VirtualizationAdmin.com Monthly Newsletter of April 2009 Sponsored by: UniPrint

Welcome to the VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter by David Davis, VCP, CCIE. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on the world of Virtualization. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com

1. It's all about VMware - ESX4 and vSphere

Thank you for reading issue #11 of our VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter! Last month we covered New Virtualization Features in Windows 2008 Server R2 Beta.

This month, we take a totally different direction and talk about VMware. In fact, while I normally try to make this newsletter balanced, there is so much big news about VMware this month, I am going to devote the entire newsletter to VMware. So what is so important? Here goes...

On April 21, with a ton of fanfare, VMware publicly announced details of their "Cloud Operating System" - vSphere. According to VMware, this is the first of its kind. Prior to the creation of this Cloud OS, the real announcement here would be that VMware ESX 4 has been released. Today, ESX 4 is just a part of vSphere. In fact, if you look at the graphic below that shows what makes up vSphere, ESX4 is just a small part of that and vCenter isn't included in the list (it's separate).
What is included in vSphere, besides ESX4, are some existing features/applications like:

• VMotion
• VMHA
• VMFS
• SVMotion
• DRS

However, some things are obviously new as they really stick out:

• Fault Tolerance (FT)
• Distributed Switch
• Data Recovery
• Thin Provisioning
• Hot Add

As I have been a part of the vSphere / ESX 4 beta for a number of months now, I can personally tell you that these are just short names for some really amazing new features / applications from VMware. Three examples are:

• Data Recovery = VMware's new backup and restore application for VMware that integrates with the vSphere / VI Client and offers many of the of the enterprise features offered by third party virtualization backup applications.
• Fault Tolerance = provides high availability to VM guests such that a backup guest is always running on another ESX host and there is zero downtime or outage if the primary VM fails.
• Distributed Switch (dvswitch) - a virtual switch that integrates networking from all ESX hosts into a single virtual switch. Additionally, you can upgrade and enable the Cisco Nexus 1000V to gain a Cisco IOS interface for managing the virtual networking across all ESX hosts and the many features that the Cisco switch provides.

Figure 1. VMware's vSphere

VMware's new vSphere cloud OS promises a lot so it is important that they deliver vSphere, all of its new features, bug free, in a timely manner. Stay tuned to VirtualizationAdmin.com for all the latest vSphere and Cloud knowledge and news!

Note to my readers: Besides reading our newsletter, I encourage you to stay up to date on the latest in Virtualization news by subscribing to the VirtualizationAdmin.com RSS Feed so make sure you have the VirtualizationAdmin.com RSS feeds configured in your RSS reader. 

As always, if you have Virtualization questions, ideas for articles, or issues to cover in the newsletter, please feel free to write to me at ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com

Thank you,
David Davis, VCP, CCIE

2. Train Signal VMware ESX Server Video Training

3. VirtualizationAdmin.com Articles of Interest

• Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 4)
  
• Readers' Choice Awards Yearly Round Up 2008
  
• OS Virtualization in Practice (Part 2)
  
• VIDEO: How to Install Windows Vista as your Guest OS in Hyper-V
  
• Installing and Configuring SCVMM 2008 Self-Service Portal
  
• Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 3)
  
• Understanding and Customizing VMware ESX Server Performance Charts
  

4. KB Articles of the Month

• VMware KB - Host Power Management Causes Problems with Guest Timekeeping (Windows Hosts) (1227)   
  
• VMware KB - VMware ESX and ESXi Comparison (1006543)   
  
• VMware KB - VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 U3 I/O failure on SAN LUN(s) and LUN queue is blocked indefinitely (1008130)   
  
• VMware KB - Hardware and Firmware Requirements for 64-Bit Guest Operating Systems (1901)  
  
• Microsoft - Free Second Shot offer on virtualization exams
  
• Microsoft - Free MS Press E-Book: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions
  
• Microsoft KB - Microsoft Application Virtualization Datasheet
  

5. Virtualization Admin Tip of the Month

Being able to manage VMware Virtual Infrastructure and your ESX hosts with the VI Client is, of course, critical. But what if you need to perform some intelligent task on your ESX hosts when you aren't around?

The answer is to use scripts to do this. VMware provides a number of options for scripting in the Virtual Infrastructure. Here are some critical VMware scripting links you should know:

• VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows - Powershell
  
• VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA)
  
• Remote Command Line Interface (RCLI) for Windows and Linux
  
• VI-Perl Toolkit
  
• VMware Sample Scripts
  

6. Helpful Links

• Virtualization Congress - May 2009 - Las Vegas, NV
• VMworld 2009 - August 31 - Sept 3 - San Francisco, CA
• VMware's Planet V12n Virtualization Blog Aggregator
• VMwareVideos.com - videos only related to VMware
• VMware Free Virtualization Webcasts
• Petri IT Knowledgebase - Virtualization Articles
• Virtual PC Guy's Weblog covering Hyper-V Virtualization
• Scott Lowe's Virtualization, Storage, and Server Blog
• Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog

7. Ask David Davis

Question

My VMware ESX servers are running slow. How do I check their performance?

Answer

Great question! Also, it is a very timely question as earlier this month, I published an article at VirtualizationAdmin.com called Understanding and Customizing VMware ESX Server Performance Charts.

In this article, I detail exactly what you need to know to check your VMware ESX Server performance. Here are 5 important points from that article:

• Make sure you are familiar with the performance of your VMware ESX hosts BEFORE you begin loading up your ESX hosts with more VMs. Of course, this would be your "baseline".
• Be ready to quickly pull up a CPU and Memory performance graph (as I demonstrated inside the VMware Virtual Infrastructure).

VMware VI Cient Chart options can be quickly be customized, charts can be saved or exported.

As your VMware virtual datacenter grows and grows, I highly recommend you look at third party applications to manage VMware performance Also, I think that you should try to integrate your existing performance applications with your VMware ESX host.

Got a question for David Davis? Send it to ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com