Here are 2 great articles of best practices for creating templates for virtual machines. I’m referring them here as my own bookmarks:
VM Template best practices (Windows)
VM Template best practices (Linux)
One thing I learned is that you already can create thin provisioned disks in VMware ESX 3.5:
vmkfstools -c 20G -d thin /vmfs/volumes/datastore/virtualmachine_name/virtualmachine_disk1.vmdk
Big thanks to lraikhman
VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3: update older ESX versions with tarball
Yesterday VMware released version 3.5u3 of their flagship product ESX, several new features are appealing for me. In previous 3.5 versions it was not possible to tarball upgrade to those versions; gladly VMware corrected this and with the u3 version it’s possible. To do this follow the procedure in the Upgrade Guide pages 76 for ESX2 hosts and 77 for ESX3 hosts.
This u3 version incorporates a number of other features Read the rest of this entry »
So our application virtualization comparison chart seems to be very popular. We get a lot of positive responses, but one thing that we get a lot is the fact that we mention ThinApp has no central management for deploying the virtualized apps, and that it can easily be done with Active Directory. Although that is true, we still say that ThinApp has no central management for deploying the apps, just to compare it with other products that do come with a central deployment tool, like InstallFree or Microsoft App-V.
Okay, so how can you distribute ThinApp Applications? There a a lot of possibilities, I will explain 2: through Active Directory and with a login script. Read the rest of this entry »
The 3 waves VMware will be riding, aren’t they forgetting something ?
I stumbled on a nice post on TechStrategyPartners from George Gilbert and Juergen Urbanski. It gives a clear view on which areas VMware will be putting their money on and why. It’s a pretty large piece of reading material and I had a couple of “duh” moments but the core of what they’re telling comes down to this:
We’ve all seen the light concerning server consolidation, it’s (becoming) commodity. So what, at this moment, are the areas where the money is ? According to the authors (VMware stakeholders), VMware has defined 3 waves they are setting out to ride the next period : Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft released the resource kit tool for App-V. The Resource kit is a selection of tools that can be used to help you manage your App-V 4.5 estate. So if you are using App-V, you might need these tools:
Yesterday the new version of the RUNBook automation application RES Wisdom has been released! Why am I so happy with this release? It has some cool features for provisioning Virtual Machines, mailboxes, and users!
What features RES Wisdom already had and what new features have been added is shown in the picture below.
I’m looking forward to play with the new version and test it’s new features especially the new Virtual Machine and snapshot features.
Citrix now provides a single place to look for application and 3rd party product compatibility. Beyond the featured Citrix Ready products Citrix is now leveraging the power of the community including; customers, resellers, partners, consultants and Citrite’s to identify all 3rd party products known to work with all Citrix products.
User settings and profiles always make the design of a new Architecture with virtualisation products (are there still any others?) a lot more difficult. Users want to be able to save application preferences, favorites etc etc. and administrators want a good managed performance (network and servers). Due to the different ways to provide a workspace to users (SBC, VDI, Old fahioned deployment etc.), the way of moving user preferences with the users becomes more and more of an issue. Because profiles are becoming bigger and bigger, a roaming profile isn’t much of a solution anymore. So a new way of user profiling is needed, I’ve found three solid options.
Veeam, known of their freeware FastSCP program to copy files to ESX servers, has released the third version of their Veeam Reporter Enterprise.
This is part of the mail I received from Veeam:
The beta is over … the first reporting solution specifically designed for documentation and change management in large VMware Infrastructure 3 environments is now generally available.
EverRun VM 4.0.2 is shipped to day, which provides compatibility with XenServer 5.0. The Marathon corporate website has also been updated for customers downloading 30-day evaluations and single host trial edition evaluations.
The Xen HA feature that is available with XenServer 5.0 has not been integrated into 4.0.2. If Xen HA is enabled before or after everRun VM 4.0.2 is installed, it will automatically be disabled. everRun VM 4.1 is due to release on December 3rd and it will fully integrate and support Xen HA. Users who require both Xen HA and everRun VM have two options. They can deploy 4.0.2 now for fault tolerant VMs and upgrade to everRun VM 4.1 in December for Xen HA support. Or they can delay deployment until December 3rd when everRun VM 4.1 will be available.
As this everRun VM release is not providing new features other than compatibility with XenServer 5.0, upgrades from existing everRun VM 4.0.x releases are not supported. New deployments should be performed using everRun VM 4.0.2. Existing deployments must wait until December 3 to upgrade to XenServer 5.0 and everRun VM 4.1 to take advantage of the many new features in that everRun release.
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