Migrate to Windows 7 with InstallFree
At VMworld 2009 in San Francisco I visited the InstallFree booth. And while I was there, the guys from InstallFree showed me this concept of the universal client, where you package/virtualize your applications once and run those applications on XP, Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows 7. “Is this so special?” I thought to myself. Well, actually it is. Where some of the vendors will make it sound very easy to migrate to a new OS when using their application virtualization solution, in fact it isn’t. Sure, in some cases you don’t need to repackage your applications, but at least you have to certify if the package still works on the new OS. … Continue Reading
VMworld 2009: Understanding “Host” and “Guest” Memory Usage
Edit: I started this blogpost more than a week ago, but I never finished it. Just as I wanted to complete the blogpost, I found out VMware released a new whitepaper about VMware vSphere Memory management. I’ve added the best practices on the bottom of this blogpost.
This hour and a half session about “Host” and “Guest” memory usage was very interesting. The topics in this session were:
- Define host and guest memory usage and ask some questions
- Memory management concepts
- Answer our questions
- Best practices
- Future Directions
It covered way more than I can put in this blogpost, but I want to highlight some of the things that were discussed during this presentation. The most important part to remember is:
The ESX hypervisor doesn’t have a clue which memory pages are active or free within a guest-OS. The hypervisor only knows how much memory is allocated to a VM.
Book: Mastering VMware vSphere 4
I don’t think this book needs more attention, being sold out on the first day of VMworld, but I’ll do it anyway. Scott Lowe did a great job writing Mastering VMware vSphere 4. Especially if you’re new to VMware vSphere and you want step-by-step instructions on how to install and maintain your VMware vSphere internal cloud (virtual infrastructure). … Continue Reading
VMworld 2009: notes
Just some notes about VMworld. I’m also working on a couple of other blogposts, but they take more time then I expected. VMworld was again a great experience for me. I was able to talk a lot of people (people I’ve met at previous VMworld conferences or people I follow on twitter), check out new/other vendors on the solution exchange, attend interesting sessions and get some hands-on experience on products I haven’t had the chance before. And off course, I found out at VMworld I passed my VCP4 beta exam! … Continue Reading
