Citrix Not Focused on Server Virtualization?

August 18, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 5 comments

Citrix recently reported Q2 2011 earnings, which was accompanied by the customary Q&A session for analysts.  It’s somewhat puzzling to see the Citrix CFO admit that they are not focused on server virtualization.  In fact, he even jumped at the chance to praise Hyper-V.  Here is the excerpt:

Bradley Whitt – Gleacher & Company, Inc.

I was curious if you’ve seen, notice any reaction from your customers and prospects to the VMware pricing changes on VSphere? And curious whether you’re seeing more Xen downloads, that type of thing?

David Henshall

We have. We’ve seen an uptick in downloads as well as direct inquiries coming in based upon what they did with their licensing. And we’re not headlong into the server virtualization space. And obviously, we’re doing well with that platform across desktop and networking and now in the cloud platform. But it’s not a focused go-to-market for us. So I’d say probably Microsoft with Hyper-V and System Center has probably seen a much bigger uptick as a result. But we have seen greater interest in XenServer.

Admittedly, Citrix is in a tough spot — they have to choose the path of least resistance, which in their case means de-emphasizing and cutting products and solutions that compete with their biggest partner.  Given this revealing perspective and the open source community shifting to KVM, it’s hard to see a future for XenServer.

Transcript from Seeking Alpha.

Tags: , , ,

Price Commitment for Windows Server Workloads

August 11, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 7 comments

It seems that many missed this recent piece of good news from Microsoft — buried at the end of a gigantic FUD post that few would have the patience to read.  Along with a full load of misinformation, Jeff Woolsey, evidently on behalf of Microsoft Corporation, closes up that monster with the following commitment on Windows pricing:

Next question: Does Microsoft plan to do anything similar to the vTax?

NO, we have no intention of imposing:

  • A VM Memory vTax
  • A VM Core vTax
  • A VM Replication vTax

This is great for vSphere customers, who often license Windows Server Datacenter Edition — per CPU socket — to run an unlimited number of VMs on an ESXi host.  As CPU cores and DIMM capacities continue to increase and Windows pricing remains constant, customers everywhere stand to save considerably on Microsoft licensing by consolidating Windows workloads onto fewer and fewer sockets.

It’s unusual to see a long-term price commitment like this from a strategic* enterprise software provider — especially one that, not long ago, introduced a new premium license for SQL Server weighing in at $55,000 per socket and clearly intended to maximize revenues from virtualized databases.

*Inside joke.  Did you get it?

Tags: , ,

VMware ESXi 5 Scripted Install to USB Flash

August 9, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 1 comment

One of the great features of VMware vSphere is the capability to boot VMware ESXi from USB flash — eliminating local storage and array controllers can reduce the acquisition and operational costs for hypervisor hosts.

Now with VMware ESXi 5, it is possible to perform an automated installation to USB storage.  Simply specify usb-storage as part of the install command in an automated install script.  For example:

install --firstdisk=usb-storage --overwritevmfs

For more flexibility in a single script, multiple disk types can be specified; they will be tried in order.  Below is an example install command from a script for HP servers.  If USB flash is not installed, the on-board SAS disks will be used.  If neither are present — such as when installing virtual ESXi systems — generic local storage is the last resort.

install --firstdisk=usb-storage,hpsa,local --overwritevmfs

Perhaps not one of the major new feature of VMware vSphere 5, but handy.

Boot Hyper-V From Flash?

You might not know this, but Microsoft Hyper-V has had the ability to boot from flash as well — announced two years ago, but yet to be acknowledged in an actual production deployment.  Of course, this bleeding-edge configuration option is only supported if installed by OEMs, not end-users.  Anyone considering Hyper-V for virtualization is highly encouraged to give it a try; it’s a great opportunity to learn a lot about Windows registry manipulation and command line tools such as imagex and diskpart.

But seriously, VMware vSphere 5 will be here soon, and you’re going to love it.

Tags: , , ,

VMware ESXi 5 Interactive PXE Installation Improvements

July 31, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 15 comments

A flexible PXE infrastructure can be a real force multiplier in your technology arsenal.  Fully-automated installs are great time-savers, but there is also value in being able to perform an interactive (manual) install of VMware ESXi, Linux, or Windows over the network.  Physical installation media is becoming less and less viable in this day of lights-out datacenters, and virtual media capabilities provided with remote consoles, such as iLO, are best reserved for punishing junior members of the team.  It’s easy enough to have a Linux-based PXE server coexist with Windows Deployment Services — useful for environments that need to deploy various operating systems on a single VLAN.

William Lam is the de-facto authority on fully-automated ESXi deployments, and others have provided recipes for configuring VMware ESXi 4.1 installation media for interactive PXE installation.

The good news is that with VMware ESXi 5 it is no longer necessary to create the image.tgz file to accommodate a manual PXE installation, and another handy enhancement to boot.cfg makes it slightly cleaner to organize multiple installation sources on a PXE/TFTP server.

Take a look at the following procedures to learn more:

Prepare the VMware ESXi 5 Installation Media

On your TFTP server, simply extract the contents of the installation ISO into a new directory.

# mkdir esxi50
# mount -o loop VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-nnnnnn.x86_64.iso tmp/
# rsync -a tmp/ esxi50/
# chmod +w esxi50/*

That’s it.  No need to create any additional files with ESXi 5.

Modify the ESXi boot.cfg Configuration File

In order to reflect the fact that the installation source is not in the root of the TFTP server, two tweaks are needed.

  1. Remove all of the slashes (/) from the boot.cfg file so relative paths will be used (vi :%s#/##g)
  2. Add a “prefix” directive to the boot.cfg file to specify the proper subdirectory, from the perspective of the TFTP root

End result will look something like this:

This is much cleaner that repeating the full path dozens of times throughout the file.

Add a PXE Menu Entry

Typically the PXE menu is pxelinux.cfg/default; add the following section and you’ll be set:

LABEL esxi50
 KERNEL /esxi50/mboot.c32
 APPEND -c /esxi50/boot.cfg
 MENU LABEL ESXi-5.0.0

Ready for interactive installation

Now you are ready to boot your physical or virtual machines for an interactive installation of VMware ESXi 5.  It’s very easy to run ESXi 5 inside a VM, now with 64-bit nested guest capabilities!

Tags: , ,

VMware vSphere can virtualize itself + 64-bit nested guests

July 12, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 76 comments

Running VMware ESXi inside a virtual machine is a great way to experiment with different configurations and features without building out a whole lab full of hardware and storage. Virtualization enthusiasts everywhere have benefited from the ability to run ESXi on ESXi, first introduced with the vSphere 4 release.

VMware vSphere 5 makes it easier than ever to virtualize hypervisor hosts. With new capabilities to run nested 64-bit guests and take snapshots of virtual ESXi VMs, the sky is the limit for your cloud infrastructure development lab. Heck, you can even run Hyper-V on top of vSphere 5 — not that you’d want to.

Physical Host Setup

The physical host running VMware ESXi 5 requires just a few configuration changes; here is a guide:

  • Install VMware ESXi 5 on a physical host and configure networking, storage, and other aspects as needed
  • Configure a vSwitch and/or Port Group to have Promiscuous Mode enabled
  • Create a second Port Group named “Trunk” with VLAN ID All (4095) if you want to use VLANs on virtual hypervisors
  • Log in to Tech Support Mode (iLO or ssh) and make the following tweak to enable nested 64-bit guests 
    echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE"' >> /etc/vmware/config

Virtual VMware ESXi Machine (vESXi) Creation

For various reasons, it’s not feasible to clone virtual ESXi VMs. As an alternative, create a fully-configured shell VM to use as a template — it can be cloned before ESXi is installed.

Create a new VM with the following guidance:

  • Guest OS: Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (64-bit)
  • 2 virtual sockets, 2+ GB RAM
  • 4 NICs — connect NIC 1 to the management network and the rest to the “Trunk” network:
  • Thin provisioned virtual disks work fine
  • Finish creating the VM, then edit the following settings
    • Options/General Options: change Guest Operating System to Other – VMware ESXi 5.x
    • CPU/MMU Virtualization: Use Intel VT … EPT… ( bottom radio button)
  • Don’t power this VM on — keep it to act as a template
  • Clone and install VMware ESXi via ISO image or PXE boot
  • Add to vCenter and configure virtual ESXi hosts for action

Nested 64-bit Guests

With the release of VMware vSphere 5, nested guests can be 64-bit operating systems. Just be sure to make the change to /etc/vmware/config on the physical host as indicated above.

Nested guests can be migrated with vMotion between virtual or physical VMware ESXi hosts; this requires a vMotion network and shared storage. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »