Now that VMware vShpere 4 is released, a lot of admins will choose to upgrade. Fortunately, the upgrade process from ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4 isn’t too difficult when using VMware Upgrade Manager. VMGuru.nl put together a quick upgrade guide to step you through the process:

• create an ESX 4.0 upgrade baseline
• select the host to upgrade and attach the baseline to your ESX host or the datacenter.
• scan your host for updates and remediate your entity.

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Technorati : ESX, VMware, vShpere
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Microsoft and Quest Software recently announced a partnership surrounding the VDI space. Quest has many products that extend Terminal Services as well as a Desktop Broker. All these technologies fit quite nicely on top of the Microsoft virtualization stack including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, App-V (SoftGrid), and Terminal Services. Microsoft’s Dai Vu states “our VDI solution with Quest provides customers with a rich virtual desktop experience through Quest vWorkspace; integrated management across existing physical and virtual desktops with Microsoft System Center; and cost-effective virtualization with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.”

Quest has set up a resource site with documents and videos to further explain the offering with Microsoft.

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Technorati : Microsoft, Quest, Terminal Services, VDI, vWorkspace
Del.icio.us : Microsoft, Quest, Terminal Services, VDI, vWorkspace

VMware recently released a case study about how they use hardware virtualization in their internal environment. This case study was later released as a webcast. There is some interesting information gathered from the study including:

• Server consolidation ratios:
  • 10 to 1 for servers
  • 64 to 1 for VDI desktops/li>
• 97% of VMware’s servers are virtualized
• 550 users are using VDI with a Wyse thin client and 24″ monitor
• VMware’s internal mail server infrastructure is virtualized and houses 7800 mailboxes
  • The mail infrastructure is made up of 29 virtual machines running Microsoft Exchange

It will be interesting to see how the release of vShpere 4 impacts these numbers.

Continue to webcast…

Technorati : ESX, VDI, VMware
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Microsoft published an article detailing how they use server virtualization in their internal IT environment. Included in the article is host server configurations, storage configuration, network configuration, high availability, security considerations, and network configurations. Also, Microsoft has several recommended best practices:

• Plan the server virtualization infrastructure carefully. Like any other IT project, the optimal deployment of server virtualization will require tradeoffs between higher availability with increased costs and lower availability. An organization must consider tradeoffs between cost and performance . Microsoft IT has developed two different server virtualization platforms: one for lab and development environments, and one for production environments. Another important consideration is whether to design a short-term solution or a long-term solution. The organization will need to find the balance between over-provisioning and over-engineering, and creating an infrastructure that cannot grow with its needs. Microsoft IT has found that short-term planning tends to result in solutions that have limited scalability, and now is developing an infrastructure that will meet its requirements for the next three to five years.
• Simplify and standardize the platform on which to deploy server virtualization. Microsoft IT has adopted a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 as its operating system for virtualization hosts and plans to use a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2. The virtualization hosts also are dedicated to this one task, so an administrator should install only the software and settings that this role requires.
• Automate and standardize the administration of the virtual server environment. Microsoft IT is planning to deploy several thousand virtual servers over the next few years, and the only way to manage them efficiently is to standardize the deployment and then automate the management tasks as much as possible. This includes:
  • Standardize the virtual machine builds by creating standard templates for different server workloads. Ideally, Microsoft IT wants to create a set of templates for building standard virtual machines for each server workload. For example, by examining the standard Internet Information Services (IIS) server build or the standard Microsoft SQL Server® build, Microsoft IT wants to create a standard virtual machine template for IIS or SQL Server. This will make deploying new virtual servers for each workload much more efficient.
  • Standardize the host and virtual server configuration. For example, Microsoft IT strives to assign the same administrator groups to all host computers, and to assign the same network names on all host computers. Increasingly, Microsoft IT is using scripts and other forms of automation to deploy and manage the host and virtual machines. Automation makes it much easier to ensure that users adhere to server build standards.
  • Implement remote management solutions. One of the important criteria that Microsoft IT uses when choosing hardware and software platforms is the support that is provided for remote management and automation.
  • Explore the option of using self-service provisioning of virtual machines. Microsoft IT has implemented self-service provisioning, which can alleviate the workload for the team that is managing the virtual environment, while increasing the responsiveness to business requirements. Self-service provisioning increases the requirement to make sure that an organization has automated and standardized all virtual machine settings.
  • Implement System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Virtual Machine Manager provides many tools for simplifying the administrative tasks that are required to manage a large virtualization environment. An organization can use Virtual Machine Manager to store server templates and to automate the virtual server deployment to the appropriate host computers. Virtual Machine Manager provides self-service provisioning of virtual machines and automatically places virtual machines on the most suitable host.

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Technorati : Hyper-V, Microsoft, Server Core, Virtual Server, Windows Server 2008
Del.icio.us : Hyper-V, Microsoft, Server Core, Virtual Server, Windows Server 2008

Citrix just released XenServer 5.5 beta to the public. Here are some of the new features of XenServer 5.5:

• Active Directory integration. Specify the AD domain to use for authentication by the pool and use your AD credentials to connect to the pool via XenCenter and ssh. You control which AD users/groups are allowed access.
• Workload balancing. Guest and host performance metrics are used to create star ratings for individual VM placement and balancing recommendations for resource pools to achieve optimal performance.
• LVHD. Fast cloning and snapshots are now supported on all SR types through integration of our software VHD stack and LVM-based Storage Repositories (SRs) - (this used to be only available on NetApp and Dell EqualLogic)
• Snapshot support in XenCenter. Create and manage disk snapshots from within XenCenter. - Previously, you had to use the CLI for snapshot functions.
• StorageLink integration. CLI-only support for a new StorageLink Gateway SR that adds native standards-based support for HP MSA, HP EVA, EMC Clariion, and NetApp storage arrays over iSCSI and Fibre Channel with optional automated initiator/fabric/array management.
• Expanded guest OS support. RHEL 5.3, Debian Lenny, and SLES 11 Linux guests.

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Technorati : , Citrix, XenServer
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VMware recently launched vSphere 4. Gabe Knuth reported live via Twitter during the launch. Now that the launch is over, Gabe has written down some of his thoughts in a detailed article about vSphere. There is some debate on whether this launch is revolutionary or evolutionary. I’ll leave that for you to decide. But, some of the things Gabe points out are:

• vSphere is set for release in Q2 2009
• VMware claims “…there is no reason that you cannot virtualize any of your servers/applications.”
• vSphere 4 is considerably more capable and more efficient with power, storage, and resources
• Private clouds built with vShpere can be replicated to an off-site cloud

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Technorati : Could Computing, SaaS, VMware, vSphere
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VMware officially launched vSphere 4 today. VMware vSphere™ 4, the next generation of products from VMware®, is poised to transform datacenters into efficient, shared, resilient cloud infrastructures and enable IT organizations to deliver the next generation of flexible and reliable IT services. VMware is hosting a webcast on April 23rd to give more details about vSphere. The webcast will give an overview of how VMware vSphere dramatically reduces capital and operating costs and increases control over delivery of IT services while preserving the flexibility to choose between any type of OS, application and hardware, hosted in-house or using external resources.

Register for the webcast…

Technorati : Cloud Computing, VDI, VMware, vSphere
Del.icio.us : Cloud Computing, VDI, VMware, vSphere

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun. So, what does this have to do with vitalization? The answer is there may be a play to enter the desktop virtualization space here according to Brian Madden’s analysis. As it turns out, Sun has quite a few products that make a VDI offering feasible. Oracle on the other hand has nothing in this space (which I guess one wouldn’t think of Oracle when thinking VDI anyway). So, with Oracle spending $7.4 billion (or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt) on Sun, we may see a push to compete with VMware/Microsoft/Citrix.

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Technorati : Desktop Virtualization, Oracle, Sun, Sun Ray, VDI
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Want to dive deeper into Microsoft Hyper-V? No problem - Ashwin has posted a list of consolidated Hyper-V resources including Whitepapers, Articles, Videos/Webcasts, PowerPoint presentations, and more. Not only are Hyper-V resources posted, but resources surrounding Hyper-V like System Center, App-V, PowerShell, etc. are posted as well. You should be able to find just about anything you are looking for related to Hyper-V here.

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Technorati : Articles, Hyper-V, Videos, Whitepapers
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HP recently released a sizing and configuration tool for Microsoft Hyper-V. The Hyper-V sizing and configuration tool provides a quick and consistent methodology to determine a “best-fit” server configuration for your virtualized Hyper-V environment. This tool enables you to quickly compare different solution configurations and obtain a highly detailed, customizable server and storage solution complete with a detailed bill of materials.

When running the tool, you specify performance and configuration data for each machine you want to convert to Hyper-V. The tool then takes this information and recommends a solution including number of servers, server specifications, and estimated cost.

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Technorati : Configuration, HP, Microsoft Hyer-V, Sizing
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