Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 - New Features

VMware has released the new version of VI3, and it has 3 notable new features.

1. Storage Vmotion: This allows you to move a Virtual Machine's disk file from one storage location to another while the machine is running, much like standard vmotion moves VM state from one host to another. This means if you have a SAN you want to take down for maintenance, you can move all VMs off of it to another SAN.

2. Update Manager: You can now update ESX hosts and Virtual Machines alike with the latest patches. This is done using the VI3 client through Virtual Center

3. Guided Consolidation: Instead of migrating machines using 3rd party tools or otherwise manually with the VMware provided tools, you can now locate all supported physical hosts in your environment, size them up as far as memory and CPU, and validate them as candidates for migration to VMware. You can then import them into a VM all from the VI3 client/Virtual Center.

World's First CCIE

Doing a bit of research on starting my own quest for CCIE, and ran into an article on networkworld about the early days of the CCIE. Apparently, they gave the first CCIE number 1024 to the lab itself, and the second to the guy that wrote the test, Stuart Biggs. So, the first real CCIE was Terry Slattery (Lookup Terrance Slattery on the verification tool) #1026. Another good page is the "CCIEs Worldwide" page which has statistics on how many CCIEs there are now and in what countries.

iSCSI + 10Gb Ethernet = Future of storage

I haven't seen much discussion in the way of this topic, but it is quite obvious that this is the future. Some vendors are already supporting this, like LeftHand networks and NetApp. There are two approaches to storage deployment now. 1)If you need top performance, Fibre Channel is the way to go, and you will have to do a forklift upgrade to 10Gb ethernet later, and 2)If you aren't going to max out a Fibre Channel network's bandwidth, do iSCSI over a 1Gb ethernet network and you can upgrade peace meal at your leisure.

NetworkWorld has a good article that hits the issue head on.

Visa IS bloated

So I and many of my colleagues have complained since the first beta that Vista is bloat ware of the worst kind. But even since it's launch, no one has pointed to how or why it is so bloated. Now, we have some vindication. Not only does Microsoft acknowledged their error to some degree, they are taking a step in the right direction. They are now developing their new version of windows on a kernel (vista-based) called "MinWin", but it won't be available until 2009-2010 timeframe. Don't worry, there is now an app you can run on vista that does much the same thing. It is called vLite
but it is unclear yet it it reduces Vista's thirst for RAM... We certainly can see Linux's strength in this area competing strongly here in the future.

Trusty Old PIX

A vulnerability came out for the new ASA and PIX version 7.2(2).

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/products_security_advisory09186a008093942e.shtml

Here's a case where upgrading makes you more vulnerable. I love my trusty old PIX 6.3! If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Open-source support model: RTFForums

I had an issue today with an open source project called PDFCreator. Now before I start I have to say that I love this software and have been installing it for over 3 years at various companies. I recently needed to install it on a Citrix environment and ran into an issue. It errored out when installing, and though the project claims that it now supports Terminal Servers it came up with a DLL registration error:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\OLEAUT32.DLLUnable to register the DLL/OCX: RegSvr32 failed with exit code 0x5Click Retry to try again, Ignore to proceed anyway (not recommended), or Abort to cancel installation"

Things like this I'm sure happen with any software, but I think the projects that really seem to be getting off the ground need to embrace a "for-profit" support model, and fast. This benefits not only the project and those involved by providing a new revenue stream, but it also makes the companies using the software with a support option.

Forums sometimes are confused as the substitute for real support, and in this case, my post in the forums was the second looking for help on the above topic with no solution yet. The forum provides hope, but doesn't give the comfort of having real support on a product.

I am CCVP today

I passed my Cisco Gateway/Gatekeeper exam yesterday with flying colors and now have my CCVP. I have to say that it seemed easier than doing the MCSE, but then again, Cisco products make more sense to work on than Microsoft. Sure Cisco IOS is complicated, but once you get into the technical details things are often intuitive. Anyway, woohoo! I have a few partner related exams to take (lifecycle services for advanced UC *boring*, CCDA, and Cisco Unity Design and Networking or CDUN). After all that, I am on to do my CCIE Voice. Onward and upward!