VMware Blast protocol vs PCoIP
2013 Top VMware & Virtualization Blogs
2013 Top VMware & Virtualization Blogs
I’m not on here (mostly because I just launched) but a lot of fantastic blogs that I follow are.
VMware Converter Standalone 5.1 beta
VMware Converter Standalone 5.1 beta
What’s New?
- Support for virtual machine hardware version 9
- Guest operating system support for Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012
- Guest operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Support for virtual and physical machine sources with GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks
- Support for virtual and physical machine sources with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
- Support for EXT4 file system
Note that this is tagged as a beta, so not suitable for production use, yet. For that stick with 5.01 for now.
(via Technodrone)
RVTools 3.5
RVTools 3.5
Rob de Veij has released an updated version of RVTools. What’s new?
- On vInfo tabpage new field: Resource pool
- On vInfo tabpage new field: Consolidation needed.
- On vCPU tabpage new field: Number of cores per socket
- New tabpage with resource pool information
- On vNetwork tabpage new column: Switch name
- On vNetwork tabpage new column: Starts Connected
- On vTools tabpage new column: required version
- On vHost tabpage new columns: custom fields
- On vDisk tabpage new columns: raw disk information
- Improved error handling for SSO login problems
- Bug fix: Invalid snapshot size fixed
- Bug fix: All datetime fields now use the local time zone
- Bug fix: data not refreshed after changing filter
RVTools is free, and just requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 or higher to be installed on the machine you’re running it from. It pulls gobs and gobs of information about your vCenter environment and puts it into an easily exportable format for analysis.
It’s one of those tools that make being a VMware administrator even easier.
White Paper: Six Tips for vSphere Resource Pools
White Paper: Six Tips for vSphere Resource Pools
Understanding Resource Pools is essential for VMware administrators. This is a great little white paper published by Dell that explains some of the major things to keep in mind and avoid pain and misuse in your environment.
(via ESX Virtualization)
VMware View Clients Updated
Updated clients for VMware Horizon View have been released by VMware. These new clients are optimized for Horizon View 5.2, as well as the newly released View Feature Pack. With the additional Feature Pack agents installed you’ll get access to your desktop via HTML5 (aka VMware’s “Blast Protocol”) as well as Unity Touch, which makes the experience of connecting to a Windows desktop from a touchscreen tablet like your iPad, a lot more fluid.
Windows client version is now 5.3, the Mac, iOS and Android clients are now marked as version 2.0. There is also a technology preview of a View Client (seen in screenshot above) in the Windows Store for use on Windows RT devices such as the Microsoft Surface. An updated Linux client will be available in the coming weeks.
Downloads for updated clients can be found on the VMware website as well as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The View Feature Pack which includes the HTML and Unity Touch agents can also be obtained on VMware.com and requires the Horizon View 5.2 Connection Broker as well as the latest version of the View Clients to function.
Out of Office
VMware Fusion 5.0.3
VMware Fusion 5.0.3
This is a free upgrade to existing Fusion 5 users.
Resolved Issues
- Added support for Boot Camp partitions on 3TB disk drives.
- Improved the cursor performance for select applications, especially when in Unity mode.
- McAfee AntiVirus Plus updated with Windows 8 support.
- Resolved an issue that could result in blurry graphics under certain circumstances.
- Resolved an issue that resulted in horizontal scrolling being reversed in Unity mode.
- Resolved an issue with displaying Office 2013 applications on some recent Macs.
- Improvements to vSockets.
Known Issues
- VMware Fusion users running OS X Mountain Lion are strongly advised to upgrade to OS X 10.8.3. Running VMware Fusion on OS X 10.8.2 can result in unexpected virtual machine crashes.
I’m excited to see if the Office 2013 update makes using Word and Outlook 2013 usable finally!
(via @eck79)
On Oracle VM 3
Oracle VM 3 improved a lot, they are not close to Microsoft or VMware, but it is pretty good if you are not trying to do dramatic things like moving virtual machines around.
Gartner’s vice president and distinguished analyst Thomas Bittman, talking about how Oracle VM is poised to be the real competitor for VMware in the future. Not Hyper-V. Not Xen.
I’m not one to really defend Microsoft or Citrix, but… have you ever actually seen Oracle VM running on a production system?
(via The Register)
Veeam 7 Backup & Replication Web Client
Xen is now a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project
Xen is now a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project →
Very interesting.
Citrix is hoping that, by donating the code to the Linux Foundation, future Xen development will get input from a wider, more diverse group of contributors. Companies such as Amazon Web Services, AMD, CA Technologies, Cisco, Google, Intel, Oracle, Samsung and Verizon have pledged to support Xen Project.
via CIO.com
vSphere 5.1 Hardening Guide, Official Release
VMware has updated its certification names/logos, again
VMware has updated its certification names/logos →
Nothing lives forever, nothing stays the same.
What was the VCP until September of last year was originally going to be the VCP-DV, is now the VCP-DCV. The VCP-DT is still the VCP-DT, but the master level certification, the VCDX, has become the VCDX-DCV. Logos have also been updated. “Data Center” is now two words instead of “Datacenter” because apparently that considered industry standard (I didn’t realize there was such a thing.)
Good thing I was waiting to order new business cards until after I could add a VCAP certification.
vOpenData Public Dashboard
vOpenData Public Dashboard →
Data visualization geeks, rejoice.
What is vOpenData?
vOpenData is an open community project that grew from the question “What is the average VMDK size for deployed virtual machines?” We wanted to create an open community database that is purely driven by users submitting their virtual infrastructure configurations. Leveraging the powerful virtualization community and applying simple analytics we are able to provide various trending statistics and data for virtualized environments. This is 100% community driven and the results will be available for everyone to view and hopefully you will contribute to the overall dataset!What information do we collect?
We made an effort to not collect specific information such as hostnames or even display names that could be used to identify a particular organization. Instead, we are using UUIDs which are automatically generated by the virtualization platform to uniquely identify a particular object. This allows us to keep track of changes in the our database when a new data set is uploaded from an existing environment. In addition we are collecting various configuration data and you can find a complete list in the Data FAQs
Check out their website for more information about how they collect this data and how to contribute.
Tape backup of virtual environments with Veeam, coming soon
Tape backup of virtual environments with Veeam, coming soon →
Virtual tape libraries, tape loaders and standalone drives are all supported in version 7 of VBR, coming soon.
This is welcomed news for a lot of people, who have compliance requirements around tape, or in the case of some administrators, just have so much data that offsite backup or archiving isn’t feasibly done without tape. Tape sucks, don’t get me wrong, but it’s far from dead and the ability to use it and get all the awesomeness of Veeam without managing two backup products is welcomed news
How and Why I’m Using Evernote
How and Why I’m Using Evernote →
I wrote a similar article nearly three years ago over when I was spinning stories over at TechVirtuoso. The use cases and the number of users of the product has skyrocketed since then. I’ve had my account since nearly the first day I had an iPhone 3G.
Their premium offering got even better a few weeks ago when they started indexing the content of Office documents in addition to the usual PDF.
Windows 8 shows reduced IOPS requests, more ideal for VDI than Windows 7?
Windows 8 shows reduced IOPS requests, more ideal for VDI than Windows 7? →
Interesting analysis by Andre Leibovici (@andreleibovici).
I suppose if you disregard the jarring user experience in a business environment, Windows 8 has been shown to have fewer IOPS requests than Windows 7 by a fairly significant margin in the bootup process, and also when users login.
So, there is one good thing about Windows 8.
Audience Quality > Audience Quantity
Yet another unpatched security hole found in Java
Yet another unpatched security hole found in Java →
Awesome! I’d hate to have a week where I didn’t have to update Java on my systems again.
Huawei is calling it quits in the United States
Huawei is calling it quits in the United States →
“We are not interested in the U.S. market any more.”
Probably because most US businesses were not to excited to base their infrastructure on the technology of a company that stole Cisco code, and is run by former members of the Chinese military. Not too long ago Sprint and Softbank had to agree to a request by the US intelligence community to rip and replace any Huawei equipment they had on the Sprint network as a condition for their upcoming merger.
I’ve actually only heard first hand of one my customers with Huawei devices in production, and oddly enough it was their storage system (which until that point I didn’t even know they had a hand in.) Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see what it looked like.