Posts Tagged ‘VMware’
EVO:Rail – VMware enters the hyperconverged space
A very exciting announcement was made at VMworld today: EVO:Rail. I’ve known for a while about this under the codename “Marvin” (and EMC’s appliance related to this codenamed “Mystic”), now it is out there with it’s official naming. But what is it? Disclaimer: I work for EMC, but what I write here are my own opinions.
First things first: A quick intro to hyper-converged
First we had converged infrastructure. Converged infrastructure operates by grouping multiple components together into a single, optimized computing package. Components of a converged infrastructure may include servers, data-storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and orchestration. VCE’s Vblock is a prime example of converged infrastructure. Below that we have reference architectures like EMC’s VSPEX and NetApp’s Flexpod.
So on to even higher integration and automation: “hyper-converged”. Hyper-converged architectures consolidate and manage compute, Read the rest of this entry »
“My VAAI is Better Than Yours”
VAAI has been around for quite some time, but I still get a lot of questions on the subject. Most people seem to think VAAI is solely for speeding up processes, where in reality there should not be significant speeding up if your infrastructure has enough reserves. VAAI is meant to offload storage-related things so they are executed where they should: Inside the storage array.
EDIT: My title was stolen borrowed from my dear collegue Bas Raayman in a post like this one, but focussing on file-side in My VAAI is Better Than Yours – The File-side of Things. Nice addition Bas!
My VAAI is better than yours
I recently had an interesting conversation Read the rest of this entry »
Passing the VMware VCP510 exam
Still had this coupon lying around for a free VCP510 exam. I got it because I did the VCP4-DT exam, and last week I saw that it was valid through… The end of THIS month. So what to do? I just took the shot. I hardly had any time to study, but then… That is nothing new to me… Just how I passed my VCP4 and VCP4-DT certifications as well 🙂
Under the Covers with Miss Alignment Part 2: Linked Clones
This post is the continuation of Under the Covers with Miss Alignment: I keep hearing this rumor more and more often: It appears that both snapshots and linked clones on vSphere 4.x and 5.0 are misaligned. Not having had the time to actually put this to the test, I thought it would at least be informative to give you some more down-and-dirty information on the subject.
Looking back at VMworld 2011 Las Vegas
VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas has come to end. Once again it has been an epic event. I can’t believe how fast it was over. Was it worthwhile? Very much. Would I do it again? Definitely!
Read the rest of this entry »
Steve Herrods VMworld Keynote Summary
Welcome to the tuesday General Session. Steve Herrod is taking the stage with some cool new stuff. This blogpost is typed as-we-go, so bear with me if anything is misspelled or looks chaotic 🙂
Introduction
Steve is looking at three phases in VDI: Simplify, Manage and Connect. These three phases are important to distinguish: First you simplify, you need to manage your setup, and users need to connect. View 5 is built to accommodate this to the max.
Up next, the new goodness for small businesses and finally… Melvin the Monster VM!
Read the rest of this entry »
Speeding up your storage array by limiting maximum blocksize
Recently I got an email from a dear ex-colleague of mine Simon Huizenga with a question: “would this help speed up our homelab environment?”. Since his homelab setup is very similar to mine, he pointed me towards an interesting VMware KB article: “Tuning ESX/ESXi for better storage performance by modifying the maximum I/O block size” (KB:1003469). What this article basically describes, is that some arrays may experience a performance impact when very large storage I/O’s are performed, and how limiting the maximum sizes of I/O blocks might improve performance in specific cases.
Whiteboxing part 2: Building the ultimate Whitebox
In part 1 of this series I posted the way I selected hardware for my ultimate whitebox server. A whitebox server is a cheap server you can use to run VMware vSphere without it being on the VMware HCL. Never supported, but working nonetheless. Now that the hardware to use was selected and ordered from my local computer components dealer, the next step is to assemble and test the setup, which is the focus of this post.
Whiteboxing part 1: Deciding on your ultimate ESX Whitebox
So you’ve decided: You want to build yourself an ESX(i) environment while minimizing cost. But how do you choose between available hardware? In this blogpost I will be focussing on my recent Whitebox server selecgtion and how I got to my configuration out of all available components.
Different ways of getting to a successful Whitebox config
There are several different ways of getting to a cheap Whitebox configuration. So far I’ve been seeing four approaches:
- Build one big Windows/Linux server and run everything virtual (so virtual ESX nodes on VMware Workstation);
- Build one big ESX(i) server and run everything virtual (so virtual ESX nodes on the physical ESX node);
- Build two smaller ESX(i) servers (surprise suprise… this can actually be cheaper over one big node!);
- Buy a complete (supported) system (Like Dell or HP).
vSphere 5: The next level.
So the big news is out: vSphere 5 is here! With a lot of exciting new features, of which I will be posting several deepdives I’m sure.
For now, let’s just look at the new and exciting features vSphere 5 brings to the table.
VMware’s clear messaging
With the coming of vSphere, VMware has a very clear messaging around this new release which raises the bar once again:
- Deploy Business Critical Applications with Confidence;
- Respond to the Needs of the Business Faster with Cloud Agility;
- Move to Cloud Computing with Trust.
Some great point to strive for I think. vSphere 5 will enable even bigger VMs to run. That is the ESX part of the game. Next, agility is on the agenda. Where competing hypervisors may deliver the same performance, VMware is aiming on their toolset to further improve their agility. Cloud computing is a very important step I think.
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