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Predictions and forecasts for 2012

31 December 2011
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I don’t like make predictions, because the future isn’t so clear or simple, and in the IT one year could be lot of time and lot of changes. Also I see a lot of predictions that seems only in a binary state (who is in, who is out)… but the real could be completely different from a simple black and white approach. For example same say that the 2012 will be the year of the VDI (I’ve heard this in the last 3 years), others that will be the big fail of the VDI and the traditional PC approach… IMHO neither of the two sentences are realistic: the end user computing segment is more complicated and actually there isn’t a clear big winner.

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General

Installing Dell OMSA 6.5 on ESXi 5

30 December 2011
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This is just a recap of some posts:

DellTechnologies, VMware , ,

VMware View Client – Kindle Fire version

27 December 2011
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Kindle Fire is a tablet from Amazon, based on Android, that may become a competitor of the Apple iPad (considering also the interesting price).

Although this tablet use Android, the recent new View Client for Android wasn’t included in the Amazon Android App Store. This lack as been correct in the last days, and now the new release 1.3 of the View Client, with PCoIP support, is available also for Kindle Fire.

An alternative client (not strictly limited to VMware View solution) could also be the new release of Wyse PocketCloud (but actually still lack of the PCoIP support).

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VMware View Client – Linux version

23 December 2011
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As written some days ago, VMware  announced the new version of the Linux View Client with PCoIP support. Now the binaries are available for the download, actually only for the Ubuntu distribution:

There is also an interesting guide on how build a full client based on a live disto: Building an Ubuntu Live CD for VMware View

Note that previously there wasn’t a public (and free) version of the Linux View Client with the PCoIP: the OpenSource vmware-view-open-client project still lack of this function (and also other functions, like USB redirection). But this does not mean that there can be any thin client Linux based fully compatible with View, because hardware vendor can have the full code from VMware.

Using the binary package from some vendors was possible build a custom version with the missing features of the OpenSource client:

 

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Why Dynamic Disks are a bad choice

22 December 2011
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Microsoft Windows Dynamic Disks (or Dynamic Volumes) are an abstraction layer (introduced in Windows 2000) over the partitions (similar to the LVM layer on Linux environment) to decoupled the volumes (with their NTFS data) from the disk partitions and have a greater flexibility, like hot-extend a volume by simple add new partitions (but also several other advantages).

But in a virtual environment there are other way to handle disk flexibility, like hot-extend a virtual disk at hypervisor level (for VMware this feature was introduced in VI 3.5U2)… so there is no need to use dynamic disks at guest level. The only requirement is that the guest file system also support a hot-extent operation: this is available from the GUI in recent versions of Windows (from Vista, aka NT 6.0), and in a limited way (not, without use 3rd part tools, for OS disks) from the command line (with the diskpart command) also in some previous versions.

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Highlights, Microsoft, vDesign

ESXi – Partitions layout of system disk

20 December 2011
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In ESXi the partitions schema is automatically defined by the installation process and there is no way to modify it (you can only choose where install the hypervisor). There is a great post from Rickard Nobel (ESXi 5 partitions) that explain the structure of the partitions, their size and their purpose. But it does not explain how to get this information.

To see the partition layout in ESXi 5, the fdisk command will not work on new GTP disk (this type is used for all new disks and for disks that are extended to more that 2 GB, as written in the post about the upgrade of VMFS).

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Highlights, VMware ,

ESXi – Replace the vmware-cmd command

19 December 2011
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As you know, several commands from local CLI (via the ESXi shell or TSM technical support mode) are changed in latest version of ESXi (in the new ESXi 5 most are replaced by the new esxcli command). One command that was alredy replaced in ESXi 4.1 was the vmware-cmd command. A new vim-cmd must be used instead (as as described by William Lam in VMware vimsh and vim-cmd). The typical use of vmware-cmd command was get/change the state of a VM and register a VM.

About the state of a VM, the VMware KB1014165 (Powering off a virtual machine on an ESXi host) explain the new command syntax and usage.

To get the list of the VMs and they unique indentifier (VMID):

  • Previous command: vmware-cmd -l
  • New command: vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

To get the state of a VM:

  • Previous command: vmware-cmd VMX_Path getstate
  • New command: vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate VMID

To shutdown a VM (trying with a guest shutdown):

  • Previous command: vmware-cmd VMX_Path stop trysoft
  • New command: vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off VMID trysoft

To register a VM:

  • Previous command: vmware-cmd -s VMX_File
  • New command: vim-cmd solo/registervm VMX_File

Note that you can use VMID or also the entire name of your VMX file.

VMware ,
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