VMware News

This article discusses the best way to make a backup of a virtual machine in VMware Fusion. To make a backup copy of a virtual machine, copy the virtual machine package (the file ending in

Lab Manager does not support the import of virtual machines containing snapshots.  However, you can take some steps to import a virtual machine with snapshots Use the following procedure for

Windows prompts for activation when swapping between booting directly from a Boot Camp partition and using it in VMware Fusion. Booting a Windows OS

This article guides you through the process of opening a command prompt from Windows, a shell prompt from Linux or Mac OS. The article also describes how to get to a command or shell prompt by using a

This article assists you in gaining access to the virtual machine's BIOS options in the event that it passes too quickly to interact with the screen. To make it easier to access the

· VMware Tools installation fails · VMware Tools installation generates the error: The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows

· When attempting to customize the deployment of a virtual machine the radio buttons are disabled (greyed out) · When a virtual machine is deployed from a template, the SID is always the same, despite the

· A Windows XP guest generates a warning about BusLogic SCSI drivers during power on · You receive the following warning: Your guest operating system is Windows XP and

You have an ESX 3.0.2 host upgraded with patch ESX-1006363 build 117737 and VirtualCenter 2.5 and are experiencing these issues: · Uploading files to a datastore fails

· The Mac uses an IDE controller · The Boot Camp virtual machine fails to start in Fusion · You receive the following stop error: STOP: 0x0000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE This issue occurs when the

This article provides steps to locate a virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion. Fusion creates a virtual machine as a bundle, which is a set of files grouped together as a package. Each

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) requires specific processors (CPU) and guest operating systems. Processors  VMware collaborated with AMD and Intel in providing an

· pNICs (Physical NICs) may lose connectivity over a period of time on a combination of IBM x3850 or x3950 M1 servers that use Intel 82571 based NICs · Loss of connectivity

· When trying to install VMware Tools the following error is displayed: Error 1606: Could Not Access Network Location \\\users\administrator\my documents or a similar error. · You need

· VMware View desktops lose their connection over a Security Gateway Server multiple times per hour · The View Client session becomes unresponsive for approximately 10 to

· VMotion on a powered on virtual machine fails · You see the error: A general system error occurred: failed to

· Time Machine backups take up too much room, too quickly · Restoring virtual machines from a Time Machine backup fails This document describes the best

· You get a blue error screen when booting to Windows. · You cannot boot into Windows. · You see this error when starting Windows: NTLDR is missing   · You receive an

· Time Machine backup disk is being filled quickly · You cannot restore virtual machine from Time Machine backup · Virtual machines are experiencing performance

Mirrored folders allow the Mac and the virtual machine to see the same content in certain personal data folders. For example: · Any content put on the Mac's desktop also appears

This article discusses ways to protect your data from accidental loss. Making good backups of your data is essential. Mac OS X (10.5 and above) includes Time Machine, a utility that makes hourly backups

Running the vcbRestore command in the service console of ESX Server 3.0.3 and of ESX Server 3.5 or later to restore a virtual machine backed up in a VCB proxy by using VCB

You encounter either of these issues: · Windows logs into any user account (automatically or manually) but once logged in immediately logs out and

What is VMware Capacity Planner? VMware Capacity Planner a tool used by VMware partners to help our customers better understand their virtualization opportunities and map the virtualization process specifics

A lot of you have been very busy this week, patching ESX hosts(That would be you Jason ;-)) and hopefully reading all the excellent articles being aggregated on Planet V12n...

• Duncan Epping - CPU/MEM Reservation Behavior
  The above paragraph is a bit misleading , as it seems to imply that a VM has to access its full reservation. What it should really say is “Memory which is protected by a reservation will not be reclaimed by ballooning or Host-level swapping even if it becomes idle,” and “Physical machine memory will not be allocated to the VM until the VM accesses virtual RAM needing physical RAM backing.” Then that pRAM is protected by the reservation and won’t be reclaimed by ballooning or .vswp-file swapping. If there is any .vswp memory at all as no .vswp is created when the reservation is equal to the provisioned memory.
• Scott Lowe - PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0
  Next, you’ll need the PXE boot files. Specifically, you’ll need the menu.c32 and pxelinux.0 files. These files are not on the DVD ISO image; you’ll have to download Syslinux from this web site. Once you download Syslinux, extract the files into a temporary directory. You’ll find menu.c32 in the com32/menu folder; you’ll find pxelinux.0 in the core folder. Copy both of these files, along with vmlinuz and initrd.img, into the root directory of the TFTP server. (If you don’t know the root directory of the TFTP server, double-check its configuration.)
• Stu Radnidge - Challenge Convention & Garbage In / Garbage Out & Engage Support Early & Engage Support Early
  The notion of GIGO is of course much older than I am, but it’s one of those concepts that is timeless. In relation to Cloud, it’s more pertinent than ever. The marketing hype would have you believe that Cloud is a panacea, and many people hawking their wares artfully dodge the subject of your existing tools and processes. But ignore these at your own peril. The COO of the company I work for has a great quote, which goes something like “God made the earth in 6 days, because he started with a clean slate.”. The same is true of internal Cloud (or whatever you want to call it – I’m going to call it that for the sake of convenience) – you could probably nail down the platform code and functionality that you want to launch with in a few weeks, but making the requisite changes to existing processes and integrating with existing tools in your environment is what will take the lion’s share of time to address.
• Luc Dekens - Counter the self-aware VUM
  Today there was quite a bit of activity on Twitter following Jason Boche’s blog post titled VMware Update Manager Becomes Self-Aware. The problem Jason discovered was that the VUM skipped the guests which are hosting the VUM server and the vCenter server. As a consequence you can not select a cluster, select “remediate” and go out for lunch anymore. The resolution was a rather cumbersome and error prone manual procedure. But of course PowerCLI can help the human vSphere administrator...
• Chris Wolf - RSA, Intel, and VMware Take a Big Step Forward in Cloud Security
  In the past, I have talked about this security dilemma in a couple of couple of key areas. First, we need a standardized set of cloud isolation levels. We also need standard metadata (either de facto or industry standard) so that third party audit tools can properly query an application’s relationship to cloud security policy in relation to virtual and physical controls that are in place. I covered those issues in more depth in the post “The Cloud Mystery Machine: Metadata Standards.” In addition, virtual resources need to be able to answer the question “Where are you?” That applies to both the runtime location and data location. It’s important to ensure that data privacy and governance concerns are met, and regulatory compliance issues such as data export restrictions are satisfied.

Recently John Arrasjid(@vcdx001), Steve Kaplan(@roidude) and I (@DuncanYB) released a book titled "Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vSphere 4". The book as John Arrasjid described it "provides a starting point for understanding the requirements to design and optimize a virtualized data center that also serves as the foundation for efficient and safe cloud computing."

The book is published by USENIX/SAGE and it is the 21st book in the Short Topics series. SAGE is a Special Interest Group of the USENIX Association. Its goal is to serve the system administration community by organizing conferences and training to enhance the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession.

Twenty copies of the book have been given away via Twitter and Mark Vaughn was one of the lucky people who won a copy and published a review. Here's an outtake from Mark's review:

Review by Mark Vaughn
This is not a technical manual designed to walk you through a vSphere installation, this is the book that will explain why you need to develop a virtualization strategy and identify the key items that you will need to address in developing that strategy. This book is a must have reference source for people working with virtualization, whether you are deploying it, developing strategies around it, or simply looking for a better understanding of virtualization technologies and strategies. This is the 21st book in the Short Topics series by USENIX, available on the SAGE website. In fact, I like this book so much that I will probably join SAGE to get access to more of the Short Topics series.

PALO ALTO, CALIF – March 2, 2010 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the data center and to the cloud, today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the purchase of up to $400 million of its Class A common stock through the end of 2011. Stock will be purchased from time to time, in the open market or through private transactions, subject to market conditions. The Company expects the equity purchase program to help partially offset dilution from its equity programs and believes it to be an appropriate use of proceeds from the exercise of employee stock options. About VMware VMware delivers...

VMware vSphere™, VMware View™ and VMware ThinApp™ Enable Healthcare Customers to Reduce Costs and Help Ensure Availability of Patient-critical Solutions. ATLANTA,GA — March 1, 2010 — Today at HIMSS10, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, continues to gain momentum in the healthcare industry as more healthcare IT vendors select VMware as their virtualization platform of choice for deploying applications. VMware vSphere™ helps these vendors simplify IT environments, improve patient information security, and boost efficiency. Healthcare providers are increasingly choosing to run their...

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Creating a top 5 seems to be getting more difficult week after week. Not only does the quality of the blog articles increase, the amount of blogs listed on PlanetV12n and the amount of articles also increase steadily. I hope I can keep up with you guys, or I might just need to get a cute assistant to help me out with this.... Hmmm, that's actually not a bad idea. Anyway, here's the list!

• Eric Gray - Taking snapshots of VMware ESX 4 running in a VM
  Clearly, the capability introduced with VMware vSphere 4 that allows VMware ESX 4 to virtualize itself is a real crowd-pleaser. However, one limitation that some have discovered while using this lab-testing technique is the lack of ability to use snapshots with virtual ESX systems. In fact, after taking a snapshot of a virtual ESX VM, you will see the system boot into the recovery shell.
• Kenneth van Ditmarsch - Using LeftHand Snapshot techniques within a VMware Environment
  Well, currently no integration exists between the LeftHand Snapshot technique and vCenter. If the LeftHand Snapshot process is started, vCenter isn’t alerted to quiesce the VM’s and therefore the VM’s are able to continue processing while a LeftHand Snapshot is made, which leads to inconsistent VM states. Last year the LeftHand roadmap indicated that vCenter application integration would be available in the new SAN/iQ 8.5. SAN/iQ 8.5 is currently shipped with the HP/LeftHand P4000 G2 nodes and will be available for download on 29th of March for existing P4000 user. For some reasons however vCenter application integration is shoved back to Q4 2010 or later.
• Steve Kaplan - The multi-hypervisor fallacy
  Implicit in multi-hypervisor advocacy is an undertone of virtualizing servers rather than the data center. This myopic perspective limits both savings and synergies. Cisco studies, for example, show a lack of vNetwork capability results in 30% fewer servers that can be virtualized along with 30% higher administrative requirements. Network administrators have no way to monitor traffic over a vSwitch for compliance, auditing and troubleshooting purposes, and they cannot apply network and security policies that follow a VM as it live-migrates. Since only vSphere enables vNetwork capabilities, multiple hypervisors leave at least a portion of the data center running less efficiently and less secure.
• Steve Chambers - IT Departments and the Collapse of the Silos
  Today I had the opportunity to present at the National Computing Center Think Tank. The NCC have a fantastic remit to bring together practitioners from the private and public sector to explore the current realities. Add to this the vendor invitations where folks like me can share our observations with no axe to sell, and it makes for a really great discussion. Awesome stuff. Prior to this invitation I prepared two documents. First I wrote a blunt paper based on my observations and feedback via Twitter. Second I wrote a Prezi for that to share the findings in ten pieces.
• Craig Risinger - The Resource Pool Priority-Pie Paradox
  We run into this on a daily basis; Misunderstanding of the “shares” concept in combination with resource pools. To start with a bold statement: A few VMs in a Low-shares Resource Pool can outperform each of many VMs in a High-shares Resource Pool. How is this possible you might ask. Resources are divided at the Resource Pool level first. Each Resource Pool is like a pie whose size determines amount of resources usable (during contention). Then that pie is subdivided among the VMs in the pool. A Resource Pool applies to all its VMs collectively. Thus a smaller pie divided among fewer VMs can yield more resources per VM than a larger pie divided by even more VMs.

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Posted by Ben Verghese
Chief Management Architect, Virtualization and Cloud Platforms Business Unit

Today VMware announced a definitive agreement to acquire certain management products from the EMC Ionix portfolio, including Server Configuration Manager (formerly Configuresoft), FastScale, Application Discovery Manager (formerly nLayers), and Service Manager (formerly Infra).   These products will provide new capabilities to VMware’s vCenter family of products.

Over the years, VMware has led the industry in virtualization of IT infrastructure. We have empowered customers to reduce costs, increase automation, and deliver new services that they could not before. Now, as the enterprise has increasingly adopted a virtualized model, the foundation has been built for the transition to cloud computing.

There is so much hype around the word “cloud” these days, but what I am referring to is a way of doing computing that enables a revolutionary business model for enterprise IT. Start with efficient pooling of infrastructure to create on-demand virtualized capacity, add automation based on industry-wide and user-local policies, self-service access to a catalogue of IT services, charge-back and usage reporting, and you achieve public-cloud economics with private cloud control. This is IT-as-a-Service.

An IT-as-a-Service model demands strong capabilities and automation across several aspects of management: provisioning, capacity, configuration, performance, business continuity. With the acquisition of the Ionix products, VMware will extend the capabilities of vCenter in order to meet these demands, especially around configuration management and compliance in the enterprise private cloud.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples where the Ionix products complement what we already have in the vCenter line. In the drive to IT-as-a-Service, customers have been asking for visibility into full-stack compliance, from metal to apps. We recently announced the ConfigControl product that works closely with vCenter to provide configuration management and compliance to policies in highly dynamic virtualized environments. Ionix Server Configuration Manager enhances this functionality in two important ways. First, it adds visibility of the guest OS and application configuration on virtualized and non-virtualized servers. Second, it provides built-in capability for Compliance Reports ranging from the ESX hardening guide to HIPAA and PCI. The Ionix Application Discovery Manager product (formerly nLayers) automatically discovers complex applications with components on multiple servers, virtual and physical. The combination of these three products, when integration is complete, will give us comprehensive configuration and compliance capability across a broad domain with virtual infrastructure at the core, but extending to the adjacent areas of the OS, complex applications, and physical hardware if needed.

There are many opportunities to integrate these two sets of products to deliver management value in the private cloud.  Another example of synergy is the potential to integrate Studio and the acquired Ionix FastScale provisioning engine.  Studio enables the application developer or integrator to describe the application and the OS and how it should be put together as a Virtual Appliance. The FastScale engine can slim down the Virtual Appliance and deploy or update the image to a VM (or bare hardware if desired). 

Let me be clear: our goal is to simplify management of IT as customers move to an increasingly dynamic and virtualized infrastructure. However, our customers have varied needs and have also made significant investments in management platforms and tools from our partners.  As we integrate the Ionix products into the vCenter family and accelerate innovation towards a new more agile management model, we remain committed to open APIs, and co-operation and integration with our partners.  This approach has allowed us to jointly provide robust solutions for our customers and we will continue to lead in this area.

Acquisition Expands VMware vCenter Management Product Family; Addresses Critical Management Needs as Customers Advance on Journey to Cloud Computing. PALO ALTO, CA and HOPKINTON, MA – February 25, 2010 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the data center and to the cloud, and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) -- the world leader in information infrastructure solutions -- today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for VMware to acquire certain software products and expertise from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of...

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PALO ALTO, Calif., February 24, 2010— VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that Tod Nielsen, chief operating officer of VMware, will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, CA on March 2, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET. A live webcast will be available on the Investor Relations page at http://ir.vmware.com. The replay of the webcast will be available for one month. About VMware VMware delivers solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. ...

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