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Sunday, September 22, 2013

Download vSphere 5.5 with other Suites

vSphere 5.5. downloads are available from today so after the long wait since the Announcement was made at VMworld

ESXi / vCenter Server

Networking

VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.5.0

Cisco Nexus 1000v for 5.5
Note: Please refer the compatibility guide on Cisco's for your vCenter if running SRM and other on Nexus 1000v

vCOPS

VMware vCenter Operations Manager Standard 5.7.2

SRM, VDP & VR

CLI

vCO

vCenter Orchestrator Appliance 5.5

vCloud

Please choke the Internet by downloading the bits :-) and Happy upgrading your production systems and also your favorite Home Labs.

Share and Care !!

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Controlling Upgrade Chaos of VMware Environment

Lot of times depending on the VMware components you are using its always better to check which component to upgrade 1st whenever there is a newer version available.

Now this is a big question for any Organization as its affects the whole chain of Maintenance, downtime, change management requirements etc. etc.

If the downtime is involved in cost and other losses then such upgrade process must be thought out carefully before proceeding further.

Depending on the products in use sometimes people have the ability/luxury of having a standby/Dev/Test/Lab environment where they can do such upgrade first and verify if its affecting anything in such environment and if everything successfully upgraded then you can roll out the same steps in your Production environment.

Now look at the following Table which will clear up most of your doubts

Now as you can see the VCD (vCloud Director) is the 1st one in the process of upgrade. As the upgrade starts with the lowest number First you go with the same recommendation for all the products and related upgrade path (whether you run only few, all or some of them) and you should not be having any issues.

I would also suggest to search http://kb.vmware.com/ and the Release Notes for each products involved, for any known issues/gotchas during the upgrade so that you can take care of them before you proceed with the Upgrade.

Now here if you are using Cisco Nexus 1000v then you need to make sure before you upgrade your ESXi/vCenter Server, please make sure that the VSM/VEM version are supported/Compatible otherwise after upgrading your vCenter server you may end up in a dead water with NO connectivity on the VMs/ESXi if hosts if everything is managed through Nexus 1000v. With your existing version of VSM you can check up the Cisco's website for the Compatibility of ESXi/VC.

As Nexus 1000v is a Cisco product the above Matrix is not reflecting the same but it will be definitely grab a spot after vCenter/ESXi host upgrade paths.

There is a published KB 2037630 available too for more information which you can refer if you are running SRM/VR and VDP solution in your environment and which will guide you on the steps of overall upgrade.

And suppose you are running vCenter Server Appliance then the above KB will not help but instead refer the KB 2031331.

Enjoy upgrading VMware Environment !!

Share and care !

Cheers.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

All Free Courses offered by VMware Education !!

Now a days lot of companies have their various certifications in the market to compete others in the same area and VMware also has few new certifications released recently which includes VCAP5-DCD, VCP5-DT etc. for the Datacenter and Desktop streams.

Few others are in BETA stages such as VCAP5-DCA and VCP-IaaS right now and will become publicly available in future. The BETA Period is over by now for both exams so whomsoever willing to appear have to wait till it generally available.

The following list includes almost all the courses offered Free of Cost (self-paced) by VMware and the areas starts from vSphere Fundamentals, View, vShiled, vCenter Operations Manager, vCenter Chargeback, Site Recovery Manager, Virtualizing Tier 1 Databases such as SQL and Oracle and not limited to that but also included courses for the TC Server, GemFire, Groovy Grails, SpringSource, Hyperic (Companies acquired by VMware) etc. etc.

I have tried finding all the Free courses offered by VMware Education and if you find any course for which there is a cost involved then pleaes leave the feedback so that I can update the list accordingly.

These courses are very good for the person who never knew what vMware vSphere is or what ESX/ESXi server is. These courses are covering the starter level areas covering desktop products such as Workstation, Fusion, Lab manager, vSphere upto all at the advanced level areas such as vShiled, Tier 1 Database virtualization, View Design, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery etc. etc.

These courses are worth if one is preparing for any entry level certification like VCP to an advanced certification such as VCAP-DCD or VCAP-DCA for various tracks such as vSphere, View or IaaS (new upcoming first vCloud Certification).

vSphere 5.x and 4.1, SRM, DR/BC,Chargeback, Capacity IQ, AppSpeed,

• VMware vSphere What's New in 5.1

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=det&id_course=149391

vCloud, vShield, vCenter Chargeback, Configuration Manager

Learn about the basics of OSGi and how it provides a modular, dynamic environment for your applications
Learn how Spring Dynamic Modules allows to you to apply the familiar Spring programming model to your OSGi-based applications
Learn how the SpringSource dm Server enables you to build Enterprise Java applications that can benefit from OSGi’s features on the server-side
Learn about OSGi and Spring-DM best practices
Learn about options and best practices for applying modularization to your own applications

Metaprogramming With Groovy

http://www.springsource.com/training/free-online-video-metaprogramming-groovy
Key learning points:

Metaprogramming Techniques With Groovy
Metaprogramming Hooks
ExpandoMetaClass
Intercept, Cache and Invoke

Core Spring

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136220
Course Objectives covers

Use the Spring Framework to develop Java applications
Use dependency injection to set up and configure applications
Test Spring-based applications
Set up Spring configuration using XML, annotations, and Java configuration
Use Hibernate and JDBC with Spring to access relational databases
Use Spring support for transactions
Use aspect-oriented programming (AOP) to add behavior to objects
Develop a basic Web application with Spring MVC
Use Spring Security to secure Web applications
Use Spring with RMI, HttpInvoker, and JMS for remote communication
Add management with the JMX API

Enterprise Integration with Spring Training

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136215

You will learn:

How to design and implement asynchronous, event-driven, message-oriented systems with Spring JMS
How to use Spring Integration to implement Hohpe and Woolf's Enterprise Integration Patterns
How to cut through hype and understand 'buzzword' topics including SOA, ESB, and REST from first principles
How to design for concurrency using the latest from Spring and java.util.concurrent
How to optimize performance across integration boundaries

Rich Web Applications with Spring Training

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136217
You will learn:

Learn to create professional Ajax user interfaces with Spring JavaScript
Learn to design and implement stateful application transactions with Spring Web Flow 2
Learn to secure web applications effectively with Spring Security 2
Learn to get the most out of Ajax toolkits such as the Dojo Toolkit in your application
Learn to integrate JSF into your application with Spring Faces

I hope you will find these courses useful for your own study purpose and also to educate a person who is new to VMware virtualization. If you see any other courses which is not in the list above then please notify me or leave a feedback on the post and I will update the post.

For all the certification requirements and other necessary courses required for the ceritfications do visit the certification site http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/certification/ and the training site http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/index.cfm?ui=www_edu&redirect=off.

Good luck and enjoy the ride of VMware Virtualization !!

Monday, June 18, 2012

vCOPS Analyze and Predict Course

Hi all,

VMware Education has released this new course called "VMware vCenter Operations Manager: Analyze and Predict [V5.0]".

You can register for the same by clicking the link below.

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_subject=31492

Here is the course outline for those who are interested in attending

1  Course Introduction
•  Introductions and course logistics
•  Course objectives
2  Introduction to VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite
•  Understand the role of operations management in the cloud era
•  Understand the vCenter Operations Management Suite and its packaging
3  Architecture and Concepts
•  Understand the data collection methodology of the vCenter Operations Manager architecture
•  Learn how vCenter Operations Manager collects data
•  Master the main components of the dashboard view
•  Navigate the objects tree and understand the badge pane
4  Working with Dashboards and Badges
•  Understand the functions of major and minor badges
•  Use the Health major badge
•  Use the Risk major badge
•  Use the Efficiency major badge
•  Use the Operations tab to navigate to details
5  Analyzing with Heat Maps
•  Work with predefined and custom heat maps through the Analysis tab
6  Working with Smart Alerts
•  Configure and use smart alerts
•  Set up email notifications
7  Working with Capacity Planning and Reports
•  Schedule, use, and export predefined capacity management reports
•  Perform what-if analyses
8  Installing and Configuring VMware vCenter Operations Manager
•  Understand and meet preinstallation requirements
•  Install vCenter Operations Manager
•  Configure vCenter Operations Manager to gather data from its environment

The class is available in two formats - In Class and Online.

Check the schedule near your location and register at your earliest so that you won't miss the chance to attend as one of the first ones who will get a chance to explore more about vCOPS and how to use the product more effectively.

Enjoy vCOPS!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Announcement about Project Octopus & View 5.1

Project Octopus BETA is now available.

To register visit the site http://www.vmwareoctopus.com/

For more details

http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/05/project-octopus-public-beta-now-available.html

VMware View 5.1 is scheduled to be released in Q2 of 2012.

The main attractions are as under which were discussed here

View Storage Accelerator
This first feature was originally called CBRC (Content Based Read Cache). This was initially introduced in vSphere 5.0. Although it is a vSphere feature, it is designed specifically for VMware View. With the release of View 5.1, the View Storage Accelerator feature can now be used to dramatically improve the read throughput for View desktops. This will be particularly useful during a boot storm or anti-virus storm, where many virtual machines could be reading the same data from the same base disk at the same time. The implementation of the accelerator is done by taking an area of host memory for cache, and then creating 'digest' files for each virtual machine disk. This feature will be most useful for shared disks that are read frequently, such as View Composer OS disks. It will be available 'out of the box' with View 5.1; no additional components will need to be installed. This feature will significantly improve performance. More here.
32 ESXi nodes sharing NFS datastores
This storage feature is also quite significant. While VMware has been able to create 32 node clusters for some time, VMware View would only allow a base disk on an NFS datastore to be shared between 8 ESXi hosts for the purposes of linked clone deployments. View 5.1 lifts this restriction, and now 32 ESXi hosts can host linked clones deployed from the same base disk on a shared NFS datastore. This feature will significantly improve scalability.
View Composer API for Array Integration (VCAI) aka Native NFS Snapshots
Although this feature is a Technology Preview in View 5.1, it is another cool storage feature of the release. View desktops deployed on VMware's linked clone technology consumes CPU on the ESXi hosts, and network bandwidth when they are deployed on NFS datastores. With this new Native NFS Snapshot feature via VAAI (vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration), customers can offload the cloning operation to the storage array, minimizing CPU usage and network bandwidth consumption. Once again this enhanced VAAI functionality was introduced in vSphere 5.0 specifically for VMware View. This feature requires a VAAI NAS plugin from the storage array vendor. Once installed and configured, customers will be able to use a storage array vendor's own native snapshot feature for deploying View desktops. Selecting this new desktop deployment method can be done via standard work-flows in View Composer. More here.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Storage Optimization – New in View 5.1, View Storage Accelerator is a technology that reduces storage loads generated by peak VDI storage reads caching the common blocks of desktop images into local host memory. The Accelerator leverages a VMware vSphere (version 5.0 or later) platform feature called Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) implemented inside the ESX/ESXi hypervisor. When enabled for specific VMs, the host hypervisor scans the storage disk blocks to generate digests of the block contents. When these blocks are read into the hypervisor, they are cached in the host based CBRC. Subsequent reads of blocks with the same digest will be served from the in-memory cache directly. This significantly improves the desktop performance, especially during boot storms or anti-virus scanning storms when a large number of blocks with identical contents are read.
Simplify Desktop Management and Deployment

View Persona Management – To help with physical to virtual desktop migrations, we’ve extended View Persona Management to physical desktops. This new feature also enables Windows XP to Windows 7 migration. The View Persona Management agent can be installed without the VMware View agent on physical desktops belonging to the same licensed VMware View desktop end-users.

During a physical to virtual migration, an administrator can first install View Persona Management on the physical desktop. When the same user uses a virtual desktop with Persona Management enabled, user data and settings are automatically synchronized. We also extend Persona Management to support a one-time Windows XP to Windows 7 migration
VMware vCenter Operations for View

New for VMware View 5.1, we have integrated with our management products to give you VMware vCenter Operations (vCOps) Manager for View. Optimized for virtual desktop deployments, VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View provides end-to-end monitoring of desktops and users, displayed with user friendly dashboards, to help identify, troubleshoot, and trend potential issues
View Administrator Enhancements

Some customers deploy VMware View in a restrictive environment in which write access to the Active Directory is prohibited. In this new version of View, an administrator can set a configuration option to reuse existing machine accounts in AD during the provisioning process.

As the numbers of VMware View deployments grow, our customers are expanding the scale of their View virtual desktop programs. Enhancements made in VMware View 5.1, make management at scale easier. VMware View Composer server in View 5.1 can be installed in a standalone server. An administrator can also configure VMware View Connection Server (via vdmadmin command line tool) to log events in syslog rather than a database.

Last but not least, View Admin UI response time has been greatly improved in a large-scale environment.
View Administrator Language Support – To serve a growing international customer base, the View Admin UI is localized to five major non-English languages: French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese.
Create the Best End-User Experience

USB Enhancements – We have reworked the USB redirect feature for the Windows client. The new USB feature no longer requires device driver to be installed on the client side. A generic USB arbitrator is implemented on the client side, while a proper USB hub is implemented in the agent. This allows VMware View to support a much broader range of USB devices while supporting fine-grained remote device policy (e.g. enable/disable mass storage file copy) even on multi-function USB devices.

RADIUS Support – Based on customer feedback, we’ve extended the security authentication support in VMware View to other two-factor authentication vendors leveraging a RADIUS client in the View 5.1 Connection Server. This gives you more choice when implementing single sign-on or security tokens into your virtual desktops.

Continued PCoIP Enhancements – We also continuously strive to enhance the PCoIP remote protocol following the significant progress made in version 5.0. We realize that optimal remote protocol performance cannot be achieved with code improvement alone. To help our customers make the right choice in protocol with proper performance tuning, we published a white paper comparing the tuning and test results of all state-of-the-art remote protocols: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/PCoIPvHDXsinglesession03-05-12.pdf

Friday, April 27, 2012

Product Update Releases by VMware

VMware has released the following upgrades to the existing products which are mainly categorized in to the following.

Datacenter & Cloud Infrastructure

Application Platform

Infrastructure Operations Management

End-user Computing

ThinApp 4.7.1

All the other downloads can be accessed from here.

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