Microsoft Windows

VMware Workstation 6.5 and ACE 2.5 both available in Beta 2

VMware has just announced the availability of VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta 2 and VMware ACE 2.5 Beta 2 through their new Beta Portal.

VMware Workstation 6 makes it possible for multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on a desktop or laptop. An existing physical PC can be converted into a VMware VM, or a new VM can be created from scratch. Each VM then represents a complete PC, including the processor, memory, network connections and peripheral ports, and can run Windows, Linux and a host of other operating systems side-by-side on the same computer.

Here is what’s new in Workstation 6.5:

A record/replay functionality in the integrated virtual debugger. You can deploy your applications in “record” mode directly from Visual Studio to capture your entire virtual machine (VM) execution. Record/Replay functionality has been added to the existing Integrated Virtual Debugger plug to reproduce exact VM executions and debug the application during replay and identify defects without leaving the familiar Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

It includes multi-monitor support for Unity, so users can integrate guest applications with host machines across two or more monitors.

VMware has also added support for virtual machine streaming, so users can start using their VMs without waiting for them to completely finish downloading from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace or a HTTP server.

VMware’s ACE is used to provision standardized client PC environments inside secure and centrally managed VMs. Each ACE contains a complete client PC—including the operating system and all applications.

ACE 2.5 users will be able to take advantage of all new features in Workstation 6.5, plus these new features;

Now there is a Kiosk Mode, so virtual desktops can be deployed to shared physical PCs while preventing the host operating system from misuse or from attacks.

There is a Full Screen Toggle Mode, so IT can switch full-screen views between guests or between guest and host operating system via hot keys.

And lastly, the new version includes Pocket ACE Caching, which improves performance of Pocket ACE by setting pre-defined maximum cache size.

Virtualization Competitive Analysis in the middle of an ROI Calculator?

Microsoft recently published their Integrated Virtualization – ROI Tool, and I thought “That’s great. When the time comes I will have the ability to provide Microsoft branded reports to support a Microsoft virtual infrastructure opportunity.” I did not take the time to check out calculator first, but I assumed (or hoped) that it would provide clear answers about licensing costs and the confusing licensing options for virtualization. It wasn’t until I read VMware’s post Microsoft’s Virtualization ROI/TCO Calculator: Our Take that I decided I’d better understand what Microsoft’s ROI calculator produced.

Specifically, VMware’s post asked me to consider the inaccuracies they found:

“… evaluate the Microsoft calculator yourself – let us know what else you find! “

So I did just that, but it wasn’t how Microsoft calculated the numbers that bothered me most. I struggled to understand why a TCO and ROI calculator included a competitive analysis. After all, VMware’s TCO calculator doesn’t compare the cost of competitor’s products. What does that have to do with return on investment? It just seems out of place to me. Furthermore, if you go back and review VMware’s points they are mostly about the competitive cost comparison, too. It’s easy to forget we are discussing a TCO / ROI calculator.

As for using the calculator for ROI, it’s fine, I guess. But it did not live up to my basic expectations of helping with licensing. In fact, intentional or not, Microsoft comes across as trying to hide accurate licensing costs, as VMware points out:

“We did find a one-line disclaimer buried in the 66-page document: “Warning – Check pricing advice and rules as the automated recommendations here may not reflect all licensing rules.” Come on, guys - licensing is such a basic component for accurate TCO estimates. The disclaimer feels pretty weak.”

On the other hand, I think I can use the Windows Server Virtualization Calculators to help estimate licensing costs. But I shouldn’t have to use another calculator to verify the first one. Overall, I am left with the same feeling I get when trying to buy a new car. It’s similar to that doubt about the “dealership transport” charges or the frustration of feeling that I’m missing hidden costs even though the price is right. I am being forced to do way too much research.

I understand that the next few years will be filled with explaining the technical and financial differences between Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and all the other virtualization products. A competitive analysis calculator would come in handy. A single, unbiased virtualization competition calculator might be impossible to create, but even separate tools from each vendor that let you enter your own pricing numbers would be a great start. Call these tools what they really are. Don’t hide them in an ROI Calculator.

VMware: beware of bridge-building competitors

VMware may be king of the virtualization mountain now. But it should beware of bridge-building competitors.

Chris Wolf, an analyst with the Burton Group, warned that Novell Inc. was similarly at the top of the world in the late 1980s with its NetWare network operating system, which filled a key gap in Microsoft products. Addressing the problem, Microsoft responded with Windows NT, a weaker alternative to NetWare but “good enough” and stronger over time, and featuring a Gateway Services tool with just enough interoperability to make it easy to port data between the two systems.

But that “gateway” eventually became a floodgate, siphoning off Novell NetWare customers, who now had an easy way to migrate to Microsoft NT and a motive for doing so: Microsoft had a much larger package of software solutions while Novell’s NetWare was just a single point solution. Farewell, Novell NetWare.

Fast forward to 2008. VMware is the undisputed leader in virtualization, the hottest thing in the software market. And as part of its interoperability measures, Microsoft’s new System Center Virtual Machine Manager will have extenders to VMware. Microsoft will also launch its far more modest Hyper-V virtualization software at the giveaway price of $28 per server this summer. But, clearly, Microsoft will be working at furious speed to make it more competitive.

VMware, like Novell NetWare, is a point solution, and Microsoft, even more than in the 1980s, is a giant ecosystem with an overwhelming share of the global software market.

“This is a great strategy for Microsoft,” Wolf said. “It’s providing just enough interoperability [with VMware] to give some management with the goal of facilitating migration. And when users get comfortable with those tools, they will slowly migrate over to Microsoft.

“It’s exactly the same runbook as Microsoft ran against Novell,” Wolf said. “It’s pretty eerie.”

Fortune 500 company uses VMware to slash long term power costs

Santa Ana, Calif.-based First American Corp., a Fortune 500 company that provides business information and analytics, is standardizing its data center with virtualization software from VMware, Inc. to improve power efficiency and better server utilization rates.

First American’s Enterprise Architect, Jake Seitz, said the increasing cost of power was the most significant driver for virtualization.

“In Q407 we started looking at our utility costs and our data center footprint, and realized that embracing virtualization would help us maximize what we have and shrink our utility footprint,” Seitz said. “My hope is that we can get to 80% virtualzed environment – we are at about 30% right now.”

Low hardware utilization rates also prompted the company to invest in VMware virtualization. “We wanted to better utilize our existing hardware. We had some hardware utilization as low as 4%, and rarely would be see anything above 15% utilization,” Seitz said.

When Seitz began looking at virualization about two years ago, he also deployed small Microsoft Virtual Server and Citrix XenServer environments - both less expensive than VMware - but decided to standardize on VMware going forward because he liked the management tools and support.

When the project started, the data center at First American was equipped with 2,800 physical servers running that many OSes. After virtualizing 700 of those servers, First American runs 3,500 OSes, Seitz said.

The OSes are mostly Microsoft Windows, though there are some Unix systems on mainframes and in Xen containers, he said. The physical servers supporting the virtual machines are x86 servers rom Hewlett Packard and Dell, and many are equipped with Intel Xeon quad-core processors, Seitz said.

First American hasn’t gotten rid of many physical servers because they lease them, but it will save power in the long run because with better server utilization, they won’t have to add more physical servers in the future, Seitz said.

Also, because their hardware is leased, it is refreshed every three years. When this happens, the IT staff has to port all of the applications and OSes from the old hardware to the new hardware. Normally, this takes months to accomplish, but it should be a lot easier using virtualization, Seitz said.

“Now, instead of doing a one-to-one refresh, we will virtualize our environment and it will shave off a few months in man hours,” Seitz said.

The company is starting to virtualize their mission critical applications now, and have even adopted a “virtual machine first” policy.

“You need a really good reason to get a physical server,” Sietz said. “Everything we do now is virtual.”

Use the VMware Converter bootable CD for the difficult conversions

Depending on the scope of your virtual environment, it is likely that physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions have taken place. The P2V process truly enables VMware administrators to put physical systems into virtual environments. However, you may have come across a system that for some reason will not go through the normal conversion. In such cases the VMware Converter bootable CD may be an option. It provides a zero-transaction state that may be a favorable environment to perform P2V conversions.

Good candidates for using the VMware Converter bootable CD include:

• Systems that run a database engine,
• have real-time systems that may not convert correctly,
• or systems where the VMware Converter agent otherwise fails.

The bootable CD is licensed to enterprise customers, so the download requires advance purchase. The VMware Converter bootable CD is a Windows XP Pre Installation (PE) environment. The initial screen loads as follows:

The behavior is very similar to that of the full installation version once the VMware Converter interface loads. The only difference is that you can only convert the local system instead of being able to convert a remote system. This is to be expected, as the bootable environment should only be used when the traditional mechanisms fail. Once in the application, you can push the conversion to a VMware ESX server or to a flat .vmdk file for use in VMware Server or VMware Workstation:

I had a chance to use the VMware Converter bootable CD for a Windows 2000 system conversion that would not complete correctly in the installed, online environment. The bootable environment is also referred to as a cold clone environment, and with no transactions occurring on the file system a clean backup environment is available. The unfortunate circumstance is that this functionality can transport a poorly configured system to your virtual environment - so you may be able to keep it and its issues running forever.

Technosium 2008: VMware Update Manager now with offline patching

I am blogging from the Technosium Global Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California. While here, I will be providing you important VMware info from the show.

VMware Update Manager is now shipping with the ability to patch offline virtual machines. This is done by using a special patching network for suspended or offline systems. Any organization implementing any network access control or that would be concerned by a system at risk by presenting itself to the main network.

Offline patching uses the Shavlik patch management technology to interact with Update Manager and the virtual machine. The patching capabilities currently include Windows virtual machines for Microsoft, Adobe, and Mozilla updates and a scanning only capability for Linux systems.

Use Virtual Infrastructure Client with Caution on Vista

The Virtual Infrastructure Client used to manage your VMWare ESX hosts may not perform all tasks correctly when running on Windows Vista. There are a handful of issues reported from users in the VMWare communities board such as “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” when trying to use the VMWare cloning features. I was fortunate enough to experience this issue just today. This thread mentions to update some time zone information into the registry. On another Vista system, we performed this registry tweak, and the VI client worked. However, this is not a good resolution from the Vistal environment perspective.

Critical VI Tasks Use on XP

If you are performing some critical VMWare tasks that are prone to failure when the VI client is installed on Vista, a better idea would be to perform those tasks from a Windows XP system. Though the issues reported with Vista are minor, and the VMWare server-side parts have intelligence to manage the issues as they occur to avoid integrity issues with the virtual machines or other pending tasks.

How to Install VMWare Tools Through Windows Group Policy

With all of the migration strategies available to the virtualization host administrators, it is easy to overlook the guest operating system details. When it comes to upgrading or installing VMWare Tools, the idea of touching every server interactively is not very appealing. For a Windows guest operating system (OS) on a domain, a group policy object can be one of your quickest options for getting the tools installed.

Some Guidelines for Installing VMWare Tools through Group Policy

The VMWare Tools are available for your guest OS as an .ISO CD-ROM file. Find the file, and get access to it from another system. Open the CD .ISO file or write it to disk and retrieve the files. Be sure to place them in a share accessible to the systems you want to install VMWare Tools with an indicator of the version. For example, \\SERVER1\Applications\VmwareTools\ESX3.02\ would indicate that this path would hold VMWare Tools for guest OSs on ESX server 3.02. Be sure to use the correct version of VMWare Tools with the corresponding guest OS if you have different VMWare host platforms in use. Each version of VMWare tools is optimized with the version provided with the installation.

Making the GPO

To make a new Group Policy Object (GPO) that would install the VMWare tools do the following from the Group Policy Management Console (gpmc.msc):

-Select the Organizational Unit (OU) you want to install VMWare tools
-Expand Computer Configuration
-Expand Software Configuration
-Click Software Installation
-In the right pane, select “New-Package”
-Browse to the VMWare Tools.msi file in your shared path
-Click Open
-Sending the package to “Assigned” will install the VMWare Tools package on the next refresh of the policy on the systems in the OU to which this GPO is linked.
-Once the package is listed, rename it from “VMWare Tools” to something more clear like “VMWare Tools - Windows - ESX 3.02″
-Once this is complete the VMWare tools will install on the server on the next boot without interaction. The Windows event log will have an entry similar to the following:


The install of application VMWare Tools - Windows - ESX 3.02 from policy Default Domain Policy succeeded.Changes to software installation settings were applied successfully.

Upgrades to VMWare Tools

In the situation where hosts are upgraded and guest OSs are moved dynamically, upgrading the VMWare Tools through the same fashion can be done as well. Be sure to use the version of the tools again in the package, and remove the old one if needed. Some proper testing is of course due, and a best practice would be to set up a test OU to apply the VMWare tools package before rolling out to more virtual machines.