Eric Sloof - Entries from May 2013

Friday, May 31. 2013

vCloud Automation Center 5.2 - General Available

What’s New? - Expanded Infrastructure Support

Enhanced vCloud Director Integration. Machine owners can provision a vApp as a single entity, but manage the component VMs individually. The vApp blueprint specifies governance policies for the vApp as a whole (such as how many machines of each type it contains), while the vApp component blueprint specifies policies that control how the machine is provisioned, the resources it can consume, and what management functions users are allowed to perform. Users can connect to virtual machines in provisioned vApps using VMRC and reconfigure vApp component machines. Administrators can also bring existing vApps provisioned in vCloud Director under vCAC management by importing the vApps and assigning blueprints to them.

Support for vCloud Director Pay-As-You-Go Allocation Model. Enterprise administrators can create reservations on VDCs using Pay-As-You-Go, Reservation Pool, or Allocation Pool. Additionally, portions of an organization VDC can now be reserved for multiple provisioning groups rather than each VDC being restricted to a single provisioning group.
Support for vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS). Enterprise administrators can specify a vCNS Manager as part of a vSphere endpoint, enabling vCAC to discover network resources like VXLAN, load balancers, and security groups. They can also specify VXLAN as network paths on reservations. Enterprise administrators or provisioning group managers can specify a load balancer or security groups on blueprints to assign those pools and groups to virtual machines during provisioning.
Support for KVM (RHEV) Hypervisor. vCAC 5.2 introduces support for the KVM hypervisor through Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager 3.1.

Improved Resource Reclamation

Improved Workflow Customization. Enterprise administrators can specify how many days to wait before setting a lease on a machine and the new lease period when sending reclamation requests. Additionally, the provisioning group manager can receive email notifications and respond to reclamation requests in addition to the machine owner.Mware Documentation 2 Release 5.2vCloud Automation Center.
Performance Metrics for vSphere. Performance data collection gathers information about resource utilization including CPU, memory, disk, and network utilization to assist in identifying reclamation candidates.Additional Platform Support. vCAC 5.2 introduces support for reclamation of Amazon Web Service (EC2) machines.

VMware vCloud Automation Center - RAPID TIME TO CLOUD VALUE

vCAC 5.2 Release Notes

vCloud Director and vCAC just buddies or best friends

VMware vCloud Automation Center Documentation

Thursday, May 30. 2013

Deployment Guide - VMware View with FlexPod

Today, many CIOs are challenged to deliver a solution that efficiently and securely delivers Windows desktops and applications to all types of end-workers and devices in a way that meetscorporate objectives for cost, security, and compliance. In order to answer this challenge, VMware® View® with FlexPod™ provides the foundation for delivering efficient and scalable virtual desktop infrastructure using a pre-validated stack from industry-leading partners including VMware, Cisco, and NetApp.

The VMware View with Flexpod architecture reduces processes, thereby minimizing operational challenges such as configuration errors, and it lowers administrative costs. Using Flexpod to scale VMware View desktops on demand provides increased service levels and resource optimization. This solution enables enterprises to rapidly deploy a pre-tested and validated virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). It provides proactive, predictive, and centralized

management that can be integrated with third-party tools.

This paper describes the Flexpod reference architecture for VMware View 5.1 that include the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) and the NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) Systems. It also provides detailed guidance on how to architect, implement, and manage a large, scalable VMware View solution with FlexPod. The paper details the best integration points for each of the key enabling Cisco and NetApp technologies and how each of these technologies plays a critical and complementary role in providing an integrated solution for VMware View

deployments.

This paper is intended for IT decision makers, architects, administrators, and others who want to familiarize themselves with the components and capabilities of VMware View on FlexPod. This paper assumes that the reader has a general understanding of VMware View and the VMware vSphere platform, and the Flexpod, Cisco, and Netapp products described in this solution.

Deployment Guide - VMware View with FlexPod

Monday, May 27. 2013

vCAC 5.1 Configuration Notes for Loadbalancer.org

A few days ago I've posted an article about the Loadbalancer.org virtual appliance being VMware ready and I've received some nice feedback from people who already have implemented the appliance in their production environment.

Michael Patton who works as a VMware vCAC PSO (National Team) North America responded with:

"My reason for writing is recently - I took on Loadbalancer.org product as a means to LB with vCAC 5.1. I worked with product and created a configuration that may be of use to your readers. Since Loadbalancer.org can be configured in may different ways - please see attached as a configuration example. The intent was simply a layer 7 LB configuration for two front end Web Servers hosting VMware's vCAC 5.1 product line."

ConfigurationNotesforLabLoadbalancer.org.pdf

Reference Architecture - VMware Horizon Workspace

VMware Horizon Workspace combines applications and data into a single, aggregated workspace, with flexible access to the data and applications employees need for productivity, regardless of where they are based.

With fewer management points and easier access, Horizon Workspace reduces the complexity of IT administration. Horizon Workspace is delivered as a virtual appliance that is easy to deploy on site and integrate with existing enterprise services.

It helps organizations to centralize assets, devices, and applications and to manage users and data securely behind the firewall. Meanwhile, it enables users to share and collaborate with external partners and customers securely when policy allows.

This reference architecture specifies the sizing and connectivity requirements for a 2,000-user Horizon Workspace application management and file sharing solution. Horizon Workspace 1.0 enables IT to maintain control over the implementation, aggregate resources, and allow end users to access their entitled applications, data, and Horizon View desktops from inside or outside the corporate firewall, on the device or devices of their choice.

Reference Architecture - VMware Horizon Workspace

VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2013

The VMware Workstation team is providing public access to the VMware Workstation Technology Preview to gather feedback from users on a wide range of hardware and software configurations. The VMware Workstation Technology Preview includes changes to the core virtualization engine and new capabilities they are exploring. They would appreciate feedback in the following areas:

Creating and running Virtual Machines using the latest operating systems - Window 8.1, Ubuntu 13.04, Fedora 18 etc.
Running Restricted virtual machines with an expiration date
Converting physical machines to virtual machines
Graphics performance and multi-monitor support
Performance of Virtual Machines running up to 16 vCPUs
General stability, application compatibility and usability

Download the VMware Workstation Technology Preview

Friday, May 24. 2013

Dutch - Een bar met geniën

VMware-expert Eric Sloof neemt tijdens VMware Forum deel aan een nieuw initiatief: de 'Genius bar'. In onderstaande blogpost legt hij uit wat dit inhoudt:

"Begin juni staat iets leuks te gebeuren! Je kunt namelijk op 4 juni gratis het VMware Forum in Den Bosch bezoeken. Deze dag geeft je de gelegenheid om met leveranciers te praten en technische sessies bij te wonen, maar als klap op de vuurpijl is er dit jaar een zogenaamde Genius bar ingericht.

De term Genius bar is komen overwaaien uit Amerika waar op evenementen als VMworld een speciale stand aanwezig is met VMware-specialisten die klaar staan om je vragen te beantwoorden. Een ware primeur voor Nederland is dat we dit jaar op het VMware Forum in Den Bosch ook een echte Genius bar hebben. Deze bar wordt bemand door Bouke Groenescheij, Duco Jaspars, Gabrie van Zanten, Joep Piscaer, Viktor van den Berg en mijzelf, Eric Sloof.

Deze vooraanstaande geniën zijn afkomstig uit het bedrijfsleven en werken dagelijks met de oplossingen van VMware. Je kunt bij deze VMware-enthousiastelingen terecht met al je vragen. Ieder 'genie' heeft zijn eigen expertise en kennis, en kan je ongetwijfeld verder helpen met je VMware-vraagstukken.

Je bent op 4 juni dus van harte welkom in Den Bosch op VMware Forum 2013. Kom vooral even langs bij de Genius bar met eventuele technische vragen. Maar je mag natuurlijk ook gewoon even een praatje komen maken :-)."

Registreer u nu gratis voor het Forum via deze link.

Now available as Rough Cut - Virtualizing Microsoft Business Critical Applications on VMware vSphere 5

The Rough Cuts service from VMware Press 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.

Many organizations are discovering the immense ROI available by virtualizing business critical applications. Microsoft has recently released new versions of many of its most popular and widely used enterprise applications, including Exchange, SQL Server, and Windows Server itself. Meanwhile, VMware has released a powerful new version of its enterprise virtualization platform, vSphere 5.1. Together, these technologies offer powerful new opportunities for cost-effective virtualization, and for migration towards cost-effective private cloud architectures. But successfully integrating them requires deep knowledge. Bridging the gap between Microsoft and VMware worlds, this guide brings together all the knowledge, best practices, and techniques you’ll need.

Two leading experts in virtualizing Microsoft business-critical applications on VMware demonstrate how to optimize performance and availability, and what you must do to ensure full support by both Microsoft and VMware. From sizing to architecture to monitoring metrics, they present start-to-finish coverage of virtualizing:

Windows Server 2012 Active Directory Domain Controllers
Windows Server 2012 Failover Clusters
Exchange Server 2013
SQL Server 2012
SharePoint 2013

For each, example configurations are provided, along with explanations and descriptions of new application features and their relationship to virtualization, as well as tips, tricks, and insights from the authors’ own experience. Throughout, diagrams and figures illustrate key points and compare feature sets, and many references to relevant white papers and Knowledge Base articles are also provided.

Virtualizing Microsoft Business Critical Applications on VMware vSphere 5 - Rough Cuts by Matt Liebowitz and Alex Fontana

Thursday, May 23. 2013

The Loadbalancer.org Virtual Appliance is VMware Ready

The Virtual Appliance offers the full functionality of hardware load balancers:

High Availability
Full Layer 4/7 Server Load Balancing
Supports unlimited Virtual & Real Servers
Web-based GUI
HTTP Cookie Persistence
RDP Cookie Persistence
SSL Offloading
802.1q VLANs
802.3ad Bonding
Feedback Agent
Stateful Packet Inspection
Full IPv6 Support
SIP Support with Call-ID Persistence
Full System root Access

Download the full featured load balancing appliance for VMware Free 30 day trial

Wednesday, May 22. 2013

An interview with VMware Cloud Automation Center Guru Zack Kielich

With the upcoming release of VMware Cloud Automation Center 5.2 on the horizon, I had the opportunity to ask Zack Kielich who works at a Senior Systems Engineer at VMware, a few questions.

Q: Hi Zack, you've recently launched the website vCACTeam.info. Is this website officially a VMware website?

A: No it's not officially affiliated with VMware. Contributors may come form VMware, but it's mainly a site designed on how to best use and implement vCAC.

Q: The VMware Cloud Automation Center product is fairly new to a lot of people. What's the greatest takeaway value for new users? Do you really have to use it for managing or automating multiple clouds or are there other use cases?

A: If there's one thing people should know about vCAC, it's that it enables customers of any knowledge level to consume the cloud resources you give them access to. At the end of the day, customers don't care where a machine gets spun up as long as it's fast and it will do what they want. That means that maybe there's an approval in the request process, but then it goes off to one of the many hypervisor or cloud vendors we support. Imagine not having to put your cloud admins to work to build VMs on the daily, while at the same time they are getting deprovisioned automatically so that you don't have to buy hardware as often--that's the goal: ease of use for the customer, cost savings for the organization.

Today, the main value that vCAC adds is the ability to manage and automate multiple cloud management tools (vSphere, RHEL KVM, AWS, etc) as well as provision to physical hardware (through UCS, iDRAC, and iLO) to build manageable hybrid cloud, private cloud, virtual desktop, and platform as a service environments. That's a pretty large feat in itself, and you can bet that there are plans to add even more value to this product as it further integrates into the VMware suite of products.

Q: The vCAC product has a lot of overlap with existing products like vCloud Director. How are both products positioned?

A: vCAC was an acquisition which had already started down it's own journey to produce value for the DynamicOps customers. Now that it's part of the VMware family, we're in the process of addressing some of the overlap, but it generally comes down to this--what are your business and, therefore, technical goals? If you need robust multi-tenancy functionality with the ability to dynamically create vApp level networking, then you probably need vCD. If you have a use case where all machines are direct connected to a vSphere vLAN and you have no need to isolate a group of machines into an application, then you could probably just connect vCAC to vSphere. It all goes back to your organization's vision and maturity level.

Q: The scripting and workflow language within vCAC is very .NET oriented and has a steep learning curve, is it going to be targeted at developers or administrators?

A: If you're building/importing new workflows, you're right, it can be .NET focused. One thing that we're trying to emphasize in order to limit that is the utilization of vCO. Many customers own vCO today as part of the vSphere suite, but don't use it. It gives organizations the ability to integrate with 3rd party applications like Infoblox, Active Directory, Remedy, and ServiceNow without having to build it. They just install the plugin and collect/pass the strings from vCAC to vCO.

Q: What will happen with vCenter Orchestrator since this product offers the same capabilities. Will both product live side by side?

A: Personally, I think that vCO will become a more central product within the VMware portfolio. The history states that there hasn't been much focus on vCO in the past, but VMware is now starting to make some large improvements in it and have more regular releases. I am encouraging everyone I speak with to check it out, if they haven't already, and if they're building extensions to vCAC to build them in vCO if possible. If you want a great resource for learning the ropes, check out the book Cody Bunch wrote.

Zack, many thanks for the interview. If you want to learn more about vCAC, you definitely have to tune in at the community roundtable podcast which was recorded by Mike Larerick recently. (#231 - vCloud Automation Center) can be downloaded at this address.

There's will also be a training course available in the near future. The vCloud Automation Center Foundation Training is designed for Technical Post-sales delivery specialists, this 2-day, hands-on class is ideal for IT Administrators who are responsible for the provisioning, management and decommissioning of machine resources. Students will learn how to install, configure and administer Cloud Automation Center 5.2 for use in data center resource provisioning. Plus learn how to how to quickly set up and create on-demand private and public cloud services.

The Basics
Configuration
Configurable Customizations
Advanced Customizations

Cool Tool - Snapshot Explorer - Foglight for Virtualization Free Edition

Virtual machine snapshots preserve the entire state of a running VM at a particular point in time. While the snapshot is active, all changes to the VM are captured in one or more delta disks. If they stay active too long, however, the delta files become too large and create problems with performance overhead and capacity. When vCenter loses control of snapshots, they become orphaned and can continue to stay active without detection. To help VM administrators better see orphaned snapshots, Dell has added Snapshot Explorer to the collection of free utilities in Foglight for Virtualization - Free Edition version 6.5.2.

Snapshot Explorer eliminates the time-consuming and tedious need to track snapshots manually. It detects all snapshots, including orphaned snapshots, and provides all of this information at a glance. Snapshot Explorer provides VM administrators with advanced filters and a detailed snapshot list.

Foglight for Virtualization, Free Edition, a single downloadable virtual appliance, now offers six free utilities:

Snapshot Explorer - Detects all snapshots, including orphaned shapshots, to avoid problems with performance and capacity.
Environment Explorer - Provides at-a-glance information about performance, efficiency and capacity.
Change Explorer - Lists all changes that occur in a virtual environment, and provides associated risk impact.
Storage Explorer - Assesses storage performance and capacity across datastores and VMs.
vScope Explorer - Offers immediate identification of VMs, hosts and datastores suffering performance, capacity and efficiency issues.
SearchMyVM Explorer - Delivers search capabilities, similar to Google, of the virtual environment.

Here's a link to the Download and the Community.

(Page 1 of 3, totaling 25 entries)