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Our friends at VMTurbo are at it again this year. Do you want to attend VMworld® 2016 US in Las Vegas this year, but your company won’t pay for the conference passes? Try your luck and win two full conference passes to VMworld® on VMTurbo®.
Let VMTurbo send you to VMworld® 2016. Enter for a chance to win two free tickets.
THREE DRAWINGS: MAY 27, JUNE 17, JULY 15
Sweepstakes starts May 4, 2016 and ends on July 15, 2016 at 11:59PM EST. Winners will be announced on the same day of each drawing and we will notify each winners by email.
VMTurbo is again giving some lucky people a chance to attend VMworld Europe for free! That’s right. If you can get yourself to Barcelona and you’re one of the lucky winners you will get your VMworld ticket for free. So please register here for the chance to win. I personally think it’s great that VMTurbo do this and I think other IT vendors should do the same. Thanks VMTurbo! Good luck all!
VMworld isn’t that long away and the early bird registration is about to finish. If you want to save $US300 on your registration then you need to do it by June 14th. Here are the key dates that you need to know about VMworld 2015.
Key VMworld Dates
VMworld 2015 US:
VMworld 2015 Europe
To register check out the VMworld Registration Page.
I’m looking forward to seeing what content is on offer this year and I’m personally looking out for NSX, Business Critical Apps, Cloud Apps and Containers sessions. Hearing from customers that have actually deployed a fully automated SDDC would also be good.
VMTurbo is once again offering free tickets to VMworld and everyone is eligible to enter VMTurbo VMworld Tickets draw. There will be three draws you could be in with a chance to win 2 tickets each time (6 tickets up for grabs in total). This is open to anyone in any country, but you need to cover your travel and accommodation expenses to pick up your tickets in the USA. You’ve got to be in to win.
Another VMworld event is over and it’s hard to believe it’s been a whole 12 months since the last one. Certainly during the keynotes there was a lot of coverage about what VMware has achieved over the last 12 months and it is impressive especially in the end user computing and hybrid cloud spaces. But overall I felt that VMworld USA 2014 lacked some of the sparkle of last year. But I guess it’s hard to top last year considering it was the 10th anniversary. This year seemed much more about building a solid foundation for a software defined datacenter, a software defined enterprise and a hybrid cloud model integrating applications with infrastructure, providing ability and flexibility, but without compromise. Although attendance was flat or a little down on last year the breakout sessions were packed, right up to the last session on Thursday. Instead of having our heads in the clouds this year it was all about the vCloud Air, and we vRealized the product naming is about to be changing. So lets dive into what I think are some of the highlights.
My VMworld started on Sunday with a Nutanix sponsored VCDX study group. Nutanix is a big supporter of the VCDX program for the entire community. The study group was put on for candidates that wanted to know more about the VCDX process and practice the design and troubleshooting scenarios. It was completely vendor agnostic, and it needs to stay that way. Nutanix understands that the only way sponsoring a VCDX study group can be of value is if the content is vendor agnostic and covers a wide range of topics. There were many VCDX helping in the room and giving advice from across many companies. This really is what the community is all about. Everyone helping each other.
Then I moved on to opening acts at VMunderground that was put on by vBrownBag. I was on the storage panel and it was a good discussion around Virtual Volumes, Hyper Convergence and Flash. I even agreed with a traditional SAN vendor that hyper converged appliances will not help SuperDomes and Mainframes, but then again I can always migrate the workloads and processes off those systems, and the Unix mid range systems as well, to a Hyper Converged world. SuperDomes, Mainframes and Unix systems is where the legacy SAN technology will stay for the foreseeable future and it will be a decline over a number of years, just like we’ve seen with the traditional big iron systems themselves. The move away from traditional SAN for x86 connected environments isn’t going to happen over night, but it’s a trend that is starting to take hold, but honestly it’s not even scratching the surface of the potential opportunity yet. The announcements from VMware and EMC around their hyper-converged offerings are just more validation of that. Flash is definitely the way of the future, and it opens up things that were previously not possible. I have a section on flash technology in the storage chapter of Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware.
There were a number of VMware announcements during the keynotes that are worth mentioning. But before I do I have to get something off my chest. vRealise is the worst name ever thought of for anything. My initial reaction to the new name for VMware’s hybrid cloud, vCloud Air was somewhat similar, but at least Air has a cool ring to it, like iPad Air for example. vRealize, just NO! I feel sorry for the sales team who have to try and sell that now. Ok, rant over. The overall themes about this being a brave new world and requiring bravery from all of the customers and the community participants was interesting. I’ve been doing virtualization for a very long time and even for business critical apps it’s a very safe bet. But SDDC and the Software Defined Enterprise going to further reduce silos and this will require some organisational changes and maturity. This is really where the bravery comes in, most of the challenges are not technical.
Two major overall themes were used during the keynotes. Firstly – “Compatibility, Compliance, Choice”, and secondly the “Power of &”. VMware has done a great job of building a partner ecosystem across a number of technologies, including the vCloud Air Network, which has 3900 partners, and the broader ecosystem around the hypervisor and NSX. This is where compatibility, compliance and choice really comes in. Seamless compatibility, compliance with regulatory and industry requirements, and choice of multiple partners and technologies. This is then extended to the OpenStack, NSX and Containers, which can run extremely well in a VMware environment, and this is the Power of &. Have your containers without compromise. Have your OpenStack on a platform easily fit on top of VMware vSphere.
By far the biggest highlight was meeting a lot of people who regularly read my blog and have benefited from the work that I and others in the community have done over the years. This is why we keep doing it. Because it makes a difference. It was also great to meet a lot of people who had bought Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doing IT Right, and had got a lot out of it too. My co-authors, Michael Corey, Jeff Szastak and I were blown away by the stories that were relayed to us about how the book had helped people, especially when it was being used to explain to DBA’s how virtualization works and that SQL is a great candidate for virtualization. The book was so popular that it actually sold out at VMworld, and we had a lot of people come up to us during the meet the authors session and book signing.
Here is a photo of my co-authors and I with the happy customer who purchased the very last copy of our book at VMworld.
Shortly after the above photo was Michael Corey and I recorded an interview with VMworld TV’s Eric Sloof regarding virtualizing SQL Server Databases on VMware.
I was lucky again this year to present a session that was included in the top 10 sessions of VMworld for the second consecutive year – VMworld 2014 SDDC1600 Art of IT Infrastructure Design The Way of the VCDX Panel.
Final Word
It was another great VMworld and a very successful VMworld. I’m very much looking forward to next year. Hopefully we’ll see the return of the Monster VM sessions and some other business critical apps sessions from me in next years VMworld.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
I’ve always enjoyed visiting Europe and every year when I visit Barcelona for VMworld it is special. It might be a smaller event than VMworld in San Francisco, but it lacks nothing in substance, networking opportunities, or announcements. The excitement level in Barcelona appears to be higher than what it was in San Francisco. This article is my thoughts on the keynotes with close to 9000 people in attendance.
Day One Keynote
Rigid to Liquid, No Status Quo, Disruption, Break Down Silo’s. Over the last decade VMware has given us the tools and confidence to virtualize anything and take the world into an era of brave new IT that can help drive business growth. Pat’s message to the audience was clear, the status quo is being disrupted and the new style of IT will see more cross functional collaboration with fewer silos, in a new more dynamic and agile environment. This message was also quite well integrated into Sanjay Poonen’s message for workspace and end user computing with IT at the speed of life. There is a focus on applications coming through from VMware, and the infrastructure enabling all types of applications. Those applications will be deployed in a more hybrid environment with a mix of use cases on premises and in a cloud environment with vCloud Air or one of the 3900 vCloud Air Network partners. VMware really covers the globe when it comes to cloud requirements, without any need to modify applications and complete choice with where they run.
Build infrastructure to enable apps, free the apps from the infrastructure components, the first strategy the SDDC, on and off premises, seamless and dynamic, with the SaaS offerings from vCloud Air VMware is delivering on the SDDC and Hybrid Cloud vision with vRealize Operations Management. It was good to see continued investment in solutions to make applications integrate seamlessly into the Software-Defined Datacenter and Hybrid Cloud vision. Especially the integration of VMware’s solutions as part of a Software as a Service offering. This is now the world of hybrid cloud.
One of the biggest announcements that may have gone unnoticed was the announcements of vRealize Code Stream. This will be available on-premises, and continuous integration as a service will be available through vCloud Air. This is a clear attack on Amazon’s status quo for developers. This pushes VMware well into the any app, anywhere, and with Horizon Workspace you can get those apps anywhere. Even for OpenStack, being integrated with VMware, which is in Beta. If VMware can take the complexity out of OpenStack it will be of massive benefit to customers that want choice around all the different components in their cloud stacks from an API perspective. To be honest though, nobody I’ve spoken to likes the vRealize branding for the management suites.
VMware continued to validate the hyper-converged infrastructure message, even to the point that vCloud Air will be built upon hyper-converged infrastructure. This proves that the old way of enterprise IT doesn’t work in a cloud environment, a web-scale environment where things are much more dynamic and you need a much better aligned economic model.
VMware has cloud management market share of 20% and is the leader in the space, leads Datacenter automation with 24% market share. This is set to continue as VMware rolls out further product integration across the suites, rather than just being an integrated SKU, but actually integrated products that work well together. This is something that Microsoft has done very well across their stack. VMware must integrate if they want to effectively compete against Microsoft. This is the Power of AND that the SDDC brings, to achieve the No Limits message that VMware had as the theme of VMworld 2014.
From an infrastructure prespective, networking and network virtualization is clearly the next big opportunity for VMware. VMware will be a major threat to Cisco in the Datacenter and Service Provider networking as a result of VMware NSX, which delivers the ability to choose any underlay networking technology at the physical layer and deliver rich networking services distributed at the software layer. This is Software-Defined Networking delivered. One of the key use cases that NSX delivers is to Decrustify the edge of the datacenter security.
VMware announced the Horizon Workspace Suite, which combines all of their End User Computing products, which will make it more easy to purchase and consume these products, although they are still separate products that will likely require professional services to integrate. Project Fargo and the Cloud Volumes addition will have some great benefits in the future for all environments as it will make it much quicker to deploy applications and use them anywhere, and on any device. Apps and end user delivery at the speed of life. So you can work where you want, when you want. Like in my article about The VMware View from the Horizon at 38,000 Feet and 8000 Miles Away.
Day Two Keynote
Here is a great summary of the first part of the Day Two Keynote from Barry Coombs:
@vmworld day 2 keynote: here is my first doodle #vmworld. If this of interest please share #vmworld2014 pic.twitter.com/cS7NlVVlMM
— Barry Coombs (The Doodle Guy) (@VirtualisedReal) October 15, 2014
SAP runs one of the largest private clouds in the world for their internal development. 85% virtualized, 75K VM’s, NSX is up next. If SAP can virtualize 80+% of itself on VMware then anyone can virtualize SAP on VMware. The only reason SAP isn’t more virtualized is that customers are still running many legacy Unix and mainframe platforms. The time is right to move off the traditional Unix platforms to a new more agile private and hybrid SDDC environment.
Vodafone – Moving to a fully Software-Defined Datacenter.
1. Pace the technology changes – 3 yrs time
2. Customer Assistance
3. Listen to Customer#VMworld #Vodafone— Sanjai Kannan (@sanjai2k) October 15, 2014
VMware Integrated OpenStack really is integrated and gives some amazing insights into the applications. VMware has done a great job at integrating OpenStack into the whole VMware ecosystem. Then you can mix and match which partner systems you use, while still getting the benefits of VMware, and the integration and API’s of OpenStack for your applications.
#VMworld VMware integrated OpenStack really is integrated, so much insight. pic.twitter.com/s2eUVndTUB
— Lord WebScale Webster (@vcdxnz001) October 15, 2014
Containers without compromise – Including without compromising performance. The performance on containers within a VM is within 3% of native. Why would you want to miss out on the benefits that virtualization brings for just 3% difference? Complete automation, non-disruptive infrastructure management, higher availability, higher SLA’s.
Docker Containers Performance in #VMware vSphere http://t.co/jGZhS4Mkmg #vmworld pic.twitter.com/M9AV3GbEVZ
— Tony Dunn (@dunntony) October 15, 2014
vRealize Code Stream – Continuous integration and code migration on premises with automation and integration with vRealize Automation. For DevOps and when your managing multiple applications and code migrations paths Code Stream will allow you to automate the migrations, testing and promotion between different environments, without necessarily having to go to a cloud. This allows you to use the app tools you’re used to, including Eclipse, Git, Perforce, Subversion etc. Vladan did a great write up about this here. I really hope the VMware field gets enablement on this product and how to pitch the value to applications teams as this could be a real game changer. Field teams have struggled in the past to pitch the value of VMware tools to applications teams and are much more comfortable talking about infrastructure. This needs to change. You need to be able to talk applications language to applications teams and understand their problems, their workflows, and what solutions they need.
vRealize Management as a Service will be available via vCloud Air, but will it be available via the vCloud Air network? That is the big question. The ability to run your vRealize management tools in vCloud Air to manage both your on premises and hybrid cloud workloads is an important step forward. This is something that I asked about when VMware started talking about Cloud 4 years ago. It’s taken 4 years of hard work to bring this to market.
VVOLS will be important for ecosystem integration, including with the VMware Integrated OpenStack, and all of the management tools. VVOLS will be the language that your VMware tools will use to speak to storage devices of all types and forms. This will increasingly become a must have for storage vendors, rather than a nice to have, which VASA has been up until now. This will be how other storage vendors plug into the VMware Integrated OpenStack, if a customer doesn’t want to use VSAN. VSAN isn’t going to be the only solution, every VMware storage partner, including the hyper-converged partners will have a part to play. I know Nutanix will be playing a big part in this space, especially with it’s web-scale converged architecture advantages.
vCloud Air integration – the biggest problem for Cloud is the cost of network bandwidth required and the explosive data growth that limits portability of systems. So although VMware is brining some great features to vCloud Air you need to be able to consume them. Without 10GbE everywhere it’s unrealistic to have application mobility going everywhere, especially with the explosive growth of data. So Cloud adoption will continue to be appropriate for certain types of applications, or as an interface to end users, while the persistent data may live elsewhere. My view is that while bandwidth may be limited for some time the vCloud Air network gives VMware reach into a lot more places, closer to the consumers of the cloud, and potentially much higher bandwidth at lower prices. This will enable network extension and application mobility to be much more realistic. I think it will be a long time before people are migrated large databases around however.
So Cloud will be limited to the web and app tiers mostly, or configuration DB’s used to run those tiers. Unless the network bandwidth problem is solved, or you’re really just doing hosting or CoLo 2.0. If you’re not going to make regular use of the Hybrid Cloud why would you provision dedicated network links for it also? So that would potentially mean you need to greatly upsize your Internet links, so they can at least be used for multiple purposes, rather than sitting idle until you want to spin something into a cloud. If you’re an enterprise hosting in a large datacenter it’s quite possible that your hosting company may well have their own cloud provisioned across the datacenter floor, or have links to the other larger clouds. This again makes it more realistic to use a Hybrid Cloud. This is something that AWS and Azure have with their direct connect links from large CoLo companies. This makes much more sense.
Final Word
VMware has announced some great technologies, it will remain to see how they are received by the market when they are actually available as GA products. Product announcements and product implementation timeframes have in the past been extremely extended due to the complexity of upgrades, lack of upgrade paths, enterprise project cycles, lack of product integration and other factors.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
Nutanix will be once again making WebScale Waves at VMworld 2014 at booth 1535. This year we are including a big focus on enterprise applications, including SAP, Oracle, SQL Server, Exchange and Java. I will be spending time on the booth along with many other experts at Nutanix and taking 1:1 meetings, in addition to the sessions that we’ll be presenting at VMworld. My co-authors and I may also be signing copies of Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doint IT Right at the Nutanix booth, so bring your copy along. To find out how you can learn more about greatly simplifying your IT infrastructure with Nutanix WebScale IT and where to party at VMworld, read on.
Nutanix is a Gold Sponsor this year at VMworld and has many opportunities for you to learn about WebScale, interact with the experts, party like a VIP and more. We will be taking the VMware theme of No Limits and showing you how this can apply with the Nutanix platform and how it’s suitable for almost any application, and almost any scale. You don’t have to be big to use Web Scale technology.
Register for a 1:1 expert meeting and for your VIP kit including a pass to the Nutanix Wannabe WebScalin’ Somethin’ party! Monday 25th August at Mezzanine. Nutanix will also have an Ask the Expert section at the booth this year and we’ll be staffing it with our VCDX architects and engineers. If you want the behind the scenes story, then this will be the place to come.
You should consider attending one of these break-out sessions featuring Nutanix experts. But early registration is suggested as these will fill up fast.
1. VAPP3031-SPO – Deploying Web-Scale Converged Infrastructure: A Customer Perspective
When Facebook, Google, Twitter and other leading cloud players designed their infrastructure, they threw away the playbook and adopted a web-scale design for their datacenter. In this session, a large Nutanix customer will discuss how they too were able to bring web-scale architecture into their datacenter for their enterprise workloads. They will also cover how they were able to leverage Nutanix to scale their environment and improve datacenter economics.
2. SDDC1600 – Art of IT Infrastructure Design: The Way of the VCDX – Panel
This session covers IT Infrastructure Design Methodology as practiced by VCDX certified architects for all certification technology tracks (SDDC, Desktop, Cloud, and Network Virtualization). Come listen to Nutanix Business Critical Applications expert Michael Webster and other accomplished architects as they discuss the what, how, and why of VCDX-quality IT infrastructure design. Examples are provided and the panel discusses their experience as panelists reviewing and validating hundreds of designs. Case studies are presented for designs with customers. One example demonstrates design success. The other example demonstrates design failure. The panel discusses and contrasts the approaches of both. Questions from the audience will be covered.
Speakers:
Mostafa Khalil – Technical Support Director, VMware
Michael Webster – Sr. Solutions and Performance Engineer VCDX-066, Nutanix
Chris Mccain – Director of Technical Certification, Networking & Security VCDX-079, vmware
Mark Gabryjelski – Virtualization Practice Manager, VCDX-023, Worldcom Exchange, Inc.
John Arrasjid – Principal Architect VCDX-001, VMware
3. INF1736 – Designing Next Generation Software-Defined Data Centers: A Panel with VMware Certified Design Experts
Successfully designing a next generation Software-Defined Data Center demands attention to details not present in “traditional” Data Center Virtualization. VMware Certified Design Experts including Nutanix’s own Josh Odgers will lead a panel discussion on the design and architecture required to successfully implement and operate a Next Generation SDDC. The panel will answer your questions on topics such as storage, networking, security, compute, consumption, orchestration, automation, and much more.
Speakers:
Matt Cowger – Global Architect, EMC
Scott Lowe – Engineering Architect, VMware
Jason Nash – CTO, Varrow
Josh Odgers – Sr. Solutions and Performance Engineer, Nutanix
Jon Kohler – Senior Data Center Engineer, MSN Communications
Final Word
VMworld 2014 in San Francisco is only a few weeks away now and I’m greatly looking forward to presenting again this year and meeting many new people, as well as connecting with existing contacts. This is the best place to learn about that’s happening in the world of virtualization and what’s coming. I hope to see you all there.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
VMworld USA is one of the premier IT industry events. It brings together around 25,000 attendees and all the best partners, vendors, and everything new and up and coming in high tech, cloud, software-defined datacenter and virtualization. It’s held in San Francisco, which is a beautiful city, and brings together some of the best and brightest in global IT. If you haven’t been, you really should go. I’ve been very fortunate to be a presenter for the last few years, including this year, and had a top 10 session last year. One of the sponsors of this site, VMTurbo is offering somebody very lucky a free ticket to VMworld. Actually, not just one free ticket, but a pair of them! Would you like to know how you can win them?
This is a fantastic way of supporting the community and allowing the lucky winner a massive opportunity. You can check out my VMworld articles here. I will be presenting a panel session on the Art of IT Infrastructure Design this year with a number of other VCDX Architects. It will be a blast.
So what’s the catch? There is none! All you have to do is visit the VMTurbo Sweepstakes Page, enter the draw, and you have one of 3 chances to win a pair of VMworld tickets! There are three draws, including today, Friday 13th! So get in and register now.
[Updated 14/06/2014] Initially the sweepstakes were only open to US and Canadian citizens, which is noted in the comments section of this blog. Based on your feedback I spoke to VMTurbo and they have now agreed to open this up globally! So now you can register, no matter where you are in the world. You have the opportunity to win free passes to VMworld. You just have to be present in the USA to collect them, which you would be having won the tickets and going to the event :). Thanks so much for VMTurbo being so responsive to the community. It was literally only 2 or 3 hours after I asked about this that it was done. This is amazing.
Final Word
Visit the VMTurbo Sweepstakes Page. You can’t win the tickets if you don’t register. I’ve already got my ticket by being a presenter. For those of you who wouldn’t normally be able to afford a VMworld ticket, this is your chance. Thanks to VMTurbo for this very generous promotion. For disclosure, other than sponsoring this blog VMTurbo did not pay for this article. But I know how valuable going to VMworld can be and how awesome it is to have this competition. So I felt that everyone should know about it.
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This post first appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com. By Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2012 – 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
At VMworld in 2013, which had 25,000 attendees, it was fantastic that one of my sessions got into the top 10 sessions of the entire event. With big thanks to my co-speakers Andrew Mitchell, Frank Denneman, Mark Achtemichuk, Emad Benjamin and Mostafa Khalil on the VAPP4679 – Software Defined Datacenter Design Panel for Monster VM’s. The audience agreed we took the Technology to the Limits for High Performance, High Utilization Workloads. We had some excellent questions and feedback during this event. This year I am upsizing the Monsters and brining you even more of what you asked for. Performance data, design and architecture guidance, Monster VM sink hole avoidance strategies. The Monster VM panel this year is super sized and I’m lucky to be joined in this session with Frank Denneman, Mostafa Kahlil, Josh Odgers. If you liked what you saw last year, which you can watch the recording of below, then you’ll love what we have for you this year. We’re certainly aiming to be in the top 10 sessions again of VMworld 2014 (assuming we are selected of course). Your support really helps.
VMworld 2013 VAPP4679 – Software-Defined Datacenter Design Panel for Monster VM’s
You can see all of the Top 10 Sessions of VMworld 2013 here.
VMworld 2014 Monster VM Sessions:
Here are three Monster VM focused sessions that I hope you’ll like and vote for. You can vote for your favourite sessions on the VMworld Session Voting web site.
Session 1302 – Mastering Monster VM Performance in Your Software-Defined Datacenter
Top 10 Session at VMworld 2013, now even more of a Super-Sized Monster for 2014. Master your Monster VM Performance. Master your Software-Defined Datacenter. Designing and architecting a Software-Defined Datacenter that will host Monster VM’s requires a different approach and different considerations to smaller VM’s to ensure you get the best benefits from the platform. Mostafa Khalil (VCDX-002), Frank Denneman (VCDX-029), Michael Webster (VCDX-066), and Josh Odgers (VCDX-090) will lead a panel discussion the key best practices that will allow you to master design and performance of many high utilization, high performance Monster VM’s. The panel will share real world performance data and answer your questions on topics such as host and cluster design and sizing, VM sizing, performance tuning, CPU scheduling, memory management, resource management, storage design and much more. Come prepared with your toughest Monster VM questions and a willingness to share you experiences.
Session 1729 – 47 Things to Know About Database Virtualization
This advanced technical, no fluff session will cover 47 unique items that individuals looking to virtualize their databases should know. The session will provide items that apply for SQL and Oracle databases running on vSphere. Presenting the session will be VMworld veterans, co-authors of Virtualizing SQL Server on VMware: Doing IT Right (VMware Press), and database virtualization experts Michael Corey, Michael Webster (VCDX 066), and Jeff Szastak.
Topics covered will be, but not limited to, physical CPU virtual CPU, NUMA, physical RAM, virtual RAM, PVSCI tuning, storage (lots of storage), physical server configuration, ESXi configurations, vSphere Cluster design, OS tuning, database specific tuning, VMXNET tuning, jumbo frames, and more!
1376 Temenos T24 Migrated from AIX to vSphere 5.1 and SQL Server 2012
This sessions would be one I recommend. Termenos is a core banking system used throughout the world. See how Rene helped Bank AlBilad virtualize their core banking platform on VMware vSphere with a Mosnter VM SQL Database. I was fortunate to be able to work with Rene on this project specifically with SQL Server and vSphere tuning.
Non-Monster VM sessions I’m involved with:
Session 1600 – Art of IT Infrastructure Design, The Way of the VCDX – PanelNon-Monster VM Sessions:
This session covers IT Infrastructure Design Methodology as practiced by both VCAP Design and VCDX certified architects. The session covers the what, how, and why of the methodology. Examples are provided and the panel discusses their experience as panelists reviewing and validating hundreds of designs. Case studies are presented for designs with customers. One example demonstrates design success. The other example demonstrates design failure. The panel discusses and contrasts the approaches of both.
Session 2631 – The Way of the VCDX, Testing Architects on IT Infrastructure Design
Final Word
Please vote for all your favourite session. It helps the selection committee make sure they have enough of the content that you want. Vote Here, Vote Now!
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This post appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com, by Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.
Another year has flown by, and what a year it was, and now we’re in a new year and I’m a year older and hopefully a little wiser, we never learn less. The great thing about being in the IT industry and especially being involved with Virtualization, Cloud and Software Defined Datacenters, there is always so a lot to learn and things are changing at an ever faster pace. All the time the economics and customers benefits are rapidly increasing all the time. I mean we don’t just do things because they are cool and technically interesting, there has to be an ROI for our customers, partners and customers organizations. It was great for me to personally be involved in revolutionizing many customers economics of delivering IT infrastructure and applications services throughout 2013, especially with the many Unix to VMware migration projects I was involved with. So this article will reflect on some of the highlights of 2013.
Firstly and most importantly I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to visit my blog and being part of the discussion, longwhiteclouds.com was viewed over 310,000 times during 2013. This is a big jump on the 2012 numbers. You can see the full 2013 report and number crunching thanks to jetpack in my Long White Virtual Clouds 2013 Year In Blogging Annual Report. It’s your feedback and being able to make a valuable contribution to the VMware and virtualization / cloud community that keeps me going. Here is a photo of the Long White Cloud (although a physical one) taken from the top of my street.
A very big thank you to my sponsors for supporting me and enabling me to bring you this content. Some sponsors have come and gone but Unitrends in particular has stuck with me pretty much all year. I want to thank them for their contribution to the VMware and virtualization community. I would also like to thank Cloud Physics for their ongoing support of the VMware community and for sponsoring this blog. Other sponsors throughout the year, which I also thank for their contributions are Nutanix (you’ll be reading a lot more about them this year), and Veeam. There are many other organisations that sponsor peer blogs in the virtualization and cloud community and I’d like to thank them for supporting the community that has been built up. Even though there were only 310K views on longwhiteclouds.com my sponsors received close to 500K impressions.
2013 Year in Review – Highlights
There were a number of highlights throughout the year but here are some that I think were the most memorable.
In early 2013 longwhiteclouds.com was voted by you into the list of Top Virtualization Blogs on vSphere-Land.com. It’s first entry into the list was in the top 25 (#21) out of 243 blogs that you voted from. Thank you so much for your support and I hope to do better next time around. Eric Siebert of vSphere-Land.com has recently released a history of the top blog voting over the years, it’s worth a read.
I was fortunate during 2013 to attend a number of conference events around the world including VMware PEX, HP Discover, VMworld, and vForum’s. At VMware’s Partner Exchange (PEX) I was involved in presenting bootcamps on virtualizing Business Critical Application, and also on the VCDX panels, which I qualified as a panelist for VCDX-DCV. I was very fortunate to be invited to attend HP Discover, which I wrote about in my articles Discovering HP Technology in Las Vegas and HP Discover 2013 Las Vegas Wrap Up. It was a great event and I and the other bloggers enjoyed it very much.
VMworld US was very special this year being the 10th annual event, it was also where we definitely bought back the Monster VM’s and Business Critical Apps in a big way and in the context of a Software Defined Datacenter. You can see a recording of the VMworld Monster VM Design Panel VAPP4679, which was voted in the top 10 sessions of VMworld. Definitely a great highlight of 2013 to get one of my sessions into the top 10 at VMworld. Big thanks to my co-presenters (also VCDX) who made it happen – Frank Denneman, Andrew Mitchell, Mostafa Khalil and Mark Achtemichuk. This theme of Monster VM’s continued at VMworld in Barcelona and the vForums, where I was joined there by Melvin the Monster VM.
Above are a selection of some of the photos from this years VMworld and vForum events. From left to right. 1. Nutanix VCDX Cluster (we’ll be growing the size of this cluster shortly). 2. Melvin Monster VM with GeekFest DJ. 3. Melvin Monster VM Twins with John Troyer interview. 4. Melvin Monster VM running on a Nutanix block with Bas Raayman. 5. Melvin Monster VM with Cormac Hogan, Ken Werneburg and I. 6. Melvin Monster VM with Martin Casado and Paul Strong.
2013 was the year that Apps loved VMware even more, even low latency apps, business critical apps on VMware exploded with even more monstrous VM’s, and HPC. This was largely because of the release of vSphere 5.5. vSphere 5.5 has been an incredibly solid release and a great platform for all types of business critical apps. Amongst the highlights of vSphere 5.5 we see Record Breaking Network Performance, Microsoft Failover Clustering Enhancements and Jumbo VMDK’s.
During the past year Unix to VMware migrations have become much more common and in 2014 this momentum is likely to continue and gain even more pace. It’s no surprise that Unix system revenues continue to decline by double digit percentages. The economics of migrating Unix applications to VMware and Hyperconverged platforms such as the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform make total sense. The Intel / x86 platforms have matured to the point where you do not have to compromise on availability, performance or service levels for the most demanding applications.
I continued my campaign of Fighting the FUD around Oracle Support and Licensing in a vSphere environment. I wrote a number of articles that can be found on my Oracle Page. This is a resource for you if you want to know anything about virtualizing Oracle Databases on vSphere. The articles include some very good stories from the field from both customers and partners. It definitely makes for interesting reading.
Late in 2012 based on frustation with the complexity and effort involved in improving security in vSphere environments with SSL Certificates I kicked off a project with VSS Labs, a VMware partner based in Singapore, to provide a solution. The goal, which the solution achieved, was to provide better vSphere platform security for the masses at an affordable price. This involved a complete SSL Certificate lifecycle and compliance tool, which turned into vCert Manager. vCert Manager went GA during 2013 and VSS Labs had a booth at VMworld. The solution provides a simple and automated way of keeping all the SSL certificates in a VMware environment up to date, including integration directly with the Certificate Authorities, as well as reporting on ongoing compliance. It also understands VMware concepts such as Lockdown Mode, Maintenance Mode and Auto Deploy. The demo VSS Labs showed at VMworld is included in my article VMworld USA 2013 by the Numbers.
VMware and SAP were shaking up enterprise apps during 2013 with their announcements around not only running SAP ERP applications in VMware clouds (public/private/hybrid), but also running HANA in VMware clouds, and putting ERP and HANA software on the VMware price book in a pay as you grow by the month subscription licensing model. The subscription based licensing model along really changes the game for enterprise software and especially for it’s consumption in cloud environments. Although these announcements were made in 2013 not all of the component pieces are yet in place. But when everything is delivered it will be one heck of a powerful combination. Throughout 2014 you’ll also see how SAP can be levered in Hyperconverged environments, including on the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform. So watch this space.
At VMworld USA 2013 we saw Cloud morphed into SDDC. After a few years of experimentation with Cloud VMware decided that it’s for service providers and for enterprises what is actually needed is a Software Defined Datacenter, and all the declarative, automated, policy driven goodness that goes with it, while allowing for hybrid cloud models at the same time. This was the inspiration for my article titled vCloud Director is Dead, Long Live vCloud Director. There are still a lot of use cases for vCloud Director and at the moment vCloud Director is a great way of enabling components of the Software Defined Datacenter vision, while the other components are bedded down a bit more and become more mature. VMware’s NSX, which was a real highlight of VMworld will also play a big part in the SDDC vision of the future. Abstract, Pool, Automate all with service and policy defined up front and easily consumable.
Converged become Hyperconverged, even for business critical apps. Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about converged infrastructure. Some vendors did a better job of it than others. Some completely missed the boat all together and instead of converged just delivered pre-assembled. It’s not the same thing. Even so, throughout 2013 Hyperconverged technologies, such as the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform, which combine compute and storage into a single and simple solution, really started to accelerate. There are other solutions in the Hyperconverged category but Nutanix is clearly the leader in this space. Next year this market will go supersonic. Primarily driven not by just convergence of different components, but by the sheer radical simplicity of deploying, managing and scaling the platforms.
Instead of a hodge-podge of pre-certified and pre-assembled components, you get one beautifully elegant, completely integrated solution in a single small package, which is still flexible and capable. This is not only going to go supersonic next year (more so than it did this year), it’s going to swallow business critical apps, including Unix systems. It’s not however going to replace all of the scale up platforms, as they will still be needed for a percentage of workloads, but anything that can work on a scale out platform virtualized computing platform (majority of systems) will be fair game. The units of scale will also keep increasing.
If you don’t believe me here’s proof. Melvin Monster VM running on a Nutanix 3450 block in my lab :).
With all these trends and opportunities it’s no wonder that I joined Nutanix as an employee in late November 2013. The opportunities around virtualizing business critical apps and Unix to VMware migrations on the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform are monstrous. You’ll see a lot more discussion on the architectural considerations as we move into 2014 and I begin to publish reference architectures and white papers on it. Till then you can review my Nutanix articles here and here.
Late in 2013 I had the pleasure of being invited to join other industry experts, such as futurist Paul Saffo and one of VMware’s CTO’s, in a Google Plus Hangout on the Future of IT. If you didn’t catch the event you can watch the recording on YouTube. Check out my article on this here. This looks at a lot further out than just 2014. But I think you’ll agree there is some interesting things on the horizon.
There are still some unanswered questions about 2013, such as, was it the year of the desktop? Was 2013 the year of flash storage? Well the jury is still out on that. But if 2013 wasn’t either of those things you can be sure that 2014 has a good chance of being both. I would predict both will become pervasive in 2014. End User Computing and Mobility and Flash Storage. Brining flash closer to applications, through Hyperconvergence (i.e. Nutanix) most likely, or through other means. Both support each other, and both are dependant on each other for economies of scale. Again, watch this space.
Final Word
Last but my no means least I have to look back over 2013 and be thankful that I have a wonderful wife and family that support everything I do. If it wasn’t for their support I would not be able to continue this blog or contribute to the community at large. They put up with my late nights and with my travel schedule. Speaking of which I was only in my home country of New Zealand for 10 weeks during 2013. 2014 will be much more balanced. You know the saying happy wife, happy life, well it’s true. Here is a photo taken shortly after my return from VMworld Barcelona. Thanks to Shiv Diddee, one of VMware’s Super TAM’s from the UAE for the Dubai T-Shirts they made me very popular and we’re getting good use out of them. From left to right, Sebastian (6), Bradley (3), Susanne, Benjamin (1). We’re expecting our 4th boy in April 2014.
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This post appeared on the Long White Virtual Clouds blog at longwhiteclouds.com, by Michael Webster +. Copyright © 2014 – IT Solutions 2000 Ltd and Michael Webster +. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission.