VMware has recently announced the public availability of the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta, a tool to create virtual appliances and distribute them in OVF format, and today’s VMTN Roundtable Podcast provided a lot of discussion about the possible scenarios for using this new version. I’m still struggling to get my mind around the potential of Studio 2.0, but I did come away from today’s podcast with a few ideas that make me think I have either blurred the functions of several existing products or I have suddenly realized there may be some great “outside the box” use case scenarios for this new VMware software.

Before continuing, it is most clear that VMware Studio’s designed intent is for ISVs and developers to package their applications as preconfigured, ready to import virtual appliances. Now with version 2.0 even multi tiered applications can be wrapped up as a vApp in vSphere and exported as an OVF containing several VMs and then imported by any VMware virtualization host (free, hosted, or bare metal). If you are not already familiar with VMware Studio check out the Studio 2.0 Beta Overview web page for a complete listing of features, but the primary topic of interest (to me and the others on today’s podcast) seems to be centered around how enterprises can leverage VMware Studio, vApps, and OVF templates.

This is where the lines get blurry to me, and I’ll outline potential Studio / OVF usage that may be “outside of the box” from the VMware software’s intended purpose. Or is it? You tell me.

vCenter / Deploy from template

The ability to export any VM as an OVF from the VI Client by itself, let alone VMware Studio, opens the door for template deployment in environments without vCenter. Build a VM to desired corporate standards and then export a copy of it to a shared network drive where it can be used as a master image for future deployments on any virtual platform that supports OVF.

With VMware Studio build a multiple VM apllication as a vApp. Configure the web server and the database for example, and before adding any data export the combination as an OVF. Deploy the vApp OVF as a master template as needed.

Sure, vCenter offers so much more automation for this process, but what about for deployment between ESX hosts that are not managed by the same vCenter or don’t share the same storage?

Lab Manager / Development

Building on the template idea, couldn’t VMware Studio and OVF exports be used as a poor man’s Lab Manager library for a development enviroment? Once again, this is most appropriate when cloning is not possible due to a lack of shared storage.

Why not export a set of VMs and import them to Workstation or Fusion on your personal computer? Do your work and import the set back when satisfied with the results.

VCB / VM Image backup

We are talking about full image copies of VMs that can be imported to any VMware virtualization host anywhere, right? Full images of vApps configured, tweaked, hardened, and optimized for each other none the less.

SRM / DR recovery

OK, the fail over automation of SRM might be the biggest stretch for replacement by OVF exports, but the ability to combine a 10 VM domain as a vApp and set the startup order of the VMs for when the vApp OVF is imported was discussed as an example on the podcast. Importing that big OVF is certainly going to take longer than SRM’s storage replication provided readiness, but the import is still quicker than server builds and tape recovery.

The v12n community rolls up it’s sleeves for challenges that seem way harder than the scenarios I’ve mentioned in this post. Am I assuming too much for VMware’s new virtual appliance software studio?

[updated 06.29.09] - The owner of the site has professionally responded in the commnents following this post. I appreciate the reply and this exercise has made me to decide to investigate providing multiple RSS feeds for VM /ETC.

To the owner(s) of networkvirtualization.com:

Change the current method of publishing protected vmetc.com content to a more acceptable style of blog aggregation, contact me to arrange a syndication agreement, or take down any and all of my content from your site.

Based on Scott Lowe’s post I Love Having My Content Stolen and the consistent reaction in both Scott’s post comments and on Twitter, I assume it’s in your best interest to do the same for all the other bloggers whose content you have used.

What is acceptable? Here are some examples.

Blog Aggregation

Take a look at Planet v12n or VirtualizationFeed.com. In summary, publish only a preview of the post, provide the proper attribution to the creator, and make sure the link is obvious and goes back to the original site and not the RSS feed. Both also maintain a blog roll of the aggregated sites.

Blog Syndication

Use Gestaltit.com for an example. As a syndicated author, I allow specific posts to be republished there via an arranged agreement. Each author’s personal blog is linked and each has their own individual Gestaltit.com RSS feed as well.

Quotes and References

Feel free quote or reference published content to make your own point. Be sure to make the quote/reference identifiable and give proper credit to the originator.

Let me clarify

I am flattered that you enjoy my content and I welcome the additional exposure. I get a great sense of satisfaction from the public use of vmetc.com. I’m not saying, nor does my Creative Commons license state, the vmetc.com RSS feed cannot be used. It is simply a matter of proper format and due recognition.

Even though my posts are available in full in my RSS feed, I suggest using a news reader such as Google Reader or social media such as Facebook and Friendfeed to access my content, as well as aggregating any other blogs, from the convenience of a web browser on any computer.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft Virtualization Team Senior Technical Product Manager, has introduced Hyper-V’s latest feature closely emulating VMware’s virtual infrastructure enterprise product offerings. Quick Storage Migration (QSM) is being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2. SCVMM 2008 R2 Release Canidate was recently released to the public. Hyper-V’s final release was integrated in Windows Server 2008 SP2.

Quoting Yuen’s post on the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog titled System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 - Quick Storage Migration, here are some high level notes about QSM:

• QSM enables the migration of a VM not only between storage locations but also from one SAN to another
• QSM relies on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
• QSM can move the virtual disks of a running virtual machine independent of storage protocols (iSCSI, FC) or storage type (local, DAS, SAN), with minimal downtime
• QSM will not be available on the free Hyper-V Server 2008 version and requires Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
• Quick Storage Migration is included with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 both in the Enterprise Edition and the Workgroup Edition
• A VM can remain running for the almost the entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from one storage location to another. The post estimates the VM downtime to be under 1 minute in most cases assuming W2K8 R2.
• The VM is put into save-state (Hyper-V snapshot) for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Yuen’s post provides a feature comparison table of QSM versus VMware’s Storage Vmotion. The following is a screen shot of the table.

It should be noted that many of the features in the table favor Microsoft because Quick Migration requires VM downtime and is not a fully live migration like VMware’s Storage Vmotion. Regardless, Microsoft’s ability to automate the storage transfer with minimal VM downtime should be recieved well by most administrators.

Check out Yuen’s post in it’s entirety for technical details on how QSM works as well as projected sample scenarios.

Check out the SCVMM Team Blog for the other comparible features to VMware that are being introduced in this VMM Release Canidate

PHD Virtual added their latest VMware utility to it’s ever growing list of free tools for virtualization administrators. Patch Downloader 6.0 is best described as a tool that will “ease the pain” for dowloading ESX 3.X patches in environments without vCenter Update Manager (VUM). Designed to filter the list of ESX patches available by selecting the desired version of ESX/ESXi, Patch Downloader enables the administrator to review individual patch classifications and instructions. Patches are then easily downloaded to a configured repository where they are ready to be manually transferred and applied to each ESX/ESXi host. I assume support for ESX 4 patches will be added soon.

The following image is a screen shot of Patch Downloader downloading ESX 3.5 patches.

Patch Downloader is the fifth free tool from PHD Technologies. The following excerpt is from an email I received and provides links and and a brief explanation of the other tools already available.

Dear VMware User,

PHD Virtual, the developer of esXpress - Date Protection & Recovery for VMware is proud to offer you great suite of Free Tools for Virtual Machines. These tools are very helpful and will save you time. Click the links below to download the free tools.

VMNetBac 1.2.0 - VMNetBac allows customers to backup and restore the network configuration of a virtual machine. VMNetBac is a quick recovery tool that minimizes the risk of losing network configurations when intrusive or mass-upgrade type tasks are performed.

Virtual SAN 1.0.0 - The Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN. It utilizes, otherwise unused, local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise-level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA.

SnapHunter 0.5.3 - SnapHunter is an ESX 3 Service Console utility which reports back on the Snapshot status of virtual machines from multiple ESX Servers.

KS QuickConfig 1.3.0 - KS QuickConfig is a Windows GUI utility that reduces the time needed to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3 servers, and eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations.

Patch Downloader 6.00 - The purpose of Patch Downloader automates the downloading of patches for various ESX versions from the VMware site.

To download a free 30 day trial of esXpress click below:
http://www.phdvirtual.com/download

I was notified by Nava Davuluri of VMware Product Marketing that a new VMTN community site and blog has been created for the purpose of centrally organizing freely available VMware product scripting and code samples. In Davuluri’s words:

“These sample codes are related to products such as the new vSphereCLI, vCLI, Perl toolkit, Java Webservices SDK, etc.

I’m trying to involve the entire developer community in using(sharing/contributing) this site more.“

On the VMware Code Central Blog he explains Code Central “is intended for VMware community developers and system administrators who use VMware infrastructure and would like to have IT control through automation.” Apparently, the Code Central Blog will update what’s new on the Code Central Community Page on a weekly basis.

After quickly checking the CodeCentral Community page one can see the potential for this to become a great site for VMware administrators and developers. For example, Davuluri already has featured links to the following, well known community contributions :

• lamw: Backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x in vSphere SDK for Perl
• lucd: Guest Provisioning System in vSphere PowerCLI
• alanrenouf: Report into MS Word in vSphere PowerCLI
• esloof: Dynamic Resource Pool Calculator in vSphere PowerCLI
• tzamora: VMware Infrastructure Power Documeter in vSphere PowerCLI
• stumpr: FindDatacenterByHostname in vSphere SDK for Perl

Update your bookmarks and RSS readers. I’m sure the Code Central Blog and VMTN Community will become a great resource.

One of the most interesting new vSphere storage features in my opinion is the new virtual disk paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI) controller. It has been reported that improved I/O with as much as 18% reduction in ESX 4 host CPU usage can be achieved by switching to PVSCSI. The benefits of PVSCSI performance are twofold:

• Reduced data center power and cooling costs to when you consider the impact of tens of hosts not having to work as hard
• A potential higher VM to host consolidation ratio when more CPU cycles are available

For reference, EMC virtualization guru Chad Sakac provided a post that explains the PVSCSI performance benefits:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/05/update-on-the-io-vsphere-performance-test.html

However, to take advantage of PVSCSI a VM virtual disk configuration might need to change. Because VMware does not support PVSCSI on the operating system boot partition, VMs will need to be configured with separate virtual disks(.vmdk) for the boot drive and the data drive(s). Note that all the posts and articles referenced mention that PVSCSI works on a .vmdk containing the boot partition. It’s just that VMware officially does not support it.

So, the challenge for using PVSCSI then is to migrate services and applications that exist on VMs that contain both the boot partition and the data on a single .vmdk. Although separate boot and data partitions are the defacto standard for physical servers, the convenience of VMs has lead to a single .vmdk configuration in a lot of IT shops.

Incentive to use PVSCSI therefore actually overlaps with a shift in VM deployment strategy and ultimately supports and provides performance reasons to adopt smaller, dedicated .vmdks for boot partitions. This multi .vmdk design change also has other benefits including optimization of deduplication and DR site replication technologies.

Here are some quick thoughts on deploying and migrating VMs to a multiple .vmdk configuration.

• Build a golden image VM template with multiple .vmdks, or change future VM deployment policy to include adding new .vmdks for installing applications and storing data.
• For VMs that already have separate partitions on a single .vmdk use VMware Converter or another tool to V2V to a new VM with separate .vmdks for each partition.
• When possible, make sure P2V migrations of physical servers result in a separate .vmdk for each partition
• Unfortunately, building new VMs and reinstalling the applications may be the only choice for existing implementations combined on a single partition .vmdk

Once the .vmdk configuration is ready, PVSCSI can be enabled following the processes explained in these posts:

• Adding the PVSCSI adapter in vSphere –
  • http://blog.petecheslock.com/2009/06/03/how-to-add-vmware-paravirtual-scsi-pvscsi-adapters/
• For Windows VMs –
  • http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/06/01/vsphere-virtual-machine-upgrade-process/
• For Linux VMs –
  • http://vmadmin.nt.com.au/?p=36
  • http://vmadmin.nt.com.au/?p=28

The final question may be “is it worth the effort to migrate to a PVSCSI supporting configuration for all VMs”? The performance, consolidation, and cost savings factors would lead most virtual administrators to answer “yes”, but ultimately the decision will most likely be made on a VM by VM basis. There are some other factors to consider as well. For example, vSphere Fault Tolerance cannot be enabled on a VM using PVSCSI.

VMware’s PDF on the new vSphere storage features can be found at http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMW_09Q1_WP_vSphereStorage_P10_R1.pdf.

 In my opinion, there are only a handful of reasons not to implement vSphere 4 immediately and all of them are temporary, techincal limitations. My list of reasons:

• 64 bit hardware (or virtualization assist CPUs) requirement
• Already Implemented the following VMware products
  • vCenter Stage Manager
  • vCenter Lab Manager
  • vCenter Site Recovery Manager
  • vCenter Lifecycle Manager
  • VMware View (Manager and Composer)

These are temporary limitations because VMware has already announced compatibility for all of their solutions with vSphere will be available in the second half of 2009. Of course, buying 64 bit hardware with modern CPUs could make you wait a little longer depending on your ‘09 budget.

VMware has a Software Compatibility Matrix that helps identify supported combinations of all their virtualization products. Here’s a screen shot.

Click for a larger image or get a copy of the .pdf at http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide/docs/vSphere_Comp_Matrix.pdf

Interestingly enough, a Virtualization Pro Blog post seems to confirm a majority of VMware users seem to be waiting at least 6 months to upgrade to vSphere. Upgrading production servers to vSphere: When and why analyzes the results of several polls conducted by the author, Eric Siebert.

Read the rest of the post for further analysis from Siebert and the results of additional, related poll topics such as the primary reasons for waiting to upgrade. Although the majority of responses do not indicate  a decision to wait because of the technical limitations I indicate here, the preference to allow some time before implementation allows for a fully supported data center on vSphere 4 in the near future.

The last part of Upgrading VMware VI 3.X to vSphere 4 involves upgrading the individual virtual machine (VM) VM tools and virtual hardware. Although guests can still run hosted on ESX 4 if the virtual hardware is not upgraded, there are some great features of Hardware version 7 (v7) that are worth the reboots required.

This post is a summary of my notes and various cut and pastes from several VMware vSphere presentations and documents. I’ve tried to organize them to where the content can be read in a logical flow. I’ve directly copied a lot of this information from the What’s New in vSphere 4.0 VMTN community document, so I’ll just recognize VMware as the provider of this information. Check out the whole document for features and maximums of vCenter and ESX 4 as well.

This VMware slide shows all the configuration maximums for vSphere 4 VMs using v7 hardware.

From the VMTN community document:

Hardware version 7 is the default for new ESX/ESXi 4.0 virtual machines. ESX/ESXi 4.0 will continue to run virtual machines created on hosts running ESX Server versions 2.x and 3.x. Virtual machines that use virtual hardware version 7 features are not compatible with ESX/ESXi releases prior to version 4.0.

Virtual Machine Scalability and Functionality

New Virtual Hardware — ESX/ESXi 4.0 introduces a new generation of virtual hardware (virtual hardware version 7) which adds significant new features including:

• New storage virtual devices:
  
  • Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) virtual device for Microsfot Cluster Service — Provides support for running Windows Server 2008 in a Microsoft Cluster Service configuration.
  • IDE virtual device — Ideal for supporting older operating systems that lack SCSI drivers.
• VMXNET Generation 3 — VMXNET3 is the third generation para-virtualized NIC from VMware. New VMXNET3 features over previous version of Enhanced VMXNET include:
  • MSI/MSI-X support (subject to guest operating system kernel support)
  • Receive Side Scaling (supported in Windows 2008 when explicitly enabled through the device’s Advanced configuration tab)
  • IPv6 checksum and TCP Segmentation Offloading (TSO) over IPv6
  • VLAN off-loading
  • Large TX/RX ring sizes (configured from within the virtual machine)
• 8-way Virtual SMP — ESX/ESXi 4.0 provides support for virtual machines with up to 8 virtual CPUs allowing larger CPU-intensive workloads to be run on the VMware ESX platform. It is also possible to assign any integer number of virtual CPUs between 1 and 8 to a VM. See the Guest Operating System Installation Guide for a list of guest operating systems that support 8-way SMP.
• 256GB RAM — Up to 256GB RAM can be assigned to ESX/ESXi 4.0 virtual machines.
• Enhanced VMotion Compatibility — Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) automatically configures servers whose CPUs feature Intel FlexMigration and AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be VMotion-compatible with servers that use older CPUs. ESX/ESXi 4.0 adds additional flexibility when configuring EVC clusters over earlier ESX releases that have EVC support.
• Virtual Machine Hot Plug Support— The new virtual hardware introduced in ESX/ESXi 4.0 provides support for adding and removing virtual devices, adding virtual CPUs, and adding memory to a virtual machine without having to power off the virtual machine. See the Guest Operating System Installation Guide for the list of operating systems for which this functionality is supported.

The following slides illustrate information about the configurations necessary to hot add virtual hardware.