VMWorld 2012 Updates

As many of you following the VMWorld updates might have read already the new licensing policy of VMWare vSphere software was released. Actually, this puts into place a whole new licensing structure and product capabilities at play and essentially can't be called a 'rollback' of the previous vRam licensing model.

The reason I can't call the licensing policy as 'rollback' yet is because VMWare plans to continue offering some of the current licensing to those who need it (not for new customers). Secondly, in a lot of organizations that were using the per VM licensing will continue to be able to buy per VM licenses. So essentially, it's not like dump everything and go to the new licensing model. Atleast this is how VMWare declared it at VMWorld.

So what changes - VMWare introduced the new vCloud suite that has Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise versions. Those customers who do not want to adopt the new vCloud suite yet can continue to purchase vSphere licenses for the bundles they were running but now there are 3 options to choose from - Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus.

The following link highlights what customers will be entitled to run as part of the conversion program to go to the new licensing model. This is being called as the Fair Value Conversion -   

http://www.vmware.com/support/support-resources/licensing/vcloud-suite-fair-value-conversion/overview.html

To make it a bit easier to understand for those planning to upgrade to the vCloud suite - customers running the Enterprise Plus suite automatically land on the vCloud Standard edition. Most important - do not forget to use your elloquent words and skillful mastery to receive additional discounts on VMWare licensing (atleast when you are switching to the new licensing). Give our friendly VMWare reps - Rob and Scott a round of applause :-)

Besides the change in the way that future VMWare products will be licensed, what changes is how VMWare views the add-on products. Things like Configuration Manager, Chargeback and so on are now available as part of the suite of products. Even SRM licensing changes from VM to Processor based so that's a big benefit to large organizations.

On the other days of VMWorld I sat down for one on one discussions with 3 vExperts - Alan Renouf (Power CLI), Suzy Vishvanathan (vStorage and VVOL's), and John (VMWare View). This was something new that was introduced this time and the one on one discussions were very insightful. I asked questions relevant to my interest and it would not be worth putting them all out here. I can talk with anyone directly who is interested to learn more.

One thing that saw a lot of attention was VMWare's integration with the Storage Arrays through the use of VASA, VAAI, and VADP.

For those that do not know VASA - vStorage API's for Storage Awareness, VAAI is vSphere API for array integration and VADP is vSphere API for Data Protection.

VASA enables vCenter to see the capabilities of the storage array like RAID provisioning, LUN types, replication mechanisms and state. VMWare is leveraging this API to lead it towards Profile Driven Storage. Profile driven storage focusses on template like profiles that allow automated provisioning, storage migrations etc.

VAAI - It was actually released in v4.1 but with limited capabilities. With vSphere 5.1 it has been opened up significantly to take advantage of the array integration functionality. It allows Block Zero (faster zeroing of eager zero disk), Full Copy (clone or vMotion at array level) and Hardware Assisted Locking. VAAI also offers NAS Hardware acceleration in vSphere 5.0 and such features become extremely useful for Thin Provisioning on NFS datastores. Also, in the past the disk provisioning on NAS defaulted to thin disks but now you can provision for Thick Disks as well.

The array integration API functionality can be seen through the VSI plugin that needs to be installed in vCenter. Off course, you need to read about which array models are supported and so on. However, a majority of arrays are covered by VMWare.

The session on PowerCLI was an excellent one from Alan Renouf. Many would be surprised by the power packed features of the CLI that are usually not considered. I discussed and found a tested process to run SRM failover based on a condition being met. For those of you interested to know about it here is Mike Laverick's post in the VMWare communities -

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/253736

I checked with Alan Renouf during my interaction on PowerCLI and he mentioned that the process has been successfully tested but it is not formally authorized by VMWare. So use it at your own risk :-)

The 'Meet the Experts' Q/A was housefull, Performance best practices was compelling to attend, and DRS related session opened up the eyes to something with more technical depth.

Duncan Epping had a Q/A session on a wide range of topics and that was interested. I thought that was more for him to receive feedback from end users on specific technologies of interest to him.

There was also a session on Best Practices to run MS SQL in a VMWare environment but honestly I thought it was a waste of time. The session started with a full room and halfway through the session 50% of the people had left finding it way too basic and something that did not actually follow Best Practices. So this was a very suprising session which I hope VMWare does not repeat with the same slides at Barcelona later this year.

Recordings of the VMWorld sessions are now available so take advantage by going through atleast a few of them that are of benefit to you.

Note that the next MB VMUG meeting is going to be very interesting since we will have a special speaker. Details to be made available very soon once the meeting agenda is confirmed.