by Katherine
5. October 2009 14:41
Do you have computer-related questions that you cannot get answered?
If so, you have come to the right blog!
Send your questions to me at khobt@bncsystems.com with the subject line "Expert Q & A" and I will post your question and answer in a future blog. It can be anything from computer networking to server support to desktop setup to software-specific questions!
Please do not post as a reply to this blog - emailed questions will get a response.
by Katherine
2. April 2009 07:50
On March 30th, 2009 VMware released Update 4 for it’s flagship bare metal ESX and free ESXi products. The build number has been incremented to build 153875.Release notes include:
What’s New
Notes:
- Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 4. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and VMware Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility. (ESX 3.5u4 is not compatible with versions of VirtualCenter prior to version 2.5u2)
- This version of ESX Server requires a VMware Tools upgrade.
The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX Server:Expanded Support for Enhanced vmxnet Adapter - This version of ESX Server includes an updated version of the VMXNET driver (VMXNET enhanced) for the following guest operating systems:
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit)
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (64-bit)
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
- Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32-bit)
The new VMXNET version improves virtual machine networking performance and requires VMware tools upgrade.Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series - Support for the Xeon processor 5500 series has been added. Support includes Enhanced VMotion capabilities. For additional information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced VMotion, see Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).QLogic Fibre Channel Adapter Driver Update - The driver and firmware for the QLogic fibre channel adapters have been updated to version 7.08-vm66 and 4.04.06 respectively. This release provides interoperability fixes for QLogic Management Tools for FC Adapters and enhanced NPIV support.Emulex Fibre Channel Adapter Driver Update - The driver for Emulex Fibre Channel Adapters has been upgraded to version 7.4.0.40. This release provides support for the HBAnyware 4.0 Emulex management suite.LSI megaraid_sas and mptscsi Storage Controller Driver Update - The drivers for LSI megaraid_sas and mptscsi storage controllers have been updated to version 3.19vmw and 2.6.48.18 vmw respectively. The upgrade improves performance and enhance event handling capabilities for these two drivers.Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems - Support for the following guest operating systems has been added specifically for this release:For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the Guest Operating System Installation Guide: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf.
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (32-bit and 64-bit).
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (32-bit and 64-bit).
- Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition and Server Edition (32-bit and 64-bit).
- Windows Preinstallation Environment 2.0 (32-bit and 64-bit).
Furthermore, pre-built kernel modules (PBMs) were added in this release for the following guests:
- Ubuntu 8.10
- Ubuntu 8.04.2
Newly Supported Management Agents - Refer to VMware ESX Server Supported Hardware Lifecycle Management Agents for the most up-to-date information on supported management agents.Newly Supported I/O Devices - in-box support for the following on-board processors, IO devices, and storage subsystems:SAS Controllers and SATA Controllers:The following are newly supported SATA Controllers.
- PMC 8011 (for SAS and SATA drives)
- Intel ICH9
- Intel ICH10
- CERC 6/I SATA/SAS Integrated RAID Controller (for SAS and SATA drivers)
- HP Smart Array P700m ControllerNotes:
- Some limitations apply in terms of support for SATA controllers. For more information, see SATA Controller Support in ESX 3.5 (KB 1008673).
- Storing VMFS datastores on native SATA drives is not supported.
Network Cards: The following are newly supported network interface cards:
- HP NC375i Integrated Quad Port Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
- HP NC362i Integrated Dual port Gigabit Server Adapter
- Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AT Network Connection
- HP NC360m Dual 1 Gigabit/NC364m Quad 1 Gigabit
- Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter
- Intel 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
- Intel 10 Gigabit XF SR Dual Port Server Adapter
- Intel 10 Gigabit XF SR Server Adapter
- Intel 10 Gigabit XF LR Server Adapter
- Intel 10 Gigabit CX4 Dual Port Server Adapter
- Intel 10 Gigabit AF DA Dual Port Server Adapter
- Intel 10 Gigabit AT Server Adapter
- Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AT CX4 Network Connection
- NetXtreme BCM5722 Gigabit Ethernet
- NetXtreme BCM5755 Gigabit Ethernet
- NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet
- NetXtreme BCM5756 Gigabit Ethernet
Expanded Support: The E1000 Intel network interface card (NIC) is now available for NetWare 5 and NetWare 6 guest operating systems.Onboard Management Processors:
- IBM system management processor (iBMC)
Storage Arrays:
- SUN StorageTek 2530 SAS Array
- Sun Storage 6580 Array
- Sun Storage 6780 Array
by
8. October 2008 12:10
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by
15. July 2008 10:07
This weekend an instructor came in to talk to us about Windows 2008, and one of the topics covered was the Microsoft virtualization platform “Hyper-V”. The presenter offered the opinion that hyper-v is significantly cheaper than Vmware (e.g. $28) and offers the same functionality. On the surface this rings true, but I dug into this a bit deeper and have found that the reality is slightly more complicated. Comparing hyper-v to Vmware products is really trying to compare apples and oranges. A simple example of this would be the feature called “memory over commitment”. All Vmware solutions (including the free Vmware Server) allow for allocating more memory to virtual machines than is physically installed on the host and uses a variety of memory reclamation techniques (not just paging) to balance the requests for memory that the guests (virtual machines) make. This is not true with hyper-v – you are only allowed to allocate as much RAM as a host has. This means two things: 1) Vmware allows for a greater density of guests to be deployed per host, and 2) in instances where you have more than one Vmware virtual host and one has gone down you can start more VM’s in a degraded state to keep things running until you can correct the issue. These two things are not true for hyper-v – it refuses to allow you to start up more VM’s if the memory limits have been reached, even if the guests may not always use all the RAM allocated. At the end of the day this means that you need to spend more money on hardware with hyper-v to achieve the same results you would get with Vmware technologies. You might say “most SMB only have four or so servers, so you don’t need the overkill Vmware provides at the premium cost.” I agree, but only as far as the ESX line of software goes. Vmware also has a free version called Vmware server that provides excellent features for...well...free. I have personally deployed Vmware server v1.0x in production environments where we were getting a minimum of 8 guests per host on dual core dual cpu Dell hosts with 8gb of RAM. In some cases we were able to get 15 or more guests per host for things like file-n-print servers and domain controllers. Again your mileage may vary depending on the requirements of the guests, but the take away I want to highlight is that Vmware Server can do everything that hyper-v can at no cost and provides some advanced technologies that hyper-v has yet to implement. XEN is another alternative that is worth mentioning. You can use the free open source XEN and roll your own, or buy into the Citrix offering if you desire an easy deployment. Either way the XEN product is more comparable to ESX than it is to hyper-v with features such as live migration. The main issues I have found with XEN is it’s poor support for guest OS’s other than Linux or Windows, but for the SMB market this is not really much of a problem. The bottom line for me is that hyper-v is a v1.0 product whose feature set is very slim compared to other offerings in the same space. I look forward to seeing what Microsoft will do with this product, but the jury is still out. A colleague recently commented that “Microsoft can throw lot’s of engineers and money at hyper-v, so it will be feature rich and crush Vmware shortly.” and I agree that it could be done...but after a careful review of their recent attempts at revamping Terminal Services I have to say that it’s not necessarily the case that they will. My $.02 – I would love to hear what you guys think! Thanks!
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