Project VRC Phase II:
Latest generation virtualization techniques doubles capacity terminal servers
With that statement Ruben and Jeroen have just released Phase II of Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) to create this whitepaper they have done more than 150 tests with Login VSI to measure the performance of servers while being stressed by a great amount of simulated users. This whitepaper has a few advantages to whitepapers published by the vendors themselves and whitepapers published by blogs that are only testing one hypervisor:
- The whitepaper is truly independent
- The whitepaper is approved by the different vendors
- Everybody can repeat the tests with the free available Login VSI
- The authors aren’t biased
- You can compare the results easily (the servers have been stressed the same way)
One of the most interesting conclusions of Phase II: The performance increase measured is not caused by improvements to the hypervisor but mainly by Intel’s innovations in the Nehalem architecture VRC states that it can be almost solely accredited for the performance improvements seen with TS workloads.
Get your free copy of the whitepaper at www.projectvrc.com
AutoIT is enterprise ready!?
In IT everybody i meet always has something against AutoIT, this is for a obvious reason you don’t want to use recorded mouseclicks or sendkeys to install your applications unless there is really (no really!) no other option left.
In everyday usage i use AutoIT to create most parts of Login VSI, its perfect for emulating the user workloads because it works like a real user and because i dont have real programming skills the rest of VSI is also created in AutoIT script.
You would think a large company would do this a little different, maybe they would create the workloads in AutoIT scripts but creating the configuration GUI’s would be done much more professional…. Well VMWare dissagrees 
apparently.
Conclusion: +1 for the AutoIT team and –1 for VMware!
VMware: Wake up!
Today a negative post from my side, VMware what are you doing, is everyone of the Thinapp team on a permanent vacation ? Why is there still no Windows 7 Support ? And even more important: Where is the official statement telling us when it will be available.
What is the alternative: XenoCode perhaps!
When comparing features XenoCode is very alike with Thinapp (Only they have win7 support 
). When it comes to being userfriendly during the capture off applications XenoCode is far ahead, they have include a standard set of templates for common applications.
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A smart thing to create from the XenoCode team is the converter this is the Ability to import external application configurations, including VMware ThinApp configurations: Customers who have already packaged applications using other technologies, including VMware ThinApp/Thinstall, can now import these configurations into Studio with a single click, without the need for any recapture.
Want to try XenoCode quick and simple just try some applications online! you can just run them like a youtube video after installing a little plugin: click here to test.
While i was writing this post Henk got all exited about XenoCode and wanted to give it a try so he’s gonna write the follow up
Virtualization.. as Escher would make it
Trust me, the Hyper-V installation & desingn posts are not finished yet; I will continue with that once I have regained some inspiration.
In the mean time, I got myself a shiny Macbook Pro (naah.. just the 15" version) with 4 GB memory and it's waiting for me to finally start practicing photoshop. There however lies a problem; I think I lack some expressionistic genes and after 1 month of downloading and installing all cool Mac stuff it is time to actually start utilizing the machine. Besides initiating RDP sessions to my Hyper-V servers, there must be some better use for the machine
Well.. Since Virtual PC for MAC is still not available I installed VMware Fusion (Workstation variant for MAC). I won't bother you with that install routine, it's next,next finish) and soon there was the inevitable question; what shall I run inside that? well.. let's do ESX!
So how to do that? Well there are quite some instructions available on the net (ie. here or here) so just click there to see what is the trick.
Installing ESX was a breeze now. After connecting to the console and creating a esx-VM (within a fusion-VM) I got a nifty little error: You may not power on a virtual machine in a virtual machine.
Well... that's kind of a bummer now isn't it?
Luckily there are some additional isolation settings that can be set within the vmx file as can be found here.
After some wrestling with formatting (quotes vs no quotes) the VM actually powered on and right now it's installing VMware virtual center.
Of course performance is not really stunning but that's logical. After all, you have to be kind of a weirdo to want this I suppose. Apart from that; for about 800 euro's a fine 8 GB physical host can be purchased but yeah.. my attick is already at full power capacity .
So, is there any use of this evenings work? Practically; not really. However the plan is to connect to virtual center server to SCVMM. Aha! now that's a use
The Virtualization Wars?
That's right... not the Clone Wars (c'mon i'm a computer guy, ofcourse I love Star Wars) but the Virtualization Wars.
Citrix CTO Simon Crosby challenges VMware CTO Stephen Herrod for a stand-off.
It all started with a blogpost of the VMware performance team: http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2009/01/virtualizing-xenapp-on-xenserver-50-and-esx-35-1.html
In this publication the VMware performance team claimed that ESX outperformed XenServer when running a virtualized XenApp server. That's quite the opposite of what most of us in the field are noticing... and more importantly, it's quite the opposite of the publication of Project Virtual Reality Check, an independent research and a joint venture of Login Consultants and PQR. During Project VRC the virtual workloads were generated using the Login VSI methodology, which Mark and I created together with Jeroen van de Kamp and dr. Bernhard Tritsch. VSI uses AutoIT scripts to simulate load in a user session.... hmm exactly the same that VMware did... only their testing methodology is poorly explained and not detailed at all. Quite the opposite with the VRC whitepapers, which contain a detailed description of the used methodology! 1-0 for VRC.
Allright, that's of course only my unbiased view on this situation, seeing as I was one of the team members of project VRC and one of the authors of the Login VSI tool.
Citrix CTO Simon Crosby responded with the following on the VMware publication:
As a former academic, I'd give this mumbo jumbo an F grade. Bad science, bad scientists, uneven playing field
Read and delight yourself with the furious reaction of Simon Crosby: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/simoncr/2009/02/02/VMware+Wins!+(Bad+Science+Required)