26 September 2007
VMworld 2007 Announcements
VMworld Announcements Below is a summary of VMworld announcements and sessions of interest. All VMworld news is available here: http://www.vmware.com/vmworldnews/ Sessions referenced below in the AA00 format are available at the below address: http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/sessions.jspa
ESX Server 3i ESX Server 3i is the industry’s first hardware-integrated hypervisor, arriving pre-installed with server hardware on solid-state media. On first boot of the server it has auto-detects its surroundings and with a few clicks is ready to run VMware virtual machines. When an appropriate license is applied, it may be managed by VMware Virtual Center. Optional VMware Infrastructure 3 licenses, purchased via the regular channels, may be applied to enable datacenter-ready features such as VMware VMotion, DRS, HA and VCB. http://www.vmware.com/vmworldnews/esx.html VMware Site Recovery Manager Site Recovery Manager is a snap-in to VMware Virtual Center which enables rapid and reliable disaster recovery automation. The tool may be used to simulate a DR situation for testing purposes. Each site must run VMware Infrastructure 3 and have its own copy of Virtual Center. Related VMworld sessions: BC29 Disaster Recovery Solution Architecture for VMware BC31 New Trends in Disaster Recovery for VMware Also see: BC30 Successful Disaster Recovery Testing for Virtualized DR VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) This end-to-end desktop virtualization solution comprises a newly-release connection broker, VMware Virtual Desktop Manager. VDM has a web-based management interface which handles user-authentication and policy enforcement in conjunction with Microsoft Active Directory. A VM may be reserved for each VDI user, or a pool of VMs may be shared across multiple users; in the latter case when a user logs out VDM optionally re-provisions the VM, ready for the next user. A beta program is now in progress. Related VMworld sessions: DV14 VDI - Considerations and Best Practices DV19 VDI Connection Broker – A Product Overview Also see: DV18 VDI Connection Broker - Architecture, Security and Deployment BM27 Reducing Energy Consumption with Virtual Infrastructure VMware Update Manager VMware Update Manager is snap-in to Virtual Center. In short this too collects and applies patches for: ESX hosts, Windows and Linux virtual machines and VMware templates. The virtual machines can be in a powered-on, suspended or powered-off state. When patching an ESX host the physical server may be required to be running no virtual machines; or the ESX host may require a reboot. In either case the Update Manager integrates with VI3 Maintenance Mode. Maintenance Mode uses VMotion to evacuate an ESX host of virtual machines. Once the update is complete the tool can be configured to exit Maintenance
Richard Allen, VMware
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rallen@vmware.com
26 September 2007
VMworld 2007 Announcements
Mode, at which point VMware DRS will migrate using VMotion some virtual machines back to the newly-patched host. When patching virtual machines, VMware Update Manager can be configured to optionally take a snapshot of a virtual machine before the guest-os patch is applied. This allows the administrator to roll back the virtual machine should the guest-os patch not behave as expected, or if the patch breaks a particular application or even the guest operating system itself. The tool can be configured for automatic deletion of the VM snapshot after a specified time period. This assists the administrator in providing a roll-back staging area but also enables autodeletion of unwanted VMware snapshots in order to clean up the storage area. The VMware Update Manager administrator defines baselines of patch levels which the tool can then check for anomalies, either manually or in an automated manner. The tool may be configured to collect regular updates from an internally-based patch server. Related VMworld sessions: IO38 Managing Patches and Updates for Hosts and VMs. IO40 IO39 Strategies for ESX Server Update Management IO40 VMware ESX Server 3 - Patch Management
Other VMworld 2007 sessions and announcements of interest All sessions are VMware unless otherwise stated Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery BC23 Bulletproof Virtual Center – A Guide to Protecting Virtual Center BC24 Complete Clustering How-To with VMware Infrastructure. Jume B.V. BC32 Best Practices for Architecting VCB Enabled Solutions BC49 Vizioncore - Leveraging Virtualization. Business Metrics & Results BM15 Managing Chargeback with VI3 BM26 The Proven ROI of Virtual Infrastructure across the Enterprise BM28 Green Grid's Best Practices for Data Center Energy Efficiency. Green Grid Desktop Virtualization DV21 PC Virtualization - Everything You Need to Know. NEC DV23 Microsoft SoftGrid App Virtualization & Vista Centralized Desktop. Microsoft Infrastructure Operations IO13 Automating the Virtual Data Center. Dunes IO17 Breaking Down Barriers to VMware Technology Adoption IO24 Virtual Center Administration - Top Ten List IO36 Getting Hardware Alerts into Microsoft Operations Manager Infrastructure Planning IP21 How to License Microsoft's Products IP29 Virtualization of Remote Sites IP36 The Impact of Virtualization on the Data Center. Intel IP41 Design, build and manage your SAN environment for VMware Infrastructure 3 IP55 Technology Preview - Guided Consolidation
Richard Allen, VMware
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rallen@vmware.com
26 September 2007
VMworld 2007 Announcements
Software Lifecycle Automation SL11 Introduction to VMware Lab Manager SL12 VMware Lab Manager Technical Deep Dive SL13 Using VMware Lab Manager to Test VMware Lab Manager SL16 Virtual Lab Automation - How to Size and Calculate ROI/TCO SL20 Debugging With Record/Replay Technology & Architecture TA24 DRS Deep Dive and Technology Preview of Distributed Power Management TA25 VMotion Between Apples and Oranges: Understanding VMotion CPU Constraints TA37 VI3 Networking: Advanced Configurations and Troubleshooting TA47 Storage Terms and Confusion Demystified for Virtualization: SAN, iSCSI or NFS? TA48 Advanced VMFS Configuration and Troubleshooting TA49 iSCSI on VI3 - Techniques, Configuration and Best Practices TA51 NFS & iSCSI - Performance Characterization and Best Practices TA54 Storage VMotion TA78 AMD's Quad Core Architecture is Enabling Virtualization Workloads & Virtual Appliances WV16 Running Windows Active Directory in VI3 WV18 Virtualizing Exchange 2007 - The Final Frontier? DELL WV19 Exchange and SQL on ESX Server. Weiss Consulting WV29 Creating and Managing Virtual Appliances Using VADK
A note from Mendel Rosenblum: “VMware Inc. chief scientist and co-founder Mendel Rosenblum led […] three demonstrations of future product capabilities that VMware may eventually bring to market. VMotion for storage Rosenblum showed how future products will leverage what he dubbed "VMotion for disks" to move not just virtual machines (VMs) but also their underlying virtual disks to different physical storage platforms while the virtual machines are still running. Streaming virtual machines Another compelling demo showed how VMware is working to improve its virtual appliance offering, which may also be applied to disaster recovery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). In a demonstration, Rosenblum showed a virtual machine streaming capability for the download of virtual appliances (that is, virtual machines containing a preconfigured operating system and application stack). Fault-tolerant virtual machines But the audience reserved its most thunderous applause for a feature Rosenblum called Continuous Availability, which would give ordinary virtual machines levels of fault tolerance that have traditionally been reserved for only the most expensive server systems.” http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid94_gci1272269,0 0.html?track=sy420&asrc=RSS_RSS-27_420
Richard Allen, VMware
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rallen@vmware.com