Eric Sloof

Just before Christmas VMware has released two new technical papers. The first one goes in-depth on best practices for running Allscripts Emergency Department (ED) on VMware vSphere. The seconds one is about configuration examples and troubleshooting for VMDirectPath.

Deployment Guide: Best Practices for Running Allscripts Emergency Department (ED) on VMware vSphere

This document provides direction to those interested in running Allscripts Emergency Department (ED) on VMware vSphere™ 4. It provides basic guidance on the architecture of Allscripts Emergency Department as well as the value of utilizing the VMware platform. The results of recent testing done jointly by VMware and Allscripts are covered, where the performance and functionality of Allscripts ED on VMware virtual infrastructure are characterized. Finally, some best practices for utilizing the two product sets together in your datacenter are outlined.

Configuration Examples and Troubleshooting for VMDirectPath

VMDirectPath supports a direct device connection for virtual machines running on Intel Xeon 5500 systems, which feature an implementation of the I/O memory management unit (IOMMU) called Virtual Technology for Directed I/O (VT‐d). VMDirectPath can work on AMD platforms with I/O Virtualization Technology (AMD IOMMU), but this configuration is offered as experimental support. Some machines might not have this technology enabled in the BIOS by default. Refer to your hardware documentation to learn how to enable this technology in the BIOS.

This year I won’t send any Christmas and happy new year cards. Instead of sending those cards I will support the Net4kids foundation. As an ambassador for Net4kids I’m proud to see that the money this foundation receives is well spent on important projects . Net4kids is the internet market place for child aid projects. With Net4kids you choose for concrete child aid rather than anonymous donations. With regular updates they tell you exactly what difference you make through your contribution.  Whether as an individual, a company or a community, whether you are looking for one-off or structural support, with Net4kids you choose what you give and to whom. Thanks to the introduction of ICT lessons, increasing numbers of Ghana’s children are being prepared for the future. These lessons and access to a library not only provide them with new opportunities on the job market, they also gain better insight into the world around them.

Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeest
English: Merry Christmas
German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
French: Joyeux Noel
Flemish: Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom
Spanish: Feliz Navidad
Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai or souksan wan Christmas
Turkish: Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad

I’ve recorded a short video which shows you how easy a Wyse P20 can be used in a VMware View 4.5 environment. The Wyse P20 allows virtual desktops to be centrally managed in VMware View 4.5 while providing rich multimedia, high resolution full frame-rate 3D graphics and HD media, and full USB peripheral interoperability locally over a LAN - or remotely over a high-latency WAN. The Wyse P20 optimizes compression algorithms and quality in real-time to achieve the best possible image quality for the available network bandwidth, thus allowing the PCoIP system to operate in various types of networks and data rates. Wyse P20 draws under 15.5 watts of power - creating cooler working environments - in every respect.

VMware has released the "Enterprise Java Applications on VMware - Best Practices Guide". This paper discusses best practices for running Enterprise Java Applications on VMware vSphere virtual machines. The guidelines will help you to get the best from your Java applications and application servers when you run them on VMware vSphere.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1087

This Enterprise Java Applications on VMware Best Practices Guide provides information about best practices for deploying enterprise Java applications on VMware, including key best practice considerations for architecture, performance, design and sizing, and high availability. This information is intended to help IT Architects successfully deploy and run Java environments on VMware vSphere.

VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a must-have tool for any administrator managing VMware vSphere in a Windows environment. Having to repeat vSphere administrative tasks can be time consuming and error-prone, but PowerCLI—created specifically for Windows environments—allows VMware administrators to automate tasks. Written to the latest PowerCLI, this handy guide shows you step by step how to use the PowerCLI cmdlets for daily administration procedures and frequently performed tasks for VMware vSphere. The reference is organized by vSphere tasks, providing a practical approach to accessing the information you need while you are on the job. Supported by real world examples and no-nonsense instruction, coverage includes installation, configuration, and management of a vSphere environment, management of the virtual machine life-cycle, security, and monitoring and reporting.

Paperback: 504 pages

Publisher: Sybex (April 12, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0470890797

ISBN-13: 978-0470890790

Amazon Comcol Sybex

Android-x86 is a project to port Android open source to the x86 platform, formerly known as "patch hosting for android x86 support". In this video I’ll show you how to create a VMware vSphere virtual machine configured with the Android-x86 boot CD.

A few days ago I’ve posted an article called “Hey Drummonds forget SSD – RAM is the future” on my website. In this article I’m showing a proof of concept with a recorded demo with some performance measurement on an VMFS with live virtual machines in RAM. It attracted a lot of comments. Of course I know when you lose power you also will lose your VMFS, but maybe that’s not a real problem. It’s depending on what type of virtual machines you are hosting and there’re other techniques like FT to create a higher level of availability to protect the virtual machines from host failures.

One of the people who commented on the article is Steve Jin, he’s running a great weblog called DoubleCloud. Steve has pointed me to a research project from Stanford University called RAMCloud. VMware founder Mendel is involved in this project. The paper “The Case for RAMClouds: Scalable High-Performance Storage Entirely in DRAM” can be downloaded from this location.

Disk-oriented approaches to online storage are becoming increasingly problematic: they do not scale grace-fully to meet the needs of large-scale Web applications, and improvements in disk capacity have far out-stripped improvements in access latency and bandwidth. This paper argues for a new approach to datacenter storage called RAMCloud, where information is kept entirely in DRAM and large-scale systems are created by aggregating the main memories of thousands of commodity servers. We believe that RAMClouds can provide durable and available storage with 100-1000x the throughput of disk-based systems and 100-1000x lower access latency. The combination of low latency and large scale will enable a new breed of data-intensive applications.

Sorry for my rude title Scott :-) but I was just on the phone with me ex Capgemini colleague Ernst Cozijnsen and we had a long discussion about super fast storage for replicas in a View environment. In the end we settled for RAM. I immediately jumped into my lab to setup a proof of concept to see how it performs and it’s pure awesomeness, faster than fast and quicker than quick. You want to see what we discussed? Well here’s the story. In the proof of concept I’m using a Windows 2008 64 bit Enterprise server with 7 GB of RAM and the StarWind iSCSI target software. I’ve configured this iSCSI target with a RAM disk of 6 GB and created a VMFS on the iSCSI target. I’ve cloned a Windows 2003 virtual machine to the newly created VMFS hosted in RAM and did some performance checks. I was astounded.

Veeam has launched a new program as part of a holiday present for the VMware community.
Going forward, anyone who is a VCP, vExpert, VCI or VCDX can get a 2 socket NFR license for both Veeam ONE and Veeam Backup & Replication.

The registration page is here: http://www.veeam.com/nfr/free-nfr-license

Doug Hazelman has posted a blog about it at: http://www.veeam.com/blog/happy-holidays-from-veeamnfrs-for-vcps-vcis-and-vexperts.html

Veeam Software, innovative provider of VMware data protection, disaster recovery and VMware management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, today announced that Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 with vPower™ is now available free to all VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, and VMware Certified Instructors. Any vExpert, VCP or VCI can receive a free two-socket software license (valued at approximately $1,800) for non-production use, including training, evaluation and development.

We all know that Viktor van den Berg was this year’s real professional photographer at the Dutch VMUG Event 2010 but nevertheless here is my small contribution.