At TSX VMware were pretty tight lipped about what new features they were planning for esx. But in one of the sessions Mike Laverick managed to tie down the product manager and then squeeze him really hard. The results were. 1) Live Data Migration (vmotion with storage) 2) Third Prty Virtual Switches 3) Better management of virtual switches across servers 4) H.A. Non Stop 5) New Service Console 6) Expanded HCL List 7) Storage Mirroring inside ESX 8) 8 VCpu's coming...

Day 2 Started with another Networking session, this one I felt was a little better than the last and I will post a link to the Slides when they appear but some of the highlights are : VM’s that need to talk to each other should be on the same Vswitch so the external network is never touched. A typical esx server with 4 network cards should have the service Console and vmkernel on the first vswitch connected to two physical Nics ie one onboard NIC and one PCI NIC. Vmtraffic should be on the second...

This session was on CPU scheduling and was rubbish. There was this poor mumbling Indian chap who drowned on for an hour. It was just like making a support call to Bangladesh. After an hour he had to rush the last slide which had the important stuff on it. Esxtop is a command line tool used in the console to monitor performance. When VMware use the term virtual worlds they mean virtual cpu’s. %used = cpu utilization %readytime=the amount of time the VM is waiting for a cpu cycle %TWAIT=the amount...

Notes From Day One - Session One We had the normal introduction session this morning where VMware really seem to be pushing their virtual appliances. These are essentially virtual machines which are prebuilt with their O.S. and apps already installed and ready to go, So you don't have to go through the rigmarole of reading the instruction manual and putting 3 Cd's in. They will also be releasing the manager for their new Ace Product as a V.A. They hope that software suppliers will catch in and start...

The vmware TSX didn't start till Tuesday (had a nice weekend with the wife in cannes though untill I reversed the brand new audi A3 hire car in to a green metal post. Turns out that they don't sell Tcut in france but nail varnsih remover is a god send). Also when the little man turns green at a pedestrian crossing in france it doesn't actually mean that it is clear to cross. But I did make some notes for Monday. I went for dinner with the product manager for magerius (one of our distis) in Germany....