Entries from Eric Sloof

H9Labs discovered a bug in VirtualCenter which causes attached VI clients to display the VMware Message of the Day over and over and over again. Not waiting for VMware to fix the bug, H9Labs has released their own patch. Read more about this issue and download the patch at H9Labs.

Here at H9Labs we're always busy creating the next "it" thing for virtualization, but never too busy to listen to our customers. Well, one of customers notified us that the H9Labs GuessMyOS and Search Bar plug-ins were causing the Message of the Day (MOTD) to appear with an annoying frequency in the VI client. In fact, the MOTD was appearing in *ALL* attached VI clients. And not just when the administrators were logging into the VI client, but over and over and over again. For no apparent reason.

The vLockstep technology used by FT requires the physical processor extensions added to the latest processors from Intel and AMD. In order to run FT, a host must have an FT-capable processor, and both hosts running an FT VM pair must be in the same processor family. The following table shows which CPUs are compatible with FT and can be used toegther in an FT VM pair. If an FT cluster mixes multiple processor types, they must be able to work together as shown by a green circle O where those the two processor types intersect in the table.

	Intel 3100	Intel 3300	Intel 5200	Intel 5400	Intel 5500	Intel 7400	AMD 1300	AMD 2300	AMD 8300
Intel 3100	O	O	O	O	X	O	X	X	X
Intel 3300	O	O	O	O	X	O	X	X	X
Intel 5200	O	O	O	O	X	O	X	X	X
Intel 5400	O	O	O	O	X	O	X	X	X
Intel 5500	X	X	X	X	O	X	X	X	X
Intel 7400	O	O	O	O	X	O	X	X	X
AMD 1300	X	X	X	X	X	X	O	O	O
AMD 2300	X	X	X	X	X	X	O	O	O
AMD 8300	X	X	X	X	X	X	O	O	O

CPU Speeds and FT : When ESX hosts are used together in an FT cluster, their processor speeds must be matched fairly closely to ensure that the hosts can stay in sync. VMware SiteSurvey will flag any CPU speeds that are different by more than 400 MHz.

You can read an overview of the VMware Fault Tolerance feature here.

Today at Partner Exchange 2009, VMware, unveiled the new Partner Network, VMware’s next-generation partner program. The new Program will provide solution-based competencies and an enhanced information portal to help partners build successful VMware virtualization practices.

VMware has established new competency-based training that will enable partners to clearly differentiate their solution expertise to customers. Partners will be able to receive certifications in four competencies: infrastructure virtualization, business continuity, desktop virtualization and virtualization management.

John D. Cook over at the The Endeavour has written a small booklet, 10 pages, of things he wish someone had told him when he first started using Windows PowerShell.

The booklet PowerShell Day 1 lists some things that I wish someone had told me the first day I started using PowerShell. It is not a tutorial on PowerShell per se. There are many excellent tutorials out there, and these can be found via the links in the booklet. Instead, what this book covers is some of the environmental issues surrounding PowerShell that are harder to discover.

During the last episode of the PowerScripting Podcast, Scott Herold was interviewed by both co-hosts Jonathan Walz & Hal Rottenberg. There was another prominent person asking questions on chat. Carter Chanklin, Product Manager at VMware's End User Enablement was just as curious as I about tomorrows launch of the Virtualization EcoShell. Scott also revealed, Vizioncore’s vRanger 4.0 will offer its own cmd-lets.

Use caution when experimenting with the SCVMM and VMware, here are five reasons why you don’t’ want to use Microsoft’s SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) for managing VMware Infrastructure.

SCVMM Displays Very Little VM and Guest OS Information
The VI Client presents useful information to VMware Infrastructure 3 administrators, such as guest OS IP address, hostname, and performance history. The SCVMM console does not offer any of this information, instead relying on integration with additional complex systems.

SCVMM Creates Unnecessary Port Groups on ESX vSwitches
When managing VMware ESX virtual machine networks, SCVMM exposes only vSwitches and not port groups. SCVMM then creates new port groups on every ESX vSwitch in the environment—duplicating existing functionality and increasing management costs and complexity.

SCVMM Imposes Artificial Constraints on VMware Infrastructure 3 Resources
SCVMM prevents migration and cloning of virtual machines that vCenter would otherwise allow. Managing VMware Infrastructure 3 with SCVMM compromises powerful features that make VMware ESX the more efficient virtualization platform.

SCVMM Provisioning Defaults Unsuitable for VMware ESX Virtual Machines
Microsoft advertises the ability to provision new VMware ESX virtual machines with SCVMM. In reality, SCVMM ignores advanced ESX capabilities and hypervisor platform differences, so the VMs it creates require numerous manual configuration adjustments to make them compatible with ESX.

SCVMM Destroys VMware Infrastructure 3 Templates During Import
Use caution when experimenting with the SCVMM capability to import VMware Infrastructure 3 templates. SCVMM will try to establish a foothold in your management environment by deleting the original templates from ESX datastores without any advance warning.

There's a fundamental structural difference between VMware and Hyper-V. Tim Antonowicz, Senior SE and virtualization guru at Mosaic explains the difference, but is he right? 

Update : Read Matt McSpirit's comment.

Veeam has released version 4.5 of its nworks Management Pack (MP) for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and its nworks Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware for HP Operations Manager. Both products now use VMware vCenter custom attributes to offer the ability to segment VMware environments by line of business, SLA (service-level agreement) terms, or any categorization of the customer’s choosing. This allows customers to manage virtual machines in accordance with their criticality to business needs, and to group virtual machines for management by department or location.

Scott Herold, the driving force behind the TheVESI, just announced the public availability of a new freeware product called The Virtualization EcoShell.

I'm not talking "Free for 30 days and then we're going to rip 80% of the features away".  I'm not talking "Free....for only a few ESX Servers".  I'm talking 100% completely free of charge regardless of the size of your environment.  How's that for an April 15th surprise?

The Virtualization EcoShell Initiative (VESI™) is a community-based initiative to help extend virtualization management using Microsoft Windows PowerShell. Whether you are a novice looking for assistance in enhancing your virtualization administration practices or an expert looking to share your knowledge with others, theVESI.org is the place for you.

@vinternals : Public service announcement. Please ensure you are sitting down before reading my latest post http://vinternals.com/2009/04/microsoft-myths-and-realities/ I'm not kidding about that last tweet. I have just endanged a good proportion of the vExpert community, who may die from laughter.

In this paper, published January 2009, we get the cold hard facts on Hyper-V as deployed by none other than Microsoft IT themselves. Internally. Y’know, that whole dogfood thing. And the results are absolutely astounding. Now before going further, I need to re-iterate this is an actual Microsoft published case. It is not an April Fools joke, they are not having a lend of us. It is stone cold truth from Microsoft’s own IT department. If you were going to listen to anybody talk about the reality of Hyper-V, it’s these guys. And again, this is not a joke. This is real.