VMware Blogs

VMware vCloud Blog: From the Financial Times: The VMware Hybrid Approach “Pays Off”

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

The hybrid cloud provides significant value to companies according to a recent article in the Financial Times.

In an interview with VMware customer AutoScout 24, the Financial Times found that the company now has the flexibility to adapt to varying traffic flows, source additional computing capacity, and migrate between two infrastructures in order to best meet customer demand, all thanks to VMware’s private and hybrid cloud technology.

AutoScout24 is an online vehicle marketplace with a catalog of over 1.8M cars. With over 100,000 commercial vehicles and 90,000 motorcycles up for sale, the site receives roughly 10M visitors every month, which places huge pressures on the company’s IT infrastructure.

To relieve unnecessary pressure, AutoScout24 is close to completing a hybrid cloud deployment based on VMware technology, in order to support the company’s new “Workshop portal” project. According to the Financial Times, the Workshop portal enables customers to “search for local garages qualified to service their vehicle, based on manufacturer, model, age and mileage, as well as the request quotes from mechanics and schedule appointments.”

Joachim Rath, head of IT production at AutoScout24, shares that a hybrid cloud is the best way of sourcing the additional computing capacity needed to roll out the service to other European cities. To deploy their hybrid cloud, the company plans to integrate their existing private cloud environment with the public cloud capacity provided by Wusys, a provider of vCloud Powered Services in Germany.

AutoScout24 is aiming to have their hybrid cloud operational by June. Once live, data will be able to migrate dynamically between the company’s private and public cloud infrastructures, allowing AutoScout24’s systems to offload intensive workloads to Wusys, thereby giving the company to quickly and affordably offer the Workshop portal to a far wider audience of car buyers.

Visit Another VMware Cloud to learn more about other companies who have successfully deployed a public, private, or hybrid cloud model through VMware. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at @vCloud and @VMwareSP for more stories about VMware cloud customers!

Team Fusion: Coda 2 Paired with VMware Fusion 4: Web development has never been easier.

Thu, 24 May 2012 22:06:49 +0000

Today the Panic inc team released Coda 2, a much anticipated web development tool for the Mac OS. We think it’s awesome software, but it gets even better when paired with VMware Fusion 4. So naturally we thought we would take a second to talk about why it’s so great.

Coda 2

Coda 2 is a “do everything” web development tool designed to stream line the web development process by putting everything in one place. Whether you need to work with an editor, Terminal, CSS, or Files Coda 2 has got it all. With over 100 new features including a totally redesigned UI, Coda 2 is a truly major update.

VMware Fusion 4 + Coda 2 =Rejoice

One of the biggest advantages to Coda 2 is the ability to cross test your code across any Mac OS native browsers on the fly, but what about Internet Explorer? That’s where VMware Fusion steps in. With VMware Fusion 4 you can instantly gain access to all versions of Internet Explorer giving you the final piece of the proverbial puzzle to the ultimate web development test bed. Here's how it works.

1.From inside Coda select the Preview tab, then click the browser preview icon in the bottom left of the window.

2. Next select the version of IE that you would like to test.

It's that easy! With just a couple clicks you can now test across virtually any browser.

If you want to check download a trial of Coda 2 click here.

To download a trial of VMware Fusion 4 click here

vSphere PowerCLI Blog: Automating SSL Checks for vCenter and Host Certificates

Thu, 24 May 2012 21:34:06 +0000

Posted by
Alan Renouf
Technical Marketing

Recently William Lam wrote a great article showing how easy it was to check your hosts SSL Certificates and Expiry information using a free tool called ssl-cert-check, he explains that it is best practice to replace VMware’s self-signed SSL certificates that are included with the vCenter Server and on all hosts, make sure you read his post here and in turn make sure you also read Michael Websters articles which take you through this process here.

But what if we wanted to check these certificates in PowerCLI, recently I found a great PowerShell Advanced function which allows us to do just this, we are able to test the certificate of any given website and return the details.

Using this script and a little code of our own we can easily check all our hosts and the vCenter Certificates as seen below:

The code will output the most important details included who the issuer of the certificate is, whether it is valid and when it expires, both in date and length of time.

This could easily be adapted to check on a regular basis and email closer to the expiry date.

Code

Function Test-WebServerSSL {
# Function original location: http://en-us.sysadmins.lv/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=332991f0-bfed-4143-9eea-f521167d287c&ID=60
[CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true, Position = 0)]
        [string]$URL,
        [Parameter(Position = 1)]
        [ValidateRange(1,65535)]
        [int]$Port = 443,
        [Parameter(Position = 2)]
        [Net.WebProxy]$Proxy,
        [Parameter(Position = 3)]
        [int]$Timeout = 15000,
        [switch]$UseUserContext
    )
Add-Type @"
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
namespace PKI {
    namespace Web {
        public class WebSSL {
            public Uri OriginalURi;
            public Uri ReturnedURi;
            public X509Certificate2 Certificate;
            //public X500DistinguishedName Issuer;
            //public X500DistinguishedName Subject;
            public string Issuer;
            public string Subject;
            public string[] SubjectAlternativeNames;
            public bool CertificateIsValid;
            //public X509ChainStatus[] ErrorInformation;
            public string[] ErrorInformation;
            public HttpWebResponse Response;
        }
    }
}
"@
    $ConnectString = "https://$url`:$port"
    $WebRequest = [Net.WebRequest]::Create($ConnectString)
    $WebRequest.Proxy = $Proxy
    $WebRequest.Credentials = $null
    $WebRequest.Timeout = $Timeout
    $WebRequest.AllowAutoRedirect = $true
    [Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = {$true}
    try {$Response = $WebRequest.GetResponse()}
    catch {}
    if ($WebRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate -ne $null) {
        $Cert = [Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2]$WebRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.Handle
        try {$SAN = ($Cert.Extensions | Where-Object {$_.Oid.Value -eq "2.5.29.17"}).Format(0) -split ", "}
        catch {$SAN = $null}
        $chain = New-Object Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Chain -ArgumentList (!$UseUserContext)
        [void]$chain.ChainPolicy.ApplicationPolicy.Add("1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1")
        $Status = $chain.Build($Cert)
        New-Object PKI.Web.WebSSL -Property @{
            OriginalUri = $ConnectString;
            ReturnedUri = $Response.ResponseUri;
            Certificate = $WebRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate;
            Issuer = $WebRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.Issuer;
            Subject = $WebRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.Subject;
            SubjectAlternativeNames = $SAN;
            CertificateIsValid = $Status;
            Response = $Response;
            ErrorInformation = $chain.ChainStatus | ForEach-Object {$_.Status}
        }
        $chain.Reset()
        [Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = $null
    } else {
        Write-Error $Error[0]
    }
}

Connect-VIServer MyVC -User Administrator –Password Password!

# Check for Host Certificates
Get-VMHost | Foreach { Test-WebServerSSL -URL $_.Name | Select OriginalURi, CertificateIsValid, Issuer, @{N="Expires";E={$_.Certificate.NotAfter} }, @{N="DaysTillExpire";E={(New-TimeSpan -Start (Get-Date) -End ($_.Certificate.NotAfter)).Days} }}

# Check for vCenter Certificate
Test-WebServerSSL -URL $DefaultVIServer | Select OriginalURi, CertificateIsValid, Issuer, @{N="Expires";E={$_.Certificate.NotAfter} }, @{N="DaysTillExpire";E={(New-TimeSpan -Start (Get-Date) -End ($_.Certificate.NotAfter)).Days} }

Get notification of new blog postings and more by following VMware PowerCLI on Twitter: @PowerCLI

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: vCenter Operations – Tell Your Story and Win BIG!

Thu, 24 May 2012 19:48:54 +0000

Interested in attending VMworld in San Francisco, or Barcelona- but are short a pass to attend either event? Do you have a good story to tell on how your company manages their virtualization and/or private cloud environment with the VMware vCenter Operations Suite? Let me tell you how you may be able to score both a free ticket and an opportunity to present your story to your peers at the most prestigious event for virtualization and cloud technology, VMworld 2012 San Francisco & EMEA.

Its Fast & Simple

Simply go to the vCenter Operations “Tell Your Story” web page, read through the program details and judging criteria – then simply “submit your story” using the on-line form! Your entry is then brought to our “expert” panel of judges:

David Davis @davidmdavis
Train Signal, vExpert, VMware Evangelist
www.vmwarevideos.com

Tommy Trogden @vTexan
EMC vSpecialist, VMware vExpert, Blogger
www.vTexan.com

Eric Sloof @esloof
Master VMware Instructor & Consultant @ NTPRO.NL, vExpert & Blogger
www.ntpro.nl

Duncan Epping @DuncaYB
VMware Principal Architect, Blogger: YellowBricks
www.yellow-bricks.com

Martin Klaus @mklausvm
Group Manager Product Marketing VMware (vC Ops)
www.vmware.com

Ben Scheerer @BenScheerer & @vCenterOps
VMware Product Marketing (vC Ops Suite)
www.benscheerer.com

Who then determine the most compelling story of how vC Ops has helped your organization better achieve its goals in virtualization and cloud.

Tips from the Judges

Be sure you read through the judging criteria:

40% of judging score is based on originality of the most authentic, impactful and creative story.
20% of judging score is based on definition of value to your business in time savings (OPEX), capital saving (CAPEX), or even ability to avert / plan for impactful events occurring in your environment, or anything else.
20% on presentation of visuals / layout – e.g. use of custom dashboards, use of screenshot to display issues, videos
10% Unique uses of vC Ops – custom dashboards, adapters, etc..
10% A description of any evaluation done of other tools considered, or replacement of any existing management tools/methodologies

Try your best to meet the majority of the criteria above. The submission form may not be conducive to your style of creativity, so go ahead and think outside the 2000 character box! Send us hyperlinks to your videos, email us any supporting graphics, screenshots, attachments, etc. – or even use our own dog food with SlideRocket!

I am truly excited about this contest, especially now that I have been able put this in place for the many vC Ops customers who were and are eager to share their story and experiences with this exciting VMware technology – and perhaps get something nice in return!

Don’t Own vC Ops? – Get it now For 50% Off

One of the criteria of the contest is that you own licenses for any version of the vC Ops Suite. With that said, for you who don’t own licenses we are now running a promotion for 50% the vCenter Operations Management “Advanced” edition. Access the promotion web page for more information.

Don’t Miss Out

This is your opportunity to attend VMworld 2012 San Francisco, or EMEA as well as present side by side with the VMware “experts” and even attend an evening on the town with the panel of experts! Just remember that you only have until July 11^th – and winners will be announced on the VMTN Community Podcast and published on the blog on July 18^th, 2012.

Thank you and I'll be looking for your submission!

-Ben (Twitter @benscheerer)

VMware vSphere Blog: Introduction to the vSphere API Part 3 - Inventory Hierarchy

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:13:48 +0000

By William Lam, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer

In Part 2 of the series, we took a look at the vSphere Object Model and how objects such as a Virtual Machine, ESXi host, Datacenter, etc. are represented in the API and how to access their properties and capabilities. In this article, we will take a look at the vSphere Inventory Hierarchy and how to go about navigating and searching through the vSphere Objects.

Overview

The vSphere API organizes its entities (Datacenter, HostSystem, VirtualMachine, etc) in an inventory hierarchy. This inventory hierarchy structure is similar for both a vCenter Server and an ESX(i) host, but for a vCenter Server, the inventory structure can be more complex. Understanding the hierarchy and the object relationships is crucial for navigating and searching through the vSphere API.

If you have connected using the vSphere Client to interact with an ESX(i) host or a vCenter Server, then you have already been exposed to the vSphere Inventory Hierarchy.

As you can see from the screenshot above, when you first login you will be presented with 4 distinct groupings:

Hosts and Clusters - This view provides you access to your ESX(i) hosts and vSphere Clusters
VMs and Templates - This view provides you access to your Virtual Machines, vApps and Virtual Machine Templates (which is just an immutable Virtual Machine)
Datastores and Datastore Clusters - This view provides you access to your Datastore and Datastore Clusters (known as StoragePod in the vSphere API)
Networking - This view provides you access to your Portgroup, Distributed Port Groups and VDS (vSphere Distributed Virtual Switches)

If you want to search for a particular vSphere entity such as an ESXi host or Datastore, you would select one of these groupings and traverse its inventory tree. You could also organize the entities using the folder constructs which also allows you to have nested entities.

So how does this all relate back to the vSphere API Inventory Hierarchy? Well, these groupings actually represents the underlying inventory hierarchy. Also, a few things are abstracted when using the vSphere Client, but for the most part you are seeing how the inventory is organized and laid out. I mentioned earlier that the vSphere Inventory Hierarchy is similar for both an individual ESX(i) host as well as for a vCenter Server, which makes it possible to manage both types of system through a unified vSphere API.

vCenter Server Inventory Hierarchy:

When you first login, you will be presented with a special managed object singleton called the ServiceInstance which you can think of as the root of the inventory. From here you will find a single folder called rootFolder which can contain one or more child entities of either a Folder or Datacenter. As you traverse the rootFolder, in case you have nested folders, you will eventually end up at a Datacenter entity which then provides you access to 4 different types of folders: VM, Host, Datastore and Network. These are synonymous to the 4 groupings we saw earlier in the vSphere Client. As you can see from the diagram above, each Datacenter will have exactly one of these these top level folders and within these folders there can be various child entity types.

For example, in the HostFolder, we can have a ComputeResource (compute resources of an ESXi host) and ClusterComputeResource (aggregated compute resources to form a vSphere Cluster) which can in turn have multiple ResourcePool (set of compute resources which could be further divided) and HostSystem (individual ESXi host).

Similarly, to retrieve other types of vSphere entities such as VirtualMachine or StoragePod (Datastore Clusters) you just need to traverse down the appropriate top level folders as outline in the diagram.

ESX(i) Inventory Hierarchy:

The inventory hierarchy for a standalone ESX(i) host is pretty much a simplified single instance of the vCenter Server hierarchy. When we first login, we still have the ServiceInstance, but the rootFolder now contains only a single Datacenter (named ha-datacenter) entity, whereas before, you could have multiple or nested Folder and Datacenter entities. You still have the 4 top level folders (VM, Host, Datastore and Network), but for the HostFolder specifically will only have a single ComputeResource entity as well as a single root ResourcePool (child resource pools can still exists) and single HostSystem definition.

As you might have guessed, the biggest difference between the inventory hierarchy of a vCenter Server and standalone ESX(i) host is that for a vCenter Server, you could be managing thousands of ESX(i) hosts and tens of thousands of VirtualMachines and therefore the inventory will be more complex. Whereas with a standalone ESX(i) host, it is just single system and hence inventory is pretty straight forward.

Hopefully this article provides you with a better understanding of how the vSphere entities are organized within the inventory hierarchy and it helps you visualize where a particular entity resides within the vSphere API. Combining the understanding of the vSphere Object Model along with the Inventory Hierarchy, you will now be able to manage and configure any vSphere object as you would using the vSphere Client.

In the next two articles, we will take a look at some the free tools that can help you better understand and explore the vSphere API.

References:

Get notification of new blog postings and more by following VMware Automation on Twitter: @VMWAutomation

VMware Global Alliances Blog: Be Sure to Visit VMware at HP Discover!

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:32:24 +0000

Posted by Jay Workman
HP Alliance Marketing
Director

HP Discover 2012 is just around the corner and as a major sponsor, VMware, will be showcasing our breath of solutions with HP. Las Vegas the week of June 4^th will definitely be the place to be if you want to learn how virtualization and cloud computing solutions from VMware running on HP Converged Infrastructure can take your business to the next level.

Make plans to visit the VMware booth (#406) to learn how you can securely manage your cloud, virtualize your business critical applications, enable secure access for remote workers from virtually any device, save ongoing OpEx with Hybrid Clouds and much more! You’ll also be able to sit in on various booth theater presentations and we’ll have VMware experts on-hand to answer your questions about our joint solutions with HP! Sit in on any three of the VMware business or technical sessions listed below and you’ll be entered into a drawing for one of three new Apple iPad’s to be given away at the show. Details are in your conference attendee bag or available at the VMware booth!

VMware Sessions:

Session ID	Title	Day	Time
PSS3302	Cloud Infrastructure, applications, and users: How VMware brings it all together	Tuesday	1:30 PM
BB3303	Haven't virtualized critical applications? Don't be passed by competitors	Tuesday	2:45 PM
TB2270	A hardened cloud infrastructure with VMware	Tuesday	4:00 PM
BB3304	Security, productivity and compliance in a BYOD World	Tuesday	4:00 PM
TB2755	Implementing a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster with the HP LeftHand	Tuesday	4:00 PM
BB3305	Lowering your costs again - with a Hybrid Cloud	Wednesday	1:30 PM
TB3258	The benefits and right practices of using 10Gb Ethernet with VMware vSphere 5.0	Wednesday	2:45 PM
TB2944	HP and VMware: building the cloud	Wednesday	2:45 PM
TB2756	Simplicity of an automated recovery plan with 3PAR and VMware SRM	Wednesday	4:00 PM
TB2941	Accelerating vMotion with the HP FlexFabric	Wednesday	5:15 PM
TB2102	HP and VMware: fast path to virtualization value and foundation for cloud	Wednesday	5:15 PM
BB2966	Why VMware choose HP ALM to manage its next-generation product lifecycles	Thursday	10:00 PM
BB2420	VMware’s perspective on reducing lifecycle costs with HP VirtualSystem for VMware	Thursday	2:45 PM

Follow @VMwareEvents on Twitter to receive news and information live from the show floor. We look forward to seeing you at HP Discover 2012 in June!

VMware vFabric Blog: VMware vFabric Suite 5.1 Standard and Advanced Editions Now Available for Download

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:54:04 +0000

Last week, VMware introduced the new VMware vFabric Suite 5.1, which is now available for customers to download and try.

Resources:

What’s New in vFabric Suite 5.1: Release notes that include links to new features for each component product.
Compare vFabric Suite Editions: Compare features between vFabric Standard and vFabric Advanced to determine what choice is right for you.

Download Free 60 Day Evaluation:

Evaluation and download: Register and try vFabric Standard or Advanced today! (non RPM packages only)
Download (RPM packages): For information on how to access the repo and installing the RPM package check out the installation documentation.

Documentation:

vFabric 5.1 Documentation Landing Page: Download documentation for all vFabric Suite Standard and Advanced products.

Special Note for vFabric Application Director Users:

vFabric Application Director 1.0 users must download and install the VMware vFabric Application Director Activation Key to activate the product during installation. This key is different from the vFabric Suite license key, which does not activate Application Director.

About the Author: Al Sargent leads vFabric Suite product marketing at VMware. A VMware employee since 2010, Al has helped make the vFabric Cloud Application Platform become one of the fastest-growing application infrastructure suites in the industry. Prior to joining VMware, Al was co-founder of cloud computing startup Sauce Labs, a software testing platform as a service (PaaS). Previously, Al held product roles at Oracle, Mercury Interactive (acquired by HP) and Wily Technology (acquired by CA), and holds one patent (#7730193). He holds a B.S. Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson.

VMware vSphere Blog: Mem.MinFreePct sliding scale function

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:53:29 +0000

One of the cool “under the hood” improvements vSphere 5 offers is the sliding scale function of the Mem.MinFreePct.

Before diving into the sliding scale function, let’s take a look at the Mem.MinFreePct function itself. MinFreePct determines the amount of memory the VMkernel should keep free. This threshold is subdivided in various memory thresholds, i.e. High, Soft, Hard and Low and is introduced to prevent performance and correctness issues. The threshold for the low state is required for correctness. In other words, it protects the VMkernel layer from PSOD’s resulting from memory starvation. The soft and hard thresholds are about virtual machine performance and memory starvation prevention. The VMkernel will trigger more drastic memory reclamation techniques when it approaches the Low state. If the amount of free memory is just a bit less than the Min.FreePct threshold, the VMkernel applies ballooning to reclaim memory. The ballooning memory reclamation technique introduces the least amount of performance impact on the virtual machine by working together with the Guest operating system inside the virtual machine, however there is some latency involved with ballooning. Memory compressing helps to avoid hitting the low state without impacting virtual machine performance, but if memory demand is higher than the VMkernels’ ability to reclaim, drastic measures are taken to avoid memory exhaustion and that is swapping. However swapping will introduce VM performance degradations and for this reason this reclamation technique is used when desperate moments require drastic measurements. For more information about reclamation techniques I recommend reading the “disable ballooning” article.

vSphere 4.1 allowed the user to change the default MinFreePct value of 6% to a different value and introduced a dynamic threshold of the Soft, Hard and Low state to set appropriate thresholds and prevent virtual machine performance issues while protecting VMkernel correctness. By default vSphere 4.1 thresholds was set to the following values:

Free memory state	Threshold	Reclamation mechanism
High	6%	None
Soft	64% of MinFreePct	Balloon, compress
Hard	32% of MinFreePct	Balloon, compress, swap
Low	16% of MinFreePct	Swap

Using a default MinFreePct value of 6% can be inefficient in times where 256GB or 512GB systems are becoming more and more mainstream. A 6% threshold on a 512GB will result in 30GB idling most of the time. However not all customers use large systems and prefer to scale out than to scale up. In this scenario, a 6% MinFreePCT might be suitable. To have best of both worlds, ESXi 5 uses a sliding scale for determining its MinFreePct threshold.

Free memory state threshold	Range
6%	0-4GB
4%	4-12GB
2%	12-28GB
1%	Remaining memory

Let’s use an example to explore the savings of the sliding scale technique. On a server configured with 96GB RAM, the MinFreePct threshold will be set at 1597.36MB, opposed to 5898.24MB if 6% was used for the complete range 96GB.

Free memory state	Threshold	Range	Result
High	6%	0-4GB	245.76MB
	4%	4-12GB	327.66MB
	2%	12-28GB	327.66MB
	1%	Remaining memory	696.32MB
Total High Threshold			1597.36MB

Due to the sliding scale, the MinFreePct threshold will be set at 1597.96MB, resulting in the following Soft, Hard and low threshold:

Free memory state	Threshold	Reclamation mechanism	Threshold in MB
Soft	64% of MinFreePct	Balloon	10244.26
Hard	32% of MinFreePct	Balloon, compress	511.23
Low	16% of MinFreePct	Balloon, compress, swap	255.62

Although this optimization isn’t as sexy as Storage DRS or one of the other new features introduced by vSphere5 it is a feature of vSphere 5 that helps you drive your environments to higher consolidation ratios.

VMTN Blog: vExpert Spotlight: Cedric Megroz

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:11:00 +0000

Name: Cedric Megroz

Blog URL: www.virtualgeek.ch

Twitter handle: cmegroz

VMware community account: cmegroz

Current employer: My current employer is LANexpert a Swiss Company leader in virtualization, storage and system.

We won the EMC Switzerland Award 2010 & 2011 and we are the Premier Solution Provider for VMware in Switzerland.

How did you get into IT?

Telecommunications in the broadest sense has always fascinated me. I started in my teenage years with the CB (Citizen Band), then in the Swiss army working with very old and incredible teleprinters and punch paper tapes. In the late 90's, I decided to recycle myself and got into IT by doing a Swiss Federal IT degree and started a new life with surrounded by so much technology.

How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2012 vExpert?

My first experience with ESX was during a course in 2006 on version 2.5. I was pretty happy to find the service console as a known environment because I had worked for a few years with a Red Had server.

It was not difficult to understand the power and flexibility offered by virtualization and I immediately wanted to specialize in it. I did this and passed my first VCP. In 2009, I passed the certification as an Instructor (VCI) which gave me the urge to share my knowledge and I began to write articles, from 2011, in French on the blog VirtualGeekCH. It's these articles on this blog that gained me the vExpert 2012 title.

What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?

Be passionate Be passionate Be passionate
read read read
exchange exchange exchange.

I am lucky to have colleagues with expertise in a lot of domains

VMware vCloud Blog: Another VMware Cloud - Ducati Runs Their Private Cloud on VMware

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

According to Daniel Bellini, CIO at Ducati Motor Holding, “Flexibility and agility was benefit number one” when deploying a private cloud with VMware. With VMware vCloud Director, Ducati has been able to “deploy applications, solutions, services, and new architectures in an incredibly short time."

Ducati Motor Holding is a high-performance motorcycle designer and manufacturer, based out of Bologna, Italy. Though Ducati is a relatively small company with around 1,000 employees and sales of 40,000 units a year, they have all the complexities of a multinational manufacturing company in terms of product configuration, supply chain, and distribution network articulation.

With a server virtualization rate approaching 100%, Ducati has embraced VMware virtualization solutions, as they have made it possible for the company to match all of its business requirements with available human and economical resources. In a recent interview with Dana Gardner, Bellini discussed Ducati’s move to the cloud with VMware, saying:

“Private cloud is already a reality in Ducati. Over our private cloud, we supply services to all our commercial subsidiaries. We supply services to our assembly plant in Thailand or to our racing team at racing venues. So private cloud is already a reality.”

In the video below from VMworld 2011, watch Bellini discuss how VMware virtualization and private cloud technology has helped Ducati out-perform their larger competitors:

According to Bellini, VMware virtualization and private cloud solutions have supported the business and the growth of the company by delivering solution infrastructures in a very short time and with very limited initial investment.

“VMware has never failed us. We have grown in terms of demands and requirements, and VMware has grown in capabilities and ability to support us.”

For those thinking about undertaking virtualization, Bellini advises, “to not be scared by the initial investment, which is something that is going to be repaid in an incredibly short time.”

VMware vSphere Blog: vCLI + ESXCLI Authentication Options

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:34:51 +0000

By William Lam, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer

Did you know the vCLI (includes ESXCLI) offers several different authentication options? This is actually not a very well known fact and I thought I share some of the different options, as this question comes up from time to time.

Note: In the examples below, I am using the vCLI 5.0 release.

1. Traditional username and password - You can either specify both the --username and --password or only specify the --username and you will then be prompted to enter your password.

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, we can specify either just the --username and be prompted for the password or we can specify both --username and --password on the command line. If you are using special characters, make sure you either escape them using “\” character or just enclose them with single quotes.

2. Session File - Instead of specifying a username/password each time, you can login once and create a session file which can then be used for the duration of your tasks. If the session file is not used, it will automatically expire after 30 minutes.

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, you need to first create a session file by using the --savesessionfile option and specifying the name of the session file. Once you have successfully created the session file, you can then use the --sessionfile option and the session file itself as your authenication.

3. Environmental Variable - You can store your authentication as well as other parameters using an environmental variable. This option is not very secure for username and passwords, as the contents is in clear text.

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, we are using the export command to create two environmental variables for username and password which is VI_USERNAME and VI_PASSWORD. There is a complete list here for more details. You can also create enviornmental variables on a Windows system, you can refer to the vCLI documentation for an example.

4. Configuration File - You can store your authentication as well as other parameters using a configuration file. This option is also not very secure for credentials, but if you decide to use this, ensure you limit access to the file.

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, we add the same variables to a configuration file. Again, you can get the full list of variables here.

5. Credential Store - For service accounts or agents that need to login through a non-interactive session, you can leverage the credential store which stores the passwords in an obfuscated (not encrypted) form for access.

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, we are using the credstore_admin.pl vSphere SDK for Perl script to add a host into credential store. We can verify by using the “list” operation and then finally we can use the credential store by using the --credstore option and specifying the default path of the file which is in /home/<user>/.vmware/credstore/vicredentials.xml

6. Pass-Through - This option is available only for Microsoft Window systems which support SSPI (Security Support Provider Interface) and passes the credentials of the executing user to the server. The executing user must have an account in a domain trusted by both machines

Here is an example:

In the screenshot above, to use the pass-through option, you just need to specify the --passthroughauth option. By default, the passthroughauth is configured for negioate but you can specify a particular authentication package such as "kerberos" by using the --passthroughauthpackage option.

In addition to these authentication options, there is one new option that is only available with the ESXCLI command that you may not have heard about. This is the --cacertsfile option which allows you to specify the CA (Certificate Authority) certificate file, in PEM format, to verify the identity of the vCenter Server system or ESXi system to run the command on. The primary use case for this is to help prevent MITM (Man-In-The-Middle) attacks.

Here is an example:

In the above screenshot, to leverage the --cacertsfile option you will need to specify a certificate file in PEM format. You will still need to specify the credentials to the system using any of the options listed above in addition to the certificate file.

You can use the following command to convert *.pfx file to *.pem format:
openssl pkcs12 -in rui.pfx -out rui.pem -nodes

If the certificate can not be verified as the screenshot shows, then the operation will be rejected even with valid credentials, else it will proceed as normal.

As you can see you have several options for authentication when it comes to the vCLI than just specifying the username and password on the command-line. Some options may be more secure than others or fit a particular use case such as leveraging a session file for a few tasks or using pass-through authentication if you are in a Windows environment. For more details about the vCLI authentication options, please refer here which also include equivalent commands for a Window systems.

FYI - For those studying for the VCAP-DCA exams, I would highly recommend you create a configuration file of the credentials, this way you do not have to retype the credentials each time. I know with a timed exam such as the VCAP-DCA, anything to help speed things up will help.

Get notification of new blog postings and more by following VMware Automation on Twitter: @VMWAutomation

VMTN Blog: A week in virtualization

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:30:00 +0000

Yesterday, VMware has announced that we are going to acquire Wanova, a company that makes Wanova Mirage, an image replication and layering technology. With the combination of VMware View and Wanova Mirage, the benefits of central image management can be extended to more types of end point systems – including physical, virtual, tethered desktops and roaming laptops (Mac and PC).

In his blog post, our CTO of End-User Computing Scott Davis explains that both VMware View™ and Wanova Mirage provide centralized desktop image management, all or nothing patching and push button image resets. The key difference in these technologies is that VMware View images execute on servers in the data center and use a remote graphics protocol for the user interface, while Wanova Mirage images are transmitted and cached locally for runtime execution on the client systems. This makes Mirage well-suited for executing managed images on disconnected laptops, including MacBooks running VMware Fusion®. And VMware View remains the ideal choice for executing images securely in the data center and delivering the user interface to remote devices such as tablets and thin clients. In this manner, the two products stand independently and when put together address a much broader swath of the market than either is capable of individually.

You can visit cto.vmware.com to read the full blog post.

On a lighter note, the VMware Go blog has published another installment of the “Andy, the Angry IT Guy” series, this time comparing corporate IT organizations to the Night’s Watch from the Game of Thrones. He covers the dangers of browser malware attacks, third-party applications, and the benefits of automation. Check out blogs.vmware.com/go for the full post, and five more from the same dude Andy, he seems entertaining.

Wish you were at EMCworld? This week, my teammate Corey has launched a web app that plugs in with Instagram and collects snapshots tagged with EMCworld. They’ve also got a contest going with taking a picture of VMware+ card in front of something funny, interesting, or cool. Go to vmwebapp.com/instagram and have a look at all the pictures!

And finally, there will be two full-day VMUG conferences happening before the month is out: one in Western Pennsylvania, and one in Denver. Go to myvmug.com to find a VMUG conference near you and to register.

Virtual Reality: System Center 2012 - Checkbox Compliant Heterogeneous Management

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:38:56 +0000

If you spend any amount of time researching Microsoft System Center 2012, whether through their websites, blogs, datasheets, or any other marketing materials, you may be under the impression that Microsoft has finally delivered on their promise of a “single pane of glass” to manage all of your investments in virtual infrastructure, especially when it comes to VMware vSphere. Having worked hands-on with both VMware vSphere and System Center 2012, my interest was piqued when a 57-page whitepaper was published by Microsoft devoted to the very subject. But the reality is that for a document fluffed up by nearly 50 pages of screen-shots and mouse click instructions, the most relevant information for the reader is this:

“In VMM, support for ESX/ESXi is optimized for virtual machine and service management.”

What’s Your Definition of Management?

Any vSphere Administrator who spends a moment to evaluate System Center 2012 and VMM (short for Virtual Machine Manager) for its multi-hypervisor management capabilities will soon learn that optimized translates to a lack of even the most basic support for their vSphere environment. Need to add a new host to your cluster? Switch over to your vSphere Client. Need to connect a host to the new LUN you just provisioned? Again, time to load up the vSphere Client. Install or upgrade VMware Tools? Add a new Virtual Machine Port Group? Browse a datastore? These examples are by no means exhaustive but you probably get the idea. When it comes to managing VMware vSphere, System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager really is just a virtual machine manager.

The Search for the “Single Pane of Glass”

Choosing the right virtual infrastructure for any workload, including business critical, test and development, or remote office, includes not only evaluating the core platform for features and performance, it also requires evaluating the management platform for capabilities to simplify management and boost efficiency. VMware vSphere Administrators have long been able to perform all manner of virtual infrastructure management tasks like building clusters, configuring virtual networking, adding storage, or patching hosts all from the same management platform – VMware vCenter Server. Only VMware vCenter Server provides the ability to manage Resource Pools, deploy bare-metal ESXi hosts, enforce host profile compliance, and configure vSphere HA and DRS. Unable to provide vSphere Administrators with any of these capabilities, System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager may end up as yet another unused pane of glass sitting alongside Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

System Center 2012 – Multi-Hypervisor Management Done “Slight”

For what it’s worth, System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager does offer support for some common VMware vSphere virtual machine related management tasks. Microsoft even goes so far as to admit that System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager is “optimized for virtual machine and service management.” Unfortunately, this moment of System Center Truth is drowned out by more broad claims of management that is comprehensive, provides day-to-day operational support, and is delivered through a “single pane of glass.” Even with the addition of all the supporting management servers, databases, and consoles required to duplicate the scenarios demonstrated in the whitepaper, vSphere Administrators would still have to count on VMware vCenter Server to handle even the simplest of VMware vSphere management tasks. For this reason, I find Microsoft’s claim of a comprehensive, single pane of glass management experience for VMware vSphere to be little more than a marketing exercise, designed ultimately for checkbox compliance.

VMware Support Insider: Knowledge Base Update

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:26:54 +0000

***UPDATE: The Knowledge Base is now available.

VMware is aware of an issue where the knowledge base becomes slow or unresponsive. We are actively troubleshooting the issue. We do not have an ETA at this time.

We want to communicate to our customers that the outage is unplanned, and being worked on by every resource necessary to get things back to normal. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and we will update this blog post as more news becomes available.

You can also watch our Twitter feed at: http://twitter.com/VMwareKB for updates.

VMware vCloud Blog: Preparing your vCloud Director SQL Server Database Server

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000

By: David Davis

If you haven’t tried installing vCloud Director yet in your virtualization lab, you should. However, be prepared that the install is more complex than the typical virtualization management tool that might happen in just a single vApp deployment. While vCD is available in a vApp (for pilot and test use only), even that requires a bit more configuration than you may be used to.

Assuming you are using the full production installation version of vCD, the biggest hurdle for most vSphere Admins is getting a database server installed and prepared to support it. To help make this process easier, I created the video below that walks you through the process of:

Installing MS SQL Server Express, used as your vCD database
Running SQL Server Management Studio to add a new user and database
Running a SQL script from KendrickColeman.com’s website to prepare the database configuration for vCD
Configuring SQL networking for vCD

Before you watch the video I would like to point out that, as this was for a lab environment, I opted for the free SQL Server Express with the Management Studio. In a production environment, you would of course want to use the full / commercial version of SQL Server.

Now, here is your 11-minute video on the preparing your vCloud Director SQL Server Database:

For VMware’s official vCloud Director documentation, checkout the vCD Installation and Configuration Guide.

And, for more information regarding vCloud Director Installation check out these resources:

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for Train Signal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP,CISSP, and vExpert level status over his 15+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and nine different video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere 5 and vCloud Director video training courses. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his VMware vSphere video training course from TrainSignal.com.

VMware Go Blog: Easing the Challenge of Virtualization for SMBs

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000

By: Matt Sarrel

Many enterprises are reaping the benefits of virtualization, e.g. a flexible infrastructure that can significantly simplify daily operations, reduced risk and cost and higher value and greater ROI over the old single app/ single server mentality. However, SMBs have been a bit slow on the uptake of virtualization technologies for a number of reasons.

Cost Effective Virtualization

When SMB IT departments launch server or desktop virtualization projects, they are often surprised to discover that the anticipated savings were consumed by a heavy up-front investment in software, hardware, training, and administration overhead. While large enterprise IT shops can go back to the CFO and ask for another 10% to help support the project, this would be akin to signing one’s own death warrant in today’s cash-strapped SMB environment.

However, virtualization can reduce costs related to underutilized physical servers. Many SMBs purchase high-capacity servers with the plan that use will grow to fit the resources – “if our application uses 5% of resources today then we'll be good for a few years as it grows to 50%.” But, this means that you're overspending by paying for tomorrow's resources today (and we know technology resources get cheaper over time so this spare capacity is basically wasted.) Instead, running a number of virtual machines on a single physical machine allows IT departments to use that spare capacity. Running multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine also consolidates the physical server footprint in the datacenter. Fewer physical servers equal less rack space, energy consumed and heat produced, plus the accompanying reduction in administration costs.

In addition, virtualization provides a great deal of flexibility by divorcing the OS/applications from the server hardware. You can add or remove resources from the virtual machine without shutting down the physical server and disassembling it. Remember the agony of the last time you had a business critical application jeopardized by failing hardware? In a virtualized environment the application's virtual machine could simply be pushed to different hardware. This flexibility facilitates more efficient scaling of server environments as business needs grow.

Minimizing Risk

Many SMBs see risk in virtualization. Whereas slow applications on physical servers can usually be isolated to a single server or application, this is far more difficult in the virtual world. “Which piece of which app is running on which virtual server on which physical server” can be a daunting question in an environment prone to virtual sprawl. Virtualization allows for consolidation of network infrastructure and storage infrastructure as well, so now troubleshooting a single app could require troubleshooting every piece of virtual and physical equipment in a datacenter. A lot of businesses may not be willing to tolerate the disruption of existing services in order to go virtual.

The shift from a physical infrastructure to a virtual infrastructure requires changes in conceptualization, architecture, and process. Many SMBs have gone with the model of direct attached storage for their physical server environment. Much to their chagrin, virtual servers and applications run best from shared storage, not from direct attached storage. It’s a lot to ask the average small business IT guy to grapple with the added of complexity of now having to manage a shared storage infrastructure (for example, a SAN) instead of simply popping a new drive into a local drive array.

SMBs may question the need for a complex virtual environment. Can a company running only a dozen apps truly reap the benefits of server and application consolidation on their own? Or would this small business be better off simply moving everything into the cloud? Why build something from scratch when you could easily leverage someone else’s infrastructure? Few companies actually want to manage greater numbers of more complex systems, and even fewer want to shell out big bucks on a whole new infrastructure that is supposed to save them time and money. SMB’s must weigh the cost savings might of virtualizing into the cloud versus building their own environment and then having to maintain it.

Benefits vs. Challenges

Small businesses can reap many benefits from virtualization, but the perception that only enterprises can benefit from server consolidation and cloud architectures has kept virtualization off the radar for many SMB IT personnel. What’s worse, there’s still a great deal of perceived uncertainty regarding the application and value of virtualization on the part of IT. Capacity planning is no longer merely a matter of 1 app = 1 machine, and while this is more efficient it is also more complex.

SMB IT personnel have found, up front planning is difficult to achieve in an environment where you’re constantly putting out fires. Even though virtualization is intended to simplify IT management, deploying a virtual infrastructure can be an arduous task, especially if you’ve never done it before.

VMware Go Can Help

Fortunately, there’s actually a tool out there that can make at least the deployment and management of virtualized machines significantly easier.

The VMware Go vSphere Hypervisor allows you to create virtual machines by leveraging the configuration of an existing physical server using the built in VMware P2V converter tool. The vSphere Hypervisor can also install a pre-packaged, reliable and secure virtual appliance that is immediately ready to run in production.

After creating the virtual machines, VMware Go can help you monitor the VM’s for performance and resource utilization through a straightforward web interface. While there’s a lot to consider and get done when virtualizing in an SMB (cost, scalability, risk), once you decide to go virtual, VMware Go can definitely simplify the initial setup and ongoing management of your new environment.

VMware vSphere Blog: SDRS maintenance mode impossible because "The virtual machine is pinned to a host."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:18:10 +0000

By Frank Denneman, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect

When using virtual machines that have disks set to snapshot independent and are placed in a datastore cluster, attempting to enter SDRS maintenance mode for a datastore results in the error "The virtual machine is pinned to a host."

By default Storage DRS will not move virtual machines with independent disks. Independent disks can be shared or not. To determine if the disks are shared is a very expensive operation within the algorithm, as Storage DRS needs to investigate every virtual machine and its disks in the datastore cluster. To reduce the overhead generated by Storage DRS on the virtual infrastructure, Storage DRS does not recommend such moves.

However after getting feedback about the use of non-shared independent disk in a datastore cluster from customers and the community forums, the engineering team released a vpxd.cfg option sdrs.disableSDRSonIndependentDisk. By default this option is not listed in the vpxd.cfg and is treated as true. When specified and set to false, Storage DRS will move independent disks and the error “The virtual machine is pinned to a host” will not appear. Remember that this option will automatically apply to all datastore clusters managed by that vCenter server!

Please note that this option should only be used with non-shared independent disks! Moving shared independent disks is not supported

VMwareTV: Desktop Virtualization (VMware View) at Foley and Lardner

Wed, 23 May 2012 03:11:24 +0000

	Desktop Virtualization (VMware View) at Foley and Lardner bit.ly -- Find out how Foley and Lardner is embracing workplace mobility and BYOD with desktop virtualization and VMware View. Foley leveraged VMware View to offer desktops as a service. The new architecture also enables a bring-your-own-device mobile computing model so that end users, instead of IT, now procure and set up mobile devices. "Another great benefit that VDI brings to the Bring Your Own Device program at Foley is that the virtual desktop resides in the data center behind our secure infrastructure so when attorneys connect there's very little information that has to go back to the endpoint device and that's a great security model for the era of BYOD." -- Rick Varju, Director of Engineering and Operation	From: vmwaretv Views: 274 0 ratings
	Time: 03:39	More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Demo: Siemens Healthcare incorporates VMware View to solve the last mile of EMR delivery

Wed, 23 May 2012 02:56:08 +0000

	Demo: Siemens Healthcare incorporates VMware View to solve the last mile of EMR delivery bit.ly -- See the demonstration shown at HIMSS12 Conference.	From: vmwaretv Views: 152 1 ratings
	Time: 04:22	More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Siemens Healthcare incorporates VMware View to solve the last mile of EMR delivery

Wed, 23 May 2012 02:51:18 +0000

	Siemens Healthcare incorporates VMware View to solve the last mile of EMR delivery bit.ly -- Learn how VMware and Siemens Healthcare address 3 keys areas for clinicians at the clinical desktops.	From: vmwaretv Views: 64 0 ratings
	Time: 04:02	More in Science & Technology

VMware Global Alliances Blog: EMC and VMware Partner to Develop New Storage Analytics Suite Powered by vCenter Operations

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:51:55 +0000

Posted by Rob Smoot
Sr. Director, Product
Marketing

At EMC World this week, VMware and EMC announced a joint solution that extends vCenter Operations Manager to provide a single view of virtualized infrastructures built on VMware vSphere and EMC VNX series storage. I’m pretty excited about our partnership with EMC and wanted to let our customer community know what we’re doing and why.

First, the why. What problem are we trying to solve? Think of the traditional division of responsibilities between server and storage administrators. Today’s virtualized environments are so dynamic that split decision-making leads to poor performance, capacity planning, and utilization. The reason is obvious: neither group has all the necessary information about the infrastructure and they can’t effectively coordinate their activities fast enough to meet service levels—or the expectations of users. Plus, troubleshooting across siloes is a time-consuming, frustrating nightmare. What’s needed is a unified approach.

And that’s just what this solution provides. The secret is the new EMC VNX Connector for vCenter Operations that feeds VNS storage metrics and customized dashboards into vCenter Operations Manager. This rich stream of information, combined with vSphere deep integration, gives vCenter Operations Manager complete visibility and understanding of the full virtual environment—servers, network and storage. A good fit for any size enterprise that uses VNX storage, the solution scales up for large cloud environments that are especially dynamic and difficult to manage.

vCenter Operations Manager offers a number of features that help administrators stay in control. They receive notifications of issues and can take steps to keep the infrastructure running at optimal capacity and efficiency—before problems occur. Customizable dashboards continuously update health, risk, and efficiency scores, providing end-to-end visibility into virtualized environments and cloud operations. Troubleshooting gets easier, too, because vCenter Operations Manager delivers actionable performance analysis that accelerates the resolution of performance and capacity problems.

But what distinguishes vCenter Operations Manager from other management tools is how it implements proactive monitoring. It actually has self-learning capabilities—powered by a rich set of patented algorithms—that learn the behavior of the infrastructure and set dynamic thresholds accurately. That means far fewer false messages and more reliable information for decision-making.

vCenter Operations Manager is continuously updated to show current scores for health, risk, and efficiency.

There’s a lot more that I could say, but here’s the bottom line: VMware vCenter Operations manager, with EMC VNX Connector for vCenter Operations, delivers full cross-domain visibility and eliminates operational silos across the virtual and physical infrastructure for VNX-based environments. And that translates directly into rapid problem resolution, optimal resource utilization and superior end-to-end performance. A future blog will talk about real-world uses. Meanwhile, post your thoughts and questions about the joint EMC-VMware announcement.

VMware vSphere Blog: vSphere Metro Storage Cluster white paper released!

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:58:05 +0000

A brand new white paper was just published. This white paper was written by Lee Dilworth, Ken Werneburg, Frank Denneman, Stuart Hardman and I. It is a white paper on vSphere Metro Storage Cluster solutions and specifically looks at things from a VMware perspective. Enjoy!

VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (VMware vMSC) is a new configuration within the VMware Hardware Compatibility List. This type of configuration is commonly referred to as a stretched storage cluster or metro storage cluster. It is implemented in environments where disaster/downtime avoidance is a key requirement. This case study was developed to provide additional insight and information regarding operation of a VMware vMSC infrastructure in conjunction with VMware vSphere. This paper will explain how vSphere handles specific failure scenarios and will discuss various design considerations and operational procedures.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10284

I am aiming to also have the kindle/epub version up soon and will let you know when they are released!

VMware vFabric Blog: Increase performance and scalability of existing applications using SQLFire

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:50:43 +0000

The Challenge

Traditional databases should not be used to do things for which they were never designed; like supporting thousands of concurrent users.

The main challenge of managing Web applications on a Cloud-scale is performance. Disk-based database architectures are fine when you have a small number of users, but they lack the facilities for horizontal scaling, and, are unable to address the variable access patterns.

In contrast, SQLFire, an in-memory database from VMware, was designed specifically for these kinds of challenges. With its speed and low latency, SQLFire delivers dynamic scalability and high performance for modern, data-intensive applications, all through a familiar SQL interface.

In this post, I will demonstrate one of the ways SQLFire can increase throughput and decrease latency of your current Web applications.

The Bottleneck

One of the most prevalent bottlenecks of today’s online applications is the database. Web and Mobile applications place increasing pressure on the data tier of these solutions, and, their current disk-based architectures simply inherit too much latency to deal with these kinds of workloads. Traditional databases are the wrong tool for this job.

Scaling Web applications creates database bottleneck

Disk-based database architecture simply can’t deal with these kinds of read-write access patterns, and, beyond a certain levels, exhibit a catastrophic collapse phenomenon.

The Solution

While it would be easy to assume that the only way to elevate this bottleneck is to embark on a lengthy effort to re-write your applications against one of those “big data” solutions everyone seems to be talking about, the truth is, that this kind of effort for many enterprise applications would be very expensive and only further balkanize their data by limiting it accessibility to other data consumers.

To increase throughput and decrease latency of your solution at that scale, you need to bring the data closer to each one of the data consumption points.

SQLFire scales horizontally, while preserving legacy database access

SQLFire provides that extra performance with the familiarity of SQL interface. It accelerates your application performance, minimizing latency and increasing overall reliability by pooling memory, CPU and network resources across a cluster of machines.

In addition to the performance, SQLFire also delivers numerous build-in data synchronization features. For example, in order to continue supporting legacy data-flows in your current solution, SQLFire can make your new “fast data” also available to back-office applications.

SQLFire’s asynchronous “write behind” pattern has been designed for very high reliability and can handle many failure conditions as persistent queues ensure write operations are performed even when the backend database is temporarily unavailable. SQLFire supports multiple options for how these events can be queued, batched, and written to the underlining database.

The Implementation

Whether you are managing Java or .NET solution, in most scenarios, pointing your application to SQLFire database is as simple as replacing the application database connection string. But, before you can do that, you will need to replicate your current data identities into a SQLFire database.

Because SQLFire supports standard ANSI SQL-92, the act of replicating databases schema in most cases is pretty simple and verily automated. Most DBAs pose numerous commercial tools to perform these tasks.

If necessary, there are also readily available, open-source utilities like Apache DdlUtils or SQLF, the SQLFire command line.

However, to truly benefit from SQLFire’s in-memory performance and linear scalability, we should take some time to design a horizontal data partitioning strategy. This is the act of spreading a large data set (many rows in a table) across multiple servers.

SQLFire uses a partition key to ensure that data is uniformly balanced across all members of a data grid. Correctly identifying the partition key will avoid expensive queries across multiple partitions and enable your highly concurrent system to handle thousands of connections and allow multiple queries to be uniformly spread across the entire data.

In contrast to the highly volatile data, which greatly benefits from partitioning, some of your data elements are pretty static (like lookup tables) and are better replicated across all nodes in the data grid to further increase the performance of individual queries.

You can apply all these extended DDL attributes to tour SQLFire schema after creation, using the “ALTER” command. For more information on these and other ways of managing your SQLFire data, see the Managing Your Data in vFabric SQLFire documentation.

The Source

To go along with this post, I put together a sample application illustrating integration of SQLFire in your online application. The source code of this application is available on GitHub.

The Demo

To demonstrate the impact of SQLFire, I deployed this sample application to a shared hosting environment. While the specific database performance depend on many variables, the purpose of this short demo is to focus on the relative gains SQLFire delivers to a generic Web application while continuing to support the legacy database.

The Conclusion

Hopefully, you got a glimpse of the scale-out nature of SQLFire and the flexibility of the different use-cases, which it can address. As with any technology, there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and trying it yourself. SQLFire licensing allows for up to three nodes to be deployed free of charge for development purposes. Go ahead and see for yourself how much faster SQLFire can make your data.

About the Author: During his 15+ years career, Mark Chmarny has worked on multiple game-changing initiatives across Government, Healthcare and Financial sectors. Most recently, as a Cloud Architect at EMC, Mark has used his deep understanding of Cloud Computing to develop numerous innovative solutions for Service Provider and Large Enterprise customers. While at EMC Mark has also co-authored several white papers and reference architecture documents on emerging technologies. Currently, Mark’s primary focus is on data and its ever-changing usage patterns. As a Data Solution Evangelist in the Cloud Application Platform group at VMware, Mark is actively engaged in defining a new approaches to distributed data management for Cloud-scale applications. Mark received a Mechanical Engineering degree from Technical University in Vienna, Austria and a BA in Communication Arts from Multnomah University in Portland, OR.

VMware vFabric Blog: Hyperic Upgrades Management of Apache Tomcat

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:25:49 +0000

As part of the larger vFabric 5.1 release this week, VMware’s Hyperic, the web infrastructure monitoring software bundled with the vFabric Suite, delivered on an upgrade to managing Apache Tomcat, the world’s most popular application server. As summarized in the blog post today, Hyperic upgraded support for Tomcat in three major ways:

1. Support for Apache Tomcat 7. Version 7 is gaining adoption in the marketplace, including with enterprise users. To further support this, the latest release for Hyperic adds support for Apache Tomcat 7, the latest stable release published by the Apache Software Foundation.

2. Improve Internal Use of Tomcat. Hyperic relies on Tomcat as its internal application server. The new version provides two new server configuration properties to better manage the how many threads are available to the Hyperic Server’s internal Tomcat server. The new parameters are set for deployments of less than 50 platforms, and are configurable for larger deployments to increase performance. For more details, see the complete blog post.

3. New Detailed Configuration History Tracking for Tomcat. Hyperic 4.6.5 provides new detail on changes in configuration files that identifies the type of change including "add", "delete", "modify", or "rename" to a file and also specify the actual changes in text files, helping administrators to answer the question, “What changed?” more quickly. In addition to Apache Tomcat this feature is now available for Apache, WebSphere, WebLogic Server, JBoss, PostgreSQL, mySQL, and Oracle. For more information on how to use this new configuration tracking, see the Hyperic documentation, see "Log and Configuration Event Tracking" in vFabric Hyperic Overview for more about the configuration tracking functionality, and see "FileChangeTrackPlugin" in vFabric Hyperic Plug-in Development for more about the new support class.

For more information on other improvements included in this release, please see the release notes or check out the documentation. Note: Hyperic documentation has moved, old versions can be found at support.hyperic.com, while new versions have moved to the vFabric 5 Documentation Center.

About the Author: Stacey Schneider has over 15 years of working with technology, with a focus on working with sales and marketing automation as well as internationalization. Schneider has held roles in services, engineering, products and was the former head of marketing and community for Hyperic before it was acquired by SpringSource and VMware. She is now working as a product marketing manager across the vFabric products at VMware, including supporting Hyperic. Prior to Hyperic, Schneider held various positions at CRM software pioneer Siebel Systems, including Group Director of Technology Product Marketing, a role for which her contributions awarded her a patent. Schneider received her BS in Economics with a focus in International Business from the Pennsylvania State University.

VMware vSphere Blog: NFS Block Sizes, Transfer Sizes & Locking

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:10:00 +0000

Posted by Cormac Hogan
Technical Marketing Architect (Storage)

I've had a few questions recently around the I/O characteristics of VMware's NFS implementation. I'm going to use this post to answer the common ones.

NFS Block Sizes

The first of these questions is usually around the block size used by NFS. The block size on NFS datastores is "only" based on the block size of the native filesystem on the NFS server or NAS array, so the size depends solely on the underlying storage architecture of the server or the array.

The block size has no dependancy on the Guest Operating System block size (which is a common misconception) because the Guest OS's virtual disk (VMDK) is only a flat file that is created on the server/array. This file is subject to the block sizes enforced on the NFS server's or NAS array's filesystem.

One more interesting piece of detail is that when there is a fsstat done on the NFS mount on the ESXi client, the ESXi NFS client always returns the default file block size as 4096. Here is an example of this using the vmkfstools command to look at the file block size:

Maximum Transfer Sizes

The NFS datastore's block sizes is different from maximum read and write transfer sizes. The maximum read and write transfer sizes are the chunks in which the client communicates with the server. A typical NFS server could advertize 64KB as the maximum transfer size for reads and writes. In this case, a 1MB read would be broken down into a 16 x 64KB sized reads. However, the point is that this has got nothing to do with the block sizes of the NFS datastore on the NFS server/NAS array.

NFS (Version 3) Locking

Another common question I get is around NFS locking. In NFS v3, which is the version of NFS still used by vSphere, the client is responsible for all locking activities such as liveliness and enforcement. The client must 'heartbeat' the lock on a periodic basis to maintain the lock. The client must also verify the lock status before issuing each I/O to the file that is protected by that lock. The client which holds the lock must periodically update the timestamp stored in the lock file to ensure lock liveliness. If another client wishes to lock the file, it monitors the lock liveliness by polling the timestamp. If the timestamp is not updated during a specific window of time (discussed later), the client which holds the lock is presumed dead and the competing client may break the lock.

To ensure consistency, I/O is only issued to the file when the client is the lock holder and the lock lease has not expired yet. By default, there are 3 heartbeat attempts at 10 seconds intervals and each heartbeat has a 5 seconds timeout. In the worst case, when the last heartbeat attempt times out, it will take 3 * 10 + 5 = 35 seconds before the lock is marked expired on the lock holder client. Before the lock is marked expired, I/O will continue to be issued, even after failed heartbeat attempts.

Lock preemption on a competing client starts from the detection of lock conflict. It then takes 3 polling attempts with 10 seconds intervals for the competing host to declare that the lock has expired and break it. It then takes another 10 seconds to establish its own lock. Lock preemption will be completed in 3 * 10 + 10 = 40 seconds before I/O will start to flow on the competing host.

Get notification of these blogs postings and more VMware Storage information by following me on Twitter: @VMwareStorage

VMware Support Insider: Mandarin Articles introduced to the Knowledge Base

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:47:45 +0000

Today we would like to introduce our Mandarin speaking customers to our first set of freshly translated Knowledgbase articles These articles have been carefully chosen from our vast repository due to their popularity and usefulness. Subscribe to this blog to receive notifications of more translations as they become available.

今天我们向中文客户介绍第一批翻译成中文的知识库文章，这些文章是从我们的知识库里根据点击率和实用性精心挑选的常用文章，订阅这个博客您将接收到关于更多翻译成中文的知识库文章发表的通知。

English title	English KB number	Mandarin Title	Mandarin KB number
Overview of VMware tools	340	VMware Tools概述	2020928
Moving or copying vitual disks in a VMware environment	900	在VMware虚拟环境下移动或拷贝虚拟磁盘	2020929
Cleaning up after incomplete uninstallation on a windows host	1308	Windows主机上未完全卸载后的清理	2020930
Adjusting ESX host time zone	1436	调整ESX主机时区	2020931
VMotion CPU Compatibility Requirements for Intel Processors	1991	Intel处理器VMotion CPU的兼容性要求	2020948
Windows XP setup can not find any hard disk drives during installation-reviewed	1000863	Windows XP安装程序在安装过程中无法找到任何硬盘驱动器	2020953
Renaming a virtual machine disk(VMDK) via vSphere Management Assistant(vMA) or vSphere CLI(vCLI)	1002491	使用vSphere Management Assistant(vMA)或vSphere CLI(vCLI)重新命名一虚拟机磁盘(VMDK)	2020958
Recreating a missing virtual machine disk(VMDK) descriptor file	1002511	重建丢失的虚拟机磁盘(VMDK)描述文件	2020962
Testing port connectivity with Telnet-Revised	1003487	使用Telnet验证端口的连通性	2020963
Injecting SCSI controller device drivers into windows when it failes to boot after converting it with VMware converter	1005208	使用VMware Converter转换后的Windows虚拟机无法启动手动加载SCSI控制器驱动程序	2020967
Time keeping best practices for Linux guests-reviewed	1006427	Linux系统时间同步最佳实践	2020975

VMware Support Insider: Scheduled Maintenance – May 25, 2012

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:37:44 +0000

VMware will be performing a system upgrade to several VMware web applications on Friday, May 25th, 2012 from 7:00PM until 8:30PM Pacific Time. During this time, we request that you file your Support Requests via phone.

If you need to file a support request while the upgrade is in progress, our global toll-free numbers for support can be found at: http://www.vmware.com/support/phone_support.html

These system upgrades are part of our commitment to continued service improvements and will help VMware better serve your needs. We appreciate your patience during this maintenance period.

VMware Knowledge Base Weekly Digest: New Articles Published for Week Ending 5/19/12

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:58:28 +0000

Apache Active MQ
Creating DLQ in Apache Active MQ (2005512)
Date Published: 5/15/2012

Apache Tomcat
Setting up mutual (two-way) SSL on vFabric tc Server using OpenSSL and Java Keytool on Linux platforms (2011302)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

My VMware
My VMware help articles (2020793)
Date Published: 5/15/2012
Combining license keys in My VMware fails (2020934)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Dividing license keys in My VMware fails (2020935)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Upgrading license keys in My VMware fails (2020939)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Downgrading license keys in My VMware fails (2020941)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Moving license keys in My VMware fails (2020947)
Date Published: 5/17/2012

Spring Framework
Using the optional name attribute in the <constructor-arg> element fails with the error: no matching constructor found in bean (2007309)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

Virtual Disk Development Kit
Mounting Linux virtual machine's virtual disk from Linux-based virtual machine fails with error: VIX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED (2002777)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware Converter
Converting a Windows physical machine fails with error: Unable to create a VSS snapshot (2003785)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware ESX
Windows guest operating system exhibits performance issues due to high memory usage by the PFN database (2020846)
Date Published: 5/18/2012
When using an EMC array with the VMW_SATP_ALUA_CX SATP, the Path Selection plugin is incorrectly set to VMW_PSP_FIXED_AP (2009821)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
ESX/ESXi server vmnic numbering and assignment (2019871)
Date Published: 5/18/2012
Determining if there have been failed login attempts to vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi hosts (2020623)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware ESXi
Purple Screen on ESXi 5.x with PF Exception 14 in vns_flow_process_vsn_packet (2019741)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware Fusion
Fusion 3.1.3 virtual machines fail to start after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7.4 (2020651)
Date Published: 5/16/2012

VMware ThinApp
Running ThinApp Converter fails with the error: Error 30006 – VIX_E_NET_HTTP_COULDNT_RESOLVE_HOST (2015396)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager
vCenter Chargeback Manager storage synchronization fails with an error related to username and password (2014131)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone
Performing a conversion using VMware Converter Standalone fails with the error: FAILED: Unable to start the change tracking driver (2019890)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Disabling SSL encryption on VMware Converter Standalone 5.0 (2020517)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator
Licensing VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (2020519)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware vCenter Orchestrator
You might not be able to register Orchestrator with Active Directory (2021037)
Date Published: 5/19/2012

VMware vCenter Orchestrator Appliance
Unable to login to VMware vCenter Orchestrator Appliance 4.2.x (2013899)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware vCenter Update Manager
Scanning, staging, or remediating a host using vCenter Update Manager fails with the error: The host returns esxupdate error codes: 5 (2020404)
Date Published: 5/17/2012

VMware vCloud Director
vShield Edge Site-to-Site VPN feature requires additional firewall rules (2010711)
Date Published: 5/14/2012
Enabling a vApp template for download in vCloud Director fails with the error: class java.lang.NullPointerException (2013680)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware vFabric GemFire
Connectivity between clients and the VMware vFabric GemFire cache server is lost (2008172)
Date Published: 5/14/2012

VMware vFabric Hyperic Agent
Disabling Auto Discovery for VMware vFabric Hyperic Agent 4.2.x/4.3.x/4.4.x/4.5.x (2001699)
Date Published: 5/15/2012
Specifying the directory location of the HQ Agent PID file (2020789)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Setting VMware vFabric Hyperic agent.log to debug mode (1032703)
Date Published: 5/17/2012

VMware vFabric Hyperic Server
Source codes for VMware vFabric Hyperic HQ default reports. (1032699)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Editing cache settings used by VMware vFabric Hyperic HQ (1032706)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Retaining custom plug-ins when upgrading vFabric Hyperic HQ (1032705)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Upgrading vFabric Hyperic 4.5.x using the RPM installer (2019141)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMware View Manager
Importing an SSL certificate from Microsoft Certificate Authority to a View Connection or Security Server (2016032)
Date Published: 5/18/2012
Attempting to view persistent disks fails with the error: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException (2016056)
Date Published: 5/15/2012
Authenticating Kiosk users in View Manager fail with the error: Unknown user name or bad password. (2017010)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
Persona Management fails when Novell Secure Login is installed (2017347)
Date Published: 5/15/2012
View Client user agent identifier (2020150)
Date Published: 5/14/2012
Persona Management fails to create the user profile directory (2020456)
Date Published: 5/17/2012
After renaming a Datacenter in vSphere, recomposing existing pools fails with the error: One of the required objects is not found in the vCenter Server (2020579)
Date Published: 5/15/2012
Customization of Windows 7 or Vista View virtual machines fail with the error: Customization timed out (2020627)
Date Published: 5/16/2012

VMware Workbench
New Features in VMware Workbench 2.0 (2001822)
Date Published: 5/15/2012

ZCS Network Edition
Lmtp stops responding and server is slow in Zimbra Collaboration Suite 7.1.1 or 7.1.2 (2007880)
Date Published: 5/15/2012

Zimbra Connectors
RIM customer support process for Zimbra customers using the Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (ZCB) (2016348)
Date Published: 5/18/2012

VMTN Blog: vExpert Spotlight: Chris Kranz

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:14:00 +0000

Name: Chris Kranz

Blog URL: www.wafl.co.uk

Twitter handle: @ckranz

Current employer: Kelway UK – www.kelway.co.uk

How did you get into IT?

Started life in the 90’s as a web developer before getting into systems administration. I was definitely a jack-of-all-trades back then, covering Linux, Windows, web, scripting and even a little app-development where appropriate. This has really helped give me a better understanding of the real world and a broader knowledge across multiple environments. Finally landed a job for a smaller reseller where I learnt about centralised storage and virtualisation. Virtualisation was very exciting and drove me to learn as much as I possibly could about it, finally getting the chance to submit my VCDX defense in 2010. I still tinker with coding, this is becoming fundamental to a lot of virtualisation technologies and solutions. Now I’m spending a lot of time designing Clouds and talking about the journey.

How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2011 vExpert?

My first VMware install was also my first PSOD (the disti had shipped mismatched CPUs), back in 2006. Straight away it was a huge interest, not just because it meant that centralised storage was quickly going to become very popular! My brothers have always been UNIX guys, so the concept of applying all that great mainframe technology to the x86 world fascinated me. I still remember wowing people with the demo of vMotion moving Virtual Center between physical hosts, and how unimpressive it looks on a demo!

Taking it forward, I’m now regularly speaking in several user groups in the UK (both the official VMware VMUG in London and the Virtual Machine User Group regularly in Leeds). At Kelway I help host many customer events and vendor sponsored study tours where VMware or Cloud is usually my topic of expertise. My day-to-day job means I am constantly evangelising and speaking about the benefits of virtualisation and why VMware is the right choice for a Cloud platform.

What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?

Minimal investment in a home lab will pay itself back 10+ fold. Mine has been growing over the years, but still it’s just a single desktop. Having the time to play around with the technology is really key, if your company can access some eval or demo equipment this is hugely beneficial. I was lucky in that I have been responsible in the past for running the IT infrastructure, so I’ve had the hands of experience of actually running this kit and technology, not just designing it. But a home lab is the next best thing. The VCDX was a long journey, and it took away many evenings and weekends from me, but it was well worth the journey. I was recently asked the benefit, and I’d 100% recommend anyone go through the blueprint process of the VCDX as it gets you to question your decisions and qualify your thought process every step of the way. This is important, we all used to do it in school / college / university, but either through laziness or time pressure this habit seems to drop in a commercial environment. If you can’t justify your decision making to yourself, how are you going to do so to a customer or your boss? I’m known at Kelway for playing devil’s advocate almost all the time, but I think this is important as it drills out the finer details. Understand how or why a solution might fail and you’ll understanding how to make it work (design for failure I believe is the phrase). This is a definite mindset to get into and I would say it’s the single habit that contributes most to my work and the position I have. Other than that, I love talking! This is a great habit to have as a public speaker and being involved in the communities :)

VMware vSphere Blog: Tighter Integration between EMC VNX Storage and VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite Announced Today

Tue, 22 May 2012 04:24:48 +0000

Posted by
Joseph Dieckhans
Sr. Technical Marketing Manager

This week I’m out at EMC World 2012, and wanted to let you know of an exciting new announcement that EMC has made. EMC announced this week that they will provide Advanced Storage Analytics for their VNX storage arrays using VMware’s vCenter Operations product. The tighter integration between storage hardware and the vCenter Operations monitoring suite will mean EMC storage customers will get the best in breed analytics and monitoring software delivered by VMware Operations in order to provide them with the in depth storage statistics and operations monitoring necessary for storage administrators to optimize storage performance and validate that storage level SLAs are met. The new product, The VNX Storage Analytics Suite and VNX Connector for VMware vCenter Operations, announced this week will be generally available later this year.

For the official EMC announcement: http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2012/20120521-05.htm

VMware End User Computing: New Features of Persona Management in VMware View 5.1

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop, End User Computing, VMware

VMware View Premier includes an integrated user profile management system: View Persona Management.

You may already be aware of how View Persona Management optimizes the handling of user profiles at login and logout for View virtual desktops. Because of the minimal amount of data uploaded at login or logout, performance is better than with Windows roaming profiles, and boot storms are eliminated or reduced.

View Persona Management also manages user profiles within the View environment, without reliance on Active Directory and without affecting desktops outside of View. You can even manage your legacy Windows roaming profiles with View Persona Management.

For a deep dive into setup and configuration, see the VMware View Persona Management Deployment Guide.

What more could you want with user profile management in a virtual desktop environment? With Persona Management in View 5.1, you can now:

Convert a Windows XP user profile to a Windows 7 user profile

Synchronize a user profile on a physical machine with the user profile on a View virtual desktop

Converting a User Profile from Windows XP to Windows 7

VMware View now provides you with a command-line migration tool for one-time conversion of the user profile on a Windows XP desktop to a user profile on a Windows 7 desktop.

Why would you want to convert a user profile from Windows XP to Windows 7? You might want to migrate users

From Windows XP View virtual desktops to Windows 7 View virtual desktops

From Windows XP physical desktops to Windows 7 View virtual desktops

You can also use this View Persona Management feature to migrate users from Windows XP physical desktops to Windows XP View virtual desktops.

For details, see the VMware View 5.1 Evaluator’s Guide and the VMware View Administration guide.

Synchronizing a User Profile Between a Physical Desktop and a View Virtual Desktop

Why would you want to synchronize a user profile on a physical machine with the user profile on a View virtual desktop?

Some users go back and forth between a physical desktop and a View virtual desktop. As the user moves between machines, you want their user profile to remain the same.

In converting a physical desktop to a View virtual desktop, you also want to transfer the user profile

VMware View now allows you to install a standalone View Persona Management application on a physical machine to manage the user profile. The existing local profile on the physical desktop is migrated to the roaming profile in the Persona Repository. When the user logs in to their virtual desktop, the user profile from the physical machine is available via the roaming profile.

Try it! See the VMware View 5.1 Evaluator’s Guide and search for Evaluation Tasks for View 5.1 New Features and then for Persona Management User Profile on a Physical Machine.

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: Hot Off the ‘Virtual’ Press - VMware Insights Magazine - Issue 2

Mon, 21 May 2012 22:48:50 +0000

VMware Insights Magazine - the online magazine for your growing business

Read how one growing business used virtualization and management tools to reduce costs and improve customer service.

Learn how to optimize your virtual environment with VMware IT management solutions.

Get the latest news on VMworld 2012 and other upcoming events, product updates, new offers, training tools, and more here

VMTN Blog: VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast - Show Notes #188 - SAP, vFabric Application Director

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:11:13 +0000

Hosts
John Troyer, @jtroyer
Alex Maier, @vmwarecommunity

Guests
Abigail Lee, VMware
Damian Karlson, EMC @sixfootdad
Ben Scheerer, VMware blog @benscheerer @vCenterOps

Link to Audio Recording
SAP, vFabric Application Director

Virtualization News (VMTN Blog)

WOW - the team at VMware have been busy...

Introducing VMware vFabric Suite 5.1: Automated Deployment, New Components, and Open Source Support

New features/components/updates

VMware product page has received a makeover - check it out
The registration is now open for - VMworld 2012 San Francisco - lets make it a record year!
VMworld Call for papers closes on the May 18 - there will be no extensions for the CFP.
Three full-day VMUG conferences - San Diego, Central Ohio, and Denver
IT from the inside - share your story today
VMware+ at EMC World + Instagram (#VMware Plus, #EMCworld)
vScience, The Science of Virtualization, Workshop in Austin, TX July 23rd-25th, 2012.

Show
Ben will be at the Central Ohio VMUG May 22. Topic Redefining the Standard for Operations Management with vCenter Operations

New VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) 1.1 Overview

Download your eval today- vCenter Infrastructure Navigator - Automatically discover application services, visualize relationships and map dependencies of applications on virtualized compute, storage and network resources

No agents deployed for VIN...

WIN - free tickets to VMworld/Dinner with expert panelists - if you own licenses to vCenter Operations - we want to hear your story!

vBrownBags

VCAP exams user interface demos

[APAC] #vBrownBag Follow-Up – VCAP5-DCD Wrap-Up

VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 - VCAP5-DCD Exam

Virtualization AutoLab

Additional Links

VMware ThinApp Blog: Comparing virtual and non-virtual environments

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:28:30 +0000

If you ever need to compare what a virtualized application is presented with inside the virtual bubble against a normal physical install, you might try using the following technique.

WinMerge is an open source differencing tool which allows you to compare two text files. It can graphically plot out the two files, and in the details window, highlight what it has found to be different. How would this be useful in a ThinApp packaging situation? By using this tool you can examine visually what a ThinApped file system and registry looks like when compared with a non-virtualized version, possibly giving you some hints on how to fix your package.

Here's an example of WinMerge comparing two registry text exports, one from a physical install of Regedit, and a second from a redirected copy of Regedit (via the Regedit debug entry point):

Notice the two bar charts in the location pane. These allow you to see that the majority of the registry is the same, but there are certain locations which are different. (Note that I am using a Case Insensitive comparison here to account for some capitalization.) Selecting the areas with the colored bars allows me to read the differences.

A second example uses another free tool to generate comparable directory listings. By exporting the contents of the C drive with Karen's Directory Printer, I can run a redirected and non redirected copy of her tool (by launching it from the CMD debug entry point), export the listings, and compare them. (Note that I disabled date and time stamps for files prior to export, as I was only interested in file size differences and files that did not exist in one listing)

Once again, I can jump to the section of the file system which is indicating a difference, and then highlight the items in question to see details.

The next time you are looking for a way to compare virtual and non-virtual environments, troubleshoot isolation mode issues, or track down why a ThinApp is working differently under different conditions, you might want to consider giving this method a try.

VMware vSphere Blog: A closer look at the View Composer API for Array Integration [incl. Video]

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:32:05 +0000

A week or so ago I published an article about new View 5.1 storage features. I followed this up with a short video post explaining how you would go about using View Storage Accelerator. In this article, I want to demonstrate the other very cool feature in View 5.1, VCAI (View Composer API for Array Integration) to you. Although this feature is still in Tech Preview for View 5.1, it is a very cool enhancements which could have very many benefits when it is eventually fully supported as a feature.

Another way of describing this feature is Native NFS Snapshots. Essentially, what the feature allows you to do is to offload the creation of the linked clones which back your View desktops to the storage array, and let the storage array handle this task. In order to do this, the NAS storage array on which the snapshots are being deployed must have the NAS Native Snapshot VAAI (vSphere API for Array Integration) feature, which was first introduced in vSphere 5.0. A special VIB/plugin (provided by the 3rd party storage array vendor) must also be installed on the ESXi host to allow us to use this offload mechanism.

The main advantage of VCAI is an improvement in performance and a reduction in the time taken to provision desktops based on linked clone pools. This task can now be offloaded to the array, which can then provision these linked clones natively rather than have the ESXi host do it.

What follows is a short video (approx. 3 and a half minutes) of setting up View 5.1 VCAI feature, showing an installed VCAI VIB from NetApp on the ESXi host, and then how to use native NFS snapshots when creating desktop pools based on linked clones. Again, my thanks to Graham Daly of VMware KBTV fame for his considerable help with this.

Further detail about the View Composer for Array Integration (VCAI) can be found on the EUC blog here.

Get notification of these blogs postings and more VMware Storage information by following me on Twitter: @VMwareStorage

VMware Global Alliances Blog: CloudOne Hosts IBM Rational Tools in the Cloud

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:22:55 +0000

Posted by Justin Murray
Systems Engineer

Like everyone else on the planet today, software professionals—developers, QA testers, and group managers—are asking themselves, “How is the cloud going to affect my work?” On the one hand, developers are always looking for better ways to develop, test and integrate code, and they can see how moving certain tasks to the cloud could make their lives easier. At the same time, they need complete control over their rapidly changing code throughout the entire development phase, and question whether cloud-based tools will constrain them. After all, when it comes to the developer’s desktop, freedom of choice is paramount.

Managers share many of their concerns, but also know that strong controls on the iterative check-in/check-out, integration, and testing processes at the back-end are essential to creating a tested, working product. Their wish list is to have the latest tools for development combined with rock-solid version control at the team level. One company is giving developers and QA testers—and their managers—a great reason to take a hard look at the cloud. CloudOne, a VMware partner, now offers the IBM Rational tools in a hosted or cloud-based model.

I recently chatted with CEO John McDonald about CloudOne’s hosted offering of IBM Rational ClearCase, ClearQuest, and Team Concert. Here are highlights of our conversation.

Posted by John McDonald
CEO, CloudOne

Ramp Up Faster with Lower Investment Costs

First, I asked John a basic question: Suppose I’m spinning up a software group and plan to use ClearCase ClearQuest, or Team Concert in my development environment. Why would I choose CloudOne?

For starters, development groups can benefit from the same economics that are driving enterprises to cloud-based CRM, ERP, and other applications—pay as you go (and grow). Start with a small Rational environment and scale as you add staff. Pay a monthly fee instead of investing in server and storage capacity that you might not need for months—or ever. The business model is compelling.

CloudOne also gets you up and running much, much faster—no delays for buying, installing, configuring and deploying servers and software. You don’t have to devote scarce staff resources to maintaining hardware or installing patches or the million-and-one tasks required to manage a Rational environment. CloudOne does all that so you can spend your time developing software.

Securing the Crown Jewels

John was once a software manager at IBM, so he knows first-hand the number one concern of development teams: security. After all, source code is the organization’s crown jewels and managers are understandably reluctant to trust it to someone else.

CloudOne has a unique and effective response, what they call an isolated occupancy service model. By privatizing the data stream at every layer, they can deploy a secure virtual private cloud (VPC)—in their terminology, an Island. There’s only one client per Island, so there’s essentially zero chance of anyone compromising their information. Plus, they use leading-edge WAN technology to ensure a high level of performance. That’s a big part of CloudOne’s success—make it secure, make it perform, and keep the implementation details out of the way.

Making Headway—And Leveraging VMware Technology

Look under the hood of CloudOne and you’ll find VMware vSphere virtualization software and vCenter management tools. VMware technology allows data center managers to rapidly provision virtual machines for ClearCase and ClearQuest and reclaim those resources quickly when they are no longer needed. It also gives CloudOne maximum flexibility to allocate computing and storage as needed and offers a high level of security.

CloudOne is gaining traction—McDonald’s, Fidelity, and Boeing are customers. Some analysts predict that, in just a few years, hosted applications will generate more revenue than their on-premises counterparts. That remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt that the cloud is transforming software development. In fact, I’ll be writing soon about new CloudOne innovations for the developer desktop. You can also learn more about CloudOne’s SaaS approach to delivering Rational software by downloading this white paper.

In the meantime, tell us about your experiences with cloud-based software development---good, bad, or indifferent.

To read more about the business benefits that a customer gained by implementing their Rational environment on the cloud have a look at this paper.

VMware vSphere Blog: HA split brain, which VM prevails?

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:08:03 +0000

By Duncan Epping, Principal Architect.

I received a question on twitter last week around HA split brain scenarios. Let me give an example first of when a split brain scenario could occur:

Isolation response = leave powered on
iSCSI / NFS storage

When the above two requirements are met and a host in your cluster is fully network isolated HA will be able to restart the virtual machine as it will appear to HA as the host has completely failed. There reason for this is because:

There will be no network heartbeats coming from this host
There will be no datastore heartbeats
The management address of this host cannot be pinged
The "isolated host" cannot write to the datastore to inform the master it is isolated

On top of that the host which is isolated will also take no response as "leave powered on" was selected. In other words, the virtual machines running on the isolated host will just remain up and running. As to the master it seems that the host has failed it will initiate the restart of the impacted VMs. Because the full host has isolated, including storage network, the VMs can be powered on as the "file lock" that the isolated host had times out.

Now as soon as the isolated host return you will have two instances of the same VM on the network. However only one of these has disk access. The one which doesn't have disk access will automatically be killed by the host it is running on. This was introduced in vSphere 4 U2 and still applies today.

Of course this whole situation could be prevented, you could just change the "isolation response" to "power off" and this is what we recommend!

VMTN Blog: Technical Marketing Update 2012 - Week 20

Sat, 19 May 2012 15:07:27 +0000

By Duncan Epping, Principal Architect.

Technical Marketing Update 2012 - Week 20

Short list this week as many of us were either in an internal training or at an internal R&D event. I promise you there will be more next week,

Blog posts:

Poweron file? (Duncan Epping) http://bit.ly/Jjn8CD
Admission control and vCloud Allocation Pool model (Frank Denneman) http://bit.ly/L9NYiW
KB article about SvMotion / VDS / HA problem republished with script to mitigate! (Duncan Epping) http://bit.ly/Ktu5Ci
Resize & Hot-Add/Extend Virtual Machine Disks using vCloud API (William Lam) http://bit.ly/M4qOag
Why is my pathing policy limited to "fixed" or "MRU" with things like MSCS cluster? (Duncan Epping) http://bit.ly/JVmWJx
Retrieving License keys from Multiple vCenters (Alan Renouf) http://bit.ly/KiHHg9
Attaching an unreplicated VMDK after SRM failover using scripts (Ken Werneburg) bit.ly/JmQ9iY

VMware vSphere Blog: Attaching an unreplicated VMDK after SRM failover using scripts

Sat, 19 May 2012 06:12:35 +0000

Posted by
Ken Werneburg
Tech Marketing

I've run into a few scenarios where it's been beneficial to not replicate a particular disk attached to a VM when using vSphere Replication, yet in order to recover the VM correctly it's necessary to have even a really stale copy of it there as a placeholder.

For example, a SQL Server might have a temp DB on a dedicated disk. We want it to be available so the VM will boot and SQL will have the DB there to use, but it is a waste of bandwidth to replicate it on an ongoing basis.

So the workaround is to copy the disk over to the recovery site, or to replicate it at least once. There are other means, but this is the simplest as it gives you a disk that has the right ID etc.

Next, copy the replicated but unwanted copy of the disk at your recovery site to somewhere else. This is important, as the next step is to disable replication for that disk and detach it within vSphere Replication as identified in this blog. The reason we copied the disk somewhere else is because disabling/detaching the disk very sensibly deletes the replicated copy of it!

Force another sync, to make sure it's all up to date, then move the copy of the disk back into the original directory at the recovery site.

You should now have a disk that is a one-time copy, resident in the recipient directory at your recovery site, but not being replicated on an on-going basis.

The last step is to use a simple PowerCLI script to attach the disk using a callout in the recovery plan. This script will use the stale copy of the disk and mount it to the VM during the recovery process.

You'll need to have powershell and powercli installed on your recovery SRM server as outlined in this post, and create a very simple script that looks something like the following.

Obviously there are specific variables that you'll need to alter to match your environment. They've been marked in italics in the below example.

g:\scripts\addvmdk.ps1:

add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
Connect-VIServer -Server vc01.mydomain.local -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
New-HardDisk -VM sql_test_srv3 -Persistence IndependentPersistent -DiskPath "[ovi-wdc-tsapps-vnx-sas-lun10] sql_test_srv3/sql_test_srv3_1.vmdk"

Finally, add a poweron script to the VM in your recovery plan that calls the script on the SRM server (not a prompt, nor a script that runs within the VM):

c:\windows\syswow64\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell -file g:\scripts\addvmdk.ps1

Note two other things about this. First, I'm using the 32 bit syswow64 powershell. This is necessary because SRM is a 32 bit environment. Secondly, I am also presuming your SRM service is running with VC admin-level credentials like a domain admin or service account, because this is the security context under which the script will be executed on the SRM server. If this is not the case you can add hardcoded userids and passwords in the script to authenticate against the VC.

So what's the end result and the benefit?

It will automatically attach the appropriately IDed disk to the VM that needs to have the disk without doing ongoing replication of unneeded data. Perfect for a temp DB scenario where the data is junk but the DB won't work correctly without it!

-Ken

VROOM!: View 5.1 Performance

Fri, 18 May 2012 20:34:18 +0000

In addition to the numerous enhancements detailed here, View 5.1 debuts a number of significant enhancements and optimizations to the PCoIP protocol. In this blog, we detail some of the most beneficial:

PCoIP efficiency

Continuing refinements to compression protocols and general performance optimization deliver further improvements in PCoIP efficiency and corresponding reductions in CPU consumption. While already performing better than the VDI competition (as illustrated here and here), these enhancements deliver up to an additional 1.3X reduction in PCoIP overheads.

Client optimizations

For this release, there has been significant optimization of the VMware View clients, making their protocol handling significantly more streamlined. This is especially apparent on thin-clients, where video playback performance is improved by as much as 3X over previous versions, as illustrated in the figure below. Indeed, even relatively low-performance processors can deliver excellent 720p video playback performance. These improvements are available for both x86 and ARM clients.

Network improvements

PCoIP handling of adverse network conditions has been significantly improved. This is especially beneficial for users connecting wirelessly from tablets or laptops over congested and lossy WiFi networks. These enhancements are most apparent during video playback and ensure fluid high-frame video playback -- the improvement can be as high as 8X.

Interactivity improvements

Significant improvements have also been made to interactivity, making interaction with the remote desktop significantly more fluid, and continuing to further improve the experience associated with using a remote desktop. As a simple visual test of this improvement, the picture below show a user rapidly drawing a spiral in mspaint, when connecting to their remote desktop using both RDP7 and View 5.1. With RDP7, the resulting spiral is obviously formed from rough polygons, whereas, with View 5.1, the spiral is significantly smoother (while this test may seem an overly simple example, it is heavily influenced by the speed and frequency at which the client communicates with the remote desktop and clearly conveys the likely differences in scrolling and dragging performance – in a later blog we will deep-dive on interactive performance, using the user experience techniques we discuss here).

VMware End User Computing: Customize the View Portal for Client Download with VMware View 5.1

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:19:36 +0000

By Tina de Benedictis, Technical Marketing Manager, Enterprise Desktop, End User Computing, VMware

Did you know that in VMware View 5.1 you can customize the View Portal that users see when they log in to the View Connection Server to begin using their virtual desktop?

By default, the View Download Portal has built-in intelligence to detect the user’s browser and operating system and responds with instructions and download links matched to the client. For example, if a user connects to their View Connection Server with a Windows PC, the View Portal offers links to download the various types of Windows View Clients from the VMware.com website.

You can customize the links and link text in the View Portal for your environment. Why would you want to change the View Portal contents? By customizing the View Portal, you can:

Restrict users to specific client versions

Provide your own View Clients, such as your own Linux View Client

Disable downloads altogether

You can create a local download repository that is an HTTP server, place View Client installers on this local site, and allow your users to download clients even if they have no access to the VMware.com client download site.

How do you customize the View Portal? You edit one properties file for links (portal-links.properties) and another properties file for link text (portal.properties).

Try it! Go to the VMware View 5.1 Evaluator's Guide and search for Evaluation Tasks for View 5.1 New Features, then View Client Unbundling.

vSphere PowerCLI Blog: Retrieving License keys from Multiple vCenters

Thu, 17 May 2012 22:15:26 +0000

Posted by
Alan Renouf
Technical Marketing

A question I receive all the time is:

How can I list all license keys I have for all of my Virtual Centers in my Infrastructure ?

Luckily PowerCLI enables us to work with multiple vCenters all at one, we can connect to many vCenters or hosts and pull back information on all of these at the same time, to do this you need to set the PowerCLI Configuration to work in multiple mode and then you can connect to more than one vCenter at the same time, to do this see the following example:

Once we are in multiple configuration mode we can then use Connect-VIserver on as many vCenters or hosts as you like, we can use this to connect to multiple vCenters with the same credentials or just list each one like below:

Connect to multiple vCenters with the same username and password:

Connect-VIServer VC1, VC2, VC3, VC4 –User Administrator –Password MyPa$$word

Connect to multiple vCenters with different credentials:

Connect-VIServer VC1 –User Administrator1 –Password MyPa$$word1

Connect-VIServer VC2 –User Administrator2 –Password MyPa$$word2

Connect-VIServer VC3 –User Administrator3 –Password MyPa$$word3

Connect-VIServer VC4 –User Administrator4 –Password MyPa$$word4

Once connected this information is stored in the $DefaultVIServers variable, this can easily be viewed at any time:

We are also easily able to run scripts against these connections, like for example the License script at the end of this post, this lists all license keys and their information for each vCenter:

(You will excuse me if I exclude the actual key)

The Code

# Set to multiple VC Mode
if(((Get-PowerCLIConfiguration).DefaultVIServerMode) -ne "Multiple") {
Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -DefaultVIServerMode Multiple | Out-Null
}

# Make sure you connect to your VCs here

# Get the license info from each VC in turn
$vSphereLicInfo = @()
$ServiceInstance = Get-View ServiceInstance
Foreach ($LicenseMan in Get-View ($ServiceInstance | Select -First 1).Content.LicenseManager) {
    Foreach ($License in ($LicenseMan | Select -ExpandProperty Licenses)) {
        $Details = "" |Select VC, Name, Key, Total, Used, ExpirationDate , Information
        $Details.VC = ([Uri]$LicenseMan.Client.ServiceUrl).Host
        $Details.Name= $License.Name
        $Details.Key= $License.LicenseKey
        $Details.Total= $License.Total
        $Details.Used= $License.Used
        $Details.Information= $License.Labels | Select -expand Value
        $Details.ExpirationDate = $License.Properties | Where { $_.key -eq "expirationDate" } | Select -ExpandProperty Value
        $vSphereLicInfo += $Details
    }
}
$vSphereLicInfo | Format-Table -AutoSize

Get notification of new blog postings and more by following VMware PowerCLI on Twitter: @PowerCLI

VMware vCloud Blog: Regional VMware User Group Networking and Learning in Charlotte North Carolina

Thu, 17 May 2012 18:16:27 +0000

By: David Davis

Yesterday I attended the Charlotte regional VMware user group for the third year in a row. It was an amazing event with top-notch speakers including the likes of Chris Colotti, Scott Lowe, Eric Siebert, Cody Bunch, Alan Renouf, and more.

Before I delve into the topics that these experts covered I want to first point out the power of the regional user groups from a social networking perspective. No matter who you are or what stage of your career you're in, you should be looking to better yourself and your career. User group meetings like these provide networking opportunities only rivaled by VMworld. Not only do you get to talk to virtualization experts and VMware admins from hundreds of different enterprise and 25+ virtualization partners, but these partners are also glad to give you the opportunity to learn about the various products they represent (and are potential sources for job opportunities). After all, to be a successful VMware admin, consultant, product manager or tech marketer you need knowledge of VMware’s solutions and the many third-party products making up the VMware ecosystem.

Virtualization consulting groups like eGroup and Varrow offer full-featured hands-on labs where you can gain experience configuring just about every VMware product feature. If you have never been to one before, events like these are a lot more than just a bunch of guys sitting around swapping war stories.

With over 25 different sessions and just five time slots during the one day, it was so difficult to make my selection as to what sessions to attend. So who did I get to meet and what did I learn? Here's the list of topics and experts.

Scott Lowe, vExpert, VCDX, and Author of Mastering vSphere 5 presented on vSphere and Network Attached Storage Storage Best Practices

Alan Renouf, vExpert and co-author of the vSphere PowerCLI Reference book presented “PowerCLI 201.”

Cody Bunch, vExpert and author of the VMware Press book on VMware Orchestrator, covered the same topic.

Chris Colotti, vExpert, VCDX, and vCloud Guru from VMware provided a vCloud Director Deepdive.

Eric Siebert, vExpert of HP covered how to understand and optimize vSphere Storage.

Jonathan Klick of vKernel covered The Top 20 vCenter Metrics That Matter.

And Jason Nash, vExpert and VCDX of Varrow presented a vSphere Distributed Switch deepdive.

These were some amazing sessions where I learned so much. I encourage you to attend your local VMware user group meeting – don't miss it!

You can download presentations from the conference here.

I'll be at the central Ohio regional VMware user group next week in Columbus Ohio speaking about VMware VCP certification.

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for Train Signal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP,CISSP, and vExpert level status over his 15+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and nine different video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere 5 and vCloud Director video training courses. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his VMware vSphere video training course from TrainSignal.com.

VMware Go Blog: IT Confessional Series: IT Admins and Game of Thrones Have More in Common Than You Think

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:23:10 +0000

By: Andy the Angry IT Guy

Editor’s note: This is the sixth installment in our ongoing series featuring “Andy,” an anonymous IT administrator at a small- to mid-sized organization located somewhere in the American Midwest. When we last left Andy, he was espousing the benefits of automated patch upgrades while trying to contain his excitement about the release of Diablo III.

Today, Andy continues on the topic of patch management and debunks a commonly held myth that only Microsoft applications should be regularly patched.

Like many of you, I’ve been watching Game of Thrones, HBO’s hit new series that’s capitalizing on a series of fantasy novels that had previously been written off as “uncool” by the majority of readers (and yes, I’ve been religiously following A Song of Fire and Ice since it first came out in 1996. What else was I supposed to do between episodes of the X-Files?).

One of my favorite plot lines in Game of Thrones is that of the Night’s Watch – an ancient military order that guards the Seven Kingdoms from the great unknown that lurks in the wild beyond the wall that surrounds their domain. I’ve increasingly come to believe that the Night’s Watch is a thinly-veiled allegory for IT professionals. Think about the parallels:

Both groups protect a wider, largely oblivious population from unknown evils that lurk just beyond the wall (or, in the case of IT, a firewall);
Both groups perform arduous tasks that go beyond the grasp of most people’s basic comprehension. And they do so at the expense of meeting/socializing with members of the opposite sex;
While both groups perform selfless tasks in the name of protecting their peers, their exploits will largely go unrecognized and uncompensated.

The last point is particularly prescient when describing the primary responsibilities of an IT administrator, especially at a smaller organization that lacks the deep resources of a Fortune 500-type company. Your job is to make sure that things work and promptly fix them when they don’t. Most of the time, no news is good news and you’ll only hear from people when something is wrong.

After nearly a decade in IT, I can safely say that the single biggest thing you can do to control your own destiny in this area is ensuring that you stay on top of all patch updates. Yes, I mean ALL patch updates – not just the Microsoft ones. Malware has evolved beyond its early, Microsoft-hating days and will now target nearly any vulnerability on almost any application.

To that end, the only way to stay ahead of the curve – and remain gainfully employed as an IT administrator – is ensuring you’re up to date on all major updates. To expand on that point, here are a few handy tips I’ve picked up on over the years:

No Browser is Safe From Malware

Not only that, but the much-maligned Internet Explorer isn’t even the most vulnerable. According to the National Vulnerability Database, Safari (81), Chrome (61), and Firefox (44) all had more vulnerabilities than IE (34) in Q1 and Q2 2010[MC1] . Web browers are the most commonly targeted applications, so it’s critical to stay as up-to-date as possible with patches.

Third-Party Applications – Not the OS – Are the Biggest Security Risks Today

While common knowledge holds that the operating system (and Microsoft) are the biggest vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure, it’s simply not the case. In recent years, third-party apps have emerged as the single greatest threat – that includes those from Adobe, Apple, Java, Mozilla, and Oracle, among others.

Automation Increases Accountability

While some people claim it’s the lazy admin that automates as many tasks as possible, I say it’s the smart, efficient one that does so. I invite anybody that thinks IT admins are lazy to spend a day in my shoes – you try dealing with a never-ending stream of angry help tickets while simultaneously keeping IT operations up and running. If you can automate any portions of the patch management process, I strongly recommend doing so; it’s the single best way to ensure that all machines in your network are up-to-date and not vulnerable to malicious software.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: IT is a thankless job, and there’s always going to be someone looking to blame you for even the slightest misstep. Like the brave men of the Night’s Watch, we have to stay constantly alert and a step ahead of our enemies to ensure the continued welfare of our organization.

If you’re interested in diving into this topic a bit deeper, take a look at The Importance of Patching Non-Microsoft Applications, a technical white paper from VMware.

VMware vFabric Blog: 4 Ways VMware transforms Postgres for the Cloud

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:30:39 +0000

In a nutshell, relational databases weren’t built for the cloud. With vFabric Postgres, VMware customers can get a proven, enterprise database integrated with VMware virtualization and ready for cloud computing.

As announced earlier this week, vFabric Postgres (vPostgres) is now available within vFabric Suite 5.1 Advanced. With vPostgres, the well-respected, open-source database gains built in best practices, optimized configuration, and cloud-ready features. While vFabric Postgres is synced up to PostgreSQL 9.1.3 minor release and includes all the new features of this version of the database (see PostgreSQL wiki for more), vFabric adds many features and considerable improvements in three categories:

1. Development and deployment become simpler, smarter, and cloud ready
2. Performance improvements with elastic memory and more
3. Monitoring and administration get an upgrade
4. Lower TCO and increase staff efficiency

Development and Deployment with vFabric Postgres

First, vPostgres is available in two form factors:

vPostgres Virtual Appliance
vPostgres RPMs for 64-bit Linux Servers (RHEL 6, Suse 11 sp1+)

The virtual appliance is easy to deploy because it is designed for the vSphere 5.0 platform. vPostgres RPMs are also available for custom installations requiring co-locations with other applications in a VM or having special deployment needs (including hot-standby setup). The RPMs can be accessed from repo.vmware.com and also from the VMware download website. The vPostgres virtual appliance can be used for development and test on VMware Player, Workstation, and Fusion products. Since vPostgres is free for developers and works on various platforms (including mobile development), developers will have a less cumbersome time moving their work to a cloud platform or virtualized environment.

In addition, the virtual appliance is ready to handle changing resource needs by adapting CPU, memory, disk size, and more without needing any other changes inside the appliance. The vPostgres smart tuning and management capabilities require less in-depth knowledge about the inner workings of the database. With these features, developers, architects, and administrators can 1) spend less time on manual resets of configuration parameters for the core engine and 2) gain cloud scale.

vFabric Postgres Performance Improvements

There are several elements that bring cloud scale to vPostgres:

vPostgres can be highly available. Using vSphere HA and vMotion technologies, “database aware high availability” and automatic failover are available with simple point and click setup using the vSphere client.
Many companies face scenarios where databases requests spike – where memory consumption is tight and lowering. With Elastic Database Memory working directly within the vSphere hypervisor, The Kernal Balloon driver, vPostgres Database Balloon driver, and buffer pool dynamically allocate memory to and from the hypervisor during times of need to help avoid inconsistent performance. This reduces performance variances drastically when facing changing memory pressures seen in server consolidation scenarios.

Many critical settings have higher default values than standard PostgreSQL. This improves out-of-the-box performance with a slight trade-off in disk space and memory usage.
Checksums are performed on each write to tables and indexes to help ensure data is clean. For example, in scenarios where SANs fail, the checksums help prevent silent bit corruption.
Lastly, checkpoint trade-offs between recovery time and performance are more complicated in the virtual world. vPostgres allows for SLA configuration. With this capability, checkpoint parameters are tuned dynamically for recovery time and performance as the system monitors itself.

Monitoring and Administration with vFabric Postgres

vPostgres supports core admin tools and adds enhancements.

vPostgres native clients are available for Linux, Windows and Mac. JDBC and ODBC clients are also available. Community PostgreSQL 9.1 clients and management tools work with vPostgres including pgadmin.

vPostgres includes an enhanced version of pg_top which gives database transactions per second, bufferpool hits, cpu, memory, disk ios and top database connections in a single dashboard view for easier understanding of the state of the database.

vPostgres is integrated with VMware vFabric License server for license management. The license keys can be used locally or using VMware vFabric License server. (There is a default 60-day trial license also available.)

Lower TCO and increase staff efficiency

Financially, license costs are more attractive compared to other “commercial” databases.
The database is packaged to work with vSphere infrastructure where virtualizing supports considerable cost-savings.
The virtual appliance saves a significant amount of installation time – no need to size hardware, install the OS, install the RDBMS, set-up the database server, and tune, With VMware vSphere 5.0+, the appliance can be set up in 15 minutes and supports real-world workload.
A built-in watchdog process enables quick HA configuration, and vSphere-based High Availability can be set-up in one click.
Smart tuning, configuration, and management reduce overall management time.
The advanced version of pg_top helps to quickly narrow the focus on problematic areas saving DBAs time who do not have indepth Postgres knowledge.

Learning More

To try out vFabric Postgres, you can download a 60 day free trial, as part of vFabric Suite Advanced, at www.vfabric.co/try.

About the Author: Jignesh Shah is the Product Manager for vFabric Postgres. He also has interests in database performance and have been working with Postgres Community for many years. He was also a key member to deliver the first published benchmark with Postgres.

VMware End User Computing: VMware View Storage Accelerator - The next step towards more reliable, more cost-effective storage for VDI environments

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:01:00 +0000

By Matt Eccleston, chief architect - VMware View, VMware

VDI with VMware View has brought many benefits to customers over the years, including business agility, improved control and security and end-user flexibility. However, a vexing problem as our customers scale up the size of their deployments has been how to achieve cost-effective storage designs for VDI environments while maintaining an excellent quality of service for their end users. The “VDI storage problem” fundamentally stems from the different economics of traditional desktop storage (a local SATA drive), and datacenter-class storage. Datacenter storage is almost always more expensive on a $ per GB, or $ per I/O throughput basis. However, at the same time, datacenter storage offers significant opportunities for pooling resources, securing, consolidating and centralizing the data of the desktop.

VMware has always been a leader in attacking this challenge, able to closely leverage its vSphere technology and apply it to the VDI market through VMware View. An example of this is View’s linked clones technology. View Composer linked clones allowed you to take advantage of the fact that many of the virtual desktops in a given environment had gigabytes of identical content (since they all came from the same Windows image template) and did not need to waste capacity by storing the same content multiple times on disk. For many scenarios, View Composer achieves a massive reduction in the amount of storage space consumed on datacenter storage.

However, with the subsequent heavy consolidation of VM data onto a relatively small amount of physical storage, coupled with the tendency of desktops to exhibit synchronized bursty storage workloads (the famed I/O storm problem, with “boot-storm” being the most well known of the ilk), new challenges arose with I/O throughput. Capacity was no longer the main issue. IOPS became the key design factor for VDI storage.

VMware again led the way, introducing View Composer based storage tiering in VMware View 4.5. This allowed the parent disk, in a linked clone scenario, which contains all of the common content of the Windows image template, to be stored on a different class of storage (typically SSD/EFD backed). This allowed for a significantly better user experience at lower cost, by dramatically increasing the read I/O capabilities available to the VDI environment.

However, storage tiering done in this manner, still had three major gaps to address:

It required a specific storage array configuration
It did little to address contention on the storage interconnect and storage controllers
It was best-suited for stateless desktop type deployments

The View Storage Accelerator helps address all three of these. The first two are addressed by adding a high read I/O capability into vSphere itself. This means that for cached read I/Os, an I/O is never even issued by ESX to the storage! In addition, it works regardless of the storage backend being used, allowing View to be deployed cost-effectively on a much broader set of storage platforms and architectures.

To illustrate how the View Storage Accelerator addresses the last point, having a read-acceleration technology that works equally well for stateful or stateless desktops, requires a bit more explanation on the internal workings of View Storage Accelerator.

The View Storage Acceleration functionality uses a patent-pending technology in ESX known internally as a content-based read-cache. There is a lot in a name. A content-based read cache is a cache in that it uses host memory to store data blocks. It is a read-cache in that it addresses only reads (as an aside, host-based write caching for stateful desktops has a very tricky coherency problem in the presence of a host-failure to solve). And perhaps most importantly, it is content-based, which means it can cache any block from any VM accessed by the host that holds identical content, regardless of how those VMs were created. This means that it works for VMs that are full copies of each other, VMs that are created from common linked clones, VMs that are created through array-based provisioning techniques, or even VMs that are P2V’d and imported from vCenter. Because the cache holds blocks of data indexed by their content rather than by logical sector, the required cache size is very small, small enough that it can fit within a reasonable, cost-effective amount of memory on every server in a cluster.

So how does this content-based caching work exactly?

The key to understanding this is: Offline indexing, online caching. At VM creation time (or in the case of View manual pools, when the VM is imported), and at configurable intervals there-after (typically weekly or monthly), the content of each VMDK file is indexed and fingerprints of the content are stored in what we call a digest file per VMDK (e.g. “myDisk-digest.vmdk”). The digest file allows for efficient management and lookups into the vSphere-based cache while the VM is running.

There are two somewhat technical points needed to complete a detailed understanding of the View Storage Accelerator mechanics:

The first is that the cache only caches blocks common to more than one VM. This is because Windows already has caching mechanisms for it’s I/O (it’s page cache). Caching that data twice, with no benefit to other VMs, would provide no benefit and waste precious RAM.

The second is that to avoid expensive computation on the I/O path, writes to previously cached entries cause the VM that issued it to no longer participate in caching for the written block (since the content likely changed). If the newly written data is in fact the same across multiple VMs, this fact will be picked up the next time digest files are regenerated (the weekly / monthly periodic maintenance operation mentioned above). To illustrate this nuance: If you roll out a significant service pack update to all of your VMs by installing it directly in each VM (an example where lots of identical content is written to different VMs), those newly written blocks will not participate in the caching immediately, but will do so at the next interval where digests are recalculated. We feel this periodic storage maintenance task (which can be configured through View as described in my colleague Narashima’s blog) is a small price to pay for keeping expensive computation off of the storage I/O path, and allowing interoperability with all storage architectures.

Ok sounds great. So what can I expect for results, and what do I need to know to put this to use in my environment?

For some of the performance results we’ve seen in our labs I will refer to you another blog entry from Narashima, who covers it well.

In terms of putting it to use in your environment, the View Storage Accelerator was designed to be applicable in any VDI scenario with VMware View. The only common scenario where you may not want to enable it is where you have an existing deployment, and are fully satisfied with the I/O characteristics of your storage. The View Storage accelerator consumes some RAM on the ESXi hosts both for the cache of data blocks, and the per-VMDK metadata associated with managing the cache entries. For most configurations this will be less than 5% of RAM on a given system. (If this sounds alarming at first blush, please consider the economics of 5% more DRAM capacity vs. the costs of getting equivalent levels of I/O improvement from the storage, and we suspect you, like us, will find that the tradeoff is well worth it). However, in a system where everything is running well and sized appropriately already, and the storage has sufficient I/O capabilities (perhaps because tiered storage is in use), it may not be worth “rocking the boat” in terms of reducing RAM available (or number of VMs) per server.

Finally, I do want to recognize that while View Storage Accelerator provides impressive benefits in addressing read I/O storms, it doesn’t directly address write I/O storms. Designing a storage architecture that accounts for peak write I/O in a VDI environment will still require consideration and adherence to best practices, especially for stateful desktops. We are not yet at VDI storage nirvana (my definition: storage $/user <= PCs, perf >= PCs, planning effort <= PCs). But the View Storage Accelerator, by continuing our history of integrating our best-in-class vSphere technology with best-in-class VDI management software brings us one big step closer, and starts to pull back the veil on the types of approaches that may allow us as an industry to not just resolve the challenges, but take advantage of the benefits of heavily consolidated storage for VDI environments.

VMware End User Computing: New View Clients Optimized for VMware View 5.1 Now Available on Windows, Linux, Mac, iPad and Android!

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:01:00 +0000

By Pat Lee, director, End-User Clients, VMware

The View Clients team is excited to release our latest clients for Windows, Linux, Mac, iPad and Android. The new client releases are optimized to deliver the best possible experience when combined with VMware View 5.1.

Optimized for VMware View 5.1
The new View Clients have up to 3x better video playback, improved interactive performance, and more robust performance on high-latency and lossy networks. See VMware View 5.1 Continues to Improve Performance for more details.

Also, the new View Clients work with VMware View 5.1 to support additional two-factor authentication vendors, leveraging a RADIUS client in the View 5.1 Connection Server. This gives you more choice when implementing single sign-on or security tokens in your virtual desktops.

Support for the Latest iPad and Android Devices
The new VMware View Client for iPad has been updated to support the new third-generation iPad and deliver better video playback and interactive performance for users of the new iPad.

The new VMware View Client for Android supports Android 4.0, otherwise known as Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). The latest View Client takes advantages of new ICS features to deliver excellent support for USB and Bluetooth external mice. This includes right-click, hover, and scroll wheels, to give you a great remote desktop experience.

Better Mobile Experience
We continue to improve the user experience on the VMware View Clients for iPad and Android. The new View Client for iPad has an updated user interface that works and looks better on the new iPad.

The new View Client for Android has new and improved graphics, an all-new Settings interface, and enhancements for smaller screen devices.

The following mobile client features all require VMware View 5.1, which has been enhanced to support our View mobile clients:

Touch in text fields to activate the onscreen keyboard – Just click in a text field and the onscreen keyboard will now be activated.
Bluetooth keyboard improvements - The extended keyboard bar no longer covers the Start menu and task bar when using a Bluetooth keyboard. Also, the touch in text field option will also activate the Bluetooth keyboard when clicking in a text field.
Internationalization improvements - French, German, and Spanish keyboards are supported when using VMware View 5.1 servers and appropriate international desktop keyboards. Direct Korean language input is supported when using VMware View 5.1 servers and desktops.
Save password option with VMware View 5.1 – VMware View 5.1 introduces a new administrator option to allow end users to securely save their user name and password on a mobile device to simplify login to their View desktop. Once the administrator enables this option, the View Client user can enable it on their particular client.

Download Latest View Clients Today
We are excited to release the new View Clients optimized for VMware View 5.1. Go download the Windows, Mac, and Android clients today from the VMware View Clients Download Center. The new iPad and Ubuntu Linux clients will be available shortly

VMware End User Computing: VMware Announces General Availability of View 5.1

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The VMware End-User Computing team is happy to announce the general availability of VMware View 5.1. No dancing this time, just great engineering!

Announced on May 2, 2012 as core component of the VMware end-user computing portfolio, VMware View 5.1 represents a major leap forward enabling IT organizations to empower more agile, productive and connected businesses by creating a better desktop for the Post-PC era.

Centralized and automated desktop management provided by VMware View 5.1 enable the scalable management of tens of thousands of virtual desktops through a single console. VMware View reduces operational costs by as much as 50 percent while increasing availability, reliability and security levels beyond levels of traditional PCs.

Built on VMware vSphere, the industry’s most widely deployed virtualization platform, VMware View 5.1 will enable the industry’s best end-user experience while simplifying IT management for large-scale deployments and reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with a virtual desktop infrastructure.

VMware View 5.1 Features and Benefits:
So what do you get in View 5? Enhancements and new features in VMware View 5.1 include:

VMware View Storage Accelerator – VMware View Storage Accelerator (formerly known as Content Based Read Cache) optimizes storage load and improves performance by caching common image blocks when reading virtual desktop images, helping to reduce overall TCO in VMware View deployments. Read more about VSA here.

VMware View Composer Array Integration (VCAI) – Offered in VMware View 5.1 as a Tech Preview, VCAI will leverage the native cloning abilities in the storage array to offload storage operations within a VMware View environment. As a result, VCAI improves provisioning speeds and management in View Composer and offers another solution for customers wanting to leverage other storage options. Read more about VCAI here.

VMware View Persona Management – New in VMware View 5.1, VMware View Persona Management will extend to physical desktops, enabling IT organizations to preserve user settings across all Windows devices and streamline the migration from physical to stateless virtual desktops.

VMware vCenter™ Operations for VMware View – Offered as a new add-on to VMware View, VMware vCenter Operations for VMware View will enable administrators to have broad insight into virtual desktop performance. Increased insight can empower administrators to quickly pinpoint and troubleshoot issues, optimize resource utilization and proactively address potential issues in real time. Read more about vCenter Operations for VMware View here.

VMware View Administrator Enhancements – New performance enhancements to the administrator user interface will deliver faster response times for large-scale desktop environments in the tens-of-thousands. With VMware View 5.1, desktop provisioning with pre-created AD accounts simplifies the process and enhances compliance policy. Administrator enhancements also include editable locations for disposable disk drives. Read more about how VMware View makes it easier to deploy large-scale designs here.

RADIUS Support – Support in VMware View 5.1 for RADIUS will enable greater choice for organizations looking to deploy two-factor authentication, while maintaining compatibility with existing choices.

New VMware View Clients – Users will be able to connect to their VMware View desktop from a variety of mobile and fixed endpoints with updated clients for Mac, Windows and Linux desktops, thin or zero clients and Apple iPad, Android and Amazon Kindle Fire tablets. VMware View 5.1 with PCoIP® adapts to the end users’ network connection to provide a high-quality, customized desktop experience over the LAN or WAN. Learn more about new VMware View Clients for Linux here.

VMware View Media Services Enhancements: VMware View 5.1 Local Mode will add multi-monitor support and expanded USB device compatibility, improving the user experience by enabling more peripherals to connect seamlessly into VMware View virtual desktops.

VMware View Administrator Language Support – Globalization and localization of administrator UI provides a better experience for non-English speaking IT organizations and will enable greater adoption in additional markets. Languages will include French, German, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

Visit the VMware View landing page or watch the View 5.1 Webinar learn more.

VMTN Blog: vExpert Spotlight: Nick Howell

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:36:00 +0000

Name: Nick Howell
Blog URL: datacenterdude.com
Twitter handle: @that1guynick
Current employer: NetApp – Virtualization Solutions Architect

How did you get into IT?

I started in IT right around Y2K, cabling buildings, learning about networking, and eventually diving into server administration.Being the typical AD/Exchange/Server admin, I discovered virtualization and shared storage in 2007, and immediately began implementing it in environments in which I worked. For the last few years, i have been an outspoken advocate of “virtualizing everything,” and doing so on NetApp storage arrays. I am currently a Virtualization Solutions Architect for NetApp, helping customers design and learn how to deploy advanced virtualization solutions.
NicI hold many industry certifications, and continue to work towards advanced Cisco and VMware certifications, including VCDX.

How did you get into working with VMware and becoming a 2012 vExpert?

Essentially, I was your typical SysAdmin working with servers/AD/Exchange, and used Workstation to do some test/dev/scripting stuff before implementing anything into the live environment. Around 2007, I started hearing more and more about this "ESX" stuff, and started looking into it. We replaced Workstation on my laptop with ESX on some older servers, and once everyone saw and understood the capabilities, it was a no-brainer, and we virtualized everything, including Exchange and Oracle.

I've been active on Twitter, and blogging since 2008, and a fervent participant in the Vmware Communities podcasts for about the same time. I received my first nomination and award in 2011, and was subsequently selected again for 2012. I've been a speaker at Vmworld, Oracle OpenWorld, and various VMUG's, and have been with NetApp since Feb 2011.

What would you tell someone who wanted to get a job like yours to do?

Be passionate. Be transparent. Always speak your mind, and be willing to admit when you're wrong or don't know the answer to something. Integrity. But at the same time, unbridled passion for the subjects. You have to eat, sleep, and breathe Virtualization. Evangelizing and sharing information has to excite you, and get you up in the morning.

Virtual Reality: Sorry Microsoft; Not Only Does vSphere Cost Less to Buy, It Also Costs Less to Operate.

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:58:45 +0000

Microsoft’s wildly exaggerated claims of providing a less expensive virtualization platform than VMware vSphere have been hard to miss if you’ve spent any time on the web lately. We’ve previously pointed out the flaws in their math and our public Cost Per Application Calculator clearly shows how deploying a virtual infrastructure built with vSphere will cost about the same as one built using Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center (or even much less when vSphere’s proven VM density advantage over Hyper-V is factored in.) Now we’re pleased to share recent independent test results that show how vSphere also delivers dramatically lower operational costs compared to Microsoft.

The acquisition capital expense (CapEx) advantage for vSphere shown by our Cost Per Application Calculator is just part of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that diligent customers will want to evaluate when choosing a virtualization and cloud platform. The other key TCO element to consider is Operational Expenses (OpEx) representing the ongoing costs of administering your virtual infrastructure. To help customers assess the OpEx differences between vSphere and Hyper-V, we enlisted Principled Technologies to run both platforms in their labs and measure the system administrator labor time needed for typical recurring tasks.

Five Typical Datacenter Tasks Tested

Principled Technologies selected five common tasks that any administrator of a virtualized datacenter must regularly perform and they measured the administrator labor time taken to complete each one using both the VMware and Microsoft platforms. The tasks tested were:

Shifting virtual machines off a host to accommodate physical maintenance
Adding storage volumes and redistributing virtual disk files across the new storage
Isolating storage-intensive “noisy neighbor” virtual machines
Provisioning new hosts
Performing a non-disruptive disaster recovery failover test

Care was taken to conduct the scenario tasks as realistically as possible using the full capabilities of the latest released versions of the VMware and Microsoft products available at the time of the testing. vCenter Site Recovery Manager was included in the VMware configuration (and the full list SRM license costs were included in the VMware total cost figures.) vSphere 5 delivered a convincing across-the-board win over Microsoft for each task tested: tasks took 78% to 97% less time to complete using vSphere. The time savings provided by the VMware platform arise from the more advanced capabilities built into vSphere and the more efficient and optimized implementation of those features we’ve perfected over our years of focusing purely on delivering the best virtual infrastructure and cloud platform.

It’s important to note that the OpEx dollar savings shown in the chart above derive from only five representative sysadmin tasks. There are many other regular activities performed by administrators of virtualized datacenters, most of which will show similar efficiency advantages for vSphere over less mature and capable alternatives, so customers should expect even greater total OpEx savings from using vSphere.

Scenarios Delivering Big OpEx Wins for vSphere

Contributors to the biggest operational advantages for vSphere were:

Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler – When more storage is needed, the vSphere administrator can add volumes and let Storage DRS redistribute virtual disk files to the new volumes automatically with no VM downtime. The Hyper-V administrator must manually redistribute VM storage and make arrangements for VM downtime during the operation.
Concurrent vMotion – The vSphere administrator can complete physical host maintenance much sooner because vMotion maintenance mode evacuations of VMs can proceed concurrently and at a faster rate (see comparative live migration testing results here.) Hyper-V hosts can only handle one live migration at a time, so administrators are tied up with much longer maintenance windows.
Storage I/O Control – vSphere makes it easy to cap the storage IOPS consumed by each VM to prevent resource hogging by “noisy neighbors.” Hyper-V has no such feature, so administrators can only respond by dedicating storage volumes for misbehaving VMs – a tedious task requiring VM downtime.
vCenter Site Recovery Manager – SRM fully automates replication of mission-critical VMs to a remote site and failover in case of disaster. Real disasters may be rare, but full-scale DR tests should be regular events. That’s where the automated and non-disruptive DR failover test features in SRM deliver big operational savings. Setting up DR failovers with Hyper-V requires maintenance-intensive scripting to orchestrate VM replications and restarts and to modify VMs for network isolation.

After making their labor time measurements, Principled Technologies then estimated how many times each task would be repeated over the course of a two-year period in a datacenter operating 1,000 virtual machines. Multiplying the cumulative time taken performing each task by the U.S. national average system administrator compensation rate gave a dollar figure for the OpEx savings. As shown below, the final result was an impressive 91% reduction in operational expenses when using vSphere compared to Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center.

Operational Expenses Dominate Total Costs

The impact of the OpEx savings delivered by vSphere are even more significant when you consider that IT operational expenses are typically much larger than capital expenses. In fact, Gartner survey data shows cross-industry IT OpEx spending is almost three times CapEx spending – even more reason to choose a virtualization platform that will save you money with better operational efficiency long after the initial purchase.

The OpEx savings delivered by vSphere were enough to tip the two-year TCO advantage in favor of VMware in the 1,000-VM datacenter that was the baseline for Principled Technologies’ tests. When you can have the clearly superior features provided by vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus Edition together with vCenter Site Recovery Manager at a lower total cost than Microsoft’s best alternative, it’s easy to make the decision to go with VMware.

If you’re running your datacenter on vSphere now, an OpEx win by vSphere probably isn’t surprising. vSphere users benefit from over a decade of optimizations we’ve built into our platform that derive from experience in thousands of production datacenters. What did surprise us was just how large an operational advantage vSphere has over the Microsoft platform. The results are a clear example of why you need to look at more than just a feature checklist and initial price tag when choosing the virtualization platform for your most critical workloads.

Take a look for yourself at the full test report by Principled Technologies here (registration required.)

VMTN Blog: A week in virtualization

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Yesterday, we’ve announced the vFabric Suite 5.1, which features automated deployment, new components, and open source support. I’ve always had a soft spot for open source software in my heart, and am glad to see the vFabric team showing it some love.

Back to the new features and components though, because there are a ton of them:

Application Director automates the deployment of applications through easy-to-use blueprints with standardized templates, component libraries and workflows
Application Performance Manager (APM) provides comprehensive monitoring of end-user transactions, Java code, middleware servers, and vSphere hosts. APM includes two components: vFabric AppInsight, which does transaction- and code-level monitoring and vFabric Hyperic, which monitors middleware servers and vSphere hosts, providing 50,000 metrics for over 75 popular web technologies.
vPostgres is relational SQL database that comes in as a virtual appliance and has virtualization optimizations such as elastic database memory and smart configuration to reduce tuning time after resizing virtual machines.
vFabric Administration Server (VAS) has a REST Management API for a uniform way to administer groups of vFabric Servers.

Support for Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server and RabbitMQ, which are the open source runtime components most frequently used in production deployments of Spring applications.

And in addition to all the new stuff above, every already existing product in vFabric Suite has been updated. Here are some of the highlights:

vFabric tc Server 2.7 has been updated to the latest stable Apache Tomcat release, and supports websockets and JDK7.
vFabric Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J) 1.1 adds support for Apache Tomcat (in addition to tc Server) and JDK7.
vFabric Web Server 5.1 now uses OpenSSL 1.0.1, adding support for TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2.
vFabric RabbitMQ 2.8.1 now has improved reliability, new message flow control to improve performance under load, dead letter queues for handling undelivered or expired messages, and compatibility with Erlang R15B for native operation on 64-bit Windows.
vFabric GemFire Application Cache Node 6.6.2 adds HTTP Session Management support for tc Server 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7, Apache Tomcat 6.0 & 7.0 and generic module for other application servers (such as Oracle WebLogic)
vFabric SQLFire Professional Edition 1.0.2 now supports unlimited node connections, which allows SQLFire Professional to scale horizontally like the other components in vFabric Suite.

While not exactly a new release, our product page vmware.com/products has received a radical makeover, and I have to say, I dig it. Now you can browse all the myriad products that we now offer, either by type, or A to Z. This new page also incorporates a product selector tool, an interactive product diagram to help make sense of it all, and a nice animated Virtualization Overview video that is both informative and fun to watch. All the product news are also listed on that page now, that’s where you will find links to the new vFabric products today.

The registration is now open for VMword San Francisco—go register yourself and tell your friends. There are early bird discounts, VMUG Advantage discounts, other discounts that I can’t all remember, and of course the steepest discount of all is the speaker discount—if you present at the show, you will get your ticket free! There are still two more days left to submit your talk proposal, and the call for papers closes on the 18^th of this month. This year, the VMworld team says there will be no extensions for the CFP, so if you miss the deadline, you’ll have to come back next year.

And finally, there will be three full-day VMUG conferences happening before the month is out: one in San Diego, another in Central Ohio, and also one in Denver. Go to myvmug.com to find a VMUG conference near you and to register.

VMware Global Alliances Blog: VMware at EMC World + Instagram

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:22:38 +0000

View all

Share your VMware Instagram experience at EMC World, and win a prize! From May 21-24^th at EMC World in Las Vegas, drop by VMware booth #201 to pick up your “VMware +_______” paddle, which is shown above.

See the instructions on the back of the paddle and upload your photos to VMwares Instagram page – it’s easy! Please be sure to upload using the hashtags #EMCworld and #VMwarePlus, so we can seed your photos into the VMware at EMC World + Instagram page. Three prizes will be awarded for the most creative #VMwarePlus photos.

You can still participate even if you can’t attend EMC World! Since we are collecting all of the #EMCworld photos you can check out the sights of the conference as they unfold in real-time on the VMware Instagram page.

Not an Instagram user? Just download the app to your smartphone for free. Click here for Andriod users or here for iPhone users to get started.

In the comments section of this post, please let us know how your experience was with #VMwarePlus and if you have any questions.

Be sure to follow @VMwareEvents and @VMware_Partners for more information during the conference.

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: I’m virtualized! Now what?

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:18:28 +0000

Many of you may be wondering what virtualization can do for you beyond server virtualization. At VMware, we like to call this the “virtualization journey.” Virtualizing your server hardware infrastructure is really just the first step in the journey to transform your business through IT. Virtualization opens the door to greater IT agility, resource utilization and cost savings. It also enables critical solutions, like business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR). The ability to maintain business operations in the event of a disaster or an outage is critical to the survival of a business. Failure to have a business continuity and disaster recovery solution in place can result in grim consequences.

“43% of companies experiencing disasters never re-open, and 29% close within two years.” McGladrey and Pullen

“93% of businesses that lost their data center for 10 days went bankrupt within one year.” National Archives & Records Administration

So, needless to say, having a reliable and viable business continuity and disaster recovery solution is essential. Thankfully, virtualizing your hardware infrastructure is the first step towards building a solution. The inherent characteristics of virtual machines (partitioning, isolation, encapsulation and hardware dependence) are the building blocks of a BCDR solution. By combining these characteristics with solutions like VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, companies can build a reliable and cost-effective BCDR solution.

Take a look at the resources below to learn more about VMware’s solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery and how to get started.

Resources:

Myron Steves, a 200 employee insurance wholesaler in Texas, has been able to slash their business continuity and disaster recovery costs across the business to become a more agile organization. Learn more.
Business continuity solution brief
Uptime Blog
Backup & Recovery VMware Community

Send your questions or comments!

~Rob Chen
Sr. Manager, SMB Marketing

VMware End User Computing: Blog Post from GTC: Hosted desktop and workstation workloads - what about my 3D graphics?

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:48:07 +0000

By Aaron Blasius, senior product manager, VMware

VDI solutions have been available for many years now and are becoming the preferred desktop platform for many market segments. From the enterprise to state, local and education customers and from Health Care to the the small and mid-size businesses, organizations are realizing the benefits of delivering desktop workloads to their employees from private clouds enabled via VMware View.

Centralization, automated provisioning and additional security are the primary drivers of View hosted solutions. Until recently, customer’s looking to secure their high value workstations assets in hosted solutions has been limited to niche solutions.

This is about to change.Virtualizing graphics workloads was not an immediate need for the early adopters of virtualization for the data center. It was the evolution to virtual desktop workloads forced the issue of virtual graphics for the data center. Organizations wanted to bring VDI to more teams and employees demanded the same high fidelity experience from their virtual machines as the one they could find at home.

VMware leveraged the virtual 3D technology developed for the Workstation and Fusion products to ensure the rich graphics experience provided by enterprise software products such as Aero. Software rendered 3D in View 5 was delivered and the use case grew.

At VMworld in Copenhagen last year we announced a technology preview with NVIDIA that enabled a true virtual workstation experience. vSphere virtualization coupled with the full power of the NVIDIA Quadro GPU card securely delivered from the data center to scientist, engineers, artists and manufacturing partners through a View virtual environment. Private clouds will be able to host the organizations most important IP. This provides the ability to more easily and securely leverage their global workforce, distributed supply chains and external partners; the View use case grew.

What’s next?
For me, few end-user scenarios expand the VDI use case more than 3D graphics. Harnessing the tremendous efficiency of the GPU for graphical rendering in a View environment impacts the two major concerns of any VDI initiative: experience and cost.

The tremendous power of ESX will be able to virtualize and manage NVIDIA’s hardware based GPU resources. Accelerated 3D rendering provides a better end-user experience and increased efficiency means higher consolidation ratios. Cards like NVIDIA’s next generation VGX GPU cards provide the horsepower to ensure GPU doesn’t have to be limiting resource for graphics hungry power users. Managing this resource with the industry’s leading hypervisor from VMware means customers will continue to manage all their private clouds via vSphere. Multi-monitor use cases, DirectX and OpenGL application, CAD reviewers and diagnosticians are just some of the groups who have struggled with the graphics performance of VDI in the past. But with virtual graphics acceleration, this will no longer be the case.

As I said, things are about the change and look for VMware to continue to lead the way by providing the most comprehensive graphics strategy in the market, I for one am very excited.

VMware Global Alliances Blog: Validation with SAP Signals Strong Support for Virtualization & Cloud Infrastructure

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:02:26 +0000

Posted by Andre Kemp
Principal - SAP Business
Practice, Americas

In a post last week, Elliot Fliesler alluded to some exiting news that we would soon share around our SAP partnership. And where better to finally unveil that news than at Sapphire Now 2012 and here on our alliances blog? It’s now official: SAP has validated its Sybase High Performance OLTP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) Database on VMware cloud infrastructure.

This validation announcement is notable for a number of reasons:

It assures customers and prospects running SAPSybase ASE databases as virtual machines that they can achieve high-performance results that match their physical infrastructure.
It enables customers and prospects to stop worrying about virtualizing business-critical applications—including their most important databases.
It signals the beginning of further testing by VMware and SAP to support the virtualization of other key SAP products, such as SAP Sybase IQ, Replication Server and SQL Anywhere on VMware cloud infrastructure.

Commentary from the Show

One of the reasons I enjoy coming to Sapphire every year is to hear firsthand how customers are currently using and prospects are thinking about using our joint solutions and services. Yesterday, I co-presented a session (2307) with one of our customers, Fonterra. This $16B (NZD) dairy company virtualized its entire SAP landscape in 2010 and is now deploying automated disaster recovery on the VMware vSphere^® platform.

From Fonterra and other attendees, I have learned that the launch of vSphere 5 has really done more to unlock the potential value of SAP landscapes. For example, customers virtualizing their SAP landscape with VMware solutions are benefitting from enhanced business agility. They also are able to provide superior service levels and improve asset turnover while lowering TCO.

More customers today are moving from server consolidation (the IT Production phase that begins the VMware Journey) into virtualizing business-critical applications (phase two or the Business Production phase). What this tells us is that a greater number and a wider variety of customers—enterprises and small and midsize businesses (SMBs)—are embracing IT transformation. They are all moving ahead with us on the journey from virtualization to cloud computing and IT as a service—at their own pace.

As I gather new insights from customers during the many meetings that I’m participating in this week, I’m reminded about how far we have come with virtualization and cloud infrastructure. At first, our products helped technical customers to overcome IT challenges and save money. Now, there is tremendous demand from CIOs and line-of-business stakeholders for more extensive services and solutions that move their business applications to a virtualized and cloud environment that solves real business issues. In this way, we are helping to transform enterprises, and this makes me look forward to working even more closely with SAP on solutions that are yet to come. Let us know how virtualizing SAP has made a difference to your business, in the comments section below.

Photo: A packed VMware theatre session at the booth yesterday.

Federal Center of Excellence (CoE) Blog: Connecting Clouds

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:58:13 +0000

For those organizations on the journey of transforming their datacenters to meet the demand of a modern IT consumption model, it’s easy to envision what cloud euphoria could/should look like. That’s mostly because vision is quite cheap – all it takes is a little imagination (maybe), a few Google queries, several visits by your favorite vendor(s), and perhaps a top-down mandate or two. The problem is execution can break the bank if the vision is not in line with the organization’s core objectives. It’s easy to get carried away in the planning stages with all the options, gizmos and cloudy widgets out there – often delaying the project and creating budget shortfalls. Cloud:Fail. But this journey doesn’t have to be difficult (or horrendously expensive). Finding the right solution is half the battle…just don’t go gluing several disparate products together that were never intended to comingle and burn time and money trying to integrate them. Sure you might eventually achieve something that resembles a cloud, but you’re guaranteed to hit several unnecessary pain points on the way.

Of course I’m not suggesting putting all your eggs in one vendor’s basket guarantees success. Nor am I suggesting that VMware’s basket is the only one that provides everything you’ll ever need for a successful cloud deployment. In fact, VMware prides itself with an enormous (and growing) partner ecosystem that provides unique approaches and technologies to cloudy problems and beyond. What I am suggesting, however, is the need to pick and choose wisely. Well integrated clouds = well functioning clouds = happy clouds and happy customers. Integration means common frameworks and interfaces, extensible API’s, automation via orchestration, app portability across clouds, and technologies that are purpose-built for the job(s) at hand. And as a bonus, integration can mean leveraging what you already have – an infrastructure awaiting the transformation of a lifetime. That’s right, the cloud journey should not be a rip-and-replace proposition.

There’s another major component to this – while I spend the majority of my time helping organizations and federal agencies adopt the cloud and transform their infrastructures, there’s often something else on the customer’s mind that can’t be ignored. It’s a long-term strategy delivered in nine datacenter-shattering words: “I want to get out of the infrastructure business”. I’m hearing this more often than not and it cannot be ignored. What they are referring to is the need to eventually shift workloads to public clouds rather than continue to invest in their own infrastructures. This strategy makes perfect sense. As the adoption of public cloud services increases, more and more CIO’s are finding new comfort levels in handing over their apps and workloads to trusted cloud providers, albeit slowly. But this also introduces new challenges. How does an organization well on its way to delivering an enterprise/private cloud to the business ensure that future adoption of public clouds does not mean starting from scratch? What about managing and securing those workloads just as you would in the private cloud? Public cloud providers need to be an extension of your private cloud, giving you the freedom of application placement, the ability to migrate workloads back and forth, and providing single-pane-of-glass visibility into all workloads and all clouds. This endeavor requires the right planning, tools, and frameworks to be successful.

Here are the top “asks” from customers currently on, or getting ready to start, this journey (in no particular order):

Private cloud now…public cloud later (or both…now)
Workload portability (across clouds / cloud providers)
A holistic management approach
End-to-end visibility
Dynamic security
Cloud-worthy scalability

If any of this is resonating, then you’re probably in a similar situation. CIO’s are pushing the deployment of private clouds while simultaneously considering public cloud options. Therefor the solution needs to deliver everything we know and love of the private cloud while laying down the framework for public cloud expansion. Problem is not many solutions out there can do this. Public cloud providers often run proprietary frameworks and management tools to keep costs low and private cloud solutions are generally focused on just that (being private).

Enter VMware.

VMware has put a lot of effort in leveraging the success of vSphere – the cloud’s critical foundation – to help take a controlling lead up the software stack and deliver a cloud solution for both private and public (i.e. hybrid) clouds. And through the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), they have also enabled a new generation of cloud service providers that build their offerings using the same vCloud frameworks available to enterprises. As a result, each and every one of these vCloud-powered service providers instantly becomes a possible extension of your private cloud, placing the power of the hybrid cloud – and all the “asks” above – at your fingertips.

Here’s what that looks like from a 1,00ft view…

Let’s review this diagram:

1 – Physical Infrastructure: commodity compute, storage, and network infrastructure.

2 – vSphere Virtualization: hardware abstraction layer and cloud foundation. Delivers physical compute, storage, and networks as resource pools, datastores, and portgroups (or dvPortgroups).

3 – Provider Virtual Datacenter (PvDC) and Organizational Virtual Datacenter (OvDC): delivered by vCloud Director as the first layer of cloud abstraction. resources are simply consumed as capacity and delivered on demand.

4 – vCenter Orchestrator: key technology for cloud integration, automation, and orchestration across native and 3^rd-party solutions.

5 – vCenter Operations: holistic management framework for visibility into performance, capacity, compliance, and overall health.

6 – Security & Compliance: dynamic, policy-based security and compliance tools across clouds using vShield Edge and vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM)

7 – VMware Service Manager for Cloud Provisioning (VSM-CP): self-service web portal and business process engine tying it all together. Integrates with vCO for mega automation.

8 –vCloud Connector (vCC): single pane of glass control of clouds and workloads. enables workload portability to/from private and public vClouds and traditional vSphere environments.

Last but not least is the very important question of “openness” in the cloud (don’t get me started on heterogeneous hypervisors!). VMware spearheaded the OVF standard several years ago, which has been adopted by the industry as a whole as a means of migrating vSphere-based workloads to non-vSphere hypervisors (and the clouds above them) with metadata in tact. In fact, OVF remains a key technology in the Hybrid cloud scenarios and is an integral part of workload portability across clouds. OVF gives customers the ability to move workloads in/out of vSphere and vCloud environments and into other solutions that support the standard. Just beware of solutions that will happily accept OVF workloads but not so happily give them back (warning: the majority won’t).

The end result: cloud goodness, happy CIO’s, and streamlined IT. How’s that for a differentiator?

++++

@virtualjad

VMware End User Computing: Overcoming the VDI IOPS Challenge

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:55:47 +0000

Guest Post by Anjan Srinivas, Director of Product Marketing, Atlantis Computing

Correct IO sizing can be a challenge for customers adopting VDI. Storage can represent between 20 and 70% of the total desktop cost in VDI infrastructure. Get it right and the project is successful – users accept it and desktop cost is low. Get it wrong and the desktop costs can rise, and the team may not get to scale beyond the first implementation – or the desktop is inexpensive and users reject it for performance reasons.

Here’s why….

The Windows OS was designed with a local and dedicated disk and requires constant access to the hard drive even when it is idle. In addition, the Windows OS will consume as much disk IO or throughput to the hard drive as is available. Windows desktop workloads are write heavy (70-80% writes, 20-30% reads) .Windows 7 OS images are also larger than XP images, forcing enterprises to buy more storage capacity to accommodate larger numbers of users( a Windows 7 image ranges from 25GB to 50GB or more depending on the components and apps installed).

There is another problem with IOPS when it comes to VDI. All IOPS coming out of virtual desktops are typically treated as “equal” by the hypervisor. This causes a lack of consistent user experience (as user workloads vary). Imagine a user running a zip file compression or running an on-demand virus scan on the same host as the CEO who needs his desktop to work on his board meeting presentation.

So why is IOPS a limiting factor?

Essentially the problem comes down to the physics of a spinning disk. In a traditional hard disk drive there is a spinning platter which is why all disks have an RPM value. Each disk can provide 65-150 IOPS per spindle depending on what type of disk is being used in the array. Customers sometimes size for the storage capacity or average IOPS. Both these approaches may result in under sizing the storage resulting in poor user experience. When sized for peak IOPS, the number of disks make the solution very expensive and raises the cost per user. It should be noted, that as of View 4.6, the concept of tiered storage was introduced…that is the ability break up the VDI workload and place different components on different types of storage. The impact is that it is now possible to put the linked clone image on SSD on the compute host, which offers a high performance experience for users (fast app launch times) as well as an improved IT experience.

What Else is Possible?

Even with the tiered storage support in View, there is also another approach customers can take to overcome IO challenges using a storage optimization solution. ILIO is NTFS aware and with its advanced IO processing and inline de-duplication it offloads the IOPS before it reaches storage. This results in lower storage capacity consumed and high performing desktop because write and read IO offload provided by ILIO. Being software, Atlantis ILIO is storage and hardware agnostic- customers no longer need to worry about qualifying new hardware vendors and buying new hardware and can leverage what they have. ILIO solution is optimized for both XP and Win7 images and supports both stateless and persistent desktops. Atlantis ILIO works in conjunction with advanced vSphere features like vMotion / DRS / HA and FT.

So what does performance look like with ILIO? Well you can expect to support high performance desktops (300+ IOPS per desktop) with up to 90% less cost when it comes to storage. You can actually support 4 to 7x more users on your existing infrastructure - SAN, NAS, local disk or even diskless (memory) options.Find out more about the IO offload and capacity improvements for a high performance desktop (300 IOPS – 2x you the PC performance) VMware View 5 desktop in the reference architecture published here. This RA includes View 5, VMware ThinApp, View Persona and View Planner tools.

Useful Links

VMware View, Atlantis ILIO & Trend Micro Reference Architecture

Offloading Virtual Desktop IOs with Atlantis ILIO: Deep Dive - By Andre Leibovici

View Calculator with Atlantis ILIO - By Andre Leibovici

Diskless VDI with Cisco UCS and Atlantis ILIO

VMware Technical Communications Video Blog: Application Modeling in vFabric Application Director

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:43:36 +0000

Matthew Ford, R&D Manager at VMware shows you how to use vFabric Application Director to create and model a three-tier custom application.

VMware Technical Communications Video Blog: Enabling Virtual Machine Portability with OVF

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:41:36 +0000

OVF (Open Virtualization Format) allows you to package, maintain, and manage one or more virtual machines as a single unit. OVF is an open standard and allows you to move the virtual machines from one VMware platform to another. You can even export to or import from other virtualization environments. This video gives an overview of OVF benefits and of the different tools for creating an OVF.

VMware End User Computing: The Accelerating Rise of Rogue Clouds

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:06:53 +0000

By Ben Goodman, Lead Evangelist, VMware Horizon Application Manager

This is the first blog in series on the Consumerization of IT, it's effect and how it can be managed successfully. It will be followed by a whitepaper on this topic.

Ready or not, your employees have gone rogue. It sounds scary, but it’s true. They’re turning to on-demand cloud services whether it be for a quick server deployment, easy access to online storage, some form of collaboration tools, or virtually any software that is delivered as-a-service. And it’s changing the very nature of the relationship between IT and the enterprise.

This story published in CIO magazine shows how difficult a job it is for industry analysts to capture the real-world penetration of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) into the enterprise. After conducting a survey of senior IT managers, only 13 percent of respondents reported that IaaS deployments were running in their environment. Unfortunately, that number fell woefully short of reality and shows how out of touch many IT managers are when it comes to knowing what cloud services are actually being used by their organization:

"The actual number was double that, and that was only talking about IAAS," according to Galen Schreck, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research (FORR).

Even Schreck's anecdotal number underestimated the gap between how many cloud apps IT thinks an organization is using and the real number, according to Frank Gillett, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.

"Informal buyers" from outside IT buy IAAS twice as often as "formal" buyers inside IT, and the informals make five times as many software buying decisions as the IT people who are supposed to be in charge, according to Forrester.

And that, as analyst Schreck pointed out, is only infrastructure. While trends in that area of the market have been profound, the revolution ahead will continue to be mobile and Software-as-a-Service application delivery. Currently, it’s commonly known that people are bringing their own devices to work, but how many realize, as Gartner predicts, that application development aimed at smartphones and tablets will outpace PC development by a ratio of 4-to-1 in the next three years? And that in the same timeframe, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside of the IT department’s budget? Many of these applications will be SaaS-based and they’ll run far outside the management control of many IT departments.

These two trends alone are going to prove to have a more profound impact on IT departments than anything we’ve seen before.

Why is this happening now, and at an accelerating pace? The trends driving mobile and IT consumerization are quite similar to those that have driven the virtualization and “cloudification” of infrastructure. It comes down to speed, convenience, and low cost. It can take many weeks to provision servers, get access to new applications, or even allocate big chunks of storage. So why not turn to a SaaS provider if an identical service is available that can be charged to the corporate credit card – and that service can be delivered to most any form factor the end user desires? This trend is also supported by the fact that many operating system and Web browser neutral apps are on the way. With speed of delivery and an abundance of applications instantly at the ready, the barriers to entry for end users are just too low, and the benefits too high for them to ignore. That is why I call SaaS the “Gateway Drug” to the cloud.

At least that’s the perspective of the typical business user. And it’s why there are plenty of examples today of enterprises having a sanctioned public cloud, CRM system, or any number of other approved services running along with islands of similar rogue applications and services scattered throughout the very same enterprise. And most of these services are fully un-managed, leaving the enterprise blind about the users who are accessing these applications.

There are many implications to these trends for both IT and the business. First, how can IT stay relevant when much of the business is getting the IT it needs (or at least thinks it is) without the assistance of the IT department? Second, how does the enterprise ensure that its data is secured, that its policies are being enforced, and that regulatory compliance demands are being met with so much IT happening below the radar? Third, how does the business know it’s getting all of the value it should from all of these services?

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. However, in the weeks ahead, we are going to tackle these issues head-on, and hopefully shed light on how IT can regain full relevance and control of the IT within an organization, so that users get maximum benefit from their technology, maximum cost effectiveness, and do so securely with the proper levels of governance in place.

In our next post, we will cover some of the risks these rogue services create, and why it’s crucial for IT to regain governance over access to these services for that reason alone.

Follow Ben on twitter at @benontech.