VM-Aware

IBM’s SVC has been around for a good few years now and it is by all accounts quite popular. It does a great job of aggregating lots of disparate storage (IBM and Non-IBM) and presenting through a more scalable and manageable interface.

Well SVC has had a make-over with the release of 4.3 and some of the key feature announced in the press release are:

• Space Efficient Virtual Disks - Or as everybody else calls it Thin Provisioning
• Space Efficient FlashCopy - Or as everybody else calls it Thin Provisioned Snapshots
• Virtual Disk Mirroring - Or as everybody else calls it High Availability
• Improved Interoperability - Or as everybody else calls it… err Improved Interoperability (Mac OS X Server and WIndows 2008)

All good stuff that is already available in something like DataCore and is a very welcome addition to a mature product.

I was looking for an app that would investigate an ESX host that wasn’t configured by me to see how much work would be needed to secure it.

I found Tripwire’s ConfigCheck java app an absolute cracker.  As Michael Parkinson would say its simplicity is its genius.

Provide hostname, username and password and wait for a minute or so for ConfigCheck to analyse the security of the host.  A list of all the areas checked is displayed with either a pass or a fail.

This is all great, but what is even better is the fact that upon completion of the tests you are offered the opportunity to download a remediation document.  This 52 page document outlines why a particular test failed and how to fix the problem.

You can download ConfigCheck here, and the remediation guide here.

NetApp have released a powerful new addition to the Open Systems SnapVault range for VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

OSSV installs directly into the VMware ESX service console and acts as a very light-weight interface to backup Virtual Machines on NetApp storage and non-NetApp storage. It works best with NetApp Protection Manager, but works well as a stand-alone product.  There’s also an excellent Best Practice guide for OSSV available here.

Check out the video below: