Silva ECS

Outlook 2007 Slowness on Windows 2008 x64

jsilva — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:18:55 +0000

Recently whe working with a client, we ran into an issue with brutally slow Outlook 2007 performance when running Outlook on Windows 2008 x64 with XenApp 5. The issue occurred whether connecting through the console, RDP, or ICA. All other applications worked fine. Some of you XenApp gurus may have already seen this. When checking the Outlook connection status, we could see average response times of 3000 milliseconds. After some troubleshooting involving removing and reinstalling Outlook, going with a plain vanilla Outlook install with no updates etc. we were still not able to resolve this issue. We did some digging and found various references on google about Outlook being slow on recent OS builds. All indications pointed to a new TCP auto tuning feature. After running -
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled and rebooting the server Outlook responded great. Now, I haven’t research what the implications are of disabling tcp autotuning, but it certainly resolved our only issue and everything continues to perform well. Hope this helps someone else that runs into this issue!

XenDesktop and vCenter 4 Integration

jsilva — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:24:57 +0000

I was performing a XenDesktop POC where the hypervisor was ESX 4 and vCenter 4. For those that do not know, XenDesktop is hypervisor agnostic and can be ran on ESX, Hyper-V, and XenServer.

During the XenDesktop Setup wizard, I could not get the XenDesktop Delivery Controller and Provisioning Server to communicate with vCenter.

I was getting the following –> Error : “The hosting infrastructure could not be reached at the specified address”

After digging, I found a handy post by Trond Eirik Haavarstein on this specific issue. Thanks Trond!!! This was very helpful.
Here is the link, and I have included the helpful article below:
http://www.xenappblog.com/2009/citrix-xendesktop-3-0-fp1-poc-hosted-on-vmware-esx-3-5/

I am working on a new Citrix XenDesktop Proof of Concept (POC) hosted on VMware ESX. During the setup I discovered some error messages I would like to share with you.

Error : “The hosting infrastructure could not be reached at the specified address”

Solution :

Create a host file entry that resolves vmare to the IP address of your VirtualCenter Server. Do this on the Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) and the Provisioning Services Server (PVS).

Import the certificate from the Virtual Center Server (%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL\rui.crt) into the trusted root authority for Computer Account – Local Computer (used the Certificate MMC to accomplish this). Do this on the DDC and PVS.

Use https://vmware/sdk in the XenDesktop Setup Wizard.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala w/ VMware Workstation and Windows 7

jsilva — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:49:27 +0000

So I was having issues with Windows Vista on my T61 build and decided it was time for a change.
I thought I’d have a little fun and put Ubuntu on my laptop. I’ve never ran a Linux OS as my primary OS.
I also loaded VMware Workstation 7 and a Windows 7 virtual machine.

So far, Ubuntu has been really easy to use. I’ve had very few snags so far. I was even able to get Office 2007 installed natively using CrossOver.
I tried WINE but could not get Office to load with that one.

Overall, It’s been very easy to use Ubuntu as a primary OS. I use the Unity feature in VMware Workstation when I need to access any Windows related apps.
So far, that has not been very common. Mostly, I need to use windows for the SSL VPN connections that I have to make.

The only major snag for me so far is that running music from my Windows 7 VM is choppy. If I run it directly on Ubuntu, the sound is great.

I use iTunes so running music from the VM is necessary. I have heard of people getting iTunes to work using WINE but it did not work for me. I’d rather run iTunes from the VM. Hopefully, someone knows of a tweak to get the sound from the Windows VM to work properly and not be choppy.

VMworld 2009 Keynote Day 2

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:49:23 +0000

Herrod is immediately covering the desktop space and VMware View.
Covering the PC Experience Over the Network (PCOIP). PCOIP will ship with a software only protocol but will have a hardware acceleration option. PCOIP will ship this year!

Herrod is touching on Hosted Virtualization for “Employee-Owned IT”. Basically, the concept of BYOC – Bring Your Own Computer.
Also discussing a Bare-Metal Virtualization for “Corporate-Owned IT”. I’m really digging the bare-metal virtualization that will be happening on laptops.

No host lesss management and patching
3D graphics and local performance

Demo: On the Client Virtualization Platform
I’m very impressed with the full motion video and 3D Graphics from the user experience.

Now performing demo from a home PC to a View session demonstrating the user pc experience.

***Moving to demo on connecting to a View desktop from an iPhone using the WYSE pocket cloud. Very cool!!

Herrod now discussing the VMware Mobile Strategy

Phone as a thinclient
Phone for management

New solution – Mobile Administration of VMware vCenter and View

Leading into the question of why not virtualize the phone itself?
Herrod announcing VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP)

Demo showing Visa utilizing mobile virtualization with both Windows CE and Android running on the same mobile device.

Herrod echoing Vmotion capabilities with server, storage, and networking capability.
Touching on DRS and new capabilities around DRS for Storage to set shares and limit IOPS.
Also covering how DPM utilizes VMotion to provide further efficiency to the datacenter.
Initial statistics show that DPM saves 20% of datacenter power.

Going into vCenter management products.
How is my application performing? Discussing VMware AppSpeed to handle baselining performance from an end user standpoint.

Discussing vSphere and VMsafe capabilities. The VMsafe API is available for vendors in the security space to develop products that plug into vSphere (ISS, Trend, McAfee, symantec etc)

Discussing VMware vCenter ConfigControl – goal is to discover track and model configuration data and relationships across all of the entities.
Demo ConfigControl – ships first half of next year. Appears to have alot of capability but not sure I like the interface.

Herrod discussing more of the vCloud and Long Distance VMotion capabilities.
Cisco has a validated design using Data Center Interconnect. Datacenter extension up to 200km
F5 has a solution using iSession with BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager.

Now discussing the PaaS vision (Platform as a Service) -

wrapping up now..I have to go to another session.

VMworld Social Scene on Tues. Evening 9.1.09

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:51:36 +0000

I’ve had a very busy VMworld so far dedicating time to networking and sessions. This evening I also had a full schedule on happy hour and parties. I started of the evening at the Thirsty Bear where the south central teams for VMware, Cisco, Intel, and Iland hosted the event. Later, I attended the WYSE party at the OLD MINT where there was great food, wine, and live performance. Check out my video from the OLD MINT.

Outside of the OLD MINT

Inside Edition

Flamenco Dancers

VMworld 2009 Datacenter

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:50:31 +0000

For anyone that is at VMworld you have heard of the datacenter that has been put together to support VMworld operations and labs.
For those that are not aware, there is a total of 512 Cisco UCS blades utilizing a unified fabric of Cisco MDS and Nexus 7000 gear including literally tons of storage from EMC and NetApp. Capable of taking on tens of thousands of VM’s and many many terabytes of storage.

37,248 Virtual machines on 776 Physical Servers

Cut power from 25Megawatts to 540 Kilowatts by virtualizing

Here is a short take of the implementation..

Monday Night Tweetup

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:49:22 +0000

I had a great time meeting many fellow bloggers and analysts from all over the world. Thanks mucho to John Troyer from VMware for putting together this event and making it possible. Here is a brief video of the happenings at the tweetup with me facing another flip from Joep towards the end of the video!

Blogger Table Before the Keynote from Yesterday

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:46:40 +0000

I took a video snippet of the Blogger table this morning for the VMworld keynote session.
I’ve never seen so many instances of tweetdeck running across laptops. It was great to meet everyone in the virtualization blogging community.

VMworld 2009 “Run The Golden Gate Bridge”

jsilva — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:34:24 +0000

The “Run The Golden Gate” event was awesome! I meant to blog on this last night 9/31 but was simply too tired. After another long day, I’m finally catching up on my posts. So first, here is my post on the run and I”ll post additional happenings shortly…

We started at out at Moscone Center where the buses picked us up for the ride to the Golden Gate.

And we get closer to the Golden Gate..

Followed up by some running action!

Vmworld Keynote..Cont.. SpringSource

jsilva — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:24:33 +0000

Paul discussing the intent to acquire SpringSource and the Spring framework.
“A dramatically easy framework to develop from” – A leading lightweight framework, enterprise and web, open and open source.

Apps
Spring/Grails Frameworks
Can go on top of Oracle, IBM, Tomcat, and DM server
Hyperic management framework for the service provider space

An interesting set of assets so that VMware can work with SpringSource to achieve deeper integration to take the information that comes from SpringSource and utilize it in vSphere.