Registration is open. So be sure to attend and sign in asap! Early birds(till the 11th of July) pay $1,495, after the 11th the price will be $1,745. VMworld officially kicks off on Monday, September 15 with an evening Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange. You can attend hands-on labs during the day on Monday, however all other VMworld activities start on Tuesday, September 16.
New ESX(i) 3.5 patches
VMware just released a whole bunch of patches. Check it:
New patches are available for ESX Server 3.5/3i.
Please follow the instructions on the appropriate patch download page.
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Patch Download Page
ESX350-200804401-BG (Critical): Prevent DHCP from resetting the IP address and netmask when trying to acquire or renew a lease. Change the default multipath policy for all HDS modular storage arrays such as AMS, SMS, WMS, 9500V to “fixed”.
ESX350-200804402-BG (Critical): Prevent the guest from stalling for a long time during snapshot operations. Prevent the ESX Server host from crashing during snapshot consolidation. Prevent the ESX Server host from rebooting while powering on a vSMP virtual machine on a Unisys ES7000/one with eight or fewer logical CPUs. Fix emulation of instructions that access I/O ports. Fix emulation of string instructions on 64-bit guest operating systems.
ESX350-200804403-BG (Critical): Prevent hostd from crashing due to incompatible entries in /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml. Allow spaces in a password while creating and editing local ESX Server users through the VI Client. Set the executable bit for .vmx configuration files. Fix a vmware-vpxa crash caused by invalid UTF-8.
ESX350-200804404-BG (General): Allow Windows virtual machines to boot when DataDigest is enabled in software iSCSI.
ESX350-200804405-BG (General): Include a megaraid2 driver fix for UNISYS platforms.
ESX350-200804406-BG (General): Add support for the Intel PRO/1000 PF Quad Port Server Adapter.
ESX350-200804407-BG (Critical): Add support for the Broadcom HT-1100 SATA/IDE controller. Prevent path thrashing during an Invista all paths down condition.
VMware ESX Server 3i Patch Download Page
ESXe350-200804401-I-BG (Critical): Fix typographic errors in the message strings of storage controller battery status, which is displayed in the VI Client. Include fixes for issues addressed by the following 3.5 patch bundles: ESX350-200804401-BG, ESX350-200804405-BG, ESX350-200804405-BG, ESX350-200804403-BG, and ESX350-200804407-BG.
We expect the next patch release in May 2008
VCB and Solaris 32 Bit VM’s
One of my readers just emailed me the following, again thanks for this info which might me useful to any of you guys out there playing with VCB:
Today with the help of VMware Support I solved a strange problem.
With all my Solaris10-32Bit VM’ s I was getting an error, when I tried to backup them via VCB. Creating snapshot of the VM failed with “Creating a quiesced snapshot failed because the (user-supplied) custom pre-freeze script in the virtual machine exited with a non-zero return code”. But there doesn’t exists a pre or post script in all of the VMs.So as you know, no snapshot means no backup of this VM. I monitored the hostd of the host, where the VM is running. There I saw this messages: ” Could not run custom freeze/thaw operation: Insufficient permissions in guest operating system”.
VMware support told me, that there is a problem within the VMTools in the Solaris VM’s. They know about this problem (I didn’t find anything about this in the internet) and will solve it in a future patch.
For now, the only way is to use the “-Q 0” switch with the vcbmounter command. This way VCB will ignore any pre or post scripts.
Christoph P.
So in short, -Q 0 disregards any pre or post scripts. Thanks Christoph for contributing to my blog!
Show VMware Tools version with BGInfo
Arne blogged about a cool feature of BGInfo yesterday, but his post is in dutch so it’s not on the Planet V12 RSS feed which is a shame cause it’s definitely usefull info.
In short: BGInfo is a handy little SysInternals tool which sets a desktop wallpaper with pre-defined info like total memory, disk info, ip info etc. With BGInfo it’s also possible to define a specific field with for instance the version information of a file. Arne discovered that it’s possible to point towards the VMware tools executable and display the VMware tools version on your server desktop aka wallpaper.
I guess a picture says more than words:
Hyper-V pricing?
Can anyone help me out? At several blogs I’ve read that Hyper-V is available with clustering and quick migration for only a fraction of the costs compared to VMware. I was just browsing the internet and stumbled upon the following:
Windows 2008 Enterprise: $3,999 with 25 CALs
The System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise Edition’s price is $1,290.
Comprehensive solution for end-to-end management of physical and virtual server environments that includes the Enterprise Server management licenses for Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007, and Data Protection Manager 2007; the license for Virtual Machine Manager 2007; and, rights to manage an unlimited number of operating system environments on a single server.
So Window 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V $3,999. VMware Enterprise which includes VMotion and HA will cost you $5,750.
System Center Enterprise will cost you $1,290. VMware VirtualCenter will cost you $4,995.
So do you need a System Center Enterprise license for every Hyper-V host you want to manage?