VM-Aware

The Desktop Virtualization blog have posted a handy article on how to change the root password if you have forgotten/lost/mislaid it.

Check it out here.

Following a request on a previous post, I have written this post about how to change the timezone of an ESX host from the command line.

* - None of the below requires an ESX host reboot.

Check the current timezone using the following command:

cat /etc/sysconfig/clock (more…)

One of the great new bits of functionality in ESX 3.5 Update is the ability to hot extend non-boot virtual disks without shutting down the VM.

I decided to give it a go with a Windows 2003 Standard VM and thought I’d provide a How To for anyone that might need/want it.

You can download the pdf here.  It is the first version of the document so please feel free to comment and let me know how to improve it.

I’m working on a Linux equivalent, but to be honest, I have never tried this before in Linux so it might be a while until the Tech Note appears

VMware have recently announced an update to 3.5 & ESXi. Normally VMware slip a few cool features into interim releases, but nothing as major as the inclusions in Update 2. Here’s an overview of some of the major functionality additions.

• VSS quiescing support - Windows 2003 VMs now have application & file system level VSS support via VMware tools.
• Hot Virtual Extend Support - This will allow virtual disks that are running out of disk space to be increased on the fly while the VM is running
• iSCSI & NFS over 10GB Ethernet
• Live Cloning of Virtual Machines - This means that instead of having to power off a machine to clone it, this can now be done while the machine is turned on. Possibly a fore-runner to continuous availability?

All of these features have a massive impact on the way VMs are used and administered and take another leap away from Microsoft in terms of functionality.

I can’t wait to see what will be included in ESX4.

VMware recently published an article on the Virtual Reality blog that raises some interesting points as to why VMware is better than Xen & Hyper-V.

Some of the areas that get particular analysis are:

• Uptime
• Direct driver model
• Memory management

More interesting still are some of the comments to post, have clearly been made by Citrix & Microsoft employees or people with a vested interest.

I find some of the points amusing, but my 2 penneth worth is thus:

• No VMotion or equivalent = not production ready

I think that this in itself is a good enough reason to use VMware over anything else.  There are a multitude of other reasons, that hundreds of posts discuss, but this is the one for me.  Even after all these years, the ability to transfer one running VM from one host to another amazes me.

It’d be interesting to see what people think, so please do comment and see if we can get a debate going.

VMware have released a Best Practice guide for DMZ implementations in a VMware ESX infrastructure.

It outlines the three main implementation routes and discusses the advantages and disadvantages below: (more…)