I just got my hands on Eric Siebert’s new book Maximum vSphere. This is Eric’s second book, and this goes deep into best practices specific to this release of vSphere. It’s also a great reference to keep on hand when those questions pop into your head. Whether you’re implementing or managing vSphere 4, upgrading from older technologies, or taking on new responsibilities in a VMware environment, you’ll find this book indispensable.

Some really great chapters in here:

• Upgrading to vSphere
• Building Your Own vSphere Lab
• Advanced Features
• Performance in vSphere

The book also benefits from contributor Simon Seagrave, and John Troyer authored the Forward. Congratulations Eric on another fine book.

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Maximum vSphere

• Installation and Deployment
• Storage
• Network
• Availability
• Management
• Platform Enhancements
• Partner Ecosystem

Today’s press releases: VMware Advances Foundation for Cloud Computing With VMware vSphere 4.1 and Expanded Virtualization Management Portfolio and VMware Introduces Enhanced Virtualization Offerings for Small and Midsize Businesses.

I also encourage you to read Steve Herrod and Bogomil Balkansky’s blog posts for additional insight and perspective on today’s announcements.

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vSphere 4.1 Launched!

My first thought was that this probably would introduce some performance issues, but then it hit me that this would cause the incorrect VMware Tools to get installed in the VM, leading to all sorts of unintended behaviors. Even worse, if the correct MCA/MCE architecture is not presented to the guest during boot I don’t think it will start at all. We use guest OS type to get this info (it only matters during boot as far as I know).

How to fix it:

1. Power off the VM.
2. Modify via GUI option General of the properties of your VM.
3. Power on the VM.
4. Reinstall the correct VMware Tools.

Anybody know of any more gotchas associated with having the wrong OS type specified for your VM?

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Impact of wrong OS type for VMs

Customers who are using VMware vSphere ESX 4.0 and are wanting to install update 1, via VMware Update Manager (VUM).

Problem description:

Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 using VUM fails or times out. Rebooting host results in a PSOD and the host has to be re-installed.

Workaround:

Please disable any 3rd party hardware monitoring agents running on the ESX 4.0.0 server before applying the update.

Customers that have already run into this issue and have installed the update but have not rebooted, need to contact Support.

The 3rd party agents can be enabled again after the upgrade is completed.

ESX 4.0 U1 is no longer available for download.

For additional details, see Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 using Update Manager fails or times out and rebooting the host results in a purple diagnostics screen (1016070).

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Upgrading ESX 4.0 to Update 1 using Update Manager

Companies running VMware have already achieved enormous gains through virtualization. The next wave of benefits will come when they reduce the time and effort required to run and manage VMware platforms. The VMware Infrastructure Software Development Kit (VI SDK) includes application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers and administrators to do just that.

Until now, there has been little documentation for the APIs. In VMware VI and vSphere SDK, software architect and author  Steve Jin demystifies the entire VMware VI and new vSphere SDK and offers detailed, task-based coverage of using the APIs to manage VMware more efficiently and cost-effectively in a new book entitled VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere.

Author Steve Jin walks readers through using the VI SDK and cloud-computing vSphere SDK to manage ESX servers, ESX clusters, and VirtualCenter servers in any environment–no matter how complex. Drawing on his extensive expertise working with VMware strategic partners and enterprise customers, he places the VI SDK in practical context, presenting realistic samples and proven best practices for building robust, effective solutions. Jin demonstrates how to manage every facet of a VMware environment, including inventory, host systems, virtual machines (VMs), snapshots, VMotion, clusters, resource pools, networking, storage, data stores, events, alarms, users, security, licenses, and scheduled tasks.

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VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere

Did you see this press release from VMware today?

In the first half of this year, VMware has added 21,000 new customers!  That’s 121 every day. Not only that, but the new flagship product, vSphere 4.0 has been downloaded over 350,000 in just twelve weeks. That works out to 140 downloads every hour!

Makes me feel pretty good about working there.

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VMware Announces More than 21,000 New Customers

There have been some frustrations I have been able to spot in the SM space where I have jumped in, helped get the customer what he needed and helped VMware retain a customer. It is very rewarding taking some responsibility in a situation which, in the end, results in much gratitude and props from the customer in a public space.

It’s going to help us too. The best way to improve our products is to listen to those who have a problem with it.

If I can assist any of you with a support or licensing problem, you can reach me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/VMwarecares. You can direct message me too if you don’t want this discussed in a public forum.

Spread the word: VMwareCares is open for business!

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VMware in Social Media

In some cases, the information that would normally be in the /tmp directory of the untarred vm-support output will instead be located in:

/usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/downloads

From what I’ve heard, this does not happen in all instances, and /tmp will be populated with the files that we have learned to expect from the ESX 3 family.

There is one more odd-ball to this mystery, where it is suggested that running vm-support from the COS vs from vSphere Client will result in different behavior, again, I have not verified this. It may or may not be related to where the script run is triggered, or instead by other circumstances unrelated to how the script was called.

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ESX 4 vm-support script

The Knowledge base team has been ultra-fast in responding to these, and two new KBs have appeared:

VMotion stops working after upgrading to vSphere 4.0 (1011294)

and

VMotion stops working after upgrading to vSphere 4 with a Licensing server is not configured error (1011296)

If you notice any issues with VMotion with vSphere, be sure to check those two articles out.

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VMotion stops working in vSphere

If you already have a VMware account as a customer or partner you can download vSphere (ESX 4, ESXi 4, vCenter Server 4, and all of the add ons) here.

For everyone else:

Get guided evaluation of VMware vSphere with access to product demos and evaluation guides.

Try it free for 60 days

Equally important is the update documentation section.

We’ve created easy self-service answers to our customers’ most common questions to reduce SR volume.

• Over 250 vSphere KB articles are available online.
• vSphere Upgrade Center answers questions on upgrading from VI3 to vSphere 4.
• The Licensing Wizard is online and ready to address common licensing issues.
• The vSphere Support Center points customers to key documentation, getting-started guides, webcasts and KB articles.

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Announcing the Release of vSphere 4