EMC and VMware Deliver Service Assurance for Virtual Data Centers
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/72105/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
Date:
Jul 24, 12
Time:
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT (Set Time Zone)
Event Type:
EMC Live Webcast
Category:
Virtualization
Location:
Online
Details:
Join us for this informative live webcast to understand how EMC and VMware Operations Management Suite for Virtual Data Center environments can help you deliver new services quickly and reliably, identify and resolve problems before service impact, and improve operational efficiency.
Register to learn how Operations Management Suite for Virtual Data Center can help you:
* Resolve problems 80% faster
* Ensure maximum service uptime, and
* Achieve a 2 times improvement in operational efficiency
________________________________
Original Page: http://www.emc.com/events/2012/q3/07-24-12-emc-and-vmware-deliver-service-assurance-for-vdcs.htm?CMP=RSS-events
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Performance Study of Oracle RAC on VMware vSphere 5.0 - Eric Sloof
IT organizations that have implemented Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) often use RAC to support critical functions of their business. Performance of these database clusters is key to enabling IT organizations to meet the requirements of their businesses, customers, and shareholders.
VMware vSphere provides a high performance virtualization platform that is capable of hosting the most critical portions of infrastructure, including Oracle RAC databases. vSphere 5 has increased these capabilities, including support for virtual machines with up to 32 vCPUs and 1TB of RAM. This support for larger virtual machines (VMs) combined with vSphere's high performance capabilities makes vSphere a great platform for running large Oracle RAC database clusters.
EMC IT has implemented vSphere throughout many parts of their infrastructure and is now in the process of moving the largest and most critical applications to vSphere. EMC and VMware worked together to evaluate the performance of one of EMC's largest Oracle RAC databases on vSphere 5. A copy of this database was used to conduct a series of tests to compare physical performance versus virtual performance.
This testing, which was done with an Oracle RAC cluster made up of six 32-CPU-based nodes, four of them virtual and two of them physical, found that virtual performed within 12% of native and was acceptable to be used for the production instance. EMC IT plans to adopt this virtual configuration in its next refresh cycle.
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/OracleRAC-perf-vSphere5.pdf
feedproxy.google.com [cid:/images/orig-link.png] <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/ZhZzOGu7CPo/2076-Performance-Study-of-Oracle-RAC-on-VMware-vSphere-5.0.html>
VMware vSphere provides a high performance virtualization platform that is capable of hosting the most critical portions of infrastructure, including Oracle RAC databases. vSphere 5 has increased these capabilities, including support for virtual machines with up to 32 vCPUs and 1TB of RAM. This support for larger virtual machines (VMs) combined with vSphere's high performance capabilities makes vSphere a great platform for running large Oracle RAC database clusters.
EMC IT has implemented vSphere throughout many parts of their infrastructure and is now in the process of moving the largest and most critical applications to vSphere. EMC and VMware worked together to evaluate the performance of one of EMC's largest Oracle RAC databases on vSphere 5. A copy of this database was used to conduct a series of tests to compare physical performance versus virtual performance.
This testing, which was done with an Oracle RAC cluster made up of six 32-CPU-based nodes, four of them virtual and two of them physical, found that virtual performed within 12% of native and was acceptable to be used for the production instance. EMC IT plans to adopt this virtual configuration in its next refresh cycle.
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/OracleRAC-perf-vSphere5.pdf
feedproxy.google.com [cid:/images/orig-link.png] <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/ZhZzOGu7CPo/2076-Performance-Study-of-Oracle-RAC-on-VMware-vSphere-5.0.html>
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Why I need a MacBook Air
I had the pleasure of having Chris Fraser (@CoureurDeNuage) from EMC in town last week and as we travelled between meetings it became apparent why a number of “professional travelers” have moved over to MacBooks.
The first thing that caught my eye was the sheer size and weight of his device. As we sat in Starbucks, Chris was able to pull out his MacBook from his bag, balance it on one knee, drink his coffee and carry on a conversation with me, while I was still struggling to pull my ThinkPad from my bag.
Once my ThinkPad was out of the bag, it was time to clear the spot on the table to fit this mammoth heavy beast that I call my laptop. I sat back and watched Chris clack away on his keyboard (still balancing it on his knee) while I was smashing the keys on the keyboard trying to wake mine from sleep. By this point Chris had sent me 2 emails with information that we had discussed earlier in the day.
I asked Chris if he had any issues connecting to the Wi-Fi, he said it was slow (we were in a really busy Starbucks) but he had no issues connecting. So after I disabled and re-enabled the Wi-Fi a couple of times with no success it was time for a reboot (which is normal for me after taking my laptop out of sleep).
Luckily I got a phone call as I was waiting for my laptop to reboot so the time it didn’t seem drag on too long, but knowing full well that it was at least 2 minutes for the whole process to finish. As I got off the phone I looked at the time and decided it was time to move on to our next meeting. Chris snapped his MacBook closed and slide it effortlessly into his bag and was up and ready to go, I on the other had had decided to fully shut down my ThinkPad so I didn’t have Wi-Fi issues the next time we stopped somewhere to get some quick work done. The whole shutdown process and then having to fight to get the ThinkPad back into my backpack took a number of minutes but then we were on our way.
As we were leaving I was thinking to myself, in the 20 minutes we were in the coffee shop, Chris was productive for close to 18 of those minutes, while I was productive on my laptop for none (I guess if I didn’t take that phone call I may of been able to get my laptop up and running for 2 or 3 minutes)
For those of you who know me well you are probably asking “Why wasn’t Mike using his iPad, he never leaves home without it” and that is a fair question. When I was on the private side of IT I only traveled with my iPad because I never had to do much more than send out a few emails or create a word document, but now that I am on the dark side, I have to use a number of websites for configurations and pricing that do not work with the iPad browsers (or at least do not work well) and I spend the majority of my time in spreadsheets working with formulas and pricing, again which isn’t the greatest on the iPad.
I’m not saying that a MacBook will cure all my technology and productivity issues, but from this experience (and the same scenario plays out almost every time I sit down to do some work when I am not in one of my offices) it is defiantly worth investigating a move to a MacBook.
Monday, June 25, 2012
VMware: VMware vSphere Blog: How to use Port-Mirroring feature of VDS for monitoring virtual machine traffic?
I would like to clarify few things in this blog entry about the Port-mirroring feature that is available on vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS). This feature is similar to the port mirroring capability available on the physical switches. Network administrators can use this feature to troubleshoot any network related issues in the virtual infrastructure and monitor virtual machine to virtual machine traffic that is flowing on the same ESXi host. Network administrators use network analyzer tool, which captures traffic, along with the port mirror feature to perform monitoring and troubleshooting activities. In the physical network, depending on where the analyzer or debug tool is placed in the network, network administrators choose different port mirroring options. The following are some of the standard port mirroring options available on physical switches:
- Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN)
- Remote Switch Port Analyzer (RSPAN)
- Encapsulated Remote Switch Port Analyzer (ERSPAN)
SPAN feature is local to the switch and requires the monitored ports and the destination port are on the same switch. With the release of vSphere 5.0, VMware provides support for only SPAN feature on VDS. The following blog entry<http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2011/08/vsphere-5-new-networking-features-port-mirroring.html> discusses the feature in little more detail. During the setup of a SPAN session customers have to select a virtual port that needs monitoring and then choose a destination virtual port where all the traffic will be mirrored. Here are some of the common monitoring and troubleshooting use cases based on where the analyzer tool is running.
1) Mirroring to an analyzer tool running in a virtual machine on the same host.
As shown in the figure below, you can have a virtual machine run analyzer tool. In such scenario you have to configure the pot mirror session with source as virtual port of the monitored virtual machine and destination as the virtual port of the virtual machine running analyzer tool.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b7115c970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b7115c970d-pi>
2) Mirroring to an external physical analyzer connected directly to the uplink port of the host.
In this case the analyzer tool is running on an external physical device, which is directly connected to the host through a NIC. As shown in the figure below, the source virtual port of the port mirror session remains same but the destination is changed to the uplink port connected to vmnic1. The mirror packets are sent through the vmnic1 to the analyzer device for monitoring.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b71202970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b71202970d-pi>
3) Mirroring to an external physical analyzer connected to a physical switch where the host is also connected.
This setup is possible provided you configure a SPAN session on the VDS and physical switch as well. Let's dig a little more here. As mentioned earlier, SPAN feature is local to a switch and requires both monitored and destination ports on the same switch. If you look at the diagram below, the analyzer is not directly connected to the VDS. It is connected through a physical switch. So this is not a straightforward use case 2.
Let's take a look at the mirror packet flow. The port mirror session is configured on the VDS with the virtual port of the monitored virtual machine as the source and uplink connected to vmnic 1 as the destination. All packets flowing through the monitored virtual machine are now copied through the vmnic1 to the physical switch port. On the same physical switch the analyzer is connected to a different port. The analyzer connected to a port on the same switch is not going to see the traffic mirrored by VDS. For this use case to work, it is not enough to configure the port mirror session on VDS. You have to configure SPAN session on the physical switch with the switch port where the host's vmnic 1 is connected is the monitored port and the destination port is where the analyzer is connected.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d155a1970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d155a1970c-pi>
VDS currently doesn't support RSPAN capability, which allows network administrators to monitor the traffic remotely multiple hops away from the source. Customers have to create a dedicated VLAN to carry the RSPAN traffic and the switches supporting RSPAN feature have to encapsulate all the monitored traffic in this special VLAN.
There is also some confusion because of the GUI screen options provided during the port mirroring setup on VDS.
If you take a look at the configuration screen shown below, there is an encapsulation option shown in the red box. This encapsulation option gives the feeling that RSPAN is supported. However, it is not and you shouldn't configure this parameter.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dc0cc3970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dc0cc3970b-pi>
________________________________
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/how-to-use-port-mirroring-feature-of-vds-for-monitoring-virtual-machine-traffic.html
- Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN)
- Remote Switch Port Analyzer (RSPAN)
- Encapsulated Remote Switch Port Analyzer (ERSPAN)
SPAN feature is local to the switch and requires the monitored ports and the destination port are on the same switch. With the release of vSphere 5.0, VMware provides support for only SPAN feature on VDS. The following blog entry<http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2011/08/vsphere-5-new-networking-features-port-mirroring.html> discusses the feature in little more detail. During the setup of a SPAN session customers have to select a virtual port that needs monitoring and then choose a destination virtual port where all the traffic will be mirrored. Here are some of the common monitoring and troubleshooting use cases based on where the analyzer tool is running.
1) Mirroring to an analyzer tool running in a virtual machine on the same host.
As shown in the figure below, you can have a virtual machine run analyzer tool. In such scenario you have to configure the pot mirror session with source as virtual port of the monitored virtual machine and destination as the virtual port of the virtual machine running analyzer tool.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b7115c970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b7115c970d-pi>
2) Mirroring to an external physical analyzer connected directly to the uplink port of the host.
In this case the analyzer tool is running on an external physical device, which is directly connected to the host through a NIC. As shown in the figure below, the source virtual port of the port mirror session remains same but the destination is changed to the uplink port connected to vmnic1. The mirror packets are sent through the vmnic1 to the analyzer device for monitoring.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b71202970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b71202970d-pi>
3) Mirroring to an external physical analyzer connected to a physical switch where the host is also connected.
This setup is possible provided you configure a SPAN session on the VDS and physical switch as well. Let's dig a little more here. As mentioned earlier, SPAN feature is local to a switch and requires both monitored and destination ports on the same switch. If you look at the diagram below, the analyzer is not directly connected to the VDS. It is connected through a physical switch. So this is not a straightforward use case 2.
Let's take a look at the mirror packet flow. The port mirror session is configured on the VDS with the virtual port of the monitored virtual machine as the source and uplink connected to vmnic 1 as the destination. All packets flowing through the monitored virtual machine are now copied through the vmnic1 to the physical switch port. On the same physical switch the analyzer is connected to a different port. The analyzer connected to a port on the same switch is not going to see the traffic mirrored by VDS. For this use case to work, it is not enough to configure the port mirror session on VDS. You have to configure SPAN session on the physical switch with the switch port where the host's vmnic 1 is connected is the monitored port and the destination port is where the analyzer is connected.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d155a1970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d155a1970c-pi>
VDS currently doesn't support RSPAN capability, which allows network administrators to monitor the traffic remotely multiple hops away from the source. Customers have to create a dedicated VLAN to carry the RSPAN traffic and the switches supporting RSPAN feature have to encapsulate all the monitored traffic in this special VLAN.
There is also some confusion because of the GUI screen options provided during the port mirroring setup on VDS.
If you take a look at the configuration screen shown below, there is an encapsulation option shown in the red box. This encapsulation option gives the feeling that RSPAN is supported. However, it is not and you shouldn't configure this parameter.
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dc0cc3970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dc0cc3970b-pi>
________________________________
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/how-to-use-port-mirroring-feature-of-vds-for-monitoring-virtual-machine-traffic.html
VMware: VMware vSphere Blog: Multi-disk replication into common directory with vSphere Replication
When replicating VMs with vSphere Replication you have control over the target location for your VMDKs that are being replicated. For example, you may have a VM with two disks and choose to place them in different directories and locations than they were in the primary site from which they are being copied.
That's great, but something that never came up with array replication is what happens when we want to put all the disks in the *same* directory at the recovery site?
If we have a machine ("VM1") that has 2 VMDKs each on different datastores, for example, they might both be named the same. We might have two "VM1.vmdk" files. In fact, this happens by default - the first disk in a directory is named for the parent VM without consideration for the fact that there may be other VMs elsewhere on different disks.
Disk one:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dbd1fb970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dbd1fb970b-pi>
Looks a lot like disk 2:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6d8ae970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6d8ae970d-pi>
Obviously attempting to replicate these VMs into a single directory on the same datastore will cause difficulty on the recovery site. We can't have more than one VMDK of a particular name in a directory.
vSphere Replication is smart - it will detect that an existing disk is in that directory, but it is not so smart that it understands what it is. It assumes very smartly that this is a seed disk you have copied in via sneakernet. If you've got this far with a multi-disk VM, don't choose this option, or you'll use the 'first' disk as a seed and it will do a full synch of the second disk against it, overwriting it!
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d1212c970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d1212c970c-pi>
What are the options? Well first, you can get to the CLI and use vmkfstools to detach, rename, and re-attach the disk then replicate to your heart's content.
Another idea is to create folders for these disks and populate them into unique folders. I.e. "VM1" is the main folder and within it there will be the VMX and all other items and sundry for a VM. In your other directories (such as "OS Disk" and "Data Disk") you can replicate the individual VMDKs. Each directory will then contain a unique but homonymous named "vm1.vmdk".
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6daa3970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6daa3970d-pi>
Set your VR target per-disk, and choose the appropriate directory at the recovery site by selecting to "specify datastore folder". This keeps your data separate, retains easy management and the ability to identify a VMDK by function easily, as well as giving you the freedom to use separate data stores at the source and single data stores at the recovery site.
Original Post by Ken Werneburg
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/multidisk-replication.html
That's great, but something that never came up with array replication is what happens when we want to put all the disks in the *same* directory at the recovery site?
If we have a machine ("VM1") that has 2 VMDKs each on different datastores, for example, they might both be named the same. We might have two "VM1.vmdk" files. In fact, this happens by default - the first disk in a directory is named for the parent VM without consideration for the fact that there may be other VMs elsewhere on different disks.
Disk one:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dbd1fb970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef016767dbd1fb970b-pi>
Looks a lot like disk 2:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6d8ae970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6d8ae970d-pi>
Obviously attempting to replicate these VMs into a single directory on the same datastore will cause difficulty on the recovery site. We can't have more than one VMDK of a particular name in a directory.
vSphere Replication is smart - it will detect that an existing disk is in that directory, but it is not so smart that it understands what it is. It assumes very smartly that this is a seed disk you have copied in via sneakernet. If you've got this far with a multi-disk VM, don't choose this option, or you'll use the 'first' disk as a seed and it will do a full synch of the second disk against it, overwriting it!
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d1212c970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615d1212c970c-pi>
What are the options? Well first, you can get to the CLI and use vmkfstools to detach, rename, and re-attach the disk then replicate to your heart's content.
Another idea is to create folders for these disks and populate them into unique folders. I.e. "VM1" is the main folder and within it there will be the VMX and all other items and sundry for a VM. In your other directories (such as "OS Disk" and "Data Disk") you can replicate the individual VMDKs. Each directory will then contain a unique but homonymous named "vm1.vmdk".
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6daa3970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017742b6daa3970d-pi>
Set your VR target per-disk, and choose the appropriate directory at the recovery site by selecting to "specify datastore folder". This keeps your data separate, retains easy management and the ability to identify a VMDK by function easily, as well as giving you the freedom to use separate data stores at the source and single data stores at the recovery site.
Original Post by Ken Werneburg
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/multidisk-replication.html
Friday, June 22, 2012
EMC Live Webcast: Consolidate Backup and Archiving with EMC Data Domain and EMC SourceOne
Consolidate Backup and Archiving with EMC Data Domain and EMC SourceOne
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/68911/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]
Date:
Jul 12, 12
Time:
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT (Set Time Zone)
Event Type:
EMC Live Webcast
Category:
Storage, Intelligent Information Management, Information Governance, Archiving
Location:
Online
Details:
This webcast illustrates how EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems and EMC SourceOne archiving software together can transform your backup and archiving strategies. Attend and learn how these products provide complete archiving and discovery while delivering consolidated backup and archive storage with high-speed, inline deduplication.
Attend this webcast and learn how EMC can help you transform backup and archiving:
* Increase productivity with integrated content archiving for email, files, and Microsoft SharePoint.
* Enhance data value with fast, online access for search and eDiscovery.
* Reduce cost with deduplication storage capable of storing massive amounts of backup and archive data for years.
* Meet governance and compliance standards including SEC 17a-4, FINRA, and other leading regulations.
[http://www.emc.com/images/events/buttons/btn_register_view_recorded.gif]<https://emcinformation.com/68911/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/68911/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]
Date:
Jul 12, 12
Time:
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT (Set Time Zone)
Event Type:
EMC Live Webcast
Category:
Storage, Intelligent Information Management, Information Governance, Archiving
Location:
Online
Details:
This webcast illustrates how EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems and EMC SourceOne archiving software together can transform your backup and archiving strategies. Attend and learn how these products provide complete archiving and discovery while delivering consolidated backup and archive storage with high-speed, inline deduplication.
Attend this webcast and learn how EMC can help you transform backup and archiving:
* Increase productivity with integrated content archiving for email, files, and Microsoft SharePoint.
* Enhance data value with fast, online access for search and eDiscovery.
* Reduce cost with deduplication storage capable of storing massive amounts of backup and archive data for years.
* Meet governance and compliance standards including SEC 17a-4, FINRA, and other leading regulations.
[http://www.emc.com/images/events/buttons/btn_register_view_recorded.gif]<https://emcinformation.com/68911/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Performance of vCenter 5.0 in ROBO environments white paper released
by Duncan Epping
I just finished reading the "Performance of VMware vCenter 5.0 in remote offices and branch offices (ROBO)" white paper. I thought it was an excellent read and recommend it to anyone who has a ROBO environment. Also it is interesting to know what kind of traffic hosts / VMs drive in general to vCenter. Especially the details around the statistics level are worth reading for those deploying larger environments as it also gives a sense of the amount of data that vCenter is processing.
Nice work Fei Chen! You can find the paper here:
Performance of VMware vCenter 5.0 in Remote Offices and Branch Offices (ROBO)
<http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10165>This document details the performance of typical vCenter 5.0 operations in a use case where vCenter manages ESXi hosts over a network with limited bandwidth and high latency, which is also known as a remote office, branch office (ROBO) environment.
(Although the date stamp on this entry says 2010 it is a June / 2012 paper, I will try to get this fixed!
________________________________
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/YellowBricks/~3/jw6HFBeViHo/
I just finished reading the "Performance of VMware vCenter 5.0 in remote offices and branch offices (ROBO)" white paper. I thought it was an excellent read and recommend it to anyone who has a ROBO environment. Also it is interesting to know what kind of traffic hosts / VMs drive in general to vCenter. Especially the details around the statistics level are worth reading for those deploying larger environments as it also gives a sense of the amount of data that vCenter is processing.
Nice work Fei Chen! You can find the paper here:
Performance of VMware vCenter 5.0 in Remote Offices and Branch Offices (ROBO)
<http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10165>This document details the performance of typical vCenter 5.0 operations in a use case where vCenter manages ESXi hosts over a network with limited bandwidth and high latency, which is also known as a remote office, branch office (ROBO) environment.
(Although the date stamp on this entry says 2010 it is a June / 2012 paper, I will try to get this fixed!
________________________________
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/YellowBricks/~3/jw6HFBeViHo/
Saturday, June 16, 2012
EMC Live Webcast: EMC Solutions for VMware View (Part of a Series)
EMC Solutions for VMware View (Part of a Series)
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/67809/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]
Date: Jul 12, 12
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT (Set Time Zone)
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Virtualization
Location: Online
Details:
Discover how EMC solutions for VMware View environments let you store, manage, protect, and analyze information with more agility, trust, and efficiency. The EMC VNX series, optimized for VMware View environments, offers you a scalable, easy-to-deploy, quality end user computing experience. Give your workforce flexible access from any device, anywhere—and still maintain IT control.
Join us for this webcast and learn to:
* Accelerate deployment of your end user computing strategy.
* Increase end-user productivity with enhanced performance.
* Improve control and manageability of virtual desktops.
* Support compliance initiatives related to corporate information and business continuity.
________________________________
Original Page: http://emcfeeds.emc.com/l?s=100003s2sm4ns80vcpn&r=googlereader&he=687474702533412532462532467777772e656d632e636f6d2532466576656e747325324632303132253246713325324630372d31322d31322d656d632d736f6c7574696f6e732d666f722d766d776172652d766965772e68746d253346434d502533445253532d6576656e7473&i=70726f78793a687474703a2f2f7777772e656d632e636f6d2f6576656e74732f323031322f71332f30372d31322d31322d656d632d736f6c7574696f6e732d666f722d766d776172652d766965772e68746d
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/67809/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]
Date: Jul 12, 12
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT (Set Time Zone)
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Virtualization
Location: Online
Details:
Discover how EMC solutions for VMware View environments let you store, manage, protect, and analyze information with more agility, trust, and efficiency. The EMC VNX series, optimized for VMware View environments, offers you a scalable, easy-to-deploy, quality end user computing experience. Give your workforce flexible access from any device, anywhere—and still maintain IT control.
Join us for this webcast and learn to:
* Accelerate deployment of your end user computing strategy.
* Increase end-user productivity with enhanced performance.
* Improve control and manageability of virtual desktops.
* Support compliance initiatives related to corporate information and business continuity.
________________________________
Original Page: http://emcfeeds.emc.com/l?s=100003s2sm4ns80vcpn&r=googlereader&he=687474702533412532462532467777772e656d632e636f6d2532466576656e747325324632303132253246713325324630372d31322d31322d656d632d736f6c7574696f6e732d666f722d766d776172652d766965772e68746d253346434d502533445253532d6576656e7473&i=70726f78793a687474703a2f2f7777772e656d632e636f6d2f6576656e74732f323031322f71332f30372d31322d31322d656d632d736f6c7574696f6e732d666f722d766d776172652d766965772e68746d
EMC Live Webcast: Upgrading, Migrating and Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange (Part of a Series)
Upgrading, Migrating and Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange (Part of a Series)
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/68102/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]Date: Jul 19, 12
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Virtualization
Location: Online
Details:
Planning to upgrade, migrate, or virtualize Microsoft Exchange? Join EMC Consulting for this exclusive opportunity to exploit proven Best Practices. You will learn to overcome the challenges of consolidating and upgrading your messaging system to Exchange 2010. And explore the significant benefits of virtualizing Microsoft Exchange with VMware.
Attend this webcast and learn:
* How to avoid common pitfalls with Exchange upgrade and migration.
* What advantages result from moving to the latest version of Exchange.
* Why EMC Consulting experience and expertise can help ensure success for your messaging initiative.
________________________________
Original Page: http://emcfeeds.emc.com/l?s=100003s2sm4ns80vcpn&r=googlereader&he=687474702533412532462532467777772e656d632e636f6d2532466576656e747325324632303132253246713325324630372d31392d31322d757067726164696e672d6d6967726174696e672d7669727475616c697a696e672d6d732d65786368616e67652e68746d253346434d502533445253532d6576656e7473&i=70726f78793a687474703a2f2f7777772e656d632e636f6d2f6576656e74732f323031322f71332f30372d31392d31322d757067726164696e672d6d6967726174696e672d7669727475616c697a696e672d6d732d65786368616e67652e68746d
Register Now<https://emcinformation.com/68102/REG/.ashx?reg_src=WEB>
[http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]Date: Jul 19, 12
![http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]Date](http://www.emc.com/images/common/spacer.gif]Date){kind=link}
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Virtualization
Location: Online
Details:
Planning to upgrade, migrate, or virtualize Microsoft Exchange? Join EMC Consulting for this exclusive opportunity to exploit proven Best Practices. You will learn to overcome the challenges of consolidating and upgrading your messaging system to Exchange 2010. And explore the significant benefits of virtualizing Microsoft Exchange with VMware.
Attend this webcast and learn:
* How to avoid common pitfalls with Exchange upgrade and migration.
* What advantages result from moving to the latest version of Exchange.
* Why EMC Consulting experience and expertise can help ensure success for your messaging initiative.
________________________________
Original Page: http://emcfeeds.emc.com/l?s=100003s2sm4ns80vcpn&r=googlereader&he=687474702533412532462532467777772e656d632e636f6d2532466576656e747325324632303132253246713325324630372d31392d31322d757067726164696e672d6d6967726174696e672d7669727475616c697a696e672d6d732d65786368616e67652e68746d253346434d502533445253532d6576656e7473&i=70726f78793a687474703a2f2f7777772e656d632e636f6d2f6576656e74732f323031322f71332f30372d31392d31322d757067726164696e672d6d6967726174696e672d7669727475616c697a696e672d6d732d65786368616e67652e68746d
Friday, June 15, 2012
VMware Labs presents its latest fling - ThinApp Factory - Eric Sloof
The ThinApp Factory is a virtual appliance that brings centralized administration and automation to the process of creating virtualized Windows applications with VMware ThinApp technology. ThinApp Factory utilizes vSphere API's to spawn workloads which automatically convert fileshares of application installers into ThinApp application containers. These workloads can be run in parellel to maximize throughput and increase ROI for virtualization projects. Packagers and administrators can now utilize 'Recipes' during this packaging process. Recipes are simply small json files which contain a redistributable blueprint of the customizations and optimizations necessary for packaging complex applications. These recipes can be created and now exchanged freely with other customers via the ThinApp community site<http://labs.vmware.com/flings/ThinApp%20Community%20Site%20above%20to%20http://communities.vmware.com/thinap.jspa>.
Key Features
* Automates packaging of application installers into virtualized Windows applications.
* Leverages vSphere, vCenter for automation of workloads to efficiently package 1000's of applications.
* Provides and utilizes 'Recipes' as redistributable blueprints for application packaging.
* Provides a lightweight web UI with a dashboard for administrators to use for the entire workflow of packaging to distribution.
* Enables administrators to import and edit existing ThinApp projects and modify package.ini, registry, and file settings through the web UI.
* Integration with Horizon Application Manager application catalog for automated population of application metadata and deployment with the Horizon ThinApp Agent.
________________________________
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/Y_8QDnLUAEs/2071-VMware-Labs-presents-its-latest-fling-ThinApp-Factory.html
Key Features
* Automates packaging of application installers into virtualized Windows applications.
* Leverages vSphere, vCenter for automation of workloads to efficiently package 1000's of applications.
* Provides and utilizes 'Recipes' as redistributable blueprints for application packaging.
* Provides a lightweight web UI with a dashboard for administrators to use for the entire workflow of packaging to distribution.
* Enables administrators to import and edit existing ThinApp projects and modify package.ini, registry, and file settings through the web UI.
* Integration with Horizon Application Manager application catalog for automated population of application metadata and deployment with the Horizon ThinApp Agent.
________________________________
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/Y_8QDnLUAEs/2071-VMware-Labs-presents-its-latest-fling-ThinApp-Factory.html
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
White Paper - Mythbusting Goes Virtual
The information being presented in this paper comes courtesy of the great minds of Eric Sloof, a VMware Certified Instructor, vExpert, consultant and active VMware community member; and Mattias Sundling, also a vExpert, a Quest Software employee and an evangelist focused on the virtualization space. The information presented here was discussed in depth during an April 2, 2012 webcast with Mattias Sundling and Eric Sloof.
[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/mythwp.png]Regardless of the underlying technology solution, as anything becomes increasingly popular and widespread in use, certain pieces of sometimes inaccurate information about that product become permanent fact, often taking on legend-like status. Moreover, as a product matures, it changes; it evolves by taking on new features, shedding old ones and improving the functionality everywhere else. However, no matter how much a product matures and no matter how much it evolves, many products carry with them myths that follow through the ages. Myths that may or may not have once been true, but are used as truisms nonetheless even as the version count rises ever higher. In this white paper, we will expose four such myths.
* Myth #1: RDMs have better performance than VMFS
* Myth #2: Changed Block Tracking causes significant overhead on your virtual machines
* Myth #3: Resource pools should always be used to categorize and allocate resources to virtual machines
* Myth #4: LSI Logic SCSI is always better than paravirtualized SCSI
http://www.vkernel.com/resources/whitepapers/mythbusting-goes-virtual
[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/mythwp.png]Regardless of the underlying technology solution, as anything becomes increasingly popular and widespread in use, certain pieces of sometimes inaccurate information about that product become permanent fact, often taking on legend-like status. Moreover, as a product matures, it changes; it evolves by taking on new features, shedding old ones and improving the functionality everywhere else. However, no matter how much a product matures and no matter how much it evolves, many products carry with them myths that follow through the ages. Myths that may or may not have once been true, but are used as truisms nonetheless even as the version count rises ever higher. In this white paper, we will expose four such myths.
![http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/mythwp.png]Regardless](http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/mythwp.png]Regardless){kind=link}
* Myth #1: RDMs have better performance than VMFS
* Myth #2: Changed Block Tracking causes significant overhead on your virtual machines
* Myth #3: Resource pools should always be used to categorize and allocate resources to virtual machines
* Myth #4: LSI Logic SCSI is always better than paravirtualized SCSI
http://www.vkernel.com/resources/whitepapers/mythbusting-goes-virtual
VMware: VMware SMB Blog: Socialcast Private Social Network Now Free for 50-Users or Below
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167675ef282970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167675ef282970b-pi>
Since VMware acquired Socialcast in 2011, we've had many exciting conversations with our customers about helping them implement private social networks within their organizations. Many of our customers are new to Enterprise Social Networks<http://www.socialcast.com/> while others have had varying degrees of [non]success with restricted, free trials or feature-constrained free offerings in the market – having 300,000 customers makes it easy to get lots of feedback quickly. We've heard from enough customers to recognize that the market need a great, free, Enterprise Social Network offering so companies can get started on the right foot with their social journey. We believe VMware is in the best position to deliver this experience.
Last week we announced that all the capabilities of the Socialcast enterprise version are free for all Socialcast communities of up to 50 users. We want all VMware customers to create a free Socialcast community and we want to hear about your journey. With complete access to all the features<http://www.socialcast.com/product> that make social in the enterprise revolutionary, small businesses and departments of larger companies can get started with an enterprise social network with the confidence that they are starting with a company that they want to end up with for the long term. Also, time and time again we've heard from our closest friends - systems administrators, application owners, IT and Security Managers - that have to pull the plug on a less-than-reliable social network because the they need access to essential administration and security functionality. Nobody wins when this happens. There's a way to blend the necessities of protecting company IP with a great user experience, but that doesn't start by circumventing the IT policies that keep company data and employees safe.
Enterprise social networks are on their way to becoming an essential part of the workplace experience – unless you think the 850M users of Facebook is a fad. According to Forrester 49% of companies will have investments in social networking solutions in 2012<http://blogs.forrester.com/rob_koplowitz/12-04-03-delivering_the_social_business_imperative>. For small businesses enterprise social networks are particularly interesting. As opposed to large companies looking to "shrink" the size of the organization, small companies often have fewer tools in place to address the issues around collaboration and integrating their workforce and systems. We've seen immediate changes in the way Socialcast's small business customers collaborate as well as a long-term shift in how they use other tools like email and file sharing. Additionally, small companies are often part of an ecosystem of vendors, customers and an extended workforce – Socialcast allows small businesses to connect this ecosystem in a private, secure way that makes everyone's work more efficient.
Starting with a free Socialcast community provides access to the rich set of features that will unite the people, applications and information in your company. If you've heard about enterprise social but haven't started your journey, or you want to bring an incredible new collaboration tool into you organization, now is the time to get started. Any organization can sign up for a free Socialcast community at http://www.socialcast.com/
~Matt Stodolnic, Sr. Director, VMware Applications Marketing
________________________________
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/2012/06/socialcastfreefor50users.html
Since VMware acquired Socialcast in 2011, we've had many exciting conversations with our customers about helping them implement private social networks within their organizations. Many of our customers are new to Enterprise Social Networks<http://www.socialcast.com/> while others have had varying degrees of [non]success with restricted, free trials or feature-constrained free offerings in the market – having 300,000 customers makes it easy to get lots of feedback quickly. We've heard from enough customers to recognize that the market need a great, free, Enterprise Social Network offering so companies can get started on the right foot with their social journey. We believe VMware is in the best position to deliver this experience.
Last week we announced that all the capabilities of the Socialcast enterprise version are free for all Socialcast communities of up to 50 users. We want all VMware customers to create a free Socialcast community and we want to hear about your journey. With complete access to all the features<http://www.socialcast.com/product> that make social in the enterprise revolutionary, small businesses and departments of larger companies can get started with an enterprise social network with the confidence that they are starting with a company that they want to end up with for the long term. Also, time and time again we've heard from our closest friends - systems administrators, application owners, IT and Security Managers - that have to pull the plug on a less-than-reliable social network because the they need access to essential administration and security functionality. Nobody wins when this happens. There's a way to blend the necessities of protecting company IP with a great user experience, but that doesn't start by circumventing the IT policies that keep company data and employees safe.
Enterprise social networks are on their way to becoming an essential part of the workplace experience – unless you think the 850M users of Facebook is a fad. According to Forrester 49% of companies will have investments in social networking solutions in 2012<http://blogs.forrester.com/rob_koplowitz/12-04-03-delivering_the_social_business_imperative>. For small businesses enterprise social networks are particularly interesting. As opposed to large companies looking to "shrink" the size of the organization, small companies often have fewer tools in place to address the issues around collaboration and integrating their workforce and systems. We've seen immediate changes in the way Socialcast's small business customers collaborate as well as a long-term shift in how they use other tools like email and file sharing. Additionally, small companies are often part of an ecosystem of vendors, customers and an extended workforce – Socialcast allows small businesses to connect this ecosystem in a private, secure way that makes everyone's work more efficient.
Starting with a free Socialcast community provides access to the rich set of features that will unite the people, applications and information in your company. If you've heard about enterprise social but haven't started your journey, or you want to bring an incredible new collaboration tool into you organization, now is the time to get started. Any organization can sign up for a free Socialcast community at http://www.socialcast.com/
~Matt Stodolnic, Sr. Director, VMware Applications Marketing
________________________________
Original Page: http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/2012/06/socialcastfreefor50users.html
Optimizing Backup and Recovery for Oracle Applications in VMware Environments with EMC
For many businesses, mission-critical Oracle applications are the foundation of their business operations – and revenue. Transforming these applications through virtualization with VMware increases efficiency, productivity and agility – but must be done with the right backup infrastructure to ensure protection and maximize savings. EMC disk-based backup with deduplication provides the performance, savings and flexibility you need to confidently accelerate Oracle virtualization efforts.
Attend this webcast and learn how EMC backup and recovery solutions can:
1. Enable you to dramatically speed backup and recovery in VMware vSphere® environments
2. Reduce backup storage requirements
3. Efficiently replicate for fast DR – and do so with flexible protection options
Featured Speakers:
George Trujillo, Senior Systems Engineer, VMware
Matthew Ellis, Senior Technical Consultant, EMC Corporation
Sam Lucido, Oracle Global Function Leader, EMC Corporation
Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 9:00 AM PDT
Monday, June 11, 2012
Press Release: Customers Worldwide Choose EMC as #1 Storage in Mission Critical Environments
Users Cite EMC as #1 Storage Technology for Oracle, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, SAP, Business Intelligence, Analytics, VDI and Home Directories
* According to a latest IDC¹ Storage Users Demand Study, measuring how storage capacity is consumed by the most widely-used business applications, in the first half of 2011, EMC—ranked again—as the leading provider of storage technology in Oracle, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, SAP, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Home Directory environments.
* The IDC Storage Users Demand Study 2011 - Fall Edition findings are based on the survey of 1,000 respondents representing 15 countries and across 19 industries with company size ranging from 50 employees to over 10,000 employees.
* In related news, today EMC also announced</about/news/press/2012/20120611-01.htm> new proven solutions for Microsoft and support for Windows Server 2012.
Full Story:
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced it is ranked by customers across the globe as the #1 storage choice for mission critical environments, according to the latest end-user study</collateral/analyst-reports/suds-fall-edition-june-2012.pdf> from IDC¹. The survey ranks storage vendors based on customer deployment patterns within the most widely-used enterprise applications. According to the IDC study, more customers choose EMC® storage than any other vendors for their Oracle, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, SAP, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Home Directory environments.
The results of the IDC study are based on the survey of 1,000 respondents representing 15 countries and across 19 industries with company size ranging from 50 employees to over 10,000 employees, which was completed in Fall 2011. The survey focused primarily on applications, enabling IDC to ascertain end-user sentiment regarding their preference toward certain brands based on specific applications.
Customer Quotes
Dan Hein, Director of Global IS Shared Services, Columbia Sportswear
"Our challenge was to build a data center with new levels of automation and the highest levels of protection. We evaluated many vendors and ultimately selected EMC because of the features in EMC VMAX®—and its strength in SAP environments, EMC's holistic view on storage with a variety of technologies and industry leading solutions that we knew we could count on."
Angelic Gibson, Director of IT Operations, American Tire Distributors
"EMC has enabled us to scale our environment, add more power on-demand with no downtime and without any impact to our users. We can provide better performance, scalability and availability with no downtime – a major benefit to us. All the while, we've managed to remain transparent to the customer, delivering services to them seamlessly. We've had great success with EMC VNX® unified storage and VMware technologies and both companies have been integral along our journey. In addition, through the use of VMware server virtualization we have the ability bring up new application tiers for Oracle eBusiness Suite in less than 20 minutes, without application downtime."
Dennis Robinson, Director, Technical Infrastructure, GENEX Services, Inc.
"GENEX provides insurers, employers and third party administrators with managed care solutions and information management capabilities. In order to grow our business it is critical to be able to scale our IT infrastructure and crunch large chunks of data efficiently and cost effectively. Since replacing our legacy storage and deploying EMC VNX unified storage and FAST Suite technology in a VMware vSphere environment, we've seen a major difference in our overall performance and have increased our business agility with the ability to handle multiple transactions at a time. Virtualizing Oracle on EMC storage with VMware vSphere has played a key role in accelerating our journey to the cloud. We're pleased to see EMC investing in validated solutions that help us capture the potential performance enhancements and cost savings available with an integrated EMC, VMware and Oracle environment."
Daniel Mettling, Information Technology Manager, Park Industries, Inc.
"The availability of our SQL Server environment is absolutely critical to our business. Downtime means we can't place sales orders, issue work orders for the shop floor or log service calls. Since implementing VNXe®, we've had 100% availability of SQL Server and all other applications in our virtualized environment."
John Orbaugh, Director of Technology, Tyler Independent School District
"We compared the cost of doing things the old way, before we transformed our IT infrastructure with EMC, which would involve replacing our physical computers every few years, instead delivering virtual desktops from our existing hardware. The ROI analysis showed that we will save an astonishing $1.3 million in just one year and more than $3 million over five years."
Industry Analyst Quote
Natalya Yezhkova, Research Director, IDC's Worldwide Storage Systems Research and Lead Analyst, Storage Users Demand Study (SUDS)
"IDC initiated its biannual worldwide survey of storage administrators that analyzes how storage capacity is consumed by the major data use cases from the most widely-used business applications to IT infrastructure support. The data suggests that EMC, which accounted for nearly a quarter of external terabytes shipped worldwide in the first half of 2011, shipped more storage than any other enterprise storage systems supplier to run eight out of nine major data use cases we surveyed."
EMC Executive Quote
Jeremy Burton, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, EMC
"Whether in traditional, next-generation virtualized cloud, Big Data or Hybrid Cloud, customers are choosing EMC as their #1 choice for the most mission critical application environments. Our product and technology innovation centered on helping customers handle the data deluge driven by the two hottest trends in IT—the transition to cloud computing and the management of Big Data."
Original Post:
http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2012/20120611-02.htm?CMP=RSS-news
* According to a latest IDC¹ Storage Users Demand Study, measuring how storage capacity is consumed by the most widely-used business applications, in the first half of 2011, EMC—ranked again—as the leading provider of storage technology in Oracle, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, SAP, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Home Directory environments.
* The IDC Storage Users Demand Study 2011 - Fall Edition findings are based on the survey of 1,000 respondents representing 15 countries and across 19 industries with company size ranging from 50 employees to over 10,000 employees.
* In related news, today EMC also announced</about/news/press/2012/20120611-01.htm> new proven solutions for Microsoft and support for Windows Server 2012.
Full Story:
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced it is ranked by customers across the globe as the #1 storage choice for mission critical environments, according to the latest end-user study</collateral/analyst-reports/suds-fall-edition-june-2012.pdf> from IDC¹. The survey ranks storage vendors based on customer deployment patterns within the most widely-used enterprise applications. According to the IDC study, more customers choose EMC® storage than any other vendors for their Oracle, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, SAP, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Home Directory environments.
The results of the IDC study are based on the survey of 1,000 respondents representing 15 countries and across 19 industries with company size ranging from 50 employees to over 10,000 employees, which was completed in Fall 2011. The survey focused primarily on applications, enabling IDC to ascertain end-user sentiment regarding their preference toward certain brands based on specific applications.
Customer Quotes
Dan Hein, Director of Global IS Shared Services, Columbia Sportswear
"Our challenge was to build a data center with new levels of automation and the highest levels of protection. We evaluated many vendors and ultimately selected EMC because of the features in EMC VMAX®—and its strength in SAP environments, EMC's holistic view on storage with a variety of technologies and industry leading solutions that we knew we could count on."
Angelic Gibson, Director of IT Operations, American Tire Distributors
"EMC has enabled us to scale our environment, add more power on-demand with no downtime and without any impact to our users. We can provide better performance, scalability and availability with no downtime – a major benefit to us. All the while, we've managed to remain transparent to the customer, delivering services to them seamlessly. We've had great success with EMC VNX® unified storage and VMware technologies and both companies have been integral along our journey. In addition, through the use of VMware server virtualization we have the ability bring up new application tiers for Oracle eBusiness Suite in less than 20 minutes, without application downtime."
Dennis Robinson, Director, Technical Infrastructure, GENEX Services, Inc.
"GENEX provides insurers, employers and third party administrators with managed care solutions and information management capabilities. In order to grow our business it is critical to be able to scale our IT infrastructure and crunch large chunks of data efficiently and cost effectively. Since replacing our legacy storage and deploying EMC VNX unified storage and FAST Suite technology in a VMware vSphere environment, we've seen a major difference in our overall performance and have increased our business agility with the ability to handle multiple transactions at a time. Virtualizing Oracle on EMC storage with VMware vSphere has played a key role in accelerating our journey to the cloud. We're pleased to see EMC investing in validated solutions that help us capture the potential performance enhancements and cost savings available with an integrated EMC, VMware and Oracle environment."
Daniel Mettling, Information Technology Manager, Park Industries, Inc.
"The availability of our SQL Server environment is absolutely critical to our business. Downtime means we can't place sales orders, issue work orders for the shop floor or log service calls. Since implementing VNXe®, we've had 100% availability of SQL Server and all other applications in our virtualized environment."
John Orbaugh, Director of Technology, Tyler Independent School District
"We compared the cost of doing things the old way, before we transformed our IT infrastructure with EMC, which would involve replacing our physical computers every few years, instead delivering virtual desktops from our existing hardware. The ROI analysis showed that we will save an astonishing $1.3 million in just one year and more than $3 million over five years."
Industry Analyst Quote
Natalya Yezhkova, Research Director, IDC's Worldwide Storage Systems Research and Lead Analyst, Storage Users Demand Study (SUDS)
"IDC initiated its biannual worldwide survey of storage administrators that analyzes how storage capacity is consumed by the major data use cases from the most widely-used business applications to IT infrastructure support. The data suggests that EMC, which accounted for nearly a quarter of external terabytes shipped worldwide in the first half of 2011, shipped more storage than any other enterprise storage systems supplier to run eight out of nine major data use cases we surveyed."
EMC Executive Quote
Jeremy Burton, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, EMC
"Whether in traditional, next-generation virtualized cloud, Big Data or Hybrid Cloud, customers are choosing EMC as their #1 choice for the most mission critical application environments. Our product and technology innovation centered on helping customers handle the data deluge driven by the two hottest trends in IT—the transition to cloud computing and the management of Big Data."
Original Post:
http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2012/20120611-02.htm?CMP=RSS-news
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Video - VMware View 5 Persona Management - Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL
Great video from Pete Long<https://twitter.com/#!/petenetlive> about VMware View 5 Persona Management. You should also check-out his website at petenetlive.com<http://www.petenetlive.com/>.
With VMware View 5, VMware introduces View Persona Managemen<http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Persona-Management-Deployment-Guide.pdf>t. View Persona Management preserves user profiles and dynamically synchronizes them with a remote profile repository. View Persona Management does not require the configuration of Windows roaming profiles, and you can bypass Windows Active Directory in the management of View user profiles. If you already use roaming profiles, Persona Management enhances their functionality.
Persona Management downloads only the files that Windows requires at login, such as user registry files. When the user or application opens other files from the desktop profile folder, these files are copied from the stored user persona to the View desktop. This algorithm provides performance beyond that achieved with Windows roaming profiles.
In addition, View copies recent user profile changes to the desktop profile up to the remote repository every few minutes. The default is every ten minutes, and this time period is configurable.
Original Post:
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2066-Video-VMware-View-5-Persona-Management.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ntpronl+%28Eric+Sloof+%7C+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ntpro.nl%29
Mike Yallits, VTSP
Client Account Manager
ESTI Consulting Services
Cell: 204 294-7773
mike.yallits@esti.ca<mailto:mike.yallits@esti.ca>
With VMware View 5, VMware introduces View Persona Managemen<http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-View-Persona-Management-Deployment-Guide.pdf>t. View Persona Management preserves user profiles and dynamically synchronizes them with a remote profile repository. View Persona Management does not require the configuration of Windows roaming profiles, and you can bypass Windows Active Directory in the management of View user profiles. If you already use roaming profiles, Persona Management enhances their functionality.
Persona Management downloads only the files that Windows requires at login, such as user registry files. When the user or application opens other files from the desktop profile folder, these files are copied from the stored user persona to the View desktop. This algorithm provides performance beyond that achieved with Windows roaming profiles.
In addition, View copies recent user profile changes to the desktop profile up to the remote repository every few minutes. The default is every ten minutes, and this time period is configurable.
Original Post:
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2066-Video-VMware-View-5-Persona-Management.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ntpronl+%28Eric+Sloof+%7C+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ntpro.nl%29
Mike Yallits, VTSP
Client Account Manager
ESTI Consulting Services
Cell: 204 294-7773
mike.yallits@esti.ca<mailto:mike.yallits@esti.ca>
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Automate the Hardening of Your Virtual Machine VMX Configurations
By William Lam, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer
As you probably have heard, VMware has just released the official vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide<http://blogs.vmware.com/security/2012/06/vsphere-50-security-hardening-guide-released.html>. In addition to providing the latest guidelines for the vSphere 5.0 platform, the new hardening guide also includes several enhancements, one of which are the CLI (ESXi Shell, vCLI or PowerCLI) commands for assessment and/or remediation for a given guideline. One particular section of the hardening guide that has been quite popular over the years is securing the Virtual Machine's VMX configuration file. You might ask, how would you go about automating these change across all your virtual machines?
I had written an article called Accessing Virtual Machine Settings<http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/03/acessing-virtual-machine-advanced-settings.html> not too long ago which shows shows you how to modify/add a single advanced setting to a virtual machine. You can easily modify those scripts to operate on more than one advanced setting. In this article, we will demonstrate these modified scripts which allows you to specify multiple advanced settings to be applied for a given virtual machine to help harden their configurations.
Disclaimer: These script are provided for informational/educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.
Below are examples of both a PowerCLI and vSphere SDK for Perl script which both accepts a file that contains a list of key/value pair advanced settings (separated by a comma) that you wish to add/modify for a virtual machine.
Here is an example of a file containing a few of the vSphere 5 Security Hardening advanced settings I wish to add to a virtual machine:
isolation.bios.bbs.disable,TRUE
isolation.device.connectable.disable,TRUE
isolation.monitor.control.disable,TRUE
isolation.tools.diskShrink.disable,TRUE
isolation.tools.diskWiper.disable,TRUE
log.keepOld,10
log.rotateSize,10000
RemoteDisplay.maxConnections,2
tools.guestlib.enableHostInfo,FALSE
tools.setInfo.sizeLimit,1048576
vmci0.unrestricted,FALSE
Note: You can apply the advanced settings while the virtual machine is running, but the changes will NOT go into effect until the virtual machine has been completely powered off and then powered back on. A guestOS reboot will not be sufficient as the VMX configurations are only read during the initial power on.
PowerCLI
Download script: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-18653
<http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-19253>
Usage: To run this script you will need the latest version of PowerCLI installed and PowerShell v2, paste the script into your editor or Powercli window once connected to the vCenter server using the Connect-VIServer cmdlet.
Here is an example of updating a virtual machine with the list of advanced settings:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0163063a1f15970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0163063a1f15970d-pi>
Here is an example where we update all VMs in a particular cluster:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab02970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab02970b-pi>
Here is an example of listing the advanced settings for the virtual machine:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab83970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab83970b-pi>
vSphere SDK for Perl
Download script: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-18654
Usage: To run the script you will need to have VMware vCLI<http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/> installed on either a Windows/Linux system or you can use the VMware vMA<http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/> appliance.
The script now includes a new option called --optionlist which accepts the file containing the list of advanced settings.
Here is an example of updating a virtual machine with the list of advanced settings:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615235c43970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615235c43970c-pi>
Here is an example of listing the advanced settings for the virtual machine:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dada3970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dada3970b-pi>
As you can see with these two scripts, administrators can easily and quickly secure all their virtual machines based on the latest recommendations from the vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide<http://blogs.vmware.com/security/2012/06/vsphere-50-security-hardening-guide-released.html> as well as from previous hardening guides.
Additional Resources:
If you are looking for additional automation of the vSphere 5 Security Hardening Guide, be sure to check out this script<http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/04/vsphere-security-hardening-report.html> which generates a report based on the vSphere Security Hardening Guide which supports the new vSphere 5 guide as well as the 4.1 and 4.0 guide.
Original Post:
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/automate-the-hardening-of-your-virtual-machine-vmx-configurations.html
As you probably have heard, VMware has just released the official vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide<http://blogs.vmware.com/security/2012/06/vsphere-50-security-hardening-guide-released.html>. In addition to providing the latest guidelines for the vSphere 5.0 platform, the new hardening guide also includes several enhancements, one of which are the CLI (ESXi Shell, vCLI or PowerCLI) commands for assessment and/or remediation for a given guideline. One particular section of the hardening guide that has been quite popular over the years is securing the Virtual Machine's VMX configuration file. You might ask, how would you go about automating these change across all your virtual machines?
I had written an article called Accessing Virtual Machine Settings<http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/03/acessing-virtual-machine-advanced-settings.html> not too long ago which shows shows you how to modify/add a single advanced setting to a virtual machine. You can easily modify those scripts to operate on more than one advanced setting. In this article, we will demonstrate these modified scripts which allows you to specify multiple advanced settings to be applied for a given virtual machine to help harden their configurations.
Disclaimer: These script are provided for informational/educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.
Below are examples of both a PowerCLI and vSphere SDK for Perl script which both accepts a file that contains a list of key/value pair advanced settings (separated by a comma) that you wish to add/modify for a virtual machine.
Here is an example of a file containing a few of the vSphere 5 Security Hardening advanced settings I wish to add to a virtual machine:
isolation.bios.bbs.disable,TRUE
isolation.device.connectable.disable,TRUE
isolation.monitor.control.disable,TRUE
isolation.tools.diskShrink.disable,TRUE
isolation.tools.diskWiper.disable,TRUE
log.keepOld,10
log.rotateSize,10000
RemoteDisplay.maxConnections,2
tools.guestlib.enableHostInfo,FALSE
tools.setInfo.sizeLimit,1048576
vmci0.unrestricted,FALSE
Note: You can apply the advanced settings while the virtual machine is running, but the changes will NOT go into effect until the virtual machine has been completely powered off and then powered back on. A guestOS reboot will not be sufficient as the VMX configurations are only read during the initial power on.
PowerCLI
Download script: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-18653
<http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-19253>
Usage: To run this script you will need the latest version of PowerCLI installed and PowerShell v2, paste the script into your editor or Powercli window once connected to the vCenter server using the Connect-VIServer cmdlet.
Here is an example of updating a virtual machine with the list of advanced settings:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0163063a1f15970d-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0163063a1f15970d-pi>
Here is an example where we update all VMs in a particular cluster:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab02970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab02970b-pi>
Here is an example of listing the advanced settings for the virtual machine:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab83970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dab83970b-pi>
vSphere SDK for Perl
Download script: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-18654
Usage: To run the script you will need to have VMware vCLI<http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/> installed on either a Windows/Linux system or you can use the VMware vMA<http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/> appliance.
The script now includes a new option called --optionlist which accepts the file containing the list of advanced settings.
Here is an example of updating a virtual machine with the list of advanced settings:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615235c43970c-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef017615235c43970c-pi>
Here is an example of listing the advanced settings for the virtual machine:
[http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dada3970b-500wi]<http://blogs.vmware.com/.a/6a00d8341c328153ef0167672dada3970b-pi>
As you can see with these two scripts, administrators can easily and quickly secure all their virtual machines based on the latest recommendations from the vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide<http://blogs.vmware.com/security/2012/06/vsphere-50-security-hardening-guide-released.html> as well as from previous hardening guides.
Additional Resources:
If you are looking for additional automation of the vSphere 5 Security Hardening Guide, be sure to check out this script<http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/04/vsphere-security-hardening-report.html> which generates a report based on the vSphere Security Hardening Guide which supports the new vSphere 5 guide as well as the 4.1 and 4.0 guide.
Original Post:
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/06/automate-the-hardening-of-your-virtual-machine-vmx-configurations.html
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Change Your LinkedIn Password Right Now!*
6.5 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords have leaked, reports Norwegian IT site Dagens IT (found via The Next Web).
The passwords were shared via a Russian hacker site, and security researcher Per Thorsheim confirms that the leak is legit.
LinkedIn hasn't offered any statement on the incident at the time of this writing, but we would strongly suggest changing your password.
Click here to learn how to change your LinkedIn password >
UPDATE: LinkedIn reports via Twitter that its "team is currently looking into reports of stolen passwords. Stay tuned for more."
*UPDATE 2: LinkedIn tweets again -- "Our team continues to investigate, but at this time, we're still unable to confirm that any security breach has occurred. Stay tuned here."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-hacked-2012-6
Is HP pulling a fast one on deduplication? - EMC demands recount
Is HP pulling the deduplication wool over our eyes by claiming its dedupe box can run at 100TB/hour while EMC's best rate is 31TB/hour? Should a 4-pool dedupe system realistically be compared to single pool design?
Yesterday at the HP Discover event in Las Vegas, the company announced its Store Once Catalyst software and B6200 disk array combination could ingest data at up to 100TB/hour while Data Domain's 990, announced just two weeks ago, ingests it at 31TB/hour. Ergo, HP is three times faster - and Data Domain sucks.
But the B6200 is actually formed from couplet building blocks: two controllers or nodes in a high-availability configuration with their own storage and a single deduplication index.
It expands to an 8-node system by aggregating four couplets in a cluster, using a 10GigE interconnect and Fusion Manager to control the 8 nodes/4 couplets as a single system with a single namespace, but four separate deduplication indices.
There is no global deduplication across a B6200 cluster.
HP B6200
EMC's Mark Twomey, technical director in the office of the CTO for Backup Recovery Systems, told us: "I don't get how HP can call it scale-out when those are four separate dedupe pools. That [100TB/hour] number is from four 2-node systems, isn't it? Yes they have one manager, but it's still four systems. If I get a manager can I compare four Data Domains?"
The B6200/Store Once's speed per deduplication index or realm is 25TB/hour. With the Catalyst software, which gets 60TB/hour of dedupe done on the source servers leaving 40TB/hour for the B6200, it is 10TB/couplet and 5TB per node.
A Data Domain 990 runs at 15TB/hour when Boost is taken out of the equation. Its raw dedupe speed is faster than that of a B6200 couplet and there is a single dedupe index. Ergo, based on a single dedupe index Data Domain's 990 is 50 per cent faster than a base B6200 configuration. Ergo, HP sucks.
El Reg suspects this difference is because the B6200 uses an older Intel processor than the newer DD 990.
HP marketing veep Craig Nunes says an 8-node B6200 is a single system because it is managed as one and has a single namespace. The single namespace is segmented into four individual namespaces, one per couplet, and, he says, "next year I could do a firmware update and change that".
Pooling resources
Will the B6200 get a global deduplication pool next year then? Nunes declined to comment.
Interestingly, the Sepaton S2100 ES2 deduplicating system that HP resells is (like the B6200) an 8-node system, supports Symantec's OST interface, and runs at a 43.2TB/hour ingest rate into a global deduplication pool.
That global pool probably means that the ES2 dedupes more effectively than HP Store Once. Also, the ES2 is a bit long in the tooth and is likely to get a speed bump via a processor refresh.
This global dedupe capability across an ES2 cluster should ensure the HP Sepaton reselling relationship remains in place, at least until the B6200 gets its own global dedupe capability. When and if that happens then characterising an 8-node B6200 cluster as a single deduplicating system will be more legitimate.
In the meantime it is justifiable to define the B6200 as a single system so far as management and overall name space is concerned, But HP is stretching the point to call it a single deduplicating system when there are four separate deduplication realms inside. ®
Original Post: By Chris Mellor
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/05/emc_queries_hp_deduplication_speed/
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Best Practices: Backup and Recovery for VMware
Traditional backup and recovery can't keep up with the increased demands of growing virtual environments. Now you can protect your virtual environment, speeding and simplifying VMware backups while saving resources. Join us for this recorded webcast and learn EMC best practices for protecting your VMware environments.
What’s more, you’ll learn how VMware vSphere 5, tightly integrated with EMC solutions, lets you:
- Improve VMware backup and recovery reliability, efficiency, and service levels
- Protect your VMware vCloud Director deployment
- Scale seamlessly into the future
Register for this webcast.
How to Improve Application Availability in VMware environments
Details: In 2012, more than half of all applications are supported by virtualized infrastructures. Protecting those applications and your business-critical data has never been more important. Join EMC and VMware for an in-depth technical review on application disaster recovery best practices using VMware Site Recovery Manager and the leading data replication solutions.
Date: Jun 14, 12
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Backup and Recovery, Virtualization, Third-Party Products, SDK and Driver, Replication
Location: Online
Attend this event and learn how to:
- Automate the recovery of your mission critical applications.
- Test recovery of mission critical applications without impact to production.
- Reliably migrate applications to new infrastructures.
How to Simplify Management with EMC VSI Plugin for VMware vSphere
Details: The EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) VMware vSphere plugin can make daily management of your vSphere environment simpler, quicker and more efficient. Learn to provision, monitor, and manage vSphere datastores running on your EMC storage array directly from the vSphere client … all with a few clicks of the mouse. What’s more, the EMC VSI plugin is free to download and use.
Date: Jun 07, 12
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT
Event Type: EMC Live Webcast
Category: Virtualization
Location: Online
Attend this session and discover how to:
- View the performance of your underlying EMC storage.
- Save valuable disk space by compressing your datastores.
- Gain a detailed view on the underlying physical storage.
- Spin up extra VMs quickly and easily.
Cool Tool - VM Aware Database Performance - Completely FREE
[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/ignitefreevm-vmware-multi-layer-summary-full.serendipityThumb.png]<http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/ignitefreevm-vmware-multi-layer-summary-full.png>CONFIO SOFTWARE has just released a new version of their IgniteVM software<http://www.ignitefree.com/vmware> that is completely free.
IgniteFreeVM takes the core feature, multi-layer visibility of databases running on VMware, from application through the storage layer, and makes it available in a free-of-charge tool for unlimited use. It differs from the paid version in a few respects – it does not have the advanced enterprise features such as reporting and alerting, and it is limited to a two hour rolling window, rather than seeing months of history.
IgniteFreeVM will be of interest to Oracle and SQL Server DBAs who have databases running on VMware. It will also be useful for VMware administrators who need to ensure success of databases on their platform and want low impact, easily understood views of how the database is using VMware resources.
http://www.ignitefree.com/
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/J-saaeTpk6Y/2062-Cool-Tool-VM-Aware-Database-Performance-Completely-FREE.html
Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone<http://itunes.apple.com/app/mobilerss-pro-google-rss-news/id325594202?mt=8>
Mike Yallits, VTSP
Client Account Manager
ESTI Consulting Services
Cell: 204 294-7773
mike.yallits@esti.ca<mailto:mike.yallits@esti.ca>
IgniteFreeVM takes the core feature, multi-layer visibility of databases running on VMware, from application through the storage layer, and makes it available in a free-of-charge tool for unlimited use. It differs from the paid version in a few respects – it does not have the advanced enterprise features such as reporting and alerting, and it is limited to a two hour rolling window, rather than seeing months of history.
IgniteFreeVM will be of interest to Oracle and SQL Server DBAs who have databases running on VMware. It will also be useful for VMware administrators who need to ensure success of databases on their platform and want low impact, easily understood views of how the database is using VMware resources.
http://www.ignitefree.com/
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/J-saaeTpk6Y/2062-Cool-Tool-VM-Aware-Database-Performance-Completely-FREE.html
Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone<http://itunes.apple.com/app/mobilerss-pro-google-rss-news/id325594202?mt=8>
Mike Yallits, VTSP
Client Account Manager
ESTI Consulting Services
Cell: 204 294-7773
mike.yallits@esti.ca<mailto:mike.yallits@esti.ca>
vSphere PowerCLI 5.0 reference app for iPhone and iPad
This tool<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpowercli5-reference/id489731144?mt=8&ls=1> is to be used for referencing the VMware vSphere 5 PowerCLI cmdlets. VMware vSphere PowerCLI<http://www.vmware.com/go/PowerCLI> is a powerful command line tool that lets you automate all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM, guest OS and more. PowerCLI is distributed as a Windows PowerShell snapin, and includes more than 300 PowerShell cmdlets, along with documentation and samples.
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpowercli5-reference/id489731144?mt=8&ls=1>[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref.jpg][http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref1.jpg]
Original Post:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/OSBGL8ym71c/2063-vSphere-PowerCLI-5.0-reference-app-for-iPhone-and-iPad.html
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpowercli5-reference/id489731144?mt=8&ls=1>[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref.jpg][http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref1.jpg]
![http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref.jpg][http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref1.jpg](http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref.jpg][http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/powercliref1.jpg){kind=link}
Original Post:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/OSBGL8ym71c/2063-vSphere-PowerCLI-5.0-reference-app-for-iPhone-and-iPad.html
Protecting Exchange 2010 with vShield 5.0
Enhancing Exchange 2010's Security Profile
In this post we will discuss using vShield to bolster the protection profile of Exchange 2010. We will start off with a brief discussion on vShield, and then move on to discussing the Exchange 2010 architecture, and then finally how we implemented vShield around Exchange 2010.
vShield 5.0 Overview
The VMware vShield product family is the foundation for trusted cloud infrastructures. vShield enables adaptive and cost-effective security services within a single management framework. vShield is a suite of products comprised of vShield Edge, vShield App, vShield Data Security, and vShield Endpoint. For purposes of this post, we will focus on two of the four products, vShield Edge and vShield App.
vShield Edge provides network edge security and gateway services to isolate VMs in a port group, vDS port group, or Cisco Nexus 1000v. vShield Edge is a stateful inspection firewall that can provide NAT, DHCP, IPsec Site to Site VPN VPN, and Web load balancing services for the virtual data center.
vShield App is a layer 2 / layer 3 virtualization aware, hypervisor based firewall that protects applications in the virtual datacenter from network based attacks. A major benefit to vShield App is configuring access control polices are based on logical and physical constructs versus purely physical constructs that a traditional firewall leverages. An example of this would be the ability to create rules based on a vApp (logical) versus IP Address (physical).
Exchange 2010 Architecture Overview
We built Exchange 2010 within the construct of a vApp. A vApp allows you to group VMs together and perform management functions against those VMs, such as power on, power off operations. vApp provide the ability to create 'nested' vApps. We leveraged this ability to create a multi-tier vApp for Exchange.
We created a root vApp labeled Exchange and then nested three different containers, based on Exchange 2010 roles (CAS, HUB, Mailbox). We then explicitly configured boot order within the CAS, HUB, and Mailbox vApps and at the Exchange Level.
We separated out the individual Exchange 2010 roles into individual VMs for the CAS, HUB, and mailbox roles. We used Exchange 2010 SP1 installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard / Enterprise. We also configured the SAMESUBNETDELAY setting to 2000ms since we are using HA, DRS, and vMotion with DAG. More information on running DAG on the vSphere platform, see the whitepaper Using VMware HA, DRS, and vMotion with Exchange 2010 DAGs. The VMware software used in this configuration was vSphere 5.0 and vShield 5.0.
For networking we used the vSphere Distributed Switch with one Port Group for production traffic and a second Port Group dedicated to DAG replication traffic. In addition, we limited the number of ports in the DAG replication network to 2 so we would not have to worry about addition VMs being plugged into this Port Group. In the screen shot below, you can see the HUB01 and MBX01 VMs both using the Production dvPortGroup and the second vNIC on MBX01 using the ExchangeDAG dvPortgroup.
Once we got Exchange up and running we installed vShield. vShield installs default open so we were able to leverage the traffic flow reports inside vShield to assist us in creating the rules around Exchange 2010.
Building the Rules
As stated earlier, vShield installs default open which allows us to leverage the traffic flows within vApp to better understand communication activity amongst systems. We decided to gradually lock down Exchange 2010 by first configuring VM to VM rules, and then implementing port based rules based on the TechNet post detailing ports used by Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb331973.aspx.
We built our rule sets using logical constructs within vCenter Server. For example, we built a rule stating the Mailbox vApp is allowed to communicate with the HUB vApp. By creating the rule against these logical constructs, any VMs placed into these containers will inherit the rules of that container.
As we built the rules we monitored traffic flows between Exchange 2010 systems, which was key in validating we correctly configured the rule sets and also identified other key traffic activities that were not documented in the aforementioned Ports Used by Exchange 2010 article. An example of this was UDP 139 from the Exchange vApp to our Domain Controller vApp.
Closing Remarks
Configure an external syslog server for vShield. As you build your rules, enable logging of the rule in order to validate enforcement of the rule. Start with general rules, like VM to VM rules and if necessary move down to port specific rules. Both of these will provide better protection, be sure to implement the appropiate level for your enviornment. Be aware that as the rules become more granular you must be more diligent to ensure all ports required by the application and OS are available. When you have validated your configuration is correct, change the default allow rule to deny.
Original Post: by Jeff Szastak
http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2012/04/protecting-exchange-2010-with-vshield.html
Everything You Need to Know About Exchange Backups* - Part 1 - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs
If you find the inner workings of Exchange data backups using Volume Shadown Copy<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636.aspx> (VSS) a bit mystifying take comfort in not being alone. Administrators may ask, "What's all the "freezing" and "thawing" I'm seeing in my event logs? What is the Exchange VSS Writer really, and what is it doing to my databases? How does it create a snapshot of a 135GB database in less than 60 seconds?"
If you ever asked these questions but only felt more confused with the answers, here's a guide to clear some of that up. To understand how a VSS backup of Exchange works it's critical to understand the basics of VSS itself. There is some excellent documentation on TechNet and MSDN on this, as well as the Windows Server Core Team blog, "Ask the Core Team.<http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/>" My esteemed colleague Randy Monteleone sums up the basics of VSS very nicely early in his post, while also providing links (repeated here) to some good TechNet primers on VSS:
How To: VSS Tracing – Randy Monteleone http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2012/04/29/how-to-vss-tracing.aspx
How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785914(WS.10).aspx
Volume Shadow Copy Service http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636.aspx
If you're already familiar with at least the basics of VSS, then look forward to Part 2 in this series, where we will break down the events that occur in a VSS Exchange backup, and how Exchange logs them in the application event log.
If you need a quick primer or refresher on VSS basics and the Exchange Writer I've condensed them into some visual points below to complement the references above.
Snapshots
Bear in mind that VSS solutions for Exchange, and for all applications, vary greatly between different hardware and software configurations. There are clone and COW snapshots, hardware and software solutions, just a very wide variety of technologies based on the core VSS subsystem. For the purposes of understanding Exchange backups we're only going to illustrate one specific type of solution out of the multitude. Detailed below is what's called "copy-on-write", or "COW" snapshots.
In a COW snapshot-based VSS backup of Exchange we have the creation of snapshots of the disks where Exchange data is hosted. No matter what is getting backed up, even if it's a single database file and a few logs, VSS creates a snapshot of the entire disk where any data is stored. If the data resides across multiple disks, such as when an Exchange database is on one disk, and the logs are on another, VSS will create snapshots of any and all of those disks.
So what is a "snapshot"? A volume snapshot is an area of space inside what's called "shadow storage", which is itself a typically small area of space on the disk located in its System Volume Information folder.
After a disk snapshot is created a change to any data block from that time forward cannot get written until a copy of that block's data before the change (as it was when the snapshot was created) gets written to the differencing area in shadow storage. In this way the data on the disk at the time the snapshot was created is preserved, block by block, in the shadow storage area. The snapshot data is then available either from the original disk, if the data blocks requested haven't changed, or from the differencing area if they have. The fundamentals of this are illustrated below:
Disk E: has a snapshot created at 1PM:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/7737.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_41108201.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/4276.image_5F00_41E8E7EB.png>
A minute later one of the blocks gets written to, but not before the data as it was at 1PM gets preserved in the differencing area:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1462.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_34362BE3.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/4682.image_5F00_794EF919.png>
As the actual disk changes the data as it was at 1PM gets written into shadow storage, preserving a record of the disk as it was in that moment:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1121.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_1674A124.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1856.image_5F00_376813CB.png>The following step:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1031.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_30686146.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/8461.image_5F00_7176E0AA.png>In the figure above a backup server requests data from the snapshot of blocks 2 and 53. Block 53 from 1PM is preserved in the snapshot, so it's copied directly from shadow storage. Block 2 is unchanged since 1PM, so it is copied via the VSS driver VOLSNAP.SYS, which operates much like a filter driver underneath the NTFS.SYS file system driver. By working in the IRP stack (the part of kernel memory that manages disk I/O) underneath the file system it can read blocks of data without NTFS objecting that a file is in use. VOLSNAP.SYS is also responsible for ensuring blocks are copied over to shadow storage if a write is requested to them, hence the name "Copy On Write". Here is more about VOLSNAP.SYS from Tim McMichael:
Exchange / VSS / and differential block size… http://blogs.technet.com/b/timmcmic/archive/2011/07/12/exchange-vss-and-differential-block-size.aspx
Now that we've got the basics of a COW snapshot down let's look at how it works with Exchange, along with some other major concepts:
Microsoft Exchange Writer
So we know that any disk that stores Exchange data gets a snapshot created of it by VSS. How exactly, though, does a backup application find out which disks those are? Oftentimes an administrator selects databases for backup without specifying anything about what disks their data files are stored in. So something is required to provide the information about where the data files are, and therefore what disks VSS needs to create snapshots of. This information also tells a backup application, also known as a VSS requestor, what specific data files should be copied out of the snapshots for preservation on backup media, as we don't want to copy out anything from the disk we don't need.
The mechanism at work here is the Microsoft Exchange VSS Writer. Like any application's VSS writer (there are many, just run VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS to see them) its first job is to tell the backup application about the data needed for backup, especially the EDB file, logs, and checkpoint file for each database requested. The information about these specific Exchange data files is known as writer metadata.[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/3678.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_5270BD0C.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/0447.image_5F00_7A836C2B.png>
In the figure above we see the initial steps of an Exchange backup. The Exchange Writer tells the backup server (the requestor) that there is a database located in a folder on volume E:, and that transaction logs for that database are in a folder on D:. Based on that information the backup application will request snapshots of the D: and E: volumes when the job progresses.
The Exchange VSS Writer serves another critical role besides providing metadata to VSS requestors. It also has the job of stopping writes to the databases and logs on disk, or "freezing" them, for the time it takes to create the necessary snapshots. A COW snapshot typically takes a small amount of time to create, as all it consists of initially is the designation of an area in shadow storage for blocks to be preserved in when they change on the actual disk. Despite this relatively quick operation it can still take up to a minute, which is plenty of time for blocks of data to change on a disk between the start and the end of its snapshot creation process. If blocks of data change but don't have the originals preserved from the exact time the snapshot creation begins those blocks may become inconsistent with other snapshot data, especially between logs, database, and checkpoint files. Hence, the Exchange Writer forces the Information Store Service, or the MS Exchange Replication Service, from writing what's in RAM to the frozen database files. In the case of the Information Store Service, the current transaction log file (Exx.log) gets rolled and closed out before the Exchange Writer allows VSS to take the snapshot. This ensures nothing changes in the file data between the beginning of the snapshot and the completion, at which point the databases are "thawed". When databases are thawed write I/O held in RAM is allowed to go to disk again.
Here's more information on how an application's VSS writer interacts with VSS with regards to freeze, thaws, and the time needed to get a snapshot completed:
::OnFreeze method http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381563(v=vs.85).aspx
The last major responsibility of the Exchange Writer is to tell the Information Store Service (MS Exchange Replication Service in the case of a passive copy backup) that the backup was completed and, if applicable, carry out post-backup tasks like log truncation, marking the database as no longer with a backup in progress, etc.
In the part two and part three of this series we'll look at a play-by-play breakdown of how the elements described above all come together in an Exchange backup, the application log events that get generated, and compare the process for a mounted database to that for a passive database copy.
Thanks go out for the collaboration on the content in these posts to Michael Blanton, Tim McMichael, Randy Monteleone, Dave Vespa, and Tom Kern.
By: Jesse Tedoff
Original Post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/06/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-exchange-backups-part-1.aspx
If you ever asked these questions but only felt more confused with the answers, here's a guide to clear some of that up. To understand how a VSS backup of Exchange works it's critical to understand the basics of VSS itself. There is some excellent documentation on TechNet and MSDN on this, as well as the Windows Server Core Team blog, "Ask the Core Team.<http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/>" My esteemed colleague Randy Monteleone sums up the basics of VSS very nicely early in his post, while also providing links (repeated here) to some good TechNet primers on VSS:
How To: VSS Tracing – Randy Monteleone http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2012/04/29/how-to-vss-tracing.aspx
How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785914(WS.10).aspx
Volume Shadow Copy Service http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636.aspx
If you're already familiar with at least the basics of VSS, then look forward to Part 2 in this series, where we will break down the events that occur in a VSS Exchange backup, and how Exchange logs them in the application event log.
If you need a quick primer or refresher on VSS basics and the Exchange Writer I've condensed them into some visual points below to complement the references above.
Snapshots
Bear in mind that VSS solutions for Exchange, and for all applications, vary greatly between different hardware and software configurations. There are clone and COW snapshots, hardware and software solutions, just a very wide variety of technologies based on the core VSS subsystem. For the purposes of understanding Exchange backups we're only going to illustrate one specific type of solution out of the multitude. Detailed below is what's called "copy-on-write", or "COW" snapshots.
In a COW snapshot-based VSS backup of Exchange we have the creation of snapshots of the disks where Exchange data is hosted. No matter what is getting backed up, even if it's a single database file and a few logs, VSS creates a snapshot of the entire disk where any data is stored. If the data resides across multiple disks, such as when an Exchange database is on one disk, and the logs are on another, VSS will create snapshots of any and all of those disks.
So what is a "snapshot"? A volume snapshot is an area of space inside what's called "shadow storage", which is itself a typically small area of space on the disk located in its System Volume Information folder.
After a disk snapshot is created a change to any data block from that time forward cannot get written until a copy of that block's data before the change (as it was when the snapshot was created) gets written to the differencing area in shadow storage. In this way the data on the disk at the time the snapshot was created is preserved, block by block, in the shadow storage area. The snapshot data is then available either from the original disk, if the data blocks requested haven't changed, or from the differencing area if they have. The fundamentals of this are illustrated below:
Disk E: has a snapshot created at 1PM:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/7737.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_41108201.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/4276.image_5F00_41E8E7EB.png>
A minute later one of the blocks gets written to, but not before the data as it was at 1PM gets preserved in the differencing area:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1462.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_34362BE3.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/4682.image_5F00_794EF919.png>
As the actual disk changes the data as it was at 1PM gets written into shadow storage, preserving a record of the disk as it was in that moment:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1121.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_1674A124.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1856.image_5F00_376813CB.png>The following step:[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/1031.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_30686146.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/8461.image_5F00_7176E0AA.png>In the figure above a backup server requests data from the snapshot of blocks 2 and 53. Block 53 from 1PM is preserved in the snapshot, so it's copied directly from shadow storage. Block 2 is unchanged since 1PM, so it is copied via the VSS driver VOLSNAP.SYS, which operates much like a filter driver underneath the NTFS.SYS file system driver. By working in the IRP stack (the part of kernel memory that manages disk I/O) underneath the file system it can read blocks of data without NTFS objecting that a file is in use. VOLSNAP.SYS is also responsible for ensuring blocks are copied over to shadow storage if a write is requested to them, hence the name "Copy On Write". Here is more about VOLSNAP.SYS from Tim McMichael:
Exchange / VSS / and differential block size… http://blogs.technet.com/b/timmcmic/archive/2011/07/12/exchange-vss-and-differential-block-size.aspx
Now that we've got the basics of a COW snapshot down let's look at how it works with Exchange, along with some other major concepts:
Microsoft Exchange Writer
So we know that any disk that stores Exchange data gets a snapshot created of it by VSS. How exactly, though, does a backup application find out which disks those are? Oftentimes an administrator selects databases for backup without specifying anything about what disks their data files are stored in. So something is required to provide the information about where the data files are, and therefore what disks VSS needs to create snapshots of. This information also tells a backup application, also known as a VSS requestor, what specific data files should be copied out of the snapshots for preservation on backup media, as we don't want to copy out anything from the disk we don't need.
The mechanism at work here is the Microsoft Exchange VSS Writer. Like any application's VSS writer (there are many, just run VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS to see them) its first job is to tell the backup application about the data needed for backup, especially the EDB file, logs, and checkpoint file for each database requested. The information about these specific Exchange data files is known as writer metadata.[http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/3678.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_5270BD0C.png]<http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-31-06-metablogapi/0447.image_5F00_7A836C2B.png>
In the figure above we see the initial steps of an Exchange backup. The Exchange Writer tells the backup server (the requestor) that there is a database located in a folder on volume E:, and that transaction logs for that database are in a folder on D:. Based on that information the backup application will request snapshots of the D: and E: volumes when the job progresses.
The Exchange VSS Writer serves another critical role besides providing metadata to VSS requestors. It also has the job of stopping writes to the databases and logs on disk, or "freezing" them, for the time it takes to create the necessary snapshots. A COW snapshot typically takes a small amount of time to create, as all it consists of initially is the designation of an area in shadow storage for blocks to be preserved in when they change on the actual disk. Despite this relatively quick operation it can still take up to a minute, which is plenty of time for blocks of data to change on a disk between the start and the end of its snapshot creation process. If blocks of data change but don't have the originals preserved from the exact time the snapshot creation begins those blocks may become inconsistent with other snapshot data, especially between logs, database, and checkpoint files. Hence, the Exchange Writer forces the Information Store Service, or the MS Exchange Replication Service, from writing what's in RAM to the frozen database files. In the case of the Information Store Service, the current transaction log file (Exx.log) gets rolled and closed out before the Exchange Writer allows VSS to take the snapshot. This ensures nothing changes in the file data between the beginning of the snapshot and the completion, at which point the databases are "thawed". When databases are thawed write I/O held in RAM is allowed to go to disk again.
Here's more information on how an application's VSS writer interacts with VSS with regards to freeze, thaws, and the time needed to get a snapshot completed:
::OnFreeze method http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381563(v=vs.85).aspx
The last major responsibility of the Exchange Writer is to tell the Information Store Service (MS Exchange Replication Service in the case of a passive copy backup) that the backup was completed and, if applicable, carry out post-backup tasks like log truncation, marking the database as no longer with a backup in progress, etc.
In the part two and part three of this series we'll look at a play-by-play breakdown of how the elements described above all come together in an Exchange backup, the application log events that get generated, and compare the process for a mounted database to that for a passive database copy.
Thanks go out for the collaboration on the content in these posts to Michael Blanton, Tim McMichael, Randy Monteleone, Dave Vespa, and Tom Kern.
By: Jesse Tedoff
Original Post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/06/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-exchange-backups-part-1.aspx
Sunday, June 3, 2012
VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator v1.1 Demo Overview
Ben Scheerer, Sr. Product Manager at VMware, provides a demo, use cases and functionality of VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) v1.1<http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-infrastructure-navigator>.
Original Post:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/V59QXrQ34E4/2061-VMware-vCenter-Infrastructure-Navigator-v1.1-Demo-Overview.html
Original Post:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/V59QXrQ34E4/2061-VMware-vCenter-Infrastructure-Navigator-v1.1-Demo-Overview.html
Saturday, June 2, 2012
vSphere 5.0 Hardening Guide - Official Release
This is the official release of the vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide, v1.0. The format of this guide has changed from previous versions. The guide is being released as a Excel spreadsheet only. The guideline metadata from earlier guides has been greatly expanded and standardized. CLI commands for assessment and remediation of the guidelines is included for the vCLI, ESXi Shell, and PowerCLI.
[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/gguide.png]
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-19605
[http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/gguide.png]
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-19605
Friday, June 1, 2012
Docking smartphones will be a key part of future, say IT pros | TechRepublic
I've written a lot about the potential convergence of smartphones and PCs — including recent pieces on Motorola Webtop<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57417863-94/meet-googles-secret-weapon-for-fighting-apple-and-microsoft/>and Ubuntu for Android<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57424335-94/androids-new-ally-against-the-iphone-ubuntu/> — but I recently polled TechRepublic's audience of IT professionals to get their take on whether they see these docking smartphones as legitimate PC replacements. This audience is notoriously ambivalent about tablets<http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/poll-results-is-the-tablet-pc-form-factor-a-fad-or-a-glimpse-into-the-future/4324>, but they turned about to be surprisingly optimistic about smartphone/PC convergence playing a key role in the future of the enterprise.
As you can see in the chart below, 82% of the audience thinks docking smartphones will become an important part of business computing.
[http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/poll-smartphone-hybrids-052012.jpg]
One TechRepublic member<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/4952024> aptly summed up the argument for why this could make sense:
"Many business and personal users may find a small computing device like a smartphone that can morph in to desktop, laptop, or tablet a very attractive option… Cost is also a factor to consider. Many businesses already provide a smartphone and a desktop or laptop to their workers. There is a obvious cost savings potential here. For consumers, cost is a even more relevant factor and may drive many to these converged devices. From a personal perspective, I need a powerful workstation for work and for now smartphones don't cut it but for the rest of my computing needs I can see devices like these in my future."
Member buck_lane<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/6858544> added:
"I love the idea of being able to point to one device and say 'thats got all the things!' I have a linux desktop and an android smartphone anyway, why not merge them? I know this will not be a full desktop replacement, as people still enjoy their high powered desktops for games, graphics and the like. The biggest feature is being able to take my secure connected work desktop with me where ever I go, less stuff to backup, and less environments to change and configure. Throw in a laser projector and keyboard and i'm good to go."
However, the concept certainly has its detractors as well. TechRepublic membervulpine<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/1878820> wrote, "I think you'll find them a fad that flies for about a year or two and fades away again like the netbook of the middle '00s. Why? because with the exception of a rare few phones, too few have a standardized connection in a standardized location that would make such a docking system more universally favorable and very few people will want to buy a new docking display every time they buy a new phone."
[http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/palm-touchstone-dock-052012.jpg]
While vulpine is right that a universal docking mechanism will definitely be needed, I think that will emerge in the years ahead. I expect that it will be a combination of wireless charging<http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-57429616-10356022/wireless-charging-to-get-a-boost-from-samsung-qualcomm/> (like we saw pioneered by the Palm touchstone<http://www.hpwebos.com/us/products/accessories/touchstone-technology.html> — see photo on right) and wireless docking like we're going to get in Wireless USB<http://www.usb.org/developers/wusb/>. Some will argue that Wireless USB won't have enough bandwidth to drive displays. That's a fair argument, but the limitation will eventually be overcome.
Another user, Bob_or_Fred<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/5182648>, summed up another one of the big concerns:
"With how often people break or lose their phones, there will be some big thinking as to why you're giving someone who only works at a desk a smartphone for a computer. Yes, people who are more mobile will get benefits from it, but not everyone is that mobile. In addition, the no-contract costs of smart phones is quite high, easily comparable or higher than a desktop. Additionally, there's lifespan. We have several desktops that have lasted 4 or 5 years, and we still use them (while admittedly, they are quite slow) because they still do what's needed. Oh and last of finally, when thinking of moving to a smartphone for a PC… Employee theft? All they have to do is wipe the memory and they have a black market ready phone, just replace the SIM card and you're good to go. (the non-removable SIM in the iPhone finally can be advertised as a feature!) At least they're easier to support. Software issues? Wipe and reimage. Hardware issues? Replace."
All in all, PC/smartphone convergence is going to be one of the key issues to watch over the next several development cycles in enterprise technology. BYOD, desktop virtualization, and cloud computing will obviously play key roles in this as well.
Original Post:
http://m.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/docking-smartphones-will-be-a-key-part-of-future-say-it-pros/10604
As you can see in the chart below, 82% of the audience thinks docking smartphones will become an important part of business computing.
[http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/poll-smartphone-hybrids-052012.jpg]
One TechRepublic member<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/4952024> aptly summed up the argument for why this could make sense:
"Many business and personal users may find a small computing device like a smartphone that can morph in to desktop, laptop, or tablet a very attractive option… Cost is also a factor to consider. Many businesses already provide a smartphone and a desktop or laptop to their workers. There is a obvious cost savings potential here. For consumers, cost is a even more relevant factor and may drive many to these converged devices. From a personal perspective, I need a powerful workstation for work and for now smartphones don't cut it but for the rest of my computing needs I can see devices like these in my future."
Member buck_lane<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/6858544> added:
"I love the idea of being able to point to one device and say 'thats got all the things!' I have a linux desktop and an android smartphone anyway, why not merge them? I know this will not be a full desktop replacement, as people still enjoy their high powered desktops for games, graphics and the like. The biggest feature is being able to take my secure connected work desktop with me where ever I go, less stuff to backup, and less environments to change and configure. Throw in a laser projector and keyboard and i'm good to go."
However, the concept certainly has its detractors as well. TechRepublic membervulpine<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/1878820> wrote, "I think you'll find them a fad that flies for about a year or two and fades away again like the netbook of the middle '00s. Why? because with the exception of a rare few phones, too few have a standardized connection in a standardized location that would make such a docking system more universally favorable and very few people will want to buy a new docking display every time they buy a new phone."
[http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/palm-touchstone-dock-052012.jpg]
While vulpine is right that a universal docking mechanism will definitely be needed, I think that will emerge in the years ahead. I expect that it will be a combination of wireless charging<http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-57429616-10356022/wireless-charging-to-get-a-boost-from-samsung-qualcomm/> (like we saw pioneered by the Palm touchstone<http://www.hpwebos.com/us/products/accessories/touchstone-technology.html> — see photo on right) and wireless docking like we're going to get in Wireless USB<http://www.usb.org/developers/wusb/>. Some will argue that Wireless USB won't have enough bandwidth to drive displays. That's a fair argument, but the limitation will eventually be overcome.
Another user, Bob_or_Fred<http://www.techrepublic.com/members/profile/5182648>, summed up another one of the big concerns:
"With how often people break or lose their phones, there will be some big thinking as to why you're giving someone who only works at a desk a smartphone for a computer. Yes, people who are more mobile will get benefits from it, but not everyone is that mobile. In addition, the no-contract costs of smart phones is quite high, easily comparable or higher than a desktop. Additionally, there's lifespan. We have several desktops that have lasted 4 or 5 years, and we still use them (while admittedly, they are quite slow) because they still do what's needed. Oh and last of finally, when thinking of moving to a smartphone for a PC… Employee theft? All they have to do is wipe the memory and they have a black market ready phone, just replace the SIM card and you're good to go. (the non-removable SIM in the iPhone finally can be advertised as a feature!) At least they're easier to support. Software issues? Wipe and reimage. Hardware issues? Replace."
All in all, PC/smartphone convergence is going to be one of the key issues to watch over the next several development cycles in enterprise technology. BYOD, desktop virtualization, and cloud computing will obviously play key roles in this as well.
Original Post:
http://m.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/docking-smartphones-will-be-a-key-part-of-future-say-it-pros/10604
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