Intel announced yesterday that it will be unveiling its six core processor, called Nehalem-EX, in the first half of 2010. The newest Intel chip will be targeted towards High Performance Computing (HPC) segment and will reportedly optimize server performance.

With the announcement of this new processor one can hope that it will drive the prices down of the previously released Core i5 and Core i7 Processors. I myself am still using a Core 2 Duo E4300 clocked at 2750Mhz(original clock speed 2200Mhz). I know, I know, I’m a bad person for overclocking, but to keep up with technology explosions I had to push my hardware to the limit. Next up for me is definitely a Core i5. So to Intel, keep announcing more cores and faster clock speeds, its only going to make it more affordable for me to make my next upgrade.

Also announced is that Hyper-threading is back on the new Core i5 and Core i7 Processors, Intel says that it was the smart thing to do, more instructions per clock cycle without using extra power.

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Nvidia is the world’s leading supplier of “discrete,” or standalone, graphics chips but takes a distant second place in overall market share to Intel, which supplies “integrated” graphics built into the chipsets that accompany all of its processors. Mercury Research estimates the total market for graphics chips, including integrated graphics, at almost $10 billion in 2009.

I think the competition is good, I mean what else can Nvidia do but take their prices down for their “stand-alone” video cards… I currently am using a Geforce 8800GT and love it, I know it has its limitations, so I am always looking for the next best thing. AMD or Nvidia, personally I like them both, whomever gives me the best bang for my dollar wins!

Full story here.

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“Hewlett-Packard Co. announced Wednesday it will purchase networking company 3Com for $2.7 billion, and also preannounced higher fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and raised its outlook for fiscal 2010.”

Check out the full story here.

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“As a major Linux vendor, one might expect that Red Hat’s new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) for Servers solution would be able to run on Linux servers.

You’d be wrong. Not only is that not the case, but the Management Server piece of RHEV, which provides virtualization management capabilities, requires users to be running Microsoft’s Windows Server.

That’s no typo: A Linux vendor is requiring its users to run one of its key new products on the rival, closed source Windows operating system.”

Here is the link to the full article.

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Double click on AddSystemRestoreEntries.reg (This will add some values to the registry). Click on Yes to continue

Then insert a Windows XP CD to your CDROM drive. Right click on sr.inf and click on install

Reboot the computer

Now you can find the System Restore utility from START–>All Programs–>Accessories–> System Tools –> System Restore

Note: On your system the vswif, vmnic, vSwitch numbers and network settings are different.

1.Run the following command to list the name of the vswif adapter:

esxcfg-vswif -l

2.Run the following command to delete the vswif adapter:

esxcfg-vswif –del vswif0

3.Run the following command to list the name of the vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -l

4.Run the following command to delete the vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -d vSwitch0

5.Run the following command to create the vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch0

6.Run the following commands to create default port groups for vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -A “VM Network” vSwitch0
esxcfg-vswitch -A “Service Console” vSwitch0

7.Run the following command to create the vswif adapter:

esxcfg-vswif –add –portgroup “Service Console” –ip=nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn –netmask=255.255.255.0 vswif0

8.Run the following command to verify that the settings in the network file are correct:

cat /etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
GATEWAYDEV=vswif0
HOSTNAME=host.domain.com
GATEWAY=nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn

9.Run the following commands to list all of the network adapters and associate a vmnic which has a link status of up:

esxcfg-nics -l
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1 vSwitch0

10.Run the following command to verify that the vmnic is associated with the vSwitch:

esxcfg-vswitch -l

11.Ping an IP address to check for network connectivity. If the ping fails remove the previous vmnic from the vSwitch and try another adapter that has a link status of up.

12.Once you have verified connectivity, you can then connect to Virtual Infrastructure client of the affected ESX Server, you may or may not have a bit a work ahead of you at this point, depending on iSCSI, etc…

Good Luck

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The Definitive way to Kill a PID process

The steps below are based on the fact that you already tried to use “vmware-cmd vmname.vmx stop; stop hard”

1.)    A final solution is to kill the PID (process ID). Issue the following command: “ps auxfww | grep <vmname>” to locate the correct PID (BTW: this cannot be done via *ESXTOP*). The first number to appear in the output is your PID. The PID can be used to terminate the process by issuing kill -9 PID.

2.)    Run vmware-cmd <vmname>.vmx getstate to see if it is now “off”, as it should be.

3.)    You can now go back into Virtual Infrastructure Client and start the machine.

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If you haven’t subscribed to this RSS Feed, you should do so now… it includes Performance Tips for ESX and vSphere. Here is the link and read the insert below.

“We made a huge number of performance improvements in vSphere 4.0. The ESX storage stack was no exception. We ran a wide variety of micro and real world benchmarks to thoroughly evaluate and optimize vSphere’s storage subsystem. It is now even more efficient for the enterprise and ready to support the cloud.

A wide variety of I/O intensive applications will run efficiently on vSphere with all the improvements.  You can find details on the architectural changes and storage performance improvements made in this white paper.”

I suggest you add the feed to your BlackBerries(Viigo) or iPhone immediately, yes now… not later, now.

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What would be better than being warned that your datastore is reaching a critical point, wouldn’t it be nice to intercept before the VMs crash?! Of course it would. Check out this pdf “Storage with VMware vSphere“, I have included an insert below.

“vSphere enables many new features for the management of virtualization storage resources. These capabilities provide vSphere administrators with new ways to increase efficiency for disk utilization and CPU cycles. With automated proactive alerts and alarms, vCenter provides more visibility and control of storage resource allocations, deployment, and monitoring. Also, new levels of reporting, topology maps, and datastore status and details screens provide an easy way to manage access and limit storage sprawl in VMware deployments. Storage VMotion has been enhanced to enable more choices for migrating VM homes from one type of storage to another. And finally, new choices exist for optimizing I/O traffic for I/O intensive Virtual Machines.”

This next link gives you a quick insight into what vSphere Offers in terms of Data Management overall, including “Responsible Thin Provisioning”.

Of course if you just cant get your hands on vSphere 4, then you can purchase Veeam Monitoring, which can monitor datastores and alert you when the datastores are almost full… see insert and check out the Veeam Monitor Homepage

“Veeam Monitor 4.0 provides full storage monitoring capabilities, including disk space, disk issues and datastore monitoring. The latter allows for viewing datastore load information aggregated from disk utilization statistics of all VMs and hosts using the specific datastore. This allows you to see the actual cumulative load on a particular datastore, and set up an alarm that fires off when the datastore load is above a specified threshold. Datastore I/O monitoring is a unique Veeam Monitor feature not available from other VMware monitoring applications.”
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