vSphere 5 is now available!

According to Yellow Bricks, it is now available for download. I'll update with links as soon as I get to a computer, but here is Yellow Bricks post.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vSphere 5 Around the Corner!

VMware recently announced vSphere 5 will be coming July-August time frame 2011.

Three big new features will be included when it does come:

Storage DRS

Just like you use DRS to help you manage the workload on your hosts, Storage DRS will help you manage the workload on your SANs. The essential workup is that you'll be able to group your storage into storage pods that you can allow Storage DRS to manage what goes where based on capacity. Pretty cool, if you are dealing with some complicated storage situations.

SRM Host-Based Replication
This buys you the ability to use SRM even if you have disparing storage at your different locations.

Network I/O Control for VMs

This allows you the option to reserve bandwidth for high-priority VMs when you've got a congested network. Very useful control to have, depending on your network layout and configuration.


Another anouncement that VMware has made about vSphere 5 - it's ESXi all the way. That's right, ESX will be discontinued in favor of it's lighter, tigher cousin. I mentioned that this was coming before, but now it's actually here. Hope you are ready for migration!

VMware won't leave you figuring it out on your own, though. They recommend that you start migrating off ESX to ESXi now in preparation for the move to vSphere 5. Here is their Info Center about it, and here is their Migration Guide.
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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Basics of Installing VMware View 4.6

We just got View 4.6 up and running in our Demo environment, and here are the basic take-aways that we have.

1. Windows 2008R2 is the minimum for VMware View Secure Gateway. Or Demo Environment was previously on 2003R2, so we had to do an upgrade.
2. You have to update all of your View Base Images to the View 4.6 Agent.
3. You have to install the latest version of VMware Tools in your View Base Images
4. A number of Microsoft Patches need to be installed on your View Base Images:
• KB961501
• KB968389
• KB975467
• KB971657
• KB944043
5. You must remove all previous Snap Shots, and start fresh for your Linked Clones

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

VMware View released for iPad

VMware released the VMware View App for the iPad this week.

This allows you to use PCoIP on the iPad; the only App previously was the Wyse PocketCloud, which limited you to using RDP through View.

You can see the app in iTunes here.

VMware has also created a forum for the VMware View for iPad App to discuss feature requests, issues, and ideas.

The new app will work with VMware View 4.6 or later, not with View 4.5, so if you aren't yet upgraded to View 4.6 (which came out at the end of Febrary), you'll need to first.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

VMware View 4.6 Released

With very little fanfare, VMware slid View 4.6 onto the market yesterday.

One of the noticeable improvements in View 4.6 is the support for PCoIP connections through the Secure Gateway. There are also some USB compatibility addressed for iPhones, iPads, and scanners; keyboard mapping improvements, and updated timeout settings for SSO users. Plus a minor 160 bug fixes.

You can download View 4.6 from VMware with a free 60 day trial if you want.

For your convenience, here's the "What's New" section of the Release Notes:

What's New in View 4.6

VMware View 4.6 includes the following new features:

• Security servers can now accommodate PCoIP connections - Security servers now include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component. The PCoIP Secure Gateway connection offers the following advantages:
  • The only remote desktop traffic that can enter the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user.
  • Users can access only the desktop resources that they are authorized to access.
  • No VPN is required, as long as PCoIP is not blocked by any networking component.
  • Security servers with PCoIP support run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.
• Enhanced USB device compatibility - View 4.6 supports USB redirection for syncing and managing iPhones and iPads with View desktops. This release also includes improvements for using USB scanners, and adds to the list of USB printers that you can use with thin clients. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• Keyboard mapping improvements - Many keyboard-related issues have been fixed. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• New timeout setting for SSO users - With the single-sign-on (SSO) feature, after users authenticate to View Connection Server, they are automatically logged in to their View desktop operating systems. This new timeout setting allows administrators to limit the number of minutes that the SSO feature is valid for.
  
  For example, if an administrator sets the time limit to 10 minutes, then 10 minutes after the user authenticates to View Connection Server, the automatic login ability expires. If the user then walks away from the desktop and it becomes inactive, when the user returns, the user is prompted for login credentials. For more information, see the VMware View Administration documentation.
• VMware View 4.6 includes more than 160 bug fixes - For descriptions of selected resolved issues, see Resolved Issues.
• Experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 RC operating systems

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vRanger 5.0 is released!

As of January 31, 2011, Quest vRanger 5.0 is now publicly available and out of beta.

There are now two versions of vRanger available: vRanger Standard Edition 5.0 and vRanger Pro 5.0. Pro buys you these additional features that people have been looking forward to: Replication, LAN Free, Catalog, and Linux FLR. Here's a look at them:

vReplicator is integrated into vRanger Pro
You no longer have to buy two separate products to do backups and replication if you choose to go the Quest route. You can use one single product for both.

Support for NFS and FTP Repositories
We already had support for CIFS and SFTP targets. The addition of NFS and FTP gives more flexibility on what you can use as a backup target. They didn't integrate credentials into the NFS support, however, so you will need to make sure that you lock down your NFS shares in other ways.

Linux File Level Restores
I know a number of people who are excited about this one. You've always been able to do FLR on Windows VMs, and now you can do the same with LinuxVMs.

Catalogs
You now have the option to catalog your file and directory structure during the backup process, rather than having to wait for it to propagate during your restore process. Awesome thing if you are always doing the type of restore where someone is sitting over your shoulder because they needed the file (that they deleted, coincidentally) yesterday; now they can't scream at you for it taking too long. My concern is that it might increase the backup window (one of the big selling points for vRanger for me is the speed) - I'm going to have to test it out and see.

LAN Free Restores over Fibre
Allows you do restores on your fibre network without touching the bandwidth on your lan.


What's Missing

Unfortunately, I notice several key features missing that were promised, that we will probably have to wait for vRanger 6.0 (current due date 2012) until they are released:

Direct-to-Target backups from ESXi (it has to backup using the vRanger box as a proxy) via a Virtual Appliance. You can currently do Direct-to-Target from ESX, but due to the lack of service console on ESXi, it will need a VA.

FlashRestore, which allows you to start running a VM before it finishes restoring. Very cool for those who are under a time crunch (wait, I believe that's the whole IT industry).


If you want to read more, or download a trial, you can from the Quest vRanger Website.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

vFoglight 6.5 is out

Quest vFoglight 6.5 was released today and is available for download from Quest's site.

For those who aren't familiar, vFoglight is Performance Management software for Virtual Environments (both VMware and Hyper-V).

Here's a breakdown of the new features available in vFoglight 6.5, as highlighed by Ben Scheerer:

Release Highlights
With Version 6.5, Quest vFoglight is focused on addressing specific virtual management needs by:

• Reducing time and effort required to manage and fix problems in the virtual infrastructure through built-in automation, workflow based alert remediation and in-context administration
• Easily presented user centric views “perspectives” that provides a single view giving a complete understanding of the infrastructure status 
• Leveraging additional hypervisor technologies to more seamlessly fit into existing virtualized environments

vFoglight v6.5 includes new and improved capabilities across performance monitoring, administration, remediation, capacity planning, chargeback, and service management in a single, downloadable solution.

• Only to offer a unique visual paradigm using color coding and movement to direct administrators to problem areas
• Reduces time and effort required to manage the virtual infrastructure through built-in automation, workflow based alert remediation and in context administration
• Capacity planning capabilities quickly identifies bottlenecks, predict capacity failures, provide scenario models and identifies candidates for optimization
• Understand how the infrastructure is supporting key applications and business services including the ability to associate costs for the use of infrastructure
• Supports heterogeneous hypervisor platforms including VMware and Hyper-V
• New support for Exchange Server 2010 (Foglight for Exchange)

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Office 2010 ThinApp

So I've been struggling in my spare time to get Office 2010 ThinApped on Windows 7, and here's what I found:

You can't do it yet.

Found a forum here talking about it. You can get it on XP (I don't care about XP right now in my test View environment), but not Win 7.

The issue is that you run into a licensing error when you deploy, because of the way that MS has changed licensing for Office 2010.

So as of right now there are two solutions for my View environment - require everyone to be on 2010 (include it in the base image) or make 2 base images, and move people over as possible.

Either way a pain, but whatever works.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410

View 4.5 is Alive!

So I finally had to make time to put in View 4.5 on my 2 test Datacenters (one is a Demo environment, the other for play).

Went in like a breeze on both. Run the installer for View Manager, update the View Composer, and boom. I'm up to 4.5.

The only real issue I ran into was with my existing XP Linked Clone pool on my test Datacenter (the Demo datacenter was fine...). I went in and removed and re-added the View Agent and updated my Snap and pointed the Pool to it. No joy. I got a blank screen.

Did some research, and saw some notes about ESX 4.0u2 with View 4.0 causing this issue, so I thought I'd start there.
Here's two links I found:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016753
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1022830

Besides, I felt like updating the datacenters to ESX 4.1 anyway, since I had held off because View 4.0 doesn't like ESX 4.1.

So I went through and upgraded vCenter, vCenter Update Manger, then used Update Manager to update my hosts. If you've not used Update Manager for it, you should - it's cool to watch. Apply your baseline with 4.1, tell it to remediate, and sit back and enjoy. That is, assuming of course, that all of your vms can migrate on their own (aka, you don't have them attached to CD drives, etc).

So once I had them updated, I once again updated my vmTools on the XP image, removed and readded the View Agent for good measure, then updated my Snap and Linked Clones. Still no joy.

So I though, ok, maybe something is wrong with my pool.

I created a new desktop pool (based off the same Snap) and it worked!

Since these were just Demo/Test datacenters, I just blew away my old pools and created new ones. If this was a live environment, then I'd have to worry about keeping the persistent disks and reattaching them.

After XP was successful, I built myself a Win 7 image, created a pool off of it, and awesome! It works great.

I love the dual monitors! I have two different resolution monitors at home, and two different aspect ratio monitors at work, so I can now take full advantage of them with View 4.5.

Now I'm going to proceed with testing out the ThinApp stuff integrated into View 4.5, and some performance testing, but so far it all looks awesome!

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:

Really?

Really?

The View 4.5 Client for local mode can't even install on a computer that is running another VMware product (like VMware Workstation).

I understand all the reasons behind, but Really?

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
VCP VMware Certified Professional vSphere 4 Study Guide (Exam VCP410) with CD-ROM (Certification Press)
VCP4 Exam Cram: VMware Certified Professional (2nd Edition)

View 4.5 Features

Here's a quick breakdown on what's new in VMware 4.5 - these are the features that didn't exist in View 4.0:

1. Offline Desktop - This is a biggy. It allows you to use a laptop that's not always on the network. This means "Yes, you are a candidate for VDI, Mr. CEO."
2. Windows 7 - Another biggy. Fully supports Win 7. You can now get rid of your legacy XP boxes :-)
3. Support for vSphere and vCenter 4.1 - Like this required any thought. vSphere 4.1 came out, and didn't support View Composer - obviously because they knew they were about to release View 4.5.
4. More View Clients - they extended this to Mac OS X
5. Easy ThinApp Delivery - It's all integrated, so you don't have to worry.
6. Administration Based on Roles - You can define who can administer what; something View 4.0 was missing. Big deal for Enterprises.
7. Support added for Tiered Storage - You can now take advantage of more storage options for your VDI clients to improve performance and control costs.
8. A bunch of other stuff

Needless to say, there's some cool new stuff. If you want to see the full list, check out the release notes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/view45/doc/view45_releasenotes.html

We're getting ready to install / play with View 4.5 in our lab so that we can figure out the caveats. I'll post back about those when we figure them out.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VMware vSphere 4 Implementation
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)
VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use