Aug 26


Well it is time for VMworld again. I’m excited to go this year as I have been doing a lot of VMware in 2011. I have recently purchased VMware Service Manager, VMware Application Discovery Manager, VMware vCenter Operations Enterprise, VMware Configuration Manager for Windows Workstations, Servers, and Linux Servers, as well as EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor and ControlCenter. I’m looking forward to getting all of it implemented of course. But next week I am really interested in the technical deep dives and continuing to watch for strategic information about these products. I am bringing a 2nd employee this year as my department has grown a bit.

Automation and IT Service Management are big interest points for me this year. VMAXe and VPlex integrations and best practices also are in scope for me this year. To top it all off I plan to spend as much time in the hands on labs as possible.

If you see me out there feel free to chat me up on topics of interest. I still need to find out if there is a bloggers lounge and take care of some last minute scheduling.

See you there!

Jul 14

Cisco Live has officially ended for me slightly early. I am currently on a plane back to Houston and this entry will be posted once I land. Cisco Live is an excellent conference and I am always saddened when it is over. I attended some great sessions this year.

I was able to catch up on new topics in the routing and switching world. I also learned a few more things and talked to an excellent resource on Cisco Quad. I had discussions arounds wireless that were very informative as well as learned about to some new wireless gear that solves a few issues we have in the field. A meeting with the Nexus and MDS teams has proved to be very helpful. I was able to find a couple of vendors that have some solutions to my network connectivity issues in some of our more remote sites. There just are not many times I can get so much accomplished in a week than these conferences.

Now I am sitting on the plane next to Josh Stephens, head geek at Solarwinds, talking about all of the Solarwinds software we have. He has given me a number tips and pointers. No wireless up here at 35,000+ feet or I would be testing them out. This ability to network with people in my industry has a great deal of value for me. I am happy that the benefits did not end when I left Las Vegas, running into the head geek was a nice bonus.

A fun future ahead of me now. New wireless gear to look into. Getting closer to a Quad deployment. New vSphere version was released. Passed CCNA Voice to get started on my voice track. CCNP Voice should sit nicely next to my CCNP Routing and Switching and CCDP. I have jokingly said I may collect the whole set!

Still with all of this excitement, to see Networkers end this year is bittersweet. I have VMWorld 2011 to look forward to I suppose. It’s back to Vegas at the end of August baby!

Jul 13

In an effort to quickly determine how bad VMWare’s vSphere 5′s new licensing is going to hit the company wallet I wrote a powershell one liner. It needs vsphere powershell to function. Once connected to vCenter the first line will show the sum of configured memory in MegaBytes.

> get-vm | measure-object -property MemoryMB -sum
Count : 518
Average :
Sum : 2171984
Maximum :
Minimum :
Property : MemoryMB

Since VMWare’s new licensing says that an Enterprise Plus Processor license is good for up to 48 GB you can do some quick math with the numbers to see how many licenses you need. 2171984 / 1024 = 2121.078125 GB. 2121.078125 GB of configured memory is just over 2 TB. 2121.078125 / 48 GB = 44.18 licenses. So it appears I need 45 processor licenses to run vSphere 5 with my current memory configurations.

This second line I have added a few more switches. These will show you your largest, smallest, and average memory configuration. The average is useful so that you can figure out on average how much a VM costs you from this new licensing view point.

> get-vm | measure-object -property MemoryMB -sum -average -maximum -minimum
Count : 518
Average : 4193.0193050193
Sum : 2171984
Maximum : 32768
Minimum : 256
Property : MemoryMB

VMWare vSphere Enterprise Plus retails for $3495 and provides you with licensing for 48 GB of memory. The means each GB you configure on a VM roughly costs you $72.81. My average VM using the numbers above costs $298.14 just for the vSphere 5 license.

This new model will prove interesting in the near future as better understanding of it is developed. It seems to me that management will see that a VM has yet another license cost. This one tied directly to how much memory we configure and usually waste on a VM. Memory increases on a VM that doesn’t consume that memory now have a cost associated with them.

This new model seems like it will hurt some of the large memory configuration blade providers that have 2 or 4 procs but support 256 or 512 GB of memory. Their prices just went up from $6,990 and $13,980 to $18,639 and $37279 My Cisco B200-M2 blades will continue to cost me $6,990 since they have 96GB of memory. I am concerned about those new B440 series Cisco blades I was looking at. 4 Procs but 512 GB of memory, $37,279 in vsphere licenses per box? Ouch.

All prices are list. There are other editions of vSphere that are cheaper however I do not use those. vSphere 5 does have a lot of positve new features that I am unsure if I can live with out. Storage DRS for instance is something we have been asking for for years.

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