When I saw this I have to admit that I started to ge a bit worried. Its not everyday you get a mark like this next to your name.

VMware, do you want to tell me something ?!? Someone give me some points or take some away, quick !!

You may have already seen vAlarm, a free utility to monitor alarms from a vcenter server. After I finished writing that application I thought, what would be useful next? So, I have written and released a free log viewer application for esx called VLogView.

Let me know what you think.

What is Capacity Planning?

This Xtravirt White Paper discusses Capacity Planning (Workload Profiling) and the reasons why it is an important first step to any virtualization exercise.

Prompted by the frustrations of trying to convince customers of the importance of fully understanding their environment before embarking on a virtualization project, this papers aim is to clear up misconceptions about the purpose and importance of this exercise.

Capacity Planning will be referred to as “Workload Profiling” as this name better represents the core activity of the exercise. Workload profiling is where a software tool such as VMware Capacity Planning, PlateSpin Recon or Lanamark is installed in a customer’s existing environment and configured to systematically gather performance and inventory data over a period of time, typically several weeks. At the end of the exercise the data is analysed and a report is generated showing the usage of the environment. This data is then used as the basis for the virtualization design phase.

The key point to note is that it’s not simply about determining how much new server hardware is required to support the new virtual environment (i.e. Capacity Planning), it’s also about having the detailed information to be able to make informed design decisions during the design phase.

The Whitepaper can be read here

Service packs are a collection of updates to a product that resolve known issue or workarounds; they may also introduce new features or extended the capabilities of existing ones. Moreover, service packs update systems to the most current code base. Being on the current code base is important because that’s where Microsoft focuses on fixing problems. For example, any such work done on Windows 2008 is targeted at the next service pack and hotfixes are built against the existing available base.

This post lists the Hyper-V specific fixes within the service pack.

I received an email in my inbox tonight – ESX 3.0.2 support ends as of August 7th 2009. More information can be viewed at VMwares site here.

Overview

There is a lot of talk about at the moment with regards to VDI – is it happening or isn’t it. There have been some industry spokes people discussing when VDI will ‘really’ take off.

Something a VDI project should consider carefully is application delivery – how are applications in a VDI environment deployed to users? In a base image? Virtualized?

This article by Danny Clarke from Add3 provides an insight in to Application Virtualization.

Application Virtualization is a concept which enables organisations to deploy their users’ applications quickly, easily and securely without many of the headaches, risks or costs associated with traditional techniques.

Application Virtualization technologies typically do this by isolating or ‘sandboxing’ applications into self-contained packages or ‘bubbles’ which make it possible to not only deliver different versions or configurations of previously conflicting applications but also streamline the entire application lifecycle from instigation, through deployment, support, updates/patches to retirement.

This white paper provides an overview, the components and some of the business and technical benefits of Application Virtualization

The whitepaper can be read here

I recieved this in my inbox courtesy of Quest

The Desktop Virtualization Group is pleased to announce today’s release of Quest vWorkspace 6.2. Here are some of the exciting features and changes for this version of vWorkspace.

vWorkspace NetApp Integration

vWorkspace is now integrated with NetApp FlexClone technology. Here are some of the benefits of this integration:

• Rapid deployment of virtual desktops.
• An average of ninety percent disk utilization reduction saving valuable SAN or NAS storage (savings vary based on use case).
• Continuous desktop access due to advanced protection and fail over.
• VMware Platform support only.

Enhanced Multimonitor Support

Improvements have been made to enhance the user experience when using multiple monitors supporting a wider variety of orientations and mix/match resolutions.

Enhanced Graphic Acceleration Support

Graphics Acceleration improvements expand the applications which are accelerated, as well as improved speed and quality. Applications that use Microsoft DirectDraw are also now accelerated.

Enhanced USB Redirection

The USB Redirection feature has been enhanced with the following features:

• Improved support for audio and video USB based devices.
• Overall improved performance.
• Additional tuning and device exclusion options are included.

Web Access and Microsoft SharePoint Integration (Experimental)

vWorkspace Web Access can now be used with Microsoft SharePoint.  Please note this feature is experimental, and currently not supported by Quest Support.  It is important that the Quest vWorkspace Web Access and Microsoft Office SharePoint Integration Release Notes are reviewed before implementing this experimental feature.

Other Features

• An alternative sysprep mode has been added for provisioning virtual machines on VMware platforms for use with provisioning domain joined machines which will be joined to an AD OU. This overcomes limitations introduced since Virtual Center Update 3..

• Additional status information has been added to the vWorkspace Management Console when Desktops or Other Servers nodes are selected.

• Modifications have been made to the database verification process to allow for version upgrades without including a database upgrade.

It is important that you review the vWorkspace 6.2 documentation and release notes for further information on resolved and known issues.

The release and product documentation are available on the vWorkspace web site at http://www.vworkspace.com, as well as the Quest SupportLink web site at http://support.quest.com/.

Overview

This excellent Visio icon pack for VMware & virtualization has been re-released as a free member download. It contains over 70 unique icons together with a user guide and sample diagram templates.

It is designed for Windows Operating Systems and has been designed to run on Microsoft Visio 2003 and Microsoft Visio 2007, although also runs on Mac Omnigraffle. They are not compatible with Microsoft Visio 2000 or 2002.

Download here

Overview

This Xtravirt white paper details the process of performing a basic installation of Citrix XenServer 5.5, including XenCenter and the registration and licensing process. Although similar to XenServer 5 (http://xtravirt.com/xd10025) the fundamental difference is the registration and licensing section.

A XenServer installation consists of two separate, physical computers; one being the XenServer host and the other to run the XenCenter management application.

XenServer is a 64-bit, x86 server-class platform devoted to hosting multiple Virtual Machines (VM’s). XenCenter is a Windows based client application that runs on a remote machine and is used to manage XenServer hosts. While the XenServer machine must be dedicated to the task of hosting VM’s, XenCenter can run on any general-purpose machine, alongside other applications.

Key Concepts:

• Installation of XenServer 5.5
• Installation of XenCenter 5.5
• Registration and Licensing

A server consolidation project typically starts with an assessment of the existing physical estate, resulting in not only the identification of the most suitable virtualization candidates, but conversely, those which have greater resource demands. Often, though not exclusively, these are found to be those machines that provide an organization’s enterprise-class services, such as databases, e-mail, and ERP. While these potential bottlenecks cannot be ignored, a combination of advances in hardware technology and a creative approach to configuration of the virtualized environment can enable the virtualization of such machines. An awareness of these options and considerations will help make the subsequent virtualization of high I/O workloads a success. This white paper aims to provide options and considerations when virtualizing high I/O workloads.

The whitepaper can be found here