Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for February 2009

Veeam Backup 3.0 supports ESXi, including free version!

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Veeam just released Backup 3.0 with ESXi(including the Free version) support:

In addition to the ESXi backup through VCB that was introduced with version 2.0, Veeam Backup 3.0 now supports ESXi backup without VCB. Veeam Backup is the only VMware backup solution that lets you backup and restore virtual machines running on all existing editions of ESXi, including ESXi free.

Now head over to Veeam and download your trial and start doing full VM backups. Veaam Backup also provides you with a file level restore:

Veeam’s fast file-level recovery feature allows you to restore individual files from your image-level backups and replicas in seconds, without having to extract the full VM image to your local drive.

Just a tip, I would suggest to do a “zero-out” before running the full VM backup!

vWire Opscheck

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As it seems Tripwire is preparing a new toolkit. Opscheck is the first of more to come that has been released.

Tripwire created a new website / community called vWire. They moved Configcheck over to vWire and added Opscheck to the list. Where Configcheck identifies possible security vulnerabilities and Opscheck checks for VMware VMotion support by rapidly analyzing ESX 3.0, 3.5, and ESXi hypervisors.

The next thing to expect from Tripwire, euuhm vWire, euuuh… vWire Solution. You can sign up for the announcement at the vWire website.

Train Signal virt CBTs still 25% reduction

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Train Signal, the post included a reduction coupon, YELLOWBRICKS. This coupon gives you 25% reduction on the Train Signal virtualization CBTs. Train Signal was so kind to also provide me with an additional coupon that gives you free shipping:

All you need to do is head over to Train Signal and enter the following coupon code “YELLOWBRICKS” and “FREESHIP”. By buying a CBT you also support Yellow-Bricks.com! Both coupon codes are valid till the end of the month, just two weeks left…

Project PARDA

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My colleague Irfan just emailed me about a new paper he has been working on and which will be presented at the FAST 2009 conference. Irfan wrote this mind blowing paper with Ajay Gulati and Carl Waldspurger. PARDA: Proportional Allocation of Resources for Distributed Storage Access.

Some of you might recognize Carl’s name by the way  cause he also wrote the famous “Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server” paper, which explains the effect of TPS and content based page page sharing.

I didn’t say mind blowing just to make it sound cool, this is one of those papers that will make your brain hurt… well at least for me as a Consultant it does.

A short outtake that explains what PARDA is about:

PARDA, a novel software system that enforces proportional-share fairness among distributed hosts accessing a storage array, without assuming any support from the array itself. PARDA uses latency measurements to detect overload, and adjusts issue queue lengths to provide fairness, similar to aspects of flow control in FAST TCP.

There’s one thing that stands out in my opinion after reading the paper a couple of times:

Combining a distributed flow control mechanism with a fair local scheduler allows us to provide end-to-end IO allocations to VMs. However, an interesting alternative is to apply PARDA flow control at the VM level, using per-VM latency measurements to control per-VM window sizes directly, independent of how VMs are mapped to hosts. This approach is appealing, but it also introduces new challenges that we are currently investigating. For example, per-VM allocations may be very small, requiring new techniques to support fractional window sizes, as well as efficient distributed methods to compensate for short-term burstiness.

So you can see where this might be going in the near future. Memory shares, CPU shares and Storage Shares. Combine this with OVF and vApp, which gives you the opportunity to add these details in the VM’s metadata, and you’ve got one big SLA driven virtualized environment or should I say a vCloud?!? This is not what the paper is about by the way, the paper describes what PARDA is, does and how it’s been tested… and it includes the results of course.

Irfan also wrote a short blog article on the paper you might also want to check this one, and don’t forget to add him to your bookmarks/rss reader!

New version of ESX Deployment Appliance(EDA)

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Herco van Brug aka “brugh” just released a new version of ESX Deployment Appliance(EDA), 0.87.

New in 0.87:

  • editing the order of the scriptparts
  • bulk creation and deletion of ESX hostnames/ip
  • an fs.php page that allows for small remote updates
  • ESXi support fixed again

So if you want to install your ESX hosts in a consistent way and faster than ever before, look into EDA now. If you need a guide on how to set it up take a look at Simon Long’s post on GabesVirtualWorld.com.