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VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 3

• What’s New
• Prior Releases of VMware Infrastructure 3
• Before You Begin
• Installation and Upgrade
• Patches Contained in this Release
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues
• Using Language Packs on the ESX Server Host

Note: In many public documents, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is now known as VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i version 3.5 as VMware ESXi 3.5. These release notes continue to use the previous convention to match the product interfaces and documentation. A future release will update the product names.

What’s New

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3:

Note: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 3. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and Virtual Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.

New features and supported IO devices:

• Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
• HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
• Newly Supported NICs —  This release adds support for the following NICs:
  • Broadcom 5716 1Gb
  • Broadcom  57710 10Gb Adapters
  • Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only

  Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.

• Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
  • Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
  • Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)

  Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported

• Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
  • Solaris 10 U5
  • Ubuntu 8.04.1
  • RHEL 4.7
• Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (KB 1007394).
• Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
• Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
• Small Footprint CIM Broker —  Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
• IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.

Hyper-V 2.0 Feature

Windows Server 2008 R2 will include Hyper-V 2.0, it promises to deliver the final pieces for enterprise level OS virtualization and to really compete with VMware at that level.

The most anticipated is of course Live Migration: moving running VM’s from one host to another without interruption of services running inside the VM’s. To accomplish this technique a new Shared Filesytem is needed and so will also be introduced in Hyper-V 2.0: Clustered Shared Volumes.

The Live migration works best together with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, it can provide additional Live Migration management and orchestration scenarios such as Live Migration via policy.

Cool thing is you only need to update to Hyper-V 2.0, none of the rest of the infrastructure needs updating.

Logical Processor Support

• Support for 32 logical processors on host computer
• Twice the initial supported number of logical processors of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Hot add remove Storage

• Add and remove VHD and pass-through disks to a running VM without requiring a reboot.
• Hot-add/remove disk only applies to VHDs and pass-through disks attached to the SCSI controller (not the IDE controller)
• Hot-add remove of storage controllers is not supported

Benefits

• Enables storage growth in VMs without downtime
• Enables additional datacenter backup scenarios

SLAT
Second Level Translation (SLAT)

Overview

• Leverage new processor features to improve performance and reduce load on Windows Hypervisor
• AMD: Enhanced Page Tables
• Intel: Nested Page Tables
• Benefits
• Improved memory management performance
• Memory usage of Windows Hypervisor will decrease from approximately 5% to 1% of total physical memory.
• More memory will be available for child partitions enabling higher consolidation ratios

Dynamic Memory
Overview

• Pool of memory is dynamically distributed across VMs
• Memory is dynamically allocated/removed based VM usage with no service interruption

Benefits

• Enables much higher consolidation ratios per host by addressing the greatest limiting factor to consolidation: Memory

How

• VM memory configuration includes:
• Initial (what VM will boot with)
• Minimum (what VM is guaranteed)
• Maximum (what VM can grow to)
• Memory is added via Hot-Add MEM functionality
• Memory is removed via Balloon driver (supported OSs)

Boot from VHD

Allows any VHD to work on physical hardware, this is very interesting! Boot an OS VHD on your physical hardware.

You can find more information at the WinHEC session descriptions: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/sessions.aspx

Silent Installation of VMWare Tools - Additional Way

1. First, you need to extract the contents of windows.iso
2. Run: msiexec.exe /i “VMware Tools.msi” /qb-! INSTALLLEVEL=1000 REBOOT=ReallySuppress

VMware Workstation 6.5

The Gold Standard for Desktop Virtualization Just Got Better

VMware® Workstation 6.5 provides the deepest OS support, best-in-class virtual machine architecture, the richest desktop user experience and an unmatched set of features to enhance productivity.

InfoWorld says that VMware Workstation 6.5 is “the gold standard for desktop virtualization…truly a world-class product and a pace-setter for the entire industry.”

VMware Workstation 6.5 is packed with new features, including:

• “Unity” view provides a seamless desktop experience.
• DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 graphics enable Windows 3D applications and games.
• Easy Install simplifies the creation of Windows and Linux virtual machines.
• Powerful Record and Replay for groundbreaking debugging capabilities.

Get details about all of the new features.

Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Release to Manufacturing

Microsoft has released Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5 to manufacturing. Formerly known as SoftGrid, App-V 4.5, App-V 4.5 is the first Microsoft-branded release of the product.

More information on Microsoft web page or Microsoft blog…
APP-V (Softgrid) Official web page

Standalone Hyper-V

Microsoft Finally details Standalone Hyper-V. Monday, at a Microsoft Virtualization event in Bellevue, Washington, Microsoft annonced  a few interesting virtualization news. The company showed off some live migration features of Windows Server 2008 R2 (R2 should be released next year)…

Full story at source: http://app-v.ca/

Microsoft Virtualization Launch

On September 8th, 2008 Microsoft will launch its new virtualization products.
Attend this free summit on Microsoft® Virtualization Products and Practices and INCREASE your productivity!

Find out how Windows Server 2008® with Hyper-V™, Microsoft System Center - including Virtual Machine Manager 2008 - and Microsoft Desktop and Application Virtualization allow you to deploy, manage and get VIRTUAL now like never before.

Cisco, VMware sign the Microsoft Virtualization Validation Program

In June 2008 Microsoft formally launched its Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) to extend the support on its products when they run as virtual machines on 3rd party virtualization platforms. Microsoft has announced that two new vendors are participating this program: VMware and Cisco.

” …Under SVVP, customers running Windows and Microsoft applications on the VMware ESX hypervisor will receive the support they need from Microsoft, in addition to the support they have enjoyed from VMware. VMware customers can continue to leverage the full flexibility and benefits of using Virtual Infrastructure.  VMware is working with Microsoft to certify ESX in the near future..” , said Carl Eschenbach, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations.

Running ESX 3.5 and 3i Under VMWare Workstation 6.5

As result of battle between Microsoft and VMWare (for place on Virtualization market), VMWare announced that a new VMWARE ESXi server became FREE.
This news generated a lot of interest and many people started to try install VMWARE ESXi on VMWARE Workstation, just to see it and learn.

By little Googling you will find a lot of sites, where explained how to run ESX 3.0 server on VMWARE Workstation 6.x, but you will see that this tricks is not working for ESX 3.5. Equally they are working, but you unable to start virtual machine inside ESX.

To make ESX 3.5 fully working on VMWare Workstation we need to do the following steps….

Full story at source: http://app-v.ca/