Tag: VMware

HP CloudStart

HP has launched a new “cloud” bundle.  It appears to be based on ProLiant and Integrity blade servers to allow you to build a private cloud.  It comes with the usual options such as Virtual Connects with Flex-10.  The bundle can include VMware or Hyper-V for ProLiants.  HPs own system will be used for Integrity servers.  So far, it just sounds like any old server/storage kit.  Where’s the cloud?  That comes with a software product called Cloud Service Automation.  There’s little info on it that I can find quickly.  I guess it’s some virtualization agnostic job engine for automating the deployment of resources, etc.

The suite is available in Asia and will slowly be made available around the rest of the world by the end of the year.

Project Kensho OVF

One fo the reasons I love virtual machines is because they are mobile.  Most of them (except RDM and passthrough disks) are just files, making them easy to migrate, copy, export, and import.  But this is lmiited to the same virtualisation platform.  Changing virtualisation platforms requires a tricky V2V process that vendors have made one-way.

Citrix has unveiled a solution with the codename of Project Kensho.  It leverages the Open Virtualisation Format (OVF) standard  (developed by  Citrix, VMware, Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft) to allow the movement of virtual machines from on virtualisation platform to another.  You can think of OVF as playing the same role as XML in business integration solutions: it’s a stepping stone.

The solution is expected to ship by Citrix in September.

What does this mean to you?  OVF gives us a standard way to V2V virtual machines between many virtualisation platforms, depending on the support offered by those platforms for OVF.

According to wikipedia:

“VirtualBox supports OVF since version 2.2.0 (April 2009).  AbiCloud Cloud Computing Platform Appliance Manager component now supports OVF since version 0.7.0 (June 2009).  Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization supports OVF since version 2.2.  VMware supports OVF in ESX 3.5, vSphere 4, Workstation 6.5, and other products using their OVF tool.  OVF version 1.1 is supported in Workstation 7.1 and VMware Player 3.1 (May 2010).  IBM supports OVF format VM images on the POWER server platform for the AIX operating system and Linux, and for Linux on z/VM on the mainframe using IBM Systems Director (via VMControl Enterprise Edition plug-in, a cross-platform VM manager”.

MS executives have confirmed in the past that VMM v.Next will include added support for XenServer management.  We know MS and Citrix are veery tight.  MS staff recommened XenDesktop as a VDI solution and Citrix are currently recommending Hyper-V for virtualisation.  It won’t surprise me to see OVF turning up in Hyper-V v.Next and VMM v.Next.  This would offer huge fleixibility:

  • Private cloud made up of many platforms (as found in medium/large organisations)
  • Switching seamlessly between public cloud (would require some form of broker application – there’s a startup opportunity!)
  • Migrating VM’s seamlessly between any virtualisation platform in public/private clouds, e.g. develop in house on Hyper-V with VSS 2010 Lab Management and upload the final VM via OVF to the cloud service provider of choice, no matter what virtualisation solution they use.

It sounds like Nirvana!  I’m sure that there will be niggling things that will cause problems:

  • Licensing: moving a VM with a MSDN license key up to a cloud environment that requires SPLA provided by the hoster will be a mess.
  • Technical: Build a VM with 8 vCPUs on VMware and migrate it to Hyper-V and you’ll lose 4 vCPUs.
  • Technical: VM additions or itnegration components are virtualisation platform specific.  Something will need to be done to be able to add/remove them seamlessly.

It’s going to take a while, and it might even be impossible for business reasons, to get to an automated, seamless solution.  But OVF will give us something where, with a tiny amount of admin work (product key and addition removal), we will have a format to make virtual machines even more mobile.

Thoughts on Hyper-V VDI Hosts

Lots of out-loud thinking here ….

If you put a gun to my head right now and asked me to pick a hardware virtualization solution for VDI then I honestly wouldn’t pick Hyper-V.  I probably would go with VMware.  Don’t get me wrong; I still prefer Hyper-V/System Center for server virtual machines.  So why VMware for VDI?

  • I can manage it using Virtual Machine Manager.
  • It does have advanced memory management features.

The latter is important because I feel that:

  • Memory is a big expense for host servers and there’s a big difference between PC memory cost and data centre memory cost.
  • Memory is usually the bottleneck on low end virtualisation.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will change my mind when it RTM’s thanks to Dynamic Memory.  What will be my decision making process then, because we do have options.  You can always switch to Hyper-V then if you have to push out VMware (free ESXi) hosts now.

Will I want to make the VDI virtual machines highly available?

Some organizations will want to keep their desktop environment up and running, despite any scheduled or emergency maintenance.  This will obviously cost more money because it requires some form of shared storage.  Thin provisioning and deduplication will help reduce the costs here.  But maybe a software solution like that from DataCore is an option?

Clustering will also be able to balance workloads thanks to OpsMgr and VMM.

Standalone hosts will use cheaper internal disk and won’t require redundant hosts.

Will I have a dedicated VDI Cluster?

My thinking is that VDI should be isolated from server virtualisation.  This will increase hardware costs slightly.  But maybe I can reduce this by using more economic hardware.  Let’s face it, VDI virtual machines won’t have the same requirements as SQL VM’s.

What sort of disk will my VDI machines be placed on?

OK, let me start an argument here.  Let’s start with RAID:  I’m going RAID5.  My VDI machines will experience next to no change.  Data storage will be on file servers using file shares and redirected folders.  RAID5 is probably 40% cheaper than RAID10.

However, if I am dynamically deploying new VM’s very frequently (for business reasons) then RAID10 is probably required.  It’ll probably make new VM deployment up to 75% faster.

What type of disk?  I think SATA will do the trick.  It’s big and cheap.  I’m not so sure that I really would need 15K disk speeds.  Remember, the data is being stored on a file server.  I’m willing to change my mind on this one, though.

The host operating system & edition?

OK: if the Hyper-V host servers are part of the server virtual machine cluster then I go with Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition, purely because I have to (for server VM Live Migration).

However, I prefer having a dedicated VDI cluster.  Here’s the tricky bit.  I don’t like Server Core (no GUI) because it’s a nightmare for hardware management and troubleshooting.  If I had to push a clustered host out now for VDI then I would use Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition.  That will give me a GUI, Failover Clustering, and Live Migration.

If I had time, then I would prepare an environment where I could deploy Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 from something like WDS or MDT.  That would allow me to treat a clustered host as a commodity.  If the OS breaks, then 5 minutes of troubleshooting, followed by a rebuild with no questions asked (use VMM maintenance mode to flush VM’s off if necessary).

Standalone hosts are trickier.  You cannot turn them into a commodity because of all the VM’s on them.  There’s a big time investment there.  They lose points for this.  This might force me into troubleshooting an OS (parent partition) issue if it happens (to be honest, I cannot think of one that I’ve had in 2 years of running Hyper-V).  That means a GUI.  If my host has 32GB or less of RAM then I choose W2008 R2 Standard Edition.  Otherwise I go with W2008 R2 Enterprise Edition.

I warned you that I was thinking out loud.  It’s not all that structured but this might help you ask some questions if thinking about what to do for VDI hosts.

Writing of Mastering Hyper-V Deployment Nearing Completion

I’ve just submitted the last of my content to Sybex for Mastering Hyper-V Deployment.  It’s been a long and tough road.  Early work started on the project in February.  I’ve been doing my normal day job and trying to squeeze in chapters in a rush schedule.  I’ve been working during the morning commute, at lunchtime, the evening commute, into the night, and at weekends.  My co-author is close to finishing his chapters on schedule.  I’ve been doing the first of the reviews as we’ve moved through the project.  I’m probably already a third of the way through the copy edits (2nd set of reviews).  After that comes the final set (I hope) of layout edits.  And then off it goes to the printers for release in November.  I can’t wait!

Are VMware Getting Desperate?

I just received this spam email from a VMware sales rep.  It was sent to a mail list <undisclosed recipients>:

“I tried to call you this morning in relation to your interest in our virtualization technology. I just wanted to know if you have any virtualization projects at present, or planned for the future. In Vmware we can help in terms of technical assistance, commercial advice, hardware setup etc. if required.

Please drop me a line when you have a moment and don’t hesitate to ask any questions that may be helpful to your objectives”.

So, VMware is cold calling people and then emailing them to drum up business.  Hmmm ….

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PubForum: Virtualization Buzz – Comparing Products

This is the first session I am attending this morning.  It is being presented by Saša Mašić.

3 comments for ESX from the audience:

  • OS Support
  • Administration tools easier to use
  • Available appliances from third parties

Some incorrect comments from the audience about backup at the host level.  Claims that only VMware supports this with third party products.  Untrue.  You most certainly can do this with Hyper-V.  It’s even better because it has cascading VSS from the host/file system, into the VM and then into the VM’s VSS writers.  I make a brief response/correction but leave it there … I smell fanboyism and am not here for an argument.

The speaker rarely gets customer requests for XenServer implementations and asks the audience about their experiences.  It appears that it tends to be restricted to organizations who are heavily invested in Citrix licensing.

1 person has done Xen in production – using Essentials for management.  The conversation has switched to management.

Only a few of us (including me) think Storage VMotion is a valuable feature.

It turns out that I am the only Hyper-V user in the audience.  I’m not very surprised – PubForum folks are very ahead of the curve and they would have been invested in VMware a long time ago.

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My Hyper-V Presentations at PubForum Frankfurt 2010

I’m exhausted.  I’ve done 2 presentations this week at Pubforum, one after the other with a quick break.  3 hours of me talking.  Phew – those poor people who had to listen to me!

I’ve posted both presentations.  As usual, they are only my cue cards.  Most of the content is me speaking or answering questions.

This is the 2 hour class that I presented:

And this is the one hour class that I presented:
 
 
 

The Lab for the Latest Chapter

The Mastering Hyper-V Deployment book covers enterprise Hyper-V deployments (and we have stuff for the smaller guys too).  That means dealing with all the possible environments that you can encounter.  Building the lab for that in my house was a challenge – I don’t have an enterprise budget so I cannot splurge on servers as required.  Appropriately, virtualization is being leaned on quite heavily.

Here’s what the lab looks like:

image

At the heart of it all is my Hyper-V laptop.  I’m running a different eSATA drive caddy than my usual demo one for these labs.  The virtual machines won’t fit on it so they are on a large USB 2.0 drive which I had sitting on a shelf.  There is a mix of Wired and Wifi networking.  My house isn’t CAT wired and I use wifi.  The VMware ESX host won’t do wifi so I’m using wired networking between it and the Hyper-V host where vCenter and VMM virtual machines are running.  The Hyper-V laptop is also the Hyper-V server in the labs.

Everything works pretty well.  The only downside is moving large files across wifi which is very slow… but that gives me a chance to take a break or get some sleep at night.

I work from my writing laptop.  From there I can RDP onto any of the Windows machines that are on the wifi network (no routing enabled on the Hyper-V host) or alternatively use Hyper-V/VMM/vCenter connections to get on any of the VM’s.  I can grab my screen shots, save them on the laptop and write away until the wee hours of the morning.

So … What Exactly Am I Writing?

You can tell I’m pretty busy because my usual high rate of blogging has dropped significantly in the last month.  Apologies for that.  The blogging has become writing.  I am involved in 2 book projects.  I’ve just seen on Twitter that details on one of those has just gone public.  I actually just saw the tweet seconds after I sent off a chapter I just finished.

Earlier this year I proposed an idea for a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtualization book to Wiley Publishing/Sybex.  It took quite a bit of work to tune the proposal.  It requires an understanding of the subject matter, the audience, and ideas on how it can be marketed.  You could think that a brief overview on the subject matter would be enough.  But no, the publisher needs much more detail.  You pretty much have to provide a detailed project plan for every heading (3 levels deep), page estimates and time estimates.  The proposal evolved over the weeks and eventually went through a couple of reviews.  I then got the news: an ISBN number was assigned and contracts were on the way – I was going to be a lead author on my own book for the very first time!!!!  I did get drunk that night – I think.

The deadlines are very tight.  I was considering seeking help.  My contact in Sybex advised that I outsource some of the chapters to a co-author.  I knew the person I wanted to bring in.  Wilbour Craddock is a technical specialist in the partner team with Microsoft Ireland.  Will (Irish folks will know him as the crazy Canadian who is always wearing shorts) is also a former SBS MVP.  His job has him spending a lot of time working with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center, making him a perfect co-author to work with on this project.  Thankfully, Will agreed to hop on board the crazy train of book writing.

Another MVP (I won’t say who yet because I don’t have permission to name him) is the technical editor under the employment of Sybex.  He’s an ace at this stuff and will make sure everything we do is up to scratch.

The book is called Mastering Hyper-V Deployment.  I won’t go into the details of it yet.  But you can bet that it is based on our collective experience and knowledge of the product set involved in a Hyper-V deployment.  I saw a gap in the market and figured I could probably write (or a good chunk of) the book to fill it.  The estimated release is in November 19th of this year.  That means we need to finish writing in July.  It has started to appear on some sites for pre-order.

I’m two chapters in a the moment.  I’m really pushing my hardware at home to its limits and am “this close” to buying more.  Will is ahead of schedule and has one chapter nearly done.

I am also working on another book project as a co-author for a friend’s book.  It’s another on-subject book that is turning out to be a good experience.  I’ve one chapter done on that and am 50% through the other.  I’ll talk more about that when the time is right.

As you may have read in my previous posts about my chapters in Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2, the original draft edit is just the very start of the process.  There are numerous technical, language, layout and copy edits for each and every chapter.  It’s a lot of work but it’s a great experience.  And I can’t wait for the buzz to see my name as the lead author of a book in a book shop.  I had to really try when I saw Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2 in Barnes & Noble over in Belleview WA back in February.