Hands-on labs - that I did...

This post is mostly for myself to keep track of the labs that i did at VMworld 2010 and what struck me as useful features...

vSphere 4.1 - new features

Storage IO shares and limits. They're not quite there yet with Storage DRS but this is a first step.

DRS feature - possibility to keep one or more VMs bound to a specific host. This is practical in relation to licensing issues where you pay per physical core/socket in a cluster.

8 concurrent VMotions!

Better HA info with new Cluster info link. It will aggregate relevant HA info and display it in a window.

Scripting ESXi installation with PXE boot and get the files over the network from a tftp server looked pretty straight forward.

VMware View 4.5 - install and configure

Components: Main View Manager server (not the correct name, I believe..). Transfer server for offline clients. View agent installs on the VM. View client to connect to View Manager.

vCloud Director - install and configure

Basically a VM that install on top of your VI and communicates with vCenter. Works as administration unit and self service portal to customers/admins. Installs on a RHEL 5 U4 or up, 64-bit. Licensing is done per VM. vShield Manager is required.

Update Manager

Practical for host patching of course... Also relevant for upgrading VMware Tools and HW version. Tools and HW version can be done in a single script.

Thinapp 4.6 - new features

The new feature that IE6 can be packaged easily is very useful. If you package an app on WinXP it can be run on other OS'es, e.g. Win7, without modification. Every time I play around with Thinapp it always strikes me why we don't use it more...

PowerCLI 4.1

One of the first examples is a script to go through your VMs and find and delete all snapshots older than a given date - e.g. older than seven days. This example is spot on and something that we're working on imlementing as well.

vShield Zones

One thing that I noted in this lab is that vShield has a built in load balancer which was easy to configure. This could probably be a good substitute for MS NLB.

VMworld 2010 - Hands-on labs, first impressions

There's been a lot of talk about the hands-on labs at this years VMworld. Here in Copenhagen there are around 240 thin clients with each two screens running up against two datacenters in Florida and Virginia with a dedicated 100 Mbit line over the Atlantic. There's also a fail-over possibility to a datacenter in Europe, should an issue occur. The whole solution is based on a number of Lab Manager installations with a custom interface on top of it which has been built for the purpose.
So far, I have taken four labs, and I must admit that I'm impressed. It works so well that you're not even thinking about what is going on under the hood. What you're actually experiencing is that as soon as you're choosing a lab, then almost instantly you have two ESX servers and a number of VMs provisioned for you. A VMware employee told me that part of the custom code is calculating the most popular labs, and then pre-deploying a number of these up front as to reduce waiting time.
Furthermore, the whole user experience is pretty cool. They've made a GUI for choosing the labs, and on flatscreens around in the room you can see statistics such as most popular labs and total number of VMs created and labs completed (see pictures below).

My VMworld session ready for public voting

Update: Unfortunately, my session was not among the lucky winners. Apparantly, the world is not ready for exciting service descriptions ;-) In stead, I'll be going to VMworld in CPH as an attendee.

My session has passed the internal review and is now ready for public voting. It is placed under 'Private Cloud - Management' and the title is:

Defining your services and offerings on vSphere

Description:

As virtual infrastructures (VI) comprise a complex set of technologies, varying perceptions of virtual infrastructures and virtual servers, tend to exist. Ask any VI admin, a sales person, or a customer and you will likely get three different answers. As organizations grow, the degree of specialization typically increases, which augments the number of departments that contribute in the service delivery model. A lack of definitions for input, output and responsibility areas between these interfaces can have a negative impact such as prolonged delivery times and an unclear delivery and pricing model. Another consequence of not defining your services is that someone else will do it for you. This could be the sales department or a solution architect that sell a custom solution due to a lack of existing building blocks. These solutions typically do not scale well and the technical design tends to be less than optimal. Services, whether it be an ‘ESX operations service’ or a ‘virtual Windows server service’, need to be defined, standardized, and published in a service catalogue. Furthermore, there should be a clear distinction between an internal service and an external customer offering. These matters will be addressed in this session as well as different examples of how a virtual infrastructure- and a virtual server service can be defined. This session builds on the theoretical framework of the updated ITIL v3, specifically with a focus on Service Design and the Service Catalogue.

VMworld 2010 Europe - in Copenhagen!

I just saw on ntpro.nl today that VMworld Europe 2010 has been moved from Cannes to Copenhagen (11-14th October). That really warms my heart ;-) One should think, however, that it would be a bit more exotic to have it in Amsterdam in stead - also because VMware apparently is moving very fast there - but maybe it's a question of facilities.

Anyways, it'll be a nice and short 20 minutes trip next year ;-)