Yesterday VMware published minor updates to their Cloud Infrastructure suite products including vCenter and ESXi 5.0 Update 1. The news is already well covered, e.g. here in the VMware vSphere blog by Duncan Epping.
It looks like there are only few new features in there. For me the most exiting one is that VAAI Thin Provisioning Block Reclaim/UNMAP is back, not inline, but on demand though. However, the list of bug fixes is very long, and this is good! I have the feeling that many enterprise customers that are still on vSphere 4.x were waiting for this update and will now more seriously attack the migration to vSphere 5.0 (following the conservative rule "Don't trust a .0 release"). At least this is what we were thinking ...
Showing posts with label Release. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Release. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2012
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
[Update] ESXi-Customizer 1.2 - another bugfix release
If you used the Advanced edit mode with ESXi-Customizer 1.0 or 1.1 and got a "Corrupt boot image" message in ESXi (either when booting the customized ISO or after having installed with it) ... this was caused by a corruption of the OEM.tgz file while re-packaging it.
It was very hard to find a Windows version of tar that produces tar archives which are fully compatible with ESXi. But (I hope) I have finally found one: a Windows port of busybox. Since ESXi uses busybox, too, this should guarantee maximum compatibility. If you ever wondered what a Windows port of busybox could be good for ... now you know ;-)
Please update to version 1.2 that incorporates this fix, and let me know if you are still struck by this bug! Please download it from the project page!
It was very hard to find a Windows version of tar that produces tar archives which are fully compatible with ESXi. But (I hope) I have finally found one: a Windows port of busybox. Since ESXi uses busybox, too, this should guarantee maximum compatibility. If you ever wondered what a Windows port of busybox could be good for ... now you know ;-)
Please update to version 1.2 that incorporates this fix, and let me know if you are still struck by this bug! Please download it from the project page!
Saturday, August 6, 2011
vSphere 5: release date rumors and licensing changes
From what I have heard the originally targeted release date for VMware's vSphere 5 was August 5th. Now this has passed and it did not happen. There are now rumors ongoing that it will be released on August 22nd (see source)...
I don't know why it is being delayed. One possible reason is the change in licensing that was announced on August 3rd (see VMware's Power of Partnership Blog). With the revelation of vSphere 5 on July 12th VMware introduced a new licensing method based on vRAM (the amount of RAM allocated to running VMs) which lead to a storm of protest among customers and partners, especially because of the low amount of vRAM per physical CPU that was originally communicated. With the announcement above VMware has doubled this entitlement for most vSphere editions and they also capped the accountable vRAM for a single VM to 96GB (even if it has more RAM than that).
This will definitely help to speed up the adoption of vSphere 5 ... once it is released.
Update (2011-08-23): Okay, nothing again ... So it will probably happen on Friday (August 26th), just before VMworld 2011 (starting on Monday 29th).
Update (2011-08-25): It is out now, the official release date was August 24th. Customers with subscription go here to download. The free ESXi version is available here.
I don't know why it is being delayed. One possible reason is the change in licensing that was announced on August 3rd (see VMware's Power of Partnership Blog). With the revelation of vSphere 5 on July 12th VMware introduced a new licensing method based on vRAM (the amount of RAM allocated to running VMs) which lead to a storm of protest among customers and partners, especially because of the low amount of vRAM per physical CPU that was originally communicated. With the announcement above VMware has doubled this entitlement for most vSphere editions and they also capped the accountable vRAM for a single VM to 96GB (even if it has more RAM than that).
This will definitely help to speed up the adoption of vSphere 5 ... once it is released.
Update (2011-08-23): Okay, nothing again ... So it will probably happen on Friday (August 26th), just before VMworld 2011 (starting on Monday 29th).
Update (2011-08-25): It is out now, the official release date was August 24th. Customers with subscription go here to download. The free ESXi version is available here.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
[Update] ESXi-Customizer 1.1 - bugfix release
I published an updated version of my ESXi-Customizer script. There was an annoying bug with the "Advanced edit"-mode causing the oem.tgz file to become corrupted during re-packaging. This has been fixed, and I also added an update check feature to let the script check for newer versions of itself.
Download it from the project page.
Download it from the project page.
Monday, July 25, 2011
[Release] ESXi-Customizer
Have you ever tried installing ESXi on a hardware box that is not explicitly supported by VMware? If you try this you will often run into the problem that the original VMware install ISO does not include a driver for the storage controller or network card that is in your box.
There is a community that works on building drivers for such devices (so called Whitebox hardware, see www.vm-help-com), and there are instructions and scripts available for adding these drivers to the original install ISO. However, they all require some (at least basic) Linux knowledge and access to a Linux system.
This has changed now ... I have written a script that automates this task and runs entirely on Windows 7. Visit the project page on this blog site to learn more!
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