Aug 31

VMware vCenter chargeback is a product I use today. I use it for show back for internal IT costs. I am working to get it tuned to the point I can show where the money I spend in CapEx and OpEx is actually going. I think the holy grail of configuration for it would be balancing the spends vs usage seen, showing that each dollar we spend is either available or consumed resources. I also wish to use vCenter Chargeback to show that I provide a value back to the business. Cost transparency in how I am running the infrastructure is something i have tried to show, and that needs to exist going forward. Chargeback helps greatly with that.

From the session we can gather a few points.
1. A data collector is good for up to 15,000 VM’s or 5 vSphere instances.
2. Charge back managers scale out for performance and high availability.
3. Max config is around 35,000 VM’s and 10 vCenter servers.
4. I have heard via various conversations that people want API’s into chargeback. It looks like that is occurring. Also a SDK is to be released in Q4 2011

I encourage you to visit the chargeback community on VMware.com. I frequently browse them and there is some good info available there.

Aug 31

For the past 2 years I have been trying to get more value out of vCO. It has seemed like vCO was a dead product. Today the room if nearly full with hundreds of people in this session. I am very happy to see this. I hope there is more content like plugins and workflow libraries available in them communities for vCO.

One of the first slides eludes to vCO being used to connect VMware Service Manager to vCloud. I hope this happens quickly, I really want this type of capability and agility. VCO isn’t about replacing the existing management systems. VCO is to be used to automate the manual tasks you perform in those management systems. Having VSM kick off workflows and automatically input the variables needed for the workflow to being is one of my goals at my company, happy it was mentioned here. I am very interested in VMware’s management strategy, I think we can expect good things.

One of the slides in this presentation shows VMware’s current it infrastructure from a high level. The next slide shows their end to end business application provisioning. I need to make sure to check these 2 slides out further.

Looks like there is a beta plugin for vCO to control F5 BigIP application delivery controllers. Application blueprints is a term we will be hearing more it seems. Finally it seems we are becoming aware that there is more to delivering an application that just a web server and a database.

VMware has seen 90%+ reduction in time for provisioning VM’s, applications, and scaling applications up with moving to cloud and using vCenter Orchestrator. Days and weeks to hours.

Plugins for vCO are being developed and seem to have some focus. Available on the VMware solutions portal. Hopefully a community can be created around these plugins and hopefully workflows that can help customers get a good jumpstart on using these tools. A plugin sdk and certification program is being created. Single stop market place for plugins is currently in beta.

There is a new instructor course for developing workflows. There will be self paced online training coming late 2011. There is also a book “Automating vCenter 5.0 with vCO” to be released in 2011. There is a blog for vCO with examples and best practices. This is actually where i saw the UCS plugin in action.

Hopefully VMware develops a virtual appliance for all of their software. A vCO appliance is in the works.

Well, let’s get started reducing our OpEx by using vCenter Orchestrator.

TEX2923 and TEX1442 are two additional sessions to look at for vCO.

Aug 31

Lab Manager does a great job of providing environments on the fly via self service. vCloud Director appears to be positioned to provide the same service in a better way.

One of the first slides in this session shows the terminology map between vCloud director and lab manager. I myself need to remember to go and look at this session online and get a copy of that slide.

Lab manager only supports 1 vCenter, but vCloud director supports 25 vCenters today. VCloud director 1.5 supports SQL now which is a nice change.

This session was mostly about SAP’s massive lab manager deployment and PoC of vCloud director to be the successor of this. They have their work cut out for them for migrating all of their VM’s in lab manager to vCloud.

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