So we have yet another failed attempt from VMware to create a windows installer and make it work.  This time it comes with VMware vCenter Update 4.  So during the installation of update 4 it attempts to upgrade the license server with absolutely no mention of this during the initial screen where you can choose which features you want to install.

During the install I continued to get a cryptic 1923 Error: Insufficient Privileges.  Now I'm the Domain Admin of the tree so I know this isn't the cause.  After playing around with it for a while I found that if you are logged into the system and attempting the install from Remote Desktop Session it would fail.  Easy enough, install from Remote Desktop with Admin switch.

I did the install of the license file from the vpx directory and upgraded license file fine.  Went back and attempted the full install again and this it started the install and again attempted to upgrade the license server and again failed and broke the service.

So last attempt went like this.  Install License Server from vpx directory and then manually upgrade vCenter, again from vpx directory and then run the full installer to upgrade Update Manager and Converter.  Update 4 requires a database schema upgrade again so make sure to have a full backup of the database.  Also the ESX vCenter agents are updated on each ESX host so don't get scared when they are all disconnected when you enter the VIC.

So I may be called a VMware hack at times.  And sometimes I really wonder what Microsoft but their product is getting better as time goes on.  But when people just make stuff up it's crazy.  I'm not even sure I want to link to this blog but here goes:

http://fawzi.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/hyper-v-vs-vmware/

So there are so many factual items that are wrong in this article its mind blowing.

Price - HyperV is not free.

Let's stop saying that HyperV is free.  It's not.  You still have to purchase Windows Server 2008.  If you purchase 2008 edition you only get one virtual license.  It's great - don't get me wrong but you still need to purchase Server 2008.  Now if you are a school, DataCenter 2008 is dirt cheap and I can make an argument for you but businesses still have to pay for it.

Support - What?

I'm sorry, you want VMware to provide phone support for Windows?  VMware supports just about any flavor of Windows, Linux and even OSX.  They provide support and support anything you can put on it.  If your NTFS volume is dead - call Microsoft.  If you VMFS volume is dead - call VMware - it's not that difficult.  There is no blame game going on here.  And trust me, getting tranferred between the Exchange and HyperV group when you have a problem with Exchange will be no different.

Hardware Support

Since when is VMware only support on x86 processors?  That just doesn't make any sense at all.

Hypervisor is Small

HyperV doesn't work without the Parent Partition.  Until Microsoft releases a hypervisor that is 872k like the article says it is then give me a call.  This is just silly to the highest degree.

Memory Management

This is where we get even stranger.  The writer complains about the ability to over allocate memory - a feature missing from HyperV.  This feature is so horrible that Microsoft is adding it to Server 2008 R2.  Can memory overcommittment get you in trouble?  Yes.  So can a car, a stick or your shoes for that matter.  Use it correctly and its great.

So news from the VMware front this week sees some developments in regards to ESX 3.5 and Project Northstar (Thinstall).

On Thursday, VMware released Update 1 for ESX 3.5 (note its not called ESX Server anymore).  This update brought a lot of nice bug fixes, support for MSCS and official Server 2008 support (note vSMP is still experimental in 2008).  They also released Virtual Center 2.5 Update 1 which is mainly a bug fix release.  No new features that I have seen.

Also on the news front word on the street that VMware recently purchased Thinstall (Project Northstar) is on schedule for a Q2 release.  I have no clue where this very exciting product will come down in regards to the pricing but since it requires nothing more than file share (NFS, DFS, NTFS) it really an exciting product.  If you are not familiar with it - basically we are looking at a way to virtualize applications.

Pretty cool stuff.  The updates are all very non-exciting updates.  The one thing you cannot seem to do is update Virtual Center from VMware Update Manager.  Missed opportunity here.

So this is an interesting turn of events.  Currently on a mission to replace every 2k3 R2 server with a shinny new 2k8 server.  So the big item to move right now is Terminal Services.  So we have our new TS server up and running but now we needed to license it.

So we build a license server and go to enter license information and what do we get - licenses are invalid.  After 4 hours with Microsoft Tech Support they mention that they have seen issues with TS Licensing and a virtual server.  I say, "no way - its an excuse".  Well, after we decommissioned the only physical box we had and discovered no joke.  So there are two big items I learned from Microsoft through this:

• Windows 2008 Licenses can only be served from a 2008 Licensing Server
• Windows 2008 License server cannot be run on virtual.

No word if the virtual problems are isolated to only VMware or to Hyper-V as well.

So I've decided to create my very first Virtual Appliance.  If you are aren't familiar with the idea of a VA its basically a pre-built VMware workstation with all of the settings and everything setup and configured.  So now that I've created my very first VA I'll need to find somewhere to post it so people can download it.  So what is it that I built?

Created an OpenSUSE linux box with MRTG installed and configured on it.  So the app was built in VMware Workstation 6 and can easily be run on VMware Player or Server which are both free as can be.  MRTG is a great little program that runs on both Windows and Linux (even NetWare) and tracks the performance of your router.

Once I have it uploaded somewhere I'll post a link.

DJ

So I get asked the question all the time.  Should I build a dual/quad core VM because all of my physical boxes were multicore?  The answer is simple, no most of the time.

Don’t build VM’s with dual/quad cores for the fun of it.  A VM with dual/quad core performs completely differently than a single vCPU server and will have a negative impact on performance.  Here is the technical details:

When a dual-core VM executes a tasks it against the pCPU’s the VM must reserve that task for two pCPU’s.  In a situation where you only had a two pCPU’s this would in effect remove the ability for an single vCPU from executing any tasks because the dual-core VM would take both pCPU’s.  The problem is exasperated when you take a dual-core VM but there isn’t any applications that can take advantage of the 2 cores.  In this case, the application on the VM with 2 vCPU executes a task against pCPU1 (the app isn’t SMP aware).  The ESX scheduler must still reserve pCPU2 for the vCPU2 although its doing nothing but sitting idle.  The scheduler will keep this pCPU2 reserved until pCPU1 completes the tasks the scheduler sends to it.

As you can see from this you can waste many resources on your ESX box with a 2 or 4 vCPU.  So the moral of the story is if you have a client and they complain that they are getting horrible performance from their ESX boxes and you noticed that they are all dual or quad core connections, you might know the reason.

If should also be noted you should never just switch a server from 2 vCPU to 1 or 1 to 2 without modifying the Windows.  There are some cool scripts I can share if you need them.  That all said there are situations where you might want a 2-core VM.  Applications like SQL and Exchange are SMP aware and will happily use both of them.  But you should never create a VM with the maximum number of physical cores.  So don’t create a 2 vCPU server on a ESX box with only 2 pVPU’s, don’t create 4vCPU on a 4pCPU box, etc.