Technodrone

Security in VMware Virtual Appliances

2013-06-17T12:00:00.000+03:00

Today I got a reminder of a post I have been meaning to write about security best practices and VMware Virtual Appliances.

A question was raised on the VMTN community VCSA - what is the default "upgrade" user for?

That is a very legitimate question!! Giving a user all rights with no password can become an issue. But in this case since it is used (most probably) for the purpose of the upgrade of the VCSA from version to version - then it might OK (or not… ).

Which leads straight into the next subject - what users (and what are their rights) exist on the vCenter Server Appliance?

Let's have a quick look at what users there are on the VCSA (screenshot is all the local users on my VCSA that are both not locked or disabled)

So firstly let me say that is a hell of a lot of users in the server that in essence is one of (if not the most) important part of your Virtual infrastructure.

You might say (and rightfully so) that even if the users are defined - that does not mean that they can actually log into the system - for that they would need some kind of shell access. So I checked which users actually have shell access. That would be users who do not have /bin/false or /sbin/nologin in their profile. This is what I got

Let's concentrate on some of the users in the list.

lp	Access to printer hardware; enables the user to manage print jobs.
ftp	FTP user
man	Used for man
games	Access to some game software
news	Used for news application
uucp	Serial and USB devices such as modems, handhelds, RS-232/serial ports.

For someone that values security - all our Linux boxes are hardened (as they should be), so the first thing we do is run the following:

# userdel shutdown
# userdel halt
# userdel reboot
# userdel games
# userdel news
# userdel gopher
# userdel ftp

(Just to clarify - I do not advise running any of the above commands on your vCenter Server without proper testing and approval from VMware and doing so might void your support.
Be warned!!)

If you were to ask me - most of the users listed above have absolutely no business being on a production box… especially not on my vCenter!!!!

In VMware's defense I should say that I checked which users were available on other VMware appliances - such as the vCOPS appliances and the new Log Insight appliance - and most of these users were not present on either of them. Perhaps this is the way going forward.

VMware have made progress - but I still do not feel 100% comfortable with the vCenter virtual appliance even after I wrote my post last year - Should You Patch the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance?

vCenter has all the keys to the kingdom - and VMware must make the utmost effort to make sure that no possibility of exploit can used by leaving silly holes and possible security vulnerabilities open in the underlying operating system.

The same way that a ESXi host is locked down - there is no reason why the vCenter server should users like games on them.

Imagine if we had Pong on our vCenter…

Yo Ho Ho - VMware Needs a CTO…

2013-06-13T17:19:00.000+03:00

Forgive the catchy title…

Well this morning I thought that I had missed something (which I usually don't) - and that Paul Strong was appointed as the new CTO succeeding Stephen Herrod.

What made me come to that conclusion you might ask - it was this article.

Performing a reality check on Twitter is easy

Forgive the ignorance but when did Paul Strong become the new CTO?
— Maish Saidel-Keesing (@maishsk) June 13, 2013

And it seemed I was not the only one.

I have heard from within VMware that Paul Strong was not appointed as the new CTO (he is the CTO for Global Field- but not THE CTO), so I do not know where The Register got their information from.

Which now brings me to another and more important question. How long can VMware go on without filling Stephen's shoes? Stephen left his position as the CTO on January 15th, 2013.

Shortly thereafter (related or not I do not know - I am not a financial buff) the VMW stock took a beating, dropping almost 20 points, today the stock it still at around the same level (after some ups and downs).

Stephen was (and still is) highly respected for his leadership qualities, his vision and his part in bringing VMware to the place they are today. I do not think there were many who were not shocked about the announcement - it was not something that many predicted. The community - especially the active virtual community hold him in high regard.

So the obvious question is what is taking so long to replace him? I do say that his replacement will have to live up to high expectations, from the shareholders, from the community and also from the customers. His spot is not an easy one to fill. I personally do not know enough about the "visionaries" within VMware who can replace him, or perhaps it will be someone from within the "mothership" (gotta love speculation).

I do think that VMware have to fill this void - the sooner the better. It has been 5 months. It is not good for business, it is not good for your stock.

It will restore peace to the the world, calm to the schizophrenics and ..

Please feel free to leave your comments and thoughts below.

Announcements from Red Hat summit

2013-06-12T23:30:00.000+03:00

Here is a short summary with links on today's announcements from the Red Hat summit in Boston.

Red Hat Launches Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.2

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.2 brings a vast array of new features, including:

Fully supported Storage Live Migration, allowing virtual machine images to be moved from one storage domain to another without disrupting service
Support for the latest industry-standard processors from Intel and AMD, including Intel Haswell series and AMD Opteron G5 processors
Enhancements in storage management, networking management, fencing and power management, Spice console enhancements, logging and monitoring, and more.

New Third-Party Plug-ins
Red Hat is already collaborating with several industry leaders to integrate their solutions with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization via the new plug-in, including high availability and disaster recovery solutions from NetApp (with a VSC), Symantec (HA), and Insight Control from HP

Red Hat Shows OpenStack Ecosystem Strength; Launches Red Hat OpenStack Certification, Unveils Red Hat Certified Solution Marketplace

As part of today’s announcement, IBM joins Cisco and Intel as Alliance Partners in the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network.
Red Hat OpenStack Certification Program
Red Hat Certified Solution Marketplace

Red Hat and Mirantis Partner Across Products and Services to Accelerate Adoption of Red Hat OpenStack

Mirantis, and Red Hat today announced that the two companies will collaborate to optimize Mirantis’ Fuel tools for deployment of Red Hat OpenStack, and deliver OpenStack implementation and integration services to joint customers.

Red Hat Announces OpenStack-powered Product Offerings to Deliver on Open Hybrid Cloud Vision

New solutions include extension to Red Hat Enterprise Linux product family and new offering to enable customers on their journey from datacenter virtualization to Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Red Hat today announced two new product offerings with one vision of delivering an Open Hybrid Cloud. The new offerings include Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, a solution that serves as the foundation for advanced cloud users who are seeking to build an OpenStack-powered cloud, and Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure, a comprehensive offering designed to support organizations on their journey from traditional datacenter virtualization to OpenStack-powered clouds.

vCenter Log Insight Now Available

2013-06-11T00:51:00.002+03:00

Hello World….

vCenter Log Insight (Release Notes) - The first public release of the new Log Management and Analytics product.

VMware vCenter Log Insight is the new solution of VMware for log management and analytics for dynamic hybrid cloud environments. It delivers superior technology for automated log management through log analytics, aggregation, and search to extend the leadership of VMware in analytics to log data. Log Insight can analyze vast amounts of unstructured machine generated data and enable interactive, real-time search and analytics through an easy to use interface providing superb time to value. It analyzes log data of all types and from all devices, enabling deep, enterprise-wide visibility. With a focus on integrated cloud operations management, and an analytics driven approach, Log Insight provides the operational intelligence needed to proactively enable service levels and operational efficiency in dynamic hybrid cloud environments.

Think of it as something similar to Splunk but different - it is specifically vSphere Centric (at least at the moment), built by VMware people (as a result of the Log Insight acquisition from August 2012) and it integrates with vCOPs (which is a great plus)

There is recommended sizing document

Licensing

VMware vCenter Log Insight is available for purchase as a standalone product. It has a simple pricing model, with one flat rate for any server, virtual machine or vSphere host from which you collect logs.

VMware vCenter Log Insight is licensed on a per operating system instance (OSI) basis, which is defined as any server, virtual or physical, with an IP address that generates logs, including network devices and storage arrays.

With Log Insight, you can analyze an unlimited amount of log data per OSI. The advantage of this is a simple and predictable pricing model that is based on the size of the infrastructure; it does not force you to buy additional licenses to cover the worst-case scenario and pay more for increased log volumes.

Given that systems and devices can generate huge amounts of log data during peak times, or while monitoring and troubleshooting for various IT issues, this is an important distinction.

Detailed pricing information will be announced when vCenter Log Insight is ready to ship
in Q3 2013.

Just as a side note… Version 1.0 should not have a version number of 0.9.1 - that does not make sense…

Give it a spin - and le me know what you think about it?

vExpert 2013

2013-06-04T14:09:00.000+03:00

Last week, the 581 people that were awarded the vExpert title for the year 2013. It is large list of people who are active in the community, that share knowledge, that lead VMUG's and all other kinds of evangelizing for VMware and the community in general.

As we all know there are a number of "perks" that come with being a vExpert, but mostly it is an honor.

An honor to be part of an amazing group of people
An honor to serve the community
An honor that people acknowledge your contributions

I have traditionally created a Twitter list of the vExperts each year, and this in not different.

I actually created two of them due to the fact that Twitter limited the number of members of a single list to 500 members (and of course they changed it on Thursday - after the lists were populated)

So there will be only a single vExpert 2013 list which you can find here.

Thank you for the honor and here is looking forward to a wonderful and exciting year..

VMTN Communities - Now Supports Mobile Devices

2013-05-24T10:10:00.000+03:00

This was not widely announced, so I guess that many of you do not know that since the upgrade that was performed on the VMware Community Forums (VMTN) there is now support for mobile devices
(such as Android and iPhone/iPad).

This is what it looks like through a regular tablet browser (Android with Chrome in my case). With a tablet this is pretty much ok, but from a phone the forums are pretty much unusable.

Here is a quick how-to on how you go about allowing mobile devices access to your account.

From a web browser - go to the preferences on your VMware Communities account.

And choose the new Mobile Tab

Give your device a name and Get Activation Code

You will presented with a QR code that you can scan and an activation code number.

Scan the code which will take you to https://vmware.jive-mobile.com where you will already have the activation code in the link.

Now with the new interface.. Click on the login button.

Click on Register.

And now you will be logged with your credentials, with access to your recent activity on the forums.

I think this is great improvement and makes the forums a lot easier to use on the go.

I would like to give a big shout out to Corey Romero (@vCommunityGuy) the Community Manager, for all the great work and planning that was put into the upgrade, and all the great day-to-day work he does for the community.

Thanks Corey!!

VMware Workstation & Fusion Technology Preview 2013

2013-05-21T16:16:00.001+03:00

VMware have just released a new public beta for VMware Workstation

The VMware Workstation team is providing public access to the VMware Workstation Technology Preview to gather feedback from users on a wide range of hardware and software configurations. The VMware Workstation Technology Preview includes changes to the core virtualization engine and new capabilities we are exploring.

What's New - Read the full release notes

VMware Hardware Version 10 - This Technology Preview introduces hardware Version 10. Hardware versions introduce new virtual hardware functionality and new features while enabling VMware to run legacy operating systems in our virtual machines.

16 vCPUs - In this Technology Preview VMware Workstation is shipping Hardware Version 10 and has enabled our users to create and run virtual machines with up to 16 virtual CPUs. Please let us know how this performs running your workloads. We have run CPU benchmarks, encryption/decryption and encoding/decoding programs to characterize the performance, but we are interested in what results you get running other applications.

SSD Passthrough - Windows 8 is capable of detecting when it is being run from a solid state drive (SSD) and optimizes itself for this hardware. In this Technology Preview, Workstation can detect when the Virtual Machine Disk file is being stored on an SSD drive and pass this information to the guest operating system to enable Windows 8 to make the same optimizations when it is running in a virtual machine.

Expiring Virtual Machines - VMware has enhanced the capabilities of Restricted Virtual Machines to include the ability to expire the virtual machine on a certain date at midnight UTC time (for now). The intent of this feature is to enable customers to create virtual machines to be shared with employees, students, customers, contractors etc. that will run until the date that that you set.

New Converter - This Workstation Technology Preview includes a preview of the next version of VMware Converter. The Converter enables users to make Physical machines virtual. This version of the Converter includes support the following enhancements:

Guest operating system support for Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Guest operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Support for virtual and physical machine sources with GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks
Support for virtual and physical machine sources with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
Support for EXT4 file system
Support for vSphere 5.1 virtual machine hardware version 9

Pre-Released OVFTool - The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine distribution format that supports sharing virtual machines between products and organizations. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility that enables a user to import and export OVF packages to and from a wide variety of VMware products.

User Interface Enhancements:

There are other small changes that have been included in this release that you may discover and we are continuing to add more features but here are a couple of items that you may come across:

Windows 8 Unity Mode Support - We are continuing to improve on how our Unity Mode user-interface works with Microsoft's "Modern UI" or the "Microsoft Design Language" (The new tile interface in Windows 8 formerly known as Metro). We have made some improvements and would like to know what you think!

Multiple Monitor Navigation - When running with 2,3,4 and even 5 or 6 monitors it has been frustrating to use the full screen mode in Workstation and toggle through each combination of monitors to get to the one you want. The fullscreen toolbar now has an option to choose your configuration and jump to it immediately.

Power Off Suspended Virtual Machines - I am sure that this has happened to you as often as it happens to me. You want to change the configuration of a virtual machine in your library that you use all of the time. You open up the virtual machine settings dialog and everything is greyed out because the virtual machine is currently suspended. Instead of powering on the virtual machine and waiting for it to boot up before powering it down to make the changes, the Technology Preview lets you simply power off the suspended Virtual Machine (as long as you don't care about what is in its memory).

Remote Hardware Upgrade - When working with virtual machines running remotely on vSphere or on another instance of Workstation, you can now remotely upgrade the Hardware version..

There is also a new release of VMware Fusion as well

VMware Labs is providing public access to the VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2013 to gather real-world feedback from users on a wide range of hardware and software configurations. The VMware Fusion Technology Preview includes changes to the core virtualization engine and new capabilities we are exploring.

Creating large VMs on appropriately equipped Macs (16 vCPUs, 64GB RAM)
Dictation Support
Network handling when running VMware ESX as a guest
Restricted virtual machines with an expiration date
PC Migration Assistant
Virtual Machine Compatibility pane under Settings
Improved handling of the Command/Windows key under Windows 8
General stability and correctness

What's New? - Read the full release notes

Features

New virtual Hardware Version 10 with support for up to 16 vCPUs on Macs with more than 16 cores.
Support for up to 64GB of RAM per VM on Macs with sufficient memory.
Support for Mountain Lion Dictation.
Updated PC Migration Assistant.
Support for expiring a restricted virtual machine after a particular date.

User Interface

Redesigned Settings > Compatibility to provide more information about the limits associated with each virtual hardware version and product compatibility.
A virtual machine can now be rebooted to BIOS/EFI by performing the following actions: Settings > Startup Disk > Restart to firmware. The “Restart to firmware” option is shown when the “Alt/Option” key is held down.

Operating Systems

Improved handling of the Command key to prevent accidentally entering “Metro-style” when running Windows 8.

Change Outlook Meetings En Masse

2013-05-20T23:04:00.000+03:00

I had my mailbox migrated to a new domain today. One of the side effects of this was that for silly reason, a large number of my meetings now had a prefix of Copy: added to the subject of the meeting.

Which annoyed the hell out of me.

Now I could go ahead and remove all the extra information one by one - but that is tedious annoying and against my automation principles.

So starting with this post Retrieve all-day appointments in Outlook with PowerShell and this one as well Create Outlook Appointments from PowerShell, I have managed to change all the outlook appointments that have the extra text in the subject line with the following lines of code

$olApp = New-Object -COM Outlook.Application
$namespace = $olApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
$fldCalendar = $namespace.GetDefaultFolder(9)
$items = $fldCalendar.Items
$copies = $items  | ? {$_.Subject -like "Copy:*" }
$copies | % {
	$newsubject = ($_.Subject).Trim("Copy: ")
	$_.Subject = $newsubject
	$_.Save()
}

Before

After

Gotta Love PowerShell!!

Choosing a Webhost for Your Blog

2013-05-20T14:00:00.000+03:00

Many bloggers have their sites hosted somewhere. Personally I find it very convenient having my blog hosted under Google's Blogger service. Since I am having issue with my provider and mentioned it on Twitter, several people asked if I found a good new host, if I would not mind sharing the details with them.

I assume that none of you know that I used to run a private webhosting service as a side gig for a decent number of years, and I think that some of the knowledge I have accumulated over the year could be of great use in choosing the right Webhost for your blog.

First let's dive into what kind of services a webhost will usually provide.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting means that you are get a certain amount of space on a shared server (it could be a physical server, or a virtual machine somewhere) where you can do a number of things. these usually are (but are not limited to)

Create web pages
Install Software - usually web interfaces to software like Wordpress, Forum software (phpBB). Softaculous is one such example.
Configure email accounts
Look at Web statistics
FTP accounts
Create MySQL databases
Create Sub-domains or add-on domains if your account allows those features

All of these options are accessible through a control panel which is web based. If you like to administer your environment through a shell command and the host allows it (it will usually be a jailed shell - which is limited) then you can.

Pros

This is usually the cheapest option. Shared hosting goes for around anything from $2-$10 per month.
You do not need to manage anything regarding the operating system - your provider will take care of this.

Cons

The noisy neighbor - usually you are sharing the same server with a number of other people - sometimes an excessive amount of people it can go up into the hundreds… If one of them causes problems on the server then you all suffer.
You are usually quite limited in your resources, how many databases you can create, email accounts, disk space etc. etc.
Support is dependent solely on your provider, and more than often enough you know more about how things work than they do.
Disk space is limited
Resources you have to disposal are also limited including bandwidth, so if you have a popular site you will either have to go to a higher package or to the next level.
You have no guaranteed resources in terms of CPU/RAM/Network.

Reseller Hosting

This is very similar to the shared hosting, except you are placed in the "Junior Manager Role". Here you have the option to to create usually an almost unlimited number of accounts, host a large number of domains. This would be suitable if you are interested in hosting more than one domain and you are not interested in paying for a shared account for each and every domain.

Pros

Same as the shared account.
Prices go for anything from $5 a month to $60 per month depending on the provider and the resources you are using.
You can sometimes outsource the end-user support to the hosting provider, if they provide that kind of service
Your provider will support you regarding problems with the hosting software.

Cons

Again the same as the shared account
Here you usually have little / no limitations in the amount of resources you can create
The limiting factors here are bandwidth and disk space.
You have no guaranteed resources in terms of CPU/RAM/Network.
You are limited to the software on the server, i.e. if you want a certain version of PHP or MySQL and the server does not have installed the you are stuck

VPS

A VPS is sort of a semi dedicated server, I would compare this in a very general way to a hypervisor with several VM's but not a Type-1 hypervisor.

Pros

You have your own Operating system. All to your self, do what want with it - for better or for worse.
You have the option to choose what flavor of OS you would like - Ubuntu,Debian, Centos, etc…
You have your own IP - it is not shared.
You have a guaranteed set of resources, RAM, disk space and bandwidth
Your RAM resources have an option to expand to burstable level for short periods of time.
Your resources are guaranteed and isolated from your neighbors.
You have a Web interface that will allow you to restart your VPS (and OOB management interface)
Shell access is standard.
Changing plans is a no-brainer.
Re-installation is simple.

Cons

Your CPU resources are usually not guaranteed
Neither are your disk or network resources.
Unless you are using a managed (that means your provider is taking care of the VPS for you) then you are in charge of the VPS. Security, updates, software installation - the whole works.
There is a limit to how much the hardware can handle - so if your provider oversells (i.e. oversubscription in the VMware world) then you will have problems.
Prices are not cheap - and can run from $25 - $200 per month depending on the resources and you package.

Dedicated Server

If your site needs a dedicated server then you have either really very busy site - or your website utilizes scripts that are not working well, that your provider refuses to let you run on the current solutions (and yes I am speaking from experience)

Pros

You are the sole ruler of your kingdom.
Root access
Full CPU/RAM/Disk resources
Out of band management
You can run multiple Operating Systems, perhaps even install ESXi on it if your provider supports it.

Cons

Price - usually starts at over $100 per month and also requires a $50-$100 setup fee.
Hardware changes are expensive,
You are usually limited to 2 hard disks. (some configurations include SSD's
Network ports are usually 100Mb/s.
The same as a VPS unless it is managed

There are other options of course, new ones like cloud hosting, or Colocation, but I think for a blog these are overkill.

Now that we have gone over all the options, where do you actually find a good and reliable host? But first why do you need one? Well the answer to that is obvious. Your blog / brand is your face to the world. If your provider mucks up because they have not backup/DR plan and their server went down - then you are in trouble. If they are trying to make as much money and are overloading the servers, or have not been in business for more than a month then perhaps they are not such a good choice.

So how would you find a good and reliable host?

I would say the best place I know of would be the Webhostingtalk forums. This is an amazing resource for anything webhosting related. The forum is always busy and I would say is the best place to find information.

They have an offers forum for Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS, Dedicated servers. The method I would advise for finding a reliable webhost is as follows, and I will take the VPS forum as an example.

Firstly you have the sticky posts - these are usually the bigger hosts who have a really good name and reputation in the forums, and they have probably paid to have the posts put up at the top of the list.

Underneath that you will see a great deal of posts with a lot of offers. How do you know which ones are reliable. Well first thing is to look for a post with a number of replies greater that 10

If a post has a number of replies it could either because it is a really cheap deal, or perhaps because it is a very good deal.

I look at the when the member joined, and how many posts he has and also what kind of member they are. This one looks like he has been here for a while, and reputable.

Looking at another post with no replies

The user has been around for a year or two but not active. Perhaps not a great idea.

So you found a good deal. Next thing you should do is search the forums to see what reviews others have posted regarding the company that you are looking at. I guarantee you, that if they do not provide decent service, or have not been honest - the thread will pop up in your search.

One last thing. Go the website of the provider, see if they have a support forum, go over the posts to see if people are happy with the service. Then open a support ticket, see how fast the response times are, check if they know what they are talking about. Checking these things before hand will save you a huge headache in the future..

To sum up this I would like to give you my recommendations of Webhosts from personal experience and some I currently use today.

Knownhost - By far the best company I have used over the years - they only deal in VPS servers and up. They are not cheap but the service they provide is fantastic!! Every support ticket I opened was responded within minutes, no matter what time of day it was. Again superb service, superb availability.

ResellerZoom - They deal in practically everything. Service was good, they have a very good budget plan, infrastructure is solid.

123Systems - They are budget provider, I have a VPS with them at the moment. Infrastructure is solid and support is very quick, but here you get what you pay for?

One last thing. Most bloggers use Wordpress as their platform for their blog, and I have seen several questions about who is a good Wordpress webhost.

I think that is the wrong question, because almost every single provider you can fins, especially those that use dedicated webhosting software like cPanel or DirectAdmin will offer you the option to install Wordpress and usually through a simple installation process.

So you can use almost any host you want, just go through the due diligence beforehand, otherwise you could regret it in the future.

Why a Single Feature Doesn't Matter?

2013-05-17T16:10:00.000+03:00

Once upon a time… Nah… This is not a fairy tale so lets do it differently.

What is the maximum size of a virtual disk that vSphere 5.1 supports? If you have no idea, then probably you have not passed your VCP (because they ask those silly kind of questions) but you can use Eric Siebert's page VMware configuration maximums from 1.0 to 5.1 if you need a reminder.. 2TB

And how much does Hyper-V support? Much more.. 64TB.

And GCE? Well they have whopping 10TB persistent disk!

How many hosts in a does a single vCenter support? 1,000
And how many hosts per cluster? 32
And Powered on VM's? 10,000
And how many simultaneous vMotions?

But Hyper-V supports 64 nodes in a cluster and 8,000 VM's (if they are powered on or not I do not know..) and so many simultaneous Live Migrations..

(These numbers are valid for current versions, but I am sure that in future releases they will go up higher)

Who …. #@##@ Cares?????? (and therefore the reason for this post…)

It doesn't really matter who has supports a bigger disk.

It does not matter if you can run 10,000 VM's or 8,000..

It is wonderful that you can store 10TB of data on a single persistent disk on GCE. (Heaven forbid that you actually have to replicate that amount of data somewhere else, back it up or even worse have to restore it!!)

And why not - because in approximately 80% of the deployments in the world (most probably more) - you will never get anywhere close to those numbers. You really won't!

So what is important then? And what should you really look for?

I would say is the solution which is suitable for you. Don't base your decisions on one parameter out of several hundred that most of you will never come across anyway.

Yes there are the certain edge cases that the sheer scale of some environments will exceed one maximum or the other. But I can assure you that when you hit 32 nodes in a single cluster I promise you, the fact that Hyper-V can support 64 is the last reason you should migrate your environment over.
If you are already going over 8,000 VM's in your Hyper-V environment then the fact that vCenter can support 10,000 should not be the reason to switch.

The technology that is suited for you, the technology that will allow your to fulfill your requirements, stand up to your SLA's, the one that suits your needs, the one that fits into your business practices and models, and that will be the most cost effective for you…

That is the solution you should choose.

(I shiver once more having to think about backing up / replicating a 10TB volume… Restoring that - don't even want to go there….)

Comments and thoughts of course are always welcome…

My Take on the vCenter Certificate Automation Tool

2013-05-09T22:43:00.000+03:00

This is just a note to point you to an article that was recently published about my thoughts on the newly released vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0.

The full post can be found on TechTarget below

I for one am looking forward to see vCert Manager released.

Upgrading to VMware's Latest Release of …

2013-05-07T15:06:00.000+03:00

Jason Boche posted a great article vSphere 5.1 Update 1 Update Sequence and there he pointed to an excellent KB article released by VMware - Update sequence for vSphere 5.1 Update 1 and its compatible VMware products (2037630)

I would like to add some of my thoughts about the mass release of products that happened last week.

First look at the screenshot below.

The first thing that I noticed - the number of products that are intertwined - is becoming larger and larger. 14 at the moment in this document.

I am extremely grateful to VMware for many things but two specific things in this context.

They have provided a detailed document stating the order that you should perform the upgrade.
They have released all of the versions at the same time - now the chance of having one component in my infrastructure that will not work with the new versions - is less likely to occur.

But on the other hand…

If I want to update your environment then you are in for a long …. ride.

Any enterprise that is using some or all of these components will not be able to perform the upgrade in a day, probably not a week, and maybe it will take them months. A while back in my post Release Cycles and Why We Are Chasing Our Tails? I wrote about the effects of having rapid release cycles and why this will make things even more complicated. I agree that most of the components can be replaced with minimal or no substantial downtime to the end user, but there will always be edge cases of course.

It is now May 2013, and if we can assume that VMware will release a new version of their products sometime around VMworld (which is what they historically do), then it seems that your organization will have to go through this process, again, sometime in Q4 of 2013.

The question then arises - is it worthwhile to do this now, and then again start the whole process again in another 4 months?

If you are to upgrade the whole stack (or at least part of it - and please make a note that VMware does recommend that you upgrade/update everything to the latest version), when should it be done?

Should you do it now because of the new functionality that was added with Update 1?
Or perhaps wait for the next version - where historically substantial additional functionality is added (again based only on previous years and releases).

I admit this is a bit of a guessing game - but it is one that you should definitely consider and understand the ramifications of such a decision, and that is ..

When and how often should you upgrade your environment?

By the Numbers - VMworld 2013 Session Voting

2013-04-24T15:00:00.000+03:00

So the onslaught of "vote for my sessions" has begun.

I like numbers and the interesting information that can be interpreted from those numbers.
VMworld Call for Papers Voting is no exception.

So let's start.

But before that, I would like to stress something. These numbers are what I have extracted from what is publicly available - it could be that the numbers presented below do not make up a full picture (they probably don't) - because there are sessions that could already have been accepted and we know nothing about it.
My thoughts only…

The number of sessions currently up for public voting - 954. Last year there were 1222 - that is a drop of 28%.

My thoughts - either there were less submissions this year, or VMware weeded out more stuff before the voting started this year, or there are many other sessions that have content relating to upcoming features that they were not publicized in the voting process. In any event - it is still impossible to go through a list of ~1000 sessions.

Vendors

To which company do the potential speakers belong? (and here I took only the Diamond sponsors)

My thoughts - very much expected - although I would have expected that Cisco would have put in more sessions (let the conspiracy theories begin..)

Tracks

The number of sessions in each sub-track of the Infrastructure track are as follows

My thoughts - Cloud and EUC will continue to be a major part of the conference this year and is every year...

Some other interesting little tidbits..

My thoughts - Automation has become a major concern as environments are growing bigger and more complex - you can see that from the numbers above.
Orchestrator - is at least on par if not starting to overtake PowerCLI as the preferred tool for automating - that is why there are so many sessions.
Puppet is still the tool of choice for most VMware professionals - strange though that Chef did not even submit anything - is this the direction for the future - maybe??
And of course vCAC, the new kid on the block - will have to prove itself.

What about Cloud?

My thoughts - Cloud cloud … cloud cloud cloud!! One of the terms that will be used too much at VMworld. But hey… it's VMworld people!!
Hybrid is definitely popular - and that also could be because that is what VMware has named their Public cloud offering. Are you confused yet???
Openstack - is something that VMware are trying to embrace - but is quite a different animal than what VMware is trying to sell as their management layer - it will be interesting to see how this evolves, still to early to say if you ask me.
And the AWS sessions - will be not be Amazon friendly..

Software Defined <insert your term here>..

My thoughts - Software Defined ..<blah>.. is the new buzzword, everyone wants it, everyone is trying to sell it and it will be present in full force at VMworld.
VMware is trying to push NSX - and it shows - just look at the number of sessions, SDS (software defined storage) is also in there - I just did not single it out

Others

My thoughts - Oracle and business critical applications - VMware are continuing to put the emphasis on how well these work on vSphere, an interesting fact though is that most of the presenters for the Business Critical Apps are not VMware people they are customers - which shows it is working and being used.
I would have expected more monitoring/vCOPS sessions.
Maybe finally there will be something new in the Active Directory sessions with the new virtualization features for domain controllers in Windows 2012 - because if not this topic has already been beaten to death….

I would say go out vote (and if you really want, I have a 3 sessions that you can click on) but I am skeptic about how much, if any influence your vote will actually have on which sessions will get in.

The FAQ states..

Influence how? By how much? As long as the process is not transparent - then we will never know.

As a wise man once said … "We are all influentials ! "

(Oops that was individuals - My bad! :) )

What Is Your Most Popular Post?

2013-04-12T16:48:00.000+03:00

I mentioned last week on The Unofficial VMware Visio Stencils post that it is by far the most popular post on my blog.

We all have a most popular post - one that usually stand out amongst the rest.

I started thinking - why not compile a list of each of our most popular blog posts. It does not necessarily have to be Virtualization related, I think it should - but you can decide.

So this is how it will work.

If you are interested, and would like to add it to the list below…

Please leave a comment below [or send me a message on Twitter or contact me at
maishsk (at) gmail (dot) com] with the following :

Name:
Your Twitter Name:
Post URL:
Screenshot of the number of all-time Pageviews for your post:

No number is too great or small - let me have it! Be it 100/1,000… /1,000,000 - It does not matter.

This is by no means a competition, just an opportunity to showcase your finest and shiniest piece of work. I will add the entries below (in the order they are received)

Name	Twitter	Post URL	All-time Number of PageViews
Maish Saidel-Keesing	@maishsk	The Unofficial VMware Visio Stencils
Luca Dell’Oca	@dellock6	About Me
William Lam	@lamw	How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5
Ather Beg	@AtherBeg	HTC Peep issue resolved: “The account was forbidden to access the Twitter server”
Phillip Jones	@P2Vme	VMware vSphere 5.1 Known Issues : Updated 9/17/2012

Will you accept the challenge?

The Unofficial VMware Visio Stencils

2013-04-08T16:00:00.000+03:00

The VMware Visio Stencils I have created are by far the most popular post on my blog. Over the past few years I have posted a three versions over the years since they were released.

I decided last week that it was time to create a dedicated page that would hold the most up to date version and not to have them spread out all across my blog.
Therefore from now all the old versions will now redirect to this page.

Why "The Unofficial VMware Visio Stencils"?
That is because they are not prepared by VMware, but by me. On each occasion I have taken the icons and diagrams that VMware release every now and again and turn them into something that a large number of people have asked for, but VMware have yet to be able to supply, a re-usable Visio stencil that can be used in diagrams.

First the legal part:

This document was created using the official VMware icon and diagram library. Copyright © 2012 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents.
VMware does not endorse or make any representations about third party information included in this document, nor does the inclusion of any VMware icon or diagram in this document imply such an endorsement.

Today (April 8th, 2013) I am also releasing the final and last part of the v3 version of the Stencils.
To make it more user friendly and easier to find what you would like, you can find below a graphical inventory of what is in each of the parts of this version (v3).

Part 1

Box Shots

Icons

2D Icons

Shapes and Assets

Build your Own

Part 2

VMware Concepts

Additional Icons

Part 3

Product Groupings

Part 3 includes the following products:

Orchestrator (x2)
CapacityIQ
Chargeback
Appspeed
Site Recovery Manager (x3)
Studio
vCloud Director
VMware Server
View (x6)
ThinApp (x2)
vCloud Director (x2)

Each of the shapes above are laid out (as much as possible) in such a way to allow you to move the components within your Visio drawing, to suit your needs.
So where are the actual stencils already???
Here you can find all the Downloads (including the historical versions)

Version
v3 (2012)	(Full package)	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3
v2 (2010)	(Full package)	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3
v1 (2009)	(Full package)	Part 1	Part 2

I hope this continues to be a valuable resource for you all!

Why Can't We Just Talk to Each Other?

2013-03-25T15:00:00.000+02:00

Times they are A-changin', Bob Dylan's song from 1963 was written at the time to make a change.

On Friday I caught wind of a story which I think should actually be an eye opener for us all.

The story I am talking about is the one about Adria Richards and her tweet at Pycon.

Amanda Blum posted a long but good post Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost with her take on the whole thing.

To make a long story short. Adria heard a sexist remark while at a conference from to guys sitting behind her. She snapped a photo and posted it to Twitter. And all hell broke loose.

One of the men was fired, her company was attacked and she was fired.

Firstly I do have my own opinion about how society has evolved over the years and how morals have continuously deteriorated generation by generation. But that is not what I want to talk about. Who was wrong here? Well both sides were.

Who was more wrong - doesn't matter.

Amy Lewis wrote a post a while back - Don’t Call Me, Maybe? (Go ahead and read it, I will wait) about how people are using social media more and more, instead of actually interacting with each other - and by interaction - I mean talking with someone on the phone or even better, face to face.

People do not talk any more. And it is a shame.

Technology has enabled us to do a great number of things, an unbelievable amount of things.

In my post Where Does it All Come From? I touched on how things have evolved in the way use technology. I have the option to reach out with my keyboard and contact someone on the other side of the world and get an answer almost instantaneously. Once upon a time we had to send a letter - wait for 3 weeks for it to arrive, and wait for another 3 weeks until we received a reply. Technology is a wonderful thing.

But it has its downsides as well.

How many of you are using your phone/iPad and looking at Facebook / Twitter while you are sitting on the couch, watching television?
Or talking to your spouse/family/parents?
Or your children?
Or your boss?
Or your workers?
Or while you are in a meeting?

I know I do it, I think we all do. The reasons are obvious, we all know them and have been written and discussed so many times, over and over again.

I cannot count the number of times I have seen someone tweet something such as

Dear fat guy next to me,If you're so big you need two arm rests, then I demand the right to use you as a pillow.
— AshGirl.com ♛ (@AshHollywood) December 4, 2012

Dear guy in the window seat next to me: IF YOU HAVE A SMALL BLADDER ON A 5-HOUR FLIGHT, BUY A DIFFERENT SEAT AND STOP GETTING REFILLS.
— Chris Pirillo (@ChrisPirillo) March 22, 2013

There are hundreds and thousands of examples like the ones above (I do not follow either of the above people on Twitter, there tweets came up randomly), I am actually sure that each and every one of us has probably posted something like this.

The question I would like to ask is why we are willing to put something like that up on Twitter for the whole world to see..

But people are never willing to say something like that, out loud, to a person's face!!

It took me a while to learn this and of course I learned it the hard way, but the best way to talk about something you dislike, is to voice your opinions, make sure you will be heard.

The lack of proper communication is one of the biggest problems (I think) we have as a society today. People are afraid to say what they think - OUT LOUD, they are willing to post it on Twitter, or Facebook, because they feel "protected", "safe", "secure" behind a technological medium which will shield them. But not everything has to be public, shared with the world. The things I see people post sometimes on public forums really makes you wonder…

Going back to the incident at Pycon, if she had turned around and told the guy to shut up and stop making those offensive remarks, then:

They both probably would have retained their jobs.
The whole thing would not have blown up out of all proportion.
The guy might think twice before making such remarks again.
We would all be one small step closer to making the world a better place.

Sometimes that "protected/shielded" place is not really that safe as you think - and could possibly cause a lot more damage than good.

It not by chance that almost everyone you ask says that the best part of going to a conference like VMworld, is the fact that you meet the people you are in contact with on a regular basis, and you can get to know them - in person. The personal contact is what makes the difference, and builds those long lasting relationships.

Perhaps it is the culture I come from, but we are not afraid to voice our opinions, not afraid to say what we have on our mind (and that can sometimes be seen as being rude, uncivilized or coarse), I know it is not like all over the world, and I feel that is a shame.

Perhaps this is a utopian wish, and I know that it is not suitable for all cultures and all situations, but I do hope that if we do communicate more (and not through Twitter/IM/Facebook etc.), voice our thoughts - directly - to the person that needs to hear them, then we will be able to understand and respect each other much more.

As was said in the post above we all lost, and we will continue to lose unless something changes.

Please feel free to leave your comments and thoughts in below.

vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.1 Beta

2013-03-19T22:16:00.000+02:00

The VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.1 Public Beta is now open. Actually it was already open on March 11th, but it seems it has not yet been publicly announced.

Download Link || Release Notes

What is VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.1

VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager is a component that enables support for heterogeneous hypervisors in VMware vCenter Server. It provides the following benefits to your virtual environment:

An integrated platform for managing VMware and third-party hypervisors from a single interface.
A hypervisor choice for the different business units in your organization to accommodate their specific needs.
No single hypervisor vendor lock-in.

When you add a third-party host to vCenter Server, all virtual machines that exist on the host are discovered automatically, and are added to the third-party hosts inventory.

The previous Beta (version 1.0) was released in November 2012.

So what's new in this release?

The VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.1 is a minor release which introduces the following new capabilities:

Migration of virtual machines from Hyper-V to ESX or ESXi hosts.
Support for the latest Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor (as well as earlier Hyper-V versions).
Increased scalability with regards to an increased number of supported third-party hosts to 50 (from 20 in vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.0).
Ability to provide custom certificates for the vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager server from the installer wizard.
Multiple objects selection in the UI of the vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager plug-in and a number of other usability improvements.
vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager server and client-side bug fixes.

It also add support for Hyper-V Server 2012

vCloud Hybrid vs. AWS - The Battle Begins

2013-03-14T15:31:00.001+02:00

Yesterday was a busy day, lots of announcements I would like to put down my thoughts on the fact the VMware will now get into the Public Cloud market in direct competition with Amazon.

We saw this coming - it started with the vCloud Service that VMware announced about 6 months ago - an open Beta - that actually was not free. In my blog post vCloud Service - I Asked Myself - Why? I explained why I think they started the service.

The Public Cloud market was too big for VMware to pass up. Every second, the sound of pennies/dollars dropping into Amazon's pockets - is a big temptation. I guess that VMware are looking to grow, looking for new sources of income - and there are two major areas were this can come from.

The first is from the mobile market. VMware have already got a very big foot in the door with their Horizon Suite of products, again they are most probably the market leader in this emerging market. I guess that there main market and that is the hypervisor will continue to bring in business - but will not be their main source of income - as it has been for several years.

The second is the Public Cloud. VMware have been there pretty much since the beginning - you could even say the leader in the market - but not really. There is really only one real Public Cloud company - and that is Amazon. Azure also have their Public Cloud - HP, Rackspace as well. But the most feature rich, the most innovative, the most advanced is AWS - without a doubt.

VMware's strategy was to enable their partners to compete and build their own Public Clouds, but as I said in the post above - it was not on par with what AWS has to offer. Really not the same.

So what does this mean for the End User?

Choice. People now have more of a choice where they can spin up a workload - Amazon will no longer be the only significant player in the market. This could start a price war between the two companies - actually already has - AWS has been gradually reducing their prices over the past few months. And if not a price war - then it will be a feature war - take their announcement about VPC for everyone for example.
Having the same infrastructure in house and the ability to expand to the cloud with the click of a button - without having to go through a lengthy process of signing contract with a provider is a huge plus for the Enterprise. This is a huge win for VMware. IT will find it a bit more difficult to swallow - if Shadow IT was becoming a problem - this opens the floodgates - wide, wide open. It will be even easier to bypass IT resources and control.
On top the ease of purchase - the fact of having the same infrastructure within my organization and outside is something that Amazon never had - and was always to their disadvantage. I think that is where VMware is going to emphasize their added value. AWS does not have a private cloud solution - they never have, VMware do.
So either Amazon will continue to stress that a Private Cloud is not needed - everything and anything can run on AWS and to ensure that is true they will continue to innovate and try and make that a fact. The other option - Amazon will start to provide a private cloud solution as well. I do not think that this option is likely one - but the only way I see this happening is if they buy a technology that will do this for them.

What does it mean for VMware?

A chunk of the market. which means more $$$. As soon as the service will be launched - VMware will have customers.
VMware will now be the ones playing catch up with Amazon. VMware was always the market leader, but now in the Public cloud space - they are going to have to start to catch up, both on market share and on functionality - they are now in second place and will have prove themselves.
Stepping on their partners toes. This is a big one. They will be going into direct competition with their partners that are already providing a Public cloud to their customers, on vCloud. It remains to be seen how this will fan out. I think that VMware might be burning some bridges here - but I guess the carrot is a lot bigger than the stick.
Cloud outages are something that happen. the bigger you get the more complex that environment will become. AWS suffers at least 2-4 times a year from a major outage. Public outcry arises immediately there after. If VMware are to become part of that market - they had better be ready to deal with the outcry - because it will also be aimed at them, when it happens. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised and we will see a service that is robust and better than AWS. Time will tell.
A huge initial expense - VMware will have to acquire a large amount of equipment to support this initiative - it will actually be interesting which way they go and who the vendors will be. Multiple locations across the globe, we will soon start to see new VMware datacenters popping up around the world.
Supporting services - I do not think that current tools and technology that VMware sell to their customers will scale to such dimensions. vCOPS cannot deal with hundred of thousands of VM's.
vCloud will probably have issues as well. They will need to either improve their products - or use someone else's solution, which in turn then leads me to think what that will be - and how long it take until VMware acquires that technology.
Going to a consumer model - they will have to deal with a whole new customer base. The Joe Shmoe's that want to spin up a VM on the cloud - and get charged for the 20 cents they used. Not the same as selling vCloud Suite licenses to the Enterprise market. Amazon is historically much more geared towards the end consumer. This is something VMware will need to learn. And one more thing - as soon as they do go to such a model, only time will tell what other services they will start to sell - the first thing that comes to mind is the mobile market and Horizon. Again time will tell.
Differentiating themselves in the market - Someone will have to explain to all those AWS customers - why they should jump ship to VMware - I am not sure that will be easy.

The move has been brewing for a long time within VMware, I remember speaking about this possibility on several occasions over the past year with a number of people in the community and the industry on when VMware would go to a Public Cloud of their own. There were opinions heated discussions, some agreed, some did not.

Yesterday it happened.

To summarize (as I see it).

VMware tried to get vCloud out there, the world was not ready for it, and was certainly not willing to accept a per-VM model - far too expensive. VMware acknowledged that, with the move to the vCloud suite - which brought back the well-known and accepted per-CPU licensing.

The public offering of vCloud started to grow, but not enough, not fast enough. Amazon was growing bigger and better, other clouds were starting to pop up - HP cloud, Rackspace, and they were not based on vCloud. Yes there was adoption of several SP's that were growing nicely with vCloud but still it was not it.

VMware has made a strategic decision to go head on with AWS (and yes they are the real only competitor that I assume they are targeting) - something that at the moment I cannot foresee how this will play out.
I do think this will be a rough year for the new VMware Hybrid Cloud. They will be taking flak from all sides. They will get kickback (and I assume it will be verbal) from all their Service Provider partners that just got a huge kick in the teeth with announcement.

I am adding to my calendar a reminder to review the subject in 3 months.

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1 Beta

2013-03-13T08:34:00.000+02:00

First and foremost I would like to express my public gratitude and thanks to legendary Ulli Hankeln,
the Master of Converter and VMDK/VMFS disk dissection/recovery for sticking with this and bugging VMware to make the proper changes to this product.

After being in a private Beta for a while - it is now open to the public

From the Release Notes

What's New

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1 Beta includes the following new functionality:

Support for virtual machine hardware version 9
Guest operating system support for Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Guest operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Support for virtual and physical machine sources with GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks
Support for virtual and physical machine sources with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
Support for EXT4 file system

Converter Standalone 5.1 Beta is known to have the following issues:

You cannot upgrade an existing installation of Converter Standalone to Converter Standalone 5.1 Beta. Before you install Converter Standalone 5.1 Beta, uninstall any earlier versions of Converter Standalone and delete any remaining Converter Standalone server database files from your system.
You cannot convert physical SLES 9 sources, if the root directory is located on an LVM disk. You need to convert the LVM disk to a basic disk.
Virtual machines cloned from RHEL6 and SLES 11 sources have no network connectivity. After the conversion is complete, you need to reconfigure the network settings on the destination virtual machine manually.
Virtual machines cloned from SLES 11 SP1 sources boot in console mode. After the conversion is complete, you need to recreate the xorg.conf file.

You can download the product here

Now if only they would bring back the cold clone CD (wishful thinking..)

Ravello Systems - and A Bit of Deja Vu

2013-03-13T03:00:00.000+02:00

A while back Duncan Epping wrote a wonderful post VMotion, the story and confessions about how people remembered the when they witnessed vMotion for the first time and asked people to add their experiences. I of course remember mine vividly - and also remember that when I first saw vMotion I knew that this would change the way we used computers in the future.

A few weeks ago - I got that feeling again - but this time not with vMotion but rather with a product that I saw for the first time from Ravello Systems.

Some background about the company and its founders

"Ravello was founded in 2011 with the sole purpose of changing the way companies, large and small consume the public cloud. Ravello is brought to you by the team that introduced the KVM hypervisor (now the standard virtualization technology in Linux)
Rami Tamir (Co-Founder, CEO) – was VP of engineering at Red Hat. He joined Red Hat through the acquisition of Qumranet where he was the co-founder and president.

Benny Schnaider (Co-Founder, President and Chairman of the Board) was VP of business development for Red Hat. He joined Red Hat through the acquisition of Qumranet where he was co-founder and CEO.

Navin R. Thadani (SVP, Products) – ran the virtualization (KVM/ RHEV) business line for Red Hat. He joined Red Hat through the acquisition of Qumranet in 2008 which he led as the VP of products.

Ravello Systems is the first company to tackle the problem head-on from an infrastructure perspective. It’s very much like what VMware did back in the early 2000s to the enterprise data center.”

“The leadership team behind Ravello has a track record of developing innovative technologies in the virtualization infrastructure space and backing it up with solid execution,” said Adam Fisher, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. “Their previous virtualization initiative, KVM has been a tremendous success in the market with record breaking virtualization performance and scalability. This time around, HVX is another ground-breaking technology and if any team can deliver, it’s these guys.”

Enough marketing babble…

I will try and explain to the best of my knowledge how I understand their technology. Ravello have developed what they name a Cloud Application Hypervisor. This hypervisor can be deployed on any cloud provider (at the moment - AWS, HP Cloud and Rackspace are the supported providers, but vCloud environments are expected to be added soon). They name their hypervisor HVX.

So how does it work (at a 10,000 ft. view). You, the user, upload a workload to the Ravello environment, and decide from there where you want to deploy it, it could be on Amazon, Rackspace or another provider. You might ask why is this such a special thing - I mean there are other companies out there that are providing a similar service - for example Cloudify - which allows you to upload an application to virtually (pun intentional)any cloud. Well the difference here is it is not an application you are moving around here - it is a complete VM. You then deploy this VM to a Cloud provider, regardless of what platform they are using underneath.

Think about it for a second. I have a VM running a complex application, in my datacenter, on my VMware environment. Installed with my standard builds, all the correct patches configurations everything I am used to doing in house. I now want to move that workload from my environment to the Cloud. VMware have vCloud Connector which will allow me to move a VM from my vCloud environment to a supported vCloud environment with very little (if any) change needed to perform this migration. That is actually quite amazing if you ask me - but the limitation is - it needs to stay within the VMware platform.

Now you need to do the same - but this time to an Openstack or AWS cloud? How would you go about getting that done? Not as simple… The VMware drivers are not exactly the same and those running on XEN(AWS) or KVM (Rackspace) so how?

Ravello have the technology that allows you to do this.

So how does it work? When you deploy a VM to a cloud, any cloud, Ravello will deploy a VM that contains an additional layer, a nested hypervisor, that will allow you to run a virtual machine on top of that VM. We have been doing nested virtualization for a while already - vSphere does that very very well. The whole concept of vInception, the VMworld HOL have been using it for years. But here is where the "secret sauce" comes in.

You can deploy a VMware VM on AWS or Openstack and I suppose the plan is to do it on anything. And of of course - vice-versa. HVX will allow you to do that. Please feel free to read about how it works.

I had one briefing with Gal Moav and Navin R. Thadani a few weeks ago where I got a demo of the product.

They have very nice interface where you can upload the virtual images to the Ravello system, and from there deploy them onto the cloud of your choice. Then you can create an application blueprint with a simple interface allowing the connections in between and out of the VM's.

Does it work? Oh YES! very well.

I did some testing with a basic VMware Linux VM - and uploaded it to Amazon. VM powered on - and I felt the urge to confirm - yes it was the same one. VMware tools installed and active in the VM. So there was no streaming of the data portions of the VM - the whole VM was uploaded - as is, encapsulated in their HVX and working. Paravirtualized SCSI drivers and VMXNET3 NIC (if my memory serves me correctly).

One of the interesting use cases that I was presented with - was the economical aspect. Ravello have the ability to identify the VM's needs, and deploy on the most cost effective destination - be it Amazon, Openstack or others in the future. I find that to be a huge advantage for the enterprise. If you are no longer dependent on the cloud infrastructure, you can pick and choose according to a number of considerations, be it cost, location, technology etc… There are several other use cases that they present on their site. Think about how you might use this as well to maximize the use of the Cloud instances you have already. Running multiple VM's the same AWS instance - can save a lot of money.

I plan to get some more information about how exactly the product works and if possible - will be able to post a follow up.

So why Déjà vu? In March 2011 I wrote this post The Datacenter - in a Few Years From Now - where I described the hypervisor for hypervisors.

Ravello is the first (and only) company that I know of that can do this.

The directions in which this could be taken are more or less endless. And that is what makes me excited about this technology.

Let me give you three examples.

Developers create VM's in their local environment, this could even be on a local laptop, vagrant or what ever they want. Once the application / environment is ready to be moved up the chain to QA / Test / Production - the VM can be imported to the cloud of your choice - whilst maximizing your savings. Minimum or next to no changes needed
Take the other direction - you have an application in the cloud - which is suffering a problem in order to debug - you can either do it in the cloud - but not always is that feasible - so you want to bring it in house - with this kind of technology this will be possible.
Risk management. I do not want to have everything on vCloud or AWS or Openstack - I would like to have my application run in multiple clouds. Up until now that was very difficult to do - I could not deploy the same application the same way to different cloud providers. With this kind of technology this will be possible.

Not all of the features / ideas I have mentioned above are available today - but they will be - and I do not see it being too far away.

The product is not perfect, and has some improvements that can be made over the next few months or years. Performance will improve, support for more Cloud Platforms will be added including in-house cloud environments as well.

There are other companies that have solutions which manage multiple clouds like Rightscale or Enstratius but I think they all do it with software solutions similar to the concept I described here - Orchestration Will Rule Them All #BRC2K11

One last thing. I tried to push the system to a bit of an extreme - and tried to upload a vESXi VM to AWS - but the system did not like it that much …. Perhaps one day we will be able to run ESXi on an AWS instance.

Ravello have a YouTube channel where you can go through their tutorials.

I am excited about the product, and see a real business need for such a technology.

I will keep my eye out on Ravello.

Disclaimer: I received access to Ravello Systems public beta - but it is open to anyone. I was given a briefing on the technology from two of the staff members. I blogging about this because I feel that the technology will make a difference to the way we will consume resources in the cloud, a disturbance in the force if you would like - but one for the better.

And the Winner is…. You!

2013-03-11T09:33:00.001+02:00

So you are all the winners, for participating, for voicing your opinions and making your vote count!

Today Eric Siebert posted the results for the top 2013 VMware and Virtualization Blogs.

I asked you Not to vote for me but it seems that did not work.

The full results and podcast can be found here.

In short.

I was ranked at No. 41 in the total count
7th in the Scripting blog category
8th in the Independent blogger category.

I would like to thank you again all for you support!

Some of my own analysis on the results.

There is only one independent in the top 10 - Eric Sloof
Only eight of the top 25 do not work for a vendor. (EMC, VMware, HP, Dell, VCE, NetApp)
7 out of the top 10 bloggers work for VMware, 1 for EMC and one for HP.
There are 4 new bloggers in the top 25.
There is 1 new blogger in the top 10.
The biggest drop in the list was from 18 to 229 (211 spots)
The biggest climb in the list was from 149 to 38 (111 spots)
The vBrownbag crew is doing an amazing job - and people appreciate it.
The favorite storage blogger - does not even work for a storage vendor, he works for VMware.
The top scripting blogger's preferred scripting language is not PowerCLI - it is Perl.

Congratulations to all the other bloggers on their achievements this year. It is a great list.

Thank you Eric Siebert for a job well done!!

You can follow all the bloggers on Twitter in the following updated lists:

Top 25 VMware/Virtualization Bloggers

Top 50 VMware/Virtualization Bloggers

Top Independent Bloggers

Favorite Scripting Bloggers

Favorite Storage Bloggers

VMware Cloud Cred Program

2013-03-09T22:13:00.000+02:00

At VMworld 2012, at the vExpert briefing - we were introduced to an upcoming social idea that VMware were working on - Cloud Cred.

Today I received an email from the VMUG organization (screenshot below)

Currently the site is not yet available (according to the mail above - it will be on March 11th) - as you can see from the screenshot below.

So what is Cloud Cred - I will leave this to VMware to explain..

An Overview and Demo is also available here.

If I remember correctly the whole idea was not received very well at the briefing.

Making the whole thing into a "game" where you are receiving points, and can get "stuff" for getting the highest scores and even "win" the grand prize of a trip for 2 to VMworld Barcelona - seems to diminish a good amount of what all the VMware evangelists, bloggers, vExperts do. We are not doing it for the points or trinkets, but because we believe in what we do.

I think the commoditization of the blogging and evangelizing - will only reduce its value. Time will tell.

What do you think?

PS. Thanks to Jake Robinson who pointed out that VMware just also launched their Cloud Credits program, which is not the same as the above. Cloud Credits and Cloud Credibility close but not the same.

VMworld CFP Voting - Needs to be More Transparent

2013-03-06T21:28:00.000+02:00

It is around that time of the year again, when VMware puts out the announcement that the Call for Papers for VMworld 2013 and will be open, and then people will start to submit their sessions to get their hour of glory at the biggest virtualization show of the year.

VMworld will be in San Francisco between August 26-29, 2013 in the Moscone Center.

Last year there were 1222 separate sessions up for voting - yes I counted them. VMware started with public voting for VMworld sessions 3 years ago with VMworld 2010

Before that there was only a committee that decided which speakers would have the honor of presenting a session at VMworld.

This post actually is the continuation of a dinner conversation I had with Mike Laverick, Edward Haletky, Gabrie van Zanten, Harold Simon and Larry Orloff and Michael Webster on the last day of VMworld 2012 in San Francisco.

Here are my thoughts. VMware has the right to decide what content it would like to have in its flagship conference, it only happens once a year and of course the show is not only there for the benefit of the attendees. There are sponsorships, partners that need to be taken care of - and I am sure there are a huge number of things I am not mentioning that have to be taken into account as well when deciding on content.

In the end there is a finite amount of sessions that can be offered. There are all sorts of considerations that will come into account, whether a session will take place (at least this is the way I would do it):

Partner commitment - I assume that VMware guarantee a number of sessions to its main partners, that would be a courtesy.
Sponsorship commitment - again I would assume that would part of the agreement with the bigger sponsors.
New technologies - VMware will definitely want sessions out there for the new announcements and features that will be coming out during that period.
Hot speakers - there are several speakers who are very good, they present almost every year, and their sessions are packed.
VMware employees - Yes there is a decent chance that they are the SME's on their topic (I mean they are the ones who design the product)
Hot topics - a topic that is likely to get high attendance because that is what people are looking to learn more about.

So what does that leave available?

Customer stories.
Interesting sessions
Stuff that has to be there

The number of sessions that are actually submitted is growing every single year. The reason behind is enough for a whole different blog post. If my memory does not betray me - there were ~3000 sessions submitted for VMworld 2012.

Back to the voting process. VMware announces that the voting is open, and the Wrath of Khan is unleashed.. Everything is fair game, Twitter, Facebook, blog posts - the works. Vote for session …
I voted for ………… 's session badabing, badaboom…

And then what - the voting is closed - votes are counted and then a few weeks later - the Session catalog is announced.

But isn't something missing?

Why does VMware even allow voting? One would assume - to see which sessions get the most number of votes - and allow those sessions to "get all the glory".

A voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election or on a policy referendum.
A voting system enforces rules to ensure valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result.

Source Wikipedia

You are given a choice
You vote
The results are published - so you know who won.

And here we come down to what we spoke over dinner that evening. Voting is open for 1, 2 or maybe even three weeks. There is a lot of lobbying, people vote. And then the catalog is published.

But who received the most votes? Were the sessions that got into the catalog the ones that received the most votes? Did they get in for other reasons? If so what were they?

The mundane answer that most of those who submitted a paper receive, is not enough…
(and yes, this is the exact text from 2010, 2011, and 2012)

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2010. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal:
Session ID: MA6662
Session ID: MA6840
Session ID: V18364

We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~20% of them to be presented at VMworld. Following is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.
The submission topic did not fit within the selected track.
There were too many submissions with similar topics.

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2011. We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~15%. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal, but we greatly appreciate and value the time and effort you took to submit a session proposal, and we hope that you will participate in the VMworld 2012 Call for Papers.

Session ID: 1843

Here is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.
The submission topic did not fit within the selected track.
There were too many submissions with similar topics.

Dear Maish,

Thank you for your interest in speaking at VMworld 2012. We received a record number of submissions this year and were only able to accept ~12%. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal, but we greatly appreciate and value the time and effort you took to submit and we hope you will participate in the VMworld 2013 Call for Papers.

Session ID: 1996

Here is a list of the most common reasons why sessions were declined:

There were too many submissions with similar topics.
The submission was too basic, not enough information was provided in the abstract.
The session was too single vendor product focused and likely to have a commercial nature.

A pattern? Anyone?

VMware have the right to accept or reject any of the submitted sessions according to VMware's best interests, it is their conference. I am completely fine with that.

But I feel (and I am 100% that I am not the only one) that the voting process is not really transparent ~~enough~~ at all. No one actually knows what sessions were accepted based on the voting, what sessions were accepted in spite of the voting and which sessions were accepted - even without the voting.

My public request to VMware for this year's Call for Papers…..

Voting has a beginning a middle and an end. At the moment - that last part - is not being transmitted back to those who participated in the process.

It should - it must - otherwise the voting process is nothing much more than lip service.

If you agree (or disagree) please leave your comment or thoughts below.

How To Deal With a Complex Project

2013-02-28T14:30:00.000+02:00

You have been tasked with a task, it could be a long term project, a one-off thing. These usually involve identification of number of tasks and stages that need to be executed in order to complete the whole task.

One such an example that I would like to discuss today is the completion of a complex scripting task.

One script I have been nurturing is a deployment script for Oracle RAC on VMware. It actually has grown to be over 700 lines of code (perhaps one day I will be able to make it public).

I was asked not so long a go, “How do you manage to write such a long script? How or where do you even start?”. The answer to that question is the reason for this post.

I really love working in PowerShell and PowerCLI – that is no secret. I do dabble in other scripting languages as well but Powershell is still my favorite.

Scripting can be used in different ways.

One time quick and dirty tasks. You pop out a line of code which gets the specific information you want, and perhaps you will save it (you should) – just in case you need to do it again. These are also referred to as one-liners.
Functions – here you think a little more, I want to create a piece of code that can be used on a regular basis – make it re-usable and write it to be robust, mean and lean.
A process or a workflow. Now I know some of you will say that Powershell/PowerCLI is not really the ultimate tool to use for running complex tasks with multiple scenarios and use cases – and I must say I agree. On the other hand – vCenter Orchestrator has a steep learning curve. Using a tool that you already know and are familiar with will make it easier. Easier to write, optimize, troubleshoot, and document.

No matter which tool you use the methodology will be the same. This is how I do it – and perhaps this can help you too.

Envision the process from a high level perspective
Layout the steps you need to perform in order to get there
For each step – detail what exactly needs to happen
Write the code you need to get it done.

It is best to explain this by walking through an example (without actually writing the code)

Each VM that is created is usually done by an admin/user. You would like to have some way of knowing who created the VM, when and for whom (owner/department).

So how would you go about doing this?

Step 1 – Envision the process

This is how I see this – from a very high level.

Someone creates a VM, the details are filled in, and a report is sent out. Look at it from the perspective of upper management – they do not care about the details, how it works, they look at the process.

That was the easy part.

Step 2 - Layout the steps

When a VM is created it is logged, and these logs can be parsed or checked for specific events. From that information you will extract the information needed (Date, Created) and attach that info to the VM, the easiest way would be to add it to a custom field for the VM. This process will be performed for each of the new VM's that were found.

All of this information should should be collected into a readable format that can be sent as a report, either a file or an HTML page.

Step 3 – Describe each step in detail

VM Created

A VM is born. How do you know that this happens? Well pretty simple. Go through the events that were created in vCenter. But you have to remember of course that there are several ways to create a VM and these could be:

Deploy from OVF
Deploy from Template
Create From Scratch
Clone from Existing VM

Not all of these have the same events registered in the Events and Task so you will have to look for all of them to catch all VM's created.

You really do not want to scan all the events (from time immemorial) so you should decide on a timeframe - an this will be the period you will check against.

So if I were to layout my steps they would be as follows.

## Define Period to search - 24 hours
## Get All events for VM created
    ## Cloned VM's
    ## Deployed from OVF
    ## Created from Scratch
    ## Cloned From Existing

But in order to even begin to get events I would need a few things (seeing that I will be running this as a scheduled script):

PowerCLI
Connection to vCenter

So my steps will change a bit to look like the following:

### Validate connection to vCenter ###

## Check for PowerCLI
## Check for Connection
## If not connected then connect
## Need vCenter Name and credentials

### Get All VM's Created ###

## Define Period to search - 24 hours
## Get All events for VM created and store in a variable
    ## Cloned VM's
    ## Deployed from OVF
    ## Created from Scratch
    ## Cloned From Existing

OK So now I have all the VM's created within the past 24 hours. Here would be my next steps.

Update Fields

From the event details of each event for each VM - get who the user was that created it and when.
Populate that into a Custom field/Tag for each VM.

So if I were to layout my steps they would be as follows.

### Update details for each VM

## Go through each event
## Update Created By
    ## Extract Username that created the VM
        ## Get proper Name from Active Directory
            ## Need access to Active Directory - AD Powershell Module
        ## Update Custom Field / Tag
        ## Save to report
## Update Date Created
    ## Extract Date when VM was created
        ## Convert date to something that can be indexed
        ## Update Custom Field / Tag
        ## Save to report
## Update Owner
    ## Check if Owner was already updated
        ## If not - send email to user that created it to update the field
            ## Need to get email address of creator
            ## SMTP server variable
            ## From address variable
            ## Subject variable
            ## Body to be sent in email
        ## Save notification to report

Create Report

Now to send out the report.

## Take information from report
## Convert to something readable
    ## Export to Excel file
    ## Convert the information to HTML so it can be re-used
## Send Email
    ## SMTP server variable
    ## From address variable
    ## To address variable
    ## Subject variable
    ## Body to be sent in email

Step 4 – Write the code in detail

Now you know what the steps are, it is now time to write the code for each and every step, and this is where most of the work will be. It could be that during the writing of the code you will see that you need to perform additional steps in order to accomplish what you would like, and if so - continue writing out the stages and fill in the appropriate code. Such an example would be - this should be run as a scheduled task which means you will need to provide a method to pass the credentials to the script. Another example would be - you already sent an email to the Creator saying that they should update the Owner, and if they did not - do you leave it? Send them another email? Escalate the issue? For each of these scenarios, there are steps that need to identified, and the appropriate code written.

Another thing I like about this methodology is that it already partially provides some basic documentation for your script - something that is very important - so the code can be re-used in other scenarios as well.

I will not be providing the code for the steps, I will leave that task for you.

Summary

Envision at a high level what you want to accomplish, identify what are the needed stages for this to succeed, and break each of these stages into small steps, and detailed again further into more steps until you have each and every step as part of your plan.

I used a PowerCLI script here as an example - but this methodology can be applied to any project.

VCDX Certification
Upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1
Implementation of vCloud in your organization
Upgrade Active Directory to 2012

This is the methodology that I use - I hope that it will be of some use to you.

I Just Bought Some Kitchen Faucets/Hypervisors

2013-02-26T14:30:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago I discovered leak in one of my kitchen faucets. At the time I managed to fix it - but it was evident, it would not hold for long, so I needed to get new ones. The previous ones had served me well for a good 10 years.

I do not know about you - but things like kitchen faucets in Israel are not cheap - they can go from anything from $100 - $600 (Yes I know this outrageously overpriced - but that is what they cost).

I went to a couple of stores and looked around, asked about the products.

Where they were made (almost all the answers were China)
What guarantee came with the product, service etc.
What could go wrong with them (usually rubber washers)
The material it was made of (the mechanism is either ceramic or brass - body can be plastic, brass or zinc)

Now that I had all my detailed information - I weighed my options, do I want to get it here from a local store or perhaps should I go directly to the supplier.

Since the manufacturers are all from China - I started to look around to see if it would be possible to get it directly from there.

To cut a long story short. I found the manufacturer and purchased directly from them including the shipping through DHL it came to 25% of the original price. I had the product within a week.

So we have gone through my faucet saga (but I hear you saying, Why the heck are you blogging about this????")

This brought me to think about how people talk about changing hypervisors, or adding another hypervisor into their environment.

You go to your current software provider (VMware for example) and you want to replace/renew something - it costs you $$,$$$.

So you go around the market and ask about the products:

What are their features (HA, vMotion, DRS etc… )
What support do I get the products (24x7 phone support for example, local support personnel in my country)
What could go wrong (where do I start……. ????)
Stability, market share, price
Cloud options

According to your window shopping spree you will come to your conclusion - if it is possible and financially viable to change / switch add another hypervisor to your environment.

There is no need to say that buying a kitchen faucet is not the same as a hypervisor, definitely not. But it does show how close we are coming to the stage that infrastructure is becoming a commodity, something we can "go to a store" and buy elsewhere.

If the price is right.
If it does what we need.
If it is reliable.
You can support it correctly.

As always you can leave your thoughts and comments below.