A couple of weeks ago I attended a vBlock Seminar at Getronics Consulting (my employer BTW). At this seminar a guy named Erik Slooff employed by EMC (not to be confused with Eric Sloof from NTPRO.nl) spoke about EMC’s management tooling around vBlock and mentioned EMC sold a couple of tools to VMware. This made me curious and got me digging up some info about it. I’ve had it in draft for some time, but somehow could not finish it. So here it is.

The EMC Ionix portfolio consists of a range of different apps, a couple of them only recently acquired by EMC. In February EMC sold 4 out of the range of products from the Ionix portfolio to VMware.

The products will become/are part of the vCenter product family, just as labmanager and lifecycle manager are right now. The products:

1. Server Configuration Manager (formerly Configuresoft)
2. FastScale
3. Application Discovery Manager (formerly nLayers)
4. Service Manager (formerly Infra)

Server Configuration Manager

The first to be branded as a vCenter product on the VMware site is vCenter Configuration Manager (formerly called EMCIonix Server Configuration Manager). It collects, stores, fixes, and manages configuration settings from servers and workstations, across physical and virtual environments. With this critical data, VCM eliminates the hassle and expense associated with using multiple tools for managing change, patching, configuration, remediation and compliance.

With VCM you receive automatic alerts when your systems need to be remediated to a desired configuration state to ensure compliance or resolve problems. You can automate common tasks to increase operational efficiency, decrease costs, and regain control over your physical and virtual IT infrastructure. You can also virtualize your environment securely and successfully. In order to confidently enable the transition of tier one applications in a virtual data center, compliance and security must be equal, if not better, than the physical data center it came from. To be successful in moving to a virtualized infrastructure, organizations will need to implement a continuous approach to management.

link to EMC datasheet (pdf): Data Sheet

The old website http://www.configuresoft.com still is alive when I’m writing this and might hold some info that may not be on the VMware or EMC website.

link to the VMware vCenter product webpage: http://www.vmware.com/products/configuration-manager/

link to the VMware communities webcorner for vCenter Configuration Manager: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/mgmt/vcm

The download link now points to the Compliance checker, which is a free downloadable tool.

Fastscale

EMC bought Fastscale in the 2nd half of 2009. FastScale’s technology is focused on simplifying application and server stack management and easing deployment of physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures. Using FastScale technology, companies can run datacenters with up to three times more virtual machines without degrading performance. FastScale’s flagship product — FastScale Composer Suite — is an automated platform for building, optimizing, managing and deploying application environments in physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures. The product allows customers to streamline software stacks automatically and dynamically deploy logical servers to physical, virtual or cloud within minutes.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/emc-acquires-cloud-support-vendor-fastscale-883

Application Discovery Manager

EMC bought nlayers in 2006 and with that it became part of “EMC smarts” which later was integrated in the Ionix Suite as EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager. It provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications, their dependencies, and configurations with respect to their underlying infrastructure in data center environments. With Ionix Application Discovery Manager, you get accurate, real-time visibility into the data center from an application standpoint—critical for planning data center consolidations and migrations as well as managing change impact, virtualization initiatives, disaster recovery, and configuration management database (CMDB) population.

Source: http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/application-discovery-manager.htm

Service Manager

Service Manager is a tool formerly owned by a company called Infra. EMC called it Ionix Service Manager and it was EMC’s only tool in the Service Management area. Service Manager has a strong link to ITIL Service Management. One of the company’s that “approves” VMware Service Manager is ITIL-shop Pink Elephant now HQ based in Canada, but originated in The Netherlands in the 1980’s. (my former employer). Pink Elephant verified the tool to be compliant with the ITIL processes as defined by the ITSMF.

On the EMC-site and even on the Infra-corp-site there still is a lot of information available:

VKernel just released StorageView. I decided to check wether the software works and how valuable it will be since it is free.

Later on in this post I will let you know my findings, first lets see what VKernel has to say about it:

VKernel just released StorageVIEW, a free assessment tool that provides immediate visibility into storage problems in VMware environments.
StorageVIEW downloads and installs in minutes. It provides nearly instant analysis of VM infrastructure path latency:

• Top five host/datastore paths with the highest latency
• Listing of the associated VMs for these high latency paths
• Throughput information for each VM in the high latency path
• Aggregated results for the remaining datastore/host pairs

After registering at the VKernel website I downloaded the (small) .msi and ran the installer:

It’s literary a next-next-finish install.

After confirming the license agreement and the path and icon placement (which even gives you the option to put the app in the startup-folder) you click “Finish”:

Running the app for the first time it presents you the configuration screen:

In this screen you enter the vCenter Server (IP or hostname or FQDN) and the correct credentials to connect to the vCenter Server you specified. The tool measures latency on storage links. In the setup screen you can specify the thresholds for Warning and Critical (Alarm) events. Also the status polling interval can be defined, default the tool checks every half hour.

After clicking Connect you are presented with the main application screen:

The thing that struck me immediately was the simplicity and the buttons with the caption “Help Me Analyze”. These buttons are placed and colored in a way that you feel like you must click them. Clicking these buttons will point you to a trial of the “not free”- product by VKernel (Capacity Analyzer).

It is a nice app but this makes clear it is really a teaser because of the limited functionality and the links to the paid product. The thing it does is monitor the latency of your datastore to host paths and shows the top five data store to host links with the greatest latency. The particular example in the picture above you see an environment with only one esxi host with only local storage. so not a production environment but my own home box.

Latency will not be a problem here, but you can see performance stats about the vm’s using a certain link. It shows the performance (KB/s) for each VM.

During the setup the application runs with an icon in the taskbar:

After completing the configuration the application moves the icon to the systray where it will reside upon closure or status inquiry.

Conclusion:

VKernel StorageView is a free tool, which is great. It has limited functionality which can turn against itself. If you want more objects to monitor you probably don not want to implement a whole bunch of monitoring solutions next to each other, instead of that you will try to consolidate as much as possible in one or two products. This tool does not fit in that, the purpose of this tool is more for evaluation purposes or for home lab use. So it turns out to be a teaser for the complete product (VKernel Capacity Analyzer)

Pros: Small, Easy to use (install/configure/running it), Runs on Windows 7

Cons: little functionality, the buttons linking you to the trial of VKernel Capacity Analyzer, does not fit in a single management console vision for management.

A minute ago I received an email which I want to share with you all.

No updates yet, but I am very interested and curious in how this product differs from others like Veeam nworks etc.

Coming Soon:  Vizioncore™ Management Pack for VMware®

Thousands of organizations leverage Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager as their primary system for infrastructure monitoring. Vizioncore is shortly going to launch a new solution that will offer users a new way to extend Systems Center Operations Manager to monitor VMware virtual infrastructures.  This solution, like all Vizioncore products, is simple, easy to use, and extremely cost-effective, making it the preferred option to competing products on the market.

Vizioncore is announcing the release of a new Management Pack for VMware designed to extend Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager to monitor VMware virtual infrastructures.

With the Vizioncore Management Pack for VMware, organizations can:

• Understand the performance and availability of the virtual infrastructure with alert and event management through the Systems Center Operations Manager console.
• Baseline capacity trending to diagnose incidents and problems faster.
• Simplify deployment by leveraging low overhead collection and avoiding the need to place agents on monitored targets.

Generate trending reports to facilitate communication between IT teams.

You can register like I did using the link below to receive more information when it becomes available. (don’t forget to tick the checkbox in the bottom!)

http://vizioncore.com/products/Management-Pack-for-VMware/learn-more.php

Quest released Quest vWorkspace 7.1. In this new release it introduces WAN acceleration (EOP Xtream) a piece of (patented) technology to accelerate RDP and EOP traffic on WAN links. This feature is enabled with RDP-pass-through mode by default (port 3389) so no extra firewall configuration is required.

Other enhancements in this version are:

• advanced integration with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
• Support for Microsoft differencing disks (SCVMM integration)
• Workload evaluators for Hyper-V Hosts
  You can now load balance between multiple host servers in one desktop group, using customized workload evaluators.
• Expanded Sysprep support
  • The ability to Sysprep an SCVMM virtual computer using the
  vWorkspace Sysprep Customization wizard has been added with
  this release.
  • The Sysprep process for Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Vista,
  and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 computers can now be
  completed by the Sysprep Customizations wizard, no longer
  requiring you to alter and import an unattend.xml file.
  • The alternative method for initiating Sysprep on VMware
  computers has been added to the Sysprep Customization wizard
  as the Execution Mode setting
• RemoteApp support
  Microsoft RemoteApp support for Hyper-V virtual desktops and RD
  Session Hosts/Terminal Servers has been added enabling the
  publishing of individual applications using Microsoft’s RemoteApp
  technology on access devices.
• Flash redirection (improved)
• USB redirection (now also for x64 versions of MS Windows)
• vWorkspace Connector for Java (new name, added graphic acceleration)
• vWorkspace Management Console (several improvements)
• Deferred Authentication
  Pass-through enabled for specific windows/applications when not authenticated to allow a user to change it’s password when it becomes expired
• Optional One-Session-Per-User within a Farm
  This feature is important in healthcare for moving between stations
  without disconnecting the session.
• Support for Microsoft Application Virtualization
  Microsoft Application Virtualization APP-V 4.6 is now supported
• Internet Explorer Redirection (Experimental)
  Redirects IE-traffic from the server to the client (PNtools have to be installed + a couple of reg-entries)

Watch a demo of the new EOP Xtream here (click picture):

On Wednesday april 7th I joined 1000 other people at the combined Partner Exchange and Solution Seminar by Citrix Benelux in Bussum (NL).

The seminar was focused on desktop virtualization and unfortunately for abroad readers all sessions where in Dutch (NL).

All the sessions where recorded and are available for playback at http://www.citrixpartnerexchange.com/Downloads

The sessions I attended:

1. Keynote ‘Rethink the desktop’ by Peter van Leest (video pdf)

2. What’s next for XenApp and beyond by Andreas van Wingerden (video | pdf )

3. Synergy Berlin by Ed Bezooijen (video)

4. Migrating you XenApp implementation to a virtual desktop architecture – the easy way! by Jan Christoffels (video | powerpoint)

5. XenDesktop: Delivery of pooled and assigned virtual desktops including advanced Desktop Group Management by Martijn Bosschaart and Albert Kramer (video | powerpoint)

6. Take you virtual desktops with you – XenClient makes XenDesktop mobile by Stefan Pieters and Martijn Bosschaart (powerpoint)

There was a fuzz on the release date which was mentioned. This presentation is the only session not available on video, luckily I brought my Flip Mino . Below is the piece about the release date:

7. Making IT as easy as iTunes by Andreas van Wingerden (video)
In this presentation there was quite some time reserved for a demo with the Citrix Receiver for iPad and XenDesktop see pictures below (XP on iPad).
 

It was a useful day and nice to meet some peers!

Last week I did a post on the Teradici PCoIP Management Console where I mentioned the management console being restricted to only Firefox as browser.

Yesterday I got a comment on that post from the Andrew Naiberg, Management Console Product Manager at Teradici. In his comment he pointed out that the latest version of the Management Console (1.2.2) supports Internet Explorer 7 and 8 in addition to Firefox 3.0 and 3.5.

Nice I thought, so I went to the Wyse download page to see if this new version arrived already. No luck at Wyse, so fired up google to see if the mentioned version was available somewhere else on the web. Unfortunately the only version I could find was the version I already downloaded and tried.

After the Easter holidays (today), I resumed my laptop and was closing all the open internet explorer sessions I left open since my last activity on my laptop. Suddenly I came across the download page from Wyse and without any expectations and just out of curiosity I hit the F5 button to see if the new version was available.

Guess what? The new version of both the P20 firmware and the Teradici PCoIP Management Console are available with a date of availability set on the 5th of April.

Besides a new Management Console version also a new version of the P20 firmware is available. Reading through the release notes of the P20 firmware I want to share some of the new features and fixes that are available with the new firmware.

Important new features in conjunction with VMware View:

• Added support for Windows® 7
• Added experimental support for pre-session secure user authentication via smart card (CAC only). This feature may only be used in conjunction with VMware View™ 4.5 and above. <- Nice!
• Add local cursor/keyboard support. This feature allows users to operate PCoIP sessions over a long latency network connection. The software package is available for Windows 7, Windows Vista® and Windows® XP 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
• Increased the maximum number of domains displayed when connecting to a VMware View Connection Server from 5 to 100.
• Added support for a large number of European keyboard layouts

Bug fixes:

• Fixed problem that prevents the zero client from establishing an RDP session with a Windows 7 desktop.
• Fixed problem that prevents zero clients from completing the SSL handshake process with VMware View Connection Servers using extended validation certificates.
• Fixed problem that prevents zero clients from connecting with VMware View Connection Servers that have optionally enabled smart cards.
• Fixed problem where the network loss overlay was sometimes not displayed on zero client devices loaded with firmware release 3.0.
• Added support for configuring the following setting via the CMI interface, which is used by the PCoIP Management Console.
  • Session encryption type
  • Host Driver Function

The biggest change in the PCoIP Management Console is the ability to use Internet Explorer 7 and 8 browsers in addition to Firefox 3 and 3.5. Besides that the changes and updates to the management console are minimal, so here are some minimal highlights. Because the firmware version numbering is now changed to a three digit version number, all version numbers including the older ones are now in three digits. Besides the digits, devices now have a colour code attached, devices are shown in green when online and in red when offline.

The user manual of the management console now contains a section on how to run the MC on ESX, it tells you to use vCenter Converter. Standard the MC is delivered as an VMware player Virtual Machine.

Reading the post from Andrew Sharrock about the Wyse P20 and the management of it, I came across the Teradici PCoIP Management Console provided by Wyse.

Maybe I’m duplicating some of Andrew’s post, but these are the steps I made (and screenshots from my environment) when I configured the client with the Teradici PCoIP Management Console.

First I downloaded the management console: a zip file containing vmware virtual machine files (vmx & vmdk). Next I imported the prepped virtual machine (, using the vCenter converter plugin. The conversion is needed because they assume that you will run the VM with VMware Player.

The import is very straight forward and after turning it on you will see a basic menu in the console stating that you can access the web interface at a given ip-adress. You can also alter things like the hostname, IP (dhcp=standard), the password for the web interface (which is blank by default) and more…

Next I fired up my IE8-browser and typed the web interface adress into the adress bar of IE8. To my surprise I got the message my browser was not supported. It even tells me what browser to use: Firefox 3

Google Chrome also does not work, changed to another machine and started up Firefox (3.5.5) from there and it worked. The first thing the web interface comes up with is a license agreement you will have to agree to.

When the you agree to the license agreement the web console does appear, which has a nice design and looks very usable at first sight.

I noticed that it had discovered my client (portal) right away when I first looked at the web interface. The other thing I noticed was the option to use SRV records for the Management Console and the Connection Broker, i’ll take a look at that another time maybe.

On the DEVICES tab I clicked the device and it gives you all the options you can set and save in a profile to manage groups of thin/zero PCoIP clients.

Browsing through the settings I noticed that it detected the hardware connected to the PCoIP terminal e.g. mouse and monitor.

The first thing to configure will be the View Manager Server (connection broker), to do this you first have to create a (device) group (or use default group) with a profile and add the device to it. The groups profile can then be modified to contain the setting for the View Manager Server. After modifying the profile apply the profile to the device or all devices and your settings are effective.

Back to the start screen of the device management tab you can see that the device is not belonging to a group yet.

Select the device and choose a group from the drop down box and hit “Add”, this adds the device to the chosen group. Next is the profile.

Now a profile has to be created and assigned to the default group, to do that click on the profile tab and click “add new”.

When the profile is ready click on “Set Properties” to be able to enter the settings for the device like the IP/hostname for the View Manager etc.

Now you’ve set the right properties, the group has to be configured to use this profile.

When the group change is saved the group properties (profile application status) show whether the profile is applied or not, if necessary click “apply profile”.

After applying the profile to the group the thin client configured, you can tell the device or group of devices to reset in order to try to connect with the new settings using the POWER tab from the management console.

Tonight I joined the VMware Community Roundtable Podcast at Talkshoe. During the podcast I’ve been taking notes from the audio stream and the chat so I thought why not share these notes with you.

It was a very interesting podcast tonight with a lot of questions, which unfortunately could not be addressed all during this hour. The main guest of tonight was John Dodge (@VDIInfo on twitter), Services Architect at VMware.

VMware is expecting to get Offline desktop production ready in next release of VMware View (4.5).  In the next release “Offline Desktop” will be called “Local mode”.

The release of CVP (Client Virtualization Platform or Client Hypervisor) depends on the intel vPro processor, several vendors like Dell have adopted this. In the initial release the use of only one (1) vm will be implemented, in a later release it will be possible to run 2 (or more?) VM’s. CVP will not be in the next release, yet.

Future of View Portal is changing, the portal will be a place to get the view client. Connecting through the portal as it is now will be dropped as a future feature. Question I asked as a reaction on the future purpose of the view portal was if that means that using the internet cafe with the portal will not be possible anymore? In the chat the suggestion of a thinapped View Client was mentioned, the answer unfortunately did not make the podcast.

Linux virtual desktops are not on the roadmap just yet according to John Dodge.

Q: What is RTO profiles significance? A: The ideal desktop is persistent in behaviour but not in connection, so very significant. Make a non-persistent desktop look like a persistent desktop.

The other RTO products are going to be integrated into other VMware products.

My opinion is that profile virtualization is a absolute necessity when using large scale VDI (non persistent) desktops, at the moment I see combinations in the market with other products like Scense and RES Powerfuse.

The key factor for providing desktops today (New World Of Work/ “Het Nieuwe Werken”) is to have your desktop available anytime/anyplace/anywhere and device independent.

Carter Shanklin, VMware’s powershell “chief”, preached at the London VMUG and revealed there that View 4.5 will be manageable through PowerCLI.

Warren Ponder of VMware announced a maintenance release of VMware View: 4.0.1 at the Virtual Desktop Blog!

Next to being a maintenance release also a couple of new enhancements are introduced with this release. So bug-fixes and new stuff!

Overview of the new stuff:

• Single sign on support using PCoIP for 3rd party providers
• Thinprint support for PCoIP <- a major improvement!
• Localization support for View clients (language) <- to give it a boost in Europe and the Far east.
• Support for international keyboards

download View 4.0.1 here:
http://www.vmware.com/support/product-support/view/
The release notes can be found here:  http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/view_pubs.html

Upgrading from ESX4 to ESX4 Update 1 is something different. As I run ESXi from a USB flash device I did not feel like creating a new USB device with the latest version and importing all VM’s etc.

I wanted an upgrade without too much re-configuration. Normally I would use Update Manager to do this, but since it is installed on my vCenter server and that runs virtual and there is no other host to migrate it to, this is not an option.

I used a virtual clone of my vCenter server and took it to my laptop running with VMware workstation. Since the vCenter now left the ESXi host I was able to perform the upgrade of ESXi.

1. Shut down the vCenter Server;
2. Install VMware Standalone Converter somewhere, except on vCenter;
3. Using Standalone Converter export vCenter in Workstation format to an location outside ESXi;
4. Using VMware Workstation power up the exported vCenter server;
5. Reconfigure the Network (IP-address) of the workstation vCenter instance;
6. Create a baseline containing ESX (i) Update 1 and assign it to the Host;
7. Make sure all VM’s on the ESXi Host are powered off or suspended;
8. Connect to the Workstation instance of vCenter using the vSphere Client;
9. Scan & Remediate host using vCenter Update Manager