On Monday September 15 VMware introduced the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDOS). Is it a new product? No it is not a product on itself, it is more like a concept which shows a roadmap where VMware is aiming at in the near future. It VMware’s new name for the Virtual Infrastructure formerly known as VI3 now called VDOS.
As reported earlier by VMware during VMworld Europe back in February of this year, VMware is aiming at the cloud computing concept. With the introduction of VDOS VMware made a big step into that direction. According to VMware the main properties of such a cloud computing environment should involve:
- hardware independency
- location independency
- a self-healing mechanism
- guaranteed service levels
- secure
- scalable
- manageability
If you look at the VDOS-concept as introduced by VMware it contains four main building blocks mainly populated with currently available features and topped off which a couple of new features. Let’s take a closer look.
I will start with a diagram VMware created which shows the components (building blocks) and their relation to each other.
The four components are:
- Application vServices – Aimed at the application level, ensures the operation of those applications with availability features like vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, DRS;
- Infrastructure vServices – Aimed at the infrastructure ‘on-premise’ (CPU: vCompute, network: vNetwork, storage: vStorage)
- Cloud vServices – Aimed at the infrastructure ‘off-premise’ (third party infrastructure interfacing)
- Management vServices – Aimed at the manageability of the virtual infrastructure and the applications running on it.
Summary of new features announced in the roadmap’s (to be available in 2009):
Application vServices
- VMware Fault Tolerance (continuous availability)
- vCenter Data Recovery
- VMware VMsafe integrated products
- Hot add of CPU’s
- vApp – a standard way of describing applications in a way that it can operate as a self-managed entity it leverages the industry standard OVF (Open Virtual machine Format).
- VMware vStudio – an authoring and configuration tool, enables ISV’s and enterprises to construct Virtual Appliances and vApps
Infrastructure vServices
vCompute
- paravirtualized virtual storage device (200.000 I/O’s per second)
- VMDirect (to be able to directly access hardware)
vNetwork
- Distributed switches
- Network vMotion (movement of network statistics and history)
- third party virtual switches (CISCO?)
vStorage
- vStorage Thin Provisioning (virtual disks only allocate space when needed)
- vStorage Linked Clones
- vStorage API’s (to enable storage array software to manage individual VMware virtual machines)
Management vServices
Simplified Applications Management
- vCenter AppSpeed (better performance management)
Simplified Infrastructure Management
- vCenter Linked Mode (with multiple vCenter instances)
- Monitoring and automated remediation (compliance control for hosts)
- vCenter ConfigControl (compliance control for virtual instances)
- vCenter Orchestrator (customized workflow’s to automate operational tasks)
- vCenter CapacityIQ (capacity analyzer)
- vCenter Chargeback (charge back utility)
Simplify End-to-End Management Across Virtual and Physical Infrastructure
- VMware Ready (a management solution validation program)
Cloud vServices
This vService is introduced with VDOS. This enables companies to use capacity on-demand at external sites/third parties and for others it can be useful in a outsourcing strategy.
At Monday 15th September 2008 Vizioncore (a Quest Software division) made four announcements involving their product portfolio at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas.
vAutomation suite which consists of a combination of three products will be available from Q4 2008 through 2009:
- vControl (a webbased management tool to manage and control your virtual datacenter(s))
- vWorkflow (a workflow management tool to automate processes)
- vLifecycle (a tool to manage and control the lifecylcle of a VM from "the cradle to the grave", available mid 2009)
vRanger Pro 4.0 the newest version of the award winning backup/restore tool with some new extra features build in. vRanger Pro 4.0 now supports incremental backup resulting in smaller storage requirements.
vFoglight (formerly known as vCharter Pro) changed her name in order to make clear a redesign of the architecture took place. The product now looks like the existing product Quest Foglight. Also monitoring for a couple key applications (AD/SQL/Exchange/etc) will be included as well as chargeback functionality (end of 2008)
vOptimizer Pro will be used to optimize performance of and storage in use by vm’s by automating several activities to optimize storage consumption by those vm’s.
I like it when two things come together.
A while ago I posted a link to an article about creating your own ESXi usb-stick. There are several people around who have written something about this subject. Not much people around though, who had problems with the procedure that was described. It looks like a lot of people copied each other because in many of them a step was missing (not a very important step but hey it shows how data is copied around). So lets start describing my little experiment.
The experiment started with the purchase of a server for testing at home. I came across a server in the DELL PowerEdge range. Now you probably think that I’m loaded with money to be able to buy a Poweredge server. Wrong, some time ago DELL had a promotion I took advantage of. I purchased a PowerEdge T105, a starter model which can be placed underneath your desk. The model is very silent; my laptop makes more noise. For about 150 Euros (shipping included) I ordered myself a genuine PowerEdge with a AMD Opteron processor. All parts I selected were the minimum possible because I found out it is cheaper to buy them separately.
After a couple of day’s and two unsuccessful delivery attempts I received my Server. After checking the system with a live-cd of Ubuntu (worked perfect), I gave it a try with ESXi of the VMworld Europe USB memory stick (the one every attendee got). ESXi started but was very limited, no network was found because the onboard nic (Broadcom) was not recognized and besides the lack of network capabilities also local storage was unavailable because it did not recognize a compatible SATA controller.
After googling on this problem I found out more people suffered from this problem (after all the product as a system is not on VMware’s HCL). I gave it a rest and installed Ms Windows 2008 on it.
A couple of weeks later VMware announced the new pricing of ESXi (free!). I decided to give it another try but now with the 3.5 update 2 version of ESXi. In order to do that I needed to upgrade my VMworld Europe version of ESXi with the latest version available. Now we reach a point where I got a bit frustrated because the method to build your own USB-stick with ESXi which was everywhere described did not work for me. When trying to write the image to the usb-stick I repeatedly got an empty error message in winimage. I kept trying until I found out the problem was some sort of a protection issue with the current data on the stick.
The solution of this issue was fairly easy, just clean up the entire usb-stick (after backing up the current data, yes reading wasn’t an issue, only writing). To do so I used a utility I already had installed by Western Digital which normally is used to write zero’s to a external harddrive. After I cleaned the stick (no partitions left on the stick) I was able to write the image to the stick.
Next step of course was testing the ESXi 3.5 Update 2 with the PowerEdge T105 server. I plugged the stick in one of the slots on the back of the T105 and fired up the BIOS-utility and changed some settings in order to boot from the usb-stick. While I rebooted the system I kept my fingers crossed. The system booted from the stick and ESXi was started. Looking at the monitor I could not believe my eyes, it worked! I now have a system running ESXi with network connectivity and using local storage.
Now I even think of buying a second T105 to be able to use vMotion and other features at home.
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