Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

vSphere GA?

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You know it will not take long when KB articles start popping up:

vSphere Client overview performance charts might not appear for ESX hosts prior to ESX 4.0 (1010568)        KB Article
vSphere environment that contains hosts running ESX 3.x earlier, some of the overview performance charts do not display data after you install or upgrade to vCenter Server 4.0. In such cases, a No data available message…

How to create default alarms when upgrading to vSphere 4.0 (1010399)        KB Article
Some of the default alarms included with vSphere 4.0 are not created on your system when you upgrade from a previous version. SQL scripts that ensure that the default alarms are added to your system are attached…

And there’s plenty more where that came from…. Just do a search on the KB site with the keyword “vSphere”.

vSphere performance

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The last couple of weeks I’ve seen all these performance numbers(most not publicly available though)  of vSphere, one even more impressing than the other. I think every one will agree that the latest one is really impressive, 364.00 IOPS is just insane. There’s no load vSphere can’t handle, when correctly sized of course.

But something that even made a bigger impression on me, as a consolidation fanatic, is the following line from the latest performance study:

VMware’s new paravirtualized SCSI adapter (pvSCSI) offered 12% improvement in throughput at 18% less CPU cost compared to LSI virtual adapter

Now this may not sound like much, but when you are running 50 hosts it will make a difference. It will save you on cooling / rack space / power / hardware / maintenance, in other words this will have it’s effect on your ROI and TCO. This is the kind of info that I would love to see more, where did we cut down on “overhead”… Which improvements will make our consolidation numbers go up?!

Online Cloud Computing Summit

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I received the following email below and I think it might interest you. It’s a free online cloud computing summit with 10 webcasts varying from OVF to Security to Monetizing. Although not mentioned below one of the people presenting is Edward Haletky of AstroArch Consulting and of course the VMTN Community Forums and podcast.

Here’s the info I received, I’m personally especially interested in the OVF webcast:

Dear Duncan,

I have read your blog “Yellow Bricks” and would like to invite you and your readership to a free online webcast summit on “Cloud Computing,” to be held May 20th. The summit is hosted by BrightTALK™ (www.brighttalk.com), and will include 4 presentations from leading IT experts on topics including:

  • “The Open Virtualization Format (OVF): A Building Block for Cloud” — Winston Bumpus, President, DMTF
  • “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing” — Jeff Bardin, Founding Member of Cloud Security Alliance
  • “Catalyst Preview: Cloud Computing’s Business Advantage” — Drue Reeves and Anne Thomas Manes, VPs and  Research Directors, Burton Group
  • “Monetizing the Cloud” — Ed Sullivan, CEO, Aria Systems

You can review the agenda and register for the Cloud Computing summit at: http://www.brighttalk.com/summit/cloudcomputing2

I still owed you guys a picture…

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I still owed you guys something. Here’s the list of the people that where awarded the VCDX certification during the VMware TS vSummit 2009 in San Francisco:

  1. John Arrasjid (US)
  2. Mostafa Khalil (US)
  3. Kamau Wanguhu(US)
  4. Andrew Hald (US)
  5. Mahesh Rajani (US)
  6. Craig Risinger (US)
  7. Duncan Epping (Netherlands)
  8. Richard Damoser (Germany)

The vSummit award dinner was on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately Spencer Critchlow(VCDX 009, UK), Aidan Dalgleish(VCDX 010, UK) and Paul Nothard(VCDX 011, UK) were all scheduled on Friday and that’s why they are not in the picture. On the picture, but not VCDX’s: Melissa Tuite and Enis Konuk.

From left to right:
John Arrasjid, Mostafa Khalil, Craig Risinger, Enis Konuk, Melissa Tuite, Andrew Hald, Kamau Wanguhu, Duncan Epping, Richard Damoser and Mahesh Rajani.

I want to thank Thomas MacKay for the picture!