VirtualizationAdmin.com Monthly Newsletter of February 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. 10 Hot Features to look for in VMware's next release

Thank you for reading issue #9 of our VirtualizationAdmin.com newsletter! Last month we covered how Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Beta offers new virtualization improvements.

This month, the week of VMworld Europe 2009, let us talk about what to look for in VMware's next release. Keep in mind that many things are still covered under non-disclosure agreements. However, there are many major features that have been publicly released by VMware and, thus, we are all free to talk about them.  In fact, while spending time researching this newsletter topic, I found that there are so many new features already announced on VMware's website for VMware's next version, that I do not have time to discuss them all here. I hope that you will take some time to click on the VMware links in the features list below to learn more.

I have limited my discussion here to the 10 most exciting new features to look for in VMware's next release:

1. VMware's Infrastructure Suite has been renamed and totally restructured. VDC-OS restructuring of product line including
   • vCenter (renamed from Virtual Center)
   • Application vServices - including VMsafe, Fault Tolerance, Data Recovery, and scalability improvements (all discussed below)
   • Cloud vServices - VMware's new Cloud initiative where you can share the load of your virtual infrastructure with service providers.
   • and Infrastructure vServices - including the distributed Switch, Network vMotion, Thin provisioning, linked clones, and vStorage APIs for third party developers
     
     Let us look at some more specifics...
     
     
2. VMware's new Fault Tolerance is VMHA but where the redundant machine is already running. For a demo, watch the Fault Tolerance Video Demo.
3. vNetwork Distributed Switch is a shared switch among all ESX hosts. With this new feature, you can add the Cisco Nexus 1000v. For more information, watch the vNetwork Distributed Switch Video Demo.
4. VMwares VDM & VDI now in a package called VMware View. Included in this package are VMware Composer and ThinApp.
5. VMware acquired B-Hive's Application Performance management system. It is now integrated into vCenter and now called AppSpeed.
6. Data Recovery is VMware's new backup and recovery application for your VMware Infrastructure. It backs up and restores your virtual guest machines and fully integrates into vCenter.
7. VMsafe will soon be announced and it is a framework and a set of APIs so that 3rd party vendors can create security applications for VMware Infrastructure.
8. vCenter will now offer:
   • Monitoring and automated remediation of VMware ESX physical host configurations for compliance with standard baseline host profiles
   • Automated configuration tracking and compliance enforcement for every virtual configuration element with VMware vCenter ConfigControl
   • Drag-and-drop development of customized workflows to automate operational tasks with VMware vCenter Orchestrator
   • Capacity analysis and planning to ensure optimal sizing of virtual machines, clusters and even entire datacenters with VMware vCenter CapacityIQ
   • Automated tracking and chargeback for cost of IT services with VMware vCenter Chargeback
9. ESX Scalability Improvements
   • Virtual machines increase in size from 4 way to 8 way SMP, from 64 GB to 256GB of RAM, enabling even the largest, most resource intensive applications to run on VMware.
   • Hot add of virtual CPU, memory and network devices enables applications to scale seamlessly without disruption or downtime
10. RUMOR - while not officially announced yet from VMware, a number of blogs have rumored that VMware ESX will be renamed vSphere (see blog posts like Get Used to vSphere)

Again, those are just 10 of the most exciting features that have already been released. Stay tuned to VirtualizationAdmin.com for more detail on these features and more exciting announcements from VMworld Europe!

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

• How to Configure VMware High Availability (VMHA)
  
• Installing Windows Hyper-V Server 2008
  
• New VMware ESXi Server - Configuration Checklist
  
• Hyper-V and Legacy Applications (Part 1)
  
• OS Virtualization in Practice (Part 1)
  

4. KB Articles of the Month

• VMware KB: Data Security Best Practices - SSL keys for communicating with Virtual Center and other applications
  
• VMware KB: Deployment of a fenced configuration fails with Directory not found error
  
• VMware KB: USB Keyboard Does Not Work When Connected to a Rear Port of Dell PowerEdge 2950 Server
  
• VMware KB: Conversion fails when source or destination do not support large files
  
• Microsoft KB: Description of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Management Tools update for the release version of Hyper-V
  
• Microsoft KB: A Hyper-V update is available to increase the number of logical processors and virtual machines on a Windows Server 2008 x64-based computer
  
• Microsoft KB: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VSS writer is not used during a backup job because of corrupted or invalid virtual machine configuration files
  

5. Virtualization Admin Tip of the Month

Tripwire, well-known security application vendor, has launched a new website called vWire for their two free virtualization products - OpsCheck and ConfigCheck. Both the new website and OpsCheck are brand new!

I covered the detail of my experience with ConfigCheck in my article - Assessing VMware ESX server security with TripWire ConfigCheck. As you would read in that article, ConfigCheck is a free utility used to validate the security of VMware ESX Servers.

OpsCheck is used to optimize your vMotion configuration in your VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

I can not get enough of free utilities for VMware and I encourage you to try out both of them out for yourself!

6. Helpful Links

• Get the latest news from VMworld Europe 2009 at the VMworld Europe Networking Site
• VMware's Planet V12n Virtualization Blog Aggregator
• VMwareVideos.com - videos only related to VMware
• VMware Free Virtualization Webcasts
• Petri IT Knowledgebase - Virtualization Articles
• VM Monitor free performance monitor for VMware ESX
• 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

I just installed VMware ESXi Server, what do I need to configure?

Answer

In my recent article VMware ESXi Server - Configuration Checklist I covered exactly what needs to be configured during and after the installation of your new ESXi Server.

Essentially you need to:

1. Installation
   a. Configure the root password
   b. Configure a static IP address and DNS settings
   c. Configure a hostname on the server
   d. Test the management network
   e. Create a DNS alias for the new host on your DNS server
2. VI Client Configuration
   a. Add it to vCenter
   b. Configure Licensing
   c. Connect it to a SAN if needed
   d. Configure and start NTP
   e. Consider Security

ESXi is actually very easy to configure and add to your network. Even better, ESXi is an enterprise-grade virtualization hypervisor that is completely free!

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