Intel Haswell CPU available in June with VMCS shadowing – nested virtualization

In the beginning of June, the new Intel Haswell CPUs will be available. Besides the regular improvements like being faster, having better energy efficiency and having better graphics capabilities, these new CPUs will also include VMCS shadowing (Virtual Machine Control Structure Shadowing).

Basically it’s a feature that allows you to run a hypervisor (like VMware, Hyper-V, Xen Server) and create another hypervisor as a VM beneath it. This is also called nested virtualization.

Some of you might say, “Hey this is not new, I’ve already done this with VMware!”. The difference however is that the current method uses some sort of emulation that does not directly access the hardware. And even though it’s great for testing purposes, the performance is suboptimal.

With the embedded hardware supported VMCS shadowing in the new Intel Haswell CPU the nested hypervisor can directly access the hardware, which should improve performance. Also, it might even make it possible to use non-VMware hypervisors in a nested virtualization scenario.

Of course as always, we’ll just have to wait and see how the performance will be in real-life. It’s also not clear to me yet if hypervisors need to be updated to be able to leverage this option. Nonetheless, to me it sounds very promising and I look forward to playing around with it.

For more information read this great article by Gabe Knuth called “Could VMCS Shadowing (a.k.a. nested VMs) from Intel’s new Haswell processors be what Bromium needs to work in VMs?”. When you use the links in the article you will be able to get more information about the Intel Haswell CPUs including benchmarks and more detailed information about VMCS shadowing and use cases.

If you’re planning to build / buy an Intel Haswell based computer or Home Lab, be sure to look into the confirmed USB3 bug in the chipset. Also unfortunately the DDR3 prices have increased substantially (almost 50%) over the last half year.

 

VMware – Free VMware instructional videos

Not every company or person is able to afford training. Luckily however, more and more companies are providing free learning materials.

VMware has recently updated its instructional videos that can be found at : http://vmwarelearning.com/

 

VMware – Free videos covering what’s new in VMware vSphere 5.1

In the last half year, it’s been a very busy time for me because of all the new Microsoft products being released. As a result of this, I unfortunately haven’t been able to look into the newly added features and capabilities in VMware vSphere 5.1

Luckily however, VMware has released these free videos covering what’s new in VMware vSphere 5.1. This should make it easier to get up-to-date again.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

VMware – The VMware virtualcenter server service terminated with service specific error code 2

A friend of mine who is still a student has been building his own VMware lab environment for some time now. Yesterday he contacted me that he couldn’t get the “VMware VirtualCenter Server service” to start anymore.

The log showed: EventID 7021 “The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated with service-specific error 2 (0×2).”

A quick google search however showed that many things could be causing this error. Because it was a lab environment, I wanted to upgrade the virtual center to the latest version. Before doing so, I took a look at the VMware blog post covering the latest update 5.1.0B. In the readme it said:

“SSO service dependency on MS SQL
When SSO is installed with local Microsoft SQL Server, the services must start in a specific order.
SSO must start after SQL Server starts. If SSO starts before SQL Server starts, restart the SSO
server after SQL server starts.”

Doing so resolved the issue. To prevent the issue from re-occurring, I made the SSO service dependent on the SQL service.

I don’t understand why this is not part of the automated installation process though

 

 

VDI – Free Train Signal video series : “Intro To Desktop Virtualization”

For those who are unfamiliar with Desktop Virtualization, Train Signal is providing a free video series “Intro To Desktop Virtualization on YouTube.

Be sure to check out these websites and twitter accounts as well if you want to keep track of what Train Signal is doing:

http://www.trainsignal.com
@TrainSignal
@davidmdavis

 

 

Apple – Notes / summary for the “Mac Integration Basics 10.8 Exam”

People that know me, know that I’ve mainly been working with Microsoft my whole life. Lately however, I’ve been working with an Apple MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion however and I intend to  enough knowledge and experience to get the following certifications:

• Apple Certified Associate – Mac Integration 10.8
• Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) 10.8
• Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) 10.8

So keep an eye on my blog if you want to learn more about Apple’s Mac OS X and its certifications. Read more about other Apple certifications on their Training and Certification page.

The “Mac Integration Basics 10.8 Exam”

For people new to Mac and OS X, Apple offers the Associate certification for Mac Integration. This covers OS X basics and describes options to integrate OS X into an existing (Windows) environment. The exam costs $65 and can be taken online.

Even though the guide that Apple provides isn’t that big to begin with, I decided to summarize it anyways. I hope it is useful to someone else as well.

Also if you want to get more in-depth knowledge about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, check out this great book: Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Support Essentials. Before purchasing, you might also want to look for coupon codes as it might save you 30% off or more.

Notes / summary for the “Mac Integration Basics 10.8 Exam”

 

Home LAB – How to use Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and VMware Workstation on the same machine

In yesterday’s post I described that for my purposes it was still necessary to run VMware Workstation sometimes despite having Client Hyper-V installed on my Windows 8 machine.

What you have to keep in mind though, is that you’re already running a hypervisor when you have Client Hyper-V installed in Windows 8. Installing and running VMware Workstation might cause problems. So unfortunately you cannot run them at the same time. This is also true for other virtualization products like by example virtualbox.

As a workaround you can either uninstall or (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. When you want to switch between Hyper-V and VMware Workstation it is ofcourse best to just temporarily disable Hyper-V.

In this forum post, a couple of methods are described to (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. It includes creating a seperate boot menu entry to boot with Hyper-V disabled and modifying the setting either through registry or a command. All methods do require a reboot however.

PS:

• This kind of configuration is ofcourse not supported and should only be used for testing purposes in non production environments.
• Depending on both your hardware and what your planning to do, you might also want to consider:
  • Running VMware ESXi from a USB stick
  • Running Windows 8 from a USB stick with Windows To Go (WTG).
• It should also work on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and up, but I haven’t tested it.

 

Powershell – Get Percentage of Pysical and Virtual Servers from your VMware and Cisco UCS combined for each location

In a previous blog post I’ve already shown this script that use PowerCLI to get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment for each Virtual Center server. This script however only took into account ESX hosts and VM’s in each Virtual Center server separately.

This means that:

• The UCS blades weren’t taken into account as physical servers.
• No percentage was being calculated for each physical location.

This new script automates determining for each location the number of physical and virtual servers in VMware vSphere and Cisco UCS.

PS: You can get more detailed information from the script, but it has been disabled using comments by default.

 

PowerShell – Get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment

With the current focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) including Green IT, it might be important to know what percentage of servers has been virtualized.

This script I made will use PowerCLI to get the percentage of physical and virtual servers from your VMware environment for each Virtual Center server. You can specify multiple Virtual Center servers if desired.

 

Free training – Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) hosting 3 virtualization related Jump Starts

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is hosting 3 virtualization related Jump Starts in January and February:

1. Introduction to Hyper-V Jump Start (January 24th, 2013)
2. Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals Jump Start (January 30th, 2013)
3. Microsoft Tools for VMware Migration and Integration (Late February)

I’ve attended a couple of Jump Starts including those of Office 365, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 already and I think it’s a great way to quickly get up-to-date about a subject. Also there’s a great team of people working behind the scenes to answer questions and provide more detailed resources. Other attendees often also share their experiences and provide valuable insights.

The links above provide include a course outline and a link to register for the Jump Start.

I hope to see you there.