Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Xenserver patchmanagement

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One of the things that Xenserver, still lacks is decent patch management. VMware solved this in ESX3.5/VC2.5 with the “update manager” which is an awesome tool for updating your ESX Hosts. (Yes it can be used for Windows/Linux and applications, but it needs to be refined in my opinion.) Patching Xenserver is a manual job, but not for long. Citrix just announced a new feature for the upcoming Xenserver release, pool-wide patchmanagement.

Pool-wide patch management has been integrated into the product, and, in conjunction with a wizard in XenCenter, will allow you to:

  • Check the Citrix XenServer website for updates
  • Download any pending updates to your XenCenter system
  • Choose which servers in your managed pools you wish to apply the patches to
  • Put each server in maintenance mode (with their VMs kept online on another server via XenMotion)
  • Apply the patches
  • Bring the server back online and move VMs back to it automatically

All in a single guided process.

There should be a beta available soon. It’s good to see Citrix is bringing Xenserver up to speed. This competition/rivalry will eventually make all products better! Read it at the source.

New ESX 3i download

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I just noticed that VMware released a new version of ESX 3i on the 10th of January. The current build number is “70348” and the previous was “67921”. It’s just a minor update:

EULA Update—The reissued version of ESX Server 3i Installable incorporates an updated, corrected version of the EULA.
Licensing Fix—The reissued version of ESX Server 3i Installable lets you apply appropriate host-based licenses to servers that have more than two CPUs.

Support on ESX 3i and HA

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I never noticed this, but during the configuration of HA in my testlab I received some weird errors. I just could not enable it on the ESX Server that ran ESX 3i, and I’m pretty sure DNS works fine. Today I received an email about 3i and support on HA, which states:

Support for VMware High Availability (HA) is experimental and expected to be fully supported in an upcoming patch or update.

You can read more about it in this PDF about 3i and HA. But is it me or is almost every single interesting new feature experimental. I hope that VMware will support all the new features when the patches/updates are released

Sun to aquire MySQL

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I don’t know what’s going on these days but Sun just bought MySQL AB for approximately $1 billion. After Xensource another open source related company that gets picked up by a market leader. Read it at the source!

Thinstall’s official statement

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Here it is:

Dear Valued Customer and Partner:

We are excited to announce the acquisition of Thinstall by VMware, a complementary virtualization solution provider.

The Thinstall Team is extremely excited to be a part of the growing VMware family of solutions for the Desktop. Combining our best of breed Application Virtualization technology with VMware’s world class engineering and support will enable us to provide a higher level of quality and service to all our valued customers.

Please see the following links for more information on the acquisition:

http://www.vmware.com/whatsnew/thinstall.html
http://www.thinstall.com/assets/docs/VMwareThinstallFAQ.pdf
www.thinstall.com
or www.vmware.com

We realize there still may be unanswered questions or you may have suggestions on how we may improve upon the quality of the processes, products and services we provide to our customers throughout the transition. We pride ourselves in a customer driven approach to product development and service and no one’s opinion counts more to us than yours. Please send your questions, comments and suggestion to customeroutreach@thinstall.com or contact your current Thinstall sales representative for more information.

Additional information regarding the roadmap, team integration, and transition as we enhance Thinstall’s best of breed technology with world class engineering and support organization will be posted to www.thinstall.com.

Yours Sincerely,

The Thinstall Team (now a part of the VMware family)