The VMguy

A couple new technical papers got posted this week.  Some good reading for the IT staffers working hard this summer.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Performance on VMware vSphere^TM 4 <-Great reading for seeing how Exchange performs on ESX4.

Smart Card and Certificate Authentication in VMware View  <-If you need to use smart cards with VMware View this a must read

Repurposing a PC to a Thin Desktop Using VMware View <-a very common question from customers that want to extend the life of their PC a little longer.  Good reading on a few ideas on how to do so.

Network Segmentation in Virtualized Environments  <-Some good ideas if you need to seperate and firewall off sections of your infrastructure.

Sorry, missed this one from a week ago.  VMware released a technical white paper on all of the performance enhancements in vSphere 4.0.  Things like 8-way SMP VMs or 64 NFS mounts per cluster as well as many more.  Some good reading if you like the technology and to see what has been enhanced and added.

You can read all of the details in the white paper here .

We’ve had a bit of discussion as of late about running SQL on ESX.  There are so many things to consider in storage, network, VM layout, etc.  VMware has released a new whitepaper on all of those considerations.  It’s really a very good summary of all things to consider when beginning to virtualize your Tier-1 applications.  It has outstanding sections on CPU, memory, network, storage and availability.  More good reading for Admins entering into this phase of virtualization.

You can find all of the details in the article here.

Just started review today’s pile of Virtualization news and came across this blog post .  So many of my customers are starting to look to virtualize SQL and Exchange.  The article contains some great information on enhancements you can do to make SQL hum on ESX.  What I found interesting is that with some tweaking, you can increase performance by 21%.  That is pretty substantial.

To find out all of the tips and tweaks of running SQL on ESX, better read the Best practices guidlines for running SQL on VMware .

Next up, virtualizing Exchange tips.

I honestly don’t know the answer to this question but I’ve already been asked by a few customers so I’m opening it for discussion.  If you read VMware’s current EULA (Section 1.6), it describes a processor to include up to 6 cores.

Intel has announced a sweet 8-core Nehelem-EX Xeon and it will be interesting how this will apply to ESX.  As mentioned, I don’t know how ESX will license on it but with the processors hitting the street this quarter , we won’t have to wait long to find out.

I will, of course, post additional information as soon as it becomes publically available.