Virtualization Team

I have been asked lately if NPIV could be used to attach a tape library to a VM, & as attaching tape libraries to a VM has never been well documented. I have decided to write a small post about it. I don’t want to be a smart A**, but I will start by asking why would you want to attach a tape to a VM? Why not utilize VMware Storage API for backup & move on with it. As any method that can be utilized to connect a tape Drive/ Tape library to a VM running on ESX will compromise on many feature & introduce many restrictions to your environment. That have been said let’s see what options are available & what option is just confusing people.

As many of you know VMware has included VMotion in vSphere Essential Plus 4.1, where it was not included in vSphere Essential Plus 4.0

I have been getting the question lately, how do I obtain VMotion in this case if I have a valid support. Do I have to upgrade or change my license?

The easy answer is all you have to do is upgrade your software to vSphere 4.1. The license key you used with vSphere Essential Plus 4.0 will still be valid and usable with vSphere 4.1 & in turn will provide you with the VMotion feature, without the need to do anything on the license.

I thought its worth mentioning a bit about what to upgrade:

Lately many questions about VMware Site Recovery Manager Licensing has been raising up specially ones related to VMware vSphere Essential, vSphere Essential Plus, and other acceleration kits. Getting answer to these were always a hassle to find till I found this magical document with answers to many of these. You can find the document  at: Site Recovery Manager Pricing Licensing FAQ – Q409.pdf

I have decided to post the questions & answers of this document on my blog due to their importance & the huge demand for them, where this document is not well indexed online & quite hard to find. You can download the document above & use it offline, or look online below for the answer you require (The documents have points I have not included as they seemed well-known to me):

I believe one of the greatest addition to VMware View 4.5 is Location Based Printing. I have the question just popping up right and left lately (3 customers just this week), on how to get VMware View users to print to their nearest printers when they are using virtual desktops. In physical environment this was possible by applying computer policies, but when using terminal services or VDI the device used to access terminal service or Virtual Desktop might not be on the domain if even exist when using Zero Clients. Further, the user might access the same VM(Same computer name) from different locations, which make the use of Computer Policy alone not applicable.

VMware has just releases a new Official VMware KB Mobile App for Android & iPhone to keep VMware customers up to date on new KBs, news & so on all the time.

VMware KB app gives you the ability to:

• Search the Knowledgebase
• Read the Support Insider blog for important updates
• Catch our twitter feed from @vmwarekb (great for its real-time stream of new published KB content)
• Watch VMware KBTV (how-to videos)

Below is a great picture of the new Official VMware KB APP for Android & iPhone:

The KB App is definitely free of charge & can be found at: Get the VMware KB mobile app now!

I can see the above title bringing a lot of our competitors to read my blog for the next few days. I know many of them are already monitoring it daily, & as many of them still believe that there is still no upgrade path from our vSphere Essentials Kit & vSphere Essentials plus Kit might think I am shooting my self in the foot. I would love to disappoint them hard this time & point out that since vSphere has came out and the upgrade path from vSphere Essentials Kit & vSphere Essentials plus Kit has been available!!!!

I have just been assigned to assist one of our partners design a VDI environment using VMware View 4.5 with 5000+ Virtual Desktop. At this number of desktops every small bit has to be counted for while putting the design out. Some of the info required for the design was not ready in my mind nor obviously documented on the web. For that I had to contact our PSO team, & they have shared the answers with me. I am really thankful to the bright consultant who helped me with these info (requested not to mention his name so I will respect that). As these tips were not easy to find I thought I will share it with all of you.

For those who know me closely have already heard the news, for those who did not then yes I have just started to carry the VMware badge beginning of this month. Hmmm, I have started holding the VMware badge virtually I guess as I have not been handed that yet, but I have started as a VMware employee beginning of this month. My experience with the team has been great so far. Every one is interested in helping me adjust to the new role.

Although this news has been released for over a month now, I believe it was not pushed hard enough. Now its the time for it to make it to my blog. After reading this post, cheaper can no more be an execuse to not choose VMware the leading Virtualization product for your datacenter. Its no more the argument of just VMware being more cost effective, but a very price competetive at the initial cost. VMware has just moved VMotion to its Standard edition. That means the competitors will be offering their customers at best the equivelant of VMware Standard edition. Further, with the low pricing of VMware standard edition its no longer more expensive than the competition.

I can hear many people wonder what makes me write about KFH (Kuwait Finance House) virtualization story. Further, why now although I had conducted virtualization projects in there over the past three years. The idea has actually crossed my mind only after one of my colleagues passed by me today in office & mentioned that KFH Virtualization story is all over the media for the past week. I thought then to share their success and point out few of these news articles on my blog. You will find quite few of the news media articled linked to in my post below.

Going through VMworld 2010 video, I was not too surprised of getting the news that VMware ESX will be discontinued & only VMware ESXi will exist forward. Actually it seemed a news that had been circulating for a while, but finally its official now. Watch the below VMworld video from VMworld TV which clearly state that:

Ok, so what does this mean to me. I thought I will share my opinion of this decision.

Although VMware customers will have to pay some efforts to upgrade to ESXi, the upgrade process more than likely will be streamed line & not much more efforts than doing the normal upgrade between ESX releases. Though the gained benefits will be much worth it.

I know VMware has never promised vExperts any discounts to VMworld, but I was giving it a thought. How much of a good publicity can vExperts make of the VMworld event. Would not vExperts contribution to the VMware community be worth giving them a discount to VMworld. I mean Microsoft has been giving their MVPs discount to their trainings and events for ever. I believe VMware should step a head and reward its troops outside VMware a discounted tickets to VMworld.

I understand that many vExperts get their ticket paid by the corporate they work for, but that does not seems to be the case for everyone. I have not yet been able to attend any VMworld so far as my current employer did not fund any of it. Although my current employer is great about funding training courses, they have always considered VMworld some kind of knowledge conference and never accepted to fund it.

I have got one of my customers today complaining that she can not access her laptop CD-ROM inside her virtual machine & that she keeps getting the following error:

“You do not appear to have a valid CD-ROM device. If this is a CD-ROM device, try enabling legacy emulation mode”

The easy solution for this problem was to change the virtual machine CD-ROM mode from PassThrough IDE to Emulate IDE as per the image below:

I hope this help some one avoid the same problem.

First lets start by answering “Do I agree with the VMworld 2010 Awards winners?”. My answer to the previous question to the most part I agree with most of the winners, though I believe the judging process might need a bit of improvement. I have just came across Eric Siebert, which discuss the judging process for VMworld Award winners. You can find Eric article at:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/the-process-behind-judging-the-best-of-vmworld-awards/

It has been posted by Hany Michael that VMware is currently looking to expand their MENA team with talented people. It seems VMware is finally gathering their troops in the MENA and ready to hit the market with new innovate vCloud products.

If you think you are interested & got the talent you might want to contact Hany for recommendation at: hany [AT] vmware [DOT] com.

Below are the earlier positions mentioned by Hany, which I assume at least one or two of them still open.

• Senior Consultant – Professional Services – Saudi Arabia
• Enterprise Account Manager – Sales – Saudi Arabia
• Engagement Manager – Professional Services – Dubai
• Partner Business Manager – Sales – Dubai