Tales from the field; while being at a customer site who needed to reboot their ESX hosts (and thus put their hosts in Maintenance Mode), who found that their 2-host cluster hung at 2% while initiating VMware Maintenance Mode, the fix is below:

• Ensure Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) is enabled

As a virtualization consultant, you hear the complaint that "the storage is slow" from nearly every customer. To diagnose this problem, first you start with learning the configuration of the storage network and then move on to lower levels. As a starting point, I glance over the highest disk latencies statistics per host in the VI client and the latency results from esxtop.

For anyone that has spent time working with most any VMware API/SDK, used the HealthAnalyzer tool, or looked at a .vmx file, you may be familiar with the GuestId field. This value is intended to specify the guest operating system being installed on the virutal machine so the correct version of the VMware Tools package could be used.

For those that don't know me, part of my job involves educating customers on the benefits of technologies such as server virtualization and VDI.

I'm not only involved in design and implementation work, but I'm also involved in helping customers make decisions.

I have colleagues and friends at companies that lug around two beefy laptops in this configuration:

• Laptop #1 = Running VMware Workstation that in turn runs all the VMs necessary for VMware View

As I wrote in this article for TechTarget, VMware's partner-tool, RAWC (Reference Architecture Workload Simulator [where's the C?]) is a great tool for stressing a virtual infrastructure before, during or after a VMware View implementations.

RAWC is apparently the brain child of Fred Schimscheimer (VMware - Senior Technical Marketing Manager). Kudos to Fred!

Here are a few scenarios in which I use the tool:

SCENARIO 1

Late last week I was involved with a VMware View 4 + Samsung zero client solution and I thought I would give a quick overview of the Teradici Management Console for those that haven't seen it yet.

The Teradici Management Console is used to manage zero client assets in the enterprise. For example, zero clients running pre-3.x firmware could not be enabled for VMware View connectivity until they were upgraded. If you have 1 or 2 zero clients, you can manually update the firmware without too much trouble.

Have you ever wanted to carry around a desktop or laptop in your pocket? If so, I hope you have some uber-cool cargo pants with reinforced stitching.

For the rest of us, there have been a slew of mobile apps enabling devices such as Blackberries and iPhones to RDP/VNC into a server or desktop.

I was recently engaged with some colleagues on a large appvirt + VDI solution that involved many moving pieces, including cross-domain authentication for VMware View, zero clients with PCoIP and ThinApp in a wide array of permutations.

One of the requirements was to map a drive (e.g. V:\ which equates to \\IGIVBCFS01\Visio) when launching a VMware ThinApp package (e.g. Visio 2007) and then unmap the drive upon package exit.

It's no secret that I've been a big fan of VMware vCenter AppSpeed since it was a B-Hive product. It's one of those products that sells itself when shown to the customer. It is extremely useful in any environment that wants to identify or monitor SLA's or have a finer-tooth comb for troubleshooting purposes.

Just as a reminder, as I have at previous VMWorlds, I will once again be LiveBlogging. This year it will be a bit more dynamic as I plan on toting my Dell Mini 9 running Win7 (which has been fantastic, by the way) to each session. Also, unlike VMWorld Europe where my mobile device lacked coverage, I will be on Twitter as well.

Below is my schedule, as of right now.

VMworld 2009
Personal Schedule for Jason Langone

Print Date: Aug 27, 2009

Monday

8:30 AM-9:30 AM

Announced at VMware Partner Exchange 2008, the VMware VCDX certification is the mecca of certifications for VMware architects around the world.

I passed the VCDX Enterprise Exam about a year ago, and took the VCDX Design Exam in spring of this 2009.

I just found out that I have indeed passed the VCDX Design Exam!

Back at Virtualization Congress 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting the team from Tranxition, an Oregon-based company.

I recently got my hands on a Teradici hardware solution that included:

• Teradici thin terminal (D400)
• Teradici PCIe host card
• Power cable should I want the Teradici PCoIP host card to have separate power [perhaps to watch a machine boot?])
• Quick start guide & documentation CD

Now that Microsoft has finally announced pricing for the Azure platform, I thought I would take a look at comparing the pricing model against the most popular and mature cloud on the market to date, Amazon Web Services (AWS). My initial reaction is that Microsoft took Amazon’s price structure and met their cost point, or shaved off half a cent.

Acronyms

AWS = Amazon Web Services
AMI = Amazon Machine Image

Legend

I've just received confirmation that I will be attending VMWorld. As always, I'll be involved in both public and private discussions around virtualization and cloud computing. I'm happy to meet to discuss the industry, and as of right now, do not have a full schedule.

Also, keep an eye out for me in the labs.

See you in San Francisco (a city I much prefer to Las Vegas).

I will also be liveblogging as I have been since 2006, complete with grainy pictures from my Blackberry.

Cheers.