VirtualizationAdmin.com Monthly Newsletter of August 2008 Sponsored by: SpamTitanWelcome 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 Have you experienced the benefits of a Certified Virtual Appliance?
1. VMware's big mistake & big virtualization conferencesThank you for reading issue #3 of our VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter! Last month we covered some of the big changes in the virtualization market - namely speculation over how VMware's market dominance may change with the Microsoft Hyper-V push. This month, we have a lot of exciting news to cover as well. One of the biggest stories this month was, what I call, "VMware's big mistake". As you may have heard, VMware released their ESX 3.5 update 2 with a "timebomb" where the licensing would fail to function on a certain date. I blogged about this at Timebomb in VMware ESX & ESXi Server Update 2. This bug caused complete outages of VMware ESX infrastructure at companies large and small. Quickly, VMware released an "express patch" (also linked in my blog VMware released an "express patch") and VMware CEO Paul Maritz issued a candid apology in his blog. Apparently this "timebomb" was due to some leftover code that caused the licensing to expire on a certain date. Comment: Gee, software licensing sure can be a pain sometimes, can't it? I am glad that a major software company finally felt some pain from licensing, instead of end users. Soon thereafter, VMware issued a completely new ESX and ESXi Server Update 2 - without the timebomb. You can find these at: VMware Infrastructure 3 (VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2) and FREE VMware ESXi (VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2). Surprisingly, VMware's stock (chart of VMW) has actually gone up since this "big mistake". Still, it is nowhere close to what it was and it is about 1/4 or 1/3 what it was at its 1 year high. Apparently, good damage control pays off. On the Microsoft front, they are preparing for their Virtualization launch event (see Microsoft Virtualization Launch Events). This will first happen near their headquarters in Bellevue, WA, USA and it will then continue around the country as they did for the Windows Server 2008 launch. At their virtualization launch events, they are expected to officially launch Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and Microsoft Desktop and Application Virtualization. Now that all of these products will be officially ready, the big Microsoft virtualization push will begin. It will be interesting to see how that market will work out. Finally, September will be an exciting month. I will be attending VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas and will serve as a judge for the Best of VMworld 2008 products competition. I will officially be judging the "new products" category so it will be great to see what new virtualization products we have to look forward to. I will also have my updated Train Signal VMware ESX Server 3.5 training course ready by VMworld. I will be sending live updates from VMworld using my Twitter account (www.twitter.com/davidmdavis) and VMware will officially be sending their live VMworld updates using their Twitter account (www.twitter.com/vmworld). If you are interested in what happens at VMworld, you should follow those Twitter accounts. I hope to see you there so if you are attending, make sure you contact me so that we can connect! 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
Have you experienced the benefits of a Certified Virtual Appliance?
3. VirtualizationAdmin.com Articles of Interest
4. KB Articles of the Month
5. Virtualization Admin Tip of the MonthYou may have heard of "virtual machine tools" or "virtual guest add-ons". No matter what you call them, these tools are an installable application, containing drivers, which allow additional functionality and performance of a virtual guest machine when running inside a virtualization product. While Hyper-V allows guests to use native drivers for the hardware that it is running on, this is only possible if you install the Hyper-V integration services inside each guest. And those integration services are only available for certain guests and may even require a certain patch version of that guest OS. For more information on integration services, what is required, and how to install them, read Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Integration Services by Janique Carbone Have you experienced the benefits of a Certified Virtual Appliance?
6. Helpful Links
7. Ask David DavisQuestion How does VMware ESX Server compare to ESXi Server? Answer With VMware recently making ESXi a free product, many people will ask what is the difference between the free ESXi and the commercial ESX Server? Well, ESXi Server is a "thin hyper-visor" that offers no service console. That probably is not a bad thing because the there is management and performance overhead of that service console. Besides that difference between these two products, there are very few others. Really, ESXi and ESX Server end up functioning the same and they are managed the same. You should keep in mind that to get Virtual Center, VMotion, VMHA, and some of the other well-known VMware Infrastructure features, you will have to buy some level of the VMware Infrastructure Suite. There is no portion of the VMware Infrastructure Suite that is free. To learn more about the similarities and differences between VMware ESXi Server and ESX Server, read my article: How does VMware ESXi Server compare to ESX Server? Got a question for David Davis? Send it to ddavis@VirtualizationAdmin.com Have you experienced the benefits of a Certified Virtual Appliance?
TechGenix Sites
|
