Lately, I’ve been on phone calls with several companies to discuss whether they should run their applications on virtual machines or physical machines. Typically, some user or software person has been told the plan is to run their application on a virtual machine. They believe their application is “so special” and will not work [...]
Posts under ‘virtualization’
Software licensing in a “cloudy and virtualized” world
“Cloud Computing” is being called the “next big thing”. In 2008, Gartner Group identified “Cloud Computing” as one of the top ten disruptive technologies. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of FUD spread about what the “cloud” can and can’t be used for; however, I’m confident that over the next 5 to [...]
Windows 7 and Virtual XP mode – What and Who is it for?
The new Virtual XP Mode in Windows 7 requires a CPU supporting virtualization and a supporting BIOS. The vast majority of XP users do not have a computer with a CPU or BIOS that would support this option. With this in mind, this is not a feature that is going to be used by [...]
Application software and license procurement can become the “long-pole-in-tent” in production deployments with server virtualization using VMWare, XEN or HYPER-V
At my company we’ve been using server virtualization with VMWare products for 2-3 years. During that time we’ve created processes and procedures that allow us to deploy a server and its supporting operating system in as little as a few minutes. My reading suggests it is the same with the Hyper-V and XEN virtualization products as well.
Unfortunately, obtaining software [...]
Tracking VMWare ESX 3.x or ESXi Host resources with Cacti
I’ve been using Cacti, RRDTool, SNMP and custom scripts running on Linux for several years to collect and display historical data regarding Network, System, and FlexLM license resource usage. I recently began tracking the Host resources used by ESX. I was interested in tracking the following:
CPU utilization
Memory Free
Total Memory
IO activity
Network traffic