Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
virtualization.info Editors VKernel has updated it’s Optimization Pack to version 2.1 supporting the VKernel Management Suite version 2.2 which was released last month.
The Optimization Pack is designed to control VM sprawl by finding and reclaiming over allocated and wasted resources in virtual environments. It tracks average and peak usage for all VMs while also seeking out abandoned resources.
Last week VMware released Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter, in order to support those releases, also other products were updated, like vCenter Server Heartbeat, which is updated to version 6.3.1. This version is the follow-up of version 6.3 which was released in August last year.
vCenter Server Heartbeat is a fail-over product that protects every component inside the vCenter host, including the licensing server and Update Manager (WUM), and works across LAN and WAN links, and is OEM’ed by VMware from Neverfail.
Last week VMware released Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter, in order to support those releases, also other products were updated, like Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which is updated to version 4.1.1 and can be considered as a maintenance release supporting Update 1 for ESX/ESXi and vCenter and containing bug fixes. This version is the follow-up of version 4.1 which was released in August last year.
VMware Site Recovery Manager automates the disaster recovery process in order to recover from data center outages in hours rather than days. SRM works with VMware Infrastructure and eliminates the complexity and unreliability of manual recovery.
From 8th until the 11th of February VMware held its annual Partner Exchange conference. During the conference VMware detailed its roadmap for the upcoming version 5 of vSphere, VMware’s virtualization platform expected to be released in the second half of this year.
Although some of the features were already detailed earlier during VMworld , mentioning them on the conference tells us that it’s more likely that the features will make it into the product. VMware detailed the following new upcoming features:
In December last year, VMware released version 2.0 of its benchmarking framework VMmark, focussing on measuring the performance of the whole data center, including complex operations like manual and automated (or DRS-initated) vMotion, Storage vMotion, as well as virtual machines cloning and deployment.
Now VMware has made available version 2.1 of VMmark provinding usability, managability improvements and better scale-out abilities.
Together with the announcement of availability of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, Microsoft also announced a new version of Windows 7, called Windows Thin PC (WinTPC), which will become available shortly on the Microsoft Connect site making it available for customers willing to test it.
WinTPC is a smaller foodprint, locked down version of Windows 7, which enables customers to install this windows version on existing PCs repurposing them as thin clients which can be used to access Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments. WinTPC is comparable with Windows XP Fundamentals, which was revealed in 2005.
The WinTPC version will be made available for customers which use the Software Assurance (SA) program for their Microsoft Software, besides that for these WinTPC clients no VDA license, normally needed to access VDI desktops is needed.
VMware has made available update 1 for vSphere ESX/ESXi and vCenter, providing patches and enhancements, like support for additional guest operating systems and processor support. This update can be applied to vSphere 4.1, which was released in July last year.
ESXi now provides support for using Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) from Intel and available now on Intel Xeon 5600 series processor types. TXT can protect ESXi in some cases where system binaries are corrupted or have been tampered with.
In June last year Microsoft made available a public beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, introducing the long awaited Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V and RemoteFX for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) features. In October last year Microsoft released the Release Candidate adding support for using Dynamic Memory on the Standard and Web editions of Windows Server. Now Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.
VMware has updated it Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification to version 4. The VCDX certification was introduced in August 2008 for virtualization architects. The VCDX is the highest level of VMware certification available for design architects highly-skilled in VMware enterprise deployments and veteran professionals who want to validate and demonstrate their expertise in VMware virtual infrastructure.
In December last year Veeam made available a Release Canditate of version 5.6 of the nworks Smart Plug-In software for monitoring and management of VMware from HP Operations Manager. Now Veeam has released version 5.6. of the Smart Plug-In (SPI) and also released version 5.6. of the nworks Management Pack for monitoring and management of VMware using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM).