Eric Sloof - Entries from March 2012

Sunday, March 18. 2012

vCenter Operations - Dashboard Overview

Join VMware's Ben Scheerer diving deeper into the vC Ops capacity planning and management capabilities.

Saturday, March 17. 2012

vCenter Operations - Heat Maps & Event Management

Join VMware's Ben Scheerer diving deeper into the vC Ops capacity planning and management capabilities.

Friday, March 16. 2012

501 Release Notes

vSphere 5.0 U1 Release Notes

Support for new processors
Support for additional guest operating systems
New or upgraded device drivers
L3-routed NFS Storage Access

vCenter 5.0 U1 Release Notes

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements

View 5.0.1 Release Notes

PCoIP-enabled View Client for Mac OS X
Client SSL requirement

vCD 1.5.1 Release Notes

Firewall rules can be configured with CIDR blocks, IP ranges, and port ranges
Added system notification for lost connection to AMQP host
Enhanced cell management tool and log collection script
Support for AES-256 encryption for VPN tunnels
Increased the retention maximum for vCenter Chargeback history

SRM 5.0.1 Release Notes

Forced failover to allow you to recover virtual machines in cases where storage arrays fail at the protected site
Added support for IP Customization of Ubuntu
VMware VSA Support (Virtual machines that reside on the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) can be protected by SRM 5.0.1 using vSphere Replication (VR). VSA does not require a Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) to work with SRM 5.0.1)

vShield 5.0.1 Release Notes

Enhanced reporting and export options
New REST API calls
Improved audit logs
Simplified troubleshooting
Improved vShield App policy management
vShield App High Availability enhancements
Enablement of Autodeploy (Stateless ESXi)

Configuration Manager 5.5 Release Notes

vSphere Guest Summary dashboard
Virtual Environments Change Management dashboard
Virtual Environments Compliance Posture dashboard (previously named Security Posture)
Cloud Infrastructure Suite Integration (CIS) tree

Chargeback Manager 2.0.1 Release Notes

Upgraded the Apache Tomcat server to version 6.0.35
vCenter Chargeback Manager fails to validate XML API requests
Upgrade fails with database connection error
Usage of some of the computing resources are reported as zero
Enhancements to the vCloud Director Data Collector
Enhancements to the VM Instance Cost job
Report schedule generates duplicate reports

Heartbeat 6.4 Update 1 Release Notes

Support for vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1
The ability to install vCenter Support Tools

VMware View 5 Evaluator’s Guide

The purpose of this document is to support a self-guided, hands-on review of VMware View 5. The content is intended to show how easily you can set up a VMware View 5 environment so you can evaluate both new and important capabilities. These capabilities include creating and managing virtualized desktops, and validating the suggested use cases.

The guide is divided into the following main sections:

Key New Features of VMware View 5
Description of VMware View Components
Setting Up a View Evaluation Environment
Evaluation Tasks

This document assumes you have basic knowledge of VMware vSphere 5, and are comfortable configuring networking and storage in a virtual environment. After you install the product, this document guides you through in-depth deployment scenarios. This guide is not intended to substitute for product documentation. For detailed information regarding installation, configuration, administration, and usage of VMware products, please refer to the online VMware documentation. You may also consult the online Knowledge Base if you have any additional questions.

Free version of Veeam ONE

Veeam is pleased to offer a free version of Veeam ONE, its single solution for powerful, easy-to-use and affordable virtualization management. Now everyone can experience the benefits of realtime monitoring, change tracking, documentation and management reporting used by more than 50,000 VMware professionals.

Veeam ONE Free Edition includes all the core functionality of the full version of Veeam ONE, including full data collection, multi-user support, and a Microsoft SQL Server backend. There are no limits on the number of hosts, virtual machines (VMs), users or the size of your data archive. By simply installing a purchased license key, Veeam ONE Free Edition can easily be upgraded to the full version of Veeam ONE to gain these and other additional capabilities:

Alarm modeling and custom alarms
Full access to the knowledge base
Management of guest, host and vCenter processes
Historical change management beyond the most recent 24 hours
Microsoft Visio reports for multipathing, network, vMotion and datastore utilization
Automated report generation and distribution

This PDF details the features and differences between Veeam ONE Free Edition and the full version of Veeam ONE.

Principled Technologies Report - View 5 Compared to Citrix XenDesktop 5.5

This report shows that in a true apples-to-apples comparison where lossy and lossless policies are applied equally to both platforms to yield a comparable user experience, VMware View 5 demonstrates equal or better efficiency in bandwidth consumption and in client and server side CPU utilization when compared to Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 on common office applications. This advantage in efficiency can translate into great density, better user experience and lower cost for an organization using VDI technologies.

Thursday, March 15. 2012

VMware has released version 1.4 of their View Client for iPad

VMware View Client for iPad is the first iPad client with support for the PCoIP display protocol for tight integration with VMware View and increased flexibility for the end-user. Enable end-users to simply and securely connect to their View-Based Windows desktop from an iPad with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network (LAN) or across a Wide Area Network (WAN). The improvements in this new 1.4 version are:

Improved connection times to View server
Improved support for external monitors
Bug fixes

Wednesday, March 14. 2012

VMware View 5 - Technical Papers

The Business Case for Desktop Virtualization

In this mobile user- and device-centric environment, IT must protect data security and control user access to data at the same time as it manages the range of applications and devices for all users. The single operating system and single device per user is a model of the past. VMware offers an end user computing solution that meets the challenges of providing for a mobile workforce, without compromising IT control or the operational efficiencies of existing management processes. VMware products incorporate the needs of both IT and end users.

Secure Printing with VMware View

The first step in implementing Secure Print Release is to acquire the Secure Print Server solution from a printing partner. The Secure Print Control software will be installed on the same machine as your existing Print Server. The Secure Print Control software can use Active Directory for authentication or will integrate with an existing single sign-on solution. The Secure Print Control vendor solutions have modular SSO architecture and can work with you to integrate any existing SSO solution in your current infrastructure. Companies that do not want to use Active Directory or that have an existing SSO solution can alternatively use local lists or user input to a SQL database. The single sign-on and user login data are aggregated for compliance auditing purposes.

Security Solution Architecture for VDI

This brief provides an overview of the desktop security vulnerabilities which exist in both virtual and physical environments that must be addressed throughout the typical connection sequence, along with the VMware and thirdparty products that remediate the issues. Together, VMware and VMware technologies comprise a security solution architecture for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)—an architecture that goes beyond the viruses, worms, and phishing attacks mostly commonly addressed in desktop security technology to include data loss, system management, and compliance monitoring.

Antivirus Practices for VMware View 5

This paper focuses on the best practices for protection against viruses in the VMware View 5 virtual desktop environment. Antivirus software is one of the largest segments in today’s computer security market. Nearly every enterprise deploys antivirus software on every desktop. As services such as security, mobility, access control, and line-of-business applications are all rolled up into the datacenter or cloud, antivirus practices need to be rolled up as well.

Tuesday, March 13. 2012

VMware Workstation and Fusion Technology Preview 2012

The Technology Previews 2012 of VMware Workstation and Fusion are available in VMware's Public Beta Programs. The objective of VMware's Beta Programs is to gain customer feedback on these products. Public betas are available to anyone interested in testing new software and providing feedback to VMware's product & engineering teams.

VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2012

This Technology Preview includes changes to the underlying virtualization platform that are under active development. There are no guarantees that changes in this preview will be forward compatible with other VMware software, nor that these changes will be present in future supported releases of VMware Workstation. This Technology Preview does not include major new features.

Installation and operation of VMware Workstation on Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
Installation and operation of Windows 8 consumer preview and Windows Server 8 in a virtual machine
Rendering and graphics correctness issues on all platforms and applications
Linux 3D desktop experience, particularly when using the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta
Linux 3D application graphics correctness and performance
Stability in real-world scenarios including suspend/resume and display and device support
Nested Virtualization - running ESX and even trying Hyper-V* as a guest OS
VNC connection performance and stability

VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2012

VMware Labs is providing public access to the VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2012 to gather real-world feedback from users on a wide range of hardware and software configurations. The VMware Fusion Technology Preview includes changes to the core virtualization engine.

Installation and operation of Windows 8 previews in a virtual machine
Running Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) in a virtual machine
Rendering and graphics correctness issues on all platforms and applications
Linux 3D desktop experience, particularly Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and recent OpenSUSE releases, which should work out-of-the-box
Linux 3D application graphics correctness and performance
Changing boot devices in Mac OS X virtual machines
Performance and stability of virtual machine power operations including suspend, resume, pause and restart
Stability in real-world scenarios including suspend/resume and display and device plugging on the Mac

Saturday, March 10. 2012

Cool Tool - IgniteVM

IgniteVM is used by database administrators to ensure service and availability of database instances running in VMware virtual machines. It shows the DBA what the database response time delays are, and what the contributing causes are at the instance, virtual machine, and physical layers.

IgniteVM is a 24/7 monitoring tool, based on industry best practice Performance Intelligence and Wait-Time analysis methods. IgniteVM supports Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 LUW and Sybase databases across all operating systems, running in VMware vCenter Server or stand-alone ESX/ESXi host environments.

Wait-Time Analysis and Virtualization Visibility

Wait-time analysis is an approach to application and database performance improvement that allows users to see where users are waiting the most. Traditionally, database performance is measured in the number of events and hit ratios. While somewhat meaningful and easy to capture, these statistics do not reflect a relevant view of the end-user experience nor do they reveal with any precision where the problem originated.

IgniteVM gives DBAs visibility to see virtual server operation correlated with database instance wait-time analysis data. Assessing database performance without visibility leaves database administrators (DBAs) guessing about the root cause, hampering their ability to take action to address their most important user-oriented problems.

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