Back Again

After 4 days in heavy training I am back. This weekend I followed a “what’s new in Vsphere4” course. It was a 2 day course, with lots of interesting information. I also got re-acquainted with Power Shell and automation on the ESX platform. I might get into that for a while, there are lots of nice tools out there to make it pretty easy to do. We had a good instructor who runs a great blog on virtualization, called NTpro.nl. He wasted no opportunity to plug his blog, but as it’s a good one, so I will plug it here as well

On the editor front: moved the Angle Override setting from the particle to the spawner. Makes more sense, as you can override spawn angles at the spawner level. Also implemented change tracking, so the application warns you when you exit without saving changes, etc. Streamlined that part with the proper use of requesters and showing the save state in the application title bar. That’s just cosmetic, but I like to see what file I am editing and whether it has been changed or not since loading. Also added the enabling and disabling of properties when you select an option that overrides those settings. It’s about all the polish I am doing for the time being though. Next up is adding changeable position offsets for spawners, and then it’s back to the game! Finally.

Bummer I thought we were going to start the house wrecking project this week, but apparently it’s next week. Nobody told me! sniff.

Building project

Tomorrow, material for a big improvement on our house is arriving. We will be pulling out our front and back walls, and insert new ones, made of some sort of industrial chemical compound which will survive us all, and the walls will be properly isolated for a change. We really need this, as I can see the curtains move inside our house when it’s windy outside. I will post some pictures showing the progress. Should be fun. I’m glad I hired people to do this job, as it’s way too hot outside during the day to do heavy work.

Also tomorrow, I will go on a course for Platespin PowerConvert and PowerRecon, and this weekend I will be on a bootcamp for Vmware ESX 4 (you may call it Vsphere, I find it odd ) Busy days indeed and probably not a lot of programming going on while we’re rebuilding.

But on that note: the particle editor can now load and save libraries. I also changed the shortcut keys, and enabled all menus and added new stuff there as well, all to make it behave more like you expect from a Windows application. It’s starting to get there. I uploaded a new version for download and updated the svn so grab it if you’re in need Go to the My Code page and then to the particlesMAX project page. I started to use Tmaps for everything. It’s my library storage system and now also the thing that drives the new configuration system. I like Tmaps, they are the unsung heroes of BlitzMAX

No screenshots today! awww.

Oh joy

I’ve been working on some new 3d objects tonight (gun barrels, mounts, plating, etc) only to find that the object I’ve saved is corrupt and won’t load anymore. I’m sad, someone please hug me. sniff. I’m not in the mood to restart tonight so I’ll do it again this weekend. I had some more nice ideas about the bonus rounds though. Wrote them all down for later use.

I’ve not done a lot of coding as I’ve been busy with work. Went to a 2-day Microsoft training about MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack) but went away unimpressed. It seems that Microsoft doesn’t know how to market this collection of tools. On the one hand you have Softricity which is kinda cool but not feature complete enough in it’s current version and the new version won’t be out for some time (the last beta was from January… not good) On the other hand you have some desktop and policy editing tools, creating a weird miss-match of tools and applications. I just don’t know what to make of it… Gonna play with Vmware VDM next week as we set up a VDI environment for developers in India. I’m really looking forward to that project!

Hyper-V and its future, according to Microsoft

Bink.nu | My interview with Bob Muglia: Hyper-V R2 and more – Bink.nu

I read this little interview about Microsoft Hyper-V technology and where it will go. Mentioned was the fact that they will try to embed HyperV on hardware, like Vmware is doing right now with ESX 3i… Interesting. Would you buy a server with Hyper-V and ESX 3i embedded? Simultaniously even?

The next version (not this upcoming release) of Hyper-V will apparantly use CPU virtualization optimizations. What? It’s not using that already? The technology has been out there for at least a year…

Microsoft also wants Hyper-V to be able to share memory between VMs. Sounds like page sharing. Hasn’t VMware patended this? Oh dear, good luck…

Using a Microsoft tool to manage both Hyper-V and ESX virtual machines? You know, if a company decides to run two technologies together in the same environment you have to question its vision on virtualization. Using two technologies at the same time will not let you use the true potention of your virtual infrastructure. The big thing that might happen ofcourse (Microsoft is betting on this) is that people will V2V the VMware VMs to the HyperV machine. Sure, let’s go from a proven stable platform to this new platform, using a patched on managment tool to talk to the other management tool. Rule one in managing servers: Don’t change it when it is working well and meeting business demands. I cannot imagine this has been a customer request.

Also, comparing the release version of Hyper-V with VMware is kinda odd, seeing as HyperV is still in beta and not released yet…

Too many features and too little time, folks. Let’s see how this first version will turn out, ok?

Back In Town From VMworld Europe

Ah, we’re back. Late last night we landed on Amsterdam Schiphol airport, and I got back home at around 02:30 AM. We had a good 5 full days in mostly sunny Cannes. VMworld Europe itself was a great event. I met a lot of people and saw a lot of good and not-for-us solutions for the problems that we have to face in the not so distant virtual future. I’m mainly talking about life cycle management and overall environment management. We all agreed however that the announcements of VMware were all pretty substantial

Let me share some of the things I encountered and my thoughts on them. I will write more about other aspects of the virtualization game and VMworld in later posts, I know this is not complete or orderly. It’s just that my head is still so full of everything and I want to get it out!

VMsafe

VMware has been working together with McAfee developing a new security API which will be released very soon. The idea is that instead of having a virus or mal-ware scanning tool in the guest OS you are going to see this happen underneath the hardware, in the hypervisor. There are some big advantages to this:

• No more scanners in the OS poking their way into all kinds of user, kernel, and IO calls causing overhead and potential issues.
• Being underneath the hardware will make it possible to scan everything. From the full memory map of the guest machine to stopping malicious processes before they are started on the CPU. Yes. This works and had been demonstrated.

The good thing is is that the API will be open for everyone.

VDI

Virtual Desktops are the future. There is no doubt about it. Get into the game. There was a whole host of connection broker solutions being offered on the stand area and it’s hard to get a clear view of the offerings there. Some work to be done there for us I guess to choose a partner in that.

I need to write more about this area. I think I will.

Microsoft

Microsoft was also there at the VMware event. Pretty bold move from them but I also understand that they HAD to be there. They had a tough sell and I am afraid they made a mess of it. While the product manager of HyperV was running circles around every question asked to him, not denying or confirming one single feature, the other workers on the same stand promised everything: better performance than physical machines, flawless virtual machine migration over boxes and so on and so on. Sorry folks, but you have bought a whole different hypervisor than VMware’s, and you can not develop the same features as VMware is offering on a totally different architecture.

I’m sorry to be so negative about Microsoft as I love a lot of their products, but I’ve been doing this job for a few years now and I think I know what I am talking about. And I know when I am being simply lied to…

More to follow soon!