HP DL580 Gen9 BIOS Settings for VMware ESXi

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

These are my suggested BIOS settings for a HP DL580 Gen9 Servers running VMware ESXi.

If there are no requirements for serial ports then the following can be disabled as per VMware Performance Best Practices to disabled any hardware not required: –

  • Under System Options \ Serial Port Options
    • Embedded Serial Port
    • Virtual Serial Port

There is a 1GB embedded user partition on non-volatile flash memory on the system board that can be used to install ESXi onto. If you are going to install ESXi here then this partition will need to be enabled in the BIOS, by default it is disabled. If you are not going to use it then leave it disabled.

There is also an internal SD Card Slot that can be used to install ESXi on a SD Card installed in this slot. By default this slot is enabled in the BIOS, however if you are not going to use it then I would recommend disabling the slot, again as per VMware Performance Best Practices to disable any hardware not required.

The above two options are under System Options \ USB Options.

Also under System Options \ USB Options are the following settings: –

  • USB Control – I normally leave this enabled so that I can use the external ports to connect a keyboard and mouse if ever required for local configuration and troubleshooting.
  • USB Boot Support – I also normally leave this enabled as it is required to boot off an ISO image attached via the iLO card for doing things such as firmware upgrades and installing ESXi in the first place.
  • Virtual Install Disk – By default this is disabled and I normally leave it disabled. It contains drivers specific to the server that an OS can use during installation but I don’t think it is any use for installing ESXi.

Under System Options \ Processor Options make sure the following settings are set (these are all the default settings): –

  • Intel(R) Hyperthreading – Enabled – This is a VMware Performance Best Practice.
  • Processor Core Disabled – 0 – No processor cores will be disabled.
  • Processor x2APIC Support – Enabled – x2APIC support optimises interrupt distribution and has been supported by ESXi since version 5.1.

Under System Options \ Virtualisation Options ensure that all of the following are enabled as per VMware Performance Best Practices (by default they are all enabled): –

  • Virtualization Technology
  • Intel(R) VT-d
  • SR-IOV

Under System Options \ Boot Time Optimizations I normally disable the Dynamic Power Capping Functionality as I set the Power Profile to be controlled by the OS and therefore at boot time there is no need to spend time performing this operation. Also in this section by default the Extended Memory Test is also disabled and I leave it like this as enabling it results in a significant increase in boot time when the host has a large amount of memory installed as is the case with the majority of DL580 servers running ESXi.

The Advanced Memory Protection setting under System Options \ Memory Operations will depend on your requirements for the memory, e.g. if you want to implement mirrored memory or not. Normally I use Advanced ECC Support as this allows the full amount of installed memory to be utilised.

Under Boot Options I leave the Boot Mode as UEFI Mode as this is supported for ESXi 6. The HP documentation states that UEFI Optimized Boot is required to boot VMware ESXi in UEFI Boot Mode so I leave this enabled as it is by default. Although I have tried disabling it and ESXi did boot in UEFI Boot Mode. I also leave the Boot Order Policy as the default of Retry Boot Order Indefinitely as I do not see any reason to change from this setting. Your Boot order will depend on where you are booting ESXi from, e.g. SD card, User Partition, Hard Disk, PXE Boot, e.t.c. I normally set the boot order to be: –

  1. Generic USB Boot
  2. <Whatever device ESXi is installed on>

This way I can boot of a ISO image connected to the iLO or if that is not present (or another USB device) then it will boot ESXi from wherever I have installed it. I remove all other boot devices.

Under Network Options \ Network Boot Options I disabled any network adapter ports that are not going to be used for PXE booting.

Under Power Management I set the Power Profile to Custom and then set the Power Regulator to OS Control Mode as VMware ESXi includes a full range of host power management capabilities in the software that can save power when a host is not fully utilised. Configuring this to OS Control Mode allows ESXi the most flexibility in using the power management features. Under the Advanced Power Options I change the Energy/Performance Bias to Maximum Performance as this setting should allow for the highest performance with the lowest latency for environments that are not sensitive to power consumption, if you are sensitive to power consumption then you may not want to set this. I leave all of the other Power Management settings as the defaults.

Under Performance Options I ensure the following are enabled (this is the default): –

  • Intel (R) Turbo Boot Technology
  • ACPI SLIT

VMware best practices are to enable Intel (R) Turbo Boot Technology so that the processors can transition to a higher frequency that the processor’s rated speed.

Operating systems that support the System Locality Information Table (SLIT) can use this information to improve performance by allocating resources and workloads more efficiently.

Under the Advanced Performance Tuning Options I leave the defaults as per the table below.

Option Setting Comments
Node Interleaving Disabled Enabling this disabled NUMA. VMware recommend that in most cases you will get the best performance by disabling node interleaving.
Intel NIC DMA Channels (IOAT) Enabled This is a NIC acceleration option that runs only on Intel-based NICs
HW Prefetcher Enabled Typically, setting this option to enabled provides better performance.
Adjacent Sector Prefetch Enabled Typically, setting this option to enabled provides better performance.
DCU Stream Prefetcher Enabled Typically, setting this option to enabled provides better performance.
DCU IP Prefetcher Enabled In most cases, the default value of enabled provides optimal performance
QPI Bandwidth Optimization (RTID) Balanced The Balanced option provides the best performance for most applications. The only other option of Optimized for I/O can increase bandwidth for I/O devices such as GPUs that rely on direct access to system memory.
Memory Proximity Reporting for I/O Enabled When enabled, the System ROM reports the proximity relationship between I/O devices and system memory to the operating system. Most operating systems can use this information to efficiently assign memory resources for devices such as network controllers and storage devices.
I/O Non-posted Prefetching Enabled Disabling this can significantly improve performance for a small set of configurations that require a balanced mix of read/write I/O traffic (for example, Infiniband) or multiple x16 devices that utilize max bandwidth of the PCIe bus. Disabling this feature does, however, have a slight impact on 100% I/O read bandwidth.
NUMA Group Size Optimization Clustered The default setting of Clustered provides better performance due to the resulting Kgroups being optimised along NUMA boundaries.
Intel Performance Monitoring Support Disabled This option does not impact performance. When enabled, it exposes certain chipset devices that can be used with the Intel Performance Monitoring Toolkit.
Posted in HP, VMware | Leave a comment

Demise of vSphere C# Client

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

We have been expecting it since vSphere 4.1; VMware announced on Wed 18th May 2016 that the current version of vSphere, 6.0, will be the last version to contain the C# Client, i.e. the full desktop client we have been using since vSphere 4 and before the Web Client was available.

The Web Client that has been available since vSphere 5 has had issues with performance with many people resisting the move to it, preferring the C# desktop client even though the web client has been improved over the various releases through 5.5 and 6.0. VMware stopped adding new features to the traditional C# client with 5.5 meaning that we had to use the Web Client to utilise these new features, such as Inventory Tags, enhanced vMotion (no shared storage), vSphere Flash Read Cache and VMDKs over 2TB. This Web Client was based on Flash; a new web client based on HTML5 has recently been made available via a VMware Fling. A VMware Fling is an unsupported release which allows VMware to get features out to customer early for testing. It is this HTML5 based web client that will be included in the next version of vSphere.

The VMware Fling HTML5 Web Client is not a fully functional client at the moment but I would encourage people using vSphere 6 to download it now and start using it so that they can get used to it and try it out prior to it being the main client available. VMware Flings also allow VMware to release updates much more quickly than official supported code, therefore expect new features to be added to this client over the coming weeks and months.

The HTML5 Web Client VMware Fling can be downloaded from https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-html5-web-client

For more details on the announcement from VMware regarding the vSphere C# Client not being included in the next release of vSphere see http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/05/goodbye-vsphere-client-for-windows-c-hello-html5.html

Posted in VMware, vSphere | Leave a comment

vCenter Server Storage Filters

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

vCenter has 4 Storage Filters: –

  • RDM Filter
  • VMFS Filter
  • Host Rescan Filter
  • Same Host Transports Filter

These filters affect the actions vCenter takes when scanning storage as follows:-

RDM Filter

When you attempt to add a RDM to a VM the RDM filter filters out any RDM that have already been added to a VM leaving only the ones the LUNs that are not currently formatted as a datastore or attached to a VM as a RDM. By disabling this filter you can add the same RDM to multiple VMs.

VMFS Filter

When you use the Add Storage Wizard to add a VMFS volume to an ESXi host then the VMFS Filter filters out LUNs that have already been formatted as a VMFS datastore.

Host Rescan Filter

When you add a VMFS datastores to one ESXi host the Host Rescan Filter triggers all of the other ESXi hosts to rescan for the new volume. Disabling this filter prevents the other hosts doing this. This may be helpful when adding large amounts of VMFS datastores to a cluster, i.e. you can add all the new datastores to one ESXi host, maybe via PowerCLI, and then once completes get each of the other ESXi hosts to perform a rescan.

Same Host and Transports Filter

The Same Host and Transport Filter filters out LUNs that cannot be used to extend a VMFS datastore due to host or storage incompatibility, for example if the LUN is not presented to all hosts using the datastore.

By default all of the filters are enabled. To disable a filter you need to add the relevant advanced setting to vCenter (Administration….vCenter Settings….Advanced Settings) and set it to FALSE. By default these settings are not listed in the Advanced Setting, therefore to disable any of them you need to add them. The relevant settings are: –

Filter Advanced Setting
RDM Filter config.vpxd.filter.rdmFilter
VMFS Filter config.vpxd.filter.vmfsFilter
Host Rescan Filter config.vpxd.filter.hostRescanFilter
Sam Host and Transports Filter config.vpxd.filter.SameHostAndTransportsFilter
Posted in Configuration, VMware, vSphere | Leave a comment

VCAP5 Exams Retirement

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

Those of you who have planned to take the either of the VCAP5 exams, VCAP5-DCA or VCAP5-DCD, need to get in quick as VMware have announced the retirement of these two exams as follows: –

  • VCAP5-DCA – Data Center Administrator will be retired on June 2nd 2016
  • VCAP5-DCD – Data Center Design will be retired on June 24th 2016

I took VCAP5-DCD 23 months ago and had planned to take VCAP5-DCA but never found the time to ensure I was 100% prepared for it. These exams are not cheap, last 3hours and the closest testing centre to me for the advanced exams is a 2.5 hour drive away. Therefore, I only wanted to book the DCA exam if I was 100% confident of passing it. As my VCAP5-DCD exam was the last VMware exam I passed then my VCP certification expires in 1 month. Therefore I have booked the VCAP5-DCA exam to give it a go before it is retired and renew my VCP (assuming I pass).

The expected general availability (GA) of the VCAP6-DCV exams, VCAP6-DCV-Design and VCAP6-DCV-Deploy, is 30th May 2016. The beta period of these exams closed on 18th March 2016, for the Design exam, and 26th February 2016, for the Deploy exam.

UPDATE: Pleased to say I passed by VCAP5-DCA
VMware have extended the life of the VCAP5 exams are currently there are no published retirement date for these exams.

The following VMware exams are also being retired in June: –

  • VCIX-NV – VMware Certified Implementation Export Network Virtualisation on June 2nd 2016
  • VCP-Cloud – VMware Certified Professional Cloud on June 24th 2016
Posted in Certification, VMware | 1 Comment

vSphere Beta

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

There is a new vSphere Beta Program starting soon. I don’t know the exact date but I would suspect that it will be in time for the upcoming release (v6.5 maybe) to be ready for VMware at the end of August.

You can apply to be part of this vSphere Beta Program at http://info.vmware.com/content/35853_VMware-vSphere-Beta_Interest

This vSphere Beta is a private Beta but is open to VMware customers who have deployed vSphere 5.5 and 6.0.

Beta participants are expected to do the following: –

  • Online acceptance of the Master Software Beta Test Agreement will be required prior to visiting the Private Beta Community
  • Install beta software within 3 days of receiving access to the beta product
  • Provide feedback within the first 4 weeks of the beta program
  • Submit Support Requests for bugs, issues and feature requests
  • Complete surveys and beta test assignments
  • Participate in the private beta discussion forum and conference calls

vSphere Beta Program Overview

This program enables participants to help define the direction of the most widely adopted industry-leading virtualization platform. People who want to participate in the program can now indicate their interest by filling out the simple form found at the link above. The vSphere team will grant access to the program to selected candidates in stages. This vSphere Beta Program leverages a private Beta community to download software and share information. VMware will provide discussion forums, webinars, and service requests to enable you to share your feedback with them.

You can expect to download, install, and test vSphere Beta software in your environment or get invited to try new features in a VMware hosted environment. All testing is free-form and VMware encourage you to use their software in ways that interest you. This will provide them with valuable insight into how you use vSphere in real-world conditions and with real-world test cases, enabling them to better align their product with your business needs.

Some of the many reasons to participate in this beta opportunity:

  • Receive early access to the vSphere Beta products
  • Interact with the vSphere Beta team consisting of Product Managers, Engineers, Technical Support, and Technical Writers
  • Provide direct input on product functionality, configurability, usability, and performance
  • Provide feedback influencing future products, training, documentation, and services
  • Collaborate with other participants, learn about their use cases, and share advice and learnings

 
 

 

Posted in VMware, vSphere | Leave a comment

Migrating Windows 2008 SQL Cluster to New Windows Domain

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

This procedure is unsupported and Microsoft recommends deleting the cluster and rebuilding it from scratch if you want to migrate it from one Windows Domain to another Windows Domain. However, I have had some success migrating a clustered SQL 2008 R2 server running on Windows 2008 R2 Failover Cluster. The instructions are at a high level and assume that you know who to configure Windows Failover Cluster, edit the registry and manage Active Directory Object. If you do not know how to do these things then you probably should not be attempting to follow these instructions in the first place. If I get the time I will update the instructions with more detail and some screenshots. YOU USE THESE INSTRUCTIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  1. Set the cluster IP address to the correct network and the new IP address
  2. Add the cluster name to DNS with the new IP address
  3. Create a new Computer Account in the new domain for the cluster
  4. Update registry on each cluster node with the new GUID of the computer account created in the new domain (see below)
  5. Right click on the Cluster Name resource and select More Actions….Repair Active Directory Object
  6. For each clustered SQL instance
    1. Set the SQL Instance IP address to the correct network and new IP address
    2. Add the SQL instance name to DNS with the new IP address
    3. Create a new computer account in the new domain for the SQL instance
    4. Set permissions on the SQL instance computer account
    5. Update registry on each cluster node with the new GUID of the SQL instance computer account created in the new domain (see below)
  7. Restart the Cluster Service
  8. If you have done all of the above correctly then the cluster core services should successfully start and each of the SQL instances should start

Updating the registry with the new GUID of the computer account created in the new domain

 
 

The GUID of the new computer account will be in the format xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx. You can find this from the Attribute Editor as ObjectGUID

These are pairs of hexadecimal numbers, e.g. 11223344-5566-7788-9900-aabbccddeeff.

In the registry the first 3 sets of hexadecimal numbers have the pairs reversed e.g. 12345678 becomes 78563412, i..e the pairs are 12 34 56 78, so take 78 then 56 then 34 then 12. In addition the hyphens are not stored in the registry, so for a GUID of 5e6ff387-e531-4ee6-9bf0-6245aa54d31e it would be stored in the registry as 87f36f5e31e5e64e9bf06245aa54d31e.

In the registry under HKLM\Cluster\Resources each of the resources are listed in separate subkeys, to find the correct subkey for the cluster name, find the subkey which contains CoreCurrentName, below this look at Paramaters and edit ObjectGUID to match the translated GUID for the computer account that has been created in the new AD.

 
 

Permissions to set on the computer account created for the SQL instance

 
 

Give the cluster computer account the following permissions to the SQL instance computer account

  • Read
  • Allow to authenticate
  • Change password
  • Receive as
  • Reset password
  • Send as
  • Validated write to DNS Host Name
  • Validate write to service principle name
  • Read account restrictions
  • Write account restrictions
  • Read DNS host name attributes
  • Read MS TS gateway access
  • Read personal information
  • Read public information

 Updating the registry with the new GUID of the SQL instance account created in the new domain

 
 

The GUID of the SQL instance computer accounts needs to be translated in the same way as the computer account GUID was translated to be stored in the registry.

Again look in the registry under HKLM\Cluster\Resources and find the resource for the SQL instance name the Name key will be set to SQL Network Name (SQL-INSTANCE-NAME), e.g. SQL Network Name (SQLSERVER01), again under here open up Parameters and set ObjectGUID to the translated GUID for the instance computer account you have created.

Posted in Microsoft, SQL, Windows 2008 | 3 Comments

What is a SAN?

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

A pet hate of mine is when people refer to a Storage Device, such as a Fibre Attached NetApp Filer, as a SAN. It is not a SAN but a storage device that connects to a SAN. I often hear people say “Oh, you have bought a new SAN” when actually you have bought an additional Storage Device to connect to your existing SAN.

If you think about a network, or a LAN (Local Area Network), you have Servers connected to the LAN providing services to clients also connected to the LAN as depicted in the following diagram.

Similarly a storage device connects to a SAN (Storage Area Network) to provide services to other devices such as storage for servers, as depicted in the following diagram

More often than not there will be two SANs for redundancy, in a Fibre Channel setup these are commonly referred to as SAN fabrics. The following diagram illustrates this.

So in a Storage Area Network (SAN) environment you Storage Devices are like the Servers on your LAN and the Servers connected to your SAN are like the clients in your LAN environment. The LAN and the SAN are combined with the Servers being the common element, i.e. the Servers are connected to the front end LAN providing services to the clients but are also connected to the backend SAN using services from the Storage Devices as depicted in the following diagram.

Posted in Storage | Leave a comment

iPhone, Android or Windows Phone

Posted on February 28, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

Should I stick with an iPhone or switch back to Android or even get a Windows Phone? Don’t swear at me and say get a Blackberry!

I am currently using an iPhone 4S which I have had for just over 4 years now. I am getting sick of it, but that may be down to the age of it not because it is an iPhone. The on/off button does not work, which I understand is a common problem on this generation of iPhones. The battery doesn’t last a whole day and appears to be getting worse. These things could be fixed by getting a new button and a new battery or even upgrading to a newer iPhone.

I have struggled for a long time with the capacity of the phone; it is a 16GB iPhone. I am still running ios 7 because I do not have the space to download the upgrade. Often I cannot take photos with it because of a lack of storage and even if I delete a load of photos it doesn’t always free up the space. Other people I know with Android phones appear to be able to keep loads of photos on their phones without running out of space.

I was an early adopter of Android phones, having an early HTC Hero. The problem with this phone was that the early version of Android it was running, Cupcake (1.5) I think, had to store the apps on the internal memory and not on a memory card and the phone had very limited internal memory. This was soon rectified in the Android OS, however HTC never made that later OS available for the Hero.

What annoyed me the other day was that I wanted to get a photo from Flickr to my iPhone. I don’t use a Flickr app on my iPhone so accessed Flickr via Safari but couldn’t see a way to save the photo. If I accessed the photo on Flickr via my Windows laptop using Google Chrome I could save the photo but then couldn’t find an easy way to get the photo from the laptop to the iPhone. I attached the iPhone to the laptop via a USB cable and could access the photos on the iPhone via Windows Explorer but could not copy the photo to the iPhone. I thought I would have to synchronise the photo using iTunes but couldn’t work that out either. I’m sure I have done this in the past where I synchronise certain photo folders from my laptop to my iPhone but I think I switched that off a long time ago due to the lack of space issue. I ended up emailing the photo to myself and then accessing the email from my iPhone and then saving the photo. There should have been a better method that was simple to do without installing other apps on the iPhone; thinking about it now I think I have an app called WiFi Transfer that I have used in the past to get stuff on or off my iPhone but I had forgotten about that.

I’m sure if I had an Android phone then this would have been simpler.

I also use an iPad, or did before it was stolen, but I don’t think I need the phone and iPad/tablet to synchronise and/or share content. I would use similar apps on both of them and access the same email accounts but I don’t think that it would be a problem for me to have a different operating system on my tablet and phone.

So should I stick with an iPhone and invest in a newer one, go back to Android or even get a Windows Phone, I feel I don’t really want a Windows phone.

Once I’ve decided on the “type” of phone to get which phone should I get? I want something with a reasonable size screen but not so big that I cannot stick the phone (in a case) in my trouser pockets. I don’t need all the latest technology/gimmicks such as being able to scroll the screen up by rolling my eyes up or turning the pages of a digital book I am reading on the phone by waving my hand over the screen.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Build and Manage Your Hybrid Cloud with Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

On Wednesday 10th February 2016, the day after VMware announced Workspace ONE, see Digital Workspace, they announced a new major version of Virtual SAN (vSAN) and vRealize Suite 7. A replay of the announcement can be seen in a video at http://www.vmware.com/digitalenterprise

Arnaud Chain, VP Enterprise & Strategy, VMware EMEA introduced the announcement of vSAN 6.2 which he said increases storage virtualisation by 10 times by the use of technologies such as: –

  • Deduplication and
  • Compression

vSAN fits in with VMware’s Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) which combines the following defined in software to provide one integrated architecture: –

  • Compute
  • Storage
  • Network

The announcement described how Clouds are becoming the new Silos with different tools and skills to manage and secure them.

VMware provides a Unified Control Layer across Multi-Clouds such as the following to deploy, secure and manage them:-

  • On-Premise Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC)
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud

VMware’s HCI includes: –

  • vSphere including vCenter Server
  • vSAN
  • NSX
  • vRealize Suite

vSAN has been implemented at more than 3,000 customers.

vSAN 6.2 provides all flash performance with superior economics. Usually with storage you have a choice between high performance or cost effective, whereas vSAN 6.2 combines the two providing: –

  • up to 100,000 IOPS per node
  • as low as $1 per usable GB

Hardware Partners have certified solution as vSAN Ready Nodes and you can get hardware with vSAN pre-installed from vendors such as Fujitsu and Supermicro. There are also Engineered Appliances such as EVO:RAIL containing vSAN.

Now you can purchase an EVO SDDS based integrated system containing: –

  • vRealize
  • NSX
  • VMware Hyper-Converged Software (HCS)
  • EVO SDDS Manager
  • Certified Partner Hardware

vRealize Suite is the leader in Cloud Management and Automation and is the most comprehensive in the market-place. It works across Private Clouds running on vSphere and other hypervisors as well as Public Clouds.

The Suite consists of: –

  • vRealize Automation
  • vRealize Business
  • vRealize Operations
  • vRealize Log Insight

vRealize Automation allows you to create applications and then deploy and manage them across their life-cycle.

vRealize Business provides a real time view of the costs of running your applications.

vRealize Operations and Log Management is used for day to day management of the underlying infrastructure.

The announced vRealize 7 contains the following versions of the products: –

  • vRealize Automation 7.0
  • vRealize Business 7.0
  • vRealize Operations 6.2
  • vRealize Log Insight 3.3

vRealize Automation 7.0 allows application blue printing which sets up the networking and storage for the applications.

There are more than 1,000 customers of NSX.

The latest version of NSX extends from the datacentre to AWS and Azure, it is the leading network virtualisation solution.

As part of these announcements Kenny Wilder, Director of Network Infrastructure at Fulton County Schools described how they improved performance of a critical system running on SQL by moving to vSAN, where response times had dropped from 50-60ms to <1ms and tasks that used to take 35 minutes now only take 5 minutes. They are now planning on moving SAP and their AirWatch implementations to vSAN. Kenny explained how vSAN works out much cheaper than traditional SAN solutions and how simple it is to implement. They have 10TB of vSAN at the moment.

Rawlinson Rivera (@PunchingClouds), Principal Architect, Office of the CTO – SABU at VMware gave some more details regarding vSAN 6.2 including: –

  • vSAN 6.2 is the 4th generation release of vSAN
  • It is embedded into the hypervisor

 

 

  • New Features include: –
    • Deduplication and Compression
    • Erasure Coding providing predictable all flash storage saving that is workload independent
    • Quality of Service which ensures SLAs with per VM, one click control of max IOPs
  • Virtual SAN for VMware Photon is the best software defined storage for DevOps
  • vSAN 6.2 is up to 60% less cost than competing all flash HCI
  • Includes new automation and operations using tools familiar to VMware Admins

 

Posted in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, VMware, vRealize Suite, vSAN | Leave a comment

Digital Workspace

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Calvin Scoltock

Earlier this week on Tuesday 9th February 2016 as part of the Mobility Online Event VMware announced the Workspace ONE solution containing the new Horizon 7 and improved Horizon Air. The video of these announcements may still be available for view at http://www.vmware.com/digitalenterprise/, you will need to register.

Sanjay Poonen, EVP & GM, End-User Computing explained how we are becoming a Digital Workforce working at the “speed of life” and that VMware had more than 62,000 End User Computing (EUC) customers and was growing 30% per year.

There was a common theme throughout the announcements of VMware vision of
One Cloud – Any Application – Any Device.

Workspace ONE encompasses: –

  • Desktop
  • Mobile
  • Windows Apps
  • Identity

Sumit Dhawan, SVP & GM, Desktop Products went on to explain how Workspace ONE provided

  • Flexibility
  • Security
  • Productivity

Workspace ONE provides a consumer experience, self-service access across all devices for the following Applications: –

  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Windows

Workspace ONE is Enterprise Secure allowing the End Users to choose their own devices be it

  • Corporate Devices or
  • Bring Your Own Device

It also contains secure messaging and content applications with conditional access so you can control what your end users can access depending on how they connect. For example they may get access to more if they are connected across the corporate network than if they are connected via a public network.

Workspace ONE works hand-in-hand with VMware’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) infrastructure.

Roy Clements, Director, Solutions Engineering provided a demo of how the Single Sign On (SSO) within Workspace ONE means that you have a single identity with no need for passwords or tokens. He also showed the nice user experience of the included Boxer email client as well as Social Cast and Content Locker.

Mobile SSO provides a 3 way trust between: –

  • Workspace ONE
  • Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) Applications
  • The Device

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roy also demonstrated how the content can be protected and showed that you could prevent confidential content being copied from a secured document and pasted into an insecure location such as Twitter.

There are 3 editions of Workspace ONE starting at $8 per user per month for cloud. These editions are: –

  • Standard
  • Advanced
  • Enterprise

These solutions are designed for the Cloud First.

Horizon 7 includes 4 major First-to-Market innovations

  • Just-in-Time Delivery from Project Fargo
  • App Lifecycle Management
  • Blast Extreme Experience
  • Smart Policies

With Just-in-Time Delivery you create a Live Template and then when users login they get a customised cloud desktop with their personal settings. This means that you don’t have to manage all those clones; just manage a single master desktop.

VMware’s latest Desktop as a Service (DaaS) Horizon Air offering now comes with a “Hybrid Mode” allowing you to connect your own infrastructure to the cloud so that you can run some of your desktops/apps on-premise for security and/or performance reasons but still get all the benefits of Horizon Air by leaving the Controls within the cloud such as:

  • Simple, out of the box setup
  • Provisioning of 0 to 2000 desktops in under 20 minutes
  • Automatic upgrades and new features
  • Ability to quickly move some users to the cloud

Horizon Air costs only $16 per user per month and Horizon 7 and 6 customers can experience Horizon Air for one full year for less than $1 per user per month

Posted in VMware, Workspace ONE | Leave a comment