VSphere on myvirtualcloud.net

Datrium Audited as the Highest IOmark Benchmark Result in History - Mind-Blowing 10X!

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 07:00:35 +0000

"Datrium is the most scalable, fastest and lower latency storage solution (converged or not) on the market, beyond doubt."

We already knew that our solution is really competent, but there's nothing like a 3rd party audited benchmark to convince even the most suspicious greybeards. The results are mind-blowing!

VDI Calculator v7 Now Available w/ major changes

Wed, 06 Apr 2016 17:23:16 +0000

CHECK OUT THE NEW WEB VDI CALCULATOR HERE

Today I am releasing a new version on my VDI calculator, V7. This is a major release that include major improvements to the way VDI infrastructures are calculated, while also simplifying the process for people new to VDI sizing. I put a lot of effort into this release and had to make some big code changes to accommodate the desired outcomes. Let's go to What's New!

New 'Acropolis File Services' with Native Support for VMware Horizon UEM and Citrix Profile Manager

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 08:15:46 +0000

Nutanix has been primarily used to host virtual machines in the format of VMDKs and vdisks, but now it is also possible to natively store unstructured files such as user-generated content such as Office documents, and Windows user profiles and settings.

Nutanix 4.6 Features Overview – Part 2 (Beyond Marketing)

Sun, 21 Feb 2016 08:02:10 +0000

This is the second part of the series. The first part can be found here and contains the overview for the following new features:

Native File Services
Performance Improvements
Volume Groups in PRISM
Self Service Restore (SSR)
1-Click Upgrades of Foundation, BIOS, BMC
Metro Availability Non-Disruptive vMotion and Site Migrations
Cross Hypervisor Disaster Recovery
Project Dial: In-Place Hypervisor Conversion
OpenStack Integration
Citrix Power Management Plugin
AHV Guest Customization
AHV VLAN Trunking
Prism Actionable Capacity Forecasting
Prism Customizable Dashboards
Prism Entity Explorer

Nutanix 4.6 Features Overview - Part 1 (Beyond Marketing)

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 05:00:21 +0000

Update: Part two of the series can be found here.

Only four months after releasing Nutanix Based Software 4.5 (read Prism Central and NOS 4.5, NCC 2.1, Foundation 3.0 and MORE Tech Preview Features – What’s New!), a major release with multiple new features and improvements, Nutanix is once again pushing out a major release with tons of new features and huge performance improvements (here Official Press Release).

What are the VDI options for Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor?

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 14:17:19 +0000

The majority of Nutanix customers running VDI on Nutanix today are using vSphere as hypervisor. However, there is an increasing demand for Nutanix Acropolis supported VDI solutions. Customers want to run VDI on Acropolis, eliminating hypervisor license costs, therefore reducing the total cost per desktop. Cost per desktop has been one of the factors in VDI adoption leading to many ROI discussions; furthermore, vSphere is overkill for some VDI deployments.

The One with the GPU Graphics Performance

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 11:00:12 +0000

Those who follow my articles know that I have always been a big supporter of VDI as a method to simplify desktop administration, reduce costs, improve user experience, increase productivity, provide remote access and enable BYOD, and provide an effective disaster recovery solution for workspaces. Whilst VDI has delivered on these promises, there has been previously room for improvement in a few areas.

Nutanix Metro Availability Operations – Part 2

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 16:32:33 +0000

In the first part of this Nutanix Metro Availability series I discussed the datacenter failure recovery operation (failover) to a secondary site. In this second part I talk about the operational procedure to resume normal operations back to the primary site (failback) after a successful failover operation.

Nutanix and Veeam Strong Momentum

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:52:05 +0000

It's very pleasing when two companies enter in deep collaboration at multiple levels - this is the case of Nutanix and Veeam. In a series of joint technical and market efforts both companies have a strong momentum. Nutanix and Veeam share a similar focus on the virtualizsed data center and on the private cloud which utilizes virtualization as its underpinning technology. The combination of Nutanix and Veeam provide a great combination for protecting data in both environments. Here are few things I would like to share:

Powershell Script to Mass Clone and Power VMs via vCenter using VAAI

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:12:57 +0000

After publishing the Cloning and Powering VMs on Nutanix with VAAI video I was asked if I could share the PowerShell scripts used for the demo. I want to thank Steven Poitras (@StevenPoitras) for creating and allowing me to share the scripts with the broader community.

The scripts utilize vCenter Server to create clones and it's likely that vCenter will be the bottleneck during the provisioning process. I recommend assigning more RAM and vCPU as needed. My vCenter server ended up with 8GB RAM and 4 vCPU.

Additionally, I recommend increasing the maximum number of concurrent operations vCenter will allow. To do that one must increase the maxCostPerHost advanced setting to 24.

Quick Switching Nutanix Hyper-V to vSphere

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 18:42:43 +0000

I was given a Nutanix cluster with 2 blocks (8 nodes) to learn about the product, features and interoperability. The cluster already had Hyper-V installed.

My core virtualization skills are on vSphere, so I decided to switch the base hypervizor for all nodes to vSphere. As I mentioned in previous posts Nutanix is hypervizor agnostic, supporting vSphere, KVM and Hyper-V. The platform is able to aggregate different node types concurrently in a single Nutanix cluster.

During one of the host installations I recorded this 3 minute video to demonstrate how simple it is to manually switch hypervizors in a Nutanix cluster, however it cal also be automated. In my next video I will demonstrate how to initiate a Nutanix cluster. Keep tuned!

Watch in 720P (HD)

This article was first published by Andre Leibovici (@andreleibovici) at myvirtualcloud.net.

How is Horizon View configured for VMware VSAN?

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 08:14:04 +0000

In my previous article I discussed VSAN benefits for Horizon View (How does VMware VSAN help Horizon View?), including CAPEX and OPEX savings provided by the use of inexpensive server disks for shared storage and simplified day-to-day storage configuration and provisioning activities.

Deployment Options for vCenter Server in a Horizon View Pod [video]

Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:10:30 +0000

Starting in Horizon View 5.2, you can use a single vCenter Server to manage up to 10,000 desktops in a single Horizon View pod. VMware delivered this innovation in response to multiple requests from customers and partners.

Using a single vCenter Server, you can build a simple infrastructure that provides a single place to manage master images, fewer back-end databases and database servers, and a single vSphere Web interface to match the View Administrator interface. A single vCenter Server deployment drastically simplifies management.

Linked Clone Ad hoc space reclamation from allocated unused disk space

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 13:13:32 +0000

Horizon View 5.2 leverages a new vSphere capability that implements a new disk format for VMs on VMFS that allow for grain reduction size & more efficiently utilization of allocated blocks by filling it with real data. Unused space is reclaimed and Linked Clone desktops stay small.

3D Software Rendering with View 5.2... What's Changing!

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:00:52 +0000

When VMware View 5.1 was release I wrote about the changes to storage and memory footprint when the 3D software rendering option was enabled.

Just to recap:

View VSA Recompose Time Issue & Workaround

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:10:21 +0000

The View Storage Accelerator (aka VSA or CBRC) feature is part of vSphere 5 and later and is used by VMware View. VSA helps to address some of the performance bottlenecks and the increase storage cost for VDI. CBRC is a 100% host-based RAM-Based caching solution that helps to reduce read IOs issued to the storage subsystem and thus improves scalability while being completely transparent to guest OSs.

My Work & Home Lab Environments

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:45:12 +0000

This is one of those geek posts that are interesting to the community IMO. I am frequently asked about the lab environment I am using for prototyping End User Computing stuff and general VMware product learning and testing. People ask me what kind of physical hardware and logical setup I am using to interact with multiple different VMware products.

VMware Distributed Storage and VDI

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:03:58 +0000

In today's market we are seeing a clear change in storage architectures and the drivers for change are new technologies such as SSD/Flash and new applications, which have different requirements from the storage subsystem. Some of the storage architectures that we are seeing in the market are the traditional ones such as SAN/NAS, gateways to cloud storage, scale out storage, BLOB storage and DAS with flash drives.

Windows 7 Transparent Page Sharing and the ASLR story…

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:06:00 +0000

“Common knowledge is knowledge that is known by everyone or nearly everyone, usually with reference to the community in which the term is used.” – Source: Wikipedia.

It is typical to have sets of common knowledge that guide best practices. However, common knowledge isn’t always correct and people tend to embrace common knowledge as the only and absolute truth.

TPS, Large Memory Pages and your VDI environment

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:19:00 +0000

If you have been running VMware View 4.0 or greater the chances are that you have vSphere 4.0 U2 or vSphere 4.1 deployed in your VDI infrastructure. You may have VMware Infrastructure 3.5 U5 but I am hoping that at this stage you have already been trough the upgrade.

vscsiStats Excel Macro for Automated Charts

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:03:00 +0000

Navigating through some VDI related posts I found this very useful Excel macro created by Paul Dunn that will automatically create charts for all the data produced by vscsiStats. I thought was worth sharing since I always spend time creating those charts when I need to demonstrate the IO profile or troubleshoot storage latencies. Paul, thanks for that!

How to script Datastore Multipathing change using PowerShell

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:01:00 +0000

There is a recurring situation that I face whenever I am deploying a new VMware View environment (also applicable to any vSphere deployment) . Due to natural limitations on number of IOPS per datastore (LUN), VMware recommends that you size your datastores for a maximum of 64 virtual desktops. This number could be higher, however you will need to pay attention to the number of IOPS required to support the workload, and verify that each LUN and backend array/spindles are able to provide the required performance. Normally this performance is measured by the latency number between I/O requests. There are references that mention that if I/O latency is higher than 10 milliseconds on average and higher than 20 milliseconds at peak your workload is under I/O contention.

Improve VDI performance with IO Length Trending

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:32:00 +0000

In a VDI environment each CPU cycle, megabyte of memory or disk IO that can be reduced may represent considerable performance improvement when the workload is characterized by hundreds or thousands of desktops. Disk alignment is a topic that has been discussed to exhaustion, but the use of the correct block/cluster size for your workload is something that will drastically improve your VDI disk IO performance.

Host Swapping (another Case Study)

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Recently a good article named “Is this VM actively swapping?” was posted by Duncan Epping. Coincidently, in a recent engagement I stumbled upon an interesting swapping scenario.
Just to put in context:

DRS Cluster with 8 hosts across 2 different blade enclosures
Cluster is not memory overcommitted
All VMs have latest VMware Tools installed
TPS is enabled
All VMs hosted in shared storage with low latency
No memory reservations for VMs individually

16078 Free -> Currently 16GB memory available
High State -> Hypervisor is not under memory pressure
SWAP /MB 7222 Cur -> 7GB has been swapped
0.00 r/s -> No reads from swap currently
0.00 w/s -> No writes to swap currently

APAC Virtualisation Podcast (Vizioncore & their Revolutionary Toolset) – Wed 14/4

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:06:00 +0000

This week’s podcast will have Simon Poulton, Snr. System Engineers for ANZ, from Vizioncore.

Vizioncore is a Market Leader in Virtual Management Serving More Than 20,000 Customers Worldwide and during the last few years Vizioncore has provided administrators with many tools to facilitate the day-to-day admin tasks.

Project JIGSAW helping to Save the Planet with VMware & HP

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:32:00 +0000

I just happen to know that a global supply chain logistics provider from New Zealand has done an amazing effort to help to save the planet.

On September, 29th at 8:30pm, New Zealand was the first country in the world to take part in the global ‘lights out’ event “earth hour”, setting in motion a 24-hour wave of “lights out” events that will follow the sun around the planet.

Enabling Jumbo Frames for VMware View on IP Storage Networks

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:56:00 +0000

Although many elements are important for designing a storage system that supports a VMware View environment, from a server configuration perspective, planning for proper bandwidth and latency is essential.

VMware View environments can occasionally experience peak I/O loads, during which all virtual machines undertake an activity at the same time. I/O storms can be triggered by guest-based agents such as antivirus software or software-update agents. They can also be triggered by human behaviour, such as when all employees log in at nearly the same time in the morning.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization goes head-to-head with vSphere

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:43:00 +0000

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor features are really impressive and goes head-to-head with VMware vSphere 4.0. The release 5.4 of the product has been integrated with KVM hypervisor technology acquired from Qumranet back in 2008. The current release supports live migration, load balancing, snapshots, flexible storage, memory page sharing and ballooning, SSL encryption, multiple virtual CPUs etc…

VMware View 4 – What changes for the Administrator

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:50:00 +0000

The big difference between VMware View 3 and 4 is that View 4 adds a new display protocol – PCoIP - that provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment specially across WANs with high latency and low bandwidth.

vCenter Fail to Launch Virtual Machine Console

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:51:00 +0000

I have seen this issue many times. If vCenter VM management works fine but there is a problem launching the Virtual Machine Console and the error says: “Unable to connect to the MKS: Host address lookup for server servername failed: No such host is known” check the DNS resolution at the workstation running vCenter client. It should be able to resolve the host running the VM.