Virtualization Team

What’s VMware VMotion?

VMware VMotion enables the active migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another without interruption of service, availability of service and complete integrity of transactions.

VMware VMotion moves running virtual machines from one physical server to another while maintaining service availability.

VMware VMotion allows IT organizations to:

• Perform live migrations with zero downtime, undetectable to the user.
• Continuously and automatically optimize virtual machines within resource pools.
• Perform hardware maintenance without scheduling downtime and disrupting business operations.

Before asking VMware or your vendor for a health check on your VMware enviornemnt you can use the free Healthcheck script as an early start. Actually its a great idea to automate it to send you and update of your enviornment status weekly. Below is a bit more of the VMware Healthcheck script as posted by Ibeerens on the VMware Community forum:

What is VMware HealthCheck Script?

VMware Healthcheck is a Powershell script that reports information like snapshots, VMware tools version, datastore space, CDROM and/or floppy drives connected, VM details etc. to HTML and e-mail the output. This script can be scheduled so that for example you get every week a rapport in your mailbox with the status of the VMware environment.

A feature that VMware VI3 offers and that is definitely worth the ten minutes it takes to configure are the alarms. VMware VI3 gives us the opportunity to receive alarms (via a script) or be notified (by mail, SNMP) for changes in certain parameters of our VM.

The alarms indicate the status of objects, which can be: folders, datacenters, clusters, resource pools, and hosts and VMs. In fact, on the left side of the VMware Virtual Center, you can see these objects and their hierarchy.

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VMware innovations in operation continuity will be glowing in VMware ESX 4.0. In addition to the current high availability of VMware ESX Server, the software will inherit a function of fault tolerance. Today, VMware High Availability (HA) provides rapid restart of virtual machines in their last known state on a different ESX server, in case the physical server hosting them face a failure.

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With VMware FT (Fault Tolerance), the system provides synchronous replication of protected VMs on two different servers. The application continues to function without interruption on the secondary server if the primary server comes to fail. For additional security measure, this cloned VM is automatically replicated to a third server, as the first server is not repaired, to maintain the availability of the VM if the second server also came to the same

VMware is already testing the beta version of the new ESX 4.0. Among the features offered are:

- 64-bit Kernel and COS: Although Virtual Machine Monitor already does, VMware carries its products completely in 64 bits;
- Virtual Center clusters: We are not referring to MSCS support for Virtual Center, but about the distributed management of the virtualized infrastructure across multiple ESXs;
- Profile management of ESX servers;
- Cross-platform virtual networking: Virtual switches may be defined in the entire infrastructure rather than in each switch, as was the case until now. Networking settings can be applied to the ENTIRE virtual infrastructure.
- SMP support for as much as 8 vCPU;
- VM fault tolerance for multiple hosts—last year’s famous Continuous Availability solution; Check out more details of FT & A video of it at VMbloggie article at: VMware ESX 4.0 FT – Fault Tolerant – Sneak Peek

Now Microsoft offers technical support to customers who run the virtualization tool with Windows Server.

VMware, the clear leader of server virtualization, has announced that its VMware ESX hypervisor meets the requirements of Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) is the first hypervisor to join the program, which provides support from both Microsoft and VMware to customers who work with Windows Server and Microsoft applications. “Virtualization is already established within a stream of IT and our relationship with Microsoft shows just how far it has come, providing users of VMware ESX access to valuable support for their virtualized Microsoft applications,” says Bogomil Balkansky, Senior Director of product marketing at VMware. “VMware and Microsoft are working together to make sure that our joint customers enjoy the benefits of virtualization with the reassurance that professional support provides,” he adds.

Signs of an immature market

But is it really necessary for hypervisors to be a proprietary technology? Efforts by Microsoft and VMware to differentiate their hypervisors remind us of the networking situation thirty years ago, when all power suppliers believed in different technologies (Token Ring, Ethernet, ARCNET, etc.). Gradually, however, manufacturers have accepted the idea that taking a common standard (TCP/IP over Ethernet) and concentrating their efforts on innovation in the upper levels of the software stack, stimulates the growth of the market as a whole and, consequently, the value of the manufacturer’s own share of the pie. It seems that in the case of virtualization, suppliers are not yet ready to see the situation from this perspective. Today, speeches still revolve around concepts such as speed and feeds, but probably the market itself will finish by imposing its own rules.

Have you ever wanted to transfer files & ISO between your windows Machine & your ESX Server Service Console?

This come to be handy when you want to keep your Operating systems & other software ISOs on the storage, so you can use them for virtual machine installation & configuration for later time. Did you know installing a vmware machine from an ISO on storage usually take less than half the time if you were using a real media CD.

To achieve this goal you have two methods. Either you make Windows share accessible to the Service Console as illustrated in the following article how to mount windows share under vmware esx .

The inventor of the “virtual patch” adapts its PatchPoint boxes to VMware virtual machines. With VirtualShield, the boxes are rather cheap “virtual appliances” that provide real-time security patches for their operating system and virtualized applications.

Bluelane is already well known for its PatchPoint appliances. The solution is unique in the way that it applies security patches on the fly to all feeds that pass through the box. This way, a PatchPoint appliance protects all operating systems and applications behind it, without installing the official patches on the systems.

The selective application of patches from a single interface, immediate roll-back and instantaneous correction of a set of heterogeneous systems, the Bluelane approach is very appealing. Today, its PatchPoint boxes are deployed by major accounts, financial services and hosting service providers.

In this article I am trying to answer the following questions, which seems to pop up all the time.

How to enable Shell Access for the root account in VMware VI3 (VMware ESX)?
Is it the same way in VMware VI3 V3.5?
Why would I want to enable shell Access for the root account?
Why does VMware disable it by default?
What’s your recomendation in this regard?

Ok, Lets take one by one of these questions and answer it:

How to enable Shell Access of the root account in VMware VI3 (VMware ESX)?

To enable Shell Access of the root account in VMware VI3 all you have to do is login to the terminal with your root account. Or login through ssh using a user account then elevate to root.

Many people know VMware by products as VMware Workstation or VMware Server but not many know the full power of the enterprise products of the company.

For these who are missing on the VMware Enterprise products amazing functionalities I will leave the following video for them (Unfortunately its only available in English) …..

VMware had organized a contest so that the users of their products could demonstrate by means of a video how VMware changed their lives… and the way they work.
For all the people with a few years in technology, they know that VMware with no doubt is the most innovating technology of the last decade for the x86 environments and for which we work with day to day.

Virtualization with VMware always have been spoken of with emotion and enthusiasm. As VMware has been the first player in the X86 Virtualization market, they have further combined many features & possibilities of Virtualization around their Virtual Infrastructure product on very fast basis. All that helped them amaze everyone with their products.

VMware has announced several major improvements to its partnership program VMware VIP, which relates to nearly 10,000 partners around the world. The improvements include the Advantage+ Incentive Program, which offers higher margins to partners and reward their efforts with those concluded pro-actively sales of products and solutions VMware, sold to new customers or those who initiated negotiations even if another partner who makes the sale. VMware wants to make better use of its partners, but it is a wonder why this initiative? and why now?

From there you think that the No. 1 in the virtualization market is trying to re-motivate the troops who are increasingly hearing sirens of Microsoft and Citrix/Xen, it was a step … However, products VMware have still early to be too worried about, if one believes the craze still vivid of CIOs for ESX technologies.

By June, Site Recovery Manager will be available. This product made by VMware is intended to simplify the planning and testing of the disaster recovery project.

According to VMware,

The planning of recovery after a disaster traditionally exposes companies to significant risk of prolonged failure because too cumbersome to implement, cumbersome and difficult to maintain tests

Recovery Site Manager, of course compatible with VI3 and Virtual Center, allows us to automate the DR, based on virtual servers created for the purposes of the DR.

VMware SRM is a small revolution because it allows not only to make an automatic failover for servers and storage between the main site and the site of DR, but also to conduct tests in real time, without impact on production. One way to verify that the DR part of infrastructure is fully operational and ready when needed …

The VMware team few days back has a very short Webinar on “What’s New in VMware Infrastructure 3.5″. I have missed some of the points, but below are the most important things that have been raised:

ESX Server 3.5 & 3i:
The 3i server will be next generation to the “normal” ESX a decisive strategic plan. End of the year, the first hardware manufacturer will start releasing servers with the 3i server pre-installed. The list price of 3i is $ 495 for 2 CPUs. In the long run, the ESX3i seems to be the replacement for ESX3 stripping the Service Console!