Disappearing Virtual NIC & VMX has left the building
I know I’m not the first who noticed it, since this message is to be found in log files for years with ESX, but I still wanted to share this one:
Especially when you’re seriously troubleshooting an issue and this message appears, it’s a good laugh. Kudos to the VMware programmer with humour 
.
Back 2 Business: the missing/disappeared Virtual NIC
… Continue Reading
Project VRC: phase 3 – a must read!
Finally we’ve completed phase 3 of Project VRC. For the past months we’ve worked very hard and performed a lot of tests to compare VDI workloads and the results are very interesting, to say the least. If you’re interested in VDI, Windows 7 (on vSphere) and IOPS you really should read this whitepaper!
This whitepaper is focused on VDI; Windows XP and Windows 7 are extensively compared running on vSphere. For example; the I/O behavior of Windows XP and Windows 7 is investigated in detail. By evaluating the different phases of a desktop workload, completely new insights and best practices are given.
It’s great to see what kind of impact tweaking Windows and vSphere has on IOPS and number of users you can get on a VDI-host (which will lower the cost per desktop).
Also read the blogpost about the release of this VRC whitepaper.
vSphere 4.1 released, vMotion part of Standard edition.
VMware released vSphere 4.1 with a couple of new features like “Memory compression”, “Storage I/O Control” and much more. I’m not going to repeat all the information, because you can already read it here:
One thing that I don’t read is that vMotion is now part of vSphere Standard edition. And that’s a big improvement for a lot of organizations who don’t need all the features of Advanced or Enterprise (Plus), but do need vMotion for maintenance for example.
NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility 3.0 now available!
NetApp just announced the release of the Rapid Cloning utility (RCU):
NetApp is proud to announce the release of the Rapid Cloning Utility 3.0. This release brings many new features to assist virtual data center administrators with managing their server and desktop environments to further reduce management overhead associated with traditional storage deployments.
Here is a list of some of the new or expanded features and support for RCU 3.0:
- VMware vSphere 4.0 support
- VMware vApp support
- Data ONTAP 7.3.2, 7.3.3, and 8.0 7-mode support
- MultiStore support (requires Data ONTAP 7.3.3)
- 64-bit platform support
- Automatic import wizard into VMware View 4
- Create export file for Citrix XenDesktop 4.0
- Re-deploy VMs from a baseline image
- Create clones in qTree-based datastores
- Create clones in designated VM folders
- vCenter alert for misaligned source VM
- ‘Add storage system’ wizard with option to change attributes
- API enhanced to create, destroy and resize datastores, as well as re-deploy VMs
- Select virtual hard drive type (thin or thick) for clones
- Match guest host name to VM name when using a Customer Sysprep Answer File
- Clone nvram with VM
- Improved security for NFS datastore export
Read the rest of the announcement of the release of NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility.
VRC: Hyper-V 2008R2, vSphere 4, XenServer 5.5 on Intel ‘Nehalem’ Xeon 5500
The “Project Virtual Reality Check” team just released a new whitepaper: “Hyper-V 2008R2, vSphere 4, XenServer 5.5 on Intel ‘Nehalem’ Xeon 5500“.
“If you are looking for an independent advise and a ‘Reality Check’ in relation to Virtualizing Terminal Server and Desktop workloads, if you are curious about the impact of different hypervisors and the performance differences with various hardware and if you are searching for best practices for your virtual Desktops … Project VRC whitepapers are a must read!”
- Highlights, performance differences and best practice conclusions for Terminal Services workloads on:
- Bare metal Terminal Services; 2003/2008/x86/x64
- Hypervisors: Citrix XenServer 5.5, Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 ‘Hyper-V’ and VMware vSphere 4.0
- Performance impact using different HP Proliant state-of-the-art hardware using Intel Xeon ‘Nehalem’ x5500 … Continue Reading
