Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

vCloud Solutions Architect

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VMware is looking for a vCloud Solutions Architect for EMEA. This is probably one of the most challenging jobs within VMware at the moment… time for a change? Looking for a new challenge? Here you go:

Virtualization is the technology that is poised to change the way we think about computing. VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest-growing public software companies. VMware’s award-winning technology, market-leading position and culture of excellence provide the more than 6,600 passionate people we employ in 40 locations worldwide with a platform for professional growth and the excitement of being an early-stage innovator.

The vCloud Solutions Architect will be responsible for providing deep technical expertise with regards to vCloud opportunities involving VMware customers and partners. The individual will interface directly with the customer as well as being the technical liaison with VMware’s partners in designing and validating vCloud solutions and architectures. In addition to technical architecture support, the vCloud Solutions Architect will collaborate with Product Management and Engineering as the field representative on the support and development of current and future vCloud initiatives.

Responsibilities:

  • Present VMware vCloud vision, strategy and product roadmaps to executives and technical management
  • Provide expert technical architectural support and guidance for vCloud opportunities, including integration into existing management and monitoring systems
  • Assist in technically managing initial vCloud implementations including proof-of-concepts and pilots
  • Maintain deep technical and business knowledge of cloud hosting industry directions and trends
  • Work collaboratively with Product Management and Engineering during the development, launch and continuing refinement of VMware vCloud products
  • Document best practices & architectural references in developing and deploying VMware vCloud solutions

Requirements:

  • Multiple years of infrastructure architecture experience with significant depth around designing, implementing, and managing critical cross-functional integration projects at hosting providers. Engagement experience should include IT strategy initiatives, middleware implementations, and leveraging overall technical architecture knowledge across multiple industries
  • The individual should have extensive architectural skills dealing with infrastructure solutions such as systems management and business continuity. Expert level knowledge of x86 operating systems, advanced networking, storage architectures and programming experience is desirable
  • Enthusiastic, self-starter with a charismatic personality
  • Proven track record of selling services as part of a solution
  • Ability to see and present “the big picture” and offer solutions to make it better
  • Strong customer facing and relationship building skills
  • Must be effective in working both independently and in a team setting
  • Strong listening and question based selling skills
  • Ability to uncover business challenges and develop a custom solution to solve those challenges
  • Excellent communication skills, both written and oral are required
  • A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, related field or equivalent experience

Drop me an email if you’re interested…

New ESX(i) 3.5 patches available

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Normally I would give you guys a nice overview of the patches + KB articles but I’m on a holiday this week with limited access to wifi. Because I’m typing this on my blackberry this post will lack the details, feel a bit like Rev. Run ;-), but you guys know the drill anyway.

In total 11 new patches (9 for ESX and two for ESXi) are up for download. Make sure to read the accompanied KB articles first and of course test the patches before implementing!

Have fun,

VCDX Design Exam: been there, done that!

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I just received the following email:

Duncan,

I just wanted to let you know that you have passed the VI3 Design exam, the third of five parts of the VCDX certification program. Next steps are the submission of applications and then the defense.

Scoring our exams took a long time because we were in the alpha group. But I passed… I’m happy! I just submitted my Design and all application forms, and I’ve got the defense scheduled for upcoming Monday! Yihaaa,

VI:OPS – Automating Network Setting Changes and DNS Updates on Recovery Site Using SRM

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I just received an email about an excellent article on VI:OPS. The article is titled “Automating Network Setting Changes and DNS Updates on Recovery Site Using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager“. It includes a PDF file which contains a description for configuring automatic IP-Changes but also includes batch files for DNS updates.

When performing site failover, IT administrators are often faced with challenges to deal with disparate networks on the recovery site:

  • Network properties of virtual machines need to be customized according to the network specification of the recovery site.
  • Domain Name Server (DNS) records pertaining to these virtual machines need to be updated.

VMware® vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) enables customers to design automated recovery plans that incorporate all these necessary network property changes, relieving them of the repetitive and error-prone manual tasks.

This paper shows the mechanisms that SRM customers can use in order to automate these tasks related to network related changes.

CPU Affinity…

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I was just reading a discussion on the VMTN community on CPU affinity. The general opinion of the Experts is “Don’t use CPU affinity”. I fully agree with them, ESX is more than capable to handle the scheduling on it’s own with just a limited overhead. And like Ken Cline also stresses it could harm performance because of NUMA load balancing for instance.

Something that’s often overlooked though when one does CPU affinity is that people tend to give the VM vCPUs a 1:1 relationship with host cores. In other words a VM with two vCPUs will be pinned down to two cores on the host.

This does make sense doesn’t it? No it actually doesn’t. There’s more to a VM than just it’s vCPUs. I would like to refer to page 132 of the Resource Management Guide, aka HA-DRS Bible. In short, besides the vCPUs there are several VM associated threads that need to be scheduled as well. When affinity is set these threads, or worlds as VMware calls them, will be scheduled on the assigned cores. You can imagine that when you use the vCenter client to manage the client these threads(Video / Keyboard / Mouse / CD-Rom etc) will need to be scheduled on the same set of cores as the vCPUs need to be scheduled on… If you have a two vCPU VM and want to use CPU affinity pin it down to at least three cores! Before you start assigning cores to your VM also read the bulletpoints on page 133 why you shouldn’t.

The CPU affinity setting for a virtual machine applies not only to all of the virtual CPUs associated with the virtual machine, but also to all other threads (also known as “worlds”) associated with the virtual machine. Such virtual machine threads perform processing required for emulating mouse, keyboard, screen, CD‐ROM and miscellaneous legacy devices.

In some cases, such as display‐intensive workloads, significant communication might occur between the virtual CPUs and these other virtual machine threads. Performance might degrade if the virtual machineʹs affinity setting prevents these additional threads from being scheduled concurrently with the virtual machineʹs virtual CPUs (for example, a uniprocessor virtual machine with affinity to a single CPU, or a two‐way SMP virtual machine with affinity to only two CPUs).

For the best performance, when manual affinity settings are used, VMware recommends that you include at least one additional physical CPU in the affinity setting in order to allow at least one of the virtual machineʹs threads to be scheduled at
the same time as its virtual CPUs (for example, a uniprocessor virtual machine with affinity to at least two CPUs or a two‐way SMP virtual machine with affinity to at least three CPUs).