Anyone know what features the next major version of ESX will have?

[MattG]

Obviously, I am not asking anyone to violate their NDAs, but are there any features that VMWare has mentioned in public that the next major version of ESX will have? Any rumors?

I hope VMWare adds either VMotion or migration features between sites (seperate SAN/Subnet). The problem we have is that we can replicate the LUNS to another site, but to fail them over we would need to change the IP of every VMs in the remote sites and start them up. Which can be cumbersome.

-MattG

[GBromage]

Speaking of performance monitoring, it would be cool

if VCs performance data could call Microsoft's

Perfmon data so that they could be correlated into

the same graph.

This would be nice, but not really likely. You see

the VM doesn't see the real-physical clock - and

currently perfmon dlls assume Windows would be

running on physical hardware.

It is possible to write an agent that would run

inside the VM that would reflect the fact that

Windows is running inside a vmware virtual machine -

but don't hold your breathe for MS to do that.

AFAIK, perfmon gets it's data from SNMP and WMI system calls anyway, so it might be better to have an external host (or appliance) monitor the performance.

I see the biggest issue with this with CPU usage. If you have a VM running an a host with, say, a 2.8Ghz CPU, then the VM sees the CPU details and believes that it has exclusive use of that entire 2.8Ghz. The cpu usage stats (such as % used) are based on that assumption.

I suspect that's why VMWare moved the Mhz used, rather than %, for CPU stats?

[Michelle_Laveri]

To mind I think we have to treat such "green credentials" in perspective. Everything in our industry is geared up to buying new hardware when you buy new VMware. HP/DELL/IBM all love VMware because it always them to sell more boxes. Our industry isn't really that much geared up to re-using hardware which may actually be on the HCL...

Still better than nothing - now where did I leave my keys to the Hummer?

Regards

Mike

[Ken_Cline]

now where did I leave my keys to the Hummer?

Mike - you're on the wrong side of the pond for that kind of comment! I didn't think you Limey's had roads big enough to drive a Hummer (must be an H3!)...I thought it was only us Yanks, with our disposables mindset and consumables mentality who could REALLY appreciate the finer points of such a monstrosity! :smileygrin:

[Michelle_Laveri]

Yeah we get them... but not very often... I believe I've seen a limo version of the humer...

Regards

Mike

ps have you seen my chapters yet?

[Ken_Cline]

ps have you seen my chapters yet?

No - and none from the others, either. Maybe you should go beat up on Brian...

[kimono]

To mind I think we have to treat such "green

credentials" in perspective. Everything in our

industry is geared up to buying new hardware when you

buy new VMware. HP/DELL/IBM all love VMware because

it always them to sell more boxes. Our industry isn't

really that much geared up to re-using hardware which

may actually be on the HCL...

Buy we might, but greenliness within the datacenter is very topical right now, and I think especially in the public sector there will be initiatives and drive from the Governments to pave the way forward. FYI This article is well worth a read, and there is a VMWARE statement implying some new possibilities on page 2.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9017398

kimono[/i]

[pauliew1978]

Did they never manage to achieve "grid" computing with virtualiron?