virtual
vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is here
Nov 27th
Its here, I’m an author, watch out JK Rowling !
Its been a while coming but the vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is now available to buy on Amazon (US), we are working at getting it on the UK site but I’m just pleased to see it out there and available to buy.
This book is a co-authored publication bought to you from some of the leading names in VMware bloggers and admins, and they also asked me to contribute too 
The book is designed for you to carry around with you, its not a heavy duty full novel but more of a VMware admins help book which can be referred to when you are in the damp dark datacenter at 4am in the morning with no internet connection !
Having said that there is definitely something in there for everyone, whether you are new to VMware or a seasoned Pro.
Throughout the book you will find great tips, real life situations and numerous PowerCLI examples.
If you haven’t yet heard of this book then please read these wonderful comments already left on the Amazon post.
If you have read it then please, leave your comments along with the others.
Using the VI APIs from PowerShell
Mar 27th
The trigger for this article was a question I got from Alan. He wanted to know how he could get, from within a PowerShell script, a report of all the tasks that were run against a specific virtual machine during the last seven days.
The VI Toolkit (VITK) has a Get-Task cmdlet, but that cmdlet is in the current release of the VITK a bit restricted in it’s use. See the community thread “Determine the “lineage” of a VM | From which Template was a given VM authored?” for a further discussion on this.
Since it became clear that the VITK wouldn’t give me what I wanted, the only possible alternative was to go to the VI APIs.
Every time I need to use the VI APIs I start by looking in the API Reference Documentation.
This document, which is in fact a web-based search tool, has a rather straight-forward layout. In the left pane you find the main menu and in the right pane you will find the details on everything you select in the left pane.
Where you start your search in the API Reference depends a bit on what you have to start with. More >
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 3 Released
Nov 7th
Download it here
What’s New
The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3:
Note: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 3. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and Virtual Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.
New features and supported IO devices:
- Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
- HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
- Newly Supported NICs — This release adds support for the following NICs:
- Broadcom 5716 1Gb
- Broadcom 57710 10Gb Adapters
- Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only
Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.
- Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
- Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
- Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)
Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported
- Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
- Solaris 10 U5
- Ubuntu 8.04.1
- RHEL 4.7
- Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5
(KB 1007394). - Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
- Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
- Small Footprint CIM Broker — Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
- IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.
VMworld Europe 2009
Oct 25th
Register now to take advantage of the
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Virtualisation Congress
Apr 8th
Virtualization.info, the leading virtualisation news and analysis site since 2003 has announced the launch of Virtualization Congress (http://www.virtualizationcongress.com), the world’s first vendor independent virtualisation event, bringing together the industry’s biggest selection of virtualisation players, from the recognized leaders to the newest start-ups.
The conference, to be held at London’s ExCel, 14th-16th October, 2008, presents an ideal opportunity for current and prospective users of virtualisation technologies to hear directly from the companies at the cutting edge of their development; at the same time, in the same place for the first time ever.
