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Upcoming Events:
Well, it’s the last day of the year. There’s still 12 hours (and 1 extra second) until the year ends on the East coast of the US. I thought I’d take the time to write down my predictions for 2009. The great thing about predictions is you can write just about anything you want and you’re never wrong when the year starts and yet you’re nearly always wrong when the year ends. So here we go in no particular order.
Well, my last tip on putting your Mac to sleep faster was such a huge hit as you can see below that I thought I’d post another Mac tip up here. Don’t worry virtualization people, I’ll get back to that in a minute.
I stumbled across this tip when I hit the wrong key one day. If you’re typing along and you hit the “esc” key in the middle of a word then a list of possible words pops up. Use the arrow keys to get to the one you want and hit tab and the word completes. This works in any normally behaving Mac app. I say normally behaving because Microsoft Office doesn’t support this for some reason. Leave it to Redmond to screw that up.
What’s even neater is that it works with any word that it sees in the current document or page as well as dictionary words. This comes in real handy if you’re coding and need to complete some long entry. It also comes in handy for all the times you need to type in Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Enjoy the tip!
I just got the email update below sent to me about VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs). What is an OSP? Basically VMware has broken out the tools into their own packages. This way you can take these OSPs and use your existing software management and deployment tools to install and upgrade VMware Tools. I had previously written a small script to go through and upgrade VMware Tools programatically. I presented that tool at VMworld 2008. It looks like my little script has now been replaced by a much more elegant way to upgrade VMware Tools. Now only if we could get something similar for Microsoft operating systems.
Here’s the email with the details:
I recently ran across this nice little Exam Cram guidefor the VMware VCP exam. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of Exam Cram. I’ve always hated studying and can really get enough information from well thought out and constructed bullets to pass a test. For those of you that are like me and just need good bulleted information then this guide is for you. For others that require a more detailed dive into a topic to really understand it then you’ll want to search elsewhere or attend a more advanced class – this book is not for you.
My favorite feature of the book (besides, the concise information) is the different tips you come across throughout the pages.
These tips are critical to passing the exam and really show that the author and editor have taken the exam and know what can really trip people up.
So, if you’re in the need of a good study guide for your VCP exam then go pick up a copy of this book today.
VMware Certified Profession (VCP Exam Cram)
By Elias Khnaser
ISBN-10: 0-7897-3805-8
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a trend at customer sites. Nearly every customer I visited in the New York city area told me the same thing when the competition was brought up. It went something like this:
Customer: I would love to use VMware but the cost savings in Windows licenses from Microsoft with Hyper-V makes it a deal I can’t pass up.
Me: What do you mean by that? Licenses cost you the same for Windows no matter what virtualization solution you’re using.
Customer: That’s not what my Microsoft rep told me. They said I could get unlimited virtual machines with Datacenter Edition of Windows only if I used Hyper-V.
Me: Ah. I see. You know, they’re lying to you, right?
Customer: No. They never lie to me. Where’s the proof.
Rather than posting every time I run across a new and interesting blog I thought I’d just condense them into one list. Here are the interesting ones I ran across and added to my link page from last week:
I hope you enjoy the reads.
Ever want to setup DR but don’t have a SAN? Well, there’s several ways you can do that. The newest one is to use the EMC Celera Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA). Chad Sakac over at Virtual Geek just published the very thorough (and long) guide on how to set this up. Don’t want to use EMC for some reason? NetApp and LeftHand (now HP) have guides of their own. For NetApp go here. For LeftHand go here.
It really is amazing to see the tight integration between VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and these new virtual storage arrays. It’s the power of virtualization coming together.
Let me know if you find solutions like this useful. It’s always a team effort to get something like this out the door for the joint customers. It’s good to get feedback on whether it’s useful or not.
Wow! This new post by the competition team at VMware is really interesting.
Here’s the scenario: Say someone’s got existing Windows Server 2003 licenses (non-OEM versions) and CALs. He wants to use these licenses and CALs to run a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine. Seems pretty straight forward – as a 2003 CAL is being used to access a Windows Server 2003 environment – and a good way to save money since he’s already paid for the Windows Server 2003 licenses and CALs – right?
Make sure to read the whole post at the source. It’s interesting because there’s a huge, hidden cost to using Hyper-V for shops that aren’t upgrading to Windows Server 2008 right now. I know, some people are going to comment that everyone is upgrading already. No so. As a matter of fact I was just with a customer in Ohio today that is just beginning the process of upgrading from Windows Server 2000 to Windows Server 2003. No, that wasn’t a typo. This is a pretty major customer out there too – not your mom and pop shop.
It will be interesting to see how Microsoft talks its way out of this one. Even if it decides to change it’s CAL model that’s going to be pretty complex. If anyone does have some constructive comments on ways to get around this CAL upgrade requirement I’d love to hear about it. Just drop your info in the comments for all of the readers to hear.
UPDATE (January 18, 2008) – Microsoft has recently changed their licensing structure so you don’t need Windows Server 2008 CALs anymore if you’re accessing non-Windows Server 2008 VMs. Read more here.
I just got an email from a colleague from EMEA. He showed me the picture below. The numbers alone for the uptime on the servers is huge (over 3 years). What’s even more interesting is the app – it’s ATM control software for over 100 banks and it’s in the production environment.
3 years is only a little shy of the record that I’ve seen previously of over 4 years of uptime.
If you have a host nearing the uptime record feel free to comment back here.
Bob over at The Lone Sysadmin posted an interesting article recently about getting to VMworld. Bob does chargeback for VMs to the different lines of businesses in his company. He has some great tips on budgeting in the cost of VMworld to the cost of services delivered to the lines of business. Makes sense. After all, VMworld is a one stop shop for everything virtual. You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know. You’ll meet all sorts of great individuals you can lean on in the future. You can get your hands dirty in the labs. Personally, I would take Bob’s advice and start working VMworld into your budget now. VMworld 2009 has already been announced and VMworld Europe 2009 is just around the corner.
Something new in my budget this year is explicit funding for several people to go to VMworld. Over the last few years I’ve been able to attend as part of my organization’s training budget. With budgets shrinking I want to ensure that some folks get to go in 2009, so I’m building it into my service fees.
Read more at the source (The Lone Sysadmin).
I wrote a few days ago that the ESXi 3.5 U3 update unlocked the API set. Well, this was only partially true. I was just trying out some power operations and the command line kept staring back at me blank. I went back and pinged some of the folks in engineering and low and behold I ran into bigger issues. Turns out that while fixing an API bug the API set got partially unlocked. Yes, you read that right, VMware didn’t mean to unlock the API set – at least not wholly and not yet.
So, if you went out and started madly coding some killer VirtualCenter Client replacement then hold off because I’m told the U4 update will lock things back down again. Good news is that only customers who are using the free version of ESXi have been affected. VirtualCenter and VI (Foundation, Standard, Enterprise) customers are not affected since they had rights to the API set all along.
That’s what I get for running off and blogging about new finds too quick.
This post is sponsored by IT Knowledge Exchange. Visit ITKnowledgeExchange.com today to ask your toughest virtualization questions and get answers from your peers.
I got a question from a customer as well as a partner recently about whether or not they should use Perfmon in a Windows VM. I emailed our internal performance team to make sure that my answer of “no – it could give you bad results” was an ok answer. Turns out they’re in the process of writing a KB article on the subject and with their permissions I’ve pasted the draft of that KB article below. NOTE: This applies to ESX 3.5 and prior. Talk to your local VMware SE to get some insight into how things are changing. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about future offerings that haven’t been publicly talked about (press, VMworld, etc) in a blog posting.
OK. Not exactly related to virtualization but I thought I’d share this anyways. I am always on the move and I’m usually bringing my Mac with me. One of my favorite things about the Mac is that I can really just close the lid and walk to a meeting and open the lid and it’s ready to work instantly. That’s just incredible to me. Sure, a PC can sleep and even hibernate but neither makes the thing come alive quickly. The one painful thing for me has been waiting for my Mac to sleep. I run a lot of stuff all the time. Right now I have 21 different apps open plus a VM running in VMware Fusion. That means that when my Mac goes to sleep I have to wait for it to write most of the 4 GB of RAM to disk. A fellow engineer just showed me a faster way to make the Mac sleep – adjust the hibernatemode variable.
A fellow VMware employee just started his own blog. His name is Bob Good and he can be found at http://virtualbobsblog.com/. Bob is master of all things Green IT and TCO/ROI related. One of his first posts is “Looking at ROI/TCO in today’s economic climate“. It should be interesting to follow this blog along – especially if you’re on the business side of virtualization.
Just in time for the holidays there’s a special “Friends and Family” discount from VMware. You can get VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion for 50% off. In order to do this you’ll need to use the VMware Store and you’ll also need a special discount code. The unfortunate thing is my blog is so popular that the product manager won’t let me put the code on my blog. So to get this code you’ll need to find a VMware friend. You can be my friend on Facebook where I’ll have the code in the notes on my profile page for friends. You can also join me on Twitter and grab the code there (just send me a direct tweet and I’ll reply). Happy shopping everyone!
I try and write something new 1-2 times per week. I'll update more when I'm in the office and possibly less when I'm out and traveling. If there's something you'd really like me to hear my thoughts on then just email me.
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