As Kevin pointed out in part 7, there are resources to help VMware IT Pros understand how to work with Hyper-V. This is extremely helpful, especially if you need to run a mixed environment of both VMware and Microsoft virtualization technologies. If you end up with a mixed environment, the next question is how do you manage it all? SCVMM has been able to connect to your VMware environment since the beginning. With System Center 2012, you’ll also be able to connect to a Citrix XenServer environment. Of course with SCVMM 2012 you’ll have the ability to define your compute “fabric” as detailed in Yung Chou’s post, Fabric, Oh, Fabric. This means that once defined, it shouldn’t matter if your hypervisor is ESX(i), Citrix XenServer or Hyper-V.

Coexistence is key

Getting all these virtualization platforms defined in SCVMM is a great start but then you have to consider how to keep track of it all. How many times has “virtualization” been blamed for issues in your environment when the real cause is something unrelated? Only through comprehensive monitoring of the virtualization fabric can you get true app-to-metal visibility in your environment. For Systems Center Operations Manager, Microsoft already has a Management Pack for Hyper-V and Citrix recommends the ComTrade Citrix XenServer Management Pack. On the VMware side, Veeam has been offering a Management Pack for VMware since the MOM days.

I bring up the importance of monitoring because when you have multiple platforms it’s very important from an operational sense to make sure you have solid metrics for each. Thanks to the extensibility of System Center Operations Manager, there are numerous 3^rd party management packs available for a wide range of systems and operating systems. Veeam just happens to make a great Management Pack for VMware. For a good overview, check out a recent Webinar we did with Pete Zerger, MVP – OpsMgr, Cameron Fuller, MVP - OpsMgr and Alec King, product manager for the MP.

Author bio:

Doug Hazelman is the Vice President of Product Strategy for Veeam Software. Doug shares his expertise via the Veeam blog, and other social media outlets. Doug has spoken about virtualization management at VMworld 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, Interop, and other events including regional VMUG meetings.

This quarter, VDI hypervisor statistics are in place. Also this quarter, the number of entities surveyed this quarter increased to 578. As always, our respondents were not necessarily Veeam customers, Veeam prospects, or previous-quarter respondents. Find out more at www.V-index.com.*

Results worth noting this quarter include:

• The average consolidation ratio was 5.1 to 1
• VMware hypervisors took 67.7 % of the server virtualization workload
• Reliability, application performance and data protection were top virtualization concerns

We recently interviewed Martin Turze from Vanson Bourne, the firm that conducts V-index research and reporting. Listen to our interview with Turze by clicking Veeam Community Podcast, episode 29.

The full report is available as a PDF and there is a nifty infographic available as well. The full press release is available here.

*No site registration required.

We’re having fun with the stickers and we want you to do the same, so we’re announcing a contest! Pick up a sticker, place it somewhere and take a picture. The Veeam staff favorites will win. We will select six winners for $60 Amazon gift cards next week based on pictures shared via Twitter. Be sure to use the #Veeam hash tag and we’ll be sure to notice it and re-Tweet the picture!

Enjoy VMworld 2011!

• Veeam booth #813: Be sure to stop by the Veeam booth to discuss our products. We’ll be giving demos,, including exclusive peeks of Veeam Backup & Replication version 6. We’ve announced Hyper-V support; but we’ve not forgotten about the VMware community; you will like what you see at the show. We will also be giving demos of Veeam ONE, version 6. The booth won’t be short of gifts, either. One lucky attendee will win our raffle for USD $6,000 cash. Be there!
• Storage partner presentations: At the Veeam booth, we’ll be also providing demos of Veeam Backup & Replication and a number of storage partner targets. Veeam is storage-agnostic, and this showcase will be a way for us to show backup target options with a number of storage partners. The schedule is below:
  
• SPO3981 Veeam Backup & Replication – A Look Under the Hood: Don’t miss this one! Doug Hazelman (@VMDoug) and Anton Gostev (@Gostev) will be presenting this session at 3:00 PM on Tuesday August 30. This will be good stuff. VMDoug and Gostev will go into a number of topics about vPower and Veeam Backup & Replication version 6. Don’t Miss it!
• Veeam party: A VMworld event would not be complete without a rocking party! VIP invites to the Veeam party have been sent, but walk-up access is permitted. The party is on Tuesday August 30 from 8 PM until 11 PM at VBAR in the Venetian.
• Solutions Exchange Theatre presentation – Building a Test Lab for Storage DRS: In this session, Rick Vanover (@RickVanover) will lay out easy-to-understand and practical points for anyone wanting to learn about one of vSphere 5’s hottest new features. This session will be held on Thursday, September 1 at 10:10 AM in the Solutions Exchange Theatre stage area.

VMworld is a big deal for vendors, but be careful! To that end, use good judgment and common sense if a report is mysteriously distributed that directly attacks Veeam. See Doug’s post from earlier this week: Oh, Tolly! It will be a busy week for sure, and the entire Veeam Teeam will be working hard between now and then. At the show, don’t be a stranger – stop by and say hello. We’ll be wearing green!

The VM Notes option is a nice little addition to the quick visibility that you can get in the vSphere Client. Each virtual machine will have an attribute added with the backup server name, job name, last iteration time and file name of the backup job. This is defined in the advanced settings of a job within Veeam Backup & Replication, as shown in the figure below:

Once the job completes, the custom attribute is added to the virtual machine as configured in the job. This is very handy if there a large number of Veeam Backup & Replication servers installed or a large number of jobs as we can look directly at a virtual machine and get the status of the job. From the example job above, the status is updated on the virtual machine as shown below:

There are two takeaways for using this notification method. The first is that using a virtual machine attribute is better than using a note. If a system-generated event, such as a backup job, changed the notes for every virtual machine; there may be issues with any user-entered notes (like those that come with virtual appliances). The attributes, however are a unique field that are specific for (in this case) the Veeam Backup job.

It is also important to point out that the attribute displayed is the last successful backup job, listed by timestamp. Should there be an unsuccessful attempt to back up an individual job; the timestamp from the last successful job will remain. Further, additional notification options such as the email message option will explicitly note that the job failed.

This can benefit virtualization administrators in a number of ways. The most prominent is that using the attributes are an easy way to ensure that new virtual machines are being backed up. It also is a good way to monitor the timing of different jobs and their completion times. In both cases, this can save a trip back to the Veeam Backup & Replication server to check within the application.

What tricks have you used with virtual machine attributes and notes? Share your comments below.

We are launching a new promotion called, “Tweet to Win.” Tweet to Win is a simple contest in that we are looking for Tweets that show how virtualization has changed your lives. If your Tweet is chosen, you win an iPod Touch!

This Twitter contest has only two guidelines:

1.Tweets must have the #Veeam hashtag

2.Tweets must be posted between April 15 through April 18

The best Tweet according to our staff will be the winner, and we will announce the winner on April 21. Follow Veeam on Twitter to stay up-to-date with this contest. Good luck and happy Tweeting!

The goal of this VMware Communities page is to be about the community and the resources that we all bring to the table. It is not a place for marketing overload! In addition to our related podcast episodes, there are links to Professional VMware BrownBag, vSoup, VMware’s own Communities Podcast and more. Be sure to visit this page or subscribe to get updates.

For the Veeam Community Podcast, the best way to keep up to date is to set up a subscription through iTunes, MyGoogle, RSS or on the Podbean site.

• VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS technical deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman
• System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007 R2 Unleashed: Supplement to System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed by Kerrie Meyler, Cameron Fuller, John Joyner, and Andy Dominey.
• Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli

This webinar was given live twice to accommodate different time zones. Congratulations to our winners Sean, Tighe, Mark, Daniel, Wayne, Mike, Paul, Amit, Michael, Bjørn, Dany, Aleksandar, Chris, Eduardo, and Anthony!

Veeam Backup and Replication v5 was selected as the gold award winner for the backup and storage category. This may sound familiar, as Veeam Backup and Replication version 4 received the same distinction in 2009. The Product of the Year page states this about important features for backup and storage for virtualization:

De-duplication, snapshots and shorter virtual machine recovery times are a few of the most important capabilities these products offer.

Not to be outdone, Veeam ONE was selected as the gold award winner for the virtualization management category. The Product of the Year page states this about important features for virtualization management for virtualized environments:

This year's winners in the virtualization management category address monitoring needs, capacity management, the virtual network and better cost models.

This is great news, and thank you to TechTarget and the virtualization community for a wonderful year!

In Veeam Backup and Replication v5, there are only a few considerations for deciding between VMware ESX and ESXi. Generally speaking, Veeam Backup and Replication v5 offers full support for licensed ESXi installations. This is due to the fact that once ESXi is licensed to communicate with the vCenter Server, the full suite of management agents become active as they are licensed with vCenter.

The one caveat of how ESXi differs from ESX in terms of Veeam Backup and Replication v5 is support for host as a direct backup target. In the User Guide, the following statement may raise a number of questions:

However, at this time you cannot select ESXi as a backup target — as it is possible to do with “full” ESX servers.

This is due to how the data is moved from the host to the backup file. With ESX, it is possible however to make a backup from one ESX host to another directly on the VMFS datastore. This is loosely equivalent to the replication capability that goes directly to a VMFS datastore. However, Replication capabilities can go directly to a VMFS datastore on ESXi.

Let me be very clear, backups can exist on ESXi; but only to locations accessible to the Veeam Backup and Replication server. Most frequently, this is a local drive on the server or a network resource that it can access directly. Writing directly to a VMFS volume isn’t exactly that useful either. Many users frequently want to offload backup files to tape, and if the backup files reside on a VMFS datastore; they are less accessible to anything that can move them to tape.

The message we get from VMware is to get moving to ESXi. I’ve adopted it in my virtualization practice with success, and Veeam Backup and Replication can support it. If you have any comments about ESXi’s support for Veeam Backup and Replication; share them below and let’s talk about it.