Oi,
Well I didn’t really have much sleep last night, I was up pretty much all night because of an allergic reaction to what I ate for dinner last night. I think it was the crab cakes, it may have contained shrimps (I asked, and they said it didn’t). It wasn’t pretty, bumps everywhere and the itchiness… oh my…

Okay so yesterday was craaazy. I bet you there was more people in here yesterday and there is in most small town in Canada. The number came out to be some 10,100 peeps yesterday. Sessions were full, the line-ups were long and the way they handle the entry to the session was not the best method either. Anyways, I attended 3 sessions yesterday (and I missed or came late to the other 2). There was also a big “solutions exchange,” it’s like a big vendor expo – I got a few goodies to give to some co-workers.

So, VMware announced that their new ESX server (ESX 3.i or 3.5) will be shipped inside a chip. This will reduce deployment time as the hardware vendor will have the chip built inside their servers. The new ESX will no longer has a service console (RHEL 3) with it, it is just the kernel – hypervisor (footprint of 32MB, as compared to the 2GB with the service console). Dell also announced that at the end of November there will be LIMITED RELEASES of their new server class which will include the ESX “chip.” Well, here’s a little background of the “chip.” VMware was testing the new ESX using a USB key to simulate a chip. Long story short, the new Dell “chip” is not actually a chip on the motherboard, but rather a MEMORY CARD READER (ya …!! like the one you would find in your Camera or Nintendo DS) builtin, as a riser card, to the motherboard. Hmmm…. you will then insert the 2GB memory card (probably will be SD) and there’re your ESX Server. Of course there are pros and cons to that, but I’ll have you guys comment on it. HP will also do a similar thing, except I heard they will have a USB plug right on the motherboard (most newer blades already have these). They may certify specific brand of USB key to be used inside these servers (imagine one of them melting inside your server…. ooh.. gave me the shivers). If you still want to use your old hardware, you can just plug the USB key (with the ESX kernel… sorry ESX hypervisor) to the server and let it boot from it. And yes, it will just dangle in front (or at the back) of the server… I thought that was kinda scary

As I mentioned earlier, VMware announced a new product for DR management called VMware Site Recovery Manager. It is a product that will enable you to manage your auto/manual recovery/failover in the event of a disaster. The product is attached to the VC. It takes advantange the ability of the storage replication technology (if you already have this implemented) and allows you to automatically create/configure the VMs that are in the primary site to the secondary site. VMware SRM will use VC as a proxy to communicate to the ESX hosts. It will NOT do: reports on the replication, quiesceing, or automatic failback. It will run in active-passive configuration and power-on operators can be configured by priority levels (priority levels can also be configured). It also has the a neat testing procedure so you can test your DR scenarios before it happens (knock on wood…. <knock> <knock>). This product will definitely needs to be reviewed later (when we have a proper working DR site and after we implement the SAN replication technology, but for now…. ).

VMotion between CPUs – summary. VMware pretty much said that they have been working with CPU vendors to make sure that there is a uniformity between each chips so VMs can be VMotion between them. Of course, we’re talking about the next ESX roll-out. They all agreed that the base chips must at least support SSE3. This new version of VMotion is called “ENHANCED VMOTION.” It works with different CPU types (same or diferent vendors) by hiding CPU ID instruction feature bit but does not disable the associated instruction feature opcodes. I have more on my notes, but I’m not going to write it all down in this blog.

The last session I went was a “sales” session from DoubleTake and their virtualization solution. For more info, go to http://www.doubletake.com/

Well it was a pretty busy Day 2, but it was a good one. I will try to write Day 3 tomorrow, it’s getting so late…

Posted by jandie on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 12:36 am.