Microsoft

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Virtualization Short Take #35

Thursday, February 18, 2010 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

It’s that time again: time for another Virtualization Short Take! Here’s a collection of links, articles, posts, and other tidbits that I’ve found interesting, informative, or useful over the last few weeks. I hope that you find something useful as well!

  • Tom Howarth has been spending some time with Microsoft’s App-V application virtualization solution; he’s written a three-part series (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Part 1 discusses domain and certificate setup, Part 2 centers around policies and GPO settings, and Part 3 covers the client-side setup for App-V. While Tom’s overview is extremely helpful, I don’t recall seeing any thoughts on App-V as a product. Tom, did you like it? Not like it? What was good or bad about it? It would be great to have a post that brings this sort of information together.
  • Interested in getting a better feel for the communications that occur between an ESX/ESXi host and vCenter Server? This post discusses decoding SSL traffic with Wireshark so that you can see what’s happening.
  • Jeremy Waldrop of Varrow has a good “getting started” post on using vCenter Server’s storage alarms. If you’re looking for an introductory piece, this is a good place to start.
  • If you’re using Hyper-V and have VMs that are generating lots of network traffic, this post from the Windows Server Performance Team discussing increasing the VMBus buffer size is probably worth a look for you.
  • And while I’m mentioning Hyper-V, Ben Armstrong aka Virtual PC Guy discusses an RDP ActiveX control that provides RDP connectivity to a VM (not RDP connectivity to the guest OS, which is distinct and separate). I’ve never been a huge fan of ActiveX controls, but this could be useful in certain environments.
  • Is defragmentation of VMs a good thing? Scott Drummonds asks the same question in this blog post. My only comment: avoid defragmentation with thin provisioned disks (array-level or hypervisor-level thin provisioning).
  • Of course, Scott Drummonds also had a flurry of very useful posts over the last few weeks: missing Perfmon counters, inaccuracy of guest performance counters, and Las Vegas taxi rates. (The Las Vegas taxi post actually helped me save some money when headed to the airport after PEX. Your mileage may vary—pun intended.)
  • Eric Sloof’s home-grown tests of running linked clones on an SSD aren’t definitive, but they definitely back up the value that has been seen with the deployment of EFDs (Enterprise Flash Drives) in virtualized environments.
  • This PowerShell script will show you the logged-in user for a given VMware View desktop. Handy!
  • Readers seeking more information on guest OS alignment should read this article by Jeff Muir. While the focus of the article is on VHD and NTFS alignment, the underlying principles are also applicable to VMDK files in VMware environments.
  • Frank Denneman, VCDX 29, has had a few good posts recently. He had a post that discusses the use of local storage for VM swap; this post was then parlayed into a greater discussion on understanding the impact of design decisions. It’s a pretty fitting discussion given the timing around all the VCDX defense panels at Partner Exchange and Frank’s own elevation to the VCDX priesthood. Frank’s article on VM sizing and NUMA was also a great read. Keep up the good work, Frank! (And I’m still waiting to see all the info about memory reservations you promised me…)
  • Jason Boche recently highlighted his adventures in using Round Robin multipathing with his EMC Celerra. One key takeaway is that he had to reboot the ESX/ESXi host after changing the SATP, so keep that in mind. There is also a very specific CLARiiON configuration that needs to be set: the Failover Mode needs to be set to 4.
  • Jonathan Medd provides some great information on users who might be new to vCenter Update Manager in this article.
  • If you are planning on virtualizing any SQL Server systems, be sure to check out this list of best practices for SQL Server, written by Scott Drummonds. The document is a bit old (December 2008), but the recommendations are still valid.
  • It appears that VMware has updated this KB article recommending the use of the LSI Logic vSCSI controller for low I/O environments. I’m glad to see VMware has added more information and clarification; the previous version of the article was a bit spartan, to say the least.
  • I think that Figure 1 on this page on Cisco solutions for VMware View environments would give even Hany Michael a run for the money! While Figure 1 is pretty complex, the information in the article is useful and helps underscore some of the many different ways Cisco products can be put to use in a VMware View environment.
  • Here’s a useful document on integrating Cisco UCS with VMware DPM.
  • This weekly summary of new KB articles is quite useful. OK, I know this isn’t new and many people probably already knew about it but it’s still useful. So get off my case, OK?

There’s more that I could include, but I should probably wrap this up. Here are a few other links worth mentioning:

The Backup Blog: Avamar and VMware Backup Revisited
VMware KB: ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 shutdown and reboot commands
VMware KB: Masking a LUN from ESX and ESXi 4.0 using the MASK_PATH plug-in
Rethinking vNetwork Security
Announcing NVSPBind

That’s it for this time around. Thanks for reading and feel free to submit any interesting links you’ve found in the comments!

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Partner Exchange 2010 Session TECHBC0320

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 9 comments

This is a liveblog for VMware Partner Exchange session TECHBC0320, “How VMware Leverages Microsoft Volume Shadow Services for Virtual Machine Snapshots”. The presenter is Paul Vasquez with VMware; he works within the Technical Alliances Organization at VMware with a focus on backups.

The session starts out with an overview of VMware snapshots followed by a quick overview of Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services.

Vasquez is careful to distinguish VMware snapshots from array-based snapshots, which is good since that seems to confuse a number of people. VMware snapshots can include the state of memory (optional), settings, and disk. Snapshots are taken at the VM level, and up to 32 snapshots can be taken. Over 20 snapshots can cause performance concerns and, in Vasquez’s words, “can cause undesirable results”.

In general, a snapshot will include all disks although there are ways to exclude disks from a snapshot.

Operations involving VMware snapshots include taking a snapshot (self-explanatory), reverting to a snapshot (reverts the VM to the snapshot state, the delta file remains until the snapshot is deleted), and deleting a snapshot (delta file is removed, VM continues running in the current state).

Some use cases for snapshots include: rollback capability for testing patches or updates; rollback for failed software installation; protection against unwanted results of OS reconfigurations or testing; backups (for creating consistent copies of a VM); and replication.

The delta file grows as-needed; over time, the delta file will grow larger and larger. Vasquez cautions attendees to be sure to plan datastore sizes to account for snapshots for VMs and the delta file growth caused by the changes to those VMs.

A good question was raised about read I/Os and the impact of snapshots (does

The presentation now moves on to a discussion of VSS. One component of VSS is the requestor; the requestor makes a request from a provider, and the writer provides information on how to provide information to a requestor. Providers are included with Windows and are responsible for intercepting I/O requests to create and represent volume shadow copies on the file system. There are also 3rd party providers. In this context of this discussion (VSS integration with VMware snapshots), VMware Tools is the requestor.

There is a wide range of applications that provide VSS support, including Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Active Directory, BITS, DHCP, and WINS. The vssadmin list providers command will show all the providers. (Note that you won’t see the VMware Tools when you run this command; it is dynamically loaded only at snapshot time and then unloaded.)

The vssadmin list writers command will show a list of writers.

The general flow of operation with VSS runs like this:

  1. Requestor makes a shadow copy.
  2. The writer is told to freeze all I/O.
  3. The provider creates a shadow copy.
  4. The writer is told to “thaw,” or resume, I/O to the application.
  5. The requestor now has access to the shadow copy.

The writer can support multiple enumerations, or different ways of coordinating the creation of the shadow copy. Exchange, for example, supports Full (backs up databases, logs, and checkpoints; truncates logs), Copy (backs up databases, logs, and checkpoints; does not truncate logs), Incremental (backs up and truncates logs), Differential (backs up logs but does not truncate). Of these, VMware uses the Copy enumeration when requesting shadow copies. Supposedly, the reason this is the case is to prevent interfering with backup applications that aren’t aware that logs were truncated. In addition, when VMware calls VSS, all writers are engaged, so it’s not possible to selectively choose which VSS writers should be engaged (can’t engage VSS for Exchange but not SQL within the same VM, for example).

In the future, VMware Tools will offer granular control over which VSS enumeration is used. Granular control over which VSS writers can be engaged is also planned.

Vasquez now moves into a discussion of how VMware snapshots and VSS integrate together. When a VMware snapshot is taken, this is when VSS integration comes into play. Obviously, for VSS integration the VM must be powered on (the guest OS must be running in order for VSS to be operational).

Some form of quiescing is always used when a snapshot is taken (unless the VM is powered off). The VMware Sync driver provides a crash-consistent copy of the VM but doesn’t interact with applications. This option is available in vSphere 4.0 and can be used when no VSS support from the application is available. Obviously, there is VSS support (hence this session), and there are pre- and post-quiesce scripts that can be used to create homebrew solutions as well. Both VSS and the Sync driver can be enabled using VMware Tools.

VSS support is enabled in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 or higher.

Going back to the VSS flow earlier, an additional step is present before the writer resumes I/O to take the VMware snapshot. After the VMware snapshot is taken, the shadow copy created by the provider is discarded because it is no longer needed. Once again, Vasquez reminds attendees that the VMware Tools Requestor only supports the copy enumeration.

An attendee asked if any plans were in place to do quiescing at the VMFS layer (supposedly to assist with hardware-based snapshots); Vasquez responds that some form of VMFS quiescing would be helpful, but there are challenges with that arrangement that make it currently very difficult to actually achieve.

(Vasquez also commented on the end-of-life policy for the ESX Service Console, but I’ll hold on mentioning what was said until I verify the confidentiality of the statement.)

Some additional things to remember:

  • VMware Tools build must be 110268 or higher.
  • VMware Tools must be running and VSS must be functioning properly.
  • VSS Service must be set to Manual or Automatic.
  • ESX 3.5 Update 2 is required for VSS support.
  • Be sure VSS support is installed with VMware Tools.
  • Try not to keep VMware snapshots around for a long time. Manage snapshots carefully.
  • Sync driver can be used as a failback in the event VSS support fails.
  • VSS snapshot has a 10 second timeout. Rare cases could cause a failure of getting the VSS shadow copy.

Most of the information contained in this presentation are found in the current vSphere documents and in Microsoft’s VSS documentation. (I’ll update this post with URLs when possible.)

And that’s it for the session.

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Thinking Out Loud: Is VMware Legitimizing the Competition?

Monday, November 16, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 14 comments

I was reading a completely unrelated post on Alessandro’s site this morning about how VKernel is reacting to VMware’s release of CapacityIQ when a thought occurred to me: is VMware legitimizing the competition?

Here’s the excerpt from Alessandro’s post that started me thinking:

And of course VKernel now is also in hurry to clarify that support for Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer is coming.

Now, let me ask you this question: what is one of the largest complaints about products like Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer? It’s the size of the partner ecosystem. Customers are a bit more hesitant to deploy these other solutions in part because there aren’t as many partner solutions out there to complement the virtualization solutions.

So, as VMware expands into new markets like capacity management and monitoring, backups, etc., former VMware-only partners are forced to adapt their products to work with Hyper-V and XenServer in order to protect themselves. This causes the size of the partner ecosystem for VMware’s competitors to grow, eliminating that complaint and removing one of VMware’s competitive advantages. In effect, VMware’s own actions are building out the partner ecosystem for their competitors and thus legitimizing the competition.

Am I crazy? Am I wrong? What is a company like VMware to do, if anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

UPDATE: Some readers have pointed out, rightfully so, that “legitimizing” isn’t really the best word to use here. Perhaps “assisting” or “helping” is a better word?

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VM Hardware Version 7 and Windows Server 2008

Saturday, October 31, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

Stu over at vInternals posted an article a couple of days ago about a problem he encountered with VMware vSphere and Windows Server 2008. Apparently, there is an unexpected behavior with Windows Server 2008 and VM hardware version 7 that is described in this VMware KB article. Stu, however, was seeing the behavior not on upgrading VMs from VM hardware version 4 to VM hardware version 7, but on new virtual machines created from the beginning with VM hardware version 7.

According to an update on Stu’s article, VMware has acknowledged this as a bug and will be investigating a fix to the problem. Until then, follow Stu’s advice and speak to your VMware account team if you are experiencing this problem. If you are getting ready to proceed with a VMware vSphere upgrade and have Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition VMs in place, keep this behavior in mind and plan accordingly.

Thanks to Stu for bringing this matter to light!

UPDATE: Stu posted an update with more information and an explanation for the unexpected behavior, so be sure to check it out.

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VMware HA, VMware FT, and OS Clustering

Friday, October 30, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 18 comments

With the release of VMware vSphere 4 earlier this year, VMware officially introduced VMware Fault Tolerance (VMware FT), a new mechanism for providing extremely high levels of availability to virtual machine workloads. As I’ve talked with customers, I’ve noticed a growing number of customers who are unaware of the differences between the types of high availability that VMware provides (in the form of VMware HA and VMware FT) and operating system-level clustering (such as Microsoft Windows Failover Clustering). Although both types of technology are intended to increase availability and reduce downtime, they are very different and offer different types of functionality.

Consider these points:

  • While using VMware HA will protect you against the failure of an ESX/ESXi host, VMware HA won’t—by default—protect you against the failure of the guest operating system. An OS-level cluster, on the other hand, does protect against the failure of the guest operating system. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • VMware clusters that are using VMware HA can choose to use VM Failure Monitoring and gain some level of protection against the failure of the guest operating system, but you still won’t get protection of the specific application within the guest operating system, unlike an OS-level cluster. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • These same arguments also apply to VMware FT. VMware FT won’t protect you against guest operating system failure—a crash of the OS in the primary VM generally means a crash of the OS in the secondary VM at the same time—and it won’t protect you against application failure. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • You can’t failover between systems using VMware HA or VMware FT in order to perform OS upgrades or apply OS patches. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • Similarly, you can’t failover between systems using VMware HA or VMware FT in order to do a rolling upgrade of the application itself. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • Of course, the VMware technologies do have some advantages. Both VMware HA and VMware FT are far, far simpler to enable and configure than an OS-level cluster. +1 for VMware.
  • Both VMware HA and VMware FT don’t require any application support in order to protect the VM and its workloads. +1 for VMware.
  • Neither VMware HA nor VMware FT require that you license specific editions of the guest operating system or application in order to be able to use their benefits. +1 for VMware.
  • VMware HA can produce higher levels of utilization within a host cluster than using OS-level clustering. +1 for VMware.
  • VMware FT can provide higher levels of availability than what is available in most OS-level clustering solutions today. +1 for VMware.

This is not a knock against any of technologies listed—VMware HA, VMware FT, or OS-level clustering—but rather an exploration of their advantages, disadvantages, similarities, and differences. Hopefully, this will help readers who might not be as familiar with these products make a more informed decision about which technologies to deploy in their data center. (Hint: You’ll probably need all of them.)

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SVVP Certifications for VMware vSphere

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

VMware has completed Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) certifications for both VMware vSphere 4.0 as well as ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 4. This brings the list of SVVP-certified products to include:

  • VMware vSphere 4.0 (ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0)
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
  • VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 4
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3
  • VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2

According to my contacts within VMware—and many of you have probably heard the same—the company is seeking to achieve SVVP certification for every ESX and ESXi release from 3.5 Update 2 onward for the maximum supported configuration of both CPUs and RAM on both Intel and AMD platforms. That includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server.

You can view the full list of SVVP-certified platforms here.

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vSphere Virtual Machine Upgrade Process

Monday, June 1, 2009 in Gestalt, Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 35 comments

Upgrading a VMware Infrastructure 3.x environment to VMware vSphere 4 involves more than just upgrading vCenter Server and upgrading your ESX/ESXi hosts (as if that wasn’t enough). You should also plan on upgrading your virtual machines. VMware vSphere introduces a new hardware version (version 7), and vSphere also introduces a new paravirtualized network driver (VMXNET3) as well as a new paravirtualized SCSI driver (PVSCSI). To take advantage of these new drivers as well as other new features, you’ll need to upgrade your virtual machines. This process I describe below works really well.

I’d like to thank Erik Bussink, whose posts on Twitter got me started down this path.

Please note that this process will require some downtime. I personally tested this process with both Windows Server 2003 R2 as well as Windows Server 2008; it worked flawlessly with both versions of Windows. (I’ll post a separate article on doing something similar with other operating systems, if it’s even possible.)

  1. Record the current IP configuration of the guest operating system. You’ll end up needing to recreate it.
  2. Upgrade VMware Tools in the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools. When prompted, choose to perform an automatic tools upgrade. When the VMware Tools upgrade is complete, the virtual machine will reboot.
  3. After the guest operating system reboots and is back up again, shutdown the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Power > Shutdown Guest.
  4. Upgrade the virtual machine hardware by right-clicking the virtual machine and selecting Upgrade Virtual Hardware.
  5. In the virtual machine properties, add a new network adapter of the type VMXNET3 and attach it to the same port group/dvPort group as the first network adapter.
  6. Remove the first/original network adapter.
  7. Add a new virtual hard disk to the virtual machine. Be sure to attach it to SCSI node 1:x; this will add a second SCSI adapter to the virtual machine. The size of the virtual hard disk is irrelevant.
  8. Change the type of the newly-added second SCSI adapter to VMware Paravirtual.
  9. Click OK to commit the changes you’ve made to the virtual machine.
  10. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted, log in and recreate the network configuration you recorded for the guest back in step 1. Windows may report an error that the network configuration is already used by a different adapter, but proceed anyway. Once you’ve finished, shut down the guest operating system again.
  11. Edit the virtual machine to remove the second hard disk you just added.
  12. While still in the virtual machine properties, change the type of the original SCSI controller to VMware Paravirtual (NOTE: See update below.)
  13. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted up, log in.
  14. Create a new system environment variable named DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES and set the value to 1.
  15. Launch Device Manager and from the View menu select Show Hidden Devices.
  16. Remove the drivers for the old network adapter and old SCSI adapter. Close Device Manager and you’re done!

If you perform these steps on a template, then you can be assured that all future virtual machines cloned from this template also have the latest paravirtualized drivers installed for maximum performance.

Post any questions or clarifications in the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Per this VMware KB article, VMware doesn’t support using the PVSCSI adapter for boot devices. That is not to say that it doesn’t work (it does work), but that it is not supported. Thanks to Eddy for pointing that out in the comments!

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This VMworld Thing is Like Watching a Train Wreck

Saturday, May 30, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 23 comments

Watching VMware destroy their public image over this VMworld exhibitor agreement is like watching a train wreck: you want to take your eyes off of it, but it’s just so awful and so terrible that you’re mesmerized.

In case you don’t have any idea what’s going on, jump over and give this post a quick read. Done? OK, let’s continue.

In the update to that post, I said that VMware had clarified their position and that competition would be allowed at VMworld. Being the person that I am—I tend to take people at their word and trust that they are as honest and straightforward as I am—I left it at that. I was a bit curious to know why the exhibitors’ agreement contained language that was specifically targeted at their competition if all they wanted was a way to prevent exhibitors from behaving in an unseemly fashion, but rather than stirring up waters that had already been muddied I would just let things settle and see what happened.

Well, what happened was that Brian Madden—whom I have no reason not to trust, but at the same time I don’t know him personally—reports here that VMware is restricting the size of the booth that both Microsoft and Citrix are allowed to use. According to Brian, only VMware TAP Partners are allowed larger booths.

Alessandro Perilli—whom I do know personally, and I whom I know wouldn’t publish anything unless he was quite certain of his sources—also refers to Brian’s post in his own post here, lending further credibility to the claims of VMware’s actions.

So, let’s sum it up:

  • VMware adds language to their exhibitors’ agreement that is specifically targeted at their competitors in an effort to prevent unseemly behavior at VMworld.
  • VMware claims that competition will be allowed and they want to encourage a rich ecosystem of partners and competitors.
  • VMware limits their two key competitors, Microsoft and Citrix, to a 10 foot-by-10 foot booth, and further states that exhibitor employees must remain in the boundaries of their booth. (To be fair, VMware is also refusing to take their money for a larger booth.)

I tell my kids all the time, “Actions speak louder than words.” What would you derive from VMware’s actions?

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VMware, This is Wrong

Thursday, May 28, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 11 comments

UPDATE: VMware has clarified their position; they will allow competitors to exhibit at VMworld. The text in the exhibitors agreement was legalese—supposedly consistent with other major vendor-sponsored conferences—meant to give them an out in the event an exhibitor behaves inappropriately.

I sincerely hope that Brian Madden is wrong about the recent change to vendor policies for VMworld.

This is exactly the wrong thing to do in this sort of competitive landscape. You know, earlier this week on the Virtual Thoughts podcast, I was defending VMworld’s move into the territory of their former ISVs with products like vCenter Data Recovery, vCenter Chargeback, and vCenter ConfigControl. After all, VMware is a publicly owned company, and they have to show value to their shareholders. But this? This doesn’t have anything to do with showing value to the shareholders. This is like a spoiled little kid saying, “This is my sandbox, and you can’t play in it.”

What are you going to do, VMware? Let’s see, you’re expanding into the territory formerly handled by many of your ISVs, and now you’re blocking access to competing products at VMworld. So who will be at VMworld? Let’s see…

  • Vizioncore can’t come, because vRanger Pro overlaps functionality VMware will provide in vCenter Data Recovery. And vFoglight overlaps with CapacityIQ.
  • VKernel can’t come; again, they overlap with CapacityIQ.
  • As Brian Madden mentioned, Quest won’t be there due to a conflict with VMware View.
  • Microsoft won’t be there, because they won’t be able to talk about Hyper-V. True, they could come and not talk about Hyper-V, but I suspect they’ll also act like a spoiled child by saying, “If we can’t play by our rules, we won’t play at all.” Hmm…considering 90-95% of all the workloads running on VMware are Microsoft Windows, that’s an interesting situation to create. Oh, and VMware: are you prepared to be excluded from Tech-Ed too?
  • Ditto for Citrix. And probably ditto for being allowed to exhibit at Synergy. So much for VMware vSphere being the best platform on which to run XenApp—you won’t get the chance to make that claim!
  • Leostream? Nope—conflicts/overlaps with VMware View.
  • What about Hyper9? Not sure, vCenter Server 4.0 does provide a Search feature now, so that could potentially preclude Hyper9 from coming, too.
  • Surely Veeam could come, but they can’t talk about Veeam Backup (conflicts with vCenter Data Recovery).
  • esXpress? Nope.
  • Hardware vendors—IBM, HP, Dell—will be there.
  • Storage vendors—EMC, NetApp, HP, Compellent, Dell—will be there.
  • Networking vendors like Cisco and HP will be there. Unless VMware thinks that HP’s networking functionality isn’t complementary enough to its own virtual networking functionality…

I’m sure that I’ve overlooked some companies, but it sounds to me like the vast majority of the third-party ISVs now find themselves precluded from exhibiting at VMworld, in addition to finding themselves competing head-to-head with VMware in their own markets. Looks like the exhibit hall is going to be a lot less crowded this year!

Is VMware the new Microsoft? I’ll let you answer that one on your own.

Disclaimer: Before anyone jumps the gun and says otherwise, note that these opinions are mine, and are not endorsed by my employer or any vendor or other organization.

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Sanbolic Brings Snapshots to Melio FS

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 in Microsoft, Storage by slowe | 9 comments

Sanbolic is continuing to differentiate its clustered file system, Melio FS, in advance of the rudimentary clustered file system Microsoft plans on introducing in Windows Server 2008 R2. In an announcement last week, Sanbolic announced support for fully journaled snapshots. This functionality allows any server accessing the clustered file system to invoke a snapshot. The new snapshot functionality provides support for VSS and “full industry standard APIs,” although I’m not really sure what those “full industry standard APIs” are exactly.

You can download the full press release describing the new functionality here.

Separately, Sanbolic also announced that Melio FS fully supports Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008; more information on that is also available.

Now, if only Sanbolic would port Melio FS to VMware ESX/ESXi, then we could have some really interesting discussions. Snapshot functionality built into the shared file system, anyone?

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