The VSAN story is out and doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. It feels like everyone I talk to is asking about the product and the pricing model (see VSAN Pricing and Implications). More than once now, I’ve seen a wince or the written equivalent. I can certainly understand, as an extra $15K in licensing to a six CPU cluster is far from trivial. My goal here is to unpack the pricing a bit to examine the value that’s being delivered (the value is non-trivial as well). (more…)
After a wide-open public beta, lots of speculation about licensing models and costs, and a long wait, VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) went GA on March 12, 2014. The basic issue of pricing was revealed: $2,495 per CPU socket for any workload or a $50/user model for Horizon View. What are the implications of VSAN pricing for end users? (more…)
OK, so I really meant to do a series of posts speculating on General Availability announcements based on a close reading of the VMware Partner Exchange Content Catalog. Life intervened, and I only got through the VSAN content. And now that VMware PEX 2014 Day 1 has come and gone, it seems anti-climactic. There were no GA announcements on VSAN, BC/DR to vCHS, Desktone’s integration into the VMware lineup, NSX in the channel, or Airwatch mobile device management integration into the EUC lineup.
On the other hand, I’d have to characterize VMware PEX Day 1 as a success. (more…)
The PEX 2014 Content Catalog is online, so I had quite a bit of searching, slicing, and dicing to do. My initial read-through was looking for clues about announcements which might happen before Partner Exchange, but I gave up on that very quickly. If you think you’ve found something I’ve overlooked, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Maybe a problem I had was getting sidetracked by content. So it seemed more productive to think about the interesting sessions. This is the first of a few posts about interesting stuff I saw in the content catalog. (more…)
PEX 2014 is actually going to be my first VMware Partner Exchange. Exciting! The full pass is booked and paid for. No turning back now! The early-bird deadline is January 6th, so book now to save some money ($300). This year the boot camps are from Feb 8-10 with the event proper on Feb 10-13. I won’t be making it out to the boot camps, but will be attempting to get on-site as early as possible on the 10th for the Hands on Labs. I seem to remember (more…)
Thin provisioning of virtual disks has been a quiet benefit to IT administrators working in virtual environments. In the recent past of thick provisioned storage as the only option (still common in non-virtualized, local storage environments), administrators made educated guesses about the amount of disk space their systems would need. Only in the 2008 Server family did Microsoft even include operating system tools to expand disk partitions, an incentive to over-provision storage. (more…)
The ESXi Shell (formerly known as “Tech Support Mode”) is a Busybox embedded Linux environment which vSphere administrators can use as a direct command line administrative interface for the vSphere host. Everything one might want to do with the CLI (“run common system administration commands against ESX/ESXi systems”) can be done in the ESXi Shell for the local system. In addition, there are some commands and options that can only be run in the ESXi Shell. There’s also the added advantage of not needing to install the CLI package on a machine with network access to the vSphere host. It’s also where you’d run utility scripts like ghettoVCB for backup. (more…)
Working in the virtualization field demands a skill set which crosses domains. Windows guest administration is one of the tasks that can’t be ignored. Be it template management, deployment, or performance troubleshooting, Windows administration is a basic skill that a well-rounded administrator should be able to do. However, Windows administration can be a full time job, so if one’s focus is one level up, on the hypervisor, it’s important to have a consistent set of easily accessible tools to do basic administrative tasks. A colleague pointed me to Chocolatey as a meta-tool which can help install and manage best-of-breed tools which often aren’t developed by Microsoft or included with the standard operating system install. (more…)
Think you’ll be able to use Link Aggregation Groups (LAG) to turn your four Gigabit links into a single 4 Gigabit link? Well, Link Aggregation might not do the job you think it will do. Listen, I get it. There are a ton of topics that you have to know about to be an effective Virtualization solution designer, and network intricacies might seem pretty far down the list. So here’s the deal.