VirtualizationImpact

Release: VMware vC Ops 5.0.1/VIN 1.1/vADM 6.2.2 & Workstation 8.0.3

May 9th, 2012 Posted in Product Update, VMware - General

May, 09 2012

Release: vC OPs 5.0.1 – Maintenance Release

I am a little late with posting these three release updates from VMware, but they are still worth the post. First up we have the first maintenance release for vC OPs since it was release last year. This release comes with a quite a few enhancements for a first .1 update but is primarily a performance and stability enhancement release.

Upgrade Process: Low – Just obtain the .pak upgrade file from VMware Download site and login to the administration page and select upgrade. Browse to the .pak file and upload. The upgrade process takes about 20 minutes depending on the size of you deployment and how large your database is.

Full release notes of new features and enhancements can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/vcops/doc/vcops-501-release-notes.html

Release: vIN 1.1 for vSphere Web Client

Next up is a fairly major release for vIN, aka Virtual Infrastructure Navigator. vIN currently resides inside the vSphere Web Client and provides virtual machine dependency mapping. This is a totally cool product that was built off the previous success of the vADM product, however this is specifically designed for the virtual environment. This new version adds enhanced discovery abilities including the ability to see one hop out from a virtual machine to physical machine. although you won’t get much data from that physical machine, we can now see that a VM entity is communicating externally with another physical server (virtualize that thing already!). vIN is one of my favorite products to come out of the development of the Web Client and vC OPs (part of the Enterprise Suite) that adds tremendous value to ANY sized virtual environment, especially for planning SRM deployments and disaster recovery planning processes.

Upgrade Process: Medium- Download the vIN 1.1 OVF from the VMware download site and deploy to replace the 1.0 appliance. There is not an upgrade option from 1.0 to 1.1 as the data discovered just gets rediscovered after deployment. Un-register and turn off discovery in the vSphere Web Client prior to upgrading to 1.1 first! Once the 1.0 appliance is un-registered, you can shut it off and deploy 1.1 and proceed through the same deployment process.

Full release notes of new features and enhancements can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/adm/doc/vcenter-infrastructure-navigator-11-release-notes.html

Release: vADM 6.2.2 & Workstation 8.0.3

Finally we have a maintenance release for vADM, bringing that version up to 6.2.2 along with Workstation up to 8.0.3. On the vADM front, we are looking primarily bug fixes and enhancements for added stability plus added support for vSphere 5 VI-SDK active discovery scanning which was heavily requested. Workstation 8.0.3 contains a few security fixes including the SCSI device unchecked memory write which was talked about across a few news outlets, strongly recommend upgraded to .3.

Upgrade Process: Low – Workstation 8.0.3

High – vADM 6.2.2

Full release notes for Workstation 8.0.3 can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws80/doc/releasenotes_workstation_803.html

Full release notes for vADM 6.2.2 can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/adm/doc/vcenter-application-discovery-manager-622-release-notes.html

**Upgrade Process Levels: Low – relatively easy to upgrade, possibly require change management, back up your data first and read upgrade documents!; Medium – Involved, and may require change management controls prior to deploying, read documents and backup prior to upgrading; High – Highly technical, most likely involve change controls, backups are a MUST, read documentation thoroughly, contact support prior to upgrading is recommended for any known compatibility issues, may involve consultation services to upgrade.

Release: VMware vShield 5.0.1 : Security & Compliance

April 25th, 2012 Posted in New Release, Product Update, VMware - General

Apr, 25 2012

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A few days ago (April 23rd) VMware released a maintenance release for their big security product, vShield 5 which is bumped to revision .1. Below are some of the highlighted changes and updates and direct link to the VMware Security and Compliance Blog!

Jonathan

Automation

Simplified automation using new REST API calls for vShield Data Security workflows, including triggers for completion of scans.
Enable download of vShield VIBs (host modules) from vShield Manager, a key step in support for Autodeploy (Stateless ESXi).

High Availability and Policy Management

Automatic restart of vShield App or virtual machines if a heartbeat is not detected.
Improved vShield App policy management with the option to fail open or fail closed.
Option to selectively exclude virtual machines from vShield App protection.

Actionable Data

Improved audit logs for vShield Manager provide detailed information about administrative user actions on vShield security operations.
Simplified troubleshooting with single file download of vShield system configuration and events.
Enhanced reporting for vShield Data Security allows users to view data as pie charts and bar graphs – and export this data to various file formats.

http://blogs.vmware.com/security/2012/04/vmware-releases-vshield-501.html

BugReport: vSphere 5 vDS + SvMotion Causes HA Failure

April 18th, 2012 Posted in VMware - Bug, VMware - General

Apr, 18 2012

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I don’t usually make posts about known issues in the wild or bugs that are reported across products as they usually are fixed relatively quickly. Last week there was a vSphere bug that made its way across the forums in both the VMTN and other private boards.

The issue isn’t a critical one but it does deserve a post for more advanced vSphere environments. If you are running a vDS (vSphere Distributed Switched) and perform a Storage vMotion and the host that you performed the Storage vMotion has an HA event the VM fails to restart. Thankfully there are KB’s from VMware on this issue and some members of the VMware technical staff have taken some time to write a script to fix this issue. Before continuing, the key reasons for the issue because the port information file is not be recreated on the destination data store, so when the HA event occurs the VM fails to start. Duncan Epping explained the issue in depth on his blog, so I will forward to his posting for more indepth explanation as Duncan has been covering this in depth the since the issue broke.

From Duncan’s post explaining the issue: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/04/14/clarifying-the-svmotion-vds-problem/

When a VM is attached to a dvPortgroup it is connected to a port. This information is stored locally on the host and on the VMFS volume this VM is stored on.
This volume will contain a file which is named equal to the port number of this VM.
When the VM is Storage vMotioned to a different datastore this file is not created on the destination datastore
When the host fails on which the Storage vMotioned VM resides HA will attempt to restart that VM.
In order for HA to restart it and connect it to the dvPortgroup this file is required.
As the file is not available the restart fails.

Some more information and links to great content on the issue along with a script created by William Lam and Alan Renouf.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/04/17/scripts-release-for-storage-vmotion-ha-problem/

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/04/11/ha-fails-to-initiate-restart-when-a-vm-was-svmotioned-and-on-a-vds/

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2013639

Hope this helps some out there, the above links from fellow bloggers and technical staff are excellent and explain work arounds for the problem until we get an official patch for the problem. I just want to reiterate, this is NOT a major issue and there is a workaround that has been reported to work for many administrators that have seen the issue in their environment.

*Note- The script provided in above links are not officially support by VMware, but have been reported to work without issues.

Jonathan

Release: VMware Fusion 4.1.2 Update

April 15th, 2012 Posted in VMware - General

Apr, 15 2012

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VMware has just went GA with a new version of Fusion for OSX, version 4.1.2 which is the second release in the 4.1 iteration. This is a general maintenance release and bug fix, no new features are available. I have been running this on two machines with no issues for 24 hours since release and can report a solid release at hand. VMware tools will automatically be updated upon power on of a VM and proceed to reboot after installation and update. Below are core release notes along with link. You can obtain the update by launching the Fusion Software Update from the menu on Fusion.

This release fixes the following issues, direct link below:

http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion4/doc/releasenotes_fusion_412.html

General Issues

Resolved an issue that caused the following message when you resumed a suspended virtual machine: The Virtual Machine is unable to reserve memory.
The McAfee VirusScan software is updated.
Resolved an intermittent problem that caused printing to fail on Mac OS X Lion.
Resolved an issue that occurred when copying and pasting information from newer Linux distributions.
Improved compatibility with certain versions of Mac OS X.
Resolved an issue where the Windows 2000 guest operating systems would not power down when the virtual machine shut down.
Resolved an issue with short shared folder names.
Improved the behavior of the minibar when placed at the top of the display.
Fixed mapping of comma on numeric keyboard mapping of a French keyboard.
Resolved an intermittent problem when removing a CD device from a virtual machine.
Improved compatibility with Many Tricks’ Moom application in a virtual machine.
Resolved memory access issue when using VMware Fusion as a gdb stub.
Application is signed using Developer ID.
The minimize and hide operations work when using smart full screen with multiple displays.
A new configuration option “fusion.alwaysOpenInNewWindow = TRUE” that forces a virtual machine to always open in a new window is available.

Security Issues

VMware Tools Incorrect Folder Permissions Privilege Escalation. The access control list of the VMware Tools folder was incorrectly set. Exploitation of this issue may lead to local privilege escalation on Windows-based guest operating systems. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-1518 to this issue.

VMTN: vExpert 2012 Announcement

April 15th, 2012 Posted in VMware - General

Apr, 15 2012

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Is it already that time of year?! The VMware community received a huge surprise today seeing the vExpert 2012 Announcement from the VMTNCommunity account going live. This year we have approximately 150 new members joining an already elite group of members from the past few years. It’s great to see so many new people on the list (and knowing many of them) being part of such a huge beneficial community of users all around the world. It goes to show how important this award is to VMware, representing its massive community for education, social media, blogging, VMTN communities, podcasts, books, and everything else in between.

Congratulations to everyone on the list this year, I look forward to interacting with you through the many type of platforms and gatherings in the near future, now start writing and sharing your knowledge!

Congratulations to my podcast partner, Barry Coombs (virtualisedreal.com) for making the 2012 list too, we are both thrilled to have the opportunity to support an outstanding community!

Press Release: http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2012/04/announcing-vexpert-2012-title-holders.html

Where in the World Have I Been?: VMware …& Happy Holidays!!

December 25th, 2011 Posted in General, Virtualization, VMware - General

Dec, 25 2011

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Where should I start? Where the in the world have I been since my last blog post??!! If you have been following me on twitter you will notice that I made quite a change in my job profession and with this slight adjustment has brought with it some changes, which are all for the best of my career and future. Before I go further into this awesome change I wanted to make a quick post to close up the year, 2011. What a year it has been, I personally was faced with tons of challenges, both personally and professionally. Those included some harrowing moments during the crazy weather that we had in late summer-early fall which I wrote about in a blog post a few postings back (which you will find duplicated on many websites around the world..). To say the least, it has been an incredible year, I traveled more than I ever have and have seen the back of too many airline headrests, stuffed overhead bulk-heads and late departing flights. However, something in me just loves the traveling (but I do miss my wife and family) and thankfully I have a super understanding and amazing wife that knows that I love it. I learned a wealth of information and met some incredibly smart and brutally genious people during my travels, from the amazing TechField Day event from Steven Foskett, to VMworld, Dell World, EqualLogic User Conference and to everything else in between, it has been an amazing year of networking with new people and new technologies, something I just CAN’T get enough of.

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vadm, vcm, vcops, vmware, vsm

#DellWorld Kick-Off – Press/Analyst Event Synopsis

October 12th, 2011 Posted in Dell World 2011, General

Oct, 12 2011

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I was lucky enough to be invited to the Dell World Press event held at The Long Center in Austin today. There were roughly 80-100 members of the Press attending this event, which was put together to kick off the Dell World conference here in Austin. The panel consisted of Michael Dell, Stephen Schuckenbrock, Brad Anderson, Stephen Felice, Karen H. Quintos and David Johnson.

Karen Quintos started the event introductions by welcoming the group and explaining a little about Dell World, including the type of people that were invited. The invitation base is comprised of approx. 1900 select Dell customers plus channel partners, media, press and analysts. No exact number of attendees was mentioned though.

Next up was Michael Dell, who spoke the most at the event, gave an overview of what we can expect at the first Dell World event along with opening remarks about the company vision for the future. Michael mentioned how the company itself has been listening to the REAL needs of its customers and that Dell is a radically different company than it was 27 years ago. He also mentioned how social media is affecting the kinds of products and services it has today and how this new form of customer engagement is affecting their new ventures.

The conversation continued to talk a lot about what the Dell vision was a few years ago, which was more of a product company then a solution company. Customers wanted more abilities and understandings of these products that they were selling, they were looking for an end-to-end solutions provider. The Dell World Event, along with future events, has one main goal, and that is to explain to its customers the new Dell vision of an end-to-end solutions provider. Michael also mentioned that Dell has been the most active acquirer in the technology industry. Dell stated that their acquisition teams look at what the key pain points are for its customers and makes the best acquisition based on their needs in the market place today.

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Dell World 2011: Unlocking Innovation – I’ll Be There!

October 9th, 2011 Posted in Dell, Dell World 2011

Oct, 09 2011

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Dell World 2011 is next week, which sure came around the corner quickly! This is the first “world” conference for Dell so I am excited to see how this shapes up. I am going to be covering the event via my blog here and will try to cover as many keynotes as I can. The good thing about this event is that the entire list of keynotes and sessions will be broadcasted live online, for free!

You can watch the entire event online here: http://dellworld.social27.com/ . You must register for the event prior to it starting to be able to watch all of the sessions live. Below is a list of the Event Keynotes that will be taking place. I am most excited about hearing Michael Dell (Dell), Steve Ballmer(Microsoft), Paul Maritz(VMware) and Paul Otellini(Intel).

Along with these top executives, Dell will be having a few of their select engineers presenting at smaller sessions after the larger the keynotes. So far the event keynotes sound impressive although probably not super technical like the Dell Storage Forum/User Conferences of the past. This event seems to be targeting the C-Level executives of medium to larger customers, but that is just my perception prior to attending, I will see if I am correct.
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Tech Field Day 8 Synopsis + My Top 3 Up & Coming Companies

October 8th, 2011 Posted in General, TechFieldDay

Oct, 08 2011

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Tech Field Day – My First Time!

I was attending VMworld last month and while attending the vExpert Welcome Dinner I met Stephen Foskett from Gestalt IT. I heard of Tech Field Day events from other previous attendees including my good friend Matt Vogt (@mvogt), who was a delegate at Tech Field Day 7. You can read his review of the event here: “http://mattvogt.posterous.com“.

So what is Tech Field Day? At first I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Was this a conference, a mini conference, mini sessions, or round table type discussions? I watched a few of the videos from past events online so I had somewhat of an idea of what to expect, but each Tech Field Day is different. Tech Field Day 8 was centered around start up companies in the Silicon Valley which a seasoned company or two thrown in to spice things up. I was extremely happy to be able to attend TFD8 for many reasons, with the biggest being that I was thrilled about the line-up of companies presenting at this event. It isn’t every day you can walk into a company and be given the red carpet treatment! In my opinion, Stephen did a great job choosing companies for all the delegates to visit in the past and this TFD was no exception.

The format for Tech Field Events is a mix between round-table discussions and mini-session style presentations. One thing to understand is that the group of people selected to attend the events are not your average technologists, they are all very smart, highly educated and highly regarded IT related people. Also, everyone is involved to some degree in either social media, blogging or run technology related websites. The group of delegates can be from many different disciplines of IT, for example, this TFD had a mix of administrators, service providers and bloggers from various fields like Networking, VOiP/IP Telephone, Virtualization, Storage, Servers and System Administration. This was a truly a small, but dynamic group of people that was assembled to review 8 companies and the technology that they bring to the table. I have to say, I was humbled and honored to be a part of the Tech Field Day 8 group.

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Disaster: Hurricane Irene & Tropical Storm Lee – My 1st Hand DR Story

October 1st, 2011 Posted in General, Virtualization

Oct, 01 2011

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I never thought I would have to write a story like this on my site, but after experiencing first-hand the incredible power of Mother Nature there was no question it would be a perfect blog post. Before going into the details of what happened and why I am writing this I have to say, it’s been a tiring, stressful, long and grueling past 4 days. Most companies “SAY” they have a DR plan, they say they “TEST” it but you will never know how the plan is going to work until the disaster actually strikes. I hope this blog post makes it clear to everyone, make sure your DR plan is strong and tested, and most importantly, make sure you have a way to control the potential loss of your entire operation. Please excuse the brevity of certain parts of my success story; I don’t want to bore people with non-important details.

Extreme Weather…2011 Edition

First let’s talk briefly about the recent “extreme weather” patterns in the northeast United States. We had the wettest summer on record and have had everything from extreme rain, hurricanes, tropical storms, torrential downpours that produce 4 inches of rain in 20 minutes to a brief earthquake a few weeks ago. It’s definitely been quite the challenging set of environmental conditions that have all been unexpected.

Every company, no matter where they are located has to have some sort of “threat” to their building or location. Seriously, think about it, you can be located in the best possible location with your datacenter and there are still threats for disasters. A simple gasoline tanker truck accident or even a small chlorine truck flipping over and if you think that can’t happen, everyone in the world takes their electricity power grids for granted. Let’s also not forget about internet connections and high speed, high bandwidth backbones, which we still haven’t seen our first “crash” yet, but as many network engineers will tell you, it’s bound to happen.

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