VMware ESX 4 New features

According to VMware, the future of the VMware Enterprise Edition Virtualization which name as ESX 4 will be launched earlier next year, will contain some of the features which been show case during the seminar to the public. Below is some of the information which had been shared by VMware for reference

1. 64 bits kernel VS the current 32 bits kernel on ESX server
2. Thin Provisioning
3. Fault Tolerance
4. 8 way virtual SMP
5. 256 GB memory per single VM

There are also more to come in the roadmap of year 2009 which will specify on the vcloud, virtual data center and etc. At lease for today, this had been public demostrate to the end user about some of the technology roadmap and features in the next version. ESX 4 is still under private beta test at this moment, which aim to be launched at 1st quater next year.

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 Release

VMware had just official released the Workstation 6.5.1. There are some new features will be impress with the latest build number of 126130

For more information, please view it over at the link below

VMware Workstation 6.5.1

VMware Server 2.0

VMware Server 2.0 is free and open source version, which is different with enterprise ESX 3i which also a free version from VMware. In term to utilize VMware server 2.0, you will require to have a Windows or Linux install on your machine or server, and install VMware Server 2.0 on top of the operating system to enable the hypervisor to be executed. This is different with ESX 3i which is not require any Operating System to be installed.

We may see this is comparison which compete with VMware workstation 6.5 which recently launched. If you ask my opinion, I will say that both are on different product range. VMware Server 2 can be consider as alternative to the business users, who may not need the advance technology & features to simplify their IT environment with minimal administration require. This product is more suitable for the Small Medium Enterprise users which may not have a Data Center for their working location. I will say that a Junior IT professional will easily able to manage the VMware Server and take the opportunity as a entry level for Enterprise Virtualization with VMware Server 2. Besides that, it does provide opportunity for every users to have virtualization in place for their business to provide better ROI in term of hardware investment and utilization.

If we look VMware workstation, it provide more features and ability to the IT pro users to perform their test and development environment on their laptop, workstation or desktop which reduce the amount of servers require for a corporate to perform their application development. Somehow, ESX is targeting Enterprise level, 3i is provide for free which some cases we may not require VMotion and HA capability.Management wise, Workstation is simple and easy. You may not require to browse through the web console and easily can be launched as a program from your machine, but you will lost the administration features on the network. VMware Workstation has ACE integrated, drag and drop features and etc, which may not require for most of the VMware Server users for hosting purpose. VMware Server 2 will require a web browser for your management, and you able to manage it through LAN network. There is a tomcat installed while you configure you VMware server at the 1st time.

As well, you may compare the VMware Server 2 with XEN hypervisor free version. I believe in term of features, VMware always have better comparison. User freindly & Reliability are always important for a consumer when they consider the investment to a certain software.

Equallogic VS FC SAN

Economy Crisis this year has encouraged users to consider the ISCSI SAN Vs FC SAN today. Data Storage growth will never stop unless the business is stop. In order to keep the environment growth, the IT architect will have to provide a cost effective solution in the finance critical timing like now.

Performance wise, we may know that the Equallogic ISCSI might not beat the huge SAN box which easily cost you double as your TCO on ISCSI. I would like to share my finding relevant on the features it bundle with equallogic. In FC SAN, we are able to achive performance and functionality, which require always additional license cost and expensive infrastrucutre to support it. Today, ISCSI provide more flexibility in term of FC due to the common understanding we all have on the IP technology which we deal with it everyday.

In Equallogic ISCSI, you will entitle every features which bundle together with the storages you purchase.

• Snapshot Volume Manager
• Thin Provisioning
• Raid 5, Raid 50, Raid 10
  
• Auto Load Balancing
• Web Base Console
• DR Replication
• Storage Replication
• Volume Clone

The details of the available features is more than what I am stated here of course. Imagine if you own a FC SAN today, you may end up paying additional charges for every piece of licenses you require of the functionality. Beside this, Virtualization and VMware is become a main player for every Data Center today. Same with Equallogic, it had also become a powerful competitor to compete with the major vendor like Netapps, EMC, HP, HDS, IBM and etc.

Whithout comparing the cost and performance, I am really impress with the simplify management provided by Equallogic. You will not require to be long waiting of the web console, and it is user friendly and easy to be managed. Compare to FC SAN, you will require certain level of skillsets and patient for administration which you may suffer from the slow loading from the console always. Additional to that, FC SAN will become slower when the number of spindle and workload is increase, but equallogic has it advantage with every array will increase the processing power and throughput. Personal experience, I am only require less than 10 minutes to setup and configure my Equallogic Storage array, and able to start provisioning right after the configuration done. Is Really Fast!!

I run the performance test on my ESX server to compare the I/O performance Vs FC SAN, I realize that the performance is acceptable with the amount of money we pay for it. Simply becoz you may not virtualize the servers which require the real I/O intensive performance. I am able to achieve approximately 140MB/s with FC SAN for read/write, with Equallogic, I manage to achieve 115MB/s as maximum throughput in my VM. Again, this may be impacted due to the software ISCSI initiator. ISCSI HBA will able to improve the performance with minimize the overhead on ESX host. For my test, I only manage to run with single array. If we have more array in the future, it will able to increase the disk performance and storage throughput. 10Gb Ethernet are also on the way to the market next year. Equallogic are also design for SRM solution which provide by VMware to simplify the DR solution. With this storage solution, we will no longer require a big pipe for SAN storage replication as we did for the FC SAN previously.

Latest array PS 5500E are providing 48TB in RAW with SATA, which will be a good option for DR solution to provide cheaper hardware cost & better functionality. If I has been asked to reduce my CAPEX for SAN purchase, the only option I can think now is ISCSI as my option. Cisco 3750 is the recommended switches for DELL Equallogic, it is much more cheaper if we compare to the brocade FC SAN swithces.

Never the less, FC SAN are still the best option in term of reliable and performance, but as it is a tough time now for budget spending, I believe Equallogic has provide us an additional option with limited budget.

Storage Thin Provisioning

Most of the software and storage are supporting think provisioning today. As most of us know that this features provide the users to fully utilize the available storage for the business. Previously, we may consume extra storage space which is idle or unused due to the risk of storage grow rapidly always. In order to re size the partition of the production system, it always require a down time of production to minimize the risk of data corruption.

Today, with thin provisioning, we will able to forecast the storage allocation as usual which include the buffer require for storage grow, which even allow the administrator to increase the percentage of buffer for every volume it created. Without putting extra money on the storage system, we will able to achieve by using thin provisioning. Example I may have a LUN with 1TB usable storage, but I will able to assign total of 5TB to five different servers which contain 1TB each. As long as the initial data consume is within 1TB, it will be fine. Beside that, the thin provisioning will have the intelligent to increase the actual allocation automatically on the fly, which is no down time. From OS perspective, it will always recognize as 1TB no matter on Windows or Linux, this has provide a down time saving for our business today. Of course, the storage will provide monitoring features to ensure the capacity warning is alert before it full, therefore, the storage administrator will able to add the storage to the environment on actual consume basis.

Netware 6.5 on VMware

Netware 6.5 on VMware is not new thing. But you will find that is not allowed to have more than 1 Vcpu per VM by default. Actually there is ways to overcome this as you normally can't fo it through virtual center. VMware workstation allow you to change the number of Vcpu as usual. But, on ESX server is different. You may need to log in to the web access to specify host or virtual center, and power off the virtual machine. On the web console, you can edit the number or Virtual CPU from 1 to 2 or 4. Then you power up the VM again, and now you will able to see the extra Vcpu you added just now. Go back to the virtual center, you should able to see the extra cpu too. VMware not recommend to have more than 1 Vcpu per VM for netware as it has some performance impact on host level and is proven during my personal test on it. The CPU utilization on host will be very high consistantly but it only consume 5% from the VM level.

DELL Equallogic PS5500E provide Auto Snapshot Manager for VMware

The latest version of ISCSI SAN Equallogic PS 5500E which launched recently had provide better capacity, performance, extra functionality and more spindles in arrays. It could be support both 500GB and 1TB SATA II spindles up to 48 drives in a single array of 4U. A very impress usable storage space in single array which up to 48TB in Raw. If we compare to the capacity, it is hardly found that a single array would provide a huge capacity at 48TB in Raw today. In additional to that, DELL had provide all the necessary features as for storage management as free which integrated as part of the storage purchase for equallogic ISCSI SAN. The latest features is regarding the Snapshot Manager for VMware. Previous version is only supported on Microsoft environment, but now, it had also supported on VMWare environment.

This features provide more option which will allow the users to snapshot, backup, and restore the files, volume, VM or even a single file that you need. Many of us may think about using the VCB for our VM backup today, the equallogic had provide some interesting package which allow us to avoid of VCB in our environment, and provide better backup and restoration process.

If we talk about disk base backup, which is VTL, it always cost involve in term of disk space and software licenses. With the latest features from Equallogic, we will able to avoid the extra investment require on VTL, but provide the similar functionality on disk base backup, and from disk to tape backup. If I bought the equallogic previously and sign up with the maintenance, I entitle the upgrade of the new features today. It will be a excellent surprise for my investment. As economy crisis, IT budget is been tight and require to work smarter, this should be a great news for the consumers. Personally, I will still say that the 10Gbe will be my option as to get rid of the fiber channel storage that we current use for VMware. As 48 spindles in a single array, we may need the bigger through put from the array to reach the client always.

According to DELL, we should able to see the official launch on 10Gbe but 1st quater of 2009.

VMware Increase Research Development Staff in China

According to the latest news from China, VMware is increasing the number of staff in China for R & D due to the high demand market which is double digits growing every year in China.

For more information, please read the related news here.

VMware China

Intel Moving to Infiniband

Intel had recently acquired the company call Neteffect which is focusing on 10Gbps adapter’s technology. As 10Ge is no longer a new thing in the market, but we still do not see it become the popular solution in the industry due to the expensive switches, NIC and solution that been widely control by the technology leader in networking solution. As we may also see some technology related to Ethernet infiniband which provide 20Gbps by using HCA (host channel adapter), that will be another major competitor to be compared with the 10Ge.

Personally I had been urging the storage and network vendor over and over again regarding the 10Ge products. The reason of it is pretty simple that the Fiber Channel is just too expensive to be deployed and managed VS Ethernet 10Ge. But the concern is the vendors are very slow responding to the 10Ge release roadmap although customers are demanding on that.

With Intel moving to the market now, I will see that is a big opportunity to make this 10Ge become inexpensive in the future with the high volume production provide by Intel in the servers’ market NIC. As virtualization becomes an important piece in the data center, the bandwidth will require being growing as much as possible at the same time VS CPU Cores and Memory. Intel had proven their right track on the servers NIC as many of us can easily found that the servers NICs are produced by Intel. Even in VMware ESX servers, your VM will be provided either AMD or Intel virtual NIC drivers on top of the hypervisor Virtualization.

As a IT Consumers, I am more than happy to see the technology become cheaper and cheaper and of course personally I do believe Intel will able to make the popularization for 10Ge moving forward.

Google Drops Yahoo Ad Deal

It had been a long time discussion, negotiation and application related to Google and Yahoo Ad Deal since the original approach by Microsoft who tried to buy Yahoo Inc to compete themselves over Google in the Ad IT market.

Personal point of view, we should always keep the market competitive to ensure no monopolize happen in every sector, especially in IT. Previously we have Microsoft and Intel both on antitrust cases, and it had been proven by both giant company in how GOOD they were to control and monopolize the market which always sell you high price with low performance goods or software.
Now the deal is off, and yahoo is still yahoo which will not mess up with google strategy. With that, it keep the market open and competitive which is always healthy to provide more choices for the consumer. Most users are google supporter today, but will you still be their die heart fans when the market is only have google as the only player left, which provide no choice for you to adapt everything they enforce? My answer will be NO, what about you?

AMD Layoff 500 workers worldwidwe

Latest news from the IT industry, AMD is going to lay off 500 workers worldwide from theri Manufacturing and Operation. It been common exercise for most of the IT giant player trying to reduce their productivity due to the slower market demand recently happen worldwide thanks to the economy downturn in the US.

This is absolutely bad news for the people which will be lay off. The new president of the US will require to work harder to rescue the financial crisis situation happen over in US.

ESX 4 Beta screen shot

Interesting to have a preview about the ESX 4? I found a link that posted with couple of screen shots for preview purpose which is currently still on beta test.

ESX 4


Have fun

SAP on x86 x64 platform

Most of the SAP users today may still rely their system to be hosted on the expensive IBM AIX, HPUX or SUN system which provide the High availabilities to support the non stop business operation for 24 x7 . It is make sense to do this for the past 5 years when the x86 processing power were not as powerful as today. Imagine that the amount of money that require to be pump in for the expensive solution today to keep the SAP running versus the cheaper x86 platform, you will significant see the amount of money you can save for the business from time to time.

I am here more focus to talk about the small and medium size environment for SAP which may be fit to most of the cases. With the technology today, it is sufficient to split the environment with multiple choices include blade, 2way or 4 way x86 servers or even the powerful Virtualization today. HA clustering of course will be the important thing that require to keep the Database with no interruption. My personal experience, we had run the entire DR for SAP on the virtualization today, which will not be utilize most of the time and the only job is to keep the data in sync from time to time. With this, we save the significant amount of money which allow us to further improve the environment for my company. Beside that, the applicaiton server on SAP should perfectly perform on the VM as proven on most of the huge SAP hosting company today. At the same time, Linux or Windows will be sufficient to handle the environment by reducing the complexity for future production support. Easily compare the support cost for linux/windows VS AIX or Unix, that will show another significant saving in the entire project.

SAP is certify itself to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise 64 bits at any x86 & x64 platform servers today. Our environment had been running with this model with more than 2 years and had not see there is any performance or production issue yet. Economy crisis had hit IT badly recently, should we still spending the money as we did previously? My thought is NO, I will rather to keep the money to expand the storages, DC, Virtualization, Dedupe and etc, which will allow the IT to be survived with the minimal capex and enhance the environment. CAPEX cut is not new thing today, a project which required USD 500k could be deploy with USD 300k on Linux and x86 platform VS Unix, will be more attracted to the investor, CIO or the CEO

More PC are moving to Linux than Windows

There are more and more development currently been done by the major IT vendor example HP, DELL, Asus, ACER and etc which try to move away from Microsoft Windows to Linux due to the slow boot. The next version of notebook or PC are targeting for fast boot with minimum functionaties such as web browsers, email client and etc. In stead of booting like a windows machine today, you will not able to start the entire machine with less than 30 seconds. These group of ppl are targeting to get the entire machine ready with less than 30 seconds and they also trying to switch to the lower cost computer chips which is outsite of Intel and AMD both.

The software to allow this happen is Splashtop which develop by Silicon Valley company DeviceVM. The software would run on a separate ARM processor, instead of the main CPU from Intel and AMD. Thie provide more optional choices for the vendor world instead of a fix and limited choices they could make. With these approach, we should able to see more linux devices from time to time on the netbook, laptops, mobile devices and etc. Stay tune and cheer for Linux

Windows 7 and Vista from Microsoft

Many of us may see the information flying around the web regarding the Windows 7 currently in the BETA test. I am not very sure as the consumer and IT Pro, what will we see the reaction recently been taken by Microsoft approach. The major concern for myself regarding their product is raising from time to time. Microsoft had really push hard for the Windows Vista for the past 2 years, but guess what, I think they need to improve their QC and QA for every products they launch and push to the customers. Microsoft started to admit the failure on Vista approach and push harder to quick launch the windows 7 ASAP now. This is what most of the IT users feel it.

Looking at the strategy by Microsoft, we compare Vista, Windows 2008 and Hyper V, None of it had been real complete and launch with full promise as they publish or public announce. All these 3 products are really heading to the traditional small company mindset with "Launch it 1st, and fix it later ". Guess what, this will screw up the confident of your customer who willing to pay their moneys for new technology. OK, now they admit the failure and rushing for the windows 7, most of us may have the imagination now, and hold back the brave we put on the vista previously. Personal opinion, I will not put myself a big hope on windows 7 as the failure on vista, but again is how Microsoft wanna play with the game to regain the confident of their customers.

100,000 Sony Batteries Recall

There was a big recall announcement by the major notebook vendors from HP, DELL, Fujitsu and etc 2 years back. We thought the battery exploited issues had been fixed now, but yet it does not actually. Recent announcement 2 days back, Sony is recalled another 100,000 batteries again which also due to the similar technology issue with what happened 2 years back.

As a consumer, I sincerely said that this should not happen for 2nd time as most of the brand which is impacted now is consider all the top brand in the market that the consumer had been confident to. With the 2nd round of recall now, I am just sad to see that the cost cutting always screw up the technology reliabilities and safety. Are they supposed to put the consumer on the risk while they would try to archive the costs lower exercise they need? The answer is a balance required in the middle.

I believe the problem batteries should not be settled with only replacement and the manufactured and selling company should require to compensate to the consumer who spend their money on the products which could had been risk to their safety. Again as I said, I hate to see this happen as it does show the lack of professionalism and safety consideration when the producer trying to sell their products to the consumer. Just similar to the poison milk issues recently happen in China. I do not see there is any different in both cases.