I came across this little tidbit this morning. Netapp has posted a couple ‘featured technology demonstration’ videos from VMworld Europe 2008. One video covers Snap Manager for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) and the other covers Open Systems SnapVault.

At the same location, Netapp also links over to a preview of a new technical report titled ‘Open Systems SnapVault Best Practices Guide for Protecting Virtual Infrastructure’.

You can find the Netapp VMworld Europe 2008 resources page here. And below are links to the individual items I mentioned:

Snap Manager for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) Video

Open Systems SnapVault

Open SnapVault Technical Report Preview

It’s been quite some time since my last post (almost 2 months; yikes). It turns out that a new addition to the family has take up a bit more time than I had anticipated.

Now that things have settled down a bit, I should be posting a bit more regularly. Stay tuned….

Here’s another installment of ‘Quick Bits’:

• There’s an interesting conversation taking place over on Scott Lowe’s blog. He posted some thoughts from a recent meeting with some Citrix folks which covered XenServer. Simon Crosby, from Citrix (formerly XenSource), posted an extended version of his comment response over on his Citrix blog. There seems to have been some mis-information on both sides, but I recommend you check out the discussion.
• Another response by Simon Crosby in regards to a post by a VMware employee on cpu checking during the live migration of VMs. More of the same.
• VMware released five new performance white papers. I haven’t fully digested it yet, but one of the white papers covers VMI (VMware’s paravirtualization) which lines up nicely with Scott’s XenServer discussion. You can see a summary of all five white papers (with links) here.
• As mentioned in Quick Bits #1, Andrew Kutz has done some good work in relation to VirtualCenter plugins. He recently posted the first revision of his “VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Plugin and Extension Programming Guide”. You can check out the two plugins he’s created and the guide here. Keep in mind that 3rd party plugins are currently not supported by VMware.
• VMware launched a Developer Center blog. So far there is a single ‘welcome’ post (with some brief info), but hopefully we’ll see some good info coming from it. You can find the blog here.
• Via Duncan from yellow-bricks.com, VMware published a KB article which details how to get a shell on a running instance of ESX 3i. The shell is intended to be used in tech support situations. You can find the KB article here.

As always, feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below.

I often come across items that, for one reason or another, don’t justify an entire post. In an effort to pass on useful information (with a thought or two), I’ll be publishing a “Quick Bits” post every so often. Scott Lowe has also started a similar technique over on his blog (definitely worth checking out).

• Rich Brambley, from vmetc.com posted best practice information on ESX service console partitioning. This information is based on VMware Authorized Consultant documentation. There’s nothing outrageous in the partitioning scheme, but it’s worth a look to see how you line up with best practices.

• Andrew Kutz from lostcreations.com released the first and second third-party plugins for VirtualCenter. The first, is a GUI to invoke storage VMotion operations. The second, is a GUI that allows the creation of multiple port groups on multiple ESX hosts at once. Keep in mind that VMware currently doesn’t support third-party VirtualCenter plugins, so use at your own risk. If you’re interested in creating your own VirtualCenter plugins, check out this thread from the VMware community forums. Hopefully, we’ll see some official documentation and support from VMware in the near future on this front.

• Stuart Radnidge over at vinterals.com has successfully PXE booted ESX 3i Installable. It looks like I’m not the only one who sees the benefits in networking booting a hypervisor.

• Barry Flanagan from Citrix posted a nice article (with videos) covering XenMotion. This is worth a look if you are interested in XenServer.

I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have, so feel free to respond in the comments.

Earlier this week, there were a couple of announcements regarding Netapp integration with both ESX and XenServer.

First let’s take a look at the integration with ESX. Netapp released “SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure” which automates the backup and restore process of ESX datastores on Netapp arrays (through the use of Netapp’s snapshots technology). This can be integrated into DR situations through the use of SnapMirror (Netapp’s replication technology). This doesn’t come as a big surprise as Netapp has offered similar functionality for other products for some time now (Oracle databases, MS Exchange, MS Sql Sserver, SAP).

As for XenServer, Citrix announced the “Storage Delivery Services Adapter” for Netapp arrays. This “adapter” is much different than the ESX SnapManager product. In addition to automating the backup/restore process, this adapter also provisions storage to be used by XenServer (and ultimately VMs). According to the datasheet, the adapter will provision iSCSI LUNs on the Netapp array from the XenCenter management interface. This is a nice feature, but it doesn’t appear to be very flexible at this time (limited to iSCSI and two variations of volume/LUN configurations). This type of functionality is a logical step for virtualized environments (although I wasn’t expecting to see this emerge for another 8-12 months).

Something I found interesting about these announcements, are the two different approaches. In one case, the virtualization vendor has the product offering (XenServer), while the storage vendor owns the other (ESX). I’m sure Netapp worked closely with both VMware and Citrix, but what are the implications (if any) of the different approaches (upgrades, support, etc.)?

I’d love to hear any thoughts on the subject. Would you prefer to have this functionality provided by the virtualization vendor or the storage vendor? Or does it matter at all?