So this came out during my View 4 beta testing, but I chocked it up to the drivers in the Beta being unsigned (as they often are), however this is still an issue in the final bits of vSphere 4 update 1 and View 4.

When creating a template from scratch (and sometimes after upgrading templates) using the (Parallel) LSI Logic SCSI controller (as you are instructed to do in the XP Deployment guide), you will run into an issue after creating a linked clone pool.

When a linked clone is created in View 4, a second controller is added for the additional disks (unlike in View 4). With IDE, this isn’t an issue (as the disks are added to the second IDE controller). With BusLogic SCSI, the additional controller is auto detected and doesn’t require any user interaction. However, if the template is made with the LSI Logic controller, non-admin users will be presented with a dialogue box after every View Composer operation (newly created clone, refresh, or recompose) which will ask for admin credentials to install the driver for the second LSI Logic controller.

This is a big issue as the Windows XP Deployment Guide says: “The LSI Logic adapter issued for VDI-based deployments is recommended.” They later elaborate that this is for performance reasons.

For now I recommend people either change around their templates to use a different controller.

So a while back I made a post about some new best practices for vSphere based on some new features that were available. One of the ugly points at the time was that while the new PVSCSI controller was awesome, you could only use it for additional disks.

Well I’m thankful to report that as of vSphere Update 1, you can boot from a PVSCSI controller so there shouldn’t be a necessity to add a second controller just when you want to take advantage of this new IO device.

Coincidentally, one of the other points in that article was about Thin Provisioning, but a recent whitepaper from VMware has pretty much alleviated all my fears on that front.

Looks like VMware is already preparing for the launch of Intel’s newest chip. I noticed the following in vCenter 4 Update 1’s EVC Cluster options:

Good to note this means that there is sufficient changes ahead to require a different EVC mode. That means for those of you installing Nehalem-based clusters today, if you plan on adding Westmere cores in the future, you’ll have to turn EVC on in Core i7 mode.

So I recently upgraded my primary work laptop to 64-bit Windows 7. So far, I have no regrets! Loving the new OS, although my battery life seems to have taken a slight hit, but I’m not sure if that’s due to the OS, the battery dying, or a combination of both.

However, I did find one of my applications just would not work in 64-bit Windows 7, no matter how much fixing I tried. I considered going back to an older version to test if that worked, but I figured I’d just eat the Virtualization dogfood and do what any good nerd would do – run it in a VM!

Microsoft has been kind enough to offer a special XP Mode VM to all business-class Win7 customers. I made a blog post about this previously when it was announced. But now it was time to really give it a try. At the same time, VMware just released Workstation 7 (convenient how that version number lined up…) which includes support for importing the XP Mode VM directly into Workstation so you can use Unity to run XP apps. Sounds like a great comparison test to me!

Virtual PC with XP Mode

Setting up VPC was fairly simple, although it took a very very long time for everything to finally start working. First, you install the XP Mode VM package from Microsoft, then you install an update to Windows 7 which adds VPC into the OS itself. Finally, you have to start the setup wizard for XP Mode, which sits and runs for quite a long time setting up your VM. What I’m assuming its doing during this time (because it gives you no feedback other than a progress bar) is sysprep’ing the VM, adding your special user account, and installing the Virtual PC integration components. Once you’re finally done, you can install applications and then they appear as icons in your start menu.

How does it really work?

What it turns out XP Mode is actually doing (as far as I can tell) is launching seamless RDP windows into your XP VM. There were a few hints to me that this was what it was doing:

• When you launch an “XP Mode” application from your start menu, it forces a log out of whoever is logged into your XP VM.
• The various icons in the task bar look like RDP windows sometimes.
• The process list gives away what’s actually going on. =)

Using RDP is a clever choice, and the whole XP Mode in VPC thing has some good things and some bad things going for it.

Pros:

• It integrates directly into your start menu. No need to manually start and stop your XP VM – when you ask for an application it resumes the VM on demand and starts the app. This can be time consuming, however.
• System tray icons appear in your Windows 7 Notification Area. This is a nice touch of integration which Workstation 7 does not have.
• Apps appear seamless with your other Win7 native applications.

Cons:

• Speed. Virtual PC is a dog of a virtualization engine, and in my testing it took significantly longer for apps to startup and process.
• System tray icons appear in your Windows 7 Notification Area. Yes, I already listed this in Pros, because I think it’s cool, but in reality it’s really confusing. When you need to perform Windows Updates on your XP Mode VM, the Windows Update notification appears in your main OS.
• Sometimes windows get lost. If your application launches windows which don’t create a task bar icon (such as notification or alert dialog boxes) these can easily become lost. For some reason, I can’t Alt+Tab to see them, instead I have to minimize everything to get to these windows.
• It requires your processor support Intel VT or AMD-V. This has been written about in detail on other blogs, so I won’t touch on it here too much, other than to say if your system doesn’t have this you’re out of luck.

VMware Workstation 7 + Unity Mode

Installing Workstation 7 is a breeze, as usual. One of the big benefits of Workstation over Virtual PC is that.. well, VPC is a free product and has the feature set to match the price. Workstation is a fabulous product, but to be fair I should really be comparing it to the free VMware Player 3.0 product, which has the same feature set when it comes to using XP Mode, so for the purposes of this comparison I will overlook all of the cool extra stuff Workstation gives you.

First you install XP Mode just like you would for VPC. After installing Workstation 7/Player 3, you just have to go to the menu and select Import Windows XP Mode VM… and that’s it! It then runs through a standard sysprep process (which you actually get to see and input information into, unlike when you use VPC). After that, you install VMware tools, then enable Unity Mode and you’re good to go.

How does it really work?

VMware’s Unity mode, from what I can tell, works by screenscraping the actual video output of your VM (not hard, since its a virtual video card), isolating the area that the application is in, and then overlaying that in a window on your host OS. This differs from VPC’s RDP window method because your VM is doing all the screen rendering, not the host OS, but that also means that you don’t have the disadvantages of running over what’s essentially a remote display protocol. For example, running Internet Explorer in a window using VPC, Flash videos played back extremely poorly. In Workstation 7, they were much better. The VMware products can also do 3D graphics and other cool things, whereas VPC cannot.

Pros:

• Speed. Workstation 7’s virtualization engine is significantly faster than VPC’s. Also, with Workstation 7 (not sure about VMware Player) you can give your XP Mode VM two vCPUs if you feel that’s necessary.
• Graphics. The VMware products’ graphics capabilities are just plain better.
• Switching modes is easy. If you want to use Unity Mode, you click a button and it turns on. Turning it off is just as simple. With XP Mode, you cannot launch the VM’s console if any applications are open, because a local login kills your RDP sessions.

Cons:

• Integration. Unity mode creates a separate “start menu” in purple that appears above your Windows Start Icon when you mouse-over it. I found this menu to be a little awkward and the purple color wasn’t doing it any favors. Similarly, all your Unity Mode windows have a hideous purple border and a purple VMware logo in their title bar. Great for keeping heads or tails of what’s virtual and what’s not, but it’s definitely an eyesore.
• You must start the VM yourself. If you want to launch an application, you need to start the VM manually, enable Unity mode, and then you’re good to go. Virtual PC’s integration directly into your main start menu has a definite edge here.
• Cost. Technically, using VMware Player 3.0 avoids this issue, but if you want the full feature set you have to pony up some money to VMware for a license. That said, a $99 upgrade to my Workstation 6 license (free when I got my VCP!) will probably be on my Christmas list.

Verdict

So which one is better? I think it comes down to what type of user you are. I’m a crazy VMware nerd who would be using Workstation to run ESXi virtually and all sorts of other stuff, so Workstation was the second thing I installed on my Windows 7 box (after Firefox 3.6 beta). I would be using it anyway, so I’m not the best comparison here. However, from my experience I can break it down to a fairly easy choice.

If the integration features of Virtual PC + XP Mode are a big draw for you, or if you’re setting this up for a non-technical user, then the all-Microsoft solution has some big advantages. If performance and flexibility are more important to you than really slick OS integration, I would recommend using the VMware products.

As for me? I’m just glad we have choices, because I’m sure it will make both parties work hard to improve their products.

A side note…

In my original article about Windows 7’s XP Mode, I mentioned that VMware should be doing the same thing in the VDI space. If VMware can make this work in Workstation, they should be able to do something similar in ESX. Today, Citrix is already allowing seamless app publishing (via ICA) from XenDesktop virtual machines. VMware could do the same thing – why not have a pool of VMs where half are Windows 7 and half are Windows XP, and allow seamless windows from the latter to the former? You’d have your main VDI desktop running Windows 7 with PC over IP and all the fancy graphics, and then have your legacy apps broken out in a separate VM published via Unity into a single desktop view. Sounds like a winning combo to me! How about it VMware? Or for that matter, Microsoft? Remote Desktop Services could sure use a unique feature other than “it’s made by Microsoft.”

So for everyone who’s gone out and grabbed the final bits for PowerShell 2.0, you may have found one still-supported Microsoft operating system conspicuously absent. That would be the x64 Edition of Windows XP. Yes, it was never a really well supported OS, since it had the awkward position of being half Server 2003, half Windows XP. But the good news is, because of these common roots with Windows Server 2003 x64 (for example, they share a service pack) there is a way to get PowerShell 2.0 on XP-64. Just download the Server 2003 x64 version and it installs just fine – I confirmed this on my home machine (which has been happily running XP64 for the last 2+ years).

Of course, with Windows 7 64-bit out now, the days are numbered for my home machine’s Windows install…

So this has already bitten me in the ass and I just wanted to warn anyone else with test or lab environments who runs into trouble.

According to the SRM Compatibility Matrix, you cannot install SRM Server on 64-bit Windows Server 2008. Considering this is generally the recommended platform for vCenter installs, it means anyone trying to co-habitate the SRM server with vCenter is out of luck.

Haven’t had a lot to say recently, but I definitely wanted to call this out:

There’s a great blog article by Scott Davis over at the View-Point blog talking about why PCoIP is so awesome compared to its competition. This is information that partners have had for a while and is what has had me so excited for PCoIP. It’s something that screenshots and benchmarks really don’t do justice to.

These last two weeks I’ve been at a customer site working on an SRM deployment. Customer updated to the latest FLARE code (version 4.29) and this broke the currently available Storage Replication Adapter for MirrorView (version 1.3.0.4). So for those CX4 customers using SRM, hold off on the FLARE update unless you talk to your EMC representative.

I wanted to especially thank Chad Sakac for his help diagnosing this problem. Chad, you rock!

Recently some very clever people at VMware and EMC showed off some scripts at VMworld that allows you to combine SRM and VMware View. I went to the session at VMworld and it was impressive but light on details. The good news is, the scripts are now posted, and you can grab them from my Sky Drive.

Some shortcomings of the script, however, as I see it, is that it’s really impossible to do a VMware View “test” using these. Because View has to talk to VirtualCenter, AD, DNS, and between connection brokers, doing a “test”  is always missing some components. In the VMworld presentation, they used some EMC plugins to do easy failback after their “test”, but the test itself is very disruptive to anything in production.

Big thanks to Tommy Walker for providing these scripts, as well as to the very clever authors (whose names are in the script source).

On Friday HP just posted a new version of the View Client for the t5545 Thin Client. You can download it and view installation instructions here. I’m out of the office at a customer site this week so I haven’t been able to play with it, but the release notes are pretty boring (basically just adding official View 3.1 support).

When I get a chance to play with it, I will post more, but feel free to check it out and post your results!