VMWare vSphere 4 Offers SMBs "Always On IT"

An entry-level price point of $166 per processor for the VMWare vSphere 4 allows smaller companies to consolidate servers without breaking the bank and enable the high availability "always on IT" that VMWare claims is the aspiration of all SMBs.

VMWare's 3 new SMB products break into two groups with the break point being 20 physical servers.

• $166 per processor -- VMware vSphere 4 Essentials: All-in-one solution for small offices to consolidate and manage many application workloads while reducing hardware and operating costs. (fewer than 20 physical servers)
• $499 per processor -- VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus: Adds VMware High Availability and VMware Data Recovery for a complete server consolidation and business continuity solution for the small office IT environment. (fewer than 20 physical servers)
• $2,245 per processor -- VMware vSphere 4 Advanced: Scalable, strategic consolidation and availability solution that includes VMware VMotion, VMware Fault Tolerance, VMware Data Recovery and VMware vShield Zones. (more than 20 physical servers)

Forget Cygwin and VMware, run coLinux

Until a week ago I would have said that Cygwin was the best available way to hybridize Windows and *nix. I was relatively happy with my xterms and ssh. But that was all that I could use it for. Running X applications compiled for Cygwin was unusably slow. So I had to use VNC to connect to run X11 apps. Well, I no longer have Cygwin on my machine, it has been replaced by Cooperative Linux.

I don't know what rock I've been hiding under for the past two years but I had not heard of Cooperative Linux until a few weeks ago. Cooperative Linux is a recompilation of the Linux kernel as a Windows executable. All of the native posix commands get remapped to the Windows kernel. And it's fast. It's unbelievably fast. Once the kernel is running, it can run native Linux binaries. In other words, you can boot your Debian/Gentoo/*buntu/etc. distribution while in Windows without any binary recompilation a la VMWare or Virtual PC.

VMWare Tools

VMWare Tools makes the guest OS far more responsive. VMWare Tools is available for Windows, Linux, Netware and FreeBSD. This was in version 5.5 of tools. The newer version of tools may have Solaris. It would be nice to have Solaris.

VMWare Tools on Windows is straightforward. After installing, enable full hardware acceleration.


VMWare Tools on Ubuntu 7.04

Instructions are provided at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Tools

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Everything runs file until this question:

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel?
[/usr/src/linux/include]

/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.20-16-generic/include

And then it complains again: The directory of kernel headers (version @@VMWARE@@ UTS_RELEASE) does not match your running kernel (version 2.6.20-16-generic).

As per this entry, modified /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h and added the line:

#define UTS_RELEASE "2.6.20-16-generic"

I guess I'll have to use Ubuntu 6.10

Hitachi's Universal Storage Platform V is virtually huge

The USPV offers a performance boost over previous Tagmastore systems. In addition, the new hardware ships thin provisioning software - technology yet to be implemented by Hitachi's high-end rivals.

The new hardware can handle 3.5 million input-output operations per second — a 40 per cent boost from its predecessor, launched in 2004. The USPV also offers a 4GB/sec Fibre Channel Switch backplane for connections to disk drives and hosts. The array now supports 16 controller pairs for a total of 224 font-end Fibre Channel ports and 112 FICON or ESCON host ports. The device hold up to 1152 drives.

While internal storage has stayed the same at 332TB, virtualized external storage gets a major boost from its previous incarnation's 32PB to up to 247PB.

"This is a big box for big users," principal IT advisor of Illuminata, John Webster said. "It's clearly not for the faint of heart. You've really got to know what you're doing with a device like this."

Hitachi promises a major improvement in disk utilization with the array's use of thin provisioning. While the technology isn't new, the system is the first high-end device of its kind to use it.

Thin provisioning is a technology debuted by 3PAR where physical disk capacity is used only as needed for virtual volumes. It replaces the traditional method where large portions of storage capacity are allocated to applications but often remain unused.