And more cool stuff announced. I know I have to stay objective and try not to sound like a cheerleader… but man did you see the latest announcements? It’s hard not to get excited, it’s hard not to be enthusiastic, the hell with it I’m not even gonna try it.
And why not one might ask? Well because VMware just announced the fact that vCenter Server will be released as a linux virtual appliance in the future and the vCenter client will be cross platform available. So all you linux minded or mac minded sysadmins out there, keep an eye out for the beta program. This is also a great reason for me to ditch XP on my laptop and start installing Ubuntu, well as soon as it’s available that is! But is definitely one of the best announcements this week in my opinion. I’ve been asked this question, when will VC (client) be available for linux, very very often. Well I still can’t give an answer but it’s on the roadmap! Getting the MS requirement out of the Virtual Environment or should I say vCloud is important for a lot of customers and (most important) SysAdmins.
But that’s not it, the new “limitations” that Dr. Stephen Herrod announced today are overwhelming, 64 nodes in a cluster, 4096 processor cores and 64 TB of RAM. So my question is … what about the current 2TB limitation for LUN’s. Let’s hope that one will be gone soon… And let’s hope VMFS also get’s a make over, no that it’s not functioning at the moment but a VMFS resize option would be nice for instance. Well we will just have to wait and see I guess. But it would fit into the new vStorage initiative. Which, as Chad explained, is also an API where hardware vendors can take advantage off! Like for instance the vCenter SAN Snapshot integration that NetApp, Dell/EQL and EMC announced yesterday.
Well I can rewrite Scott’s entire blog but that just isn’t very useful… So click here and read one of the most extensive live blogs on the VMworld Day 2 Keynote. These were just some random thoughts, I’m going for a walk, just to clear up my mind… a lot of information in a short amount of time.
Save the cheerleader, save the world… Nice enthusiastic information.
This is all very exciting and I agree, but I am just curious about the following comment:
“Getting the MS requirement out of the Virtual Environment or should I say vCloud is important for a lot of customers and (most important) SysAdmins.”
I would actually prefer to have VC run on the Windows platform, but that’s my preference.
Is this being said in the context of the preferences of an admin, or is there some other concern out there that we aren’t aware of? Just curious as it’s not evidenent to us why one would desire to purge MS from the environment, other than preferences and comfort levels.
Thanks!
From my experience, many *nix shops didn’t want to manage a random Windows instance to enable their virtualization solution. SO this is a great way to keep them from looking at other virtualization solutions to maintain their homogeneous *nix environment.
Well I said it important “for a lot of”, so definitely not all. It just changes the options you have. if you’re a Linux shop you will get the option to install a linux only environment which is a big plus for them. For some it might not be, although I think that everyone can benefit from a VirtualCenter appliance! It will save you time on installation, will give a smaller footprint and a better standardization.
Agreed and speaking of the virtual appliance…..
When I first saw this I wondered about the implications of running Virtual Center as a VM.
Today you lose DRS functionality if VC goes down (and HA if using ESX3i), so what happens if you have a failure on the host where VC is running?
I’m all for virtual appliances, but I’m just curious about the prospect of running VC as an appliance. I would think you would want VC in a redundant out-of-band scenario.
Well you could always have FT enabled for VC…. But it’s not mission critical to lose DRS I would say, just make sure you get alerted when VC fails.
Interesting and exciting information. So we will be having a dedicated solution for VC which is platform independant. Great news Duncan. Thanks for info!