APP-V - Application Virtualization

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.0 provides a way to automate the process of updating virtual machines running on virtual servers and Hyper-V with the latest operating system updates....

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.0 uses System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage a library of offline virtual machines with either System Center Configuration Manager or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool consists of the following software components:
. A configuration user interface
. A .NET-based workflow execution infrastructure

This Solution Accelerator is supplied with the following guidance:
. Getting Started Guide
. Help file
. Release Notes
. Overview on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc501231.aspx
. Online video demonstration: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=8b4ff511-feba-4741-9595-09836ddcae7a

Changes in this Version

Version 2.0 of the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool provides full backward compatibility with version 1.0. When this tool is installed it checks the installed version of Virtual Machine Manager and determines what components are needed. Certain functionality will only be available if Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is installed.

In addition to products supported by version 1.0, this version provides support for Hyper-V technology, Virtual Machine Manager 2008, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP1, Windows Server® 2008 for installing the tool and Windows Server virtualized client operating system.

Overview of the Solution

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2.0 is built on Windows Workflow Foundation and the Windows PowerShellTM interface to manage the workflow of updating large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and software update management systems (at present, either WSUS or System Center Configuration Manager).

The tool uses "servicing jobs" to manage the update operations based on lists of existing virtual machines stored in VMM. Using Windows Workflow Foundation technology, a servicing job runs snippets of PowerShell scripts to work with virtual machines. For each virtual machine, the servicing job:

. "Wakes" the virtual machine (deploys it to a host and starts it).
. Triggers the appropriate software update cycle (Configuration Manager or WSUS).
. Shuts down the updated virtual machine and returns it to the library.

The tool works with Windows Task Scheduler to determine when to run the servicing job.

For an online video demonstration of this Solution Accelerator:
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=8b4ff511-feba-4741-9595-09836ddcae7a

Solution Accelerators on TechNet

• What's New
• Prior Releases of VMware Infrastructure 3
• Before You Begin
• Installation and Upgrade
• Patches Contained in this Release
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues
• Using Language Packs on the ESX Server Host

Note: In many public documents, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is now known as VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i version 3.5 as VMware ESXi 3.5. These release notes continue to use the previous convention to match the product interfaces and documentation. A future release will update the product names.

What's New

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3:

Note: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 3. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and Virtual Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.

New features and supported IO devices:

• Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
  
• HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
• Newly Supported NICs —  This release adds support for the following NICs:
  
  • Broadcom 5716 1Gb
  • Broadcom  57710 10Gb Adapters
  • Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only
  Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.
• Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
  • Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
  • Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)
  Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported
• Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
  • Solaris 10 U5
  • Ubuntu 8.04.1
  • RHEL 4.7
• Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (KB 1007394).
  
• Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
• Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
• Small Footprint CIM Broker —  Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
• IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.

• Support for VMs Running on Windows Server 2008
• Multi-Vendor Virtualization Platform Support
• Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO)
• Host Cluster Support for “High Availability” Virtual Machines

Download: SCVMM 2008 – Evaluation

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Release Notes

Windows Server 2008 R2 will include Hyper-V 2.0, it promises to deliver the final pieces for enterprise level OS virtualization and to really compete with VMware at that level.

The most anticipated is of course Live Migration: moving running VM’s from one host to another without interruption of services running inside the VM’s. To accomplish this technique a new Shared Filesytem is needed and so will also be introduced in Hyper-V 2.0: Clustered Shared Volumes.

The Live migration works best together with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, it can provide additional Live Migration management and orchestration scenarios such as Live Migration via policy.

Cool thing is you only need to update to Hyper-V 2.0, none of the rest of the infrastructure needs updating.

Logical Processor Support

• Support for 32 logical processors on host computer
• Twice the initial supported number of logical processors of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Hot add remove Storage

• Add and remove VHD and pass-through disks to a running VM without requiring a reboot.
• Hot-add/remove disk only applies to VHDs and pass-through disks attached to the SCSI controller (not the IDE controller)
• Hot-add remove of storage controllers is not supported

Benefits

• Enables storage growth in VMs without downtime
• Enables additional datacenter backup scenarios

SLAT
Second Level Translation (SLAT)

Overview

• Leverage new processor features to improve performance and reduce load on Windows Hypervisor
• AMD: Enhanced Page Tables
• Intel: Nested Page Tables
• Benefits
• Improved memory management performance
• Memory usage of Windows Hypervisor will decrease from approximately 5% to 1% of total physical memory.
• More memory will be available for child partitions enabling higher consolidation ratios

Dynamic Memory
Overview

• Pool of memory is dynamically distributed across VMs
• Memory is dynamically allocated/removed based VM usage with no service interruption

Benefits

• Enables much higher consolidation ratios per host by addressing the greatest limiting factor to consolidation: Memory

How

• VM memory configuration includes:
• Initial (what VM will boot with)
• Minimum (what VM is guaranteed)
• Maximum (what VM can grow to)
• Memory is added via Hot-Add MEM functionality
• Memory is removed via Balloon driver (supported OSs)

Boot from VHD

Allows any VHD to work on physical hardware, this is very interesting! Boot an OS VHD on your physical hardware.

You can find more information at the WinHEC session descriptions: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/sessions.aspx

Source: bink.nu

1. Extract the contents of windows.iso
2. Run: msiexec.exe /i “VMware Tools.msi” /qb-! INSTALLLEVEL=1000 REBOOT=ReallySuppress

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Continue at: blogs.technet.com

The Gold Standard for Desktop Virtualization Just Got Better

VMware® Workstation 6.5 provides the deepest OS support, best-in-class virtual machine architecture, the richest desktop user experience and an unmatched set of features to enhance productivity.

InfoWorld says that VMware Workstation 6.5 is “the gold standard for desktop virtualization…truly a world-class product and a pace-setter for the entire industry.”

VMware Workstation 6.5 is packed with new features, including:

• “Unity” view provides a seamless desktop experience.
• DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 graphics enable Windows 3D applications and games.
• Easy Install simplifies the creation of Windows and Linux virtual machines.
• Powerful Record and Replay for groundbreaking debugging capabilities.

Get details about all of the new features.