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The New vinternals.com (The Y Hacker News Of Virtualization)

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vinternals.com was just re-launched today by Stu Radnidge ‏(no stranger to the Virtualization community) but instead of a blog as most have come to know that URL, Stu has created something even cooler in my opinion. If you are familiar with how Y Hacker News, Reddit or even sites like Digg work, Stu is basically doing the same thing but for Virtualization-related topics. It is a news website that is completely driven by the community through the submission of either a link or a question. These entries can then be voted on by the community and the top 100 current entries will be displayed on the home page.

I think most will agree that there is already too much information out there today in various forms such as: Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Socialcast, Forums, Google+, Email, Distribution Lists, RSS Feeds, etc. and having yet another place to go for information is not going to help. The reason I think this is a pretty neat idea (if successful) for the Virtualization community is that there is a wealth of information out there, why not leverage the community as a whole help surface up useful or interesting content for everyone to benefit?

Many times there are useful bits of information or articles that are not shared through the traditional channels or more often not getting enough visibility before it's lost among the cloud of information. Hopefully with a solution like this, top quality content will be surfaced to the top and significantly help reduce the number of places you need to go for your virtualization-related news.

You will notice the look and feel of vinternals is very similar to Y Hacker News:

The other really neat thing about Stu's site is that there are no passwords to manage. When you sign up, an email with a login link is provided and everything is done using cookies. After you login, you will be able to view the current entries on the home page and if you wish to submit a link or a question, just click on the Submit button at the top.

The input is pretty straight forward: A URL, title for a link or pose a question and click on submit. To vote for an entry, you just click on the green caret icon next to each entry. If you would like to learn more about the new the vinternals site and how it works, you can read about it here. 

I am looking forward to seeing more entries submitted by the community, Great job Stu! BTW - You need an RSS feed 😉

If you are not signed up, what are you waiting for? Go here to sign up now!

How To Configure vCenter Server 5.0 To Work With VIN 2.0?

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Many of you know that I am a huge fan of VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) and the value it can bring to vSphere administrators and their organizations. With the latest release of VIN 2.0, there are even more exciting features and integration with both the vSphere and vCenter Operations Manager platforms. However, one of the prerequisites for using the latest version of VIN 2.0 is that you will need to be running a vSphere Web Client 5.1 Server which can be a challenge for customers still on vSphere 5.0.

There was a question raised internally awhile back ago on whether it would be possible to have VIN 2.0 function with a vCenter Server 5.0? In the VIN 2.0 release notes, there is a statement that seems to indicate this is possible:

The user interface of the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 2.0 virtual appliance that is deployed on vCenter Server 5.0 can only be viewed from the vSphere Web Client 5.1

A feature that may not be very well known with the release of vSphere 5.1 is that the vSphere Web Client Server also supports vCenter Server 5.0 which must be manually added through the vSphere Web Client admin application. This means that vSphere administrators not only benefit from all the new feature enhancements of the new vSphere Web Client but will would also be able to get a single view of their entire vSphere 5.x infrastructure.

Given all this information, I suspect this should work and I had an idea on how I could implement this. Since VIN 2.0 can only be used from a 5.1 version of the vSphere Web Client, we can simply deploy a VCSA 5.1 (vCenter Server Appliance) and configure it to point to our vCenter Server 5.0 environment. This will then allow us to use VIN 2.0 with our vCenter Server 5.0 environment while still maintaining our vCenter Server 5.0 environment.

Note: Though I have opted to use the VCSA as that is the simplest method IMHO, you are not required to. The only requirement is access to a vSphere 5.1 Web Client Server which you can also install on a separate Windows server.

Here is a quick diagram of what this would look like:

For some background here is what the environment looks like:

  • VCSA 5.0 managing ESXi 5.0 hosts with running VMs
  • VCSA 5.1 (configured, but no inventory)
  • VIN 2.0 deployed onto the ESXi 5.0 hosts being managed by the vCenter Server 5.0

Here are the steps to get this working:

Step 1 - Deploy the VCSA 5.1 and configure the system as you would normally. We will only be using the vSphere Web Client from this VCSA.

Step 2 - Register your vCenter Server 5.0 environment using the admin app in the vSphere Web Client. If you are using the VCSA 5.1, you will need to follow the instructions here.

Step 3 - Deploy VIN 2.0 into the vCenter Server 5.0 environment if you have not already.

Step 4 - Open a browser and connect to the VCSA's 5.1 vSphere Web Client. The URL should be https://[VC-IP]:9443/vsphere-client and provide the vCloud Suite License key which is required to license VIN 2.0

Step 5 - Enable discovery for the vCenter Server 5.0 under the "Infrastructure Navigator" tab on the left hand side of the vSphere Web Client.

Step 6 - Once the initial discovery has completed, you should now be able to see VIN information displayed for your virtual machines.

So there you have it! VIN 2.0 functioning with a vCenter Server 5.0 environment with a bit of help from the 5.1 version of the VCSA. You will still be able to connect to the vCenter Server 5.0 environment using either the vSphere C# Client and even the 5.0 vSphere Web Client. Though with so many new features in the new vSphere Web Client, this a great way to start getting comfortable with the new interface and enjoy all the benefits from VIN.

vOpenData Update & FAQs

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Ben Thomas and I launched the vOpenData project exactly 1 week ago and we really had no idea what to expect. We were completely blown away with the amount of interest and support from the awesome VMware community! In one weeks time we had contributions from over 30+ countries from around the world and we are approaching 70,000 virtual machines! Below is a quick screenshot on some of the impressive statistics. This has been a huge community effort and we wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has contributed and thanks to all the bloggers who have written awesome articles to help us get the word out! Let's continue the momentum!

There have been a few requests for showing the top 5 hardware vendors instead of the top 3. To be honest, this was done to have a symmetrical looking dashboard and all the tiles just fitted when we  designed it. We will see if we can adjust a few things to accommodate for this, but I do want to note that Ben is currently on travel for work and modifications to the site may take some time. This also includes the Contributors dashboard which we are hoping to have a prototype in the coming weeks, so please be patient as we work on that.

We have also received many questions and comments about requesting to see certain statistics, ability to filter, what information is collected, etc. and I wanted to put together a quick FAQ to help answer some of these questions for existing vOpenData users as well as new and potential prospects. If there are other things we can help clarify, feel free to leave a comment.

vOpenData FAQs

 

What is vOpenData?

Please take a look at these two blog articles for more details about vOpenData:

What information are you collecting?

You can find the complete list of anonymized data we are collecting in the Data FAQ page here. You can also view the raw contents of the zip file after executing the script. They are just plain CSV files and we highly encourage ever user to take a look before submitting.

What is a vOpenData Infrastructure?

This is just a logical container/view for your data. Once the Contributor's dashboard is available, you will be able to view and filter by various properties within a given vOpenData Infrastructure. This also means that you can either map a single vCenter Server upload to single vOpenData Infrastructure or you can have multiple vCenter Server uploads to a single vOpenData Infrastructure. If you wish to have fine grain filters, it is recommended that you have one vOpenData Infrastructure for each of your vCenter Server.

I still do not see my data reflected in the public dashboard?

It can take some time for both the processing and display of the data after upload. Please be patient and it can take up to an hour depending on the number of users and submissions.

What happens if my vCenter Server environment changes?

As your environment changes, you can periodically run the script and upload your data. If an existing object exists and it has changed, then we will update the record or add a new record if it is new. If there are no changes, then no updates are made.

What browsers are supported for the vOpenData Dashboard?

We are using Dashing for the dashboard application for vOpenData. From their site, it looks like it has only been tested on Chrome, Safari 6+ and Firefox 15+. We have also heard from a few folks that both IE9/10 does not work with the dashboard, so please use one of the supported browsers.

Is vOpenData supported on mobile browsers?

Yes, it should work on all mobile devices including the iPad, iPhone, Nexus, etc.

Can you display statistic X?

The public dashboard is just a tiny percentage of the information we have collected so far. We will provide more statistics as well as methods of filtering when the Contributor's dashboard is released. By looking at the data we currently collect in the Data FAQ page here, you can kind of guess on the types of statistics we will be able to provide.

Difference between vOpenData Public and Contributors Dashboard?

The public dashboard is just an aggregate of all the datasets submitted by the community and it only contains a very tiny percentage of the information we have collected. It is available to everyone and you do not need to sign up to view it. For those who have contributed, there will be a Contributor's dashboard that will be available when it is released and will contain all the statistics we collect. You will also be able to apply various filters on the total aggregated community data as well as your own vOpenData Infrastructures. As you can see, there is a huge benefit to those that submit their data and once the Contributors dashboard is released, you will be able to view all the data in totally new manner.

Can I see specific type of Infrastructure (e.g. server vs VDI)?

This will be available when the Contributor's dashboard is released. 

Is the data submitted mainly lab environments?

Actually, more than 75%+ of the contributed data in the vOpenData database are non-lab environments. This includes Server, VDI, Cloud and Combination environment types. Hopefully we can continue to increase this number even more as we have more contributions from the community.

Why is Windows 2012 not part of the top 10 Operating System or why is Cisco UCS not listed in the top 3 Hardware Vendors/etc?

I was pretty surprised to see these type of questions. The results are all from all the data that has been submitted by the community. If folks feel that this is not correct, then I highly encourage you submit your infrastructures or talk to your customers/clients to submit their infrastructure and let the data speak for itself.

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