Eric Sloof

The integration of SpringSource as a division of VMware has come to a point where VMware is offering a brand new workshop which is focusing on the development of applications that can run in the cloud. The new one day workshop; Developing for the Cloud is delivered in classroom format. This week Eberhard Wolff will kick off with the first one in New York and says:

"The move to the Cloud will change the way IT services are consumed - and developed. This workshop gives a good introduction to the challenges you face when creating Cloud applications - and of course how to deal with them."

You can find Eberhard's weblog at http://jandiandme.blogspot.com/

Overview

Moving to the cloud is the next major evolutionary step for IT systems. The cloud offers a lot of clear benefits such as better resource utilization and improved flexibility – both desired by businesses. Cloud computing also offers novel and smart approaches to technical problem such as scalability or fault tolerance. Therefore it is important to adapt cloud computing and by that gain a competitive advantage.However, developing software that runs well in cloud environments is a difficult and demanding task. Completely new levels of scalability must be supported. New approach and new architectures are emerging and need to be supported. This Workshop will teach the basics of cloud technologies and how to develop software for it.
 
 
Objectives    

•  Understand the advantages of Cloud technologies
•  Understand challenges when developing software for the Cloud
•  Learn about the impact of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) such as Amazon S3 or VMware vCloud on software development and how to use it efficiently
•  Comprehend the PaaS (Platform as a Service) approach and some typical implementation such as Google App Engine, VMforce or Cloud Foundry
•  Find out how to architect applications for the cloud and how to develop applications for the cloud using Spring Roo

VMware Labs presents its latest fling IOBlazer - a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark tool. IOBlazer started as a minimalist MS SQL Server emulator which focused solely on IO component. It has now matured into a scalable application with multi-platform support, capable of generating highly customizable workload by configuring parameters like:

• IO size and pattern
• Burstiness (number of outstanding IOs)
• Burst interarrival time
• Read versus write mix

Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - http://labs.vmware.com/flings/ioblazer.

IOBlazer is a multi-platform storage stack micro-benchmark. IOBlazer runs on Linux, Windows and OSX and it is capable of generating a highly customizable workload. Parameters like IO size and pattern, burstiness (number of outstanding IOs), burst interarrival time, read vs. write mix, buffered vs. direct IO, etc., can be configured independently. IOBlazer is also capable of playing back VSCSI traces captured using vscsiStats. The performance metrics reported are throughput (in terms of both IOPS and bytes/s) and IO latency.

IOBlazer evolved from a minimalist MS SQL Server emulator which focused solely on the IO component of said workload. The original tool had limited capabilities as it was able to generate a very specific workload based on the MS SQL Server IO model (Asynchronous, Un-buffered, Gather/Scatter). IOBlazer has now a far more generic IO model, but two limitations still remain:

1.The alignment of memory accesses on 4 KB boundaries (i.e., a memory page)
2.The alignment of disk accesses on 512 B boundaries (i.e., a disk sector).
Both limitations are required by the gather/scatter and un-buffered IO models.

A very useful new feature is the capability to playback VSCSI traces captured on VMware ESX through the vscsiStats utility. This allows IOBlazer to generate a synthetic workload absolutely identical to the disk activity of a Virtual Machine, ensuring 100% experiment repeatability.

Fellow vExpert David Davis over at Train Signal has released the new vSphere Troubleshooting video training. This course took him 3 months to create, it’s almost 14 hours, and it’s made up of 30 videos. Like all the other training courses from Train Signal, it’s available via streaming online video (iPad compatible) and in the DVD offline format. In this course, David will educate you on how to troubleshoot vSphere networking, storage, management processes (and much more), from the GUI but especially from the CLI.

The new vSphere Troubleshooting course will be part of an upcoming VCAP-DCA training package. David has covered all topics related to troubleshooting on the DCA blueprint. Even if you aren’t interested in the VCAP-DCA certification, the course is designed to be an excellent resource to learn how to solve virtual infrastructure trouble. Mike Laverick is the tech editor for the course.

You can view three sample videos on David’s YouTube channel which can be reached here.
In this sample from Train Signal's VMware Troubleshooting course David Davis will show you how to restore connectivity to an ESX host after management network access was lost.