VMware vCenter™ Infrastructure Navigator is an application awareness plug-in to vCenter Server, and provides continuous dependency mapping of applications. Infrastructure Navigator offers application context to the virtual infrastructure administrators to monitor and manage the virtual infrastructure inventory objects and actions. Administrators can use Infrastructure Navigator to understand the impact of the change on the virtual environment in their application infrastructure. Infrastructure Navigator helps virtual infrastructure administrators perform the following tasks:

• Make accurate first-level triage to help either eliminate the problem or associate the problem with the virtual infrastructure when business service users report problems.
• Assess change impact, manage, and communicate virtual infrastructure issues for critical applications.
• Understand the application and business impact of changes to the virtual infrastructure on applications.

The Open Source Licenses (OSL) file for the virtual appliance is available at /root/open_source_licenses.txt. You can retrieve the file by running the scp root@<appliance IP>:open_source_licenses.txt command.

Infrastructure Navigator is supported on vCenter Server 5.0 with the vSphere Web Client. The supported ESX versions include ESX/ESXi 3.5 (build 425420), ESX/ESXi 4.0 (build 398348), ESX/ESXi 4.1 (build 433742), and all builds of ESXi 5.x.

Features

This section describes the key features for the Infrastructure Navigator 1.0.0 release.

Simplifies and automates the deployment and the discovery process and keeps manages Application Component Knowledge Base (KB) current

• Eliminates physical switch spanning or credential based discovery.
• Discovers and maps the application components and dependencies using KBs and presents this knowledge through maps or search for relevant use cases.

Provide Infrastructure Navigator data for vCenter Server and related solutions

• Ensures that the application and dependency data is available to the rest of the vCenter Server entities and its various solutions through the vCenter extensibility APIs.
• Supports SRM integration to set up more focused and accurate site recovery and backup plans.

VMware vCenter Operations Manager is an automated operations management solution that provides integrated performance, capacity, and configuration management for highly virtualized and cloud infrastructure. Deep VMware vSphere integration provides the most comprehensive management of VMware environments. VMware vCenter Operations Manager is purpose-built for VMware administrators to more effectively manage the performance of their VMware environments as they move to the private cloud.

Key Benefits

• Actionable intelligence to automate manual operations processes
• Visibility across infrastructure and applications for rapid problem resolution
• Proactively ensures optimal resource utilization and virtual and cloud infrastructure performance

To enable Network I/O Control we need to have a DvS in place.  If we select the distributed switch and then select the Resource Application tab on the right, this gives us the “properties” option on the far right.  By selecting the Properties option, you can enable Network I/O Control on the DvS.  Once enabled you can see all of the System network resource pools.  There is one at the bottom of the list labeled “vSphere Replication (VR) Traffic”.  Selecting it and then clicking the “Edit Settings” link just below it opens up the settings window.

From here, you can edit the adapter shares.  The shares are to balance the bandwidth so that network flows can use the bandwidth thats available from a given dvuplink.  The shares are for a given dvUplink.

Alternatively, you can uncheck the Unlimited checkbox and set a host limit.  Keep in mind that this is Megabits per sec, not MegaBytes.  This is also the limit of the combined set of dvUplinks on a given host.

Lastly, a QOS priority tag can be used.  The traffic will have a 802.1p tag applied to it.  The IEEE does not standardize or mandate the use of the priority tag applied to the packets but the switches should treat higher tags with higher priority.  The choices are None, 1-7.

While not the granular controls that we may wish for, say individual bandwidth controls on a per VM or per-site replication limits, these settings and options are a start.  Hopefully in the future in vSphere Replication v2 we will have more granular controls for bandwidth throttling but until then, these are what we can use.  Happy computing.

The vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0 provides various new features.

• Automatic Report Scheduler
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager, you can define automatic report schedulers. These schedulers create report schedules for hierarchies and entities that match the criteria specified in the automatic report scheduler. The automatic report scheduler scans all the hierarchies and creates report schedules for the hierarchies and entities that match the specified criteria.
• Charge thin and thick provisioned virtual machines differently
  In this release, you can charge thin provisioned disks and thick provisioned disks differently. By default, thin provisioned disks are charged for the actual usage of the disk. You can override this behavior to charge the thin provisioned disks as thick provisioned in your billing policy.
• Cost variance and cost optimization
  vCenter Chargeback Manager provides a cost variance graph in the report dashboard that lets you analyze the day-to-day change in cost for a selected hierarchy or entity. The graph shows cost data for the last 30 days and that projected for the next 3 months in sets of 30 days each. vCenter Chargeback Manager lists different cost optimization opportunities, such as oversized virtual machines, undersized virtual machines, idle virtual machines, and powered off virtual machines. Cost variance and cost optimization is displayed only for the vCenter Servers that are integrated with VMware vCenter Operations.
• Showback Report
  A showback report lets you analyze how the cost is distributed among the entities based on a specified distribution policy. It is a configurable report that does not include any costs when it is generated. You can specify the total cost, fixed cost, and resource weight in the generated report to obtain the cost for each entity and for each resource per entity. The cost per entity is calculated based on the distribution policy that you select when generating the show back report.
• Apply fixed cost based on virtual machine state
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager, you can now define fixed costs that will be applied on an entity only for the duration for which the virtual machine in the entity is powered on.
• Tier-based storage costing
  vCenter Chargeback Manager lets you define storage tiers and configure cost on the tiers. All the datastores under a tier will be charged uniformly as per the cost configuration settings on the tier. You can also include VM storage profiles in a tier. The storage profiles defined in vSphere are synchronized and the datastores are automatically grouped according to their storage profiles. The cost configuration defined on a profile is applied on all the datastores that match the storage profile. Similarly, the cost configuration defined on a tier is applied to all the datastores or storage profiles added to the tier.
• Support for raw device mapping
  vCenter Chargeback Manager accounts for usage of hard disks that use raw device mapping. The corresponding cost and usage data is reported for the virtual machines that have disks using raw device mapping.
• Complete support for vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5
  vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0 supports the new features introduced in vSphere 5.0, such as VM storage profiles, and that introduced in vCloud Director 1.5, such as support for an SQL Server database.
• Partial support for IPv6
  In this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager supports IPv6 over IPv4 on an experimental basis. You can provide URLs with IPv6 IP addresses when connecting to vCenter Servers, LDAP Servers, vCenter Chargeback Manager databases, and vCenter Server databases. Ensure that the IPv6 IP address is enclosed in square brackets [ ] in the URL as per the standard convention.
• VM Instance Cost support for all hierarchies in vCenter Chargeback Manager
  In vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.0, you can define fixed cost pricing matrices for virtual machines based on vCPU count and memory bundles. Unlike earlier releases, this functionality is now available for all the hierarchies created in vCenter Chargeback Manager.
• Support for burstable billing or 95th percentile billing for the external network traffic in vCloud Director
  You can now calculate the cost for external network traffic in your vCloud Director setup based on the 95th percentile transfer rate. Starting with this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager introduces the external network transmit rate and external network receive rate resources and the Burstable Utilization resource attribute for these resources. You can define a billing policy that has these resource-attribute pair in the expression to calculate the cost based on the 95th percentile transfer rate. vCenter Chargeback Manager calculate the 95th percentile value based on the daily samples. That is, vShield Manager Data Collector runs a job that accounts for the samples for the last 24 hours and computes the 95th percentile value based on these samples.
• Support for overage charging for org vDCs in the Allocation Pool model of vCloud Director
  In this release, vCenter Chargeback Manager provides the VMware Cloud Director apply overage charge on Allocation Pool vDC property for the Cloud Director Data Collector. This property must be set to true (default value is false) to account for the resource usage over and above the guaranteed reservation in vCloud Director. This is applicable only for CPU and memory. Also, you must use the VMware Cloud Director Overage Allocation Pool Cost Model to account for resource overage. You must, however, modify the cost model to define the base rate and overage rate for the resources.
• New cost models and billing policies for vCloud Director
  This release of vCenter Chargeback Manager introduces two new cost models and billing policies that are made available when you install the Cloud Director Data Collector. 
  • VMware Cloud Director Actual Usage Cost Model: This cost model uses the new VMware Cloud Director Billing Policy – Actual Usage. This billing policy lets you calculate cost based on actual resource usage for all resources except count of networks, enabled IPSec VPN tunnel count, and NAT, DHCP, and firewall services. For these resources the allocation values defined in vCloud Director is used.
  • VMware Cloud Director Overage Allocation Pool Cost Model: This cost model uses the new VMware Cloud Director Billing Policy – Overage Allocation Pool. Only for this beta release, the billing policy calculates the overage cost for CPU based on actual usage and that for memory based on allocation. For external network transmit and external network receive the actual usage values are used and for all other resources the allocation values are used.

Smart Full Screen

Full screen mode provides better productivity and consistency with Mac OS X Lion than previous versions.

The Lion full-screen button is used in virtual machine windows.

The Lion full-screen keyboard shortcut (Cmd-Control-F) is now supported in addition to Cmd-Control-Return.

Like other full-screen Lion applications, a VMware Fusion virtual machine moves to a new space when all displays are connected to the virtual machine.

Switching to Full Screen mode on a secondary display uses the whole display but does not create a new space, which enables you to work in other Mac applications while the virtual machine makes full use of the secondary display.

The VMware Fusion menu bar and toolbar are now accessible from Full Screen mode. A short delay in showing the menu allows access the top of the virtual machine screen, particularly when running Mac OS X Lion in a virtual machine.

A redesigned, compact minibar that you can drag for quick access to common actions without leaving Full Screen mode.

Automatic virtual machine power on

Virtual machines can now be powered on automatically when VMware Fusion starts. You can override this setting by holding Shift when VMware Fusion starts. This feature was removed in VMware Fusion 4 but is now available in VMware Fusion 4.1 in the General settings for every virtual machine.

Improved animations

Improved animations for full screen mode, unity mode, library and snapshots.

Fast screen resizing and improved startup time

Faster screen resizing (Microsoft Hotfix 2522761 recommended), faster transitions into Unity and Full Screen modes, and improved startup time with Windows 7 virtual machines.

Improved Mac OS X Lion guest operating system support

Improved Mac OS X Lion virtual machine support including smoother mouse movements and support for File Vault 2 when using Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later. Upated VMware Tools disable sleep on older versions of Mac OS X virtual machines.

Improved graphics performance

Improved graphics performance and correctness for Internet Explorer 9 and Solidworks 2012 and improved graphics performance when using Mac OS X 10.7.2.

VMware Fusion 4.1 also resolves the following issues:

An intermittent problem when plugging in a new USB device that resulted in error 4.

Improved support for resizing NTFS formatted disks.

An intermittent issue connecting USB devices attached via a Thunderbolt display.

An intermittent issue installing Mac OS X Lion from physical media.

Improved compatibility of shared folders for many applications.

An issue installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu 11.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

A graphics rendering issue on some Mac Pro systems with very large amounts of memory

A graphics rendering issue specific to some non-English languages.

An intermittent problem when using the migration assistant on Mac OS X 10.7.2.

Spurious activation messages when using Boot Camp virtual machines on some systems.

What’s New in version 1.2

• Optimized for VMware View 5 with improved performance
• Support for iOS 5 including Airplay
• Presentation Mode for use with external display and Airplay
• Embedded RSA soft token simplifies login to desktop
• Background tasking to move between Windows and iOS apps
• Updated look and feel
• Integrated online help
• Buffered text input for multibyte text entry
• Now in French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
• Bug fixes

This statement sounded somewhat familiar to me, somewhere I had heard this before.  I did some digging and I found why this rang such a bell.  Flash back four and a half years ago.  I remembered this article from the NY Times in February of 2007.  In it was an introduction to a little company called VMware.  It describes this little company and how it was taking on the Goliath Microsoft.  My favorite part was a quote in the article from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who said: “Our view is that virtualization is something that should be built into the operating system.”  Essentially, virtualization is a feature and not a product.  Funny how times change.  VMware, who was selling a “feature,” just yesterday reported revenue of $941.9 million for the just-ended third quarter.  Vmware is projecting Q4 revenue to be between 1.03 and 1.06 billion.  Not bad for a “feature.”

In this day and age Apple is the Goliath and the biggest kid on the block.

Dropbox, only yesterday, scored $250 million in funding and appears to be growing well.

It amazes me sometimes how what comes around, goes around.  Never underestimate the power of a competitor and the “feature” they might be selling.  Who knows where Dropbox might be 4 years from now.  Maybe they are the next VMware.

New in v1.2 (see notes below):

• Migrate virtual machines without downtime using vMotion.  This feature is available via Host & VM action menus.  Virtual machines can also be two-finger flicked/dragged from the Host detail view to enter vMotion mode
• Ability to email vMotion validation error details to others
• View task progress reporting on VM cards
• Ability to refresh vCenter host list
• Support of ESX 3.5
• Support for vSphere 5.0

Release Notes:

• This version requires vCMA 1.2, available at: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma
• Min iOS version: 4.0

Here lies the problem and the reason for my post.  Remember that the licensing is sold in packs of 25 VMs so we can add SRM capacity in blocks of 25.  When we cross that 75 to 100 in capacity required, we need to upgrade our existing Standard Licenses to Enterprise and purchase a 25-pack of Enterprise to protect the additional VMs.    In list price terms, the 76th VM will cost $49,501.  That price includes 3 of the 25-VM Upgrade packs for SRM Standard to Enterprise (to upgrade the existing licensing for that site), a 25-VM Pack of SRM Enterprise and 4 x 1-year SnS for SRM Enterprise (the upgrade packs require SnS at purchase).

I created a chart showing List Prices and the acquisition cost and total investment in SRM.  From left to right shows the number of licensed VMs protected.  This chart assumes you start purchasing SRM Standard for a site with 75 or less VMs protected and then grow the site to larger than 75 VMs protected.

You can see from the greenish line that the total cost takes a significant jump from the 75-to-100 number of VMs protected.  Please keep in mind that these are list prices and assume that you are going to start with Standard Edition.

I was curious to know how this model would compare if we purchased SRM Enterprise licenses from the start.  I created this graph below for comparison.

You can see the blue 25-VM pack acquisition costs are a constant and predictable for each 25-VM pack.  The red total cost line is also a constant rate.   You’ll also notice that at 100 VMs and on, total costs are lower when you use Enterprise from the start.

There are a couple important observations that I have made from this analysis.  First, Standard Edition is a great way for customers to get into SRM at a much lower price point.  Please understand the risks if there is potential for that site to grow large enough to protect more than 75 VMs from it.

Second, and most important, this article is not meant as a criticism of VMware licensing practices (I’ll let others write those).  This article is meant to inform the customers:  If you need to protect a site with SRM and you think that you will eventually grow that site past the 75-protected-VM mark, you may want to consider purchasing SRM Enterprise now to balance out your costs and save some money in the end.  I really do not want to have to explain this licensing to you when started by purchasing SRM Standard Edition and now you need to protect the 76th VM.

Good luck and good computing.

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support.

• Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards
• Virtual Hardware Improvements
• New User Interface
• What Happened to Teams?
• Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart
• Remote Connections
• Upload to vSphere
• Documentation Changes

Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards

The hardware requirements to install this version of Workstation have changed. Workstation now requires a relatively modern 64-bit CPU. See Installation Requirements for details.

The keyboard filter driver is no longer installed by default. When the driver is not installed, the enhanced keyboard functionality is unavailable and you must press Ctrl-Alt-Ins instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del to send a Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke to the guest. To use the enhanced keyboard functionality, you must perform a custom installation and select the component. If you select the component, you must reboot whenever you install or uninstall Workstation.

Virtual Hardware Improvements

This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

• The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
• Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
• An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
• USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
• Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.
• You can now enable Virtual VT-X/EPT or AMD-V/RVI in the processor settings interface. With this feature, applications running in a guest can take advantage of these virtualization technologies. You can also run 64-bit guest operating systems inside of vSphere running inside Workstation.

New User Interface

The Workstation user interface has been updated to include new menus, toolbars, and an improved preferences screen.

• The favorites sidebar has been replaced with a virtual machine library. Instead of identifying every virtual machine created in Workstation as a favorite, the library is a comprehensive list of all of the virtual machines that Workstation users create, open, or access.
• A new folder summary page helps you to better manage a group of related virtual machines. Live thumbnails make it easy to see what is happening in running virtual machines.
• The full screen toolbar has been updated so that you can do more without having to leave full screen mode. Quick switch mode is no longer needed.

What Happened to Teams?

Although at first it might appear that the teams feature has been removed, you can add team attributes to any virtual machine in this version of Workstation.

• The team structure has been converted to a simple folder of virtual machines.
• A new advanced settings dialog box has been added for network adapters to let you throttle the bandwidth of incoming and outgoing transmissions and simulate packet loss.
• You can perform power operations on several virtual machines at the same time by selecting virtual machines on the folder tab and pressing the power button on the toolbar. If all of the virtual machines in a folder are in the same power state, you can select the folder to perform a power operation on all of the virtual machines in the folder.
• You use a global Workstation preference to configure the delay between powering on virtual machines.
• To implement LAN segments, you can use traditional VMnets or put all of the virtual machines that you want to communicate on the same custom VMnet.

Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart

You can share virtual machines with remote users in this version of Workstation. A shared virtual machine can be accessed remotely by other instances of Workstation. Workstation moves virtual machines to the shared virtual machines folder, where the VMware Host Agent service manages them. The VMware Host Agent service is used by other VMware products, including VMware Server and vSphere, and provides additional capabilities required by professional users. An extensive permissions interface lets you control the users who can access and use shared virtual machines.

You can use the new AutoStart feature to configure shared virtual machines to start with the host system. You can also configure AutoStart for shared virtual machines on remote hosts running Workstation and ESX 4.x and later.

Remote Connections

In this version of Workstation, you are no longer constrained to working only with virtual machines that your computer has enough power to run. You can use the new Connect to Server feature to connect to remote hosts running Workstation, ESX 4.x and later, and VMware vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote host, all of the virtual machines that you have permission to access are displayed in the virtual machine library.

Upload to ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server

VMware OVF Tool is now integrated with Workstation so that you can upload a virtual machine from Workstation to a remote server running ESX, ESXi, or vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote server, you drag the virtual machine from the local My Computer section of the virtual machine library to the remote server. A wizard walks you through the process.

Documentation Changes

This version of Workstation includes several important documentation changes.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 enhances your ability to build, manage and execute reliable disaster recovery plans for your virtual environment. With the release of version 5.0, VMware has expanded the capabilities of Site Recovery Manager to provide unprecedented levels of protection. New use cases have been made possible through the addition of the following capabilities:

• vSphere Replication. When used in conjunction with VMware vSphere 5.0, Site Recovery Manager 5.0 introduces a new capability to utilize the vSphere 5.0 host to perform replication of powered-on virtual machines over the network to another vSphere 5.0 host, without the requirement for storage array-based replication. As virtual machines change with use, the changed blocks are replicated to a shadow copy of the virtual machine resident at the recovery site, in accordance with a Recovery Point Objective set as a property of the virtual machine itself.
• Planned Migration. A new workflow designed to deliver migration while minimizing the risk of data loss. Planned migration will stop the workflow from continuing if an error is encountered, providing an opportunity to fix the problem, ensuring that systems are properly quiescent and that all data changes have been completely replicated.
• Automated Re-Protection. Re-protection is a new extension to recovery plans for use only with array-based replication. Automated re-protect enables the environment at the recovery site to establish replication and protection of the environment back to the original protected site through a single click.
• Automated Failback. Automated failback returns the entire environment to the originally protected primary site. This can only happen after re-protection has ensured that data replication and synchronization have been established to the original primary site. Failback will run the same workflow that was used to migrate the environment to the protected site, ensuring that the critical systems encapsulated by the recovery plan are returned to their original environment. Automated failback, like re-protection, is only available for use with array-based replication protected virtual machines.
• Enhanced Dependency Definition. This includes the addition of more (5) priority groups, and the ability to set virtual machine dependencies within a priority group. Virtual machine dependencies can be defined to ensure that required systems are available before dependent virtual machines are powered on. This enables highly organized workflow control, ensuring that required services are available before dependent virtual machines are powered on.

This release of VMware Fusion adds the following new features.

• New Installation Experience
• New User Interface
• Designed for Lion
• Virtual Hardware Improvements
• Encrypted Virtual Machines
• Pause State for Virtual Machines
• Remote CD and DVD Drives
• Shrinking Disks with Snapshots
• Mirrored Folders
• OVF Support
• Other Technical Changes

New Installation Experience

VMware Fusion is now installed by dragging and dropping to the Applications folder. Users of older versions can upgrade using the included utility. VMware Fusion can be uninstalled by quitting the application and dragging it to the trash.

New User Interface

VMware Fusion includes a new user interface designed to maximize screen space dedicated to running virtual machines. By keeping the interface minimal, we have improved user productivity for Windows applications. It is now more consistent with the overall Mac desktop experience than previous versions of VMware Fusion.

The new user interface includes the following key features.

• The Single-window experience is optimized around each running virtual machine, keeping related options and settings together. A new collapsible toolbar provides quick access to common virtual machine actions including switching networks, connecting and disconnecting devices, and sharing options. The Control-Alt-Delete key combination is now available as a menu button.
• The Virtual Machine Library Welcome screen has been refreshed to make it easier to get up and running quickly.
• The Virtual Machine Library is updated with thumbnails of virtual machine desktops and shortcuts to common activities.
• The Settings have been redesigned to make it easier to perform common tasks. New settings subsections for Compatibility, Default Applications and Startup Disk are included.
• The Snapshot viewer provides powerful new features for working with snapshots using a timeline-based view, inspired by Time Machine.

Designed for Lion

VMware Fusion 4 is designed for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and includes support for using Mission Control to switch between Mac and Windows applications. Support for Spaces and Exposé has also been improved to make it easier to switch between applications.

Mac OS X Lion and Mac OS X Lion Server are now supported as guest operating systems. Mac OS X Lion can be installed by dragging the Lion installer icon to the virtual machine wizard.

Virtual Hardware Improvements

As always, VMware continues to improve our virtual hardware performance and capabilities. You must upgrade the hardware version of your existing VMs or create a new VM in order to get the best features and performance from your virtual machines. Upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine from the new virtual machine settings page under Compatibility.

An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests. The new HD Audio device takes advantage of the latest sound drivers provided with Windows and produces high sound quality even under heavy load.

Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. Bluetooth devices, such as a Bluetooth phone, are paired to either the host system or to a Windows virtual machine. VMware does not recommend pairing Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice to a guest.

Link-state propagation enables applications to seamlessly communicate when using NAT-based networking even when moving between networks. For example, communication between applications will continue seamlessly when you move from a wired network to a wireless network.

Our graphics team continues to improve rendering correctness and to tune our graphics drivers. VMware Fusion 4 is up to 2.5 times faster than VMware Fusion 3 for some 3D operations. Improved support for AutoCAD, SolidWorks and Altium Designer on Windows XP and Windows 7 is also included.

Encrypted Virtual Machines

Fusion now enables security best practices by providing virtual disk encryption using industry-standard AES-128. Encryption can require a per-virtual-machine password whenever the virtual machine is powered on.

Pause State for Virtual Machines

The new Pause state suspends the virtual machine while retaining the in-memory state. This state can be useful when system resources will temporarily be taxed and the guest virtual machine is not immediately needed.

Remote CD and DVD Drives

Remote CD and DVD drives shared from another Windows PC or Mac are supported for installing operating systems on virtual machines.

Shrinking Disks with Snapshots

VMware Fusion now supports shrinking virtual disks without the need to remove the snapshots first. Shrinking virtual disks without removing snapshots allows users to maintain their virtual machines and reclaim disk space more easily than in previous releases of VMware Fusion. Look for the new virtual machine clean up capability under the Generalsection of the virtual machine settings.

Mirrored Folders

Downloads and Movies folders are now mirrored from the Mac.

OVF Support

Support for creating OVF-format virtual machines is provided by the standalone OVF tool. This tool is available for download from: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf?view=overview

Other Technical Changes

VMware Fusion 4 is now 64-bit throughout. In addition, services and kernel extensions are loaded and unloaded on-demand. The application can now be run from non-standard folder locations. The PC Migration Wizard has been updated to provide even faster migration.

VMware View 5.0 includes the following new features:

• PCoIP WAN performance optimization – Improves PCoIP protocol performance in low-bandwidth WAN environments. Users who connect to their desktops over an external WAN have enhanced desktop experience.
• Support for 3D graphics on vSphere 5.0 – This feature provides View desktops with vGPU graphics enablement available on vSphere 5.0 platforms. View users can take advantage of desktop graphics enhancements provided by AERO (such as peek, shake, and Flip 3D) and the 3D capabilities of Windows Office 2010 (such as picture editing, slide transitions and animations, presentation-to-video conversion, video embedding, editing, and 3D rotations).
• View Persona Management – The View Persona Management feature manages user profiles in a secure and centralized environment. (User profiles include user data and settings, application data and settings, and Windows registry settings configured by user applications.) View Persona Management allows IT organizations to simplify and automate the capture and management of a user’s persona while providing a rich user experience. View Persona Management offers the following benefits:
  • Provides a user profile that is independent of the virtual desktop. When a user logs in to any desktop, the same profile appears.
  • Lets you configure and manage personas entirely within View. You do not have to configure Windows roaming profiles.
  • Expands functionality and improves performance compared to Windows roaming profiles.
  • Minimizes login impact by downloading only the files that Windows requires, such as user registry files. Other files are copied to the local desktop when the user or an application opens them from the local profile folder.
  • Copies recent changes in the local profile to a remote profile repository at configurable intervals, typically once every few minutes.
• Updated client certificate checking for View clients – View clients now follow the well-known browser model for handling certificates, displaying errors detected in the certificate presented by View Connection Server, or in the certificate trust chain. Administrators can set the Certificate verification mode group policy to enforce strict certificate checking; if any certificate error occurs, the user cannot connect to View Connection Server. Alternatively, administrators can use the default Warn But Allow mode, which supports self-signed server certificates and lets users connect to View Connection Server with certificates that have expired or are not yet valid. If necessary, administrators can also set a No Security mode that lets users connect without certificate checking.
• Support for vSphere 5.0
• Support for hardware v8 – Remote View desktops can be hardware v8 virtual machines. Hardware v8 is not supported for desktops that run in local mode.
• Removed support for HP RGS display protocol
• Localization support for Korean. – View Client and the documentation, online help, and release notes are available in Korean.

Note: The version of View Client for Mac that was bundled with View 4.6 is also bundled with the View 5.0 release. This is the latest View Client for Mac and is compatible with View 4.6 and View 5.0.

• Fast Provisioning: Utilizing linked clones dramatically speeds up provisioning time and reduces storage costs.
• vApp Custom Properties: Allows developers and other users to easily pass user data into guest OSes using OVF descriptors.
• Blocking Tasks and Notifications: Programmatically connect vCloud Director to enterprise systems (e.g. CMDB) enabling end-to-end system automation.
• Expanded vCloud API: Additional commands added to the vCloud API namespace to include all GUI-accessible actions and enable broader integration and scripting using the API.
• Microsoft SQL Server Support: For new deployments of vCloud Director, Microsoft SQL is supported for the vCloud database in addition to the previously supported database servers.
• vShield Edge VPN integration: Programmatically create site-to-site IPSec-VPN tunnels to connect across clouds.

Here’s the What’s New Section from the release notes:

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0 includes the following new functionality:

• Preserving the LVM configuration on the source machine during Linux conversions.
• Enhanced synchronization including options for scheduling synchronization tasks and performing multiple synchronization tasks in a conversion job.
• Optimized disk and partition alignment and cluster size change.
• Conversion data is encrypted between the source and the server.
• Restoring VCB images.

Here we go:

The keynote kicks off with a video with admins and some of the issues they have and how they are solving them.

First speaker is Dr. Steve Herrod, CTO, VMware.  Steve talks about the world we come from, the world of managing desktops and servers.  He says that we want to start managing services and not servers.  We want to manage devices, not users.  Steve shows another video about how people are using mobile devices for their day-today work.  Steve is segueing into how we keep up to managing these devices and the user’s information and data.  Steve says we need to simplify, manage and connect the users.  He says VMware has been using View to provide the desktop as a service and using ThinApp to create an App Catalog Service.  Lastly, VMware has been creating a new data service which manages the user’s information.

Steve now starts to show a demo of View 5 and how it provisions desktops.  This is a demonstration of the “desktop as a service” above.  The next thing is to provide the apps as a catalog.  Steve then does a demo of Horizon.  The cool part here is he’s showing how Horizon will be able to scan for apps and import them into the catalog.  (This is huge as I believe the main challenge to ThinApp adoption is the admin work required to package the apps. – This drastically reduces that time.)  He shows how Horizon will be able to deploy apps automatically when the user uses it the first time or can be chosen by the user from a catalog.

Steve goes on to talk about the user data to manage.  He talks about “Project Octopus” and compares it to Dropbox.  He shows how the data will be managed: A user can use a spreadsheet on their desktop and then it sill automatically be available on their phone.  All of the demos are from the Administrator perspective and how the admins will control these products.

Steve moves on to demo the same products from the user perspective.  Steve introduces Vittorio to demo View5 and Horizon and he pretends to have it first day on the job.  He shows how he logs into his desktop for the first time and chooses his office applications from a dashboard.  He also shows how he can choose mobile apps from the same dashboard.  As he chooses one for his mobile, he gets a text message from the server with a link to install the app. (Pretty cool stuff).  Steve is back and summarizes the demo.  He talks about how they are working on implanting this on Android mobile devices.  He says that they have started strategic partnerships with Samsung to roll it out on their devices.  (No mention of Apple whatsoever.)

Vittorio is back again to demo how he gets his data on the road.  He does a demo where he has Excel on his iPad to edit a spreadsheet on the road. Steve is back recapping the demo.  Steve explains AppBlast (just demoed for the first time publicly) which gives users the ability to run Windows Apps on the iPad with nothing but HTML5.  (Very, very cool stuff – get ready Citrix, you’ll need something comparable).

Steve is now switching from desktops.  He shows the new vSphere Client for iPad and how a vMotion is done by “dragging” the VM from one host to another on the iPad.  Steve goes on to the new features in vSphere 5.  Steve gives an overview of VMware Go.  It’s a hosted service that helps SMBs deploy VMware in their environment.  He also talks about the new vSphere Storage Appliance and welcomes Bruce to the stage to show both.  Bruce shows a demo of VMware Go and the vSphere Storage Appliance.  Steve now talking about Auto Deploy and how it can spin up hosts running ESXi very quickly.  He talks about the large VMs of vSphere 5 (32-vCPUs, 1TB RAM, etc)

He talks a little more about Intelligent Virtual Infrastructure and when we deploy VMs, we should be able to “set it and forget it.”  When we deploy VMs we should be able to set policies for VMs so that they cannot “misbehave” in the future.  He’s now reviewing the new storage IO controls, pools and storage DRS in vSphere 5.  He moves into networking.  He’s describing the problem we have with networking today.  This issue is that identifier = location.  He describes their solution: VXLAN.  VXLAN is a way to move VMs across datacenters and maintain connectivity while moving VMs.  VMware has summited this as a standard with the help of Cisco.  Steve says this is the last barrier for full Cloud mobility.  After we solve this, customers will be able to unleash the full power of the global cloud.

Steve goes on to DR and Site Recovery Manager 5.  He talks about the new vSphere Replication built in to replicate the VMs to the DR side without the need for storage based replication (love this stuff.)  He mentions that when they integrate VXLAN, you will not need to reconfigure the IP addresses in the VMs.

Now on to security.  Steve describes vShield Endpoint, Edge and App and how the new features in 5.0 protect the VMs at many layers. He then goes on to management and how the focus of VMware is to automate as much as possible.  He gives the audience a “sneak peek” at where the automation tools are going.  He shows the new vSphere Web Client and shows a new column in the client labeled “Services.”  This enables the admin to see what is running on them without an agent.  The client is also showing the integration between VMs.  The use case is that if I protect a app server by SRM, the client can warn me that the app server depends on the sql server and it is not protected (absolutely brilliant.)  Steve goes on to show an upcoming version of vSphere Operations.  It has a new display of “Business Metrics” these are rollups for Management to be able to see how the infrastructure is performing.

Steve starts to sum up the keynote and how it’s about services and people.  How we have to adapt and use these technologies in the future.

My notes:  A few nice peeks at advances: AppBlast, VXLAN, vSphere and Operations futures sprinkled in with all of the new stuff in vSphere 5.  One thing I absolutely noticed: minimal vFabric mentions.  Reason being that this is not a developer conference and I’ve seen vFabric clear a room of non-developers.  Well done VMware.

We begin at 3:40pm pacific time. First up is Rick Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer from Vmware. Rick announces attendance at 19,000. Rick talks about the labs at vmworld. He talks about how in 2009 the labs were in a private cloud, in 2010 it was a hybrid cloud, and in 2011 it is a pure public cloud (mostly running at Terramark in Miami, FL). This year they expect to deploy 200,000 VMs in the labs over the course of this week. Rick reviews a few upcoming schedule highlights for the week. He also mentions VMworld 2012 will be in San Francisco August 27-30, 2012. He also mentions that they are reaching the limits of Vegas (uh, I thought CES was much larger).

Next up is Paul Martiz, CEO, VMware. Paul says that for the first time more than half of the entire install base of server applications is now running on virtualized infrasucture and no longer a majority on physical infrastructures. Here are some cool stats: a VM Is born every 6 seconds (more than human births in the U.S.), and there are more than 20 million VMs in the world. He also said there are more than 5.5 vmotions per second, which is more vms in flight, than humans in flight. There are 800,000 Vmware admins and 68,000 VCPs. Paul goes on to review the history of IT computing until now. He leads the audience the “Cloud Era”. This is a time where PCs are the minority. He talks about eventually replacing the mainframe and mini computers. He says that we are going from a world of apps that were made for a paper world. They were not designed to be real time. These will need to be replaced by apps that now need to scale and perform in real time.
Paul reviews the previous VMworld announcements of sphere, 4.0, 4.1, and now 5.0. Paul said that vSphere 5 is the first release that he has ever delivered that was on time and had all of the features that it was supposed to. Paul says that all of the Cloud Inastructure Suite will be released together, vCloud Director, vShield, Operations Manager, SRM and vSphere. These core platform products will be released together in the future.
Paul talks about the migration of old apps onto the new platforms in the Cloud Era. For these developers, VMware has developed vFabric. Paul makes the announcement of Data Director. This will allow developers to scale out databases for the new modern applications. Last topic on vFabric he explains Cloud Foundry and what it does and how it works. Not much new here, just education for the newbies.
Paul goes on to talk about desktops and announces View 5.0. It has bandwidth improvements, client ubiquity, and VOIP/unified communications. He segues into Project Horizon and delivering applications to different devices. Paul talks about the virtualization of phones and having your personal phone and corporate phone combined. (just don’t see this happening with apple and google now buying Motorola).
Paul summarizes the 3 strategies: the platform, the next generation of applications and lastly the next generation of users and their devices.
Paul invites Carl Eschenbach, co-president, customer operations, Vmware to the stage. Carl goes on to introduce a few customers and how they work with VMware. This seems like a commercial for VMware so I’ll stop blogging for now and continue with the good stuff tomorrow (where we get to dig into the technology)

As always, here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

With this release, the VMware virtual datacenter operating system continues to transform x86 IT infrastructure into the most efficient, shared, on-demand utility, with built-in availability, scalability, and security services for all applications and simple, proactive automated management. The new and enhanced features in vSphere 5.0 are listed below.

Platform Enhancements
Storage
Networking
VMware vCenter Server
Availability
Partner Ecosystem
Platform Enhancements

Convergence. vSphere 5.0 is the first vSphere release built exclusively on the vSphere ESXi 5.0 hypervisor architecture as the host platform. The ESX hypervisor is no longer included in vSphere. The vSphere 5.0 management platform, vCenter Server 5.0, supports ESXi 5.0 hosts as well as ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts.

VMware vSphere Auto Deploy. VMware vSphere Auto Deploy simplifies the task of managing ESXi installation and upgrade for hundreds of machines. New hosts are provisioned based on rules that the administrator defines. Rebuilding a server to a clean slate requires only a reboot. To move between ESXi versions, you create a new rule using the Auto Deploy PowerCLI and perform a test and repair compliance operation.

Unified CLI Framework. The expanded ESXCLI framework offers an extensible command set, including new commands to facilitate on-host troubleshooting and maintenance. The framework allows consistency of authentication, roles, and auditing, using the same methods as other management frameworks such as vCenter Server and PowerCLI. You can use the ESXCLI framework both remotely as part of vSphere CLI and locally on the ESXi Shell (formerly Tech Support Mode).

New virtual machine capabilities. ESXi 5.0 introduces a new generation of virtual hardware with virtual machine hardware version 8, which includes the following new features:
32-way virtual SMP. ESXi 5.0 supports virtual machines with up to 32 virtual CPUs, which lets you run larger CPU-intensive workloads on the VMware ESXi platform.

1TB of virtual machine RAM. You can assign up to 1TB of RAM to ESXi 5.0 virtual machines.

Software support for 3D graphics to run Windows Aero. ESXi 5.0 supports nonhardware accelerated 3D graphics to run Windows Aero and Basic 3D applications in virtual machines.

USB 3.0 device support. ESXi 5.0 features support for USB 3.0 devices in virtual machines with Linux guest operating systems. USB 3.0 devices attached to the client computer running the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client can be connected to a virtual machine and accessed in it. USB 3.0 devices connected to the ESXi host are not supported.

UEFI virtual BIOS. Virtual machines running on ESXi 5.0 can boot from and use the Unified Extended Firmware Interface (UEFI).

Graphical User Interface to configure multicore virtual CPUs. You can now configure the number of virtual CPU cores per socket in the Virtual Machine Properties view in the vSphere Web Client and the vSphere client. Previously this feature was only configurable through advanced settings.

Client-connected USB devices. USB devices attached to the client computer running the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client can be connected to a virtual machine and accessed within it.

Smart card reader support for virtual machines. Smart card readers attached to the client computer running the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client can be connected to one or more virtual machines and accessed in them. The virtual machine remote console, available in the vSphere Web Client and the vSphere Client, supports connecting smart card readers to multiple virtual machines, which can then be used for smart card authentication.

Expanded support for VMware Tools versions. VMware Tools from vSphere 4.x is supported in virtual machines running on vSphere 5.0 hosts. Additionally, the version of VMware Tools supplied with vSphere 5.0 is also compatible with ESX/ESXi 4.x.

Apple Mac OS X Server guest operating system support. VMware vSphere 5.0 adds support for the Apple Mac OS X Server 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) as a guest operating system. Support is restricted to Apple Xserve model Xserve3,1 systems.

Host UEFI boot support. vSphere 5.0 supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI you can boot systems from hard drives, CD/DVD drives, or USB media. Booting over the network requires the legacy BIOS firmware and is not available with UEFI.

Support for up to 512 virtual machines per host. vSphere 5.0 supports up to 512 virtual machines totaling a maximum of 2048 virtual CPUs per host.

Support for larger systems. vSphere 5.0 supports systems with up to 160 logical CPUs and up to 2TB of RAM.

Improved SNMP support. With vSphere 5.0, you can convert CIM indications to SNMP traps. Check with your hardware vendor to see whether their CIM provider supports this functionality. In addition, vSphere 5.0 now supports the Host Resources MIB (RFC 2790) and allows for finer control over the types of traps sent by the SNMP agent.

Memory fault isolation. On supported platforms, ESXi 5.0 detects and quarantines physical memory regions that exhibit frequent correctable errors. This preemptive action reduces the risk of uncorrectable errors that result in VM or host downtime. Should an uncorrectable memory error occur, ESXi 5.0 quarantines the failed memory region and restarts the affected virtual machines. ESXi halts with a purple diagnostic screen only if the memory error affects the hypervisor itself. These enhancements deliver improved VM and host availability.

Image Builder. A new set of PowerCLI cmdlets lets administrators create custom ESXi images that include third-party components required for specialized hardware, such as drivers and CIM providers. You can use Image Builder to create images suitable for different types of deployment, such as ISO-based installation, PXE-based installation, and Auto Deploy.

Host Profiles Enhancements. Using an Answer File, you can configure host-specific settings to use with the common settings in the Host Profile, which removes the need to add host-specific parameters. This feature enables the use of Host Profiles to fully configure a host during an automated deployment. In addition, Host Profiles includes support for an expanded set of configurations, including iSCSI, FCoE, Native Multipathing, Device Claiming and PSP Device Settings, and Kernel Module Settings.

Metro vMotion. Ability to use vMotion to move a running virtual machine when the source and destination ESX hosts are more than 5ms round trip time latency apart. The maximum supported round trip time latency between the two hosts is now 10ms.

Enablement of Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). ESXi 5.0 can be configured to boot with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). This boot option can protect ESXi in some cases where system binaries are corrupt or were tampered with.

Improvement in scalability. ESXi 5.0 supports up to 160 logical processors.

Storage

Storage DRS. This feature delivers the DRS benefits of resource aggregation, automated initial placement, and bottleneck avoidance to storage. You can group and manage similar datastores as a single load-balanced storage resource called a datastore cluster. Storage DRS makes disk (VMDK) placement and migration recommendations to avoid I/O and space utilization bottlenecks on the datastores in the cluster.

Profile-driven storage. This solution allows you to have greater control and insight into characteristics of your storage resources. It also enables virtual machine storage provisioning to become independent of specific storage available in the environment. You can define virtual machine placement rules in terms of storage characteristics and monitor a virtual machine’s storage placement based on these administrator-defined rules. The solution delivers these benefits by taking advantage of the following items:

Integrating with Storage APIs – Storage Awareness to deliver storage characterization supplied by storage vendors.

Enabling the vSphere administrator to tag storage based on customer-specific descriptions.

Using storage characterizations to create virtual machine placement rules in the form of storage profiles.

Providing easy means to check a virtual machine’s compliance against these rules.

As a result, managing storage usage and choice in vSphere deployments is more efficient and user-friendly.

vStorage APIs – Storage Awareness. A new set of APIs that allows vCenter Server to detect capabilities of a storage device, making it easier to select the appropriate storage disk for virtual machine placement. Storage capabilities, such as RAID level, thin or thick provisioning, replication state, and so on, can now be made visible with vCenter Server.

VMFS5. VMFS5 is a new version of vSphere Virtual Machine File System that offers improved scalability and performance, and provides internationalization support. With VMFS5, you can create a 64TB datastore on a single extent. RDMs in physical compatibility mode with the size larger than 2TB can now be presented to a virtual machine. In addition, on SAN storage hardware that supports vStorage APIs – Array Integration (also known as VAAI), ESXi 5.0 uses the atomic test and set (ATS) locking mechanism for VMFS5 datastores. Using this mechanism can improve performance, although the degree of improvement depends on the underlying storage hardware.

iSCSI UI support. Configure dependent hardware iSCSI and software iSCSI adapters along with the network configurations and port binding in a single dialog box using the vSphere Client. Full SDK access is also available for these configurations.

Storage I/O Control NFS support. vSphere 5.0 extends Storage I/O Control to provide cluster-wide I/O shares and limits for NFS datastores.

Storage APIs – Array Integration: Thin Provisioning. Reclaim blocks of a thin-provisioned LUN when a virtual disk is deleted or migrated. You can also preallocate space on thin-provisioned LUNs and receive advanced warnings and error messages when a datastore on a thin-provisioned LUN starts to fill up. The behavior of a full thin-provisioned disk is also improved. Only virtual machines that are trying to allocate new blocks on a full thin-provisioned datastore are paused. Virtual machines that do not require additional blocks on the thin-provisioned disk continue to run.

Swap to Host Cache. The VMkernel scheduler is modified to allow ESXi swap to extend to local or network SSD devices, which enables memory overcommitment and minimizes performance impact. The VMkernel automatically recognizes and tags SSD devices that are local to ESXi or are on the network.

2TB+ LUN support. vSphere 5.0 provides support for 2TB+ VMFS datastores. Very large VMFS5 datastores with the size of up to 64TB can be created on a singe storage device without additional extents.

Storage vMotion snapshot support. Allows you to use Storage vMotion for a virtual machine in snapshot mode with associated snapshots. You can better manage storage capacity and performance by using flexibility of migrating a virtual machine along with its snapshots to a different datastore. A new Storage vMotion mechanism uses a mirror driver, which synchronizes the source disk to the destination disk, making the migration quicker.

Software FCoE. vSphere 5.0 introduces support for a software Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) driver. To enable this driver on an ESXi host, you must have a NIC that can support some FCoE offload capabilities.

Snapshot commitments. If a snapshot commit operation fails, this feature enables the vSphere Client to warn users that a consolidate operation is still required on the virtual machine.

Networking

Enhanced Network I/O Control. vSphere 5.0 builds on network I/O control to allow user-defined network resource pools, enabling multitenancy deployment, and to bridge virtual and physical infrastructure QoS with per resource pool 802.1 tagging.

vSphere Distributed Switch Improvements. vSphere 5.0 provides a deeper view into virtual machine traffic through Netflow and enhances monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities through SPAN and LLDP.

ESXi Firewall. The ESXi 5.0 management interface is protected by a service-oriented and stateless firewall, which you can configure using the vSphere Client or at the command line with esxcli interfaces. A new firewall engine eliminates the use of iptables and rule sets define port rules for each service. For remote hosts, you can specify the IP addresses or range of IP addresses that are allowed to access each service.

VMware vCenter Server

vSphere Web Client. A new browser-based user interface that is supported across Linux and Windows platforms. In the 5.0 release, the vSphere Web Client is a replacement for the Web Access product. The client is suitable for all console and virtual machine use cases, allowing administrators to manage their environments.

vCenter Server Appliance. A vCenter Server implementation running on a preconfigured virtual appliance. This appliance significantly reduces the time required to deploy vCenter Server and associated services and provides a low-cost alternative to the traditional Windows-based vCenter Server.

Inventory Extensibility. VMware customers and partners can extend vCenter Server in multiple ways, including the inventory, graphical user interface, and agents. vCenter Server includes a manager to monitor the extensions. By deploying extensions created by VMware partners, you can use vCenter Server as a unified console to manage your virtualized datacenter.

Enhanced logging support. All log messages are now generated by syslog, and messages can now be logged on either local or one or more remote log servers. A given server can log messages from more than one host. Log messages can be remotely logged using either the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or TCP connections. The vSphere syslog listener is available as an optional plug-in to vCenter on Windows. In the vCenter Virtual Appliance (VCVA), logging is accomplished using the native syslog-ng facility. With vSphere 5.0, log messages from different sources can be configured to go into different logs for more convenience. Configuration of message logging can also be accomplished using ESXCLI in addition to the vSphere Client.

Availability

vSphere HA. vSphere High Availability is now a cloud-optimized availability platform. Enhancements such as the elimination of the primary and secondary roles and removal of the dependence on DNS make configuration easier. New features, such as the ability to use shared storage as a backup communication channel ensure higher reliability of host failure detection.

vSphere Data Recovery 2.0. VMware increases the speed and reliability of backups expands with the release of Data Recovery 2.0. This release improves integration with vCenter and provides new manageability features including:

Automated generation and emailing of backup job reports.

Improved backup, integrity check, and reclaim operation performance.

Increased resiliency against transient network failures provides improved CIFS support.

Increased flexibility to schedule, pause, and cancel integrity check operations.

Partner Ecosystem

Expanded List of Supported Processors. The list of supported processors has been expanded for ESXi 5.0. To determine which processors are compatible with this release, use the Hardware Compatibility Guide. Among the supported processors are the the Intel Xeon E7-2800, E7-4800, and E7-8800 processor series, code-named Westmere-EX, and the Intel Xeon E3-1200 and i3-2100 processor series, code-named Sandy Bridge.

Support for Multi-queue Storage Adapters. The vSphere storage stack is enhanced to discover multi-queue capabilities of adapters and distribute the incoming I/O on these queues based on CPU affinity. This results in reduced CPU cost per I/O.

• vSphere Replication – The biggest feature add.  An additional replication option which allows you to replicate your VMs without having the storage perform the replication.  Even allows you to replicate to/from local storage on the ESXi hosts.  There are some important limits to vSphere Replication.  It’s not for everything/everyone but it does do quite a bit for the first release.
  • Requires vSphere 5
  • Managed from the vSphere client directly
  • ISOs and Floppys are not replicated
  • Powered off/Suspended VMs are not replicated
  • Non-critical files are not replicated (swap files, dumps, logs, etc.)
  • VMs can have snapshots on the protected side but they are automatically collapsed on the recovery side
  • Physical RDMs not supported (but virtual RDMs are)
  • Fault Tolerant VMs, Linked Clones and VM Templates are not supported
  • Automated Failback of vSphere Replicated VMs is not supported in SRM 5.0
  • Requires VM Hardware version 7 or 8 (required for Change Block Tracking)
  • Supports up to 500 VMs
  • Asynchronous only
  • Minimum replication frequency is every 15 minutes, max is every 24 hours
  • Initial copy can be seeded by sneaker net (taking the initial on a portable HD and importing at the destination, i.e. does not need to seed the initial copy over the wire)
  • File-level consistency (except for planned migration – see below) quiesces OS file system before sending changed blocks to the DR site (does not quiesce applications)
  • Included in both Standard and Enterprise Editions of SRM
  • vSphere Replication is not available outside SRM5
• Scalability Improvements
  • 1000 Total Protected VMs (Same as SRM4.1)
  • 500 Protected VMs in a single protection group (same as SRM v4.1)
  • 250 Protection Groups (Up from 150 in v4.1)
  • 30 Simultaneous running recovery plans (Up from 3 in v4.1 – this is the biggest improvement in scalability)
• Planned Migration – This is a big feature add.  This is another option when you are going failover.  In 4.1 the only option was to start up the VMs from the last good replication and go.  This option now allow you to migrate when there is an impending disaster and the protected side is still up.  Planned migration will shut down the VMs on the protected side then initiate a replication of the storage frames (or vSphere Replication) to get the last drop of changed data to the recovery side before powering on the VMs and bringing them up.  One extremely important advantage to this method: the VMs are always in a application-consistent state when they come up in DR.  (Absolutely love this feature)
• Failback – the single most-requested feature in SRM4.  Once a failover occurs, the admin clicks the “Reprotect” link to reset the recovery plan for failback and reverse replication.  Once completed, the recovery plan can be tested or run in the reverse direction and recovery the VMs to the origional protected site.  (This is outstanding for enterprises that are required to do a true failover for DR testing.
• User Interface improvements – Slightly different look and feel.
  • both sides are visible without vCenter linked mode
  • IP changes for VMs during recovery can now be entered in the GUI (thank you VMware!)
  • Placeholder VMs at the DR side now have a unique icon (with a thunderbolt thru it) to identify them easily in the DR vCenter.
  • Reports now include the user ID that initiated the Failover or DR test.
  • Reports now include more information about the storage steps (including the device friendly names)
• IPv6 Support – Ipv6 is now supported for all links.
• IP Customization performance increase – big performance improvement in the actual IP conversion in the VM
• In guest callouts – now you can run a script inside the VM, run a script on the SRM server or insert a breakpoint to post a message (these also now have maximum timeouts as an option) during the recovery plans
• New APIs on both the Protected and Recovery Sides – new commands for 3^rd party integration (note these are SOAP based and not PowerShell or PowerCLI)
• Dependency Improvements – There are now 5 priority groups for each recovery plan.  Each priority group has to finish completely before the recovery plan will start with the next group.  Within a single priority group, you can also set dependencies (similar to how Windows Services set dependencies) so that a particular VM will not recover before it’s dependencies have recovered (note-this is within a single priority group and cannot span priority groups.)
• Licensing – There are now two editions of SRM, Standard and Enterprise.  Both are feature identical.  Standard is for sites up to 75 VMs and Enterprise is for sites up to 1000 VMs (the technical limit).  All existing customers who maintain support will get SRM Enterprise when they go to SRM5.  SRM Standard is a new offering for SMBs and Remote Offices.  When customers need to grow beyond 75 VMs at a site, they can upgrade their existing VMs to SRM Enterprise and then continue buying SRM5 Enterprise VM-Packs.  Licensing still sold in packs of 25 VMs.  Only need to purchase for the VMs that you are going to protect.

Go into your vCenter (if you have more than one, you will need to do this for each.)  Go into the “Hosts and Clusters” view.  On the left pane, select the vCenter Server itself.  On the right pane, select the “Virtual Machines” tab.  You can optionally click the “State” field title to sort by state.  You may also click the host field to sort VMs by the host names (I would recommend this if you have multiple clusters with multiple editions of ESXi).  You can then right-click the virtual machine titles and add the field for “Memory Size” as shown below.  Right-click right on the word “State” in the title of the column.

Once the Memory field has been added (it will probably be far on the right), drag the filed so it’s just to the right of the “State” field.  Now go to the “File” Menu at the top of the vSphere client and select “File” then “Export” and then “Export List”.  Export the file selecting “Excel Workbook” as the file type.  Once exported, open the list in Excel.  In Excel, add a column to the right of the memory column like so:

Edit Cell D2 and put in this formula:   =IF(B2=”Powered On”,VALUE(LEFT(C2,(LEN(C2)-3))),0)

Copy this formula down the entire column.  This checks to see if the VM state is powered on (you do not draw from your vRAM license if it is not).  It then removes the “MB” and converts the value to a numeric so you can sum them up.

Scroll down to the last row and edit the cell in the next empty row in the memory column to something like this:  =ROUNDUP(SUM(D2:D65)/1024,0)

Where D65 is actually the last cell with the memory data in it, your row number will vary depending on how many VMs you have.

The ROUNDUP will round up the memory allocation (in case you have some VM’s with 4000MB allocated to them instead of 4096MB) and you need to divide the sum by 1024 to convert to GB of vRAM.

If you would rather run a PowerCLI script to gather the info, you can find a great article on how to do it here.

I hope your number turns out ok.  If it does not, all is not lost.  There are ways to shrink your vRAM footprint so the impact of the licensing is not as bad.  If you would like me to have a look, email me, I can provide a service to see how much vRAM you have allocated but never use.  That may prolong the next license purchase a bit or perhaps soften the expense.  The new licensing does not need to always be negative, maybe we just need to learn how to size our VMs with the licensing in mind.

UPDATE: If you copy and paste these formulas into Excel, the ASCII is different for some reason.  Just backspace over the quotes (“) and readd them.  The quotes are what Excel has an issue with.

Here are some of the features:

• Deploys as an appliance, very easy to install
• Must be deployed on a new ESXi 5.0 installation
• Deploys a VSA Cluster Service on the vCenter server
• The VSA Cluster Service can deploy the VSA “Agent VMs” to each of the ESXi 5.0 hosts
• The appliance will use the local space available and present the storage on the network as an NFS datastore
• Replicates the local storage to the local storage on another host in the cluster for redundancy.
• If a host fails, the appliance storing the replica will immediately take over the failed “Agent VM’s” IP address and share the storage from the replica
• v1.0 supports 2 or 3 ESXi hosts in a cluster (Typically for the essentials kits)
• Sold as a separate SKU with one price with no license capacity restrictions (no technical size limits that I could find)
• Supports 25 VMs (configured on 2 ESXi hosts) or 35 VMs (configured on 3 ESXi hosts)
• It is the only scenario where VMware recommends running vCenter on a physical or standalone ESXi hypervisor (To protect you from running into a Catch-22 as vCenter is managing the VSAs
• Recommended to use RAID10 on the hardware RAID controllers in the hosts (to protect from a single drive failure)
• Uses RAID 1 (Mirroring) between hosts for redundancy
• Supports Storage vMotion for when you are ready to migrate to hardware shared storage
• Can put the whole VSA cluster in maintenance mode or just a single node.  Can also replace a node and have the VSA rebuild onto it for redundancy or for rolling upgrades.

Here’s how it works: Imagine I have 3 hosts numbered 1,2 and 3.  Once the VSA gets installed, it creates two volumes on the available local storage on each host.  So host 1 will have volumes 1A and 1B, host 2 has 2A and 2B, host 3 has 3A and 3B.  Once the VSAs are configured, they will be redundant so that 1A (which stores VMs) mirrors to 2B, 2A mirrors to 3B and 3A mirrors to 1B.  If any VSA get’s dropped, the VSA running the mirror copy takes the IP address of the failed VSA and keeps right on chugging.

My Take

The Pros: Great solution for SMBs without shared storage to take advantage of HA, vMotion, etc.  I also think this is an outstanding solution for companies with remote offices who want to have redundancy in 2 or 3 ESXi hosts but don’t want to put shared storage in each site.

The Cons:  Way too much overhead.  VMware is recommending hardware RAID10 from the local drives if possible.  If I have 4 x 1TB drives in a server (4TB RAW disk capacity).  I use RAID10 as per VMware’s recommendation, this means 2TB gets presented to the ESXi host.  Now the VSA uses half of that storage for VMs and half as a target to mirror the VSA from one of the other hosts.  So out of 4TB of RAW disk, I get <1TB of capacity to store VMs on (don’t forget, I need room to store ESXi itself).  Thats a 75% reduction from RAW capacity = too much overhead.

Overall I still think it’s worth it.  It’s still going to be less expensive that a shared storage frame (even with the overhead loss).  I think for remote sites, you can’t beat it.  I can’t wait to see what they add to it in v2.0.

VMware vSphere 5.0

• ESXi Convergence – No more ESX, only ESXi (they said they would do it, they meant it)
• New VM Hardware:  Version 8 – New Hardware support (VS5 still supports VM Hardware 4 & 7 as well if you still want to migrate to the old hosts)
  • 3D graphics Support for Windows Aero
  • Support for USB 3.0 devices

• Platform Enhancements (Blue Requires Hardware v8)
  • 32 vCPUs per VM
  • 1TB of RAM per VM
  • 3D Graphics Support
  • Client-connected USB devices
  • USB 3.0 Devices
  • Smart-card Readers for VM Console Access
  • EFI BIOS
  • UI for Multi-core vCPUs
  • VM BIOS boot order config API and PowerCLI Interface
• vSphere Auto Deploy – mechanism for having hosts deploy quickly when needed ( I’m going to wait and see how customers use this one.)
• Support for Apple Products – Support for running OSX 10.6 Server (Snow Leopard) on Apple Xserve hardware. (although I betting technically, you can get it to run on any hardware, you will just not be compliant in your license)
• Storage DRS – Just like DRS does for CPU and Memory, now for storage
  • Initial Placement – Places new VMs on the storage with the most space and least latency
  • Load Balancing – migrates VMs if the storage cluster (group of datastores) gets too full or the latency goes too high
  • Datastore Maintenance Mode  - allow you to evacuate VMs from a datastore to work on it (does not support Templates or non-registered VMs yet…)
  • Affinity & Anti-Affinity – Allows you to make sure a group of VMs do not end up on the same datastore (for performance or Business Continuity reasons) or VMs that should always be on the same datastore.  Can be at the VM or down to the individual VMDK level.
  • Support for scheduled disabling of Storage DRS – perhaps during backups for instance.
• Profile-Driven Storage – Creating pools of storage in Tiers and selecting the correct tier for a given VM.  vSphere will make sure the VM stays on the correct tier(pool) of storage.  (Not a fan of this just yet.  What if just 1GB of the VM needs high-tier storage? This makes you put the whole VM there.)
• vSphere File System – VMFS5 is now available.  (Yes, This is a non-disruptive upgrade, however I would still create new and SVmotion)
  • Support for a single extent datastore up to 64TB
  • Support for >2TB Physical Raw Disk Mappings
  • Better VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) Locking with more tasks
  • Space reclamation on thin provisioned LUNs
  • Unified block size (1MB) (no more choosing between 1,2,4 or 8)
  • Sub-blocks for space efficiency (8KB vs. 64KB in VS4)
• VAAI now a T10 standard – All 3 primitives (Write Same, ATS and Full Copy) are now T10 standard compliant.
  • Also now added support for VAAI NAS Primitives including Full File Clone (to have the nas do the copy of the vmdk files for vSphere) and Reserve Space (to have the NAS create thick vmdk files on NAS storage)
• VAAI Thin Provisioning – Having the storage do the thin provisioning and then vSphere telling the storage which blocks can be reclaimed to shrink the space used on the storage
• Storage vMotion Enhancements
  • Now supports storage vMotion with VMs that have snapshots
  • Now supports moving linked clones
  • Now supports Storage DRS (mentioned above)
  • Now uses mirroring to migrate vs change block tracking in VS4.  Results in faster migration time and greater migration success.
• Storage IO Control for NAS – allows you to throttle the storage performance against “badly-behaving” VMs also prevents them from stealing storage bandwidth from high-priority VMs.  (Support for iSCSI and FC was added in VS4.)
• Support for VASA (vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness) – Allows storage to integrate tighter with vcenter for management.  Provides a mechanism for storage arrays to report their capabilities, topology and current state.  Also helps Storage DRS make more educated decisions when moving VMs.
• Support for Software FCoE Adapters – Requires a compatible NIC and allows you to run FCoE over that NIC without the need for a CNA Adapter.
• vMotion Enhancements
  • Support for multiple NICs.  Up to 4 x 10GbE or 16 x 1GbE NICs
  • Single vMotion can span multiple NICs (this is huge for 1GbE shops)
  • Allows for higher number of concurrent vMotions
  • SDPS Support (Slow Down During Page Send) – throttles busy VMs to reduce timeouts and improve success.
  • Ensures less than 1 second switchover in almost all cases
  • Support for higher latency networks (up to ~10ms)
  • Improved error reporting – better, more detailed logging (thank you vmware!)
  • Improved Resource Pool Integration – now puts VMs in the proper resource pool
• Distributed Resource Scheduling/Dynamic Power Management Enhancements
  • Support for “Agent VMs” – These are VMs that work per host (currently mostly vmware services – vshield, edge, app, endpoint, etc)  DRS will not migrate these VMs
  • “Agents” do not need to be migrated for maintenance mode
• Resource pool enhancements – now more consistent for clustered vs. non-clustered hosts.  No longer can modify resource pool settings on the host itself when it is managed by vcenter.  It does allow for making changes if the host gets disconnected from vCenter
• Support for LLDP Network Protocol – Standards based vendor-neutral discovery protocol
• Support for NetFlow – Allows collection of IP traffic information to send to collectors (CA, NetScout, etc) to provide bandwidth statistics, irregularities, etc.  Provides complete visibility to traffic between VMs or VM to outside.
• Network I/O Control (NETIOC) – allows creation of network resource pools, QoS Tagging, Shares and Limits to traffic types, Guaranteed Service Levels for certain traffic types
• Support for QoS (802.1p) tagging – provides the ability to Q0S tag any traffic flowing out of the vSphere infrastructure.
• Network Performance Improvements
  • Multiple VMs receiving multicast traffic from the same source will see improved throughput and CPU efficiency
  • VMkernel NICs will see higher throughput with small messages and better IOPs scaling for iSCSI traffic
• Command Line Enhancements
  • Remote commands and local commands will now be the same (new esxcli commands are not backwards compatible)
  • Output from commands can now be formatted automatically (xml, CSV, etc)
• ESXi 5.0 Firewall Enhancements
  • New engine not based on iptables
  • New engine is service-oriented and is a stateless firewall
  • Users can restrict specific services based on IP address and Subnet Mask
  • Firewall has host-profile support
• Support for Image Builder – can now create customized ESXi CDs with the drivers and OEM add-ins that you need.  (Like slip-streaming for Windows CDs) Can also be used for PXE installs.
• Host Profiles Enhancements
  • Allows use of an answer file to complete the profile for an automated deployment
  • Greatly expands the config options including: iSCSI, FCoE, Native Multipathing, Device Claming, Kernel Module Settings & more)  (I don’t think Nexus is supported yet)
• Update Manager Enhancements
  • Can now patch multiple hosts in a cluster at a time.  Will analyze and see how many hosts can be patched at the same time and patch groups in the cluster instead of one at a time.  Can still do one at a time if you prefer.
  • VMTools can now be scheduled at next VM reboot
  • Can now configure multiple download URLs and restrict downloads to only the specific versions of ESX you are running
  • More management capabilities: update certificates, change DB password, proxy authentication, reconfigure setup, etc.
• High Availability Enhancements
  • No more Primary/Secondary concept, one host is elected master and all others are slaves
  • Can now use storage-level communications – hosts can use “heartbeat datastores” in the event that network communication is lost between the hosts.
  • HA Protected state is now reported on a per/VM basis.  Certain operations no longer wait for confirmation of protection to run for instance power on.  The result is that VMs power on faster.
  • HA Logging has been consolidated into one log file
  • HA now pushes the HA Agent to all hosts in a cluster instead of one at a time.  Result:  reduces config time for HA to ~1 minute instead of ~1 minute per host in the cluster.
  • HA User Interface now shows who the Master is, VMs Protected and Un-protected, any configuration issues, datastore heartbeat configuration and better controls on failover hosts.
• vCenter Web Interface – Admins can now use a robust web interface to control the infrastructure instead of the GUI client.
  • Includes VM Management functions (Provisioning, Edit VM, Poer Controls, Snaps, Migrations)
  • Can view all objects (hosts clusters, datastores, folders, etc)
  • Basic Health Monitoring
  • View the VM Console
  • Search Capabilities
  • vApp Management functions (Provisioning, editing, power operations)
• vCenter Server Appliance – Customers no longer need a Windows license to run vCenter.  vCenter can come as a self-contained appliance (This has been a major request in the community for years)
  • 64-bit appliance running SLES 11
  • Distributed as 3.6GB, Deployment range is 5GB to 80GB of storage
  • Included database for 5 Hosts or 50 VMs (same as SQL Express in VS4)
  • Support for Oracle as the full DB (twitter said that DB2 was also supported but I cannot confirm in my materials)
  • Authentication thru AD and NIS
  • Web-based configuration
  • Supports the vSphere Web Client
  • It does not support:  Linked Mode vCenters, IPv6, SQL, or vCenter heartbeat (HA is provided thru vSphere HA)
• vCenter Heartbeat 6.4 Enhancements
  • Allows the active and standby nodes to be reachable at the same time, so both can be patched and managed
  • Now has a plug-in to the vSphere client to manage and monitor Heartbeat
  • Events will register in the vSphere Recent Tasks and Events
  • Alerts will register in the alarms and display in the client
  • Supports vCenter 5.0 and SQL 2008 R2

That’s what I have on vSphere 5, next up is SRM5, vShield5, Storage Appliance, and vCloud Director 1.5.

New in version 1.1.0

• Support for connecting directly to a vSphere host (resolves Null Pointer Exception)
• Integrated interface to input vCMA server settings and login credentials
• Enhanced version compatibility checks between vSphere iPad application and vCMA server
• Fix for Null Pointer Exception when rebooting a host while the host was in maintenance mode
• Store password, if requested by the use, in the keychain
• Ability to properly scroll the host list in landscape mode
• Sorted host list (by name and grouped by vendor ID)
• Display either ellipsis for long virtual machine names
• Better performance metricswhen connecting directly to a vSphere host
• Show “Unavailable” or “PoweredOff” message when unable to obtain performance data for a selected VM
• Reflect available actions correctly, for a selected VM, when an operation was completed
• Ability to cancel “revert to snapshot” action

My notes:  The client is maturing, slowly, worth a look but I typically only use it when in a pinch and need some simple tasks completed in the environment.

Let’s go thru an example.  First things first, before you export, make sure you have all the information you need.  In the vSphere client, pick your level to look at the Storage View (the vCenter Server, the datacenter, a cluster, a host, etc) and select the Storage Views tab on the right.  Right-click the title bar in the right pane and make sure you have all of the fields you need.  The menu will look something like this one here:

Make sure you select all of the columns of data that you want (or don’t want).  Once you have that cleaned up, we go for the export.  Your instinct would be to go to File and Export like this:

Notice how the Export List option is greyed out?  That’s where you would expect to find the export function for the Storage Views.  I think there is a bug in the interface as that is not really where it is located in this case.  For Storage Views, move the cursor to some white space on the right or the bottom of the right pane and right-click.  You should see a popup menu that looks like something like this:

Select “Export List” from the menu and you can save the storage view as Excel, HTML, CSV, etc.  There, now you have some great data for graphs or whatever you like.

One more tip:  If you export the fields to Excel, the cells will all be text and the data values will have “GB” in the cells with them.  If you want to remove the “GB” and convert to numeric so you can work with the values here’s how:

Let’s say Cell C3  has a value of “7.77 GB”.  Create a new column and for the value put in  =VALUE(LEFT(C3,LEN(C3)-3))

The LEFT() function will cutoff the “GB” and the VALUE() function will convert the TEXT to a numeric value that you can add, subtract, etc.

Now you can add a cell at the bottom and use the AVERAGE() function and find out what your average VM size really is!  Or SUM() the Snapshot column and find out how much space your VM snaps are taking up on storage.  There are all kinds of options, have fun and enjoy!