Virtualisation

Yesterday we had a discussion on running vCenter virtual on one of the internal mailinglists. One of the gaps identified was the lack of a best practices document. Although there are multiple for VI3 and there are some KB articles these do need seem to be easy to find or complete. This is one of the reasons I wrote this article. Keep in mind that these are my recommendations and they do not necessarily align with VMware’s recommendations or requirements. Sizing Sizing is one of the most difficult parts in my opinion. As of... [Lire la suite]

We have just released a new hotfix for Windows Server 2008 R2 that address the issue that users were getting a bluescreen of death on Intel Xeon 5500 series processor-based computers with the following text:0x00000101 (parameter1, 0000000000000000, parameter3, 000000000000000c) CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUTYou can download the hotfix from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975530 For the curious, this issue is actually caused by a bug (or in Intel terms “erratum”) that causes these processors to generate spurious interrupts.  You... [Lire la suite]

A virtualization MVP recently bought this to my attention: In Windows Server 2008 R2 there was a minor change to the format of differencing virtual hard disks.  As a result you will need to apply an update to Windows Server 2008 if you want to move differencing disks from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2008. You can download this update from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971677 Note that this applies to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 (not to Windows Server 2008 R2).  If you do... [Lire la suite]

Oracle a profité de l’Oracle OpenWorld 2009 pour présenter son nouvel hyperviseur VM 2.2 bâti sur Xen 3.4 et optimisé pour les derniers Xeon Nehalem d’Intel et Opteron Istanbul d’AMD. Optimisations logicielles Il aura donc fallu cinq mois à Oracle entre l’annonce du nouvel hyperviseur par XenSource et son intégration dans VirtualMachine. VM 2.2 permet d’accélérer et de simplifier le déploiement et la gestion d’applications. La firme offre aussi la possibilité de migrer une machine virtualisée par Virtual Iron sur une image... [Lire la suite]

Le constructeur automobile français a entamé un vaste projet de virtualisation de son parc de serveurs Windows. A l'origine utilisateur de VMware ESX Server, PSA a finalement décidé de standardiser ses déploiements sur Hyper-V. L'hyperviseur de Microsoft devient ainsi la solution de virtualisation standard du groupe pour les serveurs Windows. Lire la suite …ici ... [Lire la suite]

We have just released a prebuilt Windows 7 evaluation virtual hard disk for use with Hyper-V that you can download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=606ae07e-b7db-405b-974b-dd61fc41add4 Windows validation is required to be able to download this – and the copy of Windows is limited to 90 days.  But it is still a neat and easy way to check out Windows 7 if you have a Hyper-V server handy. Cheers, Ben ... [Lire la suite]

There’s been plenty of fanfare surrounding the release of Citrix XenDesktop 4.0 this week. I plan to blog about the XenDesktop 4.0 technical features after I’ve spent some quality time with them in my lab over the next couple of weeks. However, I’d like to contribute to the XenDesktop 4 conversation by talking about its impact on client software licensing. It’s no question that user expectations for how they should access corporate resources are changing. Sometimes I need to quickly grab or view a doc from my iPhone. Other times I... [Lire la suite]

AutoProtect – Very convenient way to work and have your VM been snapshotted automatically in the upcoming release of VMware Workstation. This is really cool feature which is useful and don’t want to worry about doing and managing snapshots manualy. The software caries about it keeping for example just the last 10 snapshots. Automatic Update of VMware Tools – Another feature which users will apreciate I think is an automatic update of VMware Tools. The latest release of VMware tools is downloaded from VMware Website (if you... [Lire la suite]

The VMware vSphere QuickStart Series is a free 4-part training series designed for new customers, new admins, and evaluators. Part 1: Install & Configure ESXi:VMware vSphere deployment architecture; install/configure ESXi, networking & storage, and VMware Tools; and VM creation. Part 2: VM Management with VMware vCenter Server:vCenter Server install/configure & back-end DB connection; user access control; ESXi/ESX host management with vCenter Server; and create/manage VMs using templates, snapshots, and... [Lire la suite]

This is a Hypervisor 101 case that keeps showing itself every so often the forums, mailing lists, etc: A message to the effect of “The Hypervisor is not running” when a user tries to launch a VM. Felipe Ayora, one of our awesome UA people, has created this video that steps through how to investigate such a failure and fix it http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/25d07f2e-b2e0-4c0c-b456-79b08bfe58be http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/09/29/how-to-fix-hypervisor-not-running.aspx