VMware vSphere 5 demo: Storage DRS and more

VMware vSphere 5 comes with highly anticipated features, including Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler, a vCenter Server virtual appliance and a Web-based vSphere Client.

Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) automates vSphere 5 storage management, using Storage vMotion to automatically load balance disks. Storage DRS should increase storage utilization and save administrators time by performing many of the manual steps associated with storage load balancing.

The preconfigured vCenter Server virtual appliance should speed up deployment times. After launching it, you are directed to a website that walks you through the set up and customization options.

With the Web-based vSphere Client, administrators no longer have to rely on the .NET client to manage vSphere. Through a Web browser, you can view alarms, recent tasks and other summary information, in addition to creating and modifying virtual machines.

Read the full transcript from this video below:  
VMware vShpere 5 demo: Storage DRS and more

Hi, this is Brian Knudtson. I'm a regular contributor to SearchVMware.com. I'd like to show you a few of the features of the newly released v-Sphere 5. Of course there are many, many great new features. For example, you can now create virtual machines with 32 CPUs, 1 terabyte of RAM and USB 3.0. You can pass through USB devices to your virtual machines using client-connected USB devices, just like you would for a CD-ROM or ISO image. There's a new version of the MFS available as well called VMFS-5, which
will allow you to break above the 2 terabyte data store limit. [long pause]
[00:45] does.

But as usual, VMware has added some interesting new features. The first feature I'd like to show you is the storage DRS feature, which we can configure through data stores and data store clusters. Similar to DRS
for auto-migration of virtual machines between different host servers, you can create clusters of data stores.

The v-Sphere will automatically move the virtual machines between. In my environment here, I have a data store cluster called Test, with two different volumes. Adding a data store is as simple as selecting a new data
store. The properties for the cluster simply allow you to turn on storage DRS, which you can then automate either fully or in manual mode, similar to DRS. You can set run-time rules, to enable IO metric inclusion to
determine whether or not IO should be taken into consideration. You can also set threshold limits that determines when a Storage VMotion should occur between two different data stores. This can be both on the utilized space or an IO latency situation. You can schedule changes to the storage DRS settings. You can set up rules similar to the way you can with DRS including affinity and anti-affinity type rules. And finally, you can set specific settings for individual virtual machines.

So that's a quick look at storage DRS, which enables better utilization of your data stores. Next, I'd like to show you the v-Center Server Appliance, which is a virtual appliance that VMware is providing which contains the v-Center Server functionality. This is a long-awaited and much asked for feature, which VMware has finally given to us. To use it you simply download the OVF, import it in the v-Sphere and power it on and configure it. Once the power is on it guides you to a specific website that you can use to configure it. This is the webpage that the v-Center server appliance uses. So you simply run through these different configuration options to get it ready to go. From here you can start and stop your v-Center service,
download v-Center Server Support Bundle. You can configure your database using an embedded database within the appliance, or using an Oracle or DB2 database. You can set the ports for the different pieces of functionality within the v-Center service, and set the general size of the database as well. You can set the administrator password, and determine whether or not you want to store your log files in core files onto an NFS data store.

You can configure some of the services including syslog, NetDump and the Autodeploy feature. For this authentication section, you can tie in your v-Center server appliance into active directory. Next, you can configure the network status, including addresses and proxy servers that you might need in your environment. On the system tab you can see information about this virtual appliance and perform reboot and shutdown operations as well as setting the time zone. You can also set up the v-Center service appliance
to automatically update itself, or you can manually check for updates as well. You can use the default repository which points to a VMR server, or you can use the CD-ROM update or specify a specific repository URL in situations where you might have to download it because an appliance doesn't have direct access to the Internet. The final feature I'd like to show you is the v-Center Web Client.

Instead of having to use the .net client like we've traditionally had to do, you now have the option of accessing the v-Center management capabilities, through a web interface. Here you can see we have all of our
different inventory views, along with details of each individual item. You can see the recent tasks, as well as any work that is currently in process and any alarms that are currently triggered. You can also create virtual
machines, through a couple different ways.

That's a quick run-down of what I find some of the most interesting new features of v-Sphere 5. This is obviously a big major leap forward for both virtualization and Vmware. So check TechTarget's family of websites to find out more information about this new release. So check back with SearchVMware.com for tips, tricks and articles about this new release.