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Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Corvettefisher posted:



You sure about that I was pretty sure hyper-v was a type 2 hypervisor has to go through the OS to get the hardware


It's type 1. Here's a good description of how it works:

http://www.virtuatopia.com/index.php/An_Overview_of_the_Hyper-V_Architecture#Hyper-V_and_Type_1_Virtualization

After installing the Hyper-V role, that instance of Windows is somewhat comparable to the ESX Service Console.

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Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

bull3964 posted:

I would say one BIG advantage of Hyper-V is licensing. You buy two datacenter licences on a dual socket machine and you have unlimited virtualization rights on all microsoft server OS versions. It has saved us thousands in licensing costs being primarily a microsoft shop.



This applies to vSphere and XenServer as well. Datacenter licenses are licensed to the socket, you can run whatever hypervisor you want on top.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

KS posted:

Anyone with experience using vCloud Director? I have some architectural questions.

We're aiming for two datacenters. Datacenter A will have the production environment. It will be SAN replicated to Datacenter B for DR and we will use SRM for failover.

This in itself is trickier than you may be expecting. Have you read this yet? http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10254

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

fatjoint posted:

Even with VAAI "locking" (don't remember hearing this term before), all storage vendors and VMware have always said 20-25 vms per lun, and I'm wanting to say Scott Lowe states it as well in Mastering vSphere 5.

All storage vendors and VMware have always said "It depends," and when pressed for a number have said something low and safe. With VAAI and some help from array-side caching technologies, you can get absurdly high densities under the right conditions. EMC has claimed up to 512 VMs per LUN, NetApp was claiming up to 128 on vSphere 4.1--I'm sure that's higher by now.

Pantology fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Apr 8, 2012

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Erwin posted:

I'm reading up on VMware View and I'm trying to get an answer to the vagueness of the documentation. It seems to imply that, even if I have an existing vSphere infrastructure with a vCenter server, I need a separate vCenter server for the View VMs. Is that true?

It is even more vague about needing a separate set of ESXi hosts. I hope that's not the case, because that's dumb. I only want to virtualize 20 desktops, max.

There are two ways to license vSphere for View.

The first is the standard vSphere licensing way. Your View VMs can be managed by the same vCenter server that manages the rest of your environment. Your View VMs can run on existing hosts, or you can purchase additional host licenses if you want to separate the workloads. Run all the VMs you can, but keep in mind that you're still subject to vRAM entitlements.

The second is to use vSphere for Desktops licensing. In this model, you purchase 100-packs of View licenses, and you can run as many hosts as you'd like to support those connections. One host or 100 hosts, no difference in licensing cost. Enterprise Plus feature set, no vRAM entitlement concerns. The catch is that you're only allowed to run desktop VMs and supporting management infrastructure on those hosts, and you need a separate, dedicated vCenter server to manage those VMs under that licensing.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

FISHMANPET posted:

What in the gently caress. So what do we pay for now? Just X per CPU? Is there going to be a core limit on CPUs?

It'll all be public on Monday, but I'd imagine we'll get something like Standard / Enterprise / Enterprise Plus tiers, with different feature sets and supported maximums.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
Had an interesting question from one of our recruiters today. She's wondering if there are any key words or phrases that you'd expect seasoned VMware people to use that less-experienced people might not. Some kind of shibboleth she can look for in resumes and cover letters, and during the initial phone screen.

Two that came to mind were spelling it "VMware," and referring to the vSphere client as the "VIC." I'm not wild about either--the former only catches the truly clueless, and the latter just means you remember 3.x. Anyone have anything better?

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Misogynist posted:

Yeah, if you guys don't have 10 seconds to be spending screening a resume, you clearly don't actually care about who you're hiring.

The issue is that the technologically competent people are spread thin doing real, billable work, and this recruiter lady is just trying to help increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the candidates she does pass on to us to review more thoroughly.

I think madsushi touched on a good, simple question we can give her--"What is your favorite new feature in vSphere 5.1." Any answer is fine, so long as they have one, and they sound excited about it. Shows that they stay current, and that they give a poo poo. Everything else we can teach them.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Moey posted:

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a book on VMware View?

I think I finally broke through to my boss that adding host after host and licensing with ESXi to run individual VMs for users to connect to is possible the most inefficient way to do desktop virtualization. Not only is it a waste of physical resources, licensing isn't free either.

The Evaluator's Guide is a good introduction:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Evaluators-Guide.pdf

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

I don't recall that book spending half its page count on Kiosk Mode configuration, so I'm not sure it's going to help you much.

VCP-DT is a silly, silly test.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
I think he's talking about the isolation address, which is the gateway by default.

You can use the das.isolationaddress advanced option to change that.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006421

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

1000101 posted:


Regarding your teacher, if he's planning to defend at PEX then he's got to have a design ready for submission before the end of the year. The defense portion isn't something you just cram for and hope for the best.

Cut-off date for PEX design submissions is Jan 4, but yeah, if he's not done or nearly done with the documentation by now, he's probably going to waiting for the next one. Seems to me that you'd want to submit well in advance of the cut-off date. That way if your design gets bounced back for whatever reason, you'd still have time to correct it and re-submit.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Number19 posted:

When we do our server updates next year we'll run into the vRAM limits. I'll probably schedule it for the New Year sometime.

There is no more vRAM licensing, period. You can stay on 5.0 and load up with as much memory as your heart desires, or budget allows.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

vty posted:

I'm a VSPP and I'm still billed by vRAM. I was so happy about the change until they said it doesn't affect VSPP providers.

Anyone know if the VSPP program has ever not been RAM based? I host nearly all Exchange/MSSQL servers so the RAM is always high-reserve (store.exe, etc).

Sorry, yeah, VSPP still has wacky rules, but for the general population vRAM is dead.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

1000101 posted:

Also if you're connecting vcenter to a vDS make sure you use ephemeral binding for the vCenter server, it's database server and potentially at least 1 AD server.

I still do this out of superstition, but was under the impression that so long as you were using Static Binding you were typically okay--VMs on a port group set to static could start without vCenter being available, you just couldn't make changes to networking until vCenter was back online. Is that wrong?

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

KennyG posted:

Can you boot ESXi from a SAN. Seems there was a fair bit of handwringing about it back on 3.x and 4.x but 5 seems to be supported. Anyone doing it, is it finicky?

I've had great luck with it on both 4.x and 5.x. Almost every Cisco UCS install I've seen has involved ESXi boot from SAN. Every Vblock boots from SAN. It's a well-traveled road--nothing to be afraid of.

Autodeploy is neat, but somewhat finicky to setup.

Pantology fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Dec 18, 2012

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
I don't really get the appeal of the C-Series UCS servers, unless you're doing something really edge-casey and want to hook them into FIs for the unified fabric and profile management. I have a customer that's using them in that way for a Hadoop cluster, and they're pretty thrilled with it, but again, it's an edge case.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

three posted:

Semi-related to virtualization, but did anyone follow the VCE launch presentation this morning? They claim a billion dollar run rate, but have only sold 1,000 units. Am I way off on my math ($1mil/Vblock) or does that not make any sense?

Looking through some past BoMs, I don't know if you can get a Vblock 300 for less than $1m, or a 700 for less than $2m.

Pantology fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Feb 21, 2013

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
Yeah, the Vblock 100 and 200 were officially announced today. Vblock 100 is C-series UCS and VNXe, supporting NFS and iSCSI. Vblock 200 is C-series UCS and VNX 5300. Available March and mid-year, respectively.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
"Horizon" View 5.2 will support clusters of greater than eight hosts, with linked clones on VMFS.

http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=4627

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Misogynist posted:

He already said that he can't use Converter because it's GPT (Converter doesn't work with GPT labelled disks in the year 2013).

Good news:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vcenter/converter

Pantology fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Apr 27, 2013

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Corvettefisher posted:

Anyone got some good resources on vCloud director?

TrainSignal's vCloud course will be out in a week or two.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

Well VMworld is around the corner. I am interested on how they are going to present it this year.

Usually they do something on stage in Hall D.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
More vSphere 5.5 coverage:

http://wahlnetwork.com/category/deep-dives/5-5-vsphere-improvements/

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

E: I also want to kick myself for over complicating vButt, it really is a fairly straight forward product.

Don't worry about it. It's well worth spending as much time as you can getting familiar with all the quirks of vCloud Director, as it's got a long, bright future ahead of it.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

Doesn't the VCDX need to be based off a real project now of days?

Strongly encouraged but not required, though even a real project may require some fictional elaboration to map to the blueprint.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

theperminator posted:

How can I add the ability to my vSphere cluster for switch port ACL's on the networks?

It looks like VShield App has been discontinued, Cisco's 1000v looks like it should do it but needs to be managed by people other than our network engineers.

:edit: it looks like vSphere 5.5 adds this functionality, no idea when that is coming out though.

App and the rest of vCNS are the same not-quite-dead-yet grey area as vButt Director. It's still around for now, and a 5.5 release will ship, but after that, who knows.

Edit: Whoops. De-Butted: https://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-network-security.html

Pantology fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Sep 4, 2013

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

DevNull posted:

I am pretty sure our newest product is still under NDA, please stop posting about it.

Whoops. All the good stuff is moving to vButt Automation Center anyway, so just wait for that.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

I was actually informed that this was not true by a VCAP-DCD at lunch today a recent VCDX had a largely fictional design that passed.

You can just say you heard it from a guy. We don't need his resume.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

BTW has cisco come out with any other reasons to by the UCS's other than the unified fabric and UC Manager? Really haven't messed with them much since my new job.

No, Unified fabric, VICs, and statelessness, all tied together with UCSM, are still pretty much it. But what else are you looking for?

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

... a low number VCDX ...

Appreciate you making this important distinction, as we all know only the first 80 or so were worth a drat.

Edit: I guess I can try to be helpful, too.

Keep your eyes open. Soak up all you can about the storage, network, compute, and DR, as these are all things beyond just virtualization that you'll need to detail in your design, and will need to be able to speak with authority on in your defense. Read the VCDX blueprint and application--they outline in very black and white terms exactly what level of effort is expected in the design submission. As you feel like you're getting close to being able to submit, start reading the VCDX Bootcamp book, watching the VCDX vBrownBag sessions, and viewing VMware's VCDX Bootcamp videos to get a better idea of what the defense process feels like. Get as many mock panels under your belt as possible, and make sure they include the design and troubleshooting scenarios.

Pantology fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Oct 9, 2013

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

Anyone here using Vmware's DR or whatever they call IaaS hot sites? I'd love to know how they perform.

Are you talking about their DRaaS thing through vCHS? That was said to be in beta this quarter, so I doubt you'll find anyone actually using it, or that could talk about it if they were.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Martytoof posted:

Is there a good "Hyper-V for VMware dudes" primer? Most of the stuff is pretty straightforward but I'd love to read something that approaches teaching the material from that angle.

Yes:

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/microsoft-virtualization-for-vmware-professionals-jump-start#?fbid=cKKAesgMWOG

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:


Think I should reshoot my DCD. Any Idea what a 23y/o DCD is worth?

In most cases, about $400 more than a 23 y/o with VCP.

At a partner where there are VMware competencies that require DCD, maybe a little more. An end-user sort of organization won't be as familiar with it, and as such is unlikely to value it any higher.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

Any word if we are ever getting MSSQL support for the VCSA?

Last I saw, it'll come as soon as Microsoft releases a supported ODBC driver for Linux.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

But they have it for the decommed vButt Director...

It's almost like those are different products, run by different teams, doing things in different ways.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Docjowles posted:

They've provided one for a long rear end time. Is it not officially supported? That wouldn't surprise me I guess.

Was pulling that from this. I still parse "Linux" as "Here be dragons," so I'm not sure why they can't make the supported Red Hat client work nice with SLES.

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

Sadly 6.0 wasn't released so it's back to my 5.x VCDX design.

You shooting for PEX?

Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum
I'm assuming the 2015 defense schedule will be similar to 2014 - US dates roughly quarterly, with the first at PEX. Though since the guy that runs the program just left, who knows what'll happen.

I got talked into it at VMworld, and am now scrambling to get all my docs in a row. It's going to be tight.

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Pantology
Jan 16, 2006

Dinosaur Gum

1000101 posted:

I'd be happy to rip your docs apart and let you know if they'll pass muster. Shoot me a pm when you have something ready.

I will absolutely take you up on that. Shooting to have the bundle ready by the end of November.

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