Attended my second VMware User Group Meeting (VMUG) today. The first meeting that I attended was held at the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s office a couple of month back. Today’s meeting was sponsored by Tech Data and held at their Clearwater, FL headquarters.
First up was VMware which gave a presentation of upcoming features in View 4.5. Numerous alpha/beta screenshots were displayed which showcased numerous improvements and new features. We were asked as group not to share the exact features as this is still a work in progress so I will end that there.
Next up was IBM with a more hardware CAPEX/OPEX oriented presentation. Some of the hardware that was discussed was really impressive, things like 2TB of system RAM, blade enclosures, and 1.8″ SSD “flash packs” that cut costs and push IOPS through the roof.
The final presenter Qlogic, was pretty interesting. The presentation included 8Gb FC, fibre channel over ethernet, and 10Gb copper.
After the presentations everyone broke up into groups and went on tours of the Tech Data Solutions Center and then into discussions with each of the three presenters.
See you at the next VMUG.
–Himuraken
See the following link for a more detailed understanding of ESXi 4.0 log directories and handling VMware ESXi 4 Log Files
For those that have never used crontab, it can be a daunting task to schedule a simple script. As with all things, I highly recommend that you learn the meanings of CLI programs and their usage etcetera. With that said, I wanted to check my crontab job against a generator of sorts just to be sure I had it right. If you want a simple click and go on crontab generator, I recommend using the one provided by HTML Basix. Enjoy!
–Himuraken
The VDI marketplace has been heating up. VMware’s recent launch of View 4 seems to have sparked more interest overall.
Microsoft has further cemented its partnership with Citrix to provide virtual desktops. Microsoft has also simplified (and reduced pricing) on using desktop OS in a virtual environment.
Recent promotions by Citrix (and Microsoft) are geared towards taking customers away from VMware. Citrix, which has a large installed base in the remote access arena, should do well with the XenApp to XenDesktop trade-in.
Red Hat has just announced that it will offer desktop virtualization based on KVM.
I expect many companies may wait until their next desktop refresh cycle to implement VDI. Moving to low-cost thin and zero clients certainly makes sense from an administration perspective.
This is an exciting time for anyone involved in virtualization!
- habanero_joe
This falls under the category of Fun Apps. I recently installed GuessMyOS by Hyper9 (who make several virtualization management apps). This is a plugin for VI3 and vSphere4 client. GuessMyOS replaces the generic VM icons with OS-specific for Linux and Windows. Personally I like seeing the penguin.
This is tied to the client so must be enabled for each client instance.
Hyper9
- habanero_joe
After attending the VMware View 4 Launch tour in Tampa a couple of weeks ago, I loaded up the evaluation to give it a good field test.
NOTE: I recommend reading the documentation BEFORE installing…
A few points to consider prior to rolling out the product:
1) View Server requires a MS Windows Server (2008 is not supported yet) that is a domain member.
2) View Composer requires vCenter Server and is installed as a service on vCenter.
3) So far only Windows desktop OS is supported.
4) There is a 32-bit Open Source client available (Google it).
Note: View Composer is not required to evaluate View but it is worth the slightly extra work to see it in action. Composer certainly makes it easier to rapidly create multiple desktops from a single template.
Observations after a couple of weeks:
After the initial set up, I have not had to do anything other than reboot the View Server after it became non-responsive. This caused a seemingly unrelated error when trying to connect with View Client.
My next steps are to get the Open Source Client working and hopefully to get a PCoIP “zero client” device to test. My initial thought is why would I connect to a Windows desktop from a Windows desktop?
More later…
- habanero_joe
Ran into an issue today where a clients SBS 2008 server stopped servicing requests made to hostname/owa. I am still unsure as to what caused this issue but find a fairly simple way to recreate the OWA virtual directory for IIS. Many admins are familiar with this procedure / howto for Exchange 2003 but are unable to find something similar for Exchange 2007. While the step that I will describe below is not as in depth as the previous link, it did resolve my issue.
If your OWA is giving you the dreaded 404 treatment try this: Open IIS Manager and delete the OWA virtual directory. Next you will need to open the Exchange Management Shell. Enter in the following command and press enter afterwards: New-OWAVirtualDirectory -OwaVersion:Exchange2007 -Name "OWA" .
That will rebuild / recreate the OWA virtual directory and start accepting client requests immediately. Please note that this recreates the OWA virtual directory under Default Web Site, not under SBS Web Applications like a default SBS / Exchange 2K7 install.
Hopefully, this one liner will save you some trouble.
–Himuraken
RighteousHack welcomes our newest author, Psythian to the blog. Psythian brings years of network and systems insight to our blog. Among other things, Psythian’s expertises lie within the small business and local government markets.
Welcome to the blog Psythian!
–Himuraken