|
Written by Damian Murdoch
|
|
Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
|
ESX 3i will be free for download to everyone as of Monday 28th of July....
As you know, ESX 3i is effectively ESX server without the redhat component, just the hypervisor and offers a more secure package than the full ESX server.
From a market sentiment, I find this a timely move as Hyper-V is having an all out assault on the SMB market in order to gain some market share.
For all those people that were procrastinating about deploying a bare metal server virtualisation infrastructure, it allows the try before you buy and gets the VMware value prop in the door. Throw out those hosted solutions and run 3i.
|
|
|
Kernel Based Virtual Machine - What is it ? |
|
Written by Damian Murdoch
|
|
Monday, 21 July 2008 |
|
Basically, it provides a full virtualisation layer using Intel VT and AMD-V extensions to do the majority of the work.
It is now part of the mainline Linux kernel, and is supported by RedHat and other key players.
It offers much that XEN does (if you have heard of it) without the complications, obfuscated scripting and painful configuration.
Detail :
- KVM provides close to bare metal speeds
- It has paravirtualised nic and disk drivers - this basically means that IO does not need to go through the whole virtualisation layer - in a nutshell, bare metal IO
- It also leverages Linux - virtual machines are easily managed just like a normal running application, Linux Volume Manager allows for host based snapshots, openGL support for video...
- All of the migration tools work
The KVM wiki http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki
Lots of information about what does and does not work.
Promox VE http://www.qumranet.com/ - Linux distribution targeted at KVM. Think of it like ESX.
Solid ICE http://www.qumranet.com/products-and-solutions - openGL accelerated KVM virtual desktop environment
|
|
|
New Luns - Upgrading from 3.0x to 3.5 Update 1 |
|
Written by Damian Murdoch
|
|
Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
|
9 times out of 10 when people upgrade from ESX 3.0x to ESX 3.5 they do an in place upgrade and leave it at that.
Step 1 - upgrade VC
Step 2- Upgrade host 1
Step 3 - Upgrade next host
Step 4 - Rinse and Repeat
Seems pretty straight forward right, well not exactly because you should really be considering a cold migration between your old LUNS and a new LUN created under ESX 3.5 at upgrade time for your virtual machines. This is because the VMFS file system was upgraded in the 3.5 release, and the upgrade actually made some changes to the way VMFS handles SCSI locking.
This was stolen from the VMTN forums, but rather than re-invent the wheel :
- ESX
Server 3.0.2 used VMFS 3.21 and ESX Server 3.5 uses VMFS 3.31.
- The differences
between VMFS 3.21 and VMFS 3.31 are mainly internal architecture, bug fixes,
and small block size support (as low as 128K).
- Upgrading from VMFS 3.21 to VMFS
3.31 is not possible without reformating the volume. However, you do not need
to move the VMFS volume to 3.31 to run ESX Server 3.5.
- The volumes are
compatible. In other words, you can not upgrade a VMFS volume from version 3.21
to 3.31, but you can still upgrade the ESX Server to ESX Server 3.5 and continue
to run on a VMFS 3.21. This means you can also run VMs from ESX Server 3.0.2
directly on VMFS 3.31.
VMFS
3.31 in 3.5 introduced a distributed locking optimization - optimistic locking.
-
Doing so allows the number and duration of SCSI
reservations to be reduced, thereby reducing their impact on VM I/O and VMFS
metadata I/O originating from other hosts that share the volume.
-
You may see the message - Optimistic Lock Acquired By
Another Host - it means that a lock which was held optimistically (not yet
acquired on-disk) during a transaction was found to have been acquired on-disk
by a different host. In this case, we simply abort and retry the transaction.
Source = http://communities.vmware.com/message/963043;jsessionid=7AC7B31D4BF678B3E0653EBF1C8667F2#963043
|
|
|
EXCLUSIVE: VMware employee reveals internal details on CEO removal, exposes Tucci and Maritz confide |
|
Written by Damian Murdoch
|
|
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 |
|
More on the Diane Green coverage @ virtualisation.info - and let me say WOW.
Some internal emails have been released and virtualisation.info has some exclusive content from an insider.
<quote> No exact details have been given, but it seems like the general idea is that she was fighting to get the company spun off fully. </quote>
Read @ http://www.virtualization.info/2008/07/exclusive-vmware-employees-reveals.html
|
|
|
EMC CEO's ego has cost investors billions |
|
Written by Damian Murdoch
|
|
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 |
|
So in case you havent heard the BIG BIG news, Dianne Greene - President and CEO of VMware was let go today. I am sure you have all seen it on the wire, and read the news.... Well without getting too far into it as I am sure others have already done, I did come across an article on theregister that has an interesting take on the situation.... The full text of the article is posted under the read more link as well as some comments of my own.
OH AND DONT FORGET EARLY BIRD ENDS TOMMOROW FOR VMWORLD!
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
| Results 1 - 9 of 205 |
