Eric Sloof - Entries from January 2013

Thursday, January 31. 2013

Video - vCert Manager

A massive area of pain for customers in a virtualized environment is managing SSL certificates and keys for components in the VMware stack. Currently under development, with a scheduled release in Q1 2013, the vCert Manager is a solution that provides automated management and operations of SSL Certificates in a VMware environment - a single pane of glass to create, manage, apply, custom SSL certificates for all of the products, including creating the certificate keys, signing request, applying to the Certificate Authority, and when the certificate is issued, to automatically apply it to the particular vSphere component.

vCert manager is available as a plug in install into vCenter, or vCenter Configuration Manager, it integrates at an API level with open SSL or an Enterprise CA such as Microsoft CA in addition to allowing manual import of existing certificates and public CA certificates that can then be applied by the system.

It integrates at an API level with the VMware stack of tools (vCenter Server, Update Manager, vShield Manager, vCenter Configuration Manager, vCenter Operations, vSphere Web Client, Virtual Infrastructure Navigator, vCenter Chargeback, SRM, vCloud Director, vCenter Heartbeat, ESX and ESXi Hosts, VMware View, or a subset of these based on discussions and priorities between VSS, ITS2K and VMware from versions compatible from vSphere 4.x onwards (v5.5 of vCenter Configuration Manager and 5.0 of vCenter Operations Only onwards only)

Has auto discovery of VM components (through vCenter, vCOps, vCloud and Linked Mode)
Upon initial installation of VM components, replaces temporary/ unsecure default certificates supplied with the VMware components with those supplied by the Enterprise CA.
Stores all VMware related certificates and VM account credentials in a secure database.
Keeps track of all expirations and revocations and allows an administrator to view upcoming expirations and automatically go apply for a new certificate
Allows role based access control and separation of duties between security admin and VI admin"

Via Michael Webster over at Long White Clouds - Automating vSphere SSL Cert Management – vCert Manager Beta Demo

Wednesday, January 30. 2013

New Technical White Paper - VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 gives enterprise organizations the ability to build secure private clouds that dramatically increase datacenter efficiency and business agility. Coupled with VMware vSphere®, vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services. vCloud Director 5.1 helps you build agile infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud environments that greatly accelerate the time-to-market for applications and responsiveness of IT organizations.

This white paper addresses three areas regarding vCloud Director performance:

vCloud Director sizing guidelines and software requirements
Best practices in performance and tuning vCloud Director Architecture
Performance characterization and best practices for key vCloud Director operations and new features

Figure 1 shows the deployment architecture for vCloud Director. A user accesses vCloud Director through a Web browser or REST API. Multiple vCloud Director Server instances can be deployed with a shared database, and both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases are supported.

A vCloud Director Server instance connects to one or multiple VMware vCenter Servers. From now on, we use vCloud Director Server instance and cell interchangeably.

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 Performance and Best Practices

Tuesday, January 29. 2013

Video - Steve Herrod's Farwell to VMUG

To my VMUG friends,

As I transition to my new role at General Catalyst, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all. It has been great to work with you over the past years. I've enjoyed being a part of VMUG events and have always appreciated your passion and interest in working with VMware. I wish I could thank you all in person, but I hope you enjoy this quick video of me recalling my favorite VMUG experiences and memories.

The future for the VMUG and VMware partnership is more exciting than ever, and I will be following your success closely.

Best regards,

Steve

Monday, January 28. 2013

Free Plugin for Creating, Managing Support Requests and Uploading Logs - VMware vCenter Support Assistant

VMware vCenter Support Assistant is a free, downloadable plug-in for vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop BOTH for creating and managing service requests AND generating and uploading logs. It also includes a VMware Knowledge Base search capability, which enables customers to resolve common issues more rapidly.

Support Assistant helps gather more of the information up front that VMware Technical Support finds useful. By minimizing further data requests from VMware Technical Support, vCenter Support Assistant can help reduce time to resolution and, in turn, minimize system downtime.

Download VMware vCenter Support Assistant

Sunday, January 27. 2013

New Training Course - VMware vCloud Automation Center Foundation

VMware is about to release a new 2 day training course regarding the VMware vCloud Automation Center. This training course focuses on installing, configuring, and managing the VMware vCloud Automation Center. This course covers the configuration and use of the VMware vCloud Automation Center platform to develop self-serviced provisioning and create on-demand private and public cloud services. The objectives are:

Configure and manage provisioning groups and blueprints for provisioning logic.
Configure and manage enterprise groups and reservations for physical allocation.
Provision virtual resources of differing types.
Manage virtual resources.
Understand the role-based authentication that controls VMware vCloud Automation Center access.
Use the REST interface to easily obtain virtualization metadata.
Understand VMware vCloud Automation Center workflows.
Understand the VMware vCloud Automation Center components in a best-practices installation context.
Extend VMware vCloud Automation Center by using a Windows PowerShell script.

MyLearn : VMware vCloud Automation Center Foundation
F.A.Q. : VMware vCloud Automation

VMware vCloud Automation Center Accelerator Service
What's New in VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1

Friday, January 25. 2013

Now available as Rough Cut - VCDX Boot Camp: Preparing for the VCDX Panel Defense

The Rough Cuts service from Safari Books Online gives you exclusive access to an evolving manuscript that you can read online or download as a PDF and print. A Rough Cuts book is not fully edited or completely formatted, but you'll get access to new versions as they are created.

VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) is the highest level of VMware certification: VCDX design architects are the elite of the VMware world, veteran professionals who demonstrated exceptional skill in VMware enterprise deployments. To earn a VCDX, these professionals must create a complete enterprise VMware design and undergo a grueling defense at the hands of some of the world’s most sophisticated VMware experts.

Until now, there’s only been one way to prepare for VCDX: to participate in a VCDX Bootcamp. Every year at VMworld and the VMware Partner Exchange, John Arrasjid offers a legendary bootcamp to standing room only crowds. Arrasjid’s remarkable sessions don’t just attract VCDX candidates: they attract huge numbers of VMware experts who want an even deeper understanding of VMware architecture and best practices.

It’s no wonder: Arrasjid earned the world’s first VCDX certification, and helped architect the program. Now Arrasjid – together with equally respected VMware experts Mostafa Khalil and Ben Lin – have written the definitive VCDX study guide. The only book of its kind, VCDX Boot Camp covers everything you need to know to prepare, including:

What the VCDX covers, and what it is designed to demonstrate
Profiles of successful and unsuccessful candidates
An insider’s view of the VCDX Panel Defense process, including perspectives from the panelists
Advanced best practices for VMware design and architecture available nowhere else
Practice VCDX Design and Troubleshooting Scenarios, and more

VCDX Boot Camp: Preparing for the VCDX Panel Defense

Cloud Infrastructure Design (VCAP-CID) available for registration

VMware has released the VCAP-CID exam. It’s available for registration now. If you’re attending VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas this year you are also eligible for a 50% discount.

You can register at: http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware/vmpe/

Earning VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Infrastructure Design (VCAP-CID) certification shows that you have continued to enhance your cloud skills, and gives you a new, industry-recognized credential for your list of accomplishments.

The VCAP-CID certification is designed for architects who can devise a conceptual framework based on business requirements, organize its elements into distinct components, and design a cloud infrastructure that meets those requirements. It also verifies that you can define goals for the architecture, analyze elements of the framework, and make design decisions that ensure the proper physical and virtual components exist in the design.

Mike Laverick's Chinwag with Eric Sloof

After the course was over I was able to do an impromptu chinwag from the back of class with the man and legend - talking about vCloud Director, the challenges of design and the stuff that Eric would like to see VMware do next with vCloud Director. <- Read the full story at Mike Laverick's Blog

London is the Place for Me

This has been an awesome week. I’ve visited London for the first time in my life and I really enjoyed my trip over there. Getting to London was a bit problematic because London City (the airport I flew on) was closed on Sunday. This had to do with the amount of snowfall and clearing the runway.

During the flight I was advised by my neighbor to buy an Oistercard. These cards are similar to the Dutch public transportation cards and enable you to use all London’s public transportation including the light rail and the tube. You just put an amount of money on it and scan your card during entering and leaving the tubes. I didn’t take a taxi whole week and really enjoyed riding the Tubes. At rush hour they can be a bit busy though, no personal space left then.

From Monday to Wednesday I’ve delivered the vCloud Design Best Practices training course. This 3 day workshop prepares you for the recently released Cloud Infrastructure Design (VCAP5-CID) exam and also give you the ability to design vCloud environments. One of the students was my old buddy Mike Laverick who used work as a freelance VCI but has switched over to VMware to work as a vCloud evangelist. I must say one thing – he really kept the discussion going. Here’s a picture of Mike taking over my class. Eventually he has earned his well-deserved certificate.

On Thursday I was invited by the London VMUG to join their event. I’ve asked Jane Rimmer if it would be possible that I presented a session at the London VMUG and see was able to squeeze me into the agenda. In the end I was scheduled three times but unfortuanatly I had to cancel he last two sessions because I lost my voice and got hit by the man-flu. My complete session was recorded on video and will be made available online trough YouTube later. For people who can’t wait to get their hands on the slides here’s a link to “VMware HA Deep Dive”. This presentation will show you the inns and outs of HA admission control and isolation.

London-HA.pptx

New Technical White Paper - The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1

The CPU scheduler in VMware vSphere® 5.x (ESXi™ 5.x) is crucial to providing good performance in a consolidated environment. Because most modern processors are equipped with multiple cores per processor, or chip multiprocessor (CMP) architecture, it is easy to build a system with tens of cores running hundreds of virtual machines. In such a large system, allocating CPU resources efficiently and fairly is critical.

The goal of this document is to provide detailed explanations of ESXi CPU scheduling policies to help vSphere users who want to understand how virtual machines are scheduled. In most cases, the CPU scheduler works well with no special tuning. However, a deeper understanding of the scheduler can help users troubleshoot some performance problems and implement best practices to get the most of a scheduling policy. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide implementation specifics of the ESXi CPU scheduling algorithm or to provide the complete information of a tuning guide.

The paper also calls out a couple of interesting updates on the CPU scheduler in vSphere 5.x. For example, the CPU load balancing algorithm has significantly changed and provides nice performance improvements. vNUMA (virtual NUMA) is another exciting feature introduced in vSphere 5.0. vNUMA greatly improves the performance of workloads that are optimized for a NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) architecture.

This paper also substantiates the claims it makes with experimental data, although not every claim is backed by data. The tests were performed with micro-benchmarks that simulate certain aspects of real-world workloads, However, results may vary with actual workloads carried out on different test or production environments.

The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1

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