Citrix Project Avalon announced in May
Showing posts with label vCloud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vCloud. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
See any similarities between these stacks?
The new vCloud Suite announced yesterday
Citrix Project Avalon announced in May
Citrix Project Avalon announced in May
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
VMware vCloud Blog: Your Partner in the Cloud – Where VMware vCloud and VSPP Fit in the Revolution
VMware vCloud Blog: Your Partner in the Cloud – Where VMware vCloud and VSPP Fit in the Revolution:
The demand for cloud has grown tremendously in the last few years, with an increasing number of enterprises expressing interest in and taking advantage of private, public and hybrid cloud models. Hybrid cloud models in particular have received much attention in the last year, and in a recent Forbes article, David Nichols, principal and Americas CIO services leader for Ernst & Young IT Advisory Services, noted that hybrid cloud strategies provide a “failsafe” model for enterprises and may be the best approach to cloud computing for the enterprise.
So where does VMware fit in all this? Well last week we featured a report by the Taneja Group that discussed how VMware stacks up against other cloud vendors and why the Taneja Group considers VMware the clear cloud leader. In addition to that, check out the handy infographic below that breaks VMware down by the numbers and illustrates where VMware’s growing ecosystem of Service Provider partners fits in the cloud revolution, providing hybrid cloud services to the enterprise.
VMware values all of its Service Provider partners, and at VMware Partner Exchange next week, we look forward to highlighting all the reasons why VMware’s ecosystem of Service Providers and partners ranks among the best in the industry. Check out yesterday’s blog for a full rundown of what to expect at VMware Partner Exchange, and don’t forget to follow @VMwareSP for live coverage from the show!
VMware vSphere Blog: Uniquely Identifying Virtual Machines in vSphere and vCloud Part 1: Overview
VMware vSphere Blog: Uniquely Identifying Virtual Machines in vSphere and vCloud Part 1: Overview:
By William Lam, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer
The question of uniquely identifying virtual machines in either a vSphere or vCloud environment is one that comes up from time to time. I hear you asking, why is this import to me? One such reason is to help track virtual machine assets using external systems such as a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) and being able to uniquely identify a VM across multiple vCenter Servers and/or vCloud Director Cells.
In Part 1 of this article, I will provide an overview of what is needed to uniquely identify a VM in both vSphere vCenter and vCloud Director. In Part 2, we will dive into an example using the vSphere API and vCloud API showing the relationships.
vSphere
In vSphere, to uniquely identify a virtual machine, you can use the MoRef ID (Managed Object Reference ID) or the instanceUuid of a VM which is available using the vSphere API.
The MoRef ID is a VMware internal identifier that is generated by vSphere when new objects are created in vCenter (e.g. adding ESXi host or creating a VM). This MoRef ID is used by all VMware solutions to reference objects within vCenter. The instanceUuid is a new property that was introduced in the vSphere 4.0 API to provide an easy way to uniquely identify a VM. Previous to this, the BIOS uuid of a VM was being used to identify a VM, but it was not always guaranteed to be unique and hence a vCenter specific UUID was created.
An example of a MoRef ID for a VM would be vm-415 where “vm” identifies the object type and 415 is just a counter. An example of an instanceUuid for a VM would be 501d6aa3-54fc-8b8d-99a2-e448463ead18 which represents a 128bit identifier.
If you are managing a single vSphere environment and using vCenter Server, then you can use either property from the vSphere API to uniquely identify your VMs. If you are managing multiple vSphere environments, then you need to combine the either the MoRef ID or instanceUuid VM with the unique identifier for a given vCenter Server. Within the vCenter Server, there is also a property in the vSphere API called instanceUuid which uniquely identifies a vCenter Server. This then allows you to uniquely identify a VM across multiple vCenter Servers as the individual instanceUuid of a VM is only guaranteed to be unique across a single vCenter Server instance.
vCloud
With vCloud Director, to uniquely identify a virtual machine, you would use the vCloud Director Object ID that is automatically generated by vCloud Director when a new virtual machine is created. The vCloud Director Object ID is available using the vCloud API.
An example of a vCloud Director Object ID for a VM would be urn:vcloud:vm:71d5b81a-f82d-495a-9e58-4b95a645c841 which is expressed in URN format.
To automatically handle uniqueness of a VM across a single or multi vCloud Director Cell, there is an object reference property called href that is provided as a URL that contains information about the vCloud Director Cell and VM vCloud Director Object ID.
An example of an href for a VM would be https://vcloudurl/api/vApp/vm-71d5b81a-f82d-495a-9e58-4b95a645c841 where the UUID of the VM is captured as part of the URL.
By using the href property, you are guaranteed a unique key within vCloud Director.
vSphere and vCloud
If you need to uniquely identify a virtual machine in both vSphere and vCloud, you can still use the identifiers listed above in their respective stack but how do you go about correlating the two? As mentioned earlier, all VMware solutions leverage the MoRef ID to reference objects within vCenter. Since vCloud Director sits on top of vSphere, it too also uses the MoRef ID to map entities between the two environments. As part of the vCloud API, there is a vCloud Extension API that provides information about the underlying vSphere infrastructure including the MoRef ID of a VM and vCenter Server instanceUuid.
Here is a diagram to help visualize the unique properties between vSphere and vCloud:
From a vCloud Director VM, we can map it to a specific vCenter Server using the vCloud Extension API to retrieve the MoRef ID of the VM and instanceUuid of the vCenter Server. Using the instanceUuid, we can then correlate that back to a specific vCenter Server and find the VM with matching MoRef ID.
It is recommended that you leverage the MoRef ID as the common identifier between vCloud and vSphere. If you are only within vCloud, then you can use href property.
If you would like more details on the importance of the MoRef ID within vCloud Director, Chris Colotti wrote an excellent article here. I would highly recommend you take a look at his article.
Additional Notes:
- If you move a VM to another Organization vDC, the href and UUID will change
- If you Import a VM from vSphere to vCloud, the VM MoRef ID will stay same if you use “move” operation. If you use “copy”, the MoRef ID will change.
Additional resources:
Thanks to Michael Haines and Timo Sugliani for their feedback on the article.
Get notification of new blog postings and more by following VMware Automation on Twitter: 
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Rethink IT: vCloud Integration Manager and more clouds in more countries
Rethink IT: vCloud Integration Manager and more clouds in more countries:
Today, VMware is announcing new software designed specifically for our service provider partners called vCloud Integration Manager. We developed Integration Manager to provide a simple and standardized way for service providers to provision vCloud Director, vShield and vSphere in order to more quickly get new customers up and running on a cloud service. Until now, service providers either had to do these tasks manually, or redirect valuable software development resources to writing undifferentiated "glue code" and/or automation scripts.
Integration Manager reduces operational costs by automatically stepping through the configuration process for vCloud Director to set up Virtual Data Centers, virtual networks, administrator accounts and other cloud resources that the customer has ordered. By completing this in a matter of minutes, it decreases time to revenue (the time between receiving an order for service and fulfilling it, and therefore being able to bill for service).
Integration Manager includes a full set of REST APIs and a web GUI. The GUI provides an administrator interface to define the service building blocks that make up a full cloud service for a customer. Administrators can also configure reseller accounts, and provision and de-provision customers.
The web GUI invokes the Integration Manager API to accomplish these tasks. In production at service providers, Integration Manager will mostly be driven through API calls from the service provider’s customer portal or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. These are typically the “systems of record” for customer data and product orders, with Integration Manager doing the detailed provisioning work.
Integration Manager is also important for VMware's reseller partners, many of whom are looking to add cloud services to their portfolios in order to be able to sell complete hybrid clouds (combinations of public and private clouds). To make it simple for resellers to package, price and sell vCloud Powered or vCloud Datacenter services, Integration Manager includes the notion of a cloud reseller. This capability allows a service provider to securely delegate provisioning to resellers. In turn, the resellers can directly and immediately provision and de-provision their own customers (via the API or web GUI), without having to open tickets, send emails or make phone calls.
We developed Integration Manager in response to demand from our growing vCloud service provider ecosystem. There are now 94 clouds in 19 countries world-wide that qualify for the vCloud Datacenter or vCloud Powered status. vCloud Datacenter is a globally consistent IaaS service that's audited and certified by VMware; vCloud Powered providers offer a basic level of workload and data compatibility by using vCloud Director, the vCloud API and the OVF file format.
VMware's service provider business grew more than 200% in 2011, a testament to the momentum and rapid growth those service providers are seeing in their VMware-based clouds. With vCloud Integration Manager, we hope to further accelerate their growth and profitability by reducing operational costs and opening up new routes to market.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)