Archive for April, 2011


I’ve recently been trying to keep some of my knowledge sharp by lurking on the VMware Community Forums – I’m happy to help out other people and more often than not , pick up some fresh knowledge of my own. Generally people are not in as bad a state as they think they are and with a little advice and a gentle nudge in the right direction , they are able to resolve the situation themselves – this is much better than a spoonfed answer to a solution in my opinion.

 

One in a while , you come across something I can only desribe as a car crash post which you have to read twice before you belive it. This poor guy is one of those…

 

“Hello all, please help me with this.

I have a hp proliant 165 G7 server running with windows server 2008 R2. I decided to install ESXI 4.1 on it and it seems ok, i installed the vsphere client on another machine and the connection between client and ESXI host as succeed. But the problem is that the server do not boot from windows server 2008 anymore!! It boots from vmware Hypervisor and stops with the following screen:

"VMware ESXI 4.1.0 (VMKernel Release Build 348481)

HP Proliant DL165 G7

AMD Opteron ™ Processor 6128

12 GB Memory

Download tools to manage this host from:

http://xxxxx/

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx./ (DHCP)

<F2> Customize System                                         <F12> Shut Down / Restart

Please help me!!!”

 

I’m not going to post the link as I suspect its not going to help him get his server back.  Let this poor guys experience be a warning to others. when you see the screen below that says existing partitions will be removed , it really does mean it.

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The only time you would do something like this is part of the VMware GO! process , which uses a sacificial windows install on the machine you are going to create a hypervisor on. See http://www.vmware.com/products/go/overview.html# for more details.

The Videos from the 3 Day Virtualisation Jumpstart for Vmware Pros have been finally released. In addition to the slides decks I linked in the previous posts , you can pick up all the Videos in HD From Technet Edge at the following URL. “Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals”

 

The Videos are also available for mobile devices at the Zune Market Place and on iTunes. Android users will just have to view them natively Winking smile

 

If you’d like  to jump to a specific chapter of the Jumpstart , here are some direct links.

 

o Virtualization Jump Start (01): Virtualization Overview

o Virtualization Jump Start (02): Differentiating Microsoft & VMware

o Virtualization Jump Start (03a): Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture | Part 1

o Virtualization Jump Start (03b): Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture | Part 2

o Virtualization Jump Start (04): High-Availability & Clustering

o Virtualization Jump Start (05): System Center Suite Overview with focus on DPM

o Virtualization Jump Start (06): Automation with Opalis, Service Manager & PowerShell

o Virtualization Jump Start (07): System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

o Virtualization Jump Start (08): Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM Self-Service Portal 2.0

o Virtualization Jump Start (09): Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1

o Virtualization Jump Start (10): Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2

o Virtualization Jump Start (11): v-Alliance Solution Overview

o Virtualization Jump Start (12): Application Delivery for VDI

 

The Jumpstart was well attended and on the whole very well run – while I didn’t quite agree with the periodic competitive marketing nuggets , I would say there is certainly some good information in them, especially around SCVMM 2012.

After a short break , the vSoup podcast is back with a vengance. Christian , Ed and myself were joined by the Boy Wonder of Scripting , Johnathan Medd – in addition to plugging his book , we talk around our usual wander through all things virtual – Listen to the podcast for a chance to win a copy of the book from http://www.powerclibook.com/ 

 

http://vsoup.net/2011/04/vsoup-script-o-gasm-8/

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Look closely at the photo above and you’ll notice something missing in terms of a usual workstation setup … the PC itself. Its not hidden under the desk , but infact behind the phone.

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I’ve been able to get my hands on one of the Cisco VXC 2111 Series thin clients. These clients are part of Cisco’s virtualisation experience infrastructure (VXI) strategy and come in a number of flavours. The one above is designed to integrate with the 9971 phone it is attached to and should you have a suitably juicy PoE+ setup be powered from it too. Cisco are able to supply the clients with a PCoIP or HDX firmware in order to connect to your VMware View or Xen Desktop based solution.

For those without a suitable phone , there is a micro tower form factor available. I’ve only had time to build a view environment for the client to talk to but its been very painless so far ( short of finding a USB keyboard ! ) What would be great is to be able to see some tighter integration between the phone and client but I don’t believe it is available at this stage. I can see this being great for the contract center business – although the key differentiator is only currently due to the physical integration with the phone to reduce desktop clutter – although if you had a more conventional thin client solution you could use softphones and eliminate the phone itself so the benefit is possibly a little clouded. Its almost certainly a big step in the right direction and illustrates Cisco’s commitment to Desktop Virtualisation. The “year of VDI” might not be here , but with big vendors getting behind it like this, it surely can’t be far away.

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Details have just been released for the next meeting of the London VMware User Group – In the few years since  I have started attending , this event has continually got better and better with May’s meeting blossoming into a full days event with a couple of different tracks and 2 labs hosted by COLT , based around consumption of resources with vCould Director & Administering vCloud director. If these labs are up to the quality of those offered at VMworld Europe then it’ll be worth taking the day off just for those !

Did I mention this was all free ? After the glow of the projector bulb has died town the event concludes with a social reception at a nearby pub to give you a chance to meet , greet and drink with fellow and like minded individuals who actually want to listen to you talk about virtualisation all night ( my usual drinking buddies tend to fall asleep after the first hour or so ! )

 

Head over to http://www.myvmug.org/e/in/eid=13 and register!  follow #LonVMUG on twitter for updates and tweets from other attendee’s

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As the tweet above proves I’m about to out scoop Eric “Scoop” Sloof of ntpro.nl fame and would like to be the first to break the news on the innovative Pork Product Delivery system (PPDS)  from your favourite real time monitoring provider , Xangati.

 

In a recent briefing on the new VDI/VI Dashboards I was able to grab a screen shot as the present flicked to a preview screen that proves this to be the case.

 

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Not only is Xangati able to provide role based dash board of real time data about your VI environment that reflect the real health issues within a system , but they are able to monitor the Saltiness Levels for Admins ( SLA’s ) and trigger off an Automated Bacon Delivery Service (ABDS) provided via a network of bacon resellers ( ButcherNet). This was already been successfully beta  tested at Tech Field Day. Turkey based Bacon Substitute (TBBS) is available for environments that don’t dig on swine.

Yesterday saw the final day of the Virtualisation Jumpstart program hosted by Corey Hynes and Symon Perriman – I can finally try and get my body clock back to normal ! The main topic for the day was VDI and its associated technologies.  When looking at use cases for a windows based hypervisor stack , I’ve always felt that VDI would be one of the stronger ones as its the management of VDI with Server 2008R2 and Windows 7 is where wins will be made rather than out and out consolidation ratio and features.

I don’t know if Corey and Symon had been reading my previous posts on the jumpstart but it was made very clear by Corey that the purpose of the sessions was not to disparage VMware View in the slightest, but to highlight where a Microsoft based solution would be strong and what features and benefits it can bring to a solution. I wasn’t able to take part in the entire session to to some “real life” issues , but I’m happy to say that they kept to their word for the portion of the session I was present at and I applaud you for it ! If the solution is good enough you don’t need to put your competition down.

Before we jumped into any demo sessions there was a quite a long talk on “what is VDI” – This was some of the clearest VDI message / evangelism I’ve heard for a long time and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. Corey explained that sometimes due to some “golf course strategy” sessions , a client will decide he “want’s VDI” without really understand what is actually required. For a lot of solutions , simple session based virtualisation will be just fine ( of course those session based virtualisation hosts – Terminal Servers don’t have to be physical servers ! )

A lot was also said about the v-Alliance. This is a close working relationship between Microsoft and Citrix ( who have been like housemates who occasionally sleep together for as long as I’ve been working in IT) allowing very close integration between Xen and the Microsoft suite.

 

So was the jumpstart worth working 3 very long days for ?  I really enjoyed the SCVMM preview and its certainly given me some ideas around how a multi hypervisor environment might be able to provide a right sized solution for a number of business needs without too much additional management overhead. If you’d like to review the slide decks from the jumpstart , they are available  here . I’m told that the full recordings of the sessions will be available on technet and the Microsoft Virtual Academy.