Virtualizationism

November 23, 2010 | 3 comments

In this article I show you how to become your own Certificate Authority (CA) and write a simple script that automatically deploys a signed SSL certificate to an HP iLO controller.

November 8, 2010 | 4 comments

The new Microsoft private cloud "Virtual Machine Manager Self Server Portal 2" takes a major step backward, reverting to the "one VM per LUN" limitation when scripting LUN creation.

October 27, 2010 | 5 comments

Director of Microsoft Virtualization says vSphere hybrid clouds remind him of ancient fax machines, overlooking reality of current IaaS landscape.

October 21, 2010 | 2 comments

Microsoft claims that Linux guests running on Hyper-V are fully supported -- find out what really happens when a customer tries to get help with a SLES VM.

October 19, 2010 | 17 comments

Gartner says Hyper-V not meeting expectations even in midmarket, VMware doing pretty well.

October 12, 2010 | 3 comments

After cloning a Linux VM in vSphere, the network interface may be named eth1 instead of eth0. Learn how to change it in a snap.

September 16, 2010 | 7 comments

VMware Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) are an alternative to the VMware Tools bundled with vSphere. Pre-built packages are available for SLES for VMware (SLES 11 SP1) and easy to install.

September 10, 2010 | 10 comments

SLES for VMware is an enterprise-class Linux distribution suitable for any production workload and available for free to qualifying vSphere customers.

August 30, 2010 | 7 comments

A new feature in vSphere 4.1 allows administrators to easily perform a cold conversion (V2V) of a Hyper-V virtual machine.

August 26, 2010 | No comments

Maximum vSphere is Eric Siebert's newest book and a must-have for any vSphere administrator.

August 18, 2010 | 1 comment

Session TA8188 at VMworld 2010 will cover VMware vSphere competitive advantages over other platforms. No mention of successful multi-hypervisor strategies for your enterprise, however.

August 13, 2010 | 13 comments

PowerCLI makes it easy to automate vSphere tasks such as registering dormant VMs. It is also easy to create a hosts file for resolving guest IP addresses when DNS is not available.

August 11, 2010 | 9 comments

Roundup of recent VMware vSphere 4.1 reviews and competitive evaluation resources.

August 9, 2010 | 1 comment

The RHEV series on VCritical wraps up for now, as the Red Hat marketing machine tones down the misleading rhetoric on their unproven virtualization product.

July 12, 2010 | 18 comments

Microsoft announces Azure-in-a-box, seemingly in response to customers leaving the hosted Azure platform.

June 21, 2010 | 32 comments

Red Hat claims that RHEV virtual disks are stored as common files. In reality, they are obfuscated beyond recognition thanks to LVM volumes.

June 15, 2010 | 20 comments

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization does not allow administrators to diversify storage technologies in a data center -- all hosts in a data center must choose between NFS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel.

May 7, 2010 | 20 comments

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization tries to save power by consolidating VMs onto fewer hosts. Unlike VMware DPM, hosts remain powered on -- still consuming significant datacenter energy. Only vSphere safely powers off unneeded hosts during off-peak periods.

May 3, 2010 | 12 comments

While VMware ESX exposes the latest performance-enhancing CPU instructions to virtual machines, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) takes a more conservative approach -- downgrading all CPUs to masquerade as an old Pentium II.

April 14, 2010 | 49 comments

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has an HA feature -- Red Hat advertises it as equivalent to VMware HA. Take a look at the numerous deficiencies in that product that will have you laughing all the way to the datacenter - HA [ha ha].

April 12, 2010 | 39 comments

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is a single point of failure and the only management interface for RHEV Hypervisors. Oh, and it only runs on a physical Windows box.

April 9, 2010 | 32 comments

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization users may opt for a full installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a hypervisor host. Besides adding extra cost, RHEL KVM packages and management tools are incompatible with RHEV and must be replaced.

April 8, 2010 | 19 comments

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a new competitor to VMware vSphere. After almost half a year on the market, is anyone using it?

April 1, 2010 | 19 comments

Satirical open letter to Red Hat from VMware ESX.

March 31, 2010 | 4 comments

A year ago at MMS 2009, Microsoft criticized VMware for not offering public-private cloud federation. Today, Microsoft still has nothing to show in that area.

March 12, 2010 | 49 comments

The majority of Windows crashes are caused by third-party device drivers. See how Hyper-V reliability is compromised due to its dependence on a general-purpose OS.

March 1, 2010 | 4 comments

Yo Dawg! I heard you like to virtualize, but there is no truth to the rumor that Xzibit influenced the Hyper-V design.

February 26, 2010 | 19 comments

VMware ESX 4 can virtualize itself, and by using a special undocumented configuration setting it is now possible to take snapshots of virtual VMware ESX 4 systems.

February 17, 2010 | 20 comments

Microsoft has broken through numerous technological barriers, enabling Windows/Hyper-V to directly execute Linux applications.

February 10, 2010 | 8 comments

Humorous take on a reference to small footprint hypervisor advantages -- not from VMware.

February 2, 2010 | 2 comments

Win up to $2500 in the VMware ESXi Scripting Contest!

February 1, 2010 | 16 comments

With Hyper-V R2 out the door, leaked screenshots from a post-RTM build of Windows Server 2008 R2 suggest a Dynamic Memory feature is coming in a successor.

January 21, 2010 | 30 comments

Microsoft Virtualization publishes an embarrassing guest post refuting vSphere advantages, doing more harm than good.

January 13, 2010 | 36 comments

Learn about Microsoft's attempt to implement memory overcommit in Hyper-V.

January 12, 2010 | 17 comments

HP Blades incorporate an SD slot that can be used to easily deploy VMware ESXi from flash. Take a look.

January 6, 2010 | 5 comments

Certain errors and warnings in the vSphere Client now provide links directly to VMware KB articles with more details on the specific issue.

January 4, 2010 | 2 comments

Review of Steve Jin's new book on the VMware VI SDK. A great development resource, and administrators may improve their overall understanding of VMware vSphere and PowerCLI scripting.

December 28, 2009 | 1 comment

The top 6 posts on VCritical by page view and by reader comments.

December 23, 2009 | 2 comments

The vSphere Client allows administrators to quickly see the IP addresses used inside a virtual machine -- eliminating the need to connect to the console and interact with the guest operating system.

December 17, 2009 | 3 comments

In an InformationWeek article, Elias Khnaser does an excellent job of articulating several of the key advantages that VMware vSphere has over Hyper-V -- memory overcommit, hypervisor footprint, maturity, and more.

December 15, 2009 | 7 comments

VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0.1 is now fully integrated with VMware vSphere. The product deploys quickly as an OVF virtual appliance and the user interface is a vSphere Client plugin.

December 3, 2009 | 14 comments

While Microsoft marketing material claims Hyper-V and SCVMM can transfer large virtual machine files and templates over a SAN, the truth is that all VM transfers are done over the network. Only VMware ESX leverages high-speed storage area networking for VM migration.

November 18, 2009 | 12 comments

VMware vSphere 4 offers multiple options for expanding virtual machine storage with zero downtime, including the ability to grow a running virtual disk. Hyper-V marketing literature makes a similar claim, but is limited to simply adding another virtual disk.

November 14, 2009 | 2 comments

A new paper published by the VMware Performance Team shows that virtual disks using vStorage Thin Provisioning perform nearly as well as fully allocated thick disks.

November 10, 2009 | 19 comments

According to Microsoft's own documentation, integrating SCOM with SCVMM adds high complexity and additional cost to your virtualization environment.

November 3, 2009 | 40 comments

Microsoft stretches the truth when claiming that VMware adds an additional layer to your architecture. The fact is, Hyper-V relies on its own instance of Windows and requires more instances for running apps.

October 26, 2009 | 9 comments

Bob Kelley, a Microsoft VP, recently made the claim that only 50 percent of all workloads will be virtualized. The rest of the industry clearly disagrees.

October 23, 2009 | 21 comments

Because of the extra configuration -- and tools -- needed to deploy a complete Hyper-V R2 solution, eWeek concludes that VMware ESX/VMotion is simpler than Live Migration.

October 22, 2009 | 10 comments

After being featured at numerous events, Microsoft has finally launched Windows Server 2008 R2 for the last time. Please take a moment to acknowledge the launch -- or they may launch it again.

October 21, 2009 | 3 comments

Microsoft released Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Thee technical version number for those products is not actually 7, it is 6.1.