Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

innovate

VMworld Reveals: DRS 2.0 (#HBI2880BU)

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At VMworld, various cool new technologies were previewed. In this series of articles, I will write about some of those previewed technologies. Unfortunately, I can’t cover them all as there are simply too many. This article is about DRS 2.0, which was session HBI2880BU. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. This session was presented by Adarsh Jagadeeshwaran and Sai Inabattini. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing a Technical Preview, this feature/product may never be released, and this preview does not represent a commitment of any kind, and this feature (or it’s functionality) is subject to change. Now let’s dive into it, what is DRS 2.0 all about?

The session started with an intro, DRS was first introduced in 2006. Since then datacenters, and workloads (cloud-native architectures), have changed a lot. DRS, however, has remained largely the same over the past 10 years. What we need is a resource management engine which is more workload-centric than it is cluster-centric, that is why we are planning on introducing DRS 2.0

What has changed? In general, the changes can be placed in 3 categories:

  • New cost-benefit model
  • Support for new resources and devices
  • Faster and scalable

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VMworld Reveals: VMware Cluster Memory (OCTO2746BU)

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At VMworld, various cool new technologies were previewed. In this series of articles, I will write about some of those previewed technologies. Unfortunately, I can’t cover them all as there are simply too many. This article is about VMware Cluster Memory, which was session OCTO2746BU. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. I first learned about VMware Cluster Memory at our VMware internal R&D conference in May this year, and immediately got excited about it. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing a Technical Preview, this feature/product may never be released, and this preview does not represent a commitment of any kind, and this feature (or it’s functionality) is subject to change. Now let’s dive into it, what is Cluster Memory?

Well, it is exactly what you would expect it to be. Providing the ability to create a pool of cross-host memory resources. Now in order to do this, the first problem that needs to be looked at is the network. As mentioned in the session, the ratio of network to memory latency has lowered significantly. In 1997 the ratio was 1000 roughly, right now it is below 10. Meaning that network latency has lowered from milliseconds to low microseconds. Today to reach these low microseconds latencies technologies like RDMA will need to be considered. This change is very important for the Cluster Memory feature being discussed. Also very important, is the fact that RDMA is affordable, and this means it will be coming to a data center near you soon. A huge difference compared to years ago.

[Read more…] about VMworld Reveals: VMware Cluster Memory (OCTO2746BU)

2013 VMware Fling Contest – Join in on the fun!

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Last year VMware organized the very first VMware Open Innovation Contest and it was a very successful contest which resulted in an awesome fling called “pro-active DRS“. The Open Innovation Contest is back again in 2013 but now called the 2013 VMware Fling Contest.

Now lets get those creative juices flowing again, think about the challenges / problems you are facing everyday and how these could potentially solved and head over to the 2013 VMware Fling Contest website and submit: https://flingcontest.vmware.com/. Do note there is no need to rush to get your idea in, take your time – think about – but make sure to submit it before Nov 15th.

Of course there is an awesome price again, the winner gets a free pass to VMworld 2014, on top of that the VMware engineering team will execute on your idea and a fling will be released. How cool is that? If you need more info, stop by at the VMworld Innovation Booth at the solutions exchange.

VMware Innovate magazine edition available for download!

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Internally at VMware we have this cool magazine called “Innovate”. I am part of the team which is responsible for VMware Innovate. I noticed this tweet from Julia Austin and figured I would share it with all of you. This specific edition is about RADIO 2012, which is a VMware R&D innovation offsite. (So looking forward to RADIO 2013!)

There is some cool stuff to be found in this magazine in my opinion. Just one of the many nuggets, did you know VMware was already exploring vSphere FT in 2001? Just a nice reminder of how long typical engineering efforts can take. Download the magazine now!

Ganesh Venkitachalam presented “Hardware Fault Tolerance with Virtual Machines” (or Fault Tolerance, for short) at the “Engineering Offsite 2001.” This was released as a feature called Fault Tolerance for vSphere 4.0.