The virtual machines in a vApp can connect to vApp networks (isolated or routed) and organization vDC networks (direct or fenced). You can add networks of different types to a vApp to address multiple networking scenarios.Virtual machines in the vApp can connect to these networks. If you want to connect a virtual machine to a different network, you must first add it to the vApp.A vApp can include vApp networks and organization vDC networks. A vApp network can be isolated by selecting None in the Connection drop-down menu. An isolated vApp network is totally contained within the vApp. You can also route a vApp network to an organization vDC network to provide connectivity to virtual machines outside of the vApp. For routed vApp networks, you can configure network services, such as a firewall and static routing.You can connect a vApp directly to an organization vDC network. If you have multiple vApps that contain identical virtual machines connected to the same organization vDC network and you want to start the vApps at the same time, you can fence the vApp. This allows you to power on the virtual machines without conflict, by isolating their MAC and IP addresses.You can configure certain vApp networks to provide IP translation by adding a NAT mapping rule. When you create an IP translation rule for a network, vCloud Director adds a DNAT and SNAT rule to the vShield Edge associated with the network's port group. The DNAT rule translates an external IP address to an internal IP address for inbound traffic. The SNAT rule translates an internal IP address to an external IP address for outbound traffic. If the network is also using IP masquerade, the SNAT rule takes precedence.You can configure certain vApp networks to provide port forwarding by adding a NAT mapping rule. Port forwarding provides external access to services running on virtual machines on the vApp network. When you configure port forwarding, vCloud Director maps an external port to a service running on a port on a virtual machine for inbound traffic.

I’ve just recorded a real cool video which shows you how to install and configure ApplicationHA. This new product from Symantec and VMware is able to monitor applications within the virtual machine.

This video <- HD version - will show you how to create a stateless VMware vSphere Hypervisor formally known as ESXi and how to boot it trough PXE-iSCSI. Yesterday evening I finally succeeded in booting an ESXi 4.1 host with PXE and iSCSI. After firing the tweet, I’ve received a lot of responses asking me how I did it. In the video I’ll show you how to build your own staging server and the deployment of an ESXi 4.1 host. I’m not really a Linux guy so I had to create a Windows distribution server

In my previous post "Running the VMware vSphere Hypervisor stateless" I’ve explained how to setup an ESXi deployment server, but now we are going to take it one step further. To be able to save the ESXi configuration settings there’s a CCBoot feature available which is called “Write Back”. In this episode (HD) I’m going to show you how to enable “Write Back” for both the ESXi host and the CCBoot server. After rebooting the ESXI host the configuration will be preserved.

In this video I’ll show you how SDD storage is detected by the ESXi host after adding a new datastore. You will also learn how to configure VMware ESXi host swapping and redirecting virtual machine swap files to solid state storage.

ESX/ESXi includes an SNMP agent embedded in hostd that can both send traps and receive polling requests. such as GET requests. This agent is referred to as the embedded SNMP agent. By default, the embedded SNMP agent is disabled. To enable it, you must configure it using the vSphere CLI command vicfg-snmp. In this video I'll show you how to enable the SNMP agent.

When creating a database only use capitols even the username and the password need to be in capitols Also use the fully qualified domain name as a database server, don't use IP-addresses. For configuring vCenter information, scroll down and notice the vCenter configuration information that is necessary. It is very important that the vCenter Server Address field is correctly populated. If you have used IP addresses for all site pairing activities, continue to use IP addresses in this location. If your SRM sites were paired with host names or fully qualified domain names, it is important that you do the same at this location as you did when pairing the sites. VRMS requires naming consistency throughout the process in order to function correctly. Enter the vCenter Server Address for the site you are currently using, which should be the protected site (Site A) vCenter. Click on Generate and Install an SSL Certificate after all the information is filled out.

vSphere Replication (VR) uses replication technologies included in ESX Servers with the assistance of virtual appliances to replicate virtual machines between sites. VR is provided by vSphere Replication Servers (VR Servers or VRS). VR Servers are managed by the vSphere Replication Managment Server (VRMS). Both VRMS and VR Servers are virtual appliances. VRMS provides a way to manage VR Servers across multiple hosts. If you are using VR, you must establish at least one vSphere Replication Server and exactly one VRMS at the recovery site. To enable replication in both directions, you must deploy exactly one VRMS at each site and at least one VRS at each site. You may want to create multiple VR Servers at each site if multiple servers are required to meet your load balancing needs for replication of virtual machines. Each VRMS must be registered with a corresponding vCenter Server. For example, the primary site VRMS must be registered with the primary site vCenter Servers.Both the VRMS and VRS appliances provide a virtual appliance management interface (VAMI). These interfaces can be used to configure the VRMS database, as well as network settings, public-key certificates, and passwords for the appliances. Before using VR, you need to configure the VR infrastructure including having managed IP defined in runtime settings at both sites and having a VRMS database installed. This video provides useful guidance to help ensure you complete the installation and configuration process correctly. When installing SRM, be certain to select the VR option. If you have installed SRM and want to add VR, you can add that option by running the installer again. So, here are the steps for configure-ring vSphere SRM Replication for a Single Virtual Machine.1. On the vSphere Client Home page, click VMs and Templates. 2. Browse the inventory to find the single virtual machine to be replicated using VR. Right-click the virtual machine and click vSphere Replication.3. In the Replication Settings page, configure general replication settings. These settings include the disk file location to which the virtual machine is replicated on the recovery site, how often the virtual machine is replicated, and how the guest OS is quiesced. Use the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) slider or enter a value to configure the maximum amount of data that can be lost during the recovery. The available range is from 15 minutes to 24 hours. For example, a recovery point objective of one hour seeks to ensure that the virtual machine loses no more than one hour of data during the recovery. For smaller RPOs, less data is lost in a recovery, but more network bandwidth is consumed keeping the replica synchronized. The available quiescing types are determined by the virtual machine's operating system. Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) quiescing is supported for Windows virtual machines running Windows XP or later. Linux does not support quiescing. If no target file location is specified or if you want to override the default determined by the datastore mappings, click Browse to select a target location for the virtual machine.

AlarmVM is used by VMware Administrators to detect problems in the VMware environment and proactively notify administrators. alarmVM is a 24/7 alarm monitoring tool that detects problems in VMware objects, including VMs, hosts, clusters, datastores and vCenter Servers. When alarm conditions are detected, alarmVM notifies VMware Administrators via email and/or SNMP trap.Key Benefits:alarmVM can be installed and set up to monitor a VMware environment in less than 20 minutes.It automatically activates out-of-the-box alarms so an entire VMware environment is being monitored simply by registering a vCenter Server.By default, alarmVM notifies all configured contacts about each alarm, eliminating the need to set up contacts for each alarm.Using inheritable alarm policies, it is easy to change default alarm behavior on entire sets of vSphere objects (e.g. all VMs in a datacenter or all VMs in a folder).A 30 day history of alarms is kept, so you can see what happened in the past. During this period, alarmVM shows graphs for metric-based alarms with the underlying detailed data that would not be available in vSphere Client.alarmVM shows how alarms are trending so you can see if trouble is easing or mounting in your VMware environment.

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.

In this video I'll show you how to manipulate the slot size in a VMware vSphere HA cluster. You can set advanced attributes that affect the behaviour of your VMware HA The cluster.The das.slotMemInMB advanced value defines the maximum bound on the memory slot size. If this option is used, the slot size is the smaller of this value or the maximum memory reservation plus memory overhead of any powered-on virtual machine in the cluster.

WaveMaker has recently been acquired by VMware. This partnership is the result of discussions that have been going on between WaveMaker and the SpringSource division of VMware for more than a year. WaveMaker is a visual development tool that lets everyone quickly build and deploy great-looking web and cloud applications. With WaveMaker, you can build a complete, 3-tier web application in minutes! Let’s see how it works – in this video I’ll show you a short WaveMaker demo. The community version of WaveMaker is available for download at: http://www.wavemaker.com/downloads/

This video will show you an new vSphere 5 feature which enables you to get access to the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) through SSH instead of the ESXi physical console. Only users that are assigned the Administrator role can log in to the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI). To allow access to the direct console, add the user to the local administrators group. Enabling or disabling lockdown mode affects which types of users are authorized to access host services, but it does not affect the availability of those services. In other words, if the ESXi Shell, SSH, or Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) services are enabled, they will continue to run whether or not the host is in lockdown mode. Configure Lockdown Mode To increase the security of your ESXi hosts, you can put them in lockdown mode. When you enable lockdown mode, no users other than vpxuser have authentication permissions, nor can they perform operations against the host directly. Lockdown mode forces all operations to be performed through vCenter Server. When a host is in lockdown mode, you cannot run vSphere CLI commands from an administration server,vfrom a script, or from vMA against the host. External software or management tools might not be able to retrieve or modify information from the ESXi host. The root user is still authorized to log in to the direct console user interface when lockdown mode is enabled. Enabling or disabling lockdown mode affects which types of users are authorized to access host services, but it does not affect the availability of those services. In other words, if the ESXi Shell, SSH, or Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) services are enabled, they will continue to run whether or not the host is in lockdown mode.

Enhanced vMotion allows you to combine a vMotion and Storage vMotion into a single operation. Effectivly enabling a “shared nothing” vMotion. Use cases can be found in large datacenters and SMB markets; Cross host and datastore vMotion allows VM migration between clusters in a large datacenters, which may not have a common set of datastores between them.Cross host and datastore vMotion allows simpler setup and use of local disk, by removing the shared storage requirement, it lowers the barrier to entry for use of non-disruptive migrations and will be very useful for the SMB market.

The Operations Panel is a script tool, which runs on the client browser and extends the default ESX server web page with a short list of all available virtual machines. It gives the user the ability to perform simple power operations (start, stop, suspend, resume). Easily accessible user interface for some of the most common operations on an ESX host, available directly from the ESX home page.

Although Expandable Reservations are enabled by default on a resource pool, it doesn’t mean that they should stay enabled in every situation. In this white boarding session I’ll show what the hidden danger of using expandable reservations can lead to. The system considers the resources available in the selected resource pool and its direct parent resource pool. If the parent resource pool also has the Expandable Reservation option selected, it can borrow resources from its parent resource pool. Borrowing resources occurs recursively from the ancestors of the current resource pool as long as the Expandable Reservation option is selected. Leaving this option selected offers more flexibility, but, at the same time provides less protection. A child resource pool owner might reserve more resources than you anticipate.

What are datastore heartbeats? The host-X-hb (where X is the host’s MOID) is Located on each heartbeat datastore, this file is used to check for slave liveness through the heartbeat datastore. This file is checked by the master host if the master loses network heartbeats from the slave. For VMFS datastores, the vSphere HA agent locks this file with an exclusive lock and relies on the VMkernel heartbeat to indicate liveness. For NFS datastores, vSphere HA periodically updates the time stamp to this file to indicate liveness. The host-X-poweron (where X is the host’s MOID) is a per-host file that contains the list of all virtual machines that are powered on. This file is used as a communication channel if a management network outage occurs. Isolated slaves use this file to tell the master that it is isolated as well as to tell the master which virtual machines it has powered off. The master host must determine whether the slave host: • Actually crashed • Is not responding because of a network failure • The HA agent is in an unreachable state The absence of both a network and datastore heartbeat indicates full host failure. Datastores are used as a backup communication channel to detect virtual machine and host heartbeats. Datastore heartbeats are used to make the distinction between a failed, an isolated or a partitioned host.

Caveat when using - Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity

Sorry for my rude title Scott but I was just on the phone with me ex Capgemini colleague Ernst Cozijnsen and we had a long discussion about super fast storage for replicas in a View environment. In the end we settled for RAM. I immediately jumped into my lab to setup a proof of concept to see how it performs and it’s pure awesomeness, faster than fast and quicker than quick. You want to see what we discussed? Well here’s the story. In the proof of concept I’m using a Windows 2008 64 bit Enterprise server with 7 GB of RAM and the StarWind iSCSI target software. I’ve configured this iSCSI target with a RAM disk of 6 GB and created a VMFS on the iSCSI target. I’ve cloned a Windows 2003 virtual machine to the newly created VMFS hosted in RAM and did some performance checks. I was astounded.

Arista vEOS is a virtual-machine-based or switch-integrated implementation of Arista EOS that integrates with VMware vSphere to provide the network operator visibility and configuration access to the virtual switches within the virtual server environment.In this video I'll show you how to deploy the vEOS virtual appliance.

Deploying a new VM in the vCloud is very easy. Just go to your Catalog, select one of your vApps Templates and choose “Add to My Cloud”. But what if you want to move an existing virtual machine from your local vCenter server of private vCloud to BleuLock’s vCloud Datacenter? It’s also very easy. Launch the vCloud Connector from your vSphere client and move your existing virtual machines wherever you want. The VMware vCloud Connector is a free plug-in that will allow VMware vSphere administrators to immediately begin deploying and managing virtual machines across VMware vCloud Powered cloud services from within the VMware vSphere Client. In this video I’ll show you how to configure both the vCenter server and the vCloud Director address and how to upload a virtual machine to BlueLock’s vCloud.

Android-x86 is a project to port Android open source to the x86 platform, formerly known as "patch hosting for android x86 support". In this video I’ll show you how to create a VMware vSphere virtual machine configured with the Android-x86 boot CD.

Port mirroring is the capability on a network switch to send a copy of network packets seen on a switch port to a network monitoring device connected to another switch port. Port mirroring is also referred to as Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN) on Cisco switches. In VMware vSphere 5.0, a Distributed Switch provides a similar port mirroring capability to that available on a physical network switch. After a port mirror session is configured with a destination—a virtual machine, a vmknic or an uplink port—the Distributed Switch copies packets to the destination. Port mirroring provides visibility into: • Intrahost virtual machine traffic (virtual machine–to–virtual machine traffic on the same host) • Interhost virtual machine traffic (virtual machine–to–virtual machine traffic on different hosts) The port mirroring capability on a Distributed Switch is a valuable tool that helps network administrators in debugging network issues in a virtual infrastructure. The granular control over monitoring ingress, egress or all traffic of a port helps administrators fine-tune what traffic is sent for analysis. Port mirror configuration can be done at the Distributed Switch level, where a network administrator can create a port mirror session by identifying the traffic source that needs monitoring and the traffic destination where the traffic will be mirrored. The traffic source can be any port with ingress, egress or all traffic selected. The traffic destination can be any virtual machine, vmknic or uplink port. http://www.ntpro.nl

Logging in vSphere 5.0 has been significantly enhanced. You now have fine-grained control over system logs, the location where logs are sent, and, for each log, default size and rotation policy. You can set up logging with the vSphere Client or with the esxcli system syslog command and the PowerCLI VMHostSysLogServer Commandlets. You can also set up logging behaviour for a host by using the Host Profiles interface in the vSphere Client and can then import that host profile into other hosts.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any upstream physical access layer switch that is Ethernet standard compliant, including the Catalyst 6500 series switch, Cisco Nexus switches, and switches from other network vendors. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any server hardware listed in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). Cisco and VMware jointly designed APIs that produced the Cisco Nexus 1000V. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is a distributed virtual switch solution that is fully integrated within the VMware virtual infrastructure, including VMware vCenter for the virtualization administrator. This solution offloads the configuration of the virtual switch and port groups to the network administrator to enforce a consistent data center network policy. In this release Java applications are introduced for VSM and VEM installation.

VMware vCenter Server allows you to centrally manage hosts from either a physical or virtual Windows machine, and enables the use of advanced features such as vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), vSphere High Availability (HA), vSphere vMotion, vSphere Storage vMotion, and vSphere Auto Deploy. You can install vCenter Server in a Microsoft Windows virtual machine that runs on an ESXi host. Deploying the vCenter Server system in the virtual machine has the following advantages:- You can provide high availability for the vCenter Server system by using vSphere HA.- You can migrate the VM containing vCenter from one host to another.- You can create snapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine.- Rather than dedicating a separate server to the vCenter Server system, you can place it in a virtual machine running on the same host where your other virtual machines run.This video will show you how to install VMware vCenter Server 5.0 in a virtual machine 13 simple steps.

I’m very busy with preparing my upcoming "Mythbusters Goes Virtual" VMworld session which will go deep into a few specific well known vSphere myths. The myth busting will be done by Mattias Sundling and me. I’ll have the honour to debunk the fact that RDM offers a better performance compared to VMFS. My lab wasn’t equipped with a device that offers RDM storage and VMFS storage but luckily my good friend Duco Jaspars brought my into contact with Iomega’s Benelux country manager Filip Joly.

In general, VMware recommends that the number of vCloud Director cell instances = n + 1, where n is the number of vCenter Server instances providing compute resources for cloud consumption. Based on the Service Definition, two vCloud Director cell instances should be sufficient and allow for upgradability (upgrading one vCloud Director cell, then the other) and high availability.It is important for vCloud Director to be able to spread and run services in case of hardware failures and load balance them on available cells as best as it can. This article describes how the Kemp Loadmaster is able to balance client connections to the vCloud Director portal and ensures a highly available multi cell deployment by monitoring services an response times.The Console Proxy and web portal are running on every cell and are stateless. All instances are capable of doing work so failure of any one component does not affect user requests as they are redirected by the load balancer. In a one-armed configuration, the Virtual Servers and the VDC cells are configured on the same subnet. The LoadMaster connects to the Layer 2 network through a single interface, eth0. This architecture covers load balancing of multiple vCloud Director sells within the same site. The Loadmaster service should be configured to check the health and response time of the individual vCloud Director cells. Since each cell responds via HTTPS, this can be configured quickly via the IP and API end point URL. Generally services are checked every few-30 seconds based on load. A good starting point is 5 seconds. Example GUI URL - https://my.cloud.com/cloud/

vSphere 4.1 introduces a load-based teaming (LBT) policy that ensures vDS dvUplink capacity is optimized. LBT avoids the situation of other teaming policies in which some of the dvUplinks in a DV Port Group’s team were idle while others were completely saturated just because the teaming policy used is statically determined.

During my weekly VMware training sessions, I’m always getting a bit excited when we reach the module where the ESX and virtual machine memory is covered. I’m trying to explain how important it is; not to use the virtual machine memory limit setting and very often students believe me after checking out their own production environment for ballooning activity and 9 out of 10 times they find a few virtual machine which have a memory limit configured. The memory limit is the upper limit on memory the ESX host makes available to virtual machine.

vSphere 5 introduces a new latency-aware Metro vMotion feature that not only provides better performance over long latency networks but also increases the round-trip latency limit for vMotion networks from 5 milliseconds to 10 milliseconds. Previously, vMotion was supported only on networks with round-trip latencies of up to 5 milliseconds. In vSphere 4.1, vMotion is supported only when the latency between the source and destination ESXi/ESX hosts is less than 5 ms RTT (round-trip time). For higher latencies, not all workloads are guaranteed to converge. With Metro vMotion in vSphere 5.0, vMotion can be used to move a running virtual machine when the source and destination ESX hosts have a latency of more than 5ms RTT. The maximum supported round trip time latency between the two hosts is now 10ms. Metro vMotion is only available with vSphere Enterprise Plus license.

This video will show you how to install ESXi 5.0 on a drive with an existing ESX 4.1 installation and VMFS datastore present. ESXi 5.0 uses the same installer for fresh installations and upgrades. If the installer finds an existing ESX 4.x or ESXi 4.x installation, it allows you to performs an upgrade. During this upgrade, the ESXi installer will offer several options for preserving or discarding existing ESX host settings and VMFS datastores. If an earlier version of ESX and VMFS was found by the installer, it will show you the selected storage device contains an installation of ESX and a VMFS datastore. You can choose whether to upgrade or install and overwrite the existing installation. You can also choose whether to preserve or overwrite the existing VMFS datastore. After upgrading from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0, only the relevant settings will be migrated.

If you want to create great looking diagrams with data from the vCenter database look at this demo I’ve recorded with MS SQL Code Factory. It’s a premier Microsoft SQL GUI tool aimed at the SQL queries and scripts development. It is a good choice for everyone who need build SQL statements and edit SQL scripts with a convenient easy-to-use interface. The software provides you with a convenient easy-to-use interface, so it really does not require a deep knowledge of Microsoft SQL from its users.

You can configure vSphere HA to tolerate a specified number of host failures. With the Host Failures Cluster Tolerates admission control policy, vSphere HA ensures that a specified number of hosts can fail and sufficient resources remain in the cluster to fail over all the virtual machines from those hosts.The Advanced Runtime Info box might display a smaller number of available slots in the cluster than you expect. When you select the Host Failures Cluster Tolerates admission control policy, the Advanced Runtime Info link appears in the vSphere HA section of the cluster's Summary tab in the vSphere Client or as a box in the cluster's Monitor tab of the vSphere Web Client. This box displays information about the cluster, including the number of slots available to power on additional virtual machines in the cluster. This number might be smaller than expected under certain conditions. Cause Slot size is calculated using the largest reservations plus the memory overhead of any powered on virtual machines in the cluster. However, vSphere HA admission control considers only the resources on a host that are available for virtual machines. This amount is less than the total amount of physical resources on the host, because there is some overhead. Solution Reduce the virtual machine reservations if possible, use vSphere HA advanced options to reduce the slot size, or use a different admission control policy.

NetFlow is a general networking tool with multiple uses, including network monitoring and profiling, billing, intrusion detection and prevention, networking forensics, and SOX compliance. NetFlow sends aggregated networking flow data to a third‐party collector (an appliance or server). The collector and analyzer report on various information such as the current top flows consuming the most bandwidth in a particular virtual switch, which IP addresses are behaving irregularly, and the number of bytes a particular virtual machine has sent and received in the past 24 hours. NetFlow is a mature technology, developed by Cisco, that is widely supported by third‐party collectors. NetFlow enables visibility into virtual machine traffic in a virtualized datacenter. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a web-based bandwidth monitoring tool that collects NetFlow data exported from routing devices, and uses it to analyze and report on IP traffic across the network. With instant reports on top applications, protocols, conversations, and hosts, NetFlow Analyzer gives you valuable insight into bandwidth usage in your enterprise without the complexity and expense involved in a traditional WAN analysis setup.

In this article I want to set the record straight regarding last week’s article about New in esxtop RESV/s (SCSI reservations per second). During VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast number 118 with Krishna Raj Raja. I have learned that I didn’t measure the right metric with the correct method so now I’ve used the right method and metric -> CONS/s

In this video I’ll show you the new SCSI Reservation stats and the impact on the storage performance when the number if SCSI reservations becomes too high.

NFS is a great storage solution within a VMware vSphere environment but when the connection to the NFS server is lost, you’re in big trouble. In most circumstances some virtual machines are still connected to the NFS Datastore and since it’s in use, you cannot delete and recreate it. I’ve tried this by using the vSphere Client and trough the command line but didn’t succeed. In the end there’s no other alternative than rebooting the ESX host, or is there… If you want to find out how to remount an NFS Datastore you better watch this online training.

During the delivery of VMware Training Courses, I’ve noticed students who are really interested in how to configure the Cisco Switch in order to use Private VLAN IDs. This session will show you how to configure dvPortGroup Settings and Private VLANs on a Distributed Virtual Switch and on a Physical Cisco Switch.

VMware Labs present its latest fling, the Ruby vSphere Console - RVC is an open source project. Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is a console UI for vSphere, built on the RbVmomi bindings to the vSphere API. RVC is a console UI for VMware ESX and vCenter. The vSphere object graph is presented as a virtual filesystem, allowing you to navigate and run commands against managed entities using familiar shell syntax. Features: • Tab Completion • Marks • Ruby Mode • VMODL Introspection • Multiple Connections • Extensibility This video will show you how to get up-and-running. You'll learn how to install the Ruby vSphere Console and how to connect to the vCenter Server. I'll also show some basic tasks like powering off and -on virtual machines.

Beyond the initial installation, operators can also take advantage of the automation capabilities of vCenter Orchestrator because of its new integration with the vSphere Web Client and the vCenter Single Sign On component. Operators can run workflows from the vSphere inventory browser in just a couple of clicks. Based on the object from which it is run, a workflow's input parameters also get populated automatically to save time and eliminate errors. Operators can run multiple workflows concurrently, or schedule them as recurring or future off-hour tasks. For large organizations, administrators can allow different groups of operators to have access to different categories of workflows.

I’ve created a real cool video which shows you how to configure your vSphere 5 network in order to use multiple network adapters for vMotion. The idea for this video came from fellow VCI and virtualization friend Frank Brix Pedersen. More information about vMotion Architecture, Performance, and Best Practices in VMware vSphere 5 can be found here.

Video - Getting Started With VMware Cloud Foundry - Getting Started with Cloud Foundry provides information about installing and starting VMware Cloud Foundry, the VMware Application Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution. This video is intended for anyone who wants to install, configure, and use VMware Cloud Foundry.

If you don’t have a fancy physical iSCSI target in your lab but still want to do some testing with the esxcli command, Starwind software offers a great iSCSI alternative with their StarWind iSCSI SAN software. It can be used as shared storage for almost any application, it is fully compatible for use with VMware.

A new feature in vCloud Director 1.5 is support for static routing. This provides the ability to route between network segments without the use of NAT and enables increased flexibility in implementing network connectivity within a vCloud environment. Though most networks will have a directly connected default gateway, it is possible for networks to have more than one router (such as multiple vShield Edge devices). Static routing provides a way to manually configure routing tables so that traffic can be forwarded to these remote networks while still using the default gateway for all remaining traffic. In vCloud Director, static routing can be configured at both the routed organization network level and vApp network level.For organization networks, routes can be defined within the organization network or to an external network.For vApp networks, the static routing configuration is simplified as routes are only applied on the external interface.To demonstrate the different options for static routing with vCloud Director, I've recorded a video which will show you how to add Static Routes Between vApp Networks Routed to Different Organization Networks. An organization administrator can add static routes between two vApp networks that are routed to different organization networks. Static routes allow traffic between the networks. You cannot add static routes between overlapping networks or fenced vApps. After you add a static route to an organization network, configure the network firewall rules to allow traffic on the static route. For vApps with static routes, select the Always use assigned IP addresses until this vApp or associated networks are deleted check box.Static routes only function when the vApps included in the routes are running. If you change the parent network of a vApp, delete a vApp, or delete a vApp network, and the vApp includes static routes, those routes cannot function and you must remove them manually.Prerequisites:vShield 5.0Two organization networks routed to the same external networkStatic routing is enabled on both organization networksA vApp network routed to each organization networkThe vApp networks are in vApps that were started at least once

Quest has created a piece of software that contains our entire ‘optimizing knowledge’ called the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer and they have decided to make it available to the desktop virtualization community, completely free of charge! The impact of the Desktop Optimizer can be huge. Quest has performed tests where they compared a vanilla install of Windows 7 Enterprise (no users logged on) to an install that was optimized using the default set of optimizations in the Quest vWorkspace Desktop Optimizer. The results are staggering! This Video will show you how easy your desktop can be optimized. More information and a download link can be found here.

The vSphere Web Client, the Next-generation browser-based vSphere Client. A browser-based, fully-extensible, platform-independent implementation of the vSphere Client based on Adobe Flex. The vSphere 5.0 release includes both the new browser-based client and the Windows-based client available in prior releases. In this release, the browser-based client includes a subset of the functionality available in the Windows-based client, primarily related to inventory display and virtual machine deployment and configuration. In this video I’ll show you how to log in to vCenter Server using the vSphere Web Client and manage your vSphere inventory. Before you can start to use the Web Client you first have to verify that the vCenter Server system is registered with the client. Just open a Web browser and enter the URL for the vSphere Web Client: http://server_name:8443/vsphere-client The vSphere Web Client has improved immense comparing to the old Web Access interface and is completely rewritten in Adobe’s Flex. It’s supported on the following browsers: - Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and 8 - Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 To deploy virtual machines in the vCenter Server inventory, you can create a virtual machine or clone an existing virtual machine. It’s also possible to deploy a Virtual Machine from a Template with the vSphere Web Client. Deploying a virtual machine from a template creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the template. The new virtual machine has the virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that are configured for the template. USB devices attached to the client computer running the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client can be connected to a virtual machine and accessed within it.

When you perform certain virtual machine management operations, such as creating a virtual disk, cloning a virtual machine to a template, or migrating a virtual machine, you can specify a provisioning policy for the virtual disk file. NFS datastores with Hardware Acceleration and VMFS datastores support the following disk provisioning policies. Thick Provision Lazy ZeroedThick Provision Eager ZeroedThin ProvisionOn NFS datastores that do not support Hardware Acceleration, only thin format is available. You can use Storage vMotion to transform virtual disks from one format to another. Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created. Data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual machine. Using the default flat virtual disk format does not zero out or eliminate the possibility of recovering deleted files or restoring old data that might be present on this allocated space. You cannot convert a flat disk to a thin disk. Thick Provision Eager Zeroed is type of thick virtual disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time. In contrast to the flat format, the data remaining on the physical device is zeroed out when the virtual disk is created. It might take much longer to create disks in this format than to create other types of disks. You can use the Thin Provision format to save storage space. For the thin disk, you provision as much datastore space as the disk would require based on the value that you enter for the disk size. However, the thin disk starts small and at first, uses only as much datastore space as the disk needs for its initial operations. Note If a virtual disk supports clustering solutions such as Fault Tolerance, do not make the disk thin. If the thin disk needs more space later, it can grow to its maximum capacity and occupy the entire datastore space provisioned to it. Also, you can manually convert the thin disk into a thick disk.

A vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) functions as a single virtual switch across all associated hosts. This enables you to set network configurations that span across all member hosts, and allows virtual machines to maintain consistent network configuration as they migrate across multiple hosts. In this video I'll show you how to troubleshoot and configure vNetwork Distributed Switch Network Adapters. The vNetwork Distributed Switch networking view of the host configuration page displays the configuration of the host’s associated vNetwork Distributed Switches and allows you to configure the vNetwork Distributed Switch network adapters and uplink ports. For each host associated with a vNetwork Distributed Switch, you must assign physical network adapters, or uplinks, to the vNetwork Distributed Switch. You can assign one uplink on each host per uplink port on the vNetwork Distributed Switch.

Using Private VLANs doesn’t consolidate the number of VLANs used or does it? If you want to add security between virtual machines on the same subnet without exhausting VLAN number space, VMware advises to use Private VLANs. Private VLANs are an excellent way to provide layer 2 network isolation between servers in the same subnet. In this video you will learn that using Community Private VLANS doesn’t consolidate the number of VLANs used. On the other hand, when using Isolated Private VLANs you won’t exhaust the number of available VLAN IDs.

The VMware vCloud Connector, a free plug-in that will allow all VMware vSphere administrators to immediately begin deploying and managing virtual machines (VMs) across VMware vCloud Powered cloud services from within the VMware vSphere Client. In this video I’ll show you how to configure both the vCenter server and the vCloud Director and how to upload a virtual machine to the vCloud Director.

With the release of vCheck 6 and the easy to adapt HTML framework I have a very easy way to do just this, with a few simple changes to the plugins we can easily add any product into the reporting framework.

A few weeks ago I’ve delivered a VMware Site Recovery Manager training course and one of the attendees was Arnim van Lieshout. Besides being a co-author of the VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration guide, Arnim also works as a VMware PSO consultant. While we were trying to set-up SRM Host Based Replication, Arnim showed me a real cool trick to do some fast troubleshooting regarding the VPXD daemon, also known as the vCenter Service. This video guides you through the process of troubleshooting a corrupted vCenter Server database with vpxd.exe -s and helps you to fix VPX daemon start-up problems. The video also helps you eliminate common causes for your problem by verifying the configuration of your database, validating network connectivity, and verifying the configuration of the vCenter Server service with vpxd.exe -b.

VMware has released a great new product which is able to diagnose and analyse vSphere performance metrics. vCenter Operations Standard is for vCenter administrators who want to better understand the performance of their virtual infrastructure, and to diagnose and correct performance problems easily and quickly. vCenter Operations Standard collects performance data from each object at every level of your virtual infrastructure, from individual virtual machines and disk drives to entire clusters and datacenters. It stores and analyses the data, and uses that analysis to provide you with real-time information about problems, or potential problems, in your enterprise. vCenter Operations Standard presents the data in graphical interface pages that display different views of your virtual infrastructure.

In this video I’ll show how to deploy the vCloud Connector virtual appliance and connect it to a vCenter server instance. vCloud Connector (vCC) allows the vSphere Administrators to use their familiar vSphere Client as a single pane-of-glass view across hybrid clouds. It’s also a great tool when you have to transfer virtual machines between multiple vCenter servers. They can perform the following operations See a list of virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates on vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds (including vCloud Datacenter Services). Copy virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates between vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds. Perform basic operations (for example, power on/off, suspend, reset, delete) on virtual machines and vApps in vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds. Deploy vApp templates as vApps (fenced mode) in vCloud Director-based private and public clouds. Access vCloud vApp consoles Directly launch the vCloud URL

This quick start video provides a simplified, step-by-step set of instructions for creating a new virtual machine on the StratoGen vCloud platform. The StratoGen vCloud platform is built upon VMware vCloud Director 1.5. This video is a supplement to the vCloud director 1.5 user manual which provides comprehensive information about the platform.

The cloud consumer resources are dedicated vCenter clusters that host cloud workloads. These resources are carved up by vCloud Director in the form of one or more provider virtual datacenters, which is a vCenter cluster, and one or more attached datastores. Networking for the resource group will encompass vSphere networks visible to the hosts in that cluster. Provider virtual datacenters are further carved up into organization virtual datacenters, which are backed by vCenter resource pools.If you disable Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) on vCenter Clusters level you will lose all resource pools and you’re not able to deploy or power on vApps anymore. This video will show you such a situations, don’t try this at home.

The virtual machines in a vApp can connect to vApp networks (isolated or routed) and organization networks (direct or fenced). You can add networks of different types to a vApp to address multiple networking scenarios. Select the Networking tab in a vApp and select the Show networking details check box to view a list of the networks that are available to the vApp. Virtual machines in the vApp can connect to these networks. If you want to connect a virtual machine to a different network, you must first add it to the vApp.A vApp can include vApp networks and organization networks. A vApp network can be isolated by selecting None in the Connection drop-down menu. An isolated vApp network is totally contained within the vApp. You can also route a vApp network to an organization network to provide connectivity to virtual machines outside of the vApp. For routed vApp networks, you can configure network services, such as a firewall and static routing.There's also a possibility to connect a vApp directly to an organization network. If you have multiple vApps that contain identical virtual machines connected to the same organization network and you want to start the vApps at the same time, you can fence the vApp. This allows you to power on the virtual machines without conflict, by isolating their MAC and IP addresses.It's also possible configure certain vApp networks to provide firewall services. Enable the firewall on a vApp network to enforce firewall rules on incoming traffic, outgoing traffic, or both. When you enable the firewall, you can specify a default firewall action to deny all incoming and outgoing traffic or to allow all incoming and outgoing traffic. You can also add specific firewall rules to allow or deny traffic that matches the rules to pass through the firewall. These rules take precedence over the default firewall action.

In this video you will learn how a vCloud Director network is constructed. The PowerPoint presentation "vCloud networking explained in 1 slide and 52 animations" is created by fellow VCI over at Tuukka Korhonen (itvirtuoosit.fi).Port group backed network pools require preconfigured set of port groups either on a vNetwork distributed switch or on a standard vSwitch and port groups must be available on each ESX/ESXi host in the cluster. They need to be imported into vCloud Director when creating this network pool. This network pool is used in circumstances where vCenter cannot programmatically create port groups on the fly. Other scenarios when you want to use this network pool is when do not have vNetwork Distributed switches and want to use the Standard switch or when you want to use the Nexus 1000v switches. The port groups must be isolated at the layer 2 level from all other port groups. The port groups must be physically isolated or must be isolated using VLAN tags. Failure to properly isolate the port groups can cause a disruption on the network.Unlike other types of network pools, a network pool that is backed by port groups does not require a vNetwork distributed switch and this is the only type of network pool that works with Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switches. A network pool is backed by vSphere network resources such as VLAN IDs, port groups, or cloud isolated networks. Network traffic on each network in a pool is isolated at layer 2 from all other networks. Each organization vDC in vCloud Director can have one network pool. Meaning each Organization vDC can only be assigned to only one network pool. Multiple organization vDCs can share the same network pool but make sure that networks in the pool are isolated. Only system administrators can create and manage network pools. vApp networks are used for connectivity of virtual machines within a vApp. A vApp can be connected to a vApp specific network or to an organization network. A vApp network isolates the virtual machines in that vApp from everything else; in that way, it is like an internal organization network, but is only used by that vApp. You can connect vApps to organization network to allow them to communicate with other vApps in that organization. When you connect a vApp to an organization network, determine whether you want a fence or direct connection. Fenced will allow you to have identical virtual machines to connect to organization networks without worrying about IP and MAC address conflicts. You can also have additional firewall rules added to protect virtual machines in the vApp. While direct connection will allow you to directly connect the vApp to the organization network.

The VMware vCloud API provides support for developers who are building interactive clients of VMware vCloud Director using a RESTful application development style. vCloud API clients and servers communicate over HTTP, exchanging representations of vCloud objects. These representations take the form of XML elements. HTTP GET requests are used to retrieve the current representation of an object, HTTP POST and PUT requests are used to create or modify an object, and HTTP DELETE requests are typically used to delete an object.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.6 is the latest release of VMware's integrated operations suite, converging performance, capacity, and configuration management. This new release introduces the following features and enhancements.This release introduces vCenter Operations Manager integration in the vSphere Web Client. Badges appear in the vSphere Web Client interface when you register an instance of VMware vCenter Operations Manager with a vCenter Server that you want to monitor. Your vCenter Operations Manager license determines which badges and widgets you can see in the vSphere Web Client.Note: vCenter Operations Manger supports integration in the VMware vSphere Client for vCenter Server 5.1.

While I was prepping for my upcoming VCP-DT (beta) exam, I couldn’t resist recording a new video and here it is. The VMware View Composer, a key component of VMware vSphere 4.6, is tightly integrated with VMware View Manager to provide advanced image management and storage optimization. VMware View Composer reduces storage requirements for virtual desktop machines by up to 90 percent and enables organizations to more effectively manage their desktop images.

vCenter Operations Manager Foundation will give you insights and visibility into performance and health of your vSphere infrastructure and is now included free with VMware vSphere. VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite provides automated operations management using patented analytics and an integrated approach to performance, capacity and configuration management. vCenter Operations Management Suite enables IT organizations to get better visibility and actionable intelligence to proactively ensure service levels, optimum resource usage and configuration compliance in dynamic virtual and cloud environments. vCenter Operations Manager Foundation is the new, entry-level edition of the vCenter Operations Management Suite. It gains deep operational insights and visibility to improve the performance and health of your vSphere environment. vCenter Operations Manager Foundation is included with every vSphere edition free of charge.

I’ve created a new tool called the vmFilemanager; this tool is completely built on the VIX API 1.10 Beta. It’s not available for download yet, but I’ve recorded a demo which show how to copy files into a virtual machine. The awesome part is that I’ll also show you how easy it is to create such a tool in the free version of Microsoft Visual Basic 2008, AKA the Express Edition.

The world of monitoring tools is changing fast - after last week’s release of VMware Operations - it’s now VKernel’s new Performance Analyzer who makes its debut. monitors, diagnoses, and resolves performance issues in virtual environments. Performance Analyzer compliments monitoring and alarming capability in vCenter, it can not only diagnose problems but also resolve them. I’ve created a short demo video of the Performance Analyzer which is bundled in the VKernel vOperations Suite or vOPS 3.0.

In this (HD) video I’ll show you a new vSphere 4.1 feature regarding configuring USB Device Pass-through from an ESX/ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine. You can configure a virtual machine to use USB devices that are connected to an ESX/ESXi host where the virtual machine is running. The connection is maintained even if you migrate the virtual machine using vMotion.

In this video I’ll show you how you use the VI Client user interface to deploy the CapacityIQ appliance. VMware distributes the appliance as a .zip file that includes an Open Virtualization Format (OVF) file. After the import the CapacityIQ OVF file, I’ll also show you how to configure the virtual appliance.

VMware View Client for iPad makes it easy to access your Windows virtual desktop from your iPad with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network (LAN) or across a Wide Area Network (WAN).I’ve created a short demo video which unveils some cool features of the VMware View Client for iPad.

How to enable the Vmkernel System Info Shell (vsish) on ESX

VMware Workstation 8 provides a seamless way to access all of the virtual machines you need, regardless of where they are running. Connect to Server enables remote connections to virtual machines running on VMware Workstation, VMware vSphere, and VMware vCenter. Now you can work with local and server hosted virtual machines side by side within the same interface. You are no longer constrained by the power of your PC to run multiple virtual machines at the same time.In this video you will see how easy you can add another instance of Workstation 8 but also the vCenter server to your inventory.

VMware vShield is a suite of security virtual appliances built for VMware vCenter Server and VMware ESX integration. vShield is a critical security component for protecting virtualized datacenters from attacks and misuse helping you achieve your compliance-mandated goals. vShield App is an interior, vNIC-level firewall that allows you to create access control policies regardless of network topology. A vShield App monitors all traffic in and out of an ESX host, including between virtual machines in the same port group. vShield App includes traffic analysis and container-based policy creation. In this video I'll show you that vShield App installs as a hypervisor module and firewall service virtual appliance. vShield App integrates with ESX hosts through VMsafe APIs and works with VMware vSphere platform features such as DRS, vMotion, DPM, and maintenance mode. vShield App provides firewalling between virtual machines by placing a firewall filter on every virtual network adapter. The firewall filter operates transparently and does not require network changes or modification of IP addresses to create security zones. You can write access rules by using vCenter containers, like datacenters, cluster, resource pools and vApps, or network objects, like Port Groups and VLANs, to reduce the number of firewall rules and make the rules easier to track. You should install vShield App instances on all ESX hosts within a cluster so that VMware vMotion operations work and virtual machines remain protected as they migrate between ESX hosts. By default, a vShield App virtual appliance cannot be moved by using vMotion. The Flow Monitoring feature displays allowed and blocked network flows at the application protocol level. You can use this information to audit network traffic and troubleshoot operational.

UEFI virtual BIOS. Virtual machines running on ESXi 5.0 can boot from and use the Unified Extended Firmware Interface (UEFI). When you create a new virtual machine on an ESXi 5.0 host you have the option to choose for virtual machine version 8. This new version brings a lot of extra (scalability) features but there’s one other interesting new feature. The Extensible Firmware Interface can be selected to replace the BIOS of a virtual machine. EFI is the successor of the traditional BIOS which is used since the introduction of the IBM PC back in 1981. If you want to host Apple Mac OS X 10.6 in a virtual machine, you need EFI. In this video I’ll show you how to get access to the EFI interface. I’ll also show you how you can get access to the pre-OS command line environment. When you select a guest operating system, BIOS or Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is selected by default, depending on which firmware the operating system uses. Mac OS X Server guest operating systems support only EFI. If the operating system supports both BIOS and EFI, you can change the default before you install the guest operating system. Use the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box at the end of the creation process or after the virtual machine is created. The Firmware selection pane is on the Options tab under Advanced > Boot Options. vSphere 5.0 also supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI you can boot systems from hard drives, CD-ROM drives, or USB media. Booting over the network requires the legacy BIOS firmware and is not available with UEFI.

User-defined network resource pools in vSphere 5.0 provide an ability to add new traffic types beyond the standard system traffic types that are used for I/O scheduling. This video shows an example of a user-defined resource pool with shares, limits and IEEE 802.1p tag parameters. When customers are deploying critical applications on virtual infrastructure, they can utilize this advanced feature to reserve I/O resources for the important, business-critical application traffic and provide SLA guarantees. Service providers who are deploying public clouds and serving multiple tenants can now define and provision I/O resources per tenant, based on each tenant’s need. The new resource pools can be defined at the Distributed Switch level by selecting the resource allocation tab and clicking on new network resource pools. After a new network resource pool is defined with shares and limits parameters, that resource pool can be associated with a port group. This association of a network resource pool with a port group enables customers to allocate I/O resources to a group of virtual machines or workloads.

ESXi includes a firewall between the management interface and the network. To ensure the integrity of the host, VMware has reduced the number of firewall ports that are open by default. The ESXi firewall is enabled by default. At installation time, the firewall is configured to block incoming and outgoing traffic, except traffic for the default services. The firewall also allows Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) pings and communication with DHCP and DNS (UDP only) clients. From the host Security Profile panel, you can configure firewall properties for this host. The Secuirty Profile panel lists the incoming and outgoing connections for the firewall and the port each service uses. The panel also displays the IP addresses that are allowed to connect for each service. You can modify the list of services and the allowed IP addresses for each service. You can add supported services and management agents that are required to operate the host by adding ruleset files to the ESXi firewall configuration file directory /etc/vmware/firewall/. You open or close ports for these services by enabling or disabling the service on the host's security profile in the vSphere Client.

I've recorded a video which will show you the new vSphere 5 iSCSI UI support and some other usability improvements. In vSphere 5 you'll have the ability to configure dependent hardware iSCSI and software iSCSI adapters along with the network configurations and port binding in a single dialog box using the vSphere Client. Full SDK access is also available for these configurations. If you use the software or dependent hardware iSCSI adapters, you must configure connections for the traffic between the iSCSI component and the physical network adapters. Configuring the network connection involves creating a virtual VMkernel interface for each physical network adapter and associating the interface with an appropriate iSCSI adapter. If your host has more than one physical network adapter for software and dependent hardware iSCSI, use the adapters for multipathing. You can connect the software iSCSI adapter with any physical NICs available on your host. The dependent iSCSI adapters can be connected only with their own physical NICs.

So what’s the fuzz about this new vSphere 5 Storage DRS feature? This feature delivers the DRS benefits of resource aggregation, automated initial placement, and bottleneck avoidance to storage. You can group and manage similar datastores as a single load-balanced storage resource called a datastore cluster. Storage DRS makes VMDK placement and migration recommendations to avoid I/O and space utilization bottlenecks on the datastores in the cluster. Storage DRS takes care of the initial placement of virtual machines and VMDK files. This placement is based on Space and I/O capacity. Storage DRS will select the best datastore to place this virtual machine or virtual disk in the selected Datastore Cluster. When Storage DRS is set to fully automatic, it will do automated load balancing actions. Of course this can be configured as manual as well and that is actually the default today. Load balancing again is based on space and I/O capacity. If and when required Storage DRS will make recommendations based space and I/O capacity. It will however only do this when a specific threshold is reached. I’ve recorded a video which will show you how to: - Configure a Datastore Cluster - Set Storage DRS Automation Level - Set Storage DRS Runtime Rules - Create a Storage DRS Scheduled Task - Using Storage DRS Rules - Edit Virtual Machine Settings for a Datastore Cluster - Apply Storage DRS Recommendations - Add Storage to a Datastore Cluster A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores aggregated into a single unit of consumption for an administrators. When a datastore cluster is created, Storage DRS can manage the storage resources comparable to how DRS manages compute resources in a cluster. As with a cluster of hosts, a datastore clusters is used to aggregate storage resources, enabling smart and rapid placement of new virtual machines and virtual disk drives and load balancing of existing workloads. When you create a VM you will be able to select a Datastore Cluster as opposed to individual datastores. Storage DRS provides initial placement recommendations to datastores in a Storage DRS-enabled datastore cluster based on I/O and space capacity. During the provisioning of a virtual machine, a datastore cluster can be selected as the target destination for this virtual machine or virtual machine disk after which a recommendation for initial placement is done based on I/O and space capacity. Initial Placement in a manual provisioning process has proven to be very complex in most environments and as such important provisioning factors like current I/O load or space utilization are often ignored. Storage DRS ensures initial placement recommendations are made in accordance with space constraints and with respect to the goals of space and I/O load balancing. Although people are really excited about automated load balancing, it is Initial Placement where most people will start off with and where most people will benefit from the most as it will reduce operational overhead associated with the provisioning of virtual machines. Ongoing balancing recommendations are made when one or more datastores in a datastore cluster exceeds the user-configurable space utilization or I/O latency thresholds. These thresholds are typically defined during the configuration of the datastore cluster. Storage DRS utilizes vCenter Server’s datastore utilization reporting mechanism to make recommendations whenever the configured utilized space threshold is exceeded. I/O load is evaluated by default every 8 hours currently with a default latency threshold of 15ms. Only when this I/O latency threshold is exceeded Storage DRS will calculate all possible moves to balance the load accordingly while considering the cost and the benefit of the migration. If the benefit doesn’t last for at least 24 hours, Storage DRS will not make the recommendation.

We all know Carter from the days he brought PowerCLI to the market. After the successful launch of this new automation product, Carter moved over to Spring, where he’s working as a product manager of one of the most secret Spring projects. For these secret projects he was looking for a tool or appliance which could be sued to introduce low network bandwidth, latency and packet loss in order to test his cool WebApps. After some searching and tweeting around he has decided to build an appliance on his own. WANatronic uses Ubuntu 8.04 JEOS, RC tools and IP tables. I’ve recorded a short video about what you can do with it and how it works. If you’re interested in giving it a try and you’re using vSphere, I’ve created a VMware vSphere WANatronic 10001 appliance OVF file which can be downloaded from this location.

With VMware Data Recovery 2.0, VMware has extended the ability to quickly and simply protect and restore virtual machines. Fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server, VMware Data Recovery gives central management of backup and restore operations, and the inherent deduplication of data saves significant disk space and provides flexible options for storage. VMware Data Recovery 2.0 has introduced a number of improvements including performance enhancements, speed, and reliability improvements, as well as capabilities to enhance management with the ability to email reports and schedule maintenance windows

I’ve received some awesome birthday presents this year and one of coolest presents is a sketch Design Tablet. This sketch board can be connected to my laptop trough USB and came with an real cool sketching tool called Artweaver. In this first episode I’ll explain how VLAN IDs can be used within a standard vSwitch environment. I know I’ll have to pick up some drawing skills but I think it’s a great way to explain complicated topics.