Month: September 2009

HP BladeSystem Power Options – How to choose?

If you haven't purchased the HP BladeSystem before, the power options may be a bit confusing. In particular, if you want to buy the large C-7000 chassis, and want to minimize the number of outlets you have a variety of options. Each C-7000 chassis when fully populated with power supplies...

Cisco Nexus 1000v Documentation

Cisco has a good set of documentation for the Nexus 1000v. I've provided the direct links below. The compatibility guide seems to be frequently updated, so always be sure to download the latest version prior to deployment. For a good overview of the 1000v and all of the components, review...

Purple Screen of death with ESXi 4.0

Today I burned the HP version of ESXi 4.0 to DVD, since I wanted to test the exact same version at home that we will be using at work. My home computer is a generic Asus computer, but I figured the extra HP CIM providers wouldn't hurt. I got as...

Cost effective VDI for remote offices

During VMworld I attended a good session on VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) for remote users, presented by HP. To support ROBOs (remote office/branch office) there are two basic architectures.The first is a centralized approach, where one or two datacenters host all the required servers and storage to support all VDI...

Geekdom with VMware Storage – Know thy array!

Today I attended a killer session at VMworld 2009 on getting the most performance out of your disk array with VMware. After the session, my head was spinning with all the new information and the realization that optimizing your vSphere storage can be non-trivial. If you attended VMware world, please...

NxTOP Client hypervisor is here!

In a previous blog I mentioned that VMware is working on a client hypervisor called the Client Virtualization Platform (CVP). That product is not yet released, but I found another vendor (NxTop) on the showroom floor which IS shipping a client hypervisor TODAY. In fact, they have numerous DoD customers...

Tiered storage thoughts for vSphere

During one of the sessions today on storage sprawl the speaker recommended a three tiered storage architecture. He suggested:Tier 3: OS images; SATA storageTier 2: General application data and binaries; FC storageTier 1: Page files and databases; FC storageHis rationale was once an OS is booted, very few I/Os occur...

VMware Workstation 7.0 Preview

VMware is doing a private beta/preview of Workstation 7.0. While I can't reveal the new features due to a NDA, other people have leaked some of the possible new features. Google is your friend! Today I asked a VMware guy when the planned release was, and decoding his carefully worded...

Limitations on Microsoft Clustering with VMware

VMware has a good whitepaper on setting up a Microsoft fail-over cluster in vSphere. Unfortunately there are number of restrictions when using Microsoft clustering with VMware vSphere, which really put a damper on the practices in certain environments. The following environments and functionality are not supported for MSCS setups with...