Dear Hyper-V:

Thank you for supporting vSphere adoption in your roundabout way. 

Much love, VMware

…not your typical mud-slinging blog, is it?

Actually, my quippy love letter was inspired by an article we just published over at SearchVMware.com by Steve Kaplan.

In it, Kaplan basically argues that while smaller companies will take the bait and try Hyper-V because of cost Windows Server 2008 prevalence, when they inevitably sit down and plan for a virtualization adoption beyond test and dev, they will likely consider the virtualization roadmap… a.k.a. IT as a service, which translates to setting up a virtual environment that can support an internal cloud…which means, spending the money to bring in VMware vSphere.

Take a read. Argue about it with your colleagues. Start a debate on this blog. Or, Tweet with your VMware buddies about how VMware will still reign supreme, after all. “Woot woot!”

vSphere 4.1?

While most attendees were focusing on VMware Go and vCloud Express, a few attentive bloggers in the press section noticed that during one of the keynote’s demos, the version number on vCenter Server was 4.1.0, build 000000.

gabvirtualworld: #vmworld did you see the version number of the vcenter install??? 4.1.0

Iamw: Wonder if ESX 4.1 will be out today.

Although there hasn’t been any official announcements about vSphere 4.1 or a new vCenter release, one can only wonder whether this was an oversight by VMware or if perhaps VMware wanted its more attentive viewers to get an informal peek at what’s ahead. (Feel free to share your thoughts on this by commenting below.)

Live podcasting, vCloud Express and booth babes

Later on that day I was corralled into a live podcast session hosted by John Troyer with Dominic Rivera, Simon Seagrave, and Gabrie van Zanten, which you can watch here. We chatted about day 1, vCloud Express and the presence of booth babes at VMworld — which doesn’t seem to be as popular as you might think.

As fellow TechTarget journalist and co-host of the SearchVMware.com Hypervisor Huddle podcast Bridget Botelho put it after attending VMware User Group, the tech space can be “a boys club,” so it was refreshing to hear Troyer talk about how he doesn’t think booth babes should be a part of VMworld, as technical conferences are attended by users who want to know about technical aspects of a product, not be handed a free pen or shirt by a smiling scantily-clad young woman.

As far as vCloud Express, many that I spoke with are excited by the new release, but some such as vExpert and senior systems engineer Jase McCarty are a bit skeptical and would rather use internal cloud computing first before putting data out in a public cloud. Over lunch that day, McCarty has also wondered aloud whether VMware’s objective to bring the internal cloud to the data center would affect IT jobs, as less people would be needed to “keep the lights on” with IT architecture and infrastructure.

Best of VMworld Award judging

Finally I sat down with several other judges in the deliberation room and we went over the top choices for the coveted Best of VMworld awards. I was truly impressed at the knowledge this year’s judges have about all areas of the virtualization space. I may have been too busy to attend any VMworld sessions thusfar, but I can certainly say I learned quite a lot during the two-hour conversation around that table.

We have a great list of winners this year, and I hope to see a good crowd today at the Solutions Exchange Theater come 12:30.

Also check out our video coverage so far over at our VMworld conference coverage landing page.

• 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.

• Whether or not the hardware is fully supported by VMware for VMware vSphere 4. This implies that the hardware and IO devices you are planning to use are listed within the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guides. If they are not then there is a chance that when you call for VMware Support that they will deny you this support. It does not happen often but it is possible, so be aware of this. If you are not using VMware vSphere 4 in production, this may not be a huge issue as many a whitebox will work, just be sure your IO devices are listed within the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guides.
• Whether or not current management agents exist for VMware vSphere 4. This implies that your current crop of management agents, such as HP Insight Management Agents, are available for VMware vSphere 4. Monitoring of your physical hardware and alerting on issues is too important to not have available if your use VMware vSphere 4.
• Have you tested vSphere 4 in your environment? Wanting to upgrade implies that you have tested vSphere 4 within your environment and that you are comfortable with the changes in licensing and operation of this .0 release of software. It is unwise to just place VMware vSphere 4 into production without first running some tests. How much of a test plan you use depends on your existing testing processes, but some testing is required. If you are upgrading, at minimum you should test to see which path is a smoother transition for you: upgrading or reinstalling.
• Have you considered licensing level changes? There are many licensing level changes within VMware vSphere 4 with respect to what is available at each license level. If you upgrade will you also need to upgrade your licenses to maintain the appropriate levels of functionality. DRS is a case in point. It is important to know exactly what your licenses imply when you upgrade. With new starts of VMware ESX, it is also important to understand your license levels.
• Do you need to upgrade your hardware to use all vSphere 4.0 functions? In some cases, before you can utilize all features of VMware vSphere 4 such as Fault Tolerance you will need to also upgrade your processors. Not every processor supports VMware vLockstep. If you do require VMware Fault Tolerance, for example, it is important to know its limitations and the required CPUs.

These are not all of the issues involved with upgrading to VMware vSphere 4, but they are helpful considerations for deciding if you should upgrade or even can upgrade as well as start using VMware vSphere 4 for new installations.

As with any virtualization endeavor, it is extremely import to architect, design, and plan your vSphere 4 installations or upgrades. It is very easy to install VMware vSphere 4 without doing any planning, but if you do so, expect frustration, delays, and long days and nights. Ask the tough questions during your planning stages and do not rush to implement vSphere 4 unless there is a major need to do so.