VMware Workstation 7 Key.

If you are like me then at times you may have misplaced your VMware workstation key. I am running ver 7.0.1 on Windows 7 64-bit.

Due to this you might have to do a touch more digging. It's true you can search the registry but come on we all know that is a HUGE pain in the bum.

Here is the shortcut: The tricky part on 64bit versions of windows is the 3rd tree.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Wow6432Node/VMware, Inc./VMware Workstation/License.ws.(your version here)

Then in the right-hand pane the Serial key is the one your after.

Hope that this helps.

Talk to you again soon.

Cloud Storage.

With the latency and need of faster storage in the Data Center, Nicole brings up a good point in the post below.

Can you provision high-performance storage in a Cloud that will provide storage to a separate Cloud infrastructure? I was thinking about this and with the network guys having a love affair with iSCSI and it's associated technological topologies. Could you have a low-latency storage system on-demand in the Cloud (Public Cloud NOT Private Cloud). Currently it's not quite there to provide FC-like low latency storage to compute nodes. If you have a server that uses iSCSI you could potentially have that speedy enough to house it in a Public Cloud. Your design would require some good DR.

I can see a SATA based array hooking up to an Ethernet drop. At that point you could use some of Cisco's MDS line to provide FCIP WAN acceleration and provide storage to a completely different Cloud .... reliability would be an issue.

The Cloud in a Cloud in a Cloud

I was meeting with some IS Directors a month or so ago and they asked:

How do I better understand how all these "cloud" offerings interact with each other?

So, assuming that you use the cloud for storage, but you use another cloud service for a specific application and have all this served to a VDI client....That's alot of movement in the cloud. I understand his concern for the security of this data, but also the importance that these partners work together.

I would think that strengthens the cloud vision that host all cloud services out of the same DC. I believe you can clearly have different clouds for unrelated things like conferencing with Webex where you host the service and it clearly does not interact with many other parts/pieces, but what about the clouds within a large cloud. All this has my head in the clouds.

A plea for MOAR content :) !!

Njo, Milton, and Pete.

Please post some cool content. I would like to have some more stuf other than just my ramblings :).

Storage Question.

So the last question put the following constraints on a virtualization design and implementation problem.

Let's Review:

The constraints were that you have performance issues due to storage latency.

You have no budget the ONLY things that you can leverage is the extra hardware from the virtualization project.

So the only solution that makes sense whether it's the best is not a question.

One (I stress) one of the workable solutions is to acutally put the latency sensitive application back on physical hardware until you can ensure the storage state. Now what I mean is you can still keep it a VM but you toss it on a dedicated box with ESXi (no cost). Then using the local storage options that you have open to you create the least latency and fastest sub-system that you can.


Do you agree? Is there a solution that you think might work just as well?

Let me know. That is what the comment section is for :).

Talk to you guys soon.

Some UCS/Virtualization/Storage items.

So in general UCS is gathering some great traction. Along with Virtualization it's pulling storage pretty hard as well. One of the things that I continue to see is the underestimation of resourcing for storage in a virtual environment.

Let's now take a look at the eco-system of storage in a virtualization context with Cisco's UCS providing the vCompute platform. In this specific scenario it is entirely possible to achieve a very nice consolidation number.

But your storage doesn't need to be sweet ... right ? Wrong! Let's take an example. You consolidate 10 servers onto 1. One of the servers was VERY storage intensive but CPU cycles remained very low. This was due to a specific application that didn't like Storage latency.

But the decision that was made was to deploy these VM's onto an iSCSI connected RAID 5 array. This is a S/W iSCSI initiator connected storage device. You have 10 VM's and your storage sensitive VM is having massive issues. So what do you do? Where did it all go wrong. The planned storage implementation has enough disk space but the IOPS profile and connection choice is all wrong for the intended purpose. So how can it be fixed the budget is spent and the storage doesn't support online RAID level migration along with the fact that even if you could migrate the RAID level you would be completely out of storage. What can be done and how do we do it?

Well that's a case for another post. But if you ever end up in a position like this it's going to be a tough spot and it is possible that there might not be a good answer.

Talk to you tomorrow and I'll post about this again.