Ok, so I’ll explain my personal thoughts on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – aka VDI. Some of this comes in light of Brian Madden’s recent article on VMware’s View product and the future of their hypervisor. However, even before that article was posted by Brian, I made similar comments during the VMware Communities Podcast over a month ago. What I said was that VMware had no business being in the desktop and application delivery workspace and that they should focus on what they do best, hypervisors and VM management. I got some flack for the comment with statements like “Why shouldn’t VMware be allowed to expand their business”…”you’re just a legacy Citrix guy”…”I feel bad for Terminal Server people. They work extremely hard to deliver a desktop to users that they end up hating” Well, here is the truth, users don’t like VDI either!….at the moment.
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UPDATE!!! :Great article on VMWare NFS (pitfalls)
Gotta love Twitter! I received a note for Vaughn Stewart from NetApp about this post and that there is a hotfix for this exact issue. Looking at the release notes for ESX 3.5U4 the hotfix was rolled into this. So if you’ve upgraded to U4, the hotfix is there but you do need to confirm that the setting for NFS.LocksDisable is set back to a value of 0.
I found this article that was linked from Scott Lowe. It’s about enabling NFS.disableLock settings in ESX when using NFS – particularly when following NetApp’s Best Practice Guide TR3428.
www.vmwaretips.com - I really like this site!
White-Box VMware ESXi
First, I apologize to the four readers of this blog for the lack of posts. My wife and I are expecting our second child any day now and I’ve spent the last 2 months or so finishing my basement, painting new rooms, etc so I haven’t had a lot of time to blog. However part of my finished basement included a new home office/lab/geek-center.
Citrix Portable Profiles with XenDesktop 3.0 and Provisioning Server
Last year Citrix acquired Sepago who’s User Profile Manager was a somewhat unheard of technology. Citrix now calls this product “Portable Profiles” and it’s included with XenDesktop 3.0 Advanced edition and higher.
Powershell scripts for VMWare
I was reading Rick’s blog at vmwaretips.com and discovered this wonderful healthcheck script from Rick, as well as a kick ass Powershell script from Virtual IEF.
vIdiots Award
Mike D’s blog has some really funny links and posts in conjunction with VMWare’s vExpert’s program.
Using NetApp’s SnapManger for VI and VIBE
I’ve been meaning to get around to testing out NetApp’s SnapManager for Virtual Infrasturcture (SMVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Backup Engine (VIBE) for a while now. I had a chance to play around with both of them and I really like these solution as an alternative to VMWare’s Consolidate Backup.
VMWare ESX for FREE?!?!?
VMWare announce that VMWare ESXi will now be free.
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Connecting to Windows share from ESX Server
I keep all my OS and software media as ISO files on my PC. At work we have an ISO library on a filer NAS share. When creating virtual machines on ESX it’s much more efficient to install OS’s and applications by mounting an ISO image. Its possible to connect to window shares from your ESX servers to access and mount your ISO’s
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