StarWind V8 Release Candidate Is Available Now!

March 11, 2014 by Leave a comment

StarWind Software released the Release Candidate of  StarWind V8. The functionality and architecture of this software is similar to VMware VSAN. It can be installed on both Hyper-V and ESXi and converts local storage to a distributed shared storage.

General availability is expected in Q2 2014

starwind

Download the RC here.

It offers three products that share a common engine:

  • StarWind SAN – a unique system that allows you to create a high-performance and fault-tolerant shared storage on commodity hardware, saving $$$.
  • StarWind VSAN – a virtual SAN sharing a server with Hyper-V on parent partition. Convenient and as easy to manage as any Windows software.
  • StarWind VSA – a virtual storage appliance that merges with VMware and runs in a VM, making your system more efficient and convenient to use.

It is scalable to an unlimited number of nodes, optimized for flash as the primary storage, with its own LSFS and upgraded asynchronous replication.

StarWind SAN, the flagship product, runs on commodity servers’ hardware and converts them into high-performance, fault-tolerant SAN at a fraction of the cost and complexity associated with traditional SAN-based storage infrastructures. With its integrated VSA builder and scale-out architecture, StarWind SAN became the first solution running on Windows that creates clusters of multiple hypervisor hosts without separate physical shared storage (unlike SAS (JBOD), FC or iSCSI). With this release, StarWind supports the latest versions of both VMware and Microsoft platforms.

StarWind virtual SAN (VSAN) is a leading software defined storage for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0. The functionality and architecture of this software is similar to VMware VSAN. It runs inside parent partitions of hypervisor hosts and turns their directly attached storage (DAS) into fault-tolerant SAN. StarWind VSA follows the VMware VSA concept also, and operates inside a VM on the ESXi host, creating a fault-tolerant shared storage of the hypervisor resources.

StarWind V8 RC presents high-performance caching that allows affordable MLC SSDs to be used as level-2 flash cache and fast RAM to be used as level-1 cache. StarWind utilizes solid-state disks / flash cards as the primary storage with a dedicated flash-aware Log-Structured File System (LSFS).

Another major advantage over multiple virtual storage solutions is built-in asynchronous WAN-replication, which ensures effective disaster recovery. StarWind’s support of WAN-acceleration technologies also enables data replication over slow and cheap connections.

StarWind V8 RC includes a set of powerful experimental features including: LSFS, which eliminates the I/O blender effect; synchronous replication for clustered LSFS devices; and in-memory operation, which creates a HA cluster with one node running on RAM-disk.

Filed under Converged storage and compute, Hyper-V, StarWind, Storage, VMware solutions, vSphere 5.5

VMware VCP certification is now valid for max 2 years

March 10, 2014 by 1 Comment

VMware introduced a new recertification policy at  March 10, 2014. If you are VCP-certified you must pass any VCP or higher-level exam within two years of earning their most recent VCP certification.

If you do not certify within 2 years, your certification will be revoked, and you will no longer be entitled to use the certification logo or represent yourself as VMware certified. Your certification will be shown as no longer valid on your MyLearn account. Any employer who contacts us to validate your certification will be informed it is no longer valid.

This blog at vNetWise titled VMware Certification Expirations–Good or Bad? has some links to reactions of other bloggers on the news  and shows the uproar in the community. The author also gives his opinion on why this recertification is a good thing.

More info in this VMware post: Recertification Policy: VMware Certified Professional

Filed under Certification, VMware solutions

VMware VSAN will be GA in the week of March 10. Licensing per socket or desktop

March 7, 2014 by Leave a comment

During a special webinar at March 6 VMware announced the general availability of Virtual SAN (VSAN). VSAN 1.0 will be available in the week of March 10.

If you are unaware of VSAN: It is probably the product which release got the most attention other than that of vSphere. VSAN offers SAN-features using server based storage.

Benefits of VSAN are:

  • Reduce investment costs by using cheap low cost storage instead of expensive SAN
  • Pay as you grow model instead of large upfront investments. If you need more storage capacity simply add SDD or HDD instead of having to buy a new SAN extension.
  • It lowers operational costs because it is simple to use, does not require a storage administrator and has increased automation

VSAN can be implemented in two ways: either select your own choice of hardware based on the special VSAN HCL or select from 16 preconfigured VSAN Ready nodes available from  IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu and Dell. HP and others are expected to deliver VSAN Ready nodes at GA or sometime later.

At least three nodes are required. The maximum number of nodes in a VSAN 1.0 cluster is 32.

vSphere 5.5 Update 1 will support VSAN GA. I will not be surprised if Update 1 is released at the same time as VSAN.

Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping are writing a book on VSAN to be published by VMware Press. Release date is expected before VMworld. More details at ntpro.nl

VMware will announce pricing at GA.

The Register did some research and found several pricelists mentioning Virtual SAN. It seems VSAN  can be purchased in two ways:

  • per CPU socket. Commercial listprice is around US $ 3100.- excluding Support and Subscription. Academic and VMware Volume Purchasing prices are lower.
  • per desktop. A 1o pack VSAN desktop will cost around US $ 600,-

There will be some special offers for VSAN:

-customers using the beta will receive a discount of 20%.

-customers using VMware Virtual Storage Appliance will get reduced pricing when they upgrade to VSAN.

VMware release a new VSAN Design and Sizing Guide edition March 2014 which can be downloaded here.

VMware has a free Hands-on Lab (HOL)available which enables you to play and explorer with VMware VSAN. No need to have hardware, software and licenses. The HOL is running in the cloud.

More information:

This is a very good post by Chad Sakac. It provides some different views on two VMware statements on VSAN. Chad states:

It IS NOT an accurate statement to say that VSAN is “better” or “performs better” because it’s embedded in the kernel.

It IS NOT an accurate statement to say (as a general statement) that VSAN is lower CAPEX than external storage – though it IS accurate that it offers a compelling CAPEX picture in many use cases.

Cormac Hogan – Virtual SAN (VSAN) Announcement Review

Duncan Epping – VMware Virtual SAN launch and book pre-announcement!

Ivo Beerens – VMware VSAN Launch Q&A

Filed under Uncategorized, VMware solutions, vSphere 5.5

Visio Stencil Set for 2014 VMware vSphere and Horizon

March 7, 2014 by Leave a comment

Ray Heffer shares a new Visio stencil set for 2014 which contains some popular shapes for VMware Horizon View, Workspace and vSphere. These are not official VMware stencils, but have been created from existing external content (thanks to Maish Saidel-Keesing at TechnoDrone) in addition to using Adobe PhotoShop and pulling images from public PDF documentation.

Download at www.rayheffer.com

Filed under Visio stencils, VMware solutions, VMware View, vSphere 5, vSphere 5.5

Windows Azure now allows to set fixed IP-addresses for virtual machines

March 5, 2014 by Leave a comment

Untill recently IP-addresses of Azure virtual machines were not static/fixed. A VM which had been shutdown (for example to reduce costs, think test/dev scenario’s) could receive a different IP-address at boot than orginally assigned at creation. This leads to all kinds of issues. A new Powershell for Azure version solves this issue.

Introduction
Windows Azure once started as a Platform as a Service (Paas) offer. It is also a best effort cloud, which means the availability should be provided by the application, not by the platform. This is proven for example by the lack of a Service Level Agreement for single instance virtual machines. Customers are required to have at least two virtual machines serving the same application to get a SLA.

Since April 2013 Azure offers Virtual Machines which provides the ability for customers to have full control over the guest operating system. One of the tricky things in Azure VM’s is networking. When using traditional enterprise applications administrators want to have control over the IP-configuration of the virtual machines. However VM’s should be set to DHCP at all times. The reason for this is the Software Defined Networking architecture used in Azure.

When using Azure Virtual Networks administrators can define IP-subnets and DNS servers for their virtual machines. The first virtual machine which boots in an empty subnet will receive x.x.x.4 as IP-address, the second x.x.x.5 etc. This allows for some prediction of which IP-address a VM will receive. However, when a virtual machine is switched off, it might loose it’s IP-address when another VM in that subnet boots.

Set fixed IP
Microsoft offers a solution for this issue. Since the release of PowerShell cmdlets for Windows Azure version 0.7.3 released at February 12, 2014  it is possible to glue a IP-address to a particular virtual machine. So even if a VM is not running for a while, it will receive it’s originally assigned IP-address at boot.

More information on PowerShell for Azure here.

Four news cmdlets were added in PowerShell for Azure 0.7.3 :

  • Get-AzureStaticVNetIP
  • Set-AzureStaticVNetIP
  • Remove-AzureStaticVNetIP
  • Test-AzureStaticVNetIP

The guest operating system still have to be set to using DHCP. However there is some sort of permanent reservation made in the Azure fabric.

Some things to consider are:

  • setting a fixed IP-address to a VM can only be done using PowerShell. It is not possible using the Azure Management Portal
  • setting a fixed IP-address can only be done at creation of the VM. When the VM has already been created the PowerShell command will not work
  • it is required that the VM is part of a Azure Virtual Network

More information including some sample PowerShell scripts in the blogs below.

This information will also be described in my to be released book on Microsoft hybrid cloud. The book will provide an indepth look in Windows Azure IaaS. Also I will cover management, connecting System Center to Azure and lots more.

More info on my book will be published on this website.

MSDN blog: Allocating Static IP Addresses to your VMs
Stufox. Static IPs in Windows Azure
WindowsITPro Set Azure VM static IP address

Filed under Azure Virtual Machine, VMware solutions, Windows Azure

Unable to install .NET Framework 3.5 feature in Azure Windows Server images

March 1, 2014 by Leave a comment

Windows Azure provides images of Windows Server 2008 and 2012. Using a few mouseclicks a new virtual machine can be depoyed in just minutes.

Just like when using your own Windows install, if you need .NET Framework 3.5 you will need to install this feature. It is listed in the ‘Add roles and features’ wizard.

In Windows Azure you might get the error listed below:

Installation of one or more roles, role services, or features failed. The source files could not be found.

dotnetinstall-fail

You will get the following error if the conditions listed below are valid:

1. the virtual machine is part of an Azure Virtual Network

2. DNS server(s) are added to the Azure Virtual Network configuration

3. Those DNS server do not have a forward to an external DNS server able to resolve internet based servers.

Cause of issue

For installing .NET 3.5,  Windows Server needs to download binaries located on an internet server. Probably located at microsoft.com.

If your Azure virtual machine is not part of a virtual network, it will be configured with a Microsoft managed DNS server by DHCP. This DNS server will be able to resolve DNS queries to internet based servers. So download and installation of .NET will be sucesfully.

If the VM is part of a virtual network, and you filled in the DNS server name/IP, you as tenant are responsible for providing DNS.

In the Azure Virtual  Network configuration tab a DNS servername and IP-address can be supplied. Make sure this DNS server is able to resolve internet based servers. If not, download of .NET and thus install will fail.

If you do not manage/have access to  a DNS server, use Google public DNS at 8.8.8.8

Make sure to reboot the VM if you make changes to the Virtual Network configuration. Ipconfig will not result in providing the VM with DNS server details.

Filed under VMware solutions, Windows Azure

What it takes to write a book on IT

February 27, 2014 by Leave a comment

As you might know currently I am authoring a book on Microsoft hybrid cloud. The book will explain Windows Azure IaaS and how to connect on-premise Windows Server/System Center infrastructures to Windows Azure to create a hybrid cloud. The book will discuss cloud computing, Microsoft Cloud OS, Azure datacenters, VPN, PowerShell, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, App Controller, StorSimple,  Windows Azure Pack, billing, costs structure, administration, monitoring and much, much more.

In a series of blogpostings I will describe my experiences in writing this book. This first blog in the serie will give you an indication about the tasks involved in writing a book.

One thing to consider when wanting to write a book yourself: it will take LOTS of time.

Things I did/ do to write the book:

  • discuss contract and content with the publisher
  • discuss with girlfriend about sponsoring ;-)
  • create the outline. This provides the publisher an indication about content,
  • do research on content for the book.
  • install software in testlab. Create screendumps etc.
  • write first draft of chapters
  • search for reviewers
  • contact with Microsoft
  • write TIS. This has description of the author and content of the book. Used for publication at sites like Amazon.com
  • write bio used in book.
  • fill in invoice forms for publisher. During severall stages of the book an invoice is sent.
  • create images
  • contact with publisher with questions on reviewing etc
  • contact with reviewers
  • process reviews made by publisher and reviewers
  • monitor status of delivery of reviews
  • write blog for promotion
  • write final draft of chapters

Hope this gives an impression of the amount of work. My book will have about 250 pages. I estimate I will need about 200-250 hours to do all the tasks involved in writing the book.

 

Filed under Managing the Microsoft hybrid cloud, Uncategorized, VMware solutions

RVTools version 3.6 released

February 24, 2014 by Leave a comment

RVTools made by Rob de Veij is one of the best FREE tools available which helps consultants and system administrators in inventory and managing a VMware vSphere infrastructure. It offers a lot of information on the configuration of storage, network, virtual machines, ESX hosts  and a LOT more. Information can easily be downloaded in CSV format so you can do for example capacity planning. With RVTools you can disconnect the cd-rom or floppy drives from the virtual machines and RVTools is able to update the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine to the latest version.

If you do not know RVTools I strongly recommend to download the tool and see for yourself how useful it is and makes your life much easier. You won’t regret.

Download here.

New in the RVTools 3.6 release:

  • New tabpage with cluster information
  • New tabpage with multipath information
  • On vInfo tabpage new fields HA Isolation response and HA restart priority
  • On vInfo tabpage new fields Cluster affinity rule information
  • On vInfo tabpage new fields connection state and suspend time
  • On vInfo tabpage new field The vSphere HA protection state for a virtual machine (DAS
  • Protection)
  • On vInfo tabpage new field quest state.
  • On vCPU tabpage new fields Hot Add and Hot Remove information
  • On vCPU tabpage cpu/socket/cores information adapted
  • On vHost tabpage new fields VMotion support and storage VMotion support
  • On vMemory tabpage new field Hot Add
  • On vNetwork tabpage new field VM folder.
  • On vSC_VMK tabpage new field MTU
  • RVToolsSendMail: you can now also set the mail subject
  • Fixed a datastore bug for ESX version 3.5
  • Fixed a vmFolder bug when started from the commandline
  • Improved documentation for the commandline options

Filed under Uncategorized, VMware solutions

Register for free VCAP bootcamp at NLVMUG event

February 24, 2014 by Leave a comment

The first ever NLVMUG event will be held at March 6 in Den Bosch, the Netherlands. The agenda and information on registration can be found here.

vcap5-dcd

Besides breakout sessions this year will have a free VCAP bootcamp. VCDX Joep Piscaer, Martijn Baecke (VCDX #103) and Viktor van den Berg (VCDX #121) will help you prepare and certify for the VCAP exams and VCAP-DCD in particular.

Time: 15.15 till 17:30 during the NLVMUG event.

More information and registration for the bootcamp here.

Filed under Certification, VMware solutions

VMware VSAN will be general available in March 2014

February 13, 2014 by Leave a comment

At VMware Partner Exchange 2014 some interesting details were made public about features of VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) and it general availability.

VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) is a very popular product even when it has not been released yet. It is currently available in public beta. Over 10.000 people joined this beta. More on the background of VMware VSAN in my blog here.

VMware is currently offering beta customers a 20% discount on Virtual SAN purchases.  The discount is available to those beta participants who have joined and downloaded the Virtual SAN beta product.

I guess VMware estimates  the GA of VSAN will lead to a significant growth in sales. VSAN can be used in many customer environments currently running vSphere. It might also boosts vSphere license upgrades as vSphere 5.5 or later is required to run VSAN.  It  promises to become a pretty disruptive technology.

VSAN creates out of local server storage (SSD and HDD) a shared storage solution provinding best performance for lower costs compared to general purpose storage arrays. Host based SSD is used for caching, HDD is used for persistent storage of virtual machine hard disk files.

Benefits of VSAN are:

  • Reduce investment costs by using cheap low cost storage instead of expensive SAN
  • Pay as you grow model instead of large upfront investments. If you need more storage capacity simply add SDD or HDD instead of having to buy a new SAN extension.
  • It lowers operational costs because it is simple to use, does not require a storage administrator and has increased automation

Some more details on VSAN became public in the last couple of days thanks to VMware Partner Exchange (PEX). The information below was extracted from a recent blogpost of Chuck Hollis.

1. VSAN will be generally available in Q1 2014 (confirmed). At March 6 a VSAN webinar is scheduled. This is hosted by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and CTO Ben Fathi. These executives are likely to announce some surprises. In the past we have seen announcements of new releases of VMware vSphere at similar webinars presented by the CEO. So a good *guess* would be that at March 6 the GA data of VSAN will be announced.  Maybe March 6 will be the GA date.

2. VSAN will be made available as a seperate stock keeping unit (SKU). This means VSAN is not included in the vSphere license.

3. A VSAN cluster will support at least 16 nodes at GA.

4. VSAN can be installed by customers by buying their own parts like controllers, SDD and HDD. It will also be possible to buy preconfigured servers of IBM, Dell and Cisco. These contain all the VSAN required components which are listed on the VSAN hardware compatibility guide. For example will combine SanDisk SSDs within the Dell PowerEdge R720 and PowerEdge T620 servers to power VSAN.

5. Each VSAN node can support up to 35 disk drives (in addition to up to 5 SSD or PCI-e flash devices). A max of 560 spindles in a single VSAN cluster is supported.

A lot of questions are asked on the pricing of VSAN. Pricing has not been announced yet. Licensing will be based on the number of CPU sockets in the nodes part of a VSAN cluster (unconfirmed).

Duncan Epping has another summary about VSAN here. 

 

 

Filed under Converged storage and compute, VMware solutions, VSAN, vSphere 5.5

Atlantis releases Unified Software Defined Storage ILIO USX

February 12, 2014 by 1 Comment

Atlantis Computing released a new 100% software solution named ILIO USX (=Unified Software Defined Storage) which enables both a capacity & performance increase  compared to existing SAN/NAS/DAS.

Organizations using server virtualization are facing two operational challenges:

  • growth of data (new application, current fileservers, databases, big data etc)
  • increasing demand for performance. Both caused by increased number of applications as well as disk intensive applications.

These challenges are traditionally solved by adding more spindles in current SAN or NAS, or by adding purpose build storage solutions. Think about solutions like Nutanix, Nimble, Pure Storage, EMC XtremIO etc. See my blogpost for an overview.

The disadvantages of this approach are:

  • costs . Hybrid arrays with flash and HDD or All Flash Arrays (AFA) are relative expensive
  • different silo’s of storage solutions all having different management interfaces and requiring specific knowledge.

Atlantis ILIO USX has a different approach. It is able to use currently in use  storage arrays (SAN/NAS), abstracts its storage and provides both a storage capacity and performance boost to that storage arrays. Plus it uses the physical host memory (RAM) and host based Flash as a performance boost. 

This can be somehow compared to what for example VMware VSAN, Nutanix and Maxta MxSP do: they use SSD as a cache. However ILIO USX uses host RAM not as a cache but as a distributed storage volume. Nothing beats the speed of RAM.

Architecture: In-Memory Storage Volumes

Atlantis ILIO USX pools local server RAM, flash or “flash on Dimm” resources across multiple servers to create a high-performance In-Memory storage volume that can be used as primary storage. Data is protected by replicating it between multiple hosts and, optionally to shared storage in a capacity pool.

Turn local storage into enterprise storage

USX is able to use local storage and present it to virtual machines as a volume very similar to what Nutanix, VMware VSAN, Maxta MxSP and Simplivity does. USX pools local disks of multiple hosts into a distributed datastore.

For resiliency data is replicated to other nodes in the cluster. So if a host/node fails, data is not lost. For this replication of both the storage layer and the volume stored in memory  10Gb/s network cards are required. There is no limit in the number of nodes in a cluster.

Volumes are presented using NFS or iSCSI. This way even applications running on physical servers can benefit from USX services like de-dup, compression etc.

USX is installed on each VMware ESX host as a virtual appliance running a Linux based os. This same appraoch is used by Nutanix and Maxta.The USX software running on that virtual appliance is able to provide high end data services like dedup, inline compression, IO processing, write coalescing, fast clones, high availability and thin provisioning to any class of storage, delivered with in-memory speed.

ILIO USX is not a typical replacement of a current of even new storage solution (SAN/NAS). If an organization already invested in an all-flash array or hybrid array Atlantis ILIO USX can enhance that array. Those arrays provide great performance but not always optimal storage capacity. Because of the dedupe and compression technology at the compute level ILIO USX enables storing of up to 5 x more VMs per Terrabyte. Because of the smart way of writing data the lifetime of flash is extended.

One of the Atlantis customers uses EqualLogic arrays and pools them with their Nimble arrays to more than double the available storage capacity, while delivering 10x increase in the performance.

This is a Atlantis document explaining how VMware VSAN benefits from USX.

Hypervisor support
To be able to use ILIO USX a hypervisor is required. Currently support is limited to VMware ESX. Support for Hyper-V will be added later this year.

cloud support
Version 1.0 supports IBM SmartCloud integration. Not sure what that is.

In the 1.5 release expected in spring support is added for Amazon S3 and OpenStack Swift object storage.

Licensing & pricing 

ILIO USX has a capacity based licensing. Customers purchases licenses based on the total storage capacity presented by ILIO USX. Licenses are added incrementally in steps of 1 TB . Licensing does not depend on the characteristics of the underlying storage. So pricing is same for SSD, Flash, HDD etc. Also there is just one edition available.
Pricing has not been announced yet. Atlantis Computing partners which have done a training will be able to provide pricing.  USX is available starting now, through certified partners.

Evaluation
Evaluation versions which can be used for a limited time are expected to be available by the end of February.

More information

The press release of Atlantis Computing on ILIO USX.
Atlantis ILIO USX Techical FAQ
Atlantis ILIO USX information

The Register: Mystical VM-accelerating beast emerges from Atlantis

Blogs on ILIO USX

Atlantis launches USX. In-Memory storage for your VMware environment by Luca Dell’Oca of virtualtothecore.com

Atlantis ILIO USX, In-Memory Performance for Servers by Marco Broeken of vClouds.nl

Atlantis launches ILIO USX – pooled storage for virutalized serversby IT Candor

Atlantis ILIO USX – unified software-defined storage by Andrea Mauro of vInfrastructure.it 

Atlantis Computing Releases ILIO USX – Deploy Up to 5x More VMs / Lowers Costs by up to 50% by  dabcc.com

Filed under Atlantis Computing, Software Defined Storage, VMware solutions

SBC and VDI terms Demystified

February 12, 2014 by Leave a comment

I was getting a bit confused by all the different terms used by vendors like Citrix for ways to present datacenter executed desktops to end-users. This post is an attempt to make clear what vendors and analyst firms like Gartner mean.

Basically there are two techniques to execute desktops in a datacenter and present it to end-users:

Server Based Computing (SBC). Also known as ‘presentation virtualization’ and ‘session virtualization’. Invented by Citrix when it launched WinFrame in 1995. It basically is able to host multiple user sessions on a single operating system. Each user session is able to run it’s own user environment and applications. WinFrame evolved to the current Citrix XenApp. Microsoft acquired the code of Citrix and started it’s own product named Terminal Services. Currently this is called Remote Desktop Services. Both Citrix and Microsoft solutions allow to present individual applications or full desktops.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VMware is inventor of the VDI-technology. It introduced Virtual Desktop Manager 2.0 at January 24 2008. This was the first VDI solution on the market which involved to the current VMware Horizon View. Citrix released competitor XenDesktop in 2009.
Using VDI each user session runs on a seperate operating system running as a vitual machine hosted by a hypervisor.
VDI is in most scenarios used to present a full desktop to the enduser. Citrix offers in XenDesktop a way to present a single application in a VDI session.(VM hosted apps)

For VDI  many other terms used. One of the reasons is that VMware has legal rights on the name VDI. To prevent copyright issues some vendors decide to use a slightly different naming. Another reason is because different implementations are used in VDI like server and client operating systems.

  • Hosted Virtual Desktops (HVD). Same as VDI but Gartner uses this to prevent copyright issues
  • Centralized Virtual desktops (CVDs)= Same as VDI. Used by IDC
  • Server-hosted virtual desktops (SVHD)= Same as VDI. Mainly used by analyst firms.
  • Hosted VDI Desktops (1-to-1 Windows 7/8)= VDI. Term used by Citrix.
  • hosted private desktop = VDI. Term used by Citrix
  • Server VDI = VDI . A term used by Citrix. It is VDI delivered by Citrix XenDesktop
  • Personal VM-based VDI= VDI where each user has its own, persistent environment stored on unique virtual disks. Applications  which are installed by the user remain available even when session has ended.
  • Pooled VM-based VDI= VDI in which the user environment is reset after the session has ended.
  • Server VDI Workers (VM/Server Isolation) = VDI. A term used by Citrix. In this configuration virtual machines are running Windows Server as a guest operating system without Remote Desktop Services enabled. Each instance is used by a single end user. In most cases a Windows 7/8 look and feel is applied. Citrix XenDesktop is used to run these Windows Server vm’s. The reason to use Windows Server as a operating system for end users is Microsoft not allowing to use Windows client operating systems in multi-tenant infrastructures with shared hardware.

Server based computing terms

  • Session-Based VDI = SBC. Term used  for Remote Desktop Services of Microsoft
  • Session virtualization= SBC.
  • Presentation Virtualization= SBC
  • Terminal Services= The old name for what now is called Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.
  • Hosted-Shared Desktop (multi-user RDS) = SBC. Term used by Citrix which is in fact just Citrix XenApp running on top of Remote Desktop Services
  • MetaFrame, WinFrame, Presentation Server = SBC. Old names for what is now called Citrix XenApp

some other terms for presenting desktops used are:

cloud-hosted desktops = Also known as Desktop as a Service (DaaS). A  set of applications or a full desktop are consumed by end users. The infrastruture to offer these is managed by a service provicer.

VM hosted apps/ VM hosted applications = Uses Citrix XenDesktop to present a single application to the end user instead of a full desktop. Acts as an alternative for published applications available in XenApp.

Filed under VDI, VMware solutions

Free eBook ‘Software-Defined Storage for dummies’

February 11, 2014 by Leave a comment

Fresh of the press and compliments by Nutanix is a free eBook titled ‘Software-defined storage for dummies.

In this 46 pages eBook author Scott Lowe showcases the possibilities of web-scale IT in which powerful software acts as a key driver of datacenter efficiency and flexibility. As the industry buzz grows around this emerging technology, be one of the first to understand the true power of software-defined storage.

 Download the eBook to learn: 

  • How a new era of storage solutions will help your infrastructure become more flexible, powerful, and easy to manage
  • The emerging technologies that make software-defined storage a game-changer in the datacenter
  • Ten key software-defined storage facts that all IT experts need to know

This book was written with and for Nutanix.

software-defined-storage-for-dummies

Chapter 1:
The Current State of Storage: This chapter introduces you to the challenges of legacy storage.
Chapter 2:
Software-Defined Storage Basics: What is software-defined storage? Also, what isn’t it?
Chapter 3:
Key SDS Principles and Enablers: Find out what technologies make SDS possible.
Chapter 4:
How SDS Benefits Business: This chapter explains the things that your Chief Financial Officer
wants to know about SDS. Which is to say, how to make it
more flexible and more efficient!
Chapter 5: Ten Key SDS Facts: This chapter goes over some important facts to keep in mind as you explore SDS.

Download here.

Filed under Nutanix, VDI, VMware solutions

New free VMware app monitors your vSphere infrastructure remotely

February 11, 2014 by Leave a comment

VMware released a free, new iOS & Android app called VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist which allows you to monitor the virtual machines you care about in your vSphere infrastructure remotely on your phone. Discover diagnostic information about any alerts on your VMs using VMware Knowledge Base Articles and the web. Remediate problems from your phone by using power operations or delegate the problem to someone on your team back at the datacenter.
It even allows you to see a screenshot of the console of virtual machine.

The iOS app requires iOS 7 or later and supports iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
The Android app requires Android 4.0.3 or later

IMPORTANT NOTE: A VMware vSphere installation (5.0 and above) is required to use VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist. Access to your vSphere infrastructure may need a secure access method like VPN. Contact your IT department for further assistance.


FEATURES:
EASILY CREATE VM WATCHLISTS
Select a subset of VMs from your VMware vSphere VM inventory to tell the app what VMs to track. Use multiple lists to organize these important VMs.

VMS AT A GLANCE
Review the status of these VMs from your device including: their state, health, console and related objects.

SUGGESTED KB ARTICLES
Got an alert on your VM? Let VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist suggest what KB Articles might help you or search the web to gather more information.

REMEDIATE REMOTELY
Use power operations to remediate many situations remotely from your device.

DELEGATE TO YOUR TEAM
For those situations where you are not able to fix an issue from the device, VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist will enable you to share the VM and alert information along with any suggested KB articles and other web pages relevant to the current problem. Your colleagues back in the datacenter can use this context to resolve the issue.

SUPPORT:

Support for VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist is provided via VMware Communities (https://vmware.com/go/vspheremobile) and also included in the support contracts sold with VMware vSphere. If vSphere Mobile Watchlist customers encounter a technical issue, only Support Administrators listed on the support contract for VMware vSphere may log a service ticket with VMware Technical Support. Individual users of the vSphere Mobile Watchlist should contact their internal IT help desk or visit https://vmware.com/go/vspheremobile.

download iOS app here and more info at VMware Community here.
Download the Android app from Google Play

Filed under VMware solutions, vSphere 5, vSphere 5.5

Atlantis Computing will announce Unified Software Defined Storage solution

February 10, 2014 by Leave a comment

Atlantis Computing announced a new unified software defined storage solution named ILIO USX.

The solution is currently  presented at VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) and will probably officialy be launched at  February 11 or 12 according Tweets sent by PEX attendees.

ILIO USX “ abstracts, pools and automates the provisioning of storage services (SAN/NAS/DAS, SSD/Flash, or local server RAM”)  to meet the capacity, performance and availability requirements of any application”

Update:

At February 11 ILIO USX was announced. Here are some blogs reporting on this solution:

The press release of Atlantis Computing on ILIO USX.

Atlantis launches USX. In-Memory storage for your VMware environment by Luca Dell’Oca of virtualtothecore.com

Atlantis ILIO USX, In-Memory Performance for Servers by Marco Broeken of vClouds.nl

Atlantis launches ILIO USX – pooled storage for virutalized serversby IT Candor

Atlantis ILIO USX – unified software-defined storage by Andrea Mauro of vInfrastructure.it 

Atlantis Computing Releases ILIO USX – Deploy Up to 5x More VMs / Lowers Costs by up to 50% by  dabcc.com

 

Filed under VMware solutions

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