Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMware

New whitepapers

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VMware just published two whitepapers. I hadn’t noticed them yet and especially the second one is a very good read!

  1. VMCI Socket Performance
    The VMCI (Virtual Machine Communication Interface) device allows fast, efficient communication between virtual machines running on the same host, without using the guest networking stack. This paper presents VM-VM performance results using VMCI Sockets and compares these results to the VM-VM performance achieved using regular TCP/IP sockets.
  2. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0 Performance and Best Practices for Performance
    The goal of this white paper is to provide you with Site Recovery Manager performance data and recommendations so that you can architect an efficient recovery plan that minimizes the downtime for your environment.
    This white paper addresses various dimensions on which the recovery time depends:

    • Recoveries with iSCSI, FC, and NFS storage
    • Number of virtual machines and protection groups associated with a recovery plan
    • Virtual machine to protection group relation
    • Recovery site performance in a cluster with DPM and DRS
    • Configuration of various recovery plan parameters
    • Priority assignment of virtual machines in the recovery plan
    • High latency network between protected and recovery sites

    Furthermore, best practices are suggested in applicable areas so that you can optimize the recovery time using Site Recovery Manager.

It’s a sad day…

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For me personally it’s a sad day because my colleague, Yvo, has just resigned. Yvo is part of the VMware PSO Benelux team as a Senior Consultant and Operational Readiness Practice Lead and besides a great guy also one of the best consultants I ever worked with. Of course I am happy for Yvo and fully understand his decision as this is a great career opportunity and wish him all the best in the world at Cisco. (Get me a box UCS will you?!?! ;-))

As you can imagine we will more than likely need someone to fill Yvo’s spot as a Senior Consultant. So for one of you this might just be what you have been waiting for. If you are fluently Dutch and English, willing to travel, flexible and an expert on virtualization and have got solid consultancy skills you might just be the person we need. If you think you are or if you want more info, drop me an email and I will get you in contact with the right people or we can have an informal chat about the position. (duncan at yellow-bricks.com)

Oracle feels that not many people want to run their apps in a virtual environment!

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I just noticed the following article by “Oracle Storage Guy“:

Re: Need a favor – Oracle

You are not going to believe this.  Some VMware folks met with Charles Phillips, the president or CEO of Oracle and he said no customers had ever mentioned to him that they wanted Oracle to support their products on VMware.  Or modify the licensing scheme.  He offered if anyone knew of customers who did want better or more support for Oracle on VMware, or virtualization friendly licensing, to email him directly.  His email is Charles.phillips@oracle.com and he really needs to hear that customers run Oracle on VMware, and better support / licensing would be nice!

Apparently VMware provided Oracle a list of customers that wanted Oracle to support their Apps / Databases on VMware and even better change the licensing scheme to one that actually makes sense in 2009. Of course Charles Philips, Oracles President, responded that he never heard about this before. Charles apparently said that anyone who is looking for Oracle’s support or a licensing scheme based on vCPUs should drop him an email. Oracle customers can contact Charles.

Thanks Charles for taking this serious.

Run it with VMware Contest…

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There are still a couple of days left to enter the “Run It With VMware” contest. I just noticed a tweet which had a link to a video of one of the contestants. I thought it was funny, especially the last bit were the woman does the vSphere rap. Anyway, $ 5000,- grand prize and four $ 1000,- second prizes should be more than worth the effort. For more info check this website.

You can find more videos on Youtube.com.

VMware offers upgrade path to Virtual Iron customers

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I tweeted it yesterday and several bloggers already picked up. I wasn’t able to blog it cause I was at a customer site but still want to make sure the word is out. If you are a Virtual Iron customer and don’t want to get stuck on a dead end road this might be the perfect opportunity to make a U-Turn and head in the right direction!

Source: VMware Offers Safe Passage to Virtual Iron Customers
VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that it is offering existing Virtual Iron customers an easy way to migrate their Virtual Iron deployments to VMware vSphere™ 4, the industry’s leading virtualization platform. In light of news reports that Oracle will discontinue development of existing Virtual Iron products, the VMware offer gives companies a cost-effective way to upgrade to VMware vSphere™ 4, and provides customers a clear virtualization roadmap that will help meet their needs as their business grows.

The VMware offer gives Virtual Iron end customers who have a current license and support contract compelling savings on VMware vSphere™ 4 and VMware vCenter™ Server. More specifically, eligible Virtual Iron end customers receive aggressive discounts off the list price on the below products and services:

  • VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard
  • Support and subscription (SnS) on VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard

Proof of a current Virtual Iron license and support contract will be required to qualify for the VMware offer. Promotional pricing is limited to the number of Virtual Iron licenses supported by a current support agreement. The offer is valid through September 30, 2009.

VMware vSphere 4 delivers Virtual Iron customers the unparalleled efficiency and performance required to run critical applications in large scale environments, uncompromised control over application security and service levels, and unmatched flexibility of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.

VMware vSphere 4 also delivers “Always On IT” for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and remote and branch office (ROBO) IT environments. With VMware vSphere 4, smaller IT environments can achieve zero-downtime application availability, enterprise-class data protection, disaster recovery and simplified management at an affordable price point.

Existing Virtual Iron customers can learn more about how to migrate now to VMware vSphere 4 by visiting www.vmware.com/go/safepassage or by contacting VMware at SafePassage@vmware.com.