thank you,

Jas

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

VI: Comma separators in all performance, charts, graphs, logs, etc.

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:49:26 GMT

VI: Comma separators in all performance, charts, graphs, logs, etc.

Example: Looking at the huge numbers with no comma separators in a vCenter memory or disk utilization graph makes me go blind.

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

VI DRS (anti)affinity rules - allow more than 2 VMs per rule

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:40:02 GMT

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/03/27/anti-affinity-rules-are-not-honored-in-cluster-with-more-than-2-virtual-machines/

VI DRS (anti)affinity rules - allow more than 2 VMs per rule.
Having to create more than 1 rule for 3 or more VMs is ridiculous and tedious.

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

vSphere Virtual Machine Performance Counters Integration into Perfmon

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:43:54 GMT

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/07/08/vsphere-virtual-machine-performance-counters-integration-into-perfmon/

here is what needs work with vSphere Virtual Machine Performance Counters:

Must support vSMP VMs
Must support Linux VMs
Support for Solaris VMs would also be nice
More objects: VM Disk and VM Networking

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

Lab Manager 4 and vDS

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:42:37 GMT

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/19/lab-manager-4-and-vds/

While Lab Manager 4 Host Spanning is a step in the right direction for more flexible load distribution across hosts in a Lab Manager 4 cluster, I find the process for entering maintenance mode counter intuitive, cumbersome, and at the beginning when I didn’t know what was going on, frustrating. Unsuccessful maintenance mode attempts have always been somewhat mysterious in the past because vCenter Server doesn’t give us much information to pinpoint the problem as far as what’s preventing the maintenance mode. This situation now adds another element to the complexity. VMware should have enough intelligence to disable Host Spanning for us in the event of a maintenance mode request, or at the very least, tell us to shut it off since it is conveniently and secretly enabled by default during host preparation. Of course, all of this information is available in the Lab Manager documentation, but who reads that, right?

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

VI Templates that can migrate to different hosts like VMs

jasonboche — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:37:06 GMT

VI Templates that can migrate to different hosts like VMs. Unreg/rereg is a PITA. Unavailable hosts (think DPM) kill template use

Jason Boche, vExpert
boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist
VMware Communities User Moderator
Minneapolis Area VMware User Group Leader
vCalendar Author

Thinstalled VI client

Rkelly — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:08:01 GMT

Why doesn't Vmware offer a thinstalled VI client? This would be a nice way to combine the two technologies.

Portable VMware player

Francois Lamoureux — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:22:02 GMT

Hi all,

I was looking for the best way to carry my own VM everywhere, without the need to install anything (VMware Player), and so far I have found nothing available from VMware.

I did found however exactly what I needed from an unofficial port of VirtualBox, Portable VirtualBox. Combine this with a Oh So Easy installer/creator, and you've got this at linuxliveusb.com.

I tried it, installed it from on box on a 2GB thumb drive, move the thumb drive to my laptop, and I could run it automatically by a context menu added when right-clicking on the drive itself. Neat! The only cons so far, mouse gesture flacky, slow (probably because I did not have a super fast thumb drive) and not from VMware.

So add to that one hypervisor on the drive per OS, and you can run your VM straight out of the thumb drive, from any OS, without any host installation.

Any plan from VMware to release something like that, like a "Portable VMware Player on-a-stick"?

ESX 3.0 - Quotas for Snapshots

JasonV — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:48:24 GMT

RE: ESX 3.0

We allow our ESX VM users to create snapshots via the VIC. It would be nice to restrict the number of snaps that can be created (per datacenter/vm/etc) or the amount of disk space that snapshots can use in order to conserve disk space and prevent users from creating massive amounts of unneeded data.

Thanks.

VM > Power > Power on to Boot Menu

mpilking — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:52:28 GMT

Since the BIOS screen flashes so quickly, I think it's great that you have a VM -> Power -> Power to BIOS option. However, frequently the reason I need to get in is to chagne the boot order. I know that there is an ESC option at the BIOS boot loader to to to the Boot Menu, but that option is too fast. Please ad another option to the VM > Power menu to include "Power to Boot Menu".

firewire and usb 2.x support

techmage — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:31:25 GMT

ok...
I have noticed that there is NO firewire/800 support in vmware server (1.0.3) (not the fusion product!!!) for linux (as host OS).

this needs to be added as windows has full support for both USB 2.x and firewire/800 devices (some drivers with additional software support from associated vendors).

also, USb 2.x support is lacking (see thread here:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=94556&tstart=30
and here:
http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=691741#691741
).

can we get a start on this please?

Incorporate View client into Cisco IP Phones

Rkelly — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:02:17 GMT

Everyone has a Cisco IP phone on their desk, why not just have it be your thin client as well? Just have Cisco install the View client with PC over IP and add a USB and Monitor jack and your done.

Incorporate PCoverIP into Vmware Tools and VI console

Rkelly — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:18:33 GMT

A lot of times we are using the VI client and the Vmware remote console window to access servers over a Wan or Lan. The remote console is not really designed to be used over a WAN but we get away with it. I would dare to guess that PCoverIP would solve that issue.This would also make the VM's more cloud freindy in my opinion.

You could make PCoverIP as part of the Vmware tools package so it is installed on all the virtual servers. Then it is there and ready without a second installation you have to manage.

Also on the VMware view side of things. I think the View agents should be part of Vmware tools or at least have the option of doing this. Again you have to manage two seperate installs. Most of the time we are already updating Vware tools anyway, why not just get view agents in the same package?

Improvement Suggestion: Reorder tabs in quick switch mode

mdford — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:24:27 GMT

The VM tabs in Workstation should be moveable to allow reordering. Currently you have to open each individual VM in the order you want them displayed and cannot reorder them without closing them all down and reopening.

other cpu's / simpler pentiums

robbedoes — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:50:06 GMT

Hi !

currently (AFAIK) vmware only emulates a kind of resembling cpu in the vm as the host runs on. With cpus getting more capable and feature rich, older software just doesn't want to run in a vm.E.g. freebsd 2.2 (old I know), BSD/OS (proprietary software, 16 bit applications.

Also freeware competitors (Q, dosbox, DEC emulators) are able to emulate other cpu's: sparc, dec, 8 & 16 bit intel.

It would be (IMHO) very nice if vmware (fusion?) would also be able to emulate other cpu's, just like the competition, only better

TIA !

Improvement Suggestion: Keep Sequence Of Running VMs Display In Sync

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:56:56 GMT

Apparently, switching between running VMs in Fullscreen mode, the sequence used to cycle through these VMs is the sequence the VMs have been resumed/powered on.

This becomes extraordinarily irritating if that sequence differs from the sequence of VMs on a Workstation window's tab strip (given the Workstation tool bar is unpinned in the clients to not get distracted by it). After a couple of minutes the user doesn't have a single quick hint about the sequence used by the keyboard shortcut <CTRL>+<ALT>+<RIGHT ARROW> and <CTRL>+<ALT>+<LEFT ARROW>.

.
I'd very much like to suggest to keep these sequences in sync, either by rearranging tab strip sequence on the fly or by using the tab strip sequence to cycle through running VMs by keyboard shortcut.

.
This would include following considerations regarding having more than one Workstation window visible:

A Workstation window's tab strip content pane should be just a view on the VM, hence a 1:n relationship between VM and Workstation tab strip content panel would be established, allowing for showing/administrating the same VM from more than one Workstation window. These views ought to be synchronized, of course, to have one Workstation window reflect the changes made to the same VM on another Workstation window.

By having the Workstation tab strip become a view object, the architectural design would be to have all Workstation VM tab strips host the same pool of data but with different view aspect settings (i.e. visibility of tabs). So all Workstation VM tab strips would generally host all VMs but show only the ones the user has selected for that particular Workstation window.

Since all Workstation tab strips would be based on the same pool of data, their tab sequence would be the same on all Workstation windows (only showing the VMs selected for that particular Workstation window).

This change of design would provide for the above advantages, i.e. ...
- easy rearranging of VM tab sequence (automatically and manually, keyboard shortcut sequence should follow the overall tab strip VM sequence),
- having this sequence in sync on all Workstation windows,
- easy shifting a VM from one Workstation window to another,
- having a single VM visible on two or more Workstation windows (this is more or less kind of an academic advantage).

Improvement Suggestion: Use differential screenshots on Recordings

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:49:25 GMT

In the documentation I've read that it takes a large amount of disk space having VM Workstation record screenshots of a recording periodically.

Wouldn't it be a good idea then to only save a full screenshot every, say.. 20th screenshot and to save only modified screen regions in between?

Usually, there's not so much screen content being updated every 5 seconds. Saving differential screenshots based on a full screenshot could downsize a recordings's footprint significantly.

Axel Dahmen

.
(for a previous discussion on this topic see here.)

Improvement Suggestion: Workstation Should Deal With Power Saving CPUs Automatically

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:46:34 GMT

Currently, after installing VMware Workstation, when Workstation recognizes a host that throttles a CPUs speed to save power, a message box pops up informing the user to add a couple of entries to the config.ini file to solve the problem for keeping a guest's realtime clock providing a correct time of day.

This is quite an intrinsic VMware problem that a user shouldn't be bothered to deal with.

I'd like to suggest to have VMware deal with this issue automatically without the need to have the user fiddle around in config files.

.
(for a previous discussion on this topic see here.)

Improvement Suggestion: Replace Workstation Movie Recording Component with 3rd Party Component

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:43:28 GMT

Today I've tried recording a couple of 1920*1200 movies (Windows 7, 64 Bit, guest).

The result was extraordinary bad...

This is what I've found:

No matter what quality I had chosen, the movies didn't yield fluent playback.

I can't e-mail these movies to e-mail recipients without requiring them to install VMware movie code first.

I've tried importing one of the movies into Adobe Premiere to add descriptive subtitles, but all I saw was a black screen. Inverting the Alpha channel at least showed the first key frame image. But that's it! ... A single screen shot, nothing more.

Having Workstation save a movie while omitting frames without differences speeded up playback (including movements !!!) at a factor of 10!

.
With these negative results the recording of movie clips is useless....

I'd like to suggest to replace the movie recording components with some general components, perhaps some code from Windows Media Encoder or similar.

Actually, it should go without saying that movie clips should be recorded in a commonly prevailing format. And that recordings should be fluent. And that omiting frames should mean that at least one or two seconds of a non-movement section stay in the recording before omitting takes place.

Improvement Suggestion: Add Running Machines' Thumbnails to Side Bar

WhiteKnight — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:32:27 GMT

While running two VMs simultaneously, installing a Windows guest OS at one of them, I'd very much prefer to have a thumbnail of my running machines visible in the Side Bar TreeView control. Then I wouldn't always have to stop working on one machine in order to monitor the installation progress of the second.

I'd be great if a new Workstation version would provide running machines' thumbnail screen shots in the Side Bar below the "Powered On" node.

.
(for a previous discussion on this see here)

Add a "Ctrl-Alt-Del" button to console window!

smartodd — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:23:14 GMT

Food for thought...

Wouldn't it be nice to have the "Ctrl-Alt-Del" command added as a button to the top of the console window? Right next to the reset button would be great! Just a thought, since going to VM > "send Ctrl-Alt-Del" is something I do alot during my day.

convenient ctrl-alt-del button

jlmale0 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:18:59 GMT

It'd be very convenient if the console window of microsoft OS guests had a button that specifically sent the 'ctrl-alt-del' key combo. This is in lieu of digging through a menu to do it or remembering the alternate combination: ctrl-alt-ins.

Resource Maps How about a map or report that showed permissions

Rob.Bohmann — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:53:11 GMT

Digging around in the resource maps and I thought what could really be useful would be a map/report that showed the hierarchy - tree and where permissions have been applied, and if its not too much trouble, effective permissions at each level (DC, cluster, host, folder, when they differ from the parent object). Of course only users who have admin privileges throughout the environment would be able to view all of the effective permissions, though perhaps another built in role could be added just for security auditing? (read permissions only)?

VirtualCenter and "least permission rule"

ZMkenzie — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:41:33 GMT

Here virtualcenter server is joined to our Active Directory for authentication.

We have a small group of users which are in an Administration group defined at the datacenter level which have full access to virtualcenter. We then have nested folders and custom permissions set on this folders.

The problem is that if we use a group containing also one of the administrator users to define restricted permissions on a specific folder the "least permission rule" is applied and the administrator will not have full access on that folder anymore.

We need to find a way to keep full access for administrators even if we define restrictive rules using groups containing them on nested folders. Here, the directory is huge, with thousands groups and thousands users, and we actually don't create groups specifically for virtualcenter/vmware because we have allready structures mantained at an higher level (by an automatic provisioning tool), and because it will be a real pain handling groups by hand given the great number of users to handle.

So, for example, we can find ourself in the need of giving a "read only" permission to the folder "DB" to the group, say, "database office", but, INSIDE the database office there are some users ("database admins") which need higher privileges. Simply, now, we can't grant them higher privileges because virtualcenter applies the most rectrictive rule if there are more than one for a specific user.

The strange thing is that Virtual Center uses a "least permission rule" but it is currently based upon active directory for authentication which relies on a totally different politic.
We hope this feature will be address sooner or later because there is no advantages in current implementation.

Qt based VMWare Workstation and other products, PLEASE (Qt is now relicenced under LGPL!)

birdie — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:23:53 GMT

Dear VMWare developers and CIOs,

Nokia has just announced that Qt 4.5 will be the first library version which is available under LGPL license. That means that ISPs can develop products based on Qt without buying a license for it, or releasing source code of their products.

Please, drop monumental dependencies and abstraction layers of your GUI and switch to Qt!

Your dedicated user,

VMFS-driver for Windows

continuum — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:47:57 GMT

A VMFS-driver for Windows would be nice for data-recovery and forensic investigations.
I guess read/only would do

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

Storage Views... but really any view in the client

Rob.Bohmann — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:26:29 GMT

Storage Views are really helpful, luv 'em!

How about saving the changes to a view in the client so that when you adjust which columns/data you want to see for a particular view, those settings remain when you come back to it.

This is currently done for some other views like the virtual machines tab. I would think that this should be default behavior for all tabs and views.

It seems to keep it until you change the report, i.e show all datastores, switch to show all virtual machines, go back to show all datastores and you are back to the defaults.

A basic GUI VIClient for ESXi consoles

sbarnhart — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:10:52 GMT

I'd like to be able to install a bare-metal hypervisor on my laptop, and still use it as a laptop.

I'd like to see a basic GUI VI Client that would run on the console of an ESXi for host and allow for:

1) Switching between full-screen consoles (including GUI OSs like Windows) of VMs.

2) Basic VM control/management -- power on/off, snapshot and clone, connect/disconnect networking.

This would be VERY COOL on a laptop. Yes, I know that you can largely do this now with Server or Workstation, but you need a host OS and the performance isn't what it is with ESX. There's also some gotchas if you want more than 4GB of RAM in that you need to run a 64 bit host OS.

Manage multiple free ESX 4.0i hosts in one console

apnw — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:45:10 GMT

Many of my customers are going to virtualize their XenApp Servers to take advantage of the server's hardware resources.
In the ESX3 times we decided for XenServer because of performance advantages.
With vSphere - in my opinion - there is no more real difference between XenServer and vSphere regarding performance.
At least for me, vSphere is way more reliable than XenServer.

However, there is one thing I always have to discuss with the customers. The management of the hosts.
In XenServer - even in the free version - all host can be managed in one console. With vSphere I have to connect to each host individually.

My feature suggestion:
I would really appreciate to be able to manage multiple hosts in one console. Kind of vCenter light.

Thanks
Andre

Thinstall Version of VMWare Player Needed or Other Thin Client Player for Mobile Warriors

RightGuyDC — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:03:51 GMT

I think having Thinstall now a part of VMWARE is a Potential plus for having a "Thin" VMWARE Player. I move from Machine to Machine and I want to take my Apps and even my Small Desktops with me. I can save the VM Files or even *.ISO cd Boot image files and boot them using the VMWare Player if I have the VMWARE application installed, but I can't always download or install VMWARE player on every machine I visit. What about Hotel or Shared Cafes or Kiosks? I want the privacy and security of my configured VM appliance without the spyware and viruses of public systems. All I want to do is Bridge the Public Network with my VMWARE NAT or Bridged Network and run my Apps inside a protected VMWARE Box running from my USB Key (cheap 128MB USB Keys).

Just the Footprint alone of VMWARE Player is too big to carry on a 128MB USB Key let alone most of my virtual disks or appliances. So, please create a VMWARE Player Website that will dowload a thin JAVA Applet version of VMWARE player or will run a very thin ActiveX VMWARE Player that we can play our Virtual Appliances online by just uploading our VMX files, etc.

Alternatively, create a "Thinstall" Mini Applet VM Player (Less than 48MB to fit nicely on my USB Key). Call it "VMPLayer.exe" and let it run VMWARE Player ready to go from any USB Key and let it prompt for the VMX files to load and I will load those also from my USB Key and/or *.ISO CD Image and Boot into my Virtual Appliance and Virtual Mini Disk. I don't need much space for Linux OS and I like what I see with small Windows Utilites like UBCD for Windows and the BART-PE, etc.

Heck, I might even splurge and get a 512MB or 1GB USB Key and run VMWARE Disks of larger sizes, but the main point is to be as thin as possible so that we can run just what we need from USB Keys and deploy them without taking up all the space on the USB Key. I do have other storage files on my USB Keys you know. .

So, please let VMWARE Player go VERY THIN and think about all the uses a USB Key Enabled VMWARE Player could do to make Apps more portable and Secure for Everyone. Thanks.

Also, Please Password Enable the VMWARE Player itself, so that I can create a startup Password for any VM appliances at the VMWARE level and not the OS level. I guess a VM BIOS password would be okay. Is that supported by VMWARE Player?

Yeah VMware, I have a suggestion...

dbolton — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:59:26 GMT

How about, before deciding to release a new version of software, you actually have the licensing matrix and support infrastructure in place!!

We discovered in late June (30th) when upgrading to vSphere that one of our hosts needed an upgrade. Originally the host ran VI3 standard (piloted in 2007) and was upgraded to VI3 Enterprise in 2008. Apparently, VMware licensed VI3 on a modular basis before vSphere. Going off a quote from our VAR we upgraded to what we thought was a full upgrade, but apparently only 3 of the 5 components (vmotion, svmotion, drs, but not ha or the esx license) were actually upgraded. Once tech-support provided us with this information after a week (July 8th) of going back and forth, we requested a quote directly from vmware.

On to requesting, and waiting. It turns out that when you call VMware and ask for option 2, then licensing, you MUST type in your zip code to be directed to your licensing manager-there is no option to talk to an actual manager-just voicemail. Since we are in the Pacific Northwest, we have isarkis@vmware.com as the primary contact. Initially we received this two days (July 10) after the request:

"I've sent this request over to my quote reps to generate a quote for this renewal as my system didn't allow a quote to be created by me. I hope to get this back by Monday and will forward it to you as soon as I get it back.

Thank You,

Isabel Sarkis"

The first quote received (July 13) contained just a Gold support contract renewal. But wait, our Gold Support contract is good on this since we already upgraded to Enterprise and included a two year contract. Now to request a revised quote. We received it July 15th, but wait, the revised quote has four Gold SNS vSphere unit pricing on it. How did we go from one to four? On to requesting a revised quote again (July 15th), on to waiting...and wating...and requesting a revised quote again (July 27th)...and waiting... Okay, no movement, call vmware licensing (isarkis), no return call, no email.

It is now August 6th, and still no revised quote.

How do I get in touch with an actual person to speak with about licensing at VMware? Preferrably a person in a supervisory role in licensing.

Port Groups ACL's

touimet — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:13:02 GMT

We have a large number of Port Groups that correlate to specific test environments. VirtualCenter needs ACL's on Port Groups. We have a range of users with varying permissions that access VirtualCenter to deploy VM's. Restricted end-users have either NO access to modify Port Group assignments for his VM or FULL access to assign ANY Port Group to their VM. There is no in-between.

Additionally have a large range of datastores (multiple fiber SAN's, iSCSI SAN's, NAS Storage) that we need to have specific ACL's. As it stands now I have no control over a restricted end-user from creating his low priority VM onto our fastest and most expense $/GB SAN.

LabManager

MHAV — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:31:15 GMT

We suggest to be able to use more then one Snapshot of a VM within LabManager.

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

oops! shutdown

jlmale0 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:22:33 GMT

Perhaps it's bad form, but I find myself on the console a fair bit. And while I don't shutdown the hosts every day, it'd be nice if /sbin/shutdown did not proceed if guests were running. Allow the shutdown with a 'forced' (-F) option. Trust me, it doesn't feel good to accidently type shutdown on a live system.

Show VM Status

nurbles — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:27:46 GMT

In Workstation, it would be helpful if the current status (stop, pause, run, reboot) for each open VM was shown in the Window menu using the same icons as the toolbar. That would make it quicker to locate a VM that one left running by mistake (for example).

Very Dissapointed

bennnnnnnnnnn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:01:56 GMT

Hello

I have to manage around 40 test VM's. Until now I did this with Microsoft Virtual PC. Now, I wanted to test VMWare Server and not with a MS Product. I mean, I was ready to use a non Windows product and it is for free..

The registering Process to download it is a pain in the a.... You loose potential customers already there. One must be VERY willing to go through this.
I Installed it, went very well. I noticed that the Java environment was installed. My neck hairs stood up....
Then i clicked on the icon and IE startet but gave me some Certification Errors and an empty dialog box to select a non existant certificate.
Finally after not finding a solution i could manage start the interface through a remote PC with opera browser which brought an error message too, but i could cancel it and the interface loaded finally. To date I'm not able to start the UI on the server.
Well this slow ui interface....java...excuse me... but i have other things to do than looking on these no windows-style waiting cursors.
Then I had all these MS vhd files. I found no way to import them.

Case closed. I'll look into version 3.

Best regards
A MS spoiled user.
Ben

Availability of Virtual Center on Linux

gino64 — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 09:29:45 GMT

Hello,

The VMware virtual center product is yet available only on the Microsoft platform. Is a Linux version announced?

MySQL would also be a nice choice, rather than the expensive and proprietary Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases.

Thanks for your help.

Eric

vsphere client 4 : Access to VA Marketplace through a proxy with authentification is not implemented

mldmld — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:55:54 GMT

Hi,

==> Suggested feature : Support of credentials to access VA Marketplace via a proxy which request authentification

In my company, the enterprise proxy ask for credentials.

Using the vsphere Client 4, I would like to test in "Getting started" tab :
Deploy from VA Marketplace. It's suggested in the "Getting started
documentation".

When I click on a VM to download it, I get

An error occured while reading the URL:

The remote server returned an error : (407) Proxy Authentification Required.

On the ovftool user guide, I found page 22 that one can specify a proxy and the credentials.

I did not find a room to put my credentials in vsphere Client 4. And it does not ask for credential, as IE do.

I configure the proxy on IE and my credentials are remembered by IE.

I can access to internet using this configuration under IE

Regards

VMWare Fingerprinting via OUI (MAC prefix)

JediMercer — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:47:05 GMT

I've been working on an idea for using OUI's (more commonly known as a MAC prefix) to identify hardware. Of course the standard oui.txt distributed by IEEE gives you the company name, and from that it's easy to deduce a lot about the system with that MAC. Like if it's VMWare,

But I'd like to do more than that. I've already compiled some creation dates for the various OUI's based on archives of the IEEE website, but I'm hoping I can narrow down the VMWare product line based on the prefix. For example:

00-50-56 20001109 VMWARE, INC.
00-05-69 20010604 VMWARE, Inc.
00-0C-29 20030207 VMware, Inc.
00-1C-14 20070409 VMware, Inc.

The OUI 00-50-56 was assigned to VMWare back in 2000, just shortly before VMWare server products were available. The 00-0C-29 OUI was assigned in 2003, when VMware Virtual Center was launched.

It would seem unlikely to me that the most current VMWare products would use the 00-50-56 OUI's, so to some extent it should be possible to roughly classify a VMWare system by it's prefix. Unfortunately, these dates are rough appropximations, and I have little documentation on how VMWare (as a company and as a product) chooses to assign their address space inside each OUI.

I'm suggesting that VMWare publish information on when they obtained their various OUI assignments and how they are assigned to products. Additional info such as how MAC collisions are avoided would also be cool,

vSphere-client as a thinapp package

continuum — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:12:55 GMT

it would be nice if we could download latest vsphere-client as a thinapp-package

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

Please reign in the VMware Workstation product bloat

JDR2500 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:50:16 GMT

The install EXE's have increased in size by more than an order of magnitude over the course of the last two versions.

v. 4.5 - 37 MB

v. 5.5 - 93 MB

v. 6.0 - 330 MB

v. 6.5.0 - 568 MB

New features are great but bigger often means slower too.

Regards,

John

KickstartESX

mikeyhoward — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:17:40 GMT

I came across this today, looks interesting...

http://www.kickstartesx.com

Any thoughts?

Buy powerwf from http://www.powerwf.com/

meistermn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:30:45 GMT

Why to buy powerwf from http://www.powerwf.com/ to have workflow tool for powershell like citrix hasr with their bought of fullamor ?

Re: Deploying VMs tab order issue

jozsef — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:25:58 GMT

I have noticed that when deploying VMs in ESX 3.5 the prompt user for information screen (Last screen of deployment) the tab order for IP address does not follow a logical order after Server Name.

It is slightly annoying when you are deploying loads of VMs.

Not sure if this has already been posted.

Joe

Virtual IDE disk in ESX

sergeda — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:29:42 GMT

It would be desirable to make option select virtual IDE drive in VM configuration.
Apparantly I am very intrested in running Mikrotik router in VM. Also there are another products that doesn't support SCSI.

vSphere scripted install networking fix

GraphiteDak — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:05:51 GMT

Can the ability to prompt for networking information if the network section is missing be added back into the kickstart installation of vsphere? Needs to be put back in as was done previously.

Workarounds also do not appear to work as if the tty changes for input then weasel errors even if changing all std input/output back to original after input. Receives IOError Errno 5 input/output error right after

Logs can be posted if need be.

Please re-release ancient P2V-assistant as a free download

continuum — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:26:49 GMT

Please re-release ancient P2V-assistant as a free download.
IMHO it has a must-have feature that I miss in all Converter-versions :
configure an offline Windows while having the disk of that offline Windows mounted to the running system

Yes - I know it is outdated and doesn't work with ESX 3. But for some tasks it is still way better than anything released later

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

Backup SMTP server and SMTP Auth

ImagineIT — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:22:12 GMT

Feature request:

Backup SMTP server and SMTP authentication would be nice features to have!

Fixed window size; stretched resolutions

theturninggate — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:48:07 GMT

Booting Windows, VMWare goes through several resolutions switches and subsequent resizes. Running software at full screen but of a smaller resolution causes the window to shrink to that resolution, rather than the screen being blown up to fit the window's dimensions.

I'd like to see a fixed size window - if I set my screen resolution in Windows to 1280x800, my window should stay that way. Applications of smaller resolutions should stretch to fill that window, rather than the window shrinking to fit the new resolution.

Essentials bundle License

steveharder — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:59:59 GMT

Hi,

I would like to know if I buy the essential plus bundle for our 3 hosts now and later on would like to add an additional host to the farm,

Will I have to buy a completely new bundle and discard the old one?

I understand that the essential bundle is limited to 3 hosts but do I waste my money if I know I will grow with the hosts later on?

Thanks

Vision of software delivered by storage

DCasota — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:06:23 GMT

In every bigger company software is packaged, combined to a kind of software set (software stack), tested in all combinatoric possibilities, planned for pilot and mass delivery and delivered and installed by network. With a new release the "software set" is actualized with newer versions of the packaged software and the whole software releasemanagement process has to be fullfilled again. The more packages and different software stack versions you have, the more time you'll spend to test all possibilites.
With ThinApp we got a quite good possibility to reduce the test amount because of the encapsulation of the software and even more: The software has not be installed. Nevertheless this solves only the problem with some applications and not with all like enterprise databases, drivers, etc.

Wouldn't it be possible to structure and modify the content of a vmdk-snapshot - which has been created to catch all differences during a software installation - and to make it flexible as a kind of "storaged package" which can be assigned to different VMs? As we learned from vmware composer it's possible to redirect user directories to separated vmdks. So we could do the same for other directories.
VMware View is the first step of using the linked clone technology in a practical way. Wouldn't it be possible to combine those "storaged packages" with linked clone to a complete software stack?
If these both pieces would be possible - "storaged packages" and linked-clone of "storaged packages" - and a third piece - to transform thinapp packages to "storaged packages" - we would get a new kind of software delivery: we wouldn't need to install software by network anymore, we would just recompose a new release, do a kind of versioning and publishing and assign it to VMs. Of course this feature should be applicable for client and server guest OS. BTW linked clone is also possible for server guest OS
Of course, combining different "storaged packages" would lead to registry and file conflicts which have to be solved first.

As I said it's a vision

But what do you think?

[Database interface] - Why only support Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or IBM DB2?

calamarc123456 — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:28:09 GMT

Is there a reason that the databases are so expensive?
Why can't we load the settings to any database with an OSS license?

vSphere --> http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_intro_vs.pdf
Database interface Connects to Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or IBM DB2 to store information,
such as virtual machine configurations, host configurations, resources and
virtual machine inventory, performance statistics, events, alarms, user
permissions, and roles.

v3.5 --> http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_intro_vi.pdf
Database interface - Connects to Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server to store
information, such as virtual machine configurations, host configurations,
resources and virtual machine inventory, performance statistics, events, alarms,
user permissions, and roles.

[Infraestructure Client] - Why only Windows ?

calamarc123456 — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:31:15 GMT

Ther are a dependence on Windows OS to manage the system (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_vc_installation_guide.pdf)
the softare
i. VMware Infraestructure Client require .NET Framework 2.0
ii. VMware vCenter Server require a .NET Framework 2.0 + SQL Server | Oracle | IBM DB2

Why we have a Windows Operative System to manage a linux's cluster??

Splash screen for Workstation?

kjlee — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:45:47 GMT

What about a splash screen for VMware Workstation?

When experimenting with Virtualbox I noticed that it comes up almost immediately while Workstation takes a few seconds. Since I suppose that it will be hard to speed up starting time from a few seconds to a fraction of seconds, why not display a splash screen signaling us, yes, you have successfully invoked Workstation.

Netware and ESX

jeffoutwest — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:14:57 GMT

Anyone know what is on the VMware's roadmap to support Netware 5.x and 6.x as a guest OS for ESX 4.0 and beyond? Thanks, -Jeff

Request: EMC Powerpath For ESX or other SAN Load balancing

CWedge@Amsa — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:05:02 GMT

I have 4 HBA but no load balancing...??

You can manually do so Lun balancing, but when you get into 16 hosts 4 conenctions per host, 4 different SAN Makers, its gets confusing.

Please just make a powerpath for ESX.

Virtualizing OS X Server on an XServe

pzingg — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:20:22 GMT

Please get this product to market soon, now that Apple has permitted the licensing of multiple OS X Server instances on Apple hardware.

SnapShot Manager

VM-acrary — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:47:56 GMT

It would be nice if Snapshot Manager listed all VM's and/or snapshots (in one window), instead of having to open Snapshot Manager on each VM to administer the snapshots.