Year: 2006

VMware Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge submissions are finally available on the Virtual Appliances Directory.

At the moment the whole number amount to around 150 virtual appliances (it’s not clear if VMware finished publishing them), going from less than 1 MB to more than 2 GB.

Some of entries are complete operating systems with preconfigured applications on top. Some others are liveCD distributions inside the virtual machine.
Both categories are uninteresting in my opinion because, while providing sometimes priceless tools, they are not hard-to-do-from-yourself implementations.

I personally find much more interesting virtual appliances featuring an extreme stripped down operating system (something not every customer is able to do) with only components needed to run the intended application.

Also some virtual appliances seems to be much complex in initialization and are not reflecting the ultimate concept of virtual appliance: something you switch on and it’s ready to use (or require a minimal amount of work).

Based on this preliminary evaluation criteria I would like to underline some of them:

• Internet Connection Sharing Appliance
• JanusVM
• splunk – log files make sense
• OpenLDAP
• SugarCRM Appliance
• Internet Content Filter
• NAGIOS Appliance
• Spam Vigilante – Mail Filter Virtual Appliance
• VMOSSIM

The whole list is available here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

Foedus parner contributed with 4 papers.

The forth one of the series:

This paper provides information regarding the configuration and best practices of iSCSI with VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX Server). This paper assumes that the audience has an understanding of the basic concepts surrounding virtualization and a VMware ESX configuration.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

Foedus parner contributed with 4 papers.

The third one of the series:

This document will focus on the use of virtual machine templates in VMware Infrastructure 3. Virtual machine template functionality was redesigned in VMware Infrstructure 3 which includes VirtualCenter 2. In this context, a virtual machine template (usually referred to as simply ?a template?) is a reusable image created from a virtual machine.
The template, as a derivative of the source virtual machine,typically includes virtual hardware components, an installed guest operating system (with any applicable patches) and software application(s). New to VirtualCenter 2 is the ability to keep templates current with OS and application updates.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

Foedus parner contributed with 4 papers.

The second one of the series:

In this white paper, we will discuss the value of adding virtual infrastructure to the organization to support various staple services such as File and Printing services and DNS. Leveraging VMware ESX Server?s iSCSI support, virtual file servers reach new capabilities while keeping costs affordable at the same time.

The scalability of virtual networking support in VMware ESX Server 3.0 lends itself especially well in high-bandwidth scenarios when coupled with new processor technology from Intel. New features of ESX Server 3.0 such as clustering, consolidated backup and Distributed Availability Services mean you can ensure 100% availability of file and printing services without the complicated setup of Windows clusters or 3rd party products.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

Foedus parner contributed with 4 papers.

The first one of the series:

The purpose of this paper is to provide advice on leveraging key features of VMware Infrastructure for deployment of infrastructure services for system administrators who are new to VMware Virtual Infrastructure. This paper is intended for system administrators who are new to VMware Infrastructure.

The recommendations are applicable to small or mid size companies. Recommendations and examples will illustrate what can be accomplished using the VMware Infrastructure platform.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

The fifth one of the series:

This white paper provides an overview of VLAN concepts and benefits and illustrates three possible ESX Server and virtual machine VLAN configurations. It then compares the advantages and disadvantages of the three possible configurations and recommends some best practices.

The paper also includes configuration samples for both ESX Server and the external physical switches and concludes with a list of frequently asked questions.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

The fourth one of the series:

VMware® Infrastructure 3 provides a set of distributed infrastructure services that make the entire IT environment more serviceable, available and efficient. VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) dynamically allocates and balances computing capacity and virtual machine placement with resources pooled from multiple ESX Server hosts.

This white paper provides an architectural and conceptual overview of VMware DRS and describes how you can use DRS to simplify provisioning of applications, achieve higher levels of resource utilization, and better align use of IT resources with business values and priorities.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

The third one of the series:

VMware® Infrastructure 3 delivers comprehensive virtualization, management, resource optimization, application availability and operational automation capabilities in an integrated offering. VMware HA, a new capability in VMware Infrastructure 3, helps customers improve service levels for any application by implementing cost-effective virtualization-based high-availability solutions that are both easy to use and easy to configure.

This white paper provides an architectural and conceptual overview of VMware HA and describes how you can use HA to provide high availability for any applications running in virtual machines at lower cost than would be possible with static, physical infrastructure.

Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

The second one of the series:

This paper describes the architecture of VMware Infrastructure, beginning with the elements that make up its physical topology, followed by the virtual, or logical, view of VMware Infrastructure where the relationships between the virtual architectural elements and the physical world are explored.

Lastly, the architectures of two core VMware Infrastructure components are discussed in further detail.

Strongly recommended. Read it here.

With the announcement of ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 (aka Virtual Infrastructure 3.0) VMware launched a series of whitepapers to clarify technical and marketing aspects of the new offering.

The first one of the series:

VMware® Infrastructure is the industry?s first full infrastructure virtualization suite that empowers enterprises and small businesses alike to transform, manage and optimize their IT systems infrastructure through virtualization. VMware Infrastructure 3 includes:

• VMware ESX Server 3 with VMware VMFS, VMware VirtualCenter Agent, and VMware Virtual SMP
• VMware VirtualCenter 2 with VMware VMotion?, VMware HA, VMware DRS
• VMware Consolidated Backup

With the introduction of VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware is making significant changes to how these products are priced, packaged and licensed. VMware is also making several significant changes and additions to its support offerings and pricing.

This paper explains these important changes and reviews both entitlements for existing customers and upgrade paths available for new and existing customers.

Strongly recommended. Read it here.