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Edward L. Haletky

Jul 13 2009   9:27PM GMT

Monitoring vSphere adoption: A forum moderator’s perspective



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware, ESX, ESXi, vSphere, VMware Communities

As an active moderator and VMware Communities Guru, I’m in a unique position to see the level of vSphere adoption from an interesting vantage point — topic activity in the forums.

Take one morning’s statistics from this past week:

  • 3 pages of new VMware vSphere Forum Posts vs 1.5 pages of VMware ESX 3.5 Forum Posts.
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Forum posts used to be around 3 pages
  • The majority of VMware vSphere Forum Posts that dealt with ESX 4 vs ESXi 4 was in favor of ESXi 4 by a wide margin (I did not actually count posts but noticed there were more ESXi posts than ESX posts in those 3 pages)

So using this as a rough measurement and in a completely unscientific way, we do see that VMware vSphere is being investigated for use at least by those activie within the VMware community forums. The same thing happened when ESX v3.5 was released, and over time ESX 3.0 community posts dropped to less than a dozen per day. (I say per day because I review the vSphere, ESX 3.5, and ESX 3.0 communities once about every 24 hours give or take an hour or so.)

Given the types of questions, it looks like two things are happening:

  • VMware vSphere is being investigated
  • VMware ESXi 4 is the packaging of choice

The second item could be because many people believe that when the next version of ESX comes out, it won’t have a service console, and these users want to get a head start on the adjustment.

What we do not know from this type of adoption measurement is whether these are adoptions for use within production, enthusiasts, or testing within lab environments.

What we do know is that the increase in volume and the drop in ESX v3.5 forum posts is that vSphere is definitely gaining traction. This is not surprising, but what is to me is that ESXi 4 has a constant flow of posts while ESX 4 does not. This will shift the security model people employ to protect virtualization hosts as well.

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Jun 8 2009   4:45PM GMT

Should you upgrade to VMware vSphere 4?



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware vSphere, ESX, VMware, Upgrade, Install

Since I am an independent consultant and VMware Communities Guru, I have recently been asked many questions about whether or not to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4. My answers depends on the following items:

  • The hardware involved. VMware vSphere has certain hardware requriements, if your target hosts do not support these minimal requirements, then they are not good candidates for running VMware vSphere. The basic requirements are:

- 64 Bit CPU support. This does mean that some EMT64 machines will work. However they may not be on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guides.

- Intel-VT or AMD-V support. This pretty much goes without saying; it is impossible to use VMware vSphere if these features are not enabled within the BIOS.

- No eXecute (NX) or eXecute Disable (XD) support within the BIOS. In some cases you are required to enable this bit to allow VMware vSphere to run.

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May 22 2009   3:25PM GMT

VMware vSphere is available: Now what do you do?



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, vSphere, Licenses, ESX 4, ESXi, vCenter Server, Upgrade

So now that vSphere is available, how do you get your own copy and upgrade existing licenses? Hopefully, you have already checked if your Service and Support has been properly upgraded or existed prior to May 21, 2009. If so then you are in good shape.

Get your license keys:

  1. Log in to your VMware Account by going to http://www.vmware.com, clicking on Account, then clicking on Manage Product Licenses. Continued »

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May 20 2009   4:59PM GMT

The Plus in vSphere 4.0 Enterprise Plus licensing: Percolating thoughts



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus, Host Profiles, Nexus 1000V, dVS, PowerPath

There has been quite a bit of commentary on the nature of the vSphere 4.0 Enterprise and Enterprise Plus licenses. Most people do not see why they should pay for the new license and really can’t understand why Enterprise is going away at the end of the year.

The big question is: What is the plus within Enterprise Plus? Where is the extra value? My thoughts on the distinction between the two levels percolated until the brew was right: Apart from the obvious, Enterprise Plus adds multipath plug-in support, host profiles, and the vNetwork Distributed Switch, all of which may or not be needed by the average virtual environment.

Continued »

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May 13 2009   6:42PM GMT

The cycles of VMware communities forums: Search is your friend



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
VMware, Edward L. Haletky, Communities, VMTN, Google

Being a long-time user of the VMware Communities forums, I can definitely see that the questions posted in the forums tend to cycle and repeat themselves by newer users. This week the topics focus on Active Directory and clustering. Other weeks it is performance, VCB or configuration issues.

Though this is just within the specific forums I monitor, I am sure there are other cycles within the other forums. This is interesting to me, as long term users like myself see quite a few of the same questions, so we blog about them to try to help people get the answer if they’re searching in Google. In the blog posts, we’ll reference the question, answer the question and provide references that generally consist of other blog posts.

Since it came up this week, let’s discuss Active Directory integration. Continued »

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May 4 2009   8:18PM GMT

Using an iPhone to fix an ESX server while on vacation



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, TouchTerm, iPhone, ESX, VMware, VMware ESX

As you may or may not know, I was recently on a ’sort of’ vacation in Austin, TX., meaning I was still working on my latest book, VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment (which you can pre-order now on Amazon), so it was not much of a vacation. While away from my office I needed to access my host servers to fix a VMware ESX security element, which required not Virtual Infrastructure Client access, but console access.

To the rescue was my handy iPhone and the TouchTerm application that I downloaded for free. TouchTerm provides an SSH client for accessing a remote SSH server. The application even allows the use of pre-shared keys, which alleviates the major security concern when using SSH and other SSL-based codes. Continued »

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Apr 22 2009   8:01PM GMT

VMware vSphere may require a hardware upgrade



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware, vSphere, VMware vSphere 4, ESX, ESX 4

One of the things VMware’s products allow administrators to do is space out hardware upgrades, but that will soon change with the release of VMware vSphere. VMware vSphere’s hypervisor uses a 64-bit kernel. What this means is that vSphere ESX 4 is a 64-bit operating system that requires 64-bit hardware.

Granted, you have probably already upgraded to quad-core technologies which means you are probably safe, but those using dual-core technologies may not be. Case in point: HP DLxx0 G4 platforms. These are somewhere between 32- and 64-bit with EMT64 support, but unfortunately this is not enough to run VMware vSphere 4. You will need actual 64-bit hardware. Hopefully you can attain this with just a CPU change. Continued »

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Apr 15 2009   7:01PM GMT

Must-have VMware infrastructure plug-ins



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, H9Labs, Hyper9, Tripwire, VMware, VI Plugins, Hytrust, Wishlist

There are quite a few VMware plug-ins out there, but which would you really use on a regular basis? Here is a simple guide to the plug-ins I use and why I would not use some of the others.

Must haves:

  • VMware Update Manager (part of VMware vCenter Server)
  • Storage VMotion plug-in. This plug-in was created by Andrew Kutz who now works for Hyper9 and works on the H9Labs.com projects.
  • H9Labs Hyper9 VI Client plug-in Also from Andrew Kutz. It allows me to do simple searches within the infrastructure and hooks in to Hyper9 if you have it. Continued »

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Apr 9 2009   3:56PM GMT

VMware Tools FAQ



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware, VMware Tools, vmxnet, vmmemctl

Installing VMware Tools is generally required so that virtual machines (VMs) can fully participate in the VMware memory overcommit features by providing the per-VM memory balloon driver. This driver provides a mechanism for the VM to contract and expand memory (within the preset settings of the VM) upon request by the VMkernel. Other than this, there are a host of other drivers and tools that make up VMware Tools. Those are:

  • vmmemctl - Balloon driver.
  • vmxnet - Paravirtualized network VMwaredriver.
  • vmblock - Block filesystem driver to provide drag-and-drop functionality from the remote console.
  • vmsync - Sync driver for freezing and thawing filesystems (Linux specific).
  • vmhgfs - VMware host/guest file system driver (not used within ESX).
  • SVGA Display Driver for Windows systems.
  • Mouse Driver for Windows systems.
  • vmdesched - Experimental driver for improving time keeping.
  • vsock - Socket driver that works with VMCI.
  • VMware Guest Daemon for controlling communication between the guest and the host including time sychronization.
  • VMware Toolbox for Linux or VMware Tray for Windows for controlling various VMware Tools settings.

A few FAQs:

Do I have to install VMware Tools?
Not at all, your VMs will run fine without VMware Tools, but they will not be notified when memory ballooning occurs. The balloon driver aids the OS in handling these cases. Continued »

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Apr 2 2009   5:51PM GMT

Three new tools for the VMware toolbox



Posted by: Edward L. Haletky
Edward L. Haletky, Texiwill, VMware VI, ESX, iPhone, vCenter Mobile Access, Files Lite, iTunes Appstore

There are three new and useful tools for the virtualization administrator’s toolbox.

The first is the VMware vCenter Mobile Access Technology Preview. Thought not quite available yet, it bodes fairly well as it works from an iPhone. My only concern about this tool is about the security. Does it use pre-shared keys/certificates? Or should I only use it over a VPN that uses pre-shared keys/certificates?  Very cool technology preview, but still a few questions about it. (Click the link above to get the preview.)

The second is also something for the iPhone. Continued »

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