Virtualization Link Roundup 20090726

Another few weeks have gone by and my list of Virtualization links have hit critical mass, time to thin the herd.  Lots of product releases from VMware and Private Cloud articles (just in time for my upcoming talk on the Convergence of Private Clouds).  Forgive the one day late posting…was too busy last night enjoying sunset from 2000 foot high ridge near my house–and too tired afterward–to post this yesterday.

VMware Specific Links

• The last two weeks saw a lot of product release come from VMware:
  • View 3.1.1 was released recently, check out the release notes for details.  This update is highly recommended for View users…
  • vCenter Server 2.5 U5 was release recently as well, check out the release notes for details.
  • vCenter Lab Manager 4.0 was released.  This version is compatible with vSphere 4.0, the release notes contain all the other goodness in the latest version.
  • vCenter Chargeback 1.0 was released to market.  (I have a number of clients looking at this just to provide viability to their end users on resource consumption, even if they don’t have the finance model in place to actually charge back for that use.  Social engineering goes a long way…)
  • vCenter AppSpeed 1.0 was also released to market.  Check out this great 1st Look Video from HyperViZor
• Using a Private Cloud to Improve Exchange Performance – great article from testing Dell did around running a private Exchange cloud in their lab.
• vSphere in a Box: A “Virtual Private Cloud” Blueprint – while not officially supported by VMware, running nested VMs is a great way to build out your lab…and here’s your blueprint thanks to HyperViZor.
• Exchange Performs Well Using Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS on vSphere – interesting storage performance numbers highlighted here from recent whitepaper (linked to in article).
• Memory Performance Chart Metrics in the vSphere Client – overview of Memory performance stats now available in VIC…err, I mean vSC (doesn’t quite roll of the tongue as well…)
• VMware’s Two Two Important Cloud Beta’s – review of vCloud beta releases.

General Virtualization Links

• Business Imperative for Virtual Private Cloud Services – from the Cisco Service Provider blog.
• Cloud Standards Coordination Wiki Site – great portal attempting to document all the work around defining standards for the cloud.
• Microsoft opened Linux-driver code after ‘violating’ GPL – interesting back story on Microsoft’s submission of their Linux drivers to the Linux community.
• Is A Private Cloud Worthwhile? – I agree that we can stop trying to define the cloud and get working on preparing for or building them.  The future industry leaders are using the recession to innovate in this area.  Are you?
• HOWTO: Download, Install and License EMC PowerPath/VE – A great video how-to from Chad Sakac.  Did you know that EMC’s PowerPath can also work with non-EMC storage?  I learned this recently from one of my clients…while there is a limited list of 3rd party storage that works this is still very cool stuff!