VMware V4 update, April 2009

Re-posted as handy reference

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SNS Ltd presentation on VMware V4 at EMC, 100 Leadenhall St.
29-apr-2009

Agenda

09:45 What's new from VMware in the Datacenter

ESX Server 3.5 & VirtualCenter 2.5 overview

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat overview

VMware Infrastructure Toolkit overview

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager overview

11:30 What's new in storage and backup for VMware [EMC storage products]

EMC CLARiiON CX4 overview

EMC RecoverPoint overview

EMC Celerra NS overview

EMC Avamar overview

12:15 What's new from VMware on the Desktop

VMware View overview

VMware ThinApp overview

VMware Client Virtualization Platform preview

13:00 What's coming soon

VMware vSphere 4 preview

EMC PowerPath/VE

14:00 Close

Demonstrations will include: VMware vSphere 4 (beta) VMware Infrastructure Toolkit (for Windows)

Presentations

http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/What_is_new_in_VMware_Infrastructure_3.5.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/VMware_vCenter_Heartbeat_Technical_Overvie w.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/VMware_Site_Recovery_Manager_Technical_Ov erview.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/VMware_View_Technical_Overview.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/VMware_ThinApp_Technical_Overview.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Data_Protection/EMC_solutions_for_VMware.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Virtualisation/VMware_vSphere_4_Technical_Overview.pps http://www.snsltd.co.uk/Presentations/Data_Protection/EMC_PowerPath_Technical_Overview.pps

My notes

Due to overrunning on the EMC storage products (got bogged down in specific issues for a couple of sites), the rest of the VMware stuff was rushed and they even had to skip what would have been the only useful item within the EMC storage product segment: new Networker support for VMware. They never got to PowerPath, even running on until 15:00.

Tony Gent was SMS's tech guy and Marcus Moore did the PPT - both very knowledgeable. Took the trouble to edit out VMware Marketing's references to 'cloud' - over-used buzzword!

ESX 3i is ESX 3 with the RedHat console component omitted; 32MB footprint (i.e. tiny); integration in hardware, eliminating need to install; a startup wizard is provided; is free (pay extra for Vmotion...); USB key boot; servers can be diskless.

Distributed power management: uses VMotion to move guest systems to optimise power (feature is experimental in 3.5).

Guided consolidation: auto-discovery & analysis of physical servers and conversion to virtual - a plug-in to Virtual Console (VC).

Update Manager - auto snapshots to protect across updates; covers offline systems too; needs VMotion - puts 1 ESX host in a cluster into maintenance mode at a time; can do OS patches too.

Storage Vmotion: needs fibrechannel. Migrate live storage.

VM failure monitoring : auto host restart, based on hardware, OS or application monitoring.

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB): support iSCSI; GUI integrates with leading vendor's products.

Enhanced Vmotion CPU compatibility: now if source and target CPUs don't match, it can automatically mask out the incompatible features of the target. So e.g. seamless Intel G5 -> G6 transfer. In essence, within a cluster, all work at the current lowest common denominator CPU featureset.

Can now clone a live VM and hot-extend a VMDK disk (guest OS may not auto-recognise the change). Can hot-add vCPU and memory (if guest OS permits).

VI Foundation (low-end, paid for), Standard, Enterprise.

vCentre server heartbeat: rebadged Neverfail product; high-availablity for vCentre. $10K

Currently ESX licence servers have to be real servers (running Flex) - moving away from that mechanism to simple licence keys [hurrah!]

VI Toolkit: e.g. monitoring space taken by snapshots - script demo'ed. Uses Windows Powershell.

Site Recovery Manager: loss of a datacentre: automate setup, test and failover. Ability to test is very powerful. Assumes SAN replication between sites - and ability to interface with SAN for that, especially for reversing a failover. Not supported by HDS AMS/SMS yet but a plug-in is likely to be produced. ESX is happy with iSCSI and NFS, though NFS is Tier 2 technology.

VM View: next version will incorporate technology from www.teradici.com ('PC over IP'), which works best with hardware support (chips) at each end of a data link, but software can be used instead. HDX for Citrix is similar. Coming: client hypervisor; offline desktop.

[They were rushing by this point!]

View Composer: linked clones - efficient storage.

ThinApp: about £20/desktop. No client component, unlike App-V. Much easier application capture that App-V [I can confirm that]. Updating versions is easy where stored on file store - auto-fetches newer when app. started.

Virtual Printing: ThinPrint - driver-free technology, based on RDP; high-quality over WAN.

Offline Desktops: 'check out' virtual disk to local one.

vSphere ('VI 4'): VI 3 ends 21-May-2009. Higher maxes for hardware. VMXNET3 wirespeed network access. Improved SCSI driver. 40Gb/s net throughput. 200k IOPS. vStorage thin provisioning (avail. now from console command line) - only alloc. disk when needed, not at create time. Fear of disk fragmentation had discouraged use but research has shown that the 1MB block size for extents doesn't lead to problems.

VCB being replaced by vStorage APIs.

Data Recovery: agentless backup & deduplication, with VM- or file-level restore. VCentre plug-in. Is like the vRanger product.

HDS multipathing [between FC paths] supported, as an option.

vSwitch: cluster-level definition of switch, not just per ESX host.

Can use a Cisco Nexus1000V if real h/w preferred.

Fault Tolerance (FT): primary VM clones all changes to secondary, via Lockstep technology. If 1ary goes, 2ary flips to take over as 1ary and begins cloning to a new 2ary. 1 vCPU only. Good for Domain Controllers and Exchange.

vSafe API: for security vendors (Sophos, McAfee...). Product runs at ESX level, not at each guest OS level. Particularly useful for virtual desktops. Available in 2009H2 for Protection Engines.

vShield zones: firewalling between parts of ESX infrastructure; virtual appliance Manager and Gateways.

vCentre Workflow feature.

vCentre host profiles: simplify management. Remediate automatically back to standard, ensuring compliance.

vCentre: inventory across multiple vCentres.

Solaris v8-v10 now supported, Win98 and many other OSs.

vSphere 6 versions: Essentials $995 Ess. Plus $2995 Standard Advanced $2245 Enterprise ["won't be sold from 2009Q4" - subsequently retracted] Enterprise Plus $3495