In part 1 of this series, we explored the possibilities that VMware View’s linked clones technology unlocks. We can begin move closer to deploying a single “gold” image with this technology and managing only that “gold” image. That is a very powerful prospect. However, if we truly want to get to that state, some other items in the image need to be offloaded. This post will discuss strategies to offload the user data from the virtual desktop images.

First, let’s define what typically can be found as part of the user data.

• My documents
• Desktop
• Application Data
• Shortcuts
• Basically any “user” customization data that makes that desktop unique to the user

If the user data is part of the virtual desktop image, then the virtual desktop is not disposable (from the point of view of the user, at least ). We need to store the user data somewhere else if we do not want to lose it if the virtual desktop is refreshed, recomposed, or provisioned again. There are several ways to tackle this particular design consideration. Let’s go over a few of them.

First, the built in Windows methods.

Roaming Profiles

Pros:

• Built in to Windows
• Well understood
• Capable of offloading the entire user profile, including files for third party applications (e.g. Favorites for third party browsers like Firefox.)

Cons:

• Downloads the entire user profile every time a user logs on
• Large …
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In part 1 of this series, we explored the possibilities that VMware View’s linked clones technology unlocks. We can begin move closer to deploying a single “gold” image with this technology and managing only that “gold” image. That is a very powerful prospect. However, if we truly want to get to that state, some other items in the image need to be offloaded. This post will discuss strategies to offload the user data from the virtual desktop images.

First, let’s define what typically can be found as part of the user data.

• My documents
• Desktop
• Application Data
• Shortcuts
• Basically any “user” customization data that makes that desktop unique to the user

If the user data is part of the virtual desktop image, then the virtual desktop is not disposable (from the point of view of the user, at least ). We need to store the user data somewhere else if we do not want to lose it if the virtual desktop is refreshed, recomposed, or provisioned again. There are several ways to tackle this particular design consideration. Let’s go over a few of them.

First, the built in Windows methods.

Roaming Profiles

Pros:

• Built in to Windows
• Well understood
• Capable of offloading the entire user profile, including files for third party applications (e.g. Favorites for third party browsers like Firefox.)

Cons:

• Downloads the entire user profile every time a user logs on
• Large …
  (Read more…)

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There is no doubt that desktop virtualization can bring greater operational efficiencies to many businesses. However, one needs to design for more than just pure desktop consolidation to gain the most from this technology. There are three general components that make up a typical desktop environment. These are the Operating System, User Data, and Applications. By separating these components, each one can be managed distinctively without affecting the the other two.

This post will specifically address how technologies within VMware View can be used to better manage the Operating System in your virtual desktop environment.

A virtual desktop infrastructure with VMware View allows you to maintain multiple desktops in a pool as a single, disposable unit. This functionality is enabled by the VMware linked clone technology. Below is a diagram of what a desktop pool may look like without linked clones. Each virtual desktop is a separate 20GB image. This means that 100GB of disk space must be used to house the virtual desktop images. Also, the virtual desktops are managed almost the same way that physical desktops are managed.

<img style="border-bottom: 0px;border-left: 0px;border-top: …
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There is no doubt that desktop virtualization can bring greater operational efficiencies to many businesses. However, one needs to design for more than just pure desktop consolidation to gain the most from this technology. There are three general components that make up a typical desktop environment. These are the Operating System, User Data, and Applications. By separating these components, each one can be managed distinctively without affecting the the other two.

This post will specifically address how technologies within VMware View can be used to better manage the Operating System in your virtual desktop environment.

A virtual desktop infrastructure with VMware View allows you to maintain multiple desktops in a pool as a single, disposable unit. This functionality is enabled by the VMware linked clone technology. Below is a diagram of what a desktop pool may look like without linked clones. Each virtual desktop is a separate 20GB image. This means that 100GB of disk space must be used to house the virtual desktop images. Also, the virtual desktops are managed almost the same way that physical desktops are managed.

<img style="border-bottom: 0px;border-left: 0px;border-top: …
(Read more…)

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I apologize for being behind on posting my VMworld 2010 session notes. After returning from VMworld in September, I have been very busy as a newly designated VCDX . This session was all about virtualizing those dreaded Tier 1 Applications. These are your SQL’s, Exchanges, and even Oracles of the world. These are those applications that many IT organizations have been cautious to virtualize citing virtualization overhead as their primary concern. Hopefully, these notes will put some of those concerns to rest.

Virtualizing any application is all about proper design and that is especially true for Tier 1 applications. If you wouldn’t put your Exchange Mailbox Store on three SATA drives on a physical system, you shouldn’t do that when you virtualize it either. Here are the highlights from session EA8660.

• As of recently, VMware found in its customer base that 38% of Exchange instances have been virtualized. People are out there virtualizing Exchange contrary to popular belief.
• 8900 transactions per second has been tested out of a single virtual machine. …
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I apologize for being behind on posting my VMworld 2010 session notes. After returning from VMworld in September, I have been very busy as a newly designated VCDX . This session was all about virtualizing those dreaded Tier 1 Applications. These are your SQL’s, Exchanges, and even Oracles of the world. These are those applications that many IT organizations have been cautious to virtualize citing virtualization overhead as their primary concern. Hopefully, these notes will put some of those concerns to rest.

Virtualizing any application is all about proper design and that is especially true for Tier 1 applications. If you wouldn’t put your Exchange Mailbox Store on three SATA drives on a physical system, you shouldn’t do that when you virtualize it either. Here are the highlights from session EA8660.

• As of recently, VMware found in its customer base that 38% of Exchange instances have been virtualized. People are out there virtualizing Exchange contrary to popular belief.
• 8900 transactions per second has been tested out of a single virtual machine. …
  (Read more…)

  { 0 comments }

I am back from VMworld now and I am catching up on all of the great information that I received from the event (including my new VCDX designation ). This session was all about virtualizing real-time applications, like those found in the Cisco Unified Communications family of solutions. This was an excellent technical deep dive led by Tim Harris, Director of Validation Services for VMware.

The presentation started by comparing some characteristics of real-time applications, summarized below.

• Real-time applications are latency sensitive
• Real-time applications can be divided into two categories:
  • Hard real-time applications (think Financial Trading Systems, where even 20ms of latency can cause millions of dollars to be lost)
  • Soft real-time applications (think Voice over IP (VoIP), where it is still sensitive to latency > 20ms, but it is not quite as critical)
• The suggestion is to NOT virtualize “Hard Real-Time” applications
• Go ahead and virtualize “Soft Real-Time” applications, but plan accordingly.

Here are the findings / suggestions for those real-time apps that you should go ahead and virtualize:

• Prior to vSphere 4.x, the CPU scheduler was not engineered for real-time applications.
  • Items like less overhead for CPU scheduling and even more relaxed co-scheduling of CPU cores that were introduced in vSphere 4.x help real-time applications.
• Use …
  (Read more…)

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I am back from VMworld now and I am catching up on all of the great information that I received from the event (including my new VCDX designation ). This session was all about virtualizing real-time applications, like those found in the Cisco Unified Communications family of solutions. This was an excellent technical deep dive led by Tim Harris, Director of Validation Services for VMware.

The presentation started by comparing some characteristics of real-time applications, summarized below.

• Real-time applications are latency sensitive
• Real-time applications can be divided into two categories:
  • Hard real-time applications (think Financial Trading Systems, where even 20ms of latency can cause millions of dollars to be lost)
  • Soft real-time applications (think Voice over IP (VoIP), where it is still sensitive to latency > 20ms, but it is not quite as critical)
• The suggestion is to NOT virtualize “Hard Real-Time” applications
• Go ahead and virtualize “Soft Real-Time” applications, but plan accordingly.

Here are the findings / suggestions for those real-time apps that you should go ahead and virtualize:

• Prior to vSphere 4.x, the CPU scheduler was not engineered for real-time applications.
  • Items like less overhead for CPU scheduling and even more relaxed co-scheduling of CPU cores that were introduced in vSphere 4.x help real-time applications.
• Use …
  (Read more…)

  { 0 comments }

On Thursday, January 13th I had my first Ask Harley Session. This was a session where I answered virtualization and VMware related questions on Twitter. I received a lot of great questions during this session. Thank you to all who participated. Below are the questions and their answers in case you missed them on Twitter.

Ask Harley: Question 1 – What common issues or mistakes do you see with your customers who have setup VMware infrastructure or are looking to setup VMware?

NOTE: This answer was originally provided over a series of Tweets by Harley Stagner on 1/13/11 at TBL Networks’ Twitter site as part of our “Ask Harley” series.

Question:

What common issues or mistakes do you see with your customers who have setup VMware infrastructure or are looking to setup VMware?

Answer:

Most of the issues in an initial deployment occur from a lack of capacity, application, and infrastructure planning.

Consider the 4 core (CPU, RAM, DISK, NET) resources from a capacity standpoint. Consider application requirements (MS Clustering, Dongles, Vendor Support, Etc.).

Consider scalability and ease of management from the infrastructure standpoint. Infrastructure item examples: Scale up vs scale out(more hosts = more DRS opportunities,Less hosts = more risk).

Details. Details. Details. Example- Do I have enough space for VMDK and Swap files? Do I have a syslog server for ESXi?

Keep it simple. Avoid Resource Pools, Reservations, and Limits unless they are needed.

Resource pools are NOT for organization. That’s worth repeating. Resource pools are NOT for organization. Folders are.

There is more involved in a virtualization design / deployment than clicking next.

Ask Harley: Question 2 – Why would you use Virtual Port-ID NLB instead of IP-Hash NLB?

NOTE: This answer was originally provided over a series of Tweets by Harley Stagner on 1/13/11 at TBL Networks’ Twitter site as part of our “Ask Harley” series.

Question:

Why would you use Virtual Port-ID NLB instead of IP-Hash NLB?

Answer:

The summary answer would be simplicity. Port-ID is the default load balancing and good in a wide range of use cases.

Port-ID Advantage: Simple, effective. Port-ID Disadvantage: Only egress traffic is load balanced as it depends on the source virtual port id

IP-Hash has an upstream dependency on 802.3ad static link aggregation. An example is etherchannel on Cisco Switches. Even if the dependency is met. You may not be load balancing as efficiently as you think. You need MANY destinations in order for IP-Hash maximum effectiveness.

Why? Because IP-Hash algorithm uses an Xor of source and destination IP using the …
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