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DatacenterDynamics Converged

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DatacenterDynamics Converged recognises the need for cross-disciplinary cooperation in the data centre. From site selection and construction to outsourcing strategy and regulation through to how best to deliver the infrastructure for your mission-critical infrastructure – DatacenterDynamics Converged reflects the interaction of the following three elements for optimum data centre operation and management.

The DatacentreDynamics census revealed an industry second-to-none in terms of development. The high level of sophistication and maturity in the market has shifted the emphasis from facility and investment expenditure to concerns of efficiency; data centre monitoring, IT optimisation and the increased adoption of outsourcing models have moved centre stage.

The Italian conference is held in Milan on Jun, 7th. More information in the official page.

This year I’m one of the speaker, with this session:

  • Title: “Using server virtualization to optimize the consolidation and reduce the power consumption of the datacenter”
  • Abstact: Server consolidation is a way to reduce the number of servers and optimize the datacenter’s power consumption and the cooling requirements. By adding the server virtualization we can achieve abetter consolidation (and could also combine physical consolidation, like using blade servers) and obtain great level of reduction in both cooling and power consumption (and this is only one of the several benefit of virtualization). Of course additional systems could be needed, like shared storage, but we can make several considerations and see that still there are some benefit. We will analyze typical server consolidation in a virtual environment (ad also we will give some information about the desktop consolidation) to make some estimation of how datacenter consumption could be optimized. Also we will discuss on some techniques available in virtual environment (like VMware DPM) to optimize power requirements during low usage of the datacenter.
Events

VCAP5-DCA study guides

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Actually the exam is not yet avaialable. But some people (with the approval of VMware) have already publish the current beta exam blueprint with some study notes and some interesting information:

continue reading…

vCertification, VMware ,

VCP5-DT study guides

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I’ve written about my experience with the VCP5-DT exam but I’ve not started (and neither planned) to realize a blueprint with study notes like the one about VCP5.

But actually there are some recent works that could cover this exam:

 

vCertification , ,

Building a vSphere 5 lab

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For people that need to make practice for the VCAP-DCA exam (and the beta of VCAP5-DCA will start soon) a good lab environment is mandatory. But it could also be useful for other reasons, like demo environment.

There are several options to build one, but most used solutions are using nested hosts on one physical system with:

  • VMware Workstation/Fusion over a host OS: common for a notebook.
  • ESXi 5 on a server or a whitebox: common if you plan to have a always-on or fixed solution.

Actually both solution could be good, but Workstation could not scale too much, expecially if you work with a notebook. For whitebox configurations there are several site (I just suggest this post: Home vLab: my new WhiteBox). But you can also consider a good server (latest are really quite and powerful).

But what about the virtual environment of the virtual hosts and the virtual storage?

Some days ago I’ve seen an interesting project called vSphere 5 Auto Lab that is is a quick and easy way to build a vSphere environment for testing and learning using a single desktop or laptop PC and VMware Workstation, Fusion or ESXi. The whole lab runs in VMs on that one PC, even ESXi runs in a VM and can then run it’s own VMs.

What’s in the AutoLab?

The Autolab download contains a set of shell VMs and a lot of automation.  Once built the lab contains two ESXi servers, a Windows Active Directory Domain controller, a Windows Virtual Center, a FreeNAS storage appliance and a FreeSCO Router to link it to the outside world.

Is really interesting how the VM are configured (there are one version for ESXi and one for Workstation) and also how are deployed.

The hardware requirements for the lab are moderate. Hopefully you won’t need to buy a new computer, although you may need to do some upgrades.  If you can dedicate a computer to the role then the lab runs extremely well under ESXi.

Hardware Minimum Great Choice Used to build the lab (laptop bought in 2009)
CPU Dual Core, 64Bit Quad Core, i7 Core2 Duo
RAM 8GB How much can you afford? 8GB
Hard Disk 60GB free space 120GB SSD free space Second SATA hard disk, Laptop OS on small SSD
Operating System 64 Bit ESXi 5.0 Windows 7 64Bit
Virtualization Software VMware Player (untested) ESXi 5.0 VMware Workstation 8.0.2

Hint for the ESXi nested solution

If you use an ESXi host you can use two unique feature:

  • Transparent Page Sharing (see also KB 1021095) that can reduce the needed memory.
  • The vmdk sharing: usable to build a guest cluster, but also a cluster with ESXi nodes without the need of iSCSI or NFS appliances (same functions was explained to build a virtual XenServer Pool).

Hint for the Workstation nested solution

In Workstation you have a unique feature that permit to make a linked clone from a VM snapshot (to be host there is also in vSphere but is not directly usable from the GUI… for example it is used in VMware View or vCloud Director). In this way you can reduce the footprint of similar VMs and also reduce number of different blocks that you must access (this make possible run the environment on a SSD or just use better the cache).

VMware , , ,

VCDX5 upgrade path

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Although is not yet on the official certification page, there was a post in the VMware Community with the official path for VCDX5 upgrade: VMware Certification Announces Upgrade Path from VCDX4 to VCDX5.

Current VCDX4 holders in good standing will be able to upgrade their certification to VCDX5 by successfully passing the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5- Datacenter Design (VDCD510) exam. The VCAP5-DCD exam release date will be announced in May. Release of the VCAP5-DCD final exam blueprint will occur at that time.

VCDX4-holders in good standing who have completed the VCAP5-DCD Beta Exam and achieved a passing score have satisfied the requirements for VCDX5 and are thus certified.

No info yet about the full path, but probably will be the same of the VCDX4… for this reason will probably be announce only then the VCAP5-DCA beta will be finished (actually has not yet started).

vCertification ,

Convert virtual disk format – VMDK to VHD

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In the previous post we have discuss on how convert from VHD (used for example in Microsoft Hyper-V) to VMDK format (used in VMware products). Now let’s see how to convert from the other side.

There are several tools to make this V2V operation:

continue reading…

Microsoft, VMware, vStorage

Convert virtual disk format – VHD to VMDK

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As you probably already know a VM is incapsulated with a set of files that define VM properties and objects. Some of those files are the virtual disks files and each vendor use its own format: VMware use the VMDK and Microsoft & Citrix use the VHD format. Note that there could be more sub-types (for example for the VMDK files, but we will explain in future posts). To convert between different format you can use some kind of converter to perform a virtual to virtual (V2V) task.

continue reading…

Microsoft, VMware, vStorage
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