Tools - 16

VMware Labs presents its latest fling XVP Manager and Converter - that helps manage non-vSphere hypervisor. VMware vCenter XVP Manager and Converter provides basic virtualization management capabilities for non-vSphere hypervisor platforms towards enabling centralized visibility and control across heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. It also simplifies and enables easy migrations of virtual machines from non-vSphere virtualization platforms to VMware vSphere.

Key Features - Management of the following Microsoft Hyper-V platforms

o Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
o Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) with Hyper-V role enabled
o Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
o Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V role enabled

• Familiar vCenter Server graphical user interface for navigating through and managing non-vSphere inventory
• Ease of virtual machine migrations from non-vSphere hosts to vSphere inventory
• Compatible with VMware vCenter Server 4.0 & 4.1
• Scalable up to management of 50 non-vSphere hosts

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

https://www.youtube.com/user/vmwarelabs

RVTools is a windows .NET 2.0 application which uses the VI SDK to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts. Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.5, ESX 3.5, ESX3i, ESX4i and vSphere 4 RVTools is able to list information about cpu, memory, disks, nics, cd-rom, floppy drives, snapshots, VMware tools, ESX hosts, nics, datastores, service console, VM Kernel, switches, ports and health checks. With RVTools you can disconnect the cd-rom or floppy drives from the virtual machines and RVTools is able to list the current version of the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine. and update them to the latest version.

http://www.robware.net/

  Pass-through authentication implemented. Allows you to use your logged on
Windows credentials to automatically logon.
  All numeric columns are now formated to make it more readable.
  On vInfo the columns Commited, Uncommited, Shared and on vSnapshot the
column size are now formated in MBs instead of bytes.
  New tabpage created with service console and VMKernel information.
  Now using vSphere Web Services SDK 4.1 which supports the new features
available in vSphere 4.1
  Export to csv file now uses Windows regional separator
  using NPOI to make it possible to write directly to xls files without the need for a
installed Excel version on the system.
  New menu function to write all information to one excel workbook with for each
tabpage a new worksheet.
  new command line options. Check the documentation!

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.

Veeam has launched a new program as part of a holiday present for the VMware community.
Going forward, anyone who is a VCP, vExpert, VCI or VCDX can get a 2 socket NFR license for both Veeam ONE and Veeam Backup & Replication.

The registration page is here: http://www.veeam.com/nfr/free-nfr-license

Doug Hazelman has posted a blog about it at: http://www.veeam.com/blog/happy-holidays-from-veeamnfrs-for-vcps-vcis-and-vexperts.html

Veeam Software, innovative provider of VMware data protection, disaster recovery and VMware management solutions for virtual datacenter environments, today announced that Veeam Backup & Replication™ v5 with vPower™ is now available free to all VMware vExperts, VMware Certified Professionals, and VMware Certified Instructors. Any vExpert, VCP or VCI can receive a free two-socket software license (valued at approximately $1,800) for non-production use, including training, evaluation and development.

Symantec VirtualStore is a highly scalable, clustered NAS solution for VMware virtual machine management. Based on the Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System from Symantec, VirtualStore solves the storage challenges of virtual infrastructures with features that provide rapid provisioning of servers and virtual desktops, and efficient cloning and boot up of virtual machines, all through VMware vCenter, their management console.

• Advanced Storage Virtualization. VirtualStore is a highly scalable, clustered NAS solution that reduces storage costs associated with virtual machine sprawl and improves the performance of virtual infrastructures with built-in acceleration for serving up VMware virtual machines.

• Space-efficient Virtual Machine Provisioning. Built-in cloning and provisioning functionality captures spaceoptimized snapshots of virtual machines for significant storage savings.

• Single Management Console. Integration with VMware vCenter provides end-to-end virtual machine management from a central location.

• Enhanced End-user Virtual Desktop Experience. Patented solution for caching virtual images addresses the challenge of multiple users booting up their virtual machines simultaneously.

http://www.symantec.com/business/virtualstore

Veeam has released The First Annual Report on VMware Data Protection. They hired an independent research firm, to survey 500 enterprises CIOs. Vanson Bourne, an independent market research organization, conducted an online survey in August 2010 of 500 CIOs from organizations across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France that employ more than 1,000 people.

FirstAnnualReportonVMwareDataProtection-SurveyResults.pdf

PortBox PL: Serial to Ethernet device server

RS-232/485 serial line - Ethernet converter on TCP/IP and UDP/IP protocol. Built-in virtual serial port support, the remote port can be mapped as for example COM1 in VM using the HW VSP utility. 9-bit support extension, wide support of RS-485 question-answer communication support.A typical application is access a remote technology controlled over RS-232 of RS-485, or serial port prolonging via the Ethernet network.

http://www.hw-group.com/products/converter/index_en.html

Moxa NPort 5100A

The NPort 5100A device servers are designed to make serial devices network-ready in an instant and give your VM direct access to serial devices. The NPort 5100A device servers are ultra lean, ruggedized, and user friendly, making simple and reliable serial to Ethernet solutions possible.

http://www.moxa.com/product/NPort_5100A.htm

Art Berman, CEO over at StarWind has some exiting offers for VMware certified professionals, including the opportunity to be a guest speaker in one of their weekly iSCSI SAN webinars (where you can pick the topic) and to earn referral cash rewards. StarWind Software supports the community of Microsoft & VMware certified professionals by providing free NFR (not for resale) licenses of StarWind iSCSI SAN software to individuals with an MCP/MVP/VCP status.

As a guest speaker, you can talk about any topic related to iSCSI and StarWind SAN products, such as virtual servers & server management, desktop virtualization, disaster recovery, backups, etc., the limit is your imagination. They can arrange a live webinar or recorded webcast - whatever you prefer. Take a look at some of their previous webinars prepared by your fellow IT professionals. I’ve recently recorded a video for StarWind regarding "StarWind iSCSI multipathing with Round Robin and esxcli".

This webcast covers the benefits and features of StarWind iSCSI multipathing with Round Robin and esxcli. It also explains the operations you need to complete to create and format the datastore in the way your ESX server can create virtual machines on it and show how the esxcli command can be used for PSA (pluggable storage architecture) management and explain how to use the vSphere Client to manage the PSA, the associated native multipathing plug-in (NMP).

As an MCP/MVP/VCP you probably requested your free NFR key to give demos to your customers and colleagues or for educational use. Some of your students, colleagues or event attendees may be keen to order commercial version of our products.You can earn up to 25% off MSRP for any deal you bring StarWind - all deals are registered to your name, protecting you for your efforts. Please contact their sales department to learn how you can earn from your hard work already invested with StarWind's iSCSI SAN software.

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/offers-for-professionals-newsletter

The Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) software implements an idea of a physical interconnection cable applied to Windows audio applications. Like traditional audio devices (CD Player, FM receiver, equalizer, amplifier etc.) are connected by the electric (analog or digital) cables, Windows audio applications can be connected together by the Virtual Cables created by the VAC.

VAC has a Windows WDM/KS virtual device driver that creates a set of virtual audio devices named Virtual Cables. Each cable has a pair of audio ports, input and output. These ports are internally connected within each cable so all digital audio data sent (played) to the output port by "source" application are implicitly transferred to the input port and can be retrieved (recorded) by another (destination) application.

A Virtual Cable is similar to an ordinary audio adapter (a sound card) with its input and output externally connected between each other. Since a real adapter usually has a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) and ADC (analog-to-digital converter) in its signal path, an unneeded double digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions are performed in case of such connection. Only rare and/or expensive adapters have a digital input and output that can be connected to transfer a signal clearly. VAC does such transfer itself, without any additional audio hardware.

Each port of each Virtual Cable is multi-client, allowing multiple applications to open the port at the same time. In the WDM/KS terms, it means each cable pin can be instantiated several times. All sounds (audio streams) coming to the playback port are mixed together, and each client connected to the recording port will get an individual copy of a signal via its recording/capture stream. Mixing and distributing are performed on the cable basis only, different cables are completely independent from each other.

As a WDM/KS filter driver, VAC represents a lowest-level audio layer that can be effectively used by any upper-level layer (KS-aware applications, DirectSound and MME subsystems, ASIO wrappers and so on). A small utility, Audio Repeater, is included into the package to perform various useful tasks.

Zenoss has announced that it is now offering a free ZenPack for monitoring the performance of VMware ESX/ESXi servers. Similar to the Unix "Top" command, this ZenPack uses the VMware resxtop command to aggregate and alert on performance metrics in a single graphical view in order to provide administrators an expanded and deeper VMware ESX/ESXi monitoring experience. With this ZenPack, Zenoss is the first to enable proactive VMware management using esxtop.

VMware’s esxtop is a very powerful VMware administrator’s tool used to obtain a snapshot of the current server state.  It not only provides metrics but give you visibility to issues such as disk latency, CPU contentions, memory over commits, etc. VMware administrators have until now used esxtop at the command line to access host server performance metrics.

Virtualization administrators, while enjoying the power of the esxtop command, have been looking for enhancements to help simplify and improve performance troubleshooting. Currently the command must be executed through the command line interface and provides no capability for reporting or alerting. Historical data analysis and graphing requires users to manually redirect data to a file for further offline analysis and charting.

The new ZenPack for esxtop enables the following:

• Performance metrics from ESX and ESXi servers are automatically captured, graphed, displayed, and continually updated in one graphical interface.
• Users can set thresholds and exception alerting based on performance metrics and events as they occur.
• Historical data is saved for in-depth root cause analysis.  

“As we have been working with organizations to provide deep VMware monitoring capabilities, we saw some of our customers and community members using the esxtop command. Unfortunately, this tool was somewhat hidden and only available for power users.  We are combining the strength and ease of use of Zenoss with the esxtop command to provide a simpler monitoring capability for VMware ESX environments,” said Simon Jakesch, Engineer at Zenoss. “With this free ZenPack, users can easily identify performance problems in their ESX and ESXi environment, and immediately take steps to resolve the issues before they affect the business. This capability will save administrator time and increase accessibility to a very powerful performance tool.”

ZenPacks are software extensions to Zenoss. The ZenPack for esxtop is free. For more information on how to download the ZenPack, visit the Zenoss blog. For a complete list of all the ZenPacks that are available, please visit: http://community.zenoss.org/community/zenpacks.