When I first started with virtualization, the only option you had at the time was single core processors in the hosts. Scale up or scale out was the hot debatable topic when designing your infrastructure. On one side of the coin the idea was to scale up in that it was best to get a few of the biggest servers you could find and load them up with as much memory and processors that you could fit in the box. The end result were some very expensive servers able to run a lot of virtual machines for its time. The other side of the coin presented the idea that it was better to scale out with more, smaller servers to make up the cluster. I have worked in both type of environments and attitudes over the years and as for me, personally, I aligned myself with the scale out philosophy. The simple reason for aligning with the scale out group was host failure.
Stephen Beaver is the co-author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center and Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration as well as being contributing author of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and How to Cheat at Configuring VMware ESX Server. Stephen is an IT Veteran with over 15 years experience in the industry. Stephen is a moderator on the VMware Communities Forum and was elected vExpert for 2009 and 2010. Stephen can also be seen regularly presenting on different topics at national and international virtualization conferences.
VMworld Pilgrimage Part 2
In my Preparing for the VMworld Pilgrimage post last week, I went over some things, namely hotel and airfare, which you should have confirmed by now if you are planning on attending VMworld 2010 in San Francisco. I have heard through the grapevine that there are going to be around 15,000 people in attendance this year so it is shaping to be another great event. This post is going with the assumption that your travel, logging, sessions and labs have been booked and taken care of. With that said, what is the best way to stay current and get the most out of the week? I would like to present the thought that the VMTN Community Lounge / Blogger Area is a good place to start. If you are looking to meet some of the most active individuals in virtualization, this will be a place that you should consider checking in periodically throughout the week.
Preparing for the VMworld Pilgrimage
The countdown is on for one of the biggest virtualization conferences of the year, VMworld 2010 in San Francisco. I have been lucky enough to be able to attend all the VMworld conferences from 2005 on and the 2009 VMworld Europe in Cannes, France. These shows are pretty big and jam packed full of people, exhibits and sessions. Good old fun for the entire family!! Well not necessarily shared fun for the entire family, but if you have a passion for virtualization, then VMworld 2010 in San Francisco is the place you should be. Since it is San Francisco, you can even bring your entire family and your family can enjoy the Spouse Activities while you enjoy the talk about virtualization.
Working with VMware Update Manager Server
Have you ever considered the best way to plan, design and work with VMware Update Manager (VUM)? In the early days using VMware 3.x when VUM was first released, I would end up installing VUM on the vCenter server itself. After all, that was the recommendation from VMware at the time. I propose that this is no longer the case and I would like to present a list of best practices to follow when working with VMware Update Manager. This list came from VMware, but should only be considered as a guide. Each environment is different and your mileage may / will vary.
vSphere 4.1 Improvements in Availability
With the release of vSphere 4.1 there have been some great enhancements that have been added with this release. In one of my earlier post I took a look at the vSphere 4.1 release of ESXi. This post I am going to take a look at vSphere 4.1 availability options and enhancements. So what has changed with this release? A maximum of 320 virtual machines per cluster has been firmly set. In vSphere 4.0 there were different VM/Host limitations for DRS as well as different rules for VMware HA. VMware has also raised the number of virtual machines that can be run in a single cluster from 1280 in 4.0 to 3000 in the vSphere 4.1 release. How do these improvements affect your upgrade planning?
What Do You Think When You Hear The Word Host?
When you hear the term “host” when talking about virtual environment, what is the first thing you think of? For me, the answer is simple, a host is an appliance. For years now I have been standing on my soap box and preaching the power and fundamentals of automation in building and configuring your virtual environment. I came across a thread on the VMware VMTN Community Forum where a concerned individual was in a position that he was going to have to rebuild his host from scratch. What he did to get himself into this position was to run a hardening script on the host and then the host became broken and unusable. This person was concerned that he did not have a backup of the host and was looking for a way to rollback.