Recent figures from Microsoft show that small and medium sized organisations who already work in the cloud are very satisfied and this number is growing daily.

Basically it comes down to this; Cloud computing is a metaphor used by Technology or IT Services companies for the delivery of computing requirements as a service to a heterogeneous community of end-recipients. But that is just one definition! let’s take another ‘different’ approach. Cloud Computing makes it possible for both small and large organizations and individual users to take space. The management, updates and application developments are owned by the provider of the Cloud Computing solution. In this way it is not necessary for users to own knowledge and hardware in our homes, there is a higher Performance achieved at reduced costs. Still Fuzzy? Probably because you still do not know exactly what you get.

Public cloud is not yet mature. Private cloud paves the way for public Cloud services. Until that time, they will be used in a hybrid manner. It will take years, perhaps decades, before the public Cloud is so mature that private Clouds are no longer required. The investments that companies make in private Clouds makes them easier to switch in future public Cloud services. For services which are keen to run in the Cloud, organizations must now consider what constitutes a private Cloud. Organizations must identify the service which fits within an (external) Cloud environment and which services require greater integration and should be closer to the company.

That said, it seems we talking about services. Cloud is a lot, It’s not just one thing. Google apps, Hotmail, Mozy, Zimbra, Office365 are Cloud services too. We use these applications for many years now without probably knowing these are Cloud services too. Each of these services is translated into a functional requirement from within an organization. If you already have to renew or migrate that‘s your starting point in my opinion. Find out what businesses would fit a Cloud solution and come up with an organization-wide cloud initiative.

There are three types (with differences in level of flexibility for the user):

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Virtualization is the catalyst for Cloud, since it’s the enabling technology allowing the creation of an intelligent abstraction layer which hides the complexity of underlying hardware or software. Virtualization enables different operating systems to share the same hardware and make it easy to move operating systems, all while the applications are running. Virtualization enables flexibility and agility. Start converge your traditional data center to a more Virtual Data Center and extension to Cloud infrastructure. While doing this do not lose sight how business processes and services requirements will impact a Virtual Data Centers in preparation for Cloud planning and design.

So, Cloud is more a collective name for various business services. Create a portfolio of your services. Devise a strategy for business services and private cloud. Make it clear what opportunities exist for your company when cloud computing becomes popular if this has not been already. Set an overall Cloud strategy for your company and final form a team that investigates what the wishes of the company and the possibilities of cloud vendors are.

Cloud is not one thing!

www.mikes.eu

This is NOT true. BUT stretching it makes a very good disaster avoidance solution!!!

a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is a typical solution which still needs a good DR recovery solution (most of the time)

Disaster Avoidance

This is a process that allows proactive behavior to avoid an impending outage to services. Disasters tend to affect an entire site or have an impact on the services of the entire site even if only a partial site failure is sustained. Disaster avoidance technologies allow for configuration of a vSphere host, cluster or an entire site in such a fashion that irrespective of disaster, the services being provided will continue with minimum interruption. In most cases, disaster avoidance involves brief outages to services at a site followed by an orderly restart at a recovery site. A minimum outage sustained under controlled circumstances is typically considered acceptable as an alternative to sustaining an uncontrolled and extended outage associated with a true disaster.

Downtime Avoidance

Downtime avoidance differs from disaster avoidance as the former migrates the workloads between systems or sites with no downtime and no loss of data. vSphere technologies such as vMotion and Storage vMotion facilitate moving virtual machines or virtual machine storage with no interruption of the services they provide. Configuring vMotion and Storage vMotion requires that vSphere hosts are managed within a single VMware vCenter Server datacenter object and are configured with shared access to storage and network segments.

Disaster Recovery

This process assists rapid recovery from unplanned outages that bring down services in a fashion that makes local recovery within an acceptable time unlikely. In disaster recovery scenarios the goal is to rapidly return to operational status of the services, usually in a different datacenter in a safe location. Disaster recovery solutions will help automate return to operations of services that have stopped due to catastrophic failure of infrastructure.

Host Level

• Disaster avoidance = vMotion to avoid disaster and outage (non-disruptive)
• Disaster recovery = HA restarts VMs (disruptive)

Site Level

• Disaster avoidance = vMotion over distance to avoid disaster and outage (non-disruptive)
• Disaster recovery = SRM or scripted register/power-on of VMs at recovery site (disruptive)

Types of vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) Implementations

Single stretched vSphere cluster

• Intra-cluster vMotions are parallelized
• vMotion network requirements = 622Mbps/5ms RTT, L2 equivalence for VMkernel (support requirement) and VM network traffic (operational requirement) (10 ms with vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus/Metro vMotion) This is round-trip time without factoring in replication traffic.

Multiple vSphere clusters

• Inter-cluster vMotions are serialized
• vMotion network requirements = 622Mbps/5ms RTT, L2 equivalence for VMkernel (support requirement) and VM network traffic (operational requirement) (10 ms with vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus/Metro vMotion) This is round-trip time without factoring in replication traffic.

My Experience

On a previous project we implemented a stretched cluster solution onto a greenfield container terminal. A typical use case for a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) solution! We build 2 datacenters 7 km apart and established a very low RPO and RTO. The need of these two datacenters to be close to the key cranes (7km apart) makes this a perfect solution for stretched clustering.

questions that came to my mind where: – What happens when there is a big disaster and we lose the key cranes? There is no operation possible what so ever!.

If the complete port is gone, we can allow for a much longer RTO (Recovery TIME Objective) but we don’t allow much data to be gone (RPO)

This allowed us to allow the DR solution to be replicated backups to a second port 100km away, and use stretched clustering on the site itself to be very flexible and have a very good RPO and RTO in case of smaller disasters (let’s say a fire in one datacenter or a lose of one building one of the datacenters is located.

“Sidedness / preferred side” and other tips

If the dedicated connectivity between VPLEX Metro Clusters is lost, but both Clusters are still up, the very real possibility for split brain exists.

To prevent this split brain scenario and ensure that only one side of the Metro Cluster continues to allow writes to the stretched LUN, VPLEX introduces the concepts of preferred LUNS and

sidedness.

also without running VM’s on a preferred side, VM’s in one site could be accessing storage in another site – Creates additional latency for every I/O operation. (in case of cross connect)

With Sidedness: – VM’s run on their preferred side and storage is accessed locally.

Prior to and including vSphere4.1, you can’t control HA/DRS behavior for “sidedness”

There is no supported way to control VMware HA primary/secondary node selection with vSphere 4.x – Limits cluster size to 8 hosts (4 in each site) – No supported mechanism for controlling/specifying primary/secondary node selection. Methods for increasing the number of primary nodes also not supported by VMware.

As from vSphere 5.*, you can use DRS host affinity rules to control HA/DRS behavior.

vSphere 5 VM HA implementation changes things.

You’ll need to use multiple isolation addresses in your VMware HA configuration! minimal one on each side.

Downside, it needs smart people… what if you’re the smartest person in the room and your organization requires operational simplicity if you’re involved in the disaster? SRM is an easy push-button mechanism.

Downside2, Stretched HA/DRS clusters (and inter-cluster vMotion also) require a stretched Layer 2 network. Complicates the network infrastructure.

The network lacks site awareness, so stretched clusters introduce new networking challenges!

I have collected a lot of documents and links to share.

VPLEX Metro with VMware HA

implementation-planning-vplex

VPLEX Validating Host Multipathing

VPLEX Hardware Installation Guide

VPLEX Security Configuration Guide

VPLEX Hardware Installation Guide

Understanding vSphere Stretched Clusters, Disaster Recovery

Chad explains: Understanding vSphere Disaster Recovery/Avoidance options Virtual Geek

EMC VPLEX Metro Witness Technology and High Availability EMC

Guide to multisite disaster recovery EMC

Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) using EMC VPLEX VMware

Using VMware vSphere with EMC VPLEX Best Practices EMC

vSphere 5.0 HA and metro / stretched cluster solutions Yellow-Bricks

vSphere 5.0–update 1 and stretched clusters Virtual Geek

Originally Posted on Virtual Clouds.

Of course, everyone is going to have their own opinions on this topic because the term “cloud” is always open for debate. Let me give you a take on what I think. I’ve had this conversation with Chris Colotti and some other folks a few times so I would consider myself somewhat educated on the topic.

Server virtualization (or a virtualized datacenter) is what we have been doing for years now. Get a couple of servers, some switches, a storage array, make it all talk, then use VMware Converter or PlateSpin to do some P2Vs. Consolidation, simplifying DR efforts, simplifying administration, and achieving a lower TCO are the main goals of server virtualization. At the heart of all this was running a multitude of virtualized operatiing systems on a hypervisor that virtualized the underlying hardware. Pretty fascinating stuff. Is that cloud? Of course not. It’s just a cool technology.

Moving to cloud is a completely different game. Cloud is a different set of mind. You’ve probably heard this analogy 1000x, “Cloud is like electricity. When you flip on a light switch, the light comes on. You don’t care if that electricity was generated by coal, solar, water but the light is on and mission accomplished.” It takes more than just virtualization to move to a cloud system. I would consider virtualization to be the foundation for cloud, or the key enabler. Virtualization helps accomplish cloud. But, a virtualization datacenter IS NOT a private cloud.

So what are the components needed to achieve a cloud-like system? Let’s look at that electricity example.

• The electric company has a product, electricity. IT has a product, it’s compute, storage, and network connectivity.
• The electric company has lots of customers. So does IT. SPs have direct customers from different organizations, but internal IT has to deal with different departments such as marketing, engineering, HR, etc. There are strict requirements in every organization to make sure these departments aren’t sharing information. A cloud platform must be multi-tenant and have strict access restrictions.
• How does a customer order electricity for their house? Now-a-days, you can access the company’s website and schedule a technician to come out to your house. That’s a key part to cloud. Having a self-service provisioning portal. The ability to allow consumption of the product or resources without the need of intervention of IT.
• So it’s time to flip the switch and power on the light bulb. But first, it’s your turn to make some choices. Do you want a dimmer switch, flourescent lights, LED lights, a fan with lights? There are plenty of options. That’s where the self-service catalog comes in. Customers access the self-service catalog and order VMs of different types, sizes, pre-built operating systems, and even applications. Giving customer’s a choice makes adoption successful.
• As your turning on the light switch and electricity is being pushed, there is usually a set of approvals that need to be done to get electricity out to your house. Or perhaps upgrades on the back-end that you don’t see. That is where the beauty of automation and orchestration comes in. Just like any business, there are approvals, signoffs, etc. There are plenty of orchestration tools out there that will automatically send email approvals or start workflows of some sort. Just because someone ordered a SQL server, the job isn’t over. Through the use of orchestration, you can figure out who ordered that VM, and then add in their user credentials to have administrator access to the VM or even change the SA password. Heck, you can create workflows to do basically anything if you have the right tools. Consistency is critical in a cloud platform and too much human intervention can lead to costly mistakes and errors. Automation is a critical part of the cloud experience.
• Now that you’ve been using your electricity, it’s the end of the month. You get a bill, we’re all too familiar with that. Chargeback is a key point in having a cloud. Billing, charging, and metering of the storage, compute, and networking of the entire infrastructure is how you turn table. For the longest time IT has been viewed as a cost center. Now, IT is looked at a well oiled machine and the business units are the ones responsible for the costs of IT. Even if you really aren’t charging the business units, you can atleast do showback. Showback gives the ability to prove that IT isn’t the cost center, and the VMs being used by the different business units can now be metered.
• New housing projects, moving circuits, and new territories are all parts of an expanding electric company. Now that you have a running and working system, you have to plan for growth and scale. Capacity modeling is important so you know predicted cost and budgeting for the next year. Now the business isn’t blindly throwing money at resources and is instead taking an educated approach.

To me, server virtualization is only a single step, but a very important one. A Private Cloud, or any IaaS Cloud for that matter, isn’t achieved until you have crossed off every bullet point above. So now it’s your turn. Do you believe that server virtualization and private clouds are similar? I would like to hear your opinions and see what you believe.

Originally Posted on KendrickColeman.com.

Since the start of the Windows 8 Public Beta, there has been a great deal of discussions and comparisons galore.  There have been points made that Microsoft Hyper-V will be good enough to draw good consideration in companies looking to the future.  For me personally, feature comparison was not my first consideration. One measurement that I consider is the eco-structure of the technology, or in other words, how large is the 3^rd party partners and products supporting both the technologies?

Just last week, SolarWinds announced the latest release of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (what used to be Hyper9) now supports both VMware vSphere as well as Hyper-V. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager delivers integrated VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V capacity planning, and much more, helping to alleviate user pain points around troubleshooting, downtime and resource utilization across hypervisors.

In December of 2011, Veeam announced the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v6 which offers speed and efficiency that is unmatched by other solutions and now has the capability of protecting data on both vSphere and Hyper-V. Veeam has also released a management pack for Systems Center Operation Manager that will take all of the VMware performance and event data from the host to the storage and put that into System Center Operations Manager. Veeam’s management pack is PRO-enabled, which stands for Performance and Resource Optimization, allowing administrators to perform corrective actions on the VMware environment through SCVMM.

Virsto Software delivers game-changing performance and utilization with any block-based storage, working in conjunction with the popular hypervisors VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V. This product is a snap-in software solution that blends into your existing virtual server environment. Virsto’s storage hypervisor delivers high performance with both of the world’s most popular server hypervisors. Virsto can be used to manage virtual storage on any existing block-based storage device, from RAID to SSD.

The list goes on and on as well as getting bigger and bigger. This actually tells me two different things. Microsoft is also gaining ground not just in feature sets but also 3^rd party ecosystems from partners and products.

Another hot topic while researching this post, there is demand for conversion tools for VM’s going from vSphere to Hyper-V. Are we getting to the point that Microsoft is good enough or will we follow the history of heterogeneous systems in the datacenters and have multiple hypervisors moving forward?  Microsoft tried to have 100% saturation but there was always a place for Unix, Linux and of course, Mainframes.  Why would things be different this time around? East Coast, West Coast, VMware and Microsoft, can we all just get along and work together?

Picture a world where VMware and Microsoft can co-exist together.  Each product has a built in conversion tool that would allow you to move live VM’s from vSphere to Hyper-V and vice versa. That would be the holy grail of cohabitation. Maybe I dream big thinking Microsoft and VMware would work together to do this or maybe there will be a 3^rd party product that comes along to bridge the gap and do just that.

I think the SMB market will either be one technology or the other but as you get into SME through the large enterprises you will keep seeing more and more heterogeneous environments that will also include a heterogeneous set of hypervisors.

No related posts.

Originally Posted on The Virtualization Practice.

The first test was to try and validate vCloud Director 1.5.1 with vShield Manager 5.0.1 and the current Vblock Certification Matrix 2.5.3 that uses Cisco Nexus 1000v 4.2(1)SV1(5.1), which is the supported version of Nexus 1000v that can do VXLAN among other things. The VCE 2.5.3 certification matrix also uses VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0 Builds 474610, 504890, 515841 and VMware vCenter Server 5.0 build 455964. The Certification Matrix is a very valuable piece to customers because it validates the software and firmware levels of all the components in a Vblock to guarantee integration and compatibility so the customer doesn’t have to assume the risk of testing upgrades and releases, which can be a time consuming task for many environments.

Our test used ESXi build 515841 and vCenter 455964. These builds are normal vSphere 5.0 and NOT Update 1. After getting vCloud Director setup, we need to follow the directions lined out in Configuring Network Segmentation Manager. Of course, nothing is as spoon fed as I would like, so here is a step by step tutorial.

First thing you need to do is of course install the Nexus1000v 4.2(1)SV1(5.1). I built a tutorial called Standing Up The Cisco Nexus 1000v In Less Than 10 Minutes but that has quickly been outdated. I will create a new post soon detailing the steps of the new 1000v build because there is no longer a GUI part of the installation. Once the 1000v has been installed on the hosts used as vCloud provider vDC consumption

Step 0. VLAN Creation and trunking. During the setup of your Nexus 1000v, you should have added all the VLANs necessary for communication. You will need VLANs for External Portgroups, a VLAN(s) for VXLAN/VCDNI segmentation, or a few VLANs for VLAN Backed Network Pools.

n1000v# vlan 100

n1000v (vlan)# name External

n1000v (vlan)# vlan 150

n1000v (vlan)# name VXLAN-VCDNI

n1000v (vlan)# vlan 180-250 <- For VLAN backed Network Pools

n1000v# port-profile type vethernet External-100

n1000v# vmware port-group

n1000v# switchport mode access

n1000v# switchport access vlan 100

n1000v# port-binding ephemeral

n1000v# no shut

n1000v# state enabled

n1000v# port-profile type ethernet DATA-UPLINK

n1000v# switchport trunk allow vlan all (or the VLANs specified for trunking up to your switches)

n1000v# system vlan 100-250 (or whatever you specified for all your VLANs)

you can finish the rest for your ethernet uplinks…

Step 1. Turn on the features. The guide above only tell you about network-segmentation-manger, but you need the segmentation feature to allow vCloud to create bridged networks:

n1000v# conf t

n1000v# feature network-segmentation-manager

n1000v# feature segmentation

Step 2. Create a new organization and get the UUID from vCloud Director. Organization creation is simple, but getting the UUID can be tricky. You can get them through the vCloud API, PowerCLI, or through the vCloud Web Interface. The vCloud web interface is pretty simple for retrieving the UUID. From the admin portal, go to the Manage & Administrator tab, click on the Organizations button in the left pane, then click on the organization and a new tab is created within vCloud. Now if you look in the address bar, the UUID is the string of characters at the end. Copy that into your clipboard. (thanks to @jakerobinson for finding this). In this example my organization is IT and my UUID is c5e6d487-da66-42fd-b0f6-f885ea9ad13a.

Step 3: Create a port-profile and segmentation policy for your organization within the vCloud. You will see that steps 2-3 must be done for EVERY tenant/organization that is created for vCloud Director. Can anyone beg for automation? One thing to note here is that you can choose 2 types of Network Pools that need to be specified within the 1000v. Segmentation = VCD-NI Network Pools and VLAN = VLAN Backed Network Pools. I will show an example of each.

VXLAN/VCD-NI Example

n1000v# conf t

n1000v# port-profile type vethernet IT_Segmentation_Profile

n1000v# no shutdown

n1000v# state enabled

n1000v# conf t

n1000v# network-segment policy IT-Policy-VXLAN

n1000v# description “VCDNI and VXLAN segmentation for the IT Organization”

n1000v# type segmentation

n1000v# id c5e6d487-da66-42fd-b0f6-f885ea9ad13a

n1000v# import port-profile IT_Segmentation_Profile

VLAN Backed Example

n1000v# conf t

n1000v# port-profile type vethernet IT_VLANSegmented_Profile

n1000v# no shutdown

n1000v# state enabled

n1000v# conf t

n1000v# network-segment policy IT-Policy-VLANsegmented

n1000v# description “VLAN Backed segmentation for the IT Organization”

n1000v# type VLAN

n1000v# id c5e6d487-da66-42fd-b0f6-f885ea9ad13a

n1000v# import port-profile IT_VLANSegmented_Profile

Step 4: Configure vShield Manager. Go to the Web GUI for vShield Manager (https://ip_address) and enter your username and password. Go to the Settings tab and click on network. From there you will go to the Settings & Reports button on the left hand side which will bring you to the configuration tab. Within the configuration tab, go to the Networking page. From here we need to set 2 different things.

Create a Segment Pool ID Range. It can be a range between 4098-16000 I believe. No real rhyme or reason but I choose 8000-12000. I also chose a multicast address range of 224.10.0.1-224.10.0.150. Disclaimer: I’m going to be honest. I don’t know the first thing about VXLAN so multicast is new to me. If you know how these values effect design criteria, I would be glad to hear about them. Knowing the amount of IPs that can given out via a multicast range and the amount of Segment Pool IDs would good knowledge to have. Please comment if you would suggest different values!

The second part is to add the Nexus 1000v VSM as an External Switch Provider. Click on the button that says “Add Switch Provider” and enter the following information. Add a notable name to it, then type in the API interface for it to talk to which is https://IP_of_VSM/n1k/services/NSM, then type your user credentials and click OK. A pop-up box will come up asking to accept the RSA key to establish communication. Click OK and you should have a green box.

Step 5. Create our External Networks and Network Pools. From here on out, it’s business as usual with vCloud Director. This should be something you are familiar with if you have ever used vCloud Director. One thing to note is that using the Nexus 1000v doesn’t populate good information within vCloud (hence -1 as a VLAN).

Step 6. Create your Organization Networks, add a VM to the Catalog, and start deploying vApps. As you can see,  vShield Edge devices are being deployed and new portgroups are being created on the 1000v.

If you go back into your Cisco Nexus 1000v VSM, you can see that there are bridged VXLAN networks being created by vCloud Director and port-profiles being created for the isolated organization networks.

This was a fun challenge to get working because there is little documentaton available, and the documentation that is available is a bit mis-leading.

I did not test anything related to scale or performance, just functionality.

As of 3/30/12, I have been told that there are still some remaining bugs when running 1000v and vCloud Director and there will be a 1000v Patch coming out at some point in April, please use this knowledge with caution.

Originally Posted on Kendrick Coleman.

Both my abstract where accepted in the EMC’s Knowledge Sharing competition 2010 and 2011. Guy’s, I know it’s 2012, but I have to wait untill March, which is in a couple of day’s. Monthly, there will be published 2 or 3 Articles according to the Publishing Schedule. Of all entries, there are not more than 27 who have been nominated for publication last year.

Unfortunately again, I did not had the winning paper. But often they say that participation is more important than winning. Who am I kidding . No, seriously, that was not my goal!

A new article will be published soon (March). Despite the long wait I find it a great honor it wil be published and downloadable for everyone. In case you’re curious, EMC is trying to publish a variety of topics each month so that the global audience ’stays tuned’ throughout the year. Each month, EMC actively promote each articles in the EMC Proven Professional community and Education Services websites.

The EMC’s Knowledge Sharing program is a great initiative that allows people from around the globe to tell their story, whether it is about Cloud Computing, Content Management, Backup and Recovery, innovative approaches or other stuff. Let’s face it, it’s hot and there is too much to tell. These articles are written exclusively by EMC Proven Professionals, anyone can learn from these Knowledge Sharing articles. If you are not a Proven Professional then take the next step, get certified!

In a couple of day’s I provide the link to the article. If you are curious you can download the Book of Abstraction by clicking on the book below.

Click on article for download of Book of Abstraction!

Click on article for download the actually article!

Originally Posted on Mikes.EU.

Think about that, Microsoft has now expanded its desktop presence by adding in the mobile devices and Windows 8 will bring the Metro Interface across all desktops, phones and tablets. Can this be something that will enhance your overall computing experience as well as presenting another option for VDI?

I currently have an iPhone and an iPad that I use in conjunction with my laptop.  iTunes keeps things synced and I have some applications that will let me transfer files to and from my devices as well as have applications for most of the Office applications, but I will still have to take special steps to move and copy files around and will have to sync manually with a few of the mobile applications.  In the future, I can see Microsoft being able to offer automatic synchronization between devices running Windows 8 to the point that you can work on a document at the office, hit save on your way out the door and continue working on that document on your mobile device.  Microsoft may not have all the mobile applications in place yet but I am sure they will be coming.  If you have the applications you need, that will work across all your devices, would you really need virtual access to a desktop?  I do not think this will replace the need for VDI in all cases but would give another avenue for mobile virtual computing.

Speaking of VDI, the use of Microsoft’s “Windows To Go” technology that loads the user’s local install of Windows 8 onto a thumb drive, with apps and all, the user can then plug into any other computer to duplicate their work environment anywhere.  What if we take that concept just a wee bit further and perform a T2V (thumb to virtual) conversion and use that virtual machine for their virtual desktop, giving the end user even more options for accessibility?

The Microsoft App Store will be the key to success and we will have to wait until the Windows 8 general release to know how much content will be available as well as how long to really populate the store with quality content.

Conclusion

If we consider that both Microsoft and VMware have invested a lot of time, resources, and money into the mobile arena.  VMware is  looking to run mobile virtual machines on your phone as well as all the different mobile applications that VMware has released.   Microsoft, on the other hand, is unifying the user interface across all platforms and really starting to push their App Store in the Cloud.  I think we have arrived at the point in time for a mobile technology explosion and I would think both Microsoft and VMware would agree.  How long will it take before application venders start releasing both a desktop as well as a mobile version? I don’t think it will be too far off and the dream of being able to completely untethered from your desktop gets closer and closer.

Related posts:

• Virtual Desktop Clients as the next Mobile Device ‘Killer App’?
• Is Desktop Virtualization the Key to an Effective Windows 7 Migration?
• What to look for in a mobile OS if you are serious about desktop virtualization
• Get Your OS from VMware: Mobile Virtualization Platform
• A look at Microsoft Windows PowerShell Web Access

Tags: Desktop, Mobile Applications, smart phones, tablet, Windows 8

Originallly Posted at The Virtualization Practice.

I wanted to create a feel that is comparable to my website so it feels like there is some correlation. If you want my template, you can download it here or at the bottom of this page: kcdotcom.css

here are some pictures of the new layout…

Originally Posted on Kendrick Coleman.

I was working with a client that had a custom application / appliance running on a specific physical hardware and the appliance is fully configured and shipped out as a complete server. This is a perfect example of a product that in my opinion is something that should be available to run either physical or virtual. It has been my understanding that there is really not a big margin when selling hardware so having the option to download and deploy the application as a virtual appliance seems like a no brainer to me.

I have been working with a small client lately and have been setting up their virtualization proof of concept. One of the tasks, of the project, was a few physical to virtual (P2V) migrations. One of the servers on the list was basically a custom appliance running on an old dell server with an extremely specifically built version of Red Hat that I was unable to migrate using the vConverter. I had the server listed as problem child before starting this project and was expecting to have issues. One option that I wanted to try was to just do a clean build with the recovery disks that were sent by the vender. To say the vender was not very forth coming with information would be an understatement, but given the limited amount of information that was presented to me about the application itself, I was able to figure out that the install was failing because the licensing for the application was based on the MAC address of the system before it originally left the factory.

Once I realized that I would need to hardcode the old physical MAC address to the virtual machine, I started to do some searching to make sure this was still possible in vSphere5. I came across a lot of posts from people that were not able to get this process to work and I wanted to share the steps I followed to make the hard coding of the MAC address work correctly.

Technical Details

First step, which is very important, is to unregister the virtual machine if it is currently listed in the inventory. Removing the virtual machine from inventory will leave you the ability to edit the *.vmx file and get the changed information applied to the virtual machine when it gets registered back into the environment.

If you take a look at the entries for the vNic in the virtual machine’s vmx file, it will look something like this:

ethernet1.present = “true”

ethernet1.virtualDev = “vmxnet3″

ethernet1.networkName = “NETWORK01″

ethernet1.addressType = “vpx”

ethernet1.generatedAddress = “00:50:56:b5:6F:21″

ethernet1.features = “1″

ethernet1.startConnected = “TRUE”

You will need to make a change to ethernet1.addressType from “vpx” to “STATIC” and change the ethernet1.generatedAddress to Ethernet.address with the MAC address that come from the physical server we were migrating. One more, very important setting, to add to help make sure the MAC address rules that VMware enforces is bypassed for this specific virtual machine is the checkMACAddress option.

Your changes so far should look like this:

ethernet1.checkMACAddress = “FALSE”

ethernet1.addressType = “STATIC”

ethernet1.address = “00:00:00:12:34:56”

Although everything looked like it was working correctly from this point, I was still not able to get the license to apply and the install to complete. I needed to make one other change and that was the vNic device from “vmxnet3” to “e1000”

ethernet1.virtualDev = “e1000″

Once I made the change to the vNic device, I re-registered the virtual machine back into inventory. I was asked during the registration if I had copied or moved the virtual machine. I selected “moved” so the settings would not be touched. If I had selected copied then I believe all the custom MAC settings would have been overwritten.

From here, I started the virtual machine and re-started the licensing process and this time the license was able to be applied. The MAC coding was a success and once again all was well in the universe.

Update: It is also possible to use a similar technique within Hyper-V and Xen to set non-standard MACs for licensing purposes.

Conclusion

Licensing is a necessary to protect the intellectual properties of software companies, but the evil is that we are forced to use a method to “make it work” by not having options and support in resolving licensing issues with some companies. Licensing should not have to be this difficult or as much of a hassle when trying to move applications from physical hardware to virtual. It is understandable that when black box appliances are released, the” idea” is application will run on that hardware until its decommissioned or refreshed. Virtualization, no matter which hypervisor it is running on, should have presented a change of thought to this “idea”. Virtualization has helped redefine software life-cycle in a lot of ways since once the application is virtual the application no longer depended on the specific hardware it is running on and to my point, either should the licensing. Licensing needs to able to work in both physical and virtual worlds as well as make the migration between.

Originally Posted on The Virtualization Practice.