June 2009

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VMworld 2009 Spouse Activities

Friday, June 19, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 6 comments

As many of you probably already know, my wife Crystal is in the midst of planning another round of activities for spouses attending VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, CA, later this year. Last year in Las Vegas, Crystal was joined by a number of other ladies for some great activities that included a tour of the Grand Canyon and a visit to the Hoover Dam. Their itinerary was much more packed with fun and enjoyment than mine, that’s for sure!

Looking to replicate her success from last year, Crystal wanted me to outline the general plan for this year:

  • One day will be spent on a tour in Napa/Wine Country.
  • One day will be filled with sightseeing (Coit Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square, Bay Bridge) and shopping.
  • One day will be organized around a tour of Alcatraz.

Similar to last year, Crystal is investigating several options for an all-in-one pass like the Las Vegas PowerPass. Early recommendations include the Go San Francisco Card and the San Francisco City Pass; these will get you transportation around the city and entrance to a number of attractions and activities. She’ll make a final recommendation on which of these cards to purchase very soon.

Also like last year, the purpose in organizing the spouse activities isn’t necessarily to make all spouses attending participate in the same activities, but rather to connect spouses with others. So, if you’re not on board with the activities that Crystal has tenatively planned, that’s OK—come to the “Get to Know You” brunch on Tuesday and see if there are others who may be interested in the same activities as you. Crystal certainly expects that some spouses may be interested in activities other than what she has planned—and that’s completely OK.

However, Crystal is doing a few things differently this year than last year. First off, she’s going to need to know well in advance who is planning on attending, as Alcatraz tours sell out weeks in advance. Second, she’ll need to know who’s planning on bringing kids, so that she can plan accordingly. Third, rather than using the comments here on the site as the primary way of communicating, she’s established a dedicated e-mail account for all communications. If you are interested in participating, send an e-mail to vmworldspouses@gmail.com and let her know. Posting a comment to this article won’t really help you; you need to contact Crystal via e-mail.

So, once again, if you are interested, be sure to contact Crystal via e-mail at the e-mail address listed above. She will include you on all the communications from that point forward. Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

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TA2259 Ask the Experts at VMworld 2009

Friday, June 12, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Shamelessly copied (mostly) from both Yellow Bricks and VMwareTips.com. I didn’t think either Duncan or Rick would mind very much.

I am proud to officially announce the VMworld 2009 – Ask the Experts Panel Session. This session will feature virtualization experts Rick Scherer, Scott Lowe, Duncan Epping, Chad Sakac and Tom Howarth answering your questions on virtual infrastructure design. In the next week or so we will be posting sections on our blog sites for you to submit questions for review during the session, so stay tuned!

Session ID: TA2259
Session Title: Ask the Experts – Virtualization Design
Track: Technology and Architecture
Abstract: Are you running a virtual environment and experiencing some problems? Are you planning an upgrade from VI3 to vSphere 4 and have some questions about the infrastructure architecture changes required? Do you have a virtual infrastructure design and want it blessed by the experts? Come join us for a one hour panel session where your questions are the topic of discussion! Join the Virtualization Experts: Rick Scherer from VMwareTips.com; Scott Lowe, author of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and blog.scottlowe.org; Duncan Epping from VMware and author of Yellow Bricks; Chad Sakac from EMC and author of Virtual Geek; and Tom Howarth from planetVM.net as they answer your questions on virtualization design.

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Xeon 5500 CPUs and EVC in vSphere

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 in Gestalt, Virtualization by slowe | 12 comments

In early April when I traveled to Houston to meet with HP about the ProLiant G6 servers—a trip which resulted in this blog post—I got into a discussion with representatives from HP and Intel regarding the Xeon 5500 CPUs and Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC).

As you probably already know, EVC builds upon hardware extensions provided by AMD and Intel (AMD in the AMD-V extensions, Intel in FlexMigration) that allows a CPU to “alter” its personality or identification so as to allow live migration (i.e., VMotion) between CPUs that would otherwise be incompatible. Without these hardware extensions, you would have had to resort to unsupported CPU masking, which I’ve also discussed (here’s a summary of articles I’ve written on the topic). With the hardware extensions and EVC, the hypervisor can now take over the process of creating custom CPU masks that take all CPUs in the cluster down to the “lowest common denominator” (i.e., EVC masks off all features except those that are common to all CPUs in the cluster).

Ed Haletky provides a good overview of VMware EVC, in case you need more information.

Anyway, that’s enough background information. When I was in Houston, HP and Intel were discussing all the great new features that were available in the Xeon 5500. Knowing that introducing new CPU features generally meant introducing VMotion boundaries (like I describe here), I asked this question: “What happens to all these new features when you put a Xeon 5500-based server into a cluster with older servers and use EVC to guarantee VMotion compatibility?” My thought was that EVC would downgrade the Xeon 5500 by masking new features, thus negating many of the performance benefits offered by the Xeon 5500.

Obviously, the architectural changes introduced by the Xeon 5500 (specifically, Quick Path Interconnect) wouldn’t be affected, but what about Extended Page Tables (EPT)? Or VMDq? Or FlexPriority?

There were folks there from HP and Intel, and they were all stumped. They had to call in a few experts, but finally we got an answer from an Intel engineer on the VMware Alliance Team who was able to provide more information:

… The only features that would be disabled are some new instructions that are accessible to end-user applications living in Ring 3. For NHM-EP those would be the SSE4.2 and SSE4.1 instructions… No other features would be compromised. All the features of NHM-EP that provide performance and are under the direct control of the OS or hypervisor in Ring 0 will be fully usable: EPT, HT, NuMA, FlexPriority, VMDq, VT-x, VT-d, etc.

So there you have it: you can mix Xeon 5500-based servers in with older servers running previous generations of Xeon CPUs without sacrificing the performance benefits gained from the Xeon 5500.

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Articles on CPU Masking in VMware Environments

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | No comments

Over the last few years I’ve written a few articles on CPU masking within VMware environments. To make them easier to locate I wanted to bring them all together here. So, here are the links to these articles:

Sneaking Around VMotion Limitations
VMotion Compatibility
More on CPU Masking

Keep in mind that almost all forms of CPU masking are unsupported by VMware, so use this information at your own risk. However, in non-production environments that don’t support Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC), this may be your only option.

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Hyper9 VMM Released

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 3 comments

In case you hadn’t already heard elsewhere, our good friends at Hyper9 have released the final version of Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM). VMM works with VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere 4, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5. Users can use VMM with just about any mobile device, including the Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android, and Windows Mobile devices.

VMM is available for users to manage up to five virtual machines for free. Hyper9 is also offering special introductory pricing of only $199 to manage up to 1,000 virtual machines.

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vWire Launched

Monday, June 8, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

Tripwire is launching vWire, a new virtualization management tool that is designed to integrate both monitoring and automation to prevent and resolve problems before they cause downtime.

vWire is built around three key principles: Monitor, Correlate, Act:

  • vWire will monitor the health of the virtual infrastructure, including the same level of visibility available in the physical environment.
  • vWire will correlate change and configuration data with event data and, in a later release, performance data.
  • Finally, vWire gives administrators the ability to act upon events and objects with automation tools like PowerShell.

vWire integrates into the Virtual Infrastructure Client (and the vSphere Client, I would guess) for ease of use.

In addition, Tripwire is also launching the vWire Community, where vWire users can share information, tools, and resources.

More information about vWire is available from the vWire web site, the vWire product page on Tripwire.com, and the vWire Community.

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Adaptec Support in vSphere Revoked?

Friday, June 5, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 12 comments

It would appear (I have not yet been able to reliably verify this information) that VMware has removed support for the Adaptec aacraid driver from VMware vSphere. The driver was apparently listed on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) as supported at release, but shortly after release support was pulled. Apparently the aacraid driver is in such bad shape with vSphere that you can’t even install vSphere on systems using the aacraid driver. Even more mysterious is the fact that there is no documentation about this issue one way or the other, so it’s quite difficult to really verify where support stands. As of the last time I checked (a couple of days ago), the aacraid driver was still not listed on the HCL.

This primarily impacts white-box owners; users of systems from major vendors like HP, IBM, and Dell will most likely not be affected.

If anyone has any additional information on this matter, please speak up in the comments.

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The Return of Virtualization Short Takes

Friday, June 5, 2009 in Networking, Virtualization by slowe | 4 comments

My irregular “Virtualization Short Takes” series was put on hold some time ago after I started work on Mastering VMware vSphere 4. Now that work on the book is starting to wind down just a bit, I thought it would be a good time to try to resurrect the series. So, without further delay, welcome to the return of Virtualization Short Takes!

  • Trigged by a series of blog posts by Arnim van Lieshout on VMware ESX memory management (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), Scott Herold decided to join the fray with this blog post. Both Scott’s post and Arnim’s posts are good reading for anyone interested in getting a better idea of what’s happening “under the covers,” so to speak, when it comes to memory management.
  • Perhaps prompted by my post on upgrading virtual machines in vSphere, a lot of information has come to light regarding the PVSCSI driver. Some are advocating changes to best practices to incorporate the PVSCSI driver, but others seem to be questioning the need to move away from a single drive model (a necessary move since PVSCSI isn’t supported for boot drives). Personally, I just want VMware to support the PVSCSI driver on boot drives.
  • Eric Sloof confirms for us that name resolution is still the Achilles’ Heel of VMware High Availability in VMware vSphere.
  • I don’t remember where I picked up this VMware KB article, but it sure would be handy if VMware could provide more information about the issue, such as what CPUs might be affected. Otherwise, you’re kind of shooting in the dark, aren’t you?
  • Upgraded to VMware vSphere, and now having issues with VMotion? Thanks to VMwarewolf, this pair of VMware KB articles (here and here) might help resolve the issue.
  • Chad Sakac of EMC and co-conspirator for the storage portion of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (pre-order here), has been putting out some very good posts:
  • Leo Raikhman pointed me to this article about IRQ sharing between the Service Console and the VMkernel. I think I’ve mentioned this issue here before…but after over a 1,000 posts, it’s hard to keep track of everything. In any case, there’s also a VMware KB article on the matter.
  • And speaking of Leo, he’s been putting up some great information too: notes on migrating Ubuntu servers (in turn derived from these notes by Cody at ProfessionalVMware), a rant on CDP support in ESX, and a note about the EMC Storage Viewer plugin. Good work, Leo!
  • If you are interested in a run-down of the storage-related changes in VMware vSphere, check out this post from Stephen Foskett.
  • Rick Vanover notes a few changes to the VMFS version numbers here. The key takeaway here is that no action is required, but you may want to plan some additional tasks after your vSphere upgrade to optimize the environment.
  • In this article, Chris Mellor muses on how far VMware may go in assimilating features provided by their technology partners. This is a common question; many people see the addition of thin provisioning within vSphere as a direct affront to array vendors like NetApp, 3PAR, and others who also provide thin provisioning features in the array themselves. I’m not so convinced that this feature is as competitive as it is complementary. Perhaps I’ll write a post about that in the near future…oh wait, never mind, Chad already did!
  • File this one away in the “VMware-becoming-more-like-Microsoft” folder.
  • My occasional mentions of Crossbow prompted a full-on explanation of the Open Networking functionality of OpenSolaris by a Sun engineer. It kind of looks like SR-IOV and VMDirectPath to me…sort of. Don’t you think?
  • If you are thinking about how to incorporate HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 into your VMware environment, Frank Denneman has some thoughts to share. I’ve been told by HP that I have some equipment en route with which I can do some additional testing (the results of which will be published here, of course!), but I haven’t seen it yet.

    • OK, I guess that should just about do it. Thanks for reading, and please share your thoughts, interesting links, or (pertinent) rants in the comments.

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    Spouse Activities for VMworld 2009

    Thursday, June 4, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | No comments

    Via Twitter, a number of people have tagged my wife, Crystal, with questions regarding spouse activities for VMworld 2009. As some of you may already know, she successfully organized some activities last year in Las Vegas for a group of about 25 ladies. By all accounts, they had a fabulous time—went to the Hoover Dam, drove to the Grand Canyon, and visited lots of sights there in Vegas!

    <aside>Given the success of last year’s activities, maybe VMware will hook Crystal up with a free pass to the VMworld party this year…you know, as a token of appreciation (hint, hint).</aside>

    Anyway, she is planning on organizing a set of activities during VMworld 2009 in San Francisco this year. If you are interested in participating in activities, stay tuned to this site (you can always subscribe to the RSS feed) or follow me or Crystal on Twitter for more detail. As soon as more information is available, she or I (or both of us) will be sure to let everyone know.

    If you are interested in helping, I know that Crystal would love to have your help. You can add a comment to this post or contact Crystal via Twitter, whichever works best for you.

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    VMware vSphere Review in the Works

    Thursday, June 4, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 4 comments

    Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll start posting a multi-part review of VMware vSphere 4.

    Because this is such a large product with so many different features, I’ve decided to break it into three or four sections. As the different parts go live on the site, the list below will be modified to link to the appropriate part of the review:

    1. Overview and installation
    2. Networking and storage
    3. High availability and business continuity
    4. Management and operations
    5. Summary and wrap-up

    If there is anything in particular you’d like to see covered in the review, please note your interests by posting a comment to this article. I’ll do my best to accommodate all requests, but I can’t make any guarantees.

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