vShield 4.1 adds new components and usability enhancements.

• New License-Based Components
  • vShield Edge: vShield Edge provides network edge security and gateway services to isolate the virtual machines in a port group, vDS port group, or Cisco Nexus 1000V. The vShield Edge connects isolated, stub networks to shared (uplink) networks by providing common gateway services such as DHCP, VPN, NAT, and Load Balancing. The key features of vShield Edge are as follows:
    • Stateful Inspection Firewall
      Inbound and outbound connection control with rules based on source and destination IP address and port
    • Network Address Translation
      • IP address translation to/from the virtualized environment
      • Masquerading of virtual datacenter IP addresses to untrusted locations
    • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
      • Automatic IP address provisioning to virtual machines in vSphere environments
      • Administrator-defined parameters: address pools, lease times, dedicated IP addresses, etc.
    • Site-to-Site VPN
      • Secure communication between virtual datacenters (or edge security virtual machines)
      • IPsec VPN based on the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol
    • Web Load Balancing
      • Inbound load balancing for all HTTP traffic
      • Round-robin algorithm
      • Support for sticky sessions
    • Port Group Isolation
      • Enforced at hypervisor layer to restrict traffic within a virtual datacenter to specified port groups
      • Same effect as VLANs in virtual or physical switch environments
    • Flow Statistics
      • Virtual datacenter resource utilization metered and attributed back to tenant
      • Statistics accessible through REST APIs and leveraged in service provider chargeback applications
    • Policy Management
      Support for integration with enterprise IT security management tools
  • vShield App: 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. The key features of vShield App are as follows:
    • Hypervisor-Level Firewall
      • Inbound/outbound connection control enforced at the virtual NIC level through hypervisor inspection, supporting multihomed virtual machines
      • Ability to enforce based on network, application port, protocol type (TCP, UDP), application type
      • Dynamic protection as virtual machines migrate
      • IP-based stateful firewall and application layer gateway for a broad range of protocols including Oracle, Sun Remote Procedure Call (RPC), Microsoft RPC, LDAP and SMTP
    • Flow Monitoring
      Ability to observe network activity between virtual machines to help define and refine firewall policies, identify botnets and secure business processes through detailed reporting of application traffic (application, sessions, bytes)
    • Security Groups
      Administrator-defined, business-relevant groupings of any virtual machines by their virtual NICs
    • Policy Management
      • Policy enforcement on security groups, vCenter containers, and TCP 5 tuple (source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port, protocol)
      • Programmable interface for management and policy enforcement using REST APIs
      • Support for integration with enterprise security management tools
  • vShield Endpoint: vShield Endpoint delivers an introspection-based antivirus solution. vShield Endpoint uses the hypervisor to scan guest virtual machines from the outside without a bulky agent. vShield Endpoint is efficient in avoiding resource bottlenecks while optimizing memory use. The key features of vShield Endpoint are as follows:
    • Antivirus and Anti-Malware Offloading
      • File scanning and other tasks are offloaded from virtual machines to a security virtual machine.
      • VMware Endpoint ESX Module manages communication between virtual machines and the security virtual machine, using introspection at the hypervisor layer.
    • Antivirus and Anti-Malware Service Across Virtual Machines
      Antivirus engine and signature files are only updated within the security virtual machine, but policies can be applied across all virtual machines on a vSphere host.
    • Enforce Remediation
      • Pre-defined policies dictate whether a malicious file should be deleted, quarantined or otherwise handled.
      • vShield Endpoint driver manages file remediation activity within the virtual machine.
    • Partner Integrations
      Integration of vShield Endpoint with security virtual machine solutions from VMware partners is facilitated through VMware EPSEC, which provides a library and API for introspection into file activity at the hypervisor layer.
    • Policy and Configuration Management
      • vShield Manager provides full-featured configuration of vShield Endpoint policies.
      • vCenter activates vShield capabilities on vSphere.
      • REST APIs allow customized integration of vShield Endpoint capabilities into solutions.
• Usability Enhancements
  • Broader vSphere Client Integration: After registering the vShield Manager as a vSphere Client plug-in, you can use the vSphere Client to install and configure vShield components and features.
  • System Management via REST API: You can install and manage vShield components via REST API. For more information, see the vShield API Programming Guide.

vCenter Chargeback 1.5 provides the following new features:

• Hierarchy management tools, filters, and views
  This release of vCenter Chargeback allows you to backdate the chargeback hierarchy, view hierarchies in more than one inventory view (Host & Clusters, VM & Templates) per vCenter Server, and highlight vCenter Server entities that have not yet been added to a selected chargeback hierarchy.
• Support for resource allocation on chargeback hierarchical entity
  This release of vCenter Chargeback lets you specify allocation units for each computing resource on the entity in a chargeback hierarchy. If a report is generated on the hierarchy using a cost model that has an allocation-based billing policy, vCenter Chargeback accounts for the allocation details set on the entity.
• Auto-Costing for VMware High Availability, VMware Fault Tolerance, and guest operating systems
  vCenter Chargeback lets you charge for additional virtual machine configuration parameters. You can now define a set of fixed costs and have vCenter Chargeback automatically assign the appropriate cost based on the guest operating system or level of availability protection (VMware High Availability, VMware Fault Tolerance) configured for the virtual machine.
• Configuring cost at the host and cluster levels
  You can now configure costs for the resources at the host and cluster levels. The cost configuration data is then applied to each virtual machine created on the host or cluster.
• Enhanced cost model support
  This release adds support for defining one-time costs and overage fees. In addition to hourly rates, you now have the option to define base rates per day, month, and year.
• Support for custom billing policies
  This release of vCenter Chargeback lets you create custom billing policies and specify conditions, such as charging based on the power state of virtual machine or billing linked clones.
• New cost analysis dashboard
  vCenter Chargeback provides a dashboard that displays cost and usage breakdowns by resource type and business group. The dashboard also lets you identify the N most or least expensive virtual machines and access a list of recent reports.
• Customizable reporting interface
  vCenter Chargeback now lets you modify the report view after the report is generated. You can remove rows and columns, and can also rearrange the columns in the generated report.
• Support for generating reports in multiple currencies
  This release supports the ability to generate cost summary reports in multiple currency types within a single vCenter Chargeback instance.
• Support for multiple LDAP servers
  With this release, you can configure more than one LDAP server in vCenter Chargeback. When logging in to vCenter Chargeback, LDAP users must enter the LDAP code that was provided when configuring the LDAP server.
• Resource-based authorization
  Starting with this release, vCenter Chargeback uses resource-based authorization. vCenter Chargeback defines various resource types and authorizes access to a resource based on the role assigned to a user for the resource. A user must have a role assigned to him on the application and for the resources defined in it to enable him to perform any action in the application.
• Full support for vCenter Chargeback APIs
  vCenter Chargeback APIs provide an interface to programmatically use the various features of vCenter Chargeback. As an application developer, you can use these APIs to build chargeback applications or integrate vCenter Chargeback with your internal billing systems and compliance policies. This release of vCenter Chargeback adds full support for these APIs.
• Support for VMware Cloud Director
  vCenter Chargeback enables the delivery of an integrated pay-as-you-go solution for resource tracking and billing in the cloud. This release of vCenter Chargeback provides two new data collectors: VMware Cloud Director Data Collector and vShield Manager Data Collector. These data collectors integrate vCenter Chargeback with VMware Cloud Director and vShield Manager. This release includes support for the following features:
  • Support for VMware Cloud Director resource abstractions and resource management models: Reservation Pool, Allocation Pool, and Pay-As-You-Go.
  • Automated creation of chargeback hierarchies mapping to organizations, virtual datacenters, and vApps defined within VMware Cloud Director.
  • Metering and charging for allocation and usage of VMware Cloud Director resources, including virtual datacenters, vApps, templates and media file storage.
  • Metering and charging for external network bandwidth, network count, and network services, such as DHCP, NAT, and firewall.
  • Delivery of targeted multi-tenant chargeback reports.

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3 includes the following new functionality:

• Support for VMware vSphere 4.1 as source and destination targets
• Support for importing powered-off Microsoft Hyper-V R1 and Hyper-V R2 virtual machines
• Public API and sample code for submitting and monitoring Converter jobs
• Support for importing Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 sources
• Ability to throttle the data transfer from source to destination based on network bandwidth or CPU
• IPv6 support

Discontinued Support

• Support of the following operating systems is discontinued:
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows NT
• Support for OVF format is discontinued
• Support for VCB image sources is discontinued
• Linux installation support is discontinued

VMware vCloud Director provides the interface, automation, and management required by enterprises and service providers to build private and public clouds. vCloud Director:

• Supports multi tenancy/organizational isolation
• Allows for the creation of central application catalogs and personalization of templates
• Enables creation and deployment of vApps from catalogs/templates
• Controls user resource usage through roles/rights, quotas and leases
• Enables programmatic control through the RESTful vCloud API
• Provides an additional level of abstraction from underlying hardware

Definitely worth evaluating in your environment.  A 60-day eval is available here.

There are a few things to think about with regard to licensing  first, vSphere 4.1 now allows for DRS affinity so that VMs only move between certain hosts of a cluster.  I’m still waiting for a definite answer from my VMware friends but that should allow you to protect some VM’s and set their DRS Affinity to only the hosts that you own SRM CPUs for and still keep the full cluster for the unprotected VMs. Previously, VMware would recommend that you create a separate cluster for your “protected” VMs if they were a small subset of the whole.  Now with DRS Affinity, you can dictate that certain “protected” VMs only move between a subset of a cluster.  We’ll still have to wait and see the final ruling from VMware but I’m thinking that would work in the short-term for those in the per-CPU dilemma.

The second feature of the new licensing that I really like is the rolling average of VMs over the last twelve months.  What that translates to is that now I need to buy what my daily average of VMs protected would be over a 12 month period.  If I have certain points of the year where my VM count spikes, this average would be monitored by vCenter and alarm if I am going over my licensing limits.  However, I would only need the average number of protected VMs over the past year.  The system will continue to run after going over your limit but that’s definitely not something I would condone (Famous VMware SE saying: ethics don’t ship in the box people).

The per-vm licenses are sold in blocks of 25 and range from $1,250 to $11,250 depending on the product.  Per-vm licensing will be available for Chargeback, Appspeed, SRM, and, later this year, CapacityIQ.  You can find more information on VMware’s website here.

The last question I had was, “How do I know what my rolling average is for those licenses?”  The good news is that once you enter in a license key, the new license reporting manager in vSphere 4.1 will tell you what your rolling average is year-to-date.  Looks like someone was planning ahead.

You probably noticed by now that there is a limitation in Standard and Enterprise editions of vSphere to a maximum of 6-cores per CPU.  The Advanced and Enterprise-Plus editions of vSphere have a licensed limit of 12-cores per CPU.  Now that Intel’s 8-core CPUs and AMD’s 12-cores are out, what’s next?  Intel and AMD are sure to develop a proc with more than 12 cores (and probably sooner than we all think).  What will happen to VMware’s licensing then?  You have to remember that from a revenue standpoint, when a 24 core proc comes out, customers will be able to run twice as many workloads on that proc (or at least 50% more).  Moore’s Law states that processing performance of CPUs will double every two years.  With the processors doubling in power so quickly, customers are typically not doubling their number of VMs in the same time period.  The result is that customers tend to have a diminishing need to increase their ESX per-CPU licensing.  I know that there are exceptions to this rule, but in the SMB space the majority are not growing that fast (at least not in this economy).  The increase in processor performance actually works against VMware’s current licensing model. It not good to have a direct connection between your main revenue stream and someone else’s CPU release schedule.  What will happen?  What’s the right answer?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Will they go to a per-vm model?  Increase their current limits?  Find some middle-ground between the two?  Will they “grandfather” their customers like AT&T did with the iPad data plans?  Only VMware knows.  My opinion is that this is an issue that has to be dealt with eventually.  Maybe this will be the year, maybe next.

The second licensing dilemma that I run into is in Site Recovery Manager.  It’s no secret that SRM is my favorite non-ESX product from VMware.  As you probably know, SRM is licensed by the physical CPU where the protected virtual machines reside or could reside.  Here’s where that model breaks down:  let’s say I have a smaller customer who’s policy is only to have a DR plan for 5 of their most critical Virtual Machines.  Those five VMs run in a cluster comprise of 5 dual CPU hosts with HA and DRS enabled.  According to the SRM licensing model, I need 10 CPUs of SRM for those 5 VMs.  That does not fly well.  The solution I’ve heard some engineers mention is to create a separate smaller cluster for just the protected VMs.  I’m not fond of that idea because it goes against the consolidation principal.  I’ve never felt that lowering your consolidation ratio was justified because it did not fit a licensing model.

I know there are people much smarter than me at work trying to find a solution to both of these scenarios.  I’m hopeful that they will get resolved in a way that’s fair to both sides.  Maybe this is the year, maybe it is not.  Either way, we’ve made it thru half of 2010, perhaps the answers lie in the last 6 months of the year.

PCoIP Display Protocol: Information and Scenario-Based Network Sizing Guide – (12 pages) A good paper with very good insight on the PCoIP protocol used in VMware View.  It gives some good suggestions and the required bandwidths needed to satisfy the end users on their desktop experience.  A must have for view deployments.  (****, 4 of 5 stars)

Application Presentation to VMware View Desktops with Citrix XenApp – (3 pages) This is a whitepaper to show how to deploy applications in VMware View desktops from XenApp.  While I can see this being useful for View admins who use XenApp, the description and instructions are very minimal.  Probably something better suited for a KB article. (**, 2 of 5 stars)

Timekeeping in VMware Virtual Machines – (26 pages) This is a very important topic for all VM Admins to know.  Time is relevant to everything in a VM, whether you are trying to authenticate to Active Directory or troubleshooting using event logs, accurate time is very important.  This paper goes into some really great detail on how VMware maintains accurate time in VMs.  If you are a VMware admin, this should be a standard read.   (*****, 5 of 5 stars, vKeeper)

SAN System Design and Deployment Guide – (244 pages of storage goodness)  I have a storage background so I specifically enjoy this one.  If you are running ESX on SAN shared storage (you should be on some type of shared storage) then this is a must read.  This whitepaper is also very helpful if you are studying for the VCP or one of the new VCAP exams.  This is another paper I keep local and definitely one all VM admins with SAN should review.  (*****, 5 of 5 stars, vKeeper)

Best Practices for Running vSphere on NFS Storage – (14 pages) On the heels of the SAN design and deployment guide, this paper describes the best practices for running NFS on vSphere.  I like the fact that this article references outdated best practices that have changed and why they have changed.  This is a HUGE help to admins who google a topic only to find conflicting information.  My only regret on this paper is that I would like to see more detail on the advanced options and how they affect the performance of NFS.  Still a important doc for VM Admins using NFS storage.  Should be reviewed by all of them to make sure they are current in their deployment of NFS best practices.  (****, 4 of 5 stars)

Location Awareness in VMware View 4 – (8 pages) Good information for View Admins to know where to find out where their clients are connecting from.  This is a common request from hospitals to have printers “follow the user” as they float from terminal to terminal.  There are some advanced topics in this article and some Active Directory knowledge is definitely required especially when using loopback mode in group policy processing.  Good info and hopefully View will include some GUI-based  native features in the future to assist with this.  (***, 3 of 5 stars)

VMware vSphere 4.0 Security Hardening Guide – (70 pages) This is a outstanding reference for any VM Admin.  Security affects everyone’s environment, from the 3-man shop to the largest infrastructure.  Setting the precedence of a solid, secure enviornment from the ground up will provide you with a infrastructure that is solid as a rock. I recommend reviewing this paper often and keeping this one handy   (*****, 5 of 5 stars, vKeeper)

VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System – Technical Overview and Best Practices – (13 pages) This is a entry level paper on some of the very basics of VMFS and how they relate to RDMs.  This should be a good introduction to VMFS to new VM Admins.  I hoped with “Best Practices” in the title that there would be more technical references (advanced options for VMFS and how tweaking them affects the storage performance for instance).  I was also disappointed to see the LUN size question answered vaguely, suggesting to refer to the storage vendor to size your LUNs appropriately.  I prefer Duncan’s approach to LUN sizing and it’s what I recommend to all of my customers.  (***, 3 of 5 stars)

Look for the vPaper Report again next quarter (hopefully with some new releases in between). Until then, happy reading!

The following enhancements have been made for this release of Data Recovery.

File Level Restore (FLR) is now available for use with Linux.
Each vCenter Server instance supports up to ten Data Recovery backup appliances.
The vSphere Client plug-in supports fast switching among Data Recovery backup appliances.
Miscellaneous vSphere Client Plug-In user interface enhancements including:
The means to name backup jobs during their creation.
Additional information about the current status of destination disks including the disk’s health and the degree of space savings provided by the deduplication store’s optimizations.
Information about the datastore from which virtual disks are backed up.

You can also see a nice little writeup from the developers and a little video showing the new stuff here.

This release of VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 offers the following improvements:

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX:

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

CapacityIQ 1.0.3 is a maintenance release that supports additional VMware High Availability (HA) settings.

CapacityIQ factors reserved capacity to meet VMware HA failover commitments. CapacityIQ uses the VMware HA settings to calculate CPU and memory capacity for clusters and datacenters. The VMware HA settings do not affect host and virtual machine capacity calculations.

CapacityIQ 1.0.2 uses the enabled status of VMware HA and number of host failures in the Admission Control Policy settings of the vSphere Client as factors for modeling and forecasting capacity. CapacityIQ 1.0.3 adds the percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity and the dedicated failover host number as factors for capacity.

The following VMware HA settings are the factors that affect CapacityIQ calculations:

Enabled or disabled status of high availability.
CapacityIQ detects VMware HA settings to calculate CPU and memory capacity for clusters and datacenters. If you do not use a VMware HA cluster, CapacityIQ sums up the capacity of all hosts in the cluster.
Number of host failures that the cluster tolerates.
CapacityIQ detects the number of host failures that the cluster tolerates and excludes the hosts with the most CPU and memory capacity. For example, if a cluster has 10 hosts and you set the number of host failures to three, CapacityIQ detects which three out of the ten hosts have the most CPU and memory capacity and excludes those hosts in the calculation. The CapacityIQ calculations of VMware HA CPU capacity and VMware HA memory capacity occur separately and the hosts that CapacityIQ excludes might be different for the CPU and memory calculations.
Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity.
CapacityIQ sums up the capacity of all hosts and multiplies that value by
(1-<percentage_reserved_as_failover_spare_capacity>). For example, if a cluster with 20 hosts has a total of 100GHz, and 20 percent of hosts are set aside for failures, the calculation for the VMware HA CPU capacity of the cluster is 100 × (1-.2).
Dedicated failover host.
CapacityIQ excludes the capacity of a dedicated failover host and sums up the capacity of the rest of the hosts. For example, if a cluster has three hosts with 9GHz, 8GHz, and 6GHz, and the 9GHz host serves as a dedicated failover host, the calculation for the VMware HA CPU capacity of the cluster is 8GHz + 6 GHz.
This maintenance release does not include any additional enhancements beyond the support of VMware HA settings.

The class was comprised of eight modules.  Day one ran through modules one thru four, day two had modules 5 and 6 and day three was comprised of modules seven and eight.  You can read this to see the syllabus for the class as well as the description for each of the modules.

There were a two things about this class that I found to be very different than any other VMware class I had attended.  First, there was no real administrative work.  We never used the vSphere client or looked at a host.  We barely used the classroom terminals at all.  Almost all of the work was whiteboarding and drawing architectures of networks and storage and physical infrastructure.  For the labs, the class was divided into two groups, one group was given an enterprise customer case study and the other received a SMB case study.  Both study’s had physical environments that wanted to virtualize.  The enterprise study was obviously significantly larger however the SMB had a very limited budget.  Both had items to challenge the designers.  As we reached the end of each module, we would incorporate what we learned into that phase of the design.  The labs were actually designed very well.  At the end of each lab session, each group had to pick someone to defend their design to the rest of the class (surely to prep us for what we might find at the VCDX defense session).

The second thing I noticed about the class that was very different from other classes was the references to blogger’s information.  The instructor referenced Duncan, Frank and Mike on more than one occasion (The VMguy was left out unfortunately – guess I’ll have to try harder).  Never had I seen such a display of non-vmware owned information in such a class.  Personally, I read all of their information pretty religiously yet I still found things I did not know or had not read.  This class was a very good summary of the pitfalls to avoid in design.  It was a collaboration of all of the gotchas that these designers (some who are now VCDXs) have seen.  Everything from the configuration maximums to what features are not supported with Fault Tolerance.  It was an outstanding display of all the things you have to remember when designing an entire virtualized datacenter.

My only complaint would be that the case study notes for the labs were incomplete.  We constantly found ourselves wanting to ask our imaginary customer for more information.  This can be expected somewhat as the class is a new offering from the education department.  I must say that our instructor was constantly requesting feedback for the course and promised to relay that information back to the class designers.

All in all, I would highly recommend this class to anyone who might need to design a virtualized datacenter.  It was an outstanding collaboration of experiences and best practices that would be required before creating a accurate, reliable, properly sized, well thought-out design.  Well done VMware Education Department, well done.

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support:

New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
New Features in VMware Workstation
New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems

This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System
Host and Guest Support

Ubuntu 8.04.4    Host and guest
Ubuntu 10.04    Host and guest
OpenSUSE 11.2    Host and guest
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5    Host and guest
Fedora 12    Guest
Debian 5.0.4    Guest
Mandriva 2009.1    Guest
New Features in VMware Workstation

OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests — Improves the ability to run graphics-based applications in virtual machines.
Improved Graphics Performance — Enhanced performance with better benchmarks, frame rates, and improved rendering on Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests allows you to run various graphics-based applications. In addition, major improvements in video playback enable you to play high-resolution videos in virtual machines.
Automatic Software Updates — Download and install VMware Tools and receive maintenance updates when available.
Direct Launch — Drag guest applications from the Unity start menu directly onto the host desktop. Double-click the shortcut to open the guest application. The shortcut remains on the desktop after you exit Unity and close VMware Workstation.
Autologon — Save your login credentials and bypass the login dialog box when you power on a Windows guest. Use this feature if you restart the guest frequently and want to avoid entering your login credentials. You can enable Autologon and use direct launch to open guest applications from the host.
OVF 1.1 Support — Import or export virtual machines and vApps to upload them to VMware vSphere or VMware vCloud. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility bundled in the VMware Workstation installer. Use this tool along with VMware Workstation to convert VMware .vmx files to .ovf format or vice versa. VMware recommends that you use the OVF command-line utility. For more information, see the OVF Web site and OVF Tool User Guide.
Eight-Way SMP Support — Create and run virtual machines with a total of up to eight-processor cores.
2TB Virtual Disk Support — Maximum virtual disks and raw disks size increased from 950GB to 2TB.
Encryption Enhancements — VMware Workstation includes support for Intel’s Advanced Encryption Standard instruction set (AES-NI) to improve performance while encrypting and decrypting virtual machines and faster run-time access to encrypted virtual machines on new processors.
Memory Management — User interface enhancements have simplified the handling of increased virtual memory capacity.
User Experience Improvement Program — Help VMware improve future versions of the product by participating in the User Experience Improvement Program. Participation in the program is voluntary and you can opt out at any time. When you participate in the User Experience Improvement Program, your computer sends anonymous information to VMware, which may include product configuration; usage and performance data, virtual machine configuration; usage and performance data, and information about your host system specifications and configuration.

The User Experience Improvement Program does not collect any personal data, such as your name, address, telephone number, or email address that can be used to identify or contact you. No user identifiable data such as the product license key or MAC address are sent to VMware. VMware does not store your IP address with the data that is collected.

For more information about the User Experience Improvement Program, click the Learn More link during installation or from the VMware Workstation Preferences menu.

VMware Fusion 3.1 has a large number of new and improved features, including:

New Features

8-way SMP
2 TB Virtual Disks
OpenGL 2.1 for Vista
OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
Support for overlapping Unity windows in Exposé and Dock Exposé
USB “EasyConnect” to easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
OVF Tool for Mac OS X now included as optional install with full download or CD install
OVF Tool 2: Import and export OVF packaged virtual machines and upload to vSphere with bundled OVF Tool
Drag a disk image or virtual disk to the installation media pane of the assistant
Add shortcut for opening a virtual machines configuration file in default text editor for VMware Fusion (Hold down option and right-click in Virtual Machine Library)
User Experience Improvement Program

Graphics Improvements

Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with latest Mac OS X release
Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
Improved performance and better compatibility for both DirectX 9 and OpenGL 3D applications

Boot Camp Improvements

Up to 5x disk performance in Boot Camp virtual machines
New option to minimize prompting for password (authentication dialogs) when using Boot Camp virtual machines
Handle Mac OS X disk changes better to avoid multiple references to Boot Camp partition in the Virtual Machine Library

PC Migration Improvements

Improvements to Migrate Your PC assistant, including better validation of names and better location prompt
Prompt user if Mac OS X guest account prevents guest access to shared folders instead of failing
Open new virtual machine on successful migration
Enhanced user interface on PC being migrated including:
New progress dialog on the PC being migrated as well as in VMware Fusion
Option to show converter logs and troubleshooting steps on PC if PC migration fails
Avoids port conflicts with Web server software installed on PC such as IIS, Tomcat, and Apache

New Guest Operating Systems Supported

Ubuntu 8.0.4.4: 32- and 64-bit
Ubuntu 10.04: 32- and 64-bit (currently in Beta)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
RHEL 5.4: 32- and 64-bit

You can download it using the link above or running the updater inside of Fusion itself.  Enjoy.

When I suggested CBT to the customer they asked, “Why that one?” and how it worked.  So I explained:  When we replicate from source to target, the first copy is a full copy of the data (the “seed” it is often called).  When we go to replicate the next time, we don’t want to replicate the whole thing again, just what has changed since the last time we replicated (often called a “differential”).  The replication software needs to determine what’s changed.  Prior to ESX 4, there was not a built in method to do this.  The software would have to find another method, such as compare snapshot information and determine which blocks are new.  That uses CPU cycles on the ESX hosts and takes time (differential mode in vReplicator takes  roughly 1 minute per GB of VM data).  On the other hand, CBT is a feature in ESX4 that tracks the block changes that have occurred since a point in time.  It does not keep a copy of the changed data in a separate location, just a log that the blocks in question have changed.  This is a huge help to backup and replication technologies who typically have to determine what has changed on the disks via their own methods.  Now, ESX can tell them directly what has changed and they can get right to copying those changed blocks.  This makes the overall replication and backup jobs much quicker.

Now for a few lessons learned in using it.  First, it requires hardware version 7 VM’s (HW7) and ESX4.  VM’s need to have their VMtools upgraded to the latest version and then you can upgrade the VMs to HW7 when they are powered off via right clicking them (this updates the virtual hardware presented to the VMs and will require another reboot in Windows after powering it on when the OS discovers the new virtual HW and loads the drivers – thanks Microsoft!).  Second, CBT it is not on by default.  It is set per VM and is an advanced option you can set in the VM’s config.  Some software have the capability to change the CBT setting for you.  In our case, vReplicator has this option on the CBT options page.  On that page, it will check every VM that it can see and if they are HW7.  If they are HW7, they will show as supported.  On that screen, you will also see a checkbox for the “enabled” field.  When you click the enabled box on your HW7 VMs, vReplicator makes the change for you in the VM’s configuration.  However, as mentioned earlier, you must completely power down that VM and power it back on.  The reason for this is that, to start using it, ESX needs to create the tracking log for each disk (the log is about .5MB for ever GB of VMDK or Virtual Mapped RDM and it’s stored with the VM) and ESX only does this setup process at VM boot time.  So make note, a restart won’t work.  It has to be a VM power down and VM power back on.  There is a great article that taught me a few things on CBT by Eric Siebert that goes into a little more technical detail and you can find it here.

Once we got this process completed, my customer’s replication jobs ran MUCH faster.  The data being copied from the source to the target was the same, but the time it took vReplicator to determine what to replicate went from minutes to seconds.  Great news too was that we were able to change the replication method on the fly (from Differential to CBT, if you’re using hybrid, I think you need to re-seed).

My final advice, is make sure you understand if your backup/replication software can use CBT and what you need to enable it.  It does take a bit of work to upgrade the tools and virtual hardware (use Update Manager!).  However it’s well worth it in the long run.

Then it hit me, a single ESX host currently can see up to 256 LUNs.  Initially I thought, “but they’re never going to run more than 256 VMs on a host.”  No, but they did want to start using vMotion.  Now the LUNs will need to be presented to all hosts.  This 256 LUN limit no longer relates to the single host but to the cluster as a whole.  With all LUNs presented to all hosts, as long as they keep provisioning one-LUN-per-VM, they will be limited to 255 VM’s for the cluster (one of the LUNs is for booting ESX).  This was a limit they were most certainly going to hit (and at an accelerated pace, now that they have vMotion).

This made sense quickly to the customer.  The story has a happy ending: next week we’re upgrading them to vSphere and going to storage vMotion those VMs to a place with a better design.  There’s one thing I’ve learned about storage and virtualization is that there are no wrong designs.  However, there are ones that limit functionality.

The moral of the story is to know thy vmware maximums!  Make sure to check if a single host’s limitation could affect the design of an entire cloud.

Happy Earth Day!

The 4.5 release adds the following features to improve usability, performance, and updates:

• Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, 32-bit Windows 7, and 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems.
• ThinApp version updates to incorporate the latest features or support enhancements without rebuilding packages. The relink.exe utility updates existing packages.
• Compression of MSI packages that uses the MSICompressionType parameter to improve the ThinApp SDK performance.
• Reduced memory consumption and page file usage to improve startup performance. The OptimizeFor parameter works with the CompressionType parameter to customize memory performance and startup time.
• Anonymous collection of statistics to expand the support for applications. You can use the Setup Capture wizard or the QualityReportingEnabled parameter to help VMware build support for applications and help you migrate more native applications to a virtual environment.
• Loading of DLL files as virtual DLL files without using API functions. The ForcedVirtualLoadPaths parameter loads external system DLL files that depend on DLL files inside the package.
• Product interface updates to improve usability and link to video and documentation information.
• German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User’s Guide are available.

VMware vShield Zones – Reviewers Guide – If you haven’t figured this out yet, pay close attention to the Reviewers Guides.  If you have even slightly thought of trying out a product or technology, the reviewers guide is the next best thing to having an engineer over your shoulder walking you thru the product.  This is a really good one on Zones.  I learned quite a few things about the product that I was unaware of.  It’s a great read if you need to lock down and firewall off your VMs (or if you just want to learn how the VMs talk to each other).

Performance Brief for IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0 with VMware ESX 4 on HP ProLiant DL380 G6 Servers – This is a very specific paper on running Websphere on HP servers.  I did find some interesting bits in it however.  Specifically, configuration tips to maximize performance running Websphere in a VM.  The performance metrics should also be evaluated if you want to run Websphere on any hardware platform (perhaps even IBM).

Best Practices for Running vSphere on NFS Storage – I’m currently in a documentation war with my EMC Channel SE who swears by running VMware on NFS (You still have to convince me Steve, I’m a block-IO bigot).  This is a must-have for all Admins running VMware on NFS.  It’s also a really good guideline if you want to compare performance between file-level or block-level IO in your VMware environment and make sure your making an accurate decision.  My favorite section of this paper: “Previously thought to be Best Practices.”  Every best practice white paper should have that to debunk outdated information.  Outstanding work VMware!

PVSCSI Storage Performance -This is a paper I was waiting to see.  It compares the performance of the PVSCSI adapter to the LSI Logic adapter.  I guessed pretty close on the outcomes.  The PVSCSI adapter does perform better under higher IO workloads (some have stated only use it >2000 IOPs.)  The only thing I didn’t like about the test was that RDMs were used.  VMware has argued for the last few years that high-performance should not be a requirement for using RDMs.  So why not use what the majority of customers use in their environments?

RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server on VMware Virtual Infrastructure Deployment Guide – I really liked and hated this paper.  I liked it because it has some really good best practices and deployment tips depending on the size of the environment.  I hated it because it definitely contains errors: Table 2 shows a BES server with 23% utilization on ESX 3.5, Table 3 shows a BES server with 27% utilization under ESX 4, Figure 12 says the CPU load went down from 27 to 23 going to vSphere – not according to your tables kids.

That will do it for this month’s White Paper Review.  We’ll see you next month and look for more great technical information.

Localization of VMware View

The View Client and online help for View Client are now available in Japanese, French, German, and simplified Chinese. The View Manager Administration Guide, View Manager Release Notes, Getting Started with VMware View document, View Upgrade Guide, and View Architecture Planning Guide are also available in these languages.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5 Support

View Manager 4.0.1 includes support for VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5.

Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol

PCoIP now supports the following features:

Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.
Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.
View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.
For PCoIP-related bug fixes, see the View Client Resolved Issues section.

Dell EqualLogics, Version 1.0.2, Released 01/20/2010

EMC Celerra, Version 4.0.17, Released 01/29/2010

Fujitsu ETERNUS SF AdvancedCopy Manager, Version 1.3| Released 01/29/2010

IBM DS4000/5000, Version 01.01.35.05, Released 01/15/2010

IBM N-series SAN Adapter, Version 1.4.2, Released 01/07/2010

LSI, Version 1.01.30.05, Released 01/21/2010

You can find the updated SRAs on the SRM download site here.  As always, please check to make sure these updates are necessary for your environment.  I would have included the release notes but unfortunately the vendors are not keep track of them.  Upgrade at your own risk, and if you do, please test your recovery plans out fully with the new adapters.

Here’s the notes from the patch:

The VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 adds fixes to issues with the Cisco VSM module. If you do not use this module, you will not need this patch. For details regarding the issues fixed, please see the patch release notes.

The release notes link was not working for me on the download page.

The update mostly includes guest operating system custimization enhancements.

Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

Guest Operating Systems Customization Improvements

Customization support for the following guest operating systems has been added in this release:
For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web  Access

This release adds support for Firefox 3.x browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access. Firefox 3.x is not a supported browser for ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Web Access with this release.

Update: It appears the links are back.  Be aware they may be flaky if VMware is working on the site today.

Anti-Virus Deployment for VMware View – Great article on what to consider when deploying an anti-virus solution for your View desktops.  Great reading on how to best protect your desktop VMs.  My favorite part is the detailed exclusion list for the anti-virus scanners – very helpful.

Analysis of IBM System x3850 M2 Performance and Scalability with VMware vSphere 4 and SAP Solutions – a very specific read but has some very nice scailibility charts in it for the IBM x3850.  There’s also a nice listing of the optimized IBM BIOS settings on the server.

ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3 for VMware Infrastructure – a good read if you are deploying the ESRI ArcGIS mapping software in your environment.  Very specifics on configuration of that software on ESX 3.5.

VMware View 4 & VMware ThinApp Integration Guide – A very nice paper on how to integrate ThinApp packages into pools of desktops in View.  It has a lot of items to consider when deploying apps this way.  I’m personally hoping for some native VMware integration coming in the future.

Application Registration with VMware ThinApp – Here’s the question: how can I associate a specific file type with a ThinApp’ed application so when I click the file, it opens in the ThinApp’ed App?  Bingo, the doc goes through how to set this up in your environment on virtual or physical desktops.

Looks like bug fixes and some new supported guest and host OSes.

Here’s the What’s New section from the Release Notes:

Workstation 7.0.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues. This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new support:
New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System  Host and Guest Support
Windows 2008 R2    Host and guest
Windows Vista SP2    Host and guest
Ubuntu 9.10    Host and guest
RHEL 5.4    Host and guest
CentOS 5.4    Guest
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4    Guest