VMware Workstation - Where's my space going?

Let me begin with how much I hate that it has been so long since I've posted.  I'm hoping to pick up some new posts in the coming weeks as I have been very busy testing and implementing ESX(i) 4.1 and enjoying it overall.

This post however is about an issue I came across with VMware Workstation 7.  Like any other good tech person I have a VM that I use for surfing the web looking for things and for managing my torrents when the need arises.  Once my files are downloaded, I perform some virus scanning and then Drag and Drop (DnD) them to storage on the host computer (W7 64bit).

I noticed recently that I was running out of disk space on my primary drive (72GB high speed SAS) and was unable to figure out where it was all going.  Turns out that Workstation 7 keeps your DnD files located in the following hidden directory
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\VMwareDnD

Imagine my surprise when I found 23GB of data sitting there.  Data that I had properly stored and organized on much larger (and slower/cheaper storage).  Now that I know it is there I know to delete it, but that is a huge relief since I'm generally pretty mindful of how I use my system drive.

Apparently early versions had this issue where they placed the data in the C:\Windows\Temp\VMwareDnD directory and the files were supposed to be deleted upon reboot but did not.  The post below goes into more detail about the recent versions of Workstation on Windows 7 hosts.  The VMware employee contributing in the community forum explains that the files are left in the VMwareDnD directory until next reboot since Workstation has no way of actually knowing when the copy is completed to the final chosen location.  This is fair logic but unfortunately this was not the case for me since I've rebooted several times and I had files in this temp directory from 2 months back.

It's not a big deal for me now that I know where to look and what to expect, but the key take away here is that while DnD is a great feature to use with Workstation, you have to keep an eye on your storage usage.  I'm certainly benefiting also since it forced me to properly evaluate the applications I had installed and allowed me to remove a few that were no longer needed.

Thanks for reading.

VMware Community Reference
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/268474

Workstation 7 at Last!

This has been an exciting month with the release of Windows 7, the launch of Ares1-X (pending at time of writing), and the release of Workstation 7.  VMware announced earlier today the general availability of Workstation 7 and I personally can not wait (but will) to get my hands on it.  I have to plan this right though since the trial is for 30 days.  I think I have enough email addresses to last me until I get my VCP upgraded to v4 and hopefully a new Workstation 7 license.  I'm providing a collection of information on Workstation 7.  I hope it helps and if you think something should be added then please let me know.

Here's a few reasons to buy/upgrade Workstation 7

• Full native support for ESX(i) 4 in Workstation - Recommendations
  
• Support for Windows 7 including Aero feature*
  
• 3D support - DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3, and OpenGL 2.13D
• Driverless Printing
• Pause the VM to quickly and temporarily free up resources for other VMs or applications.
  
• Greater VM resource options
• 4 virtual processors or virtual cores
• 32GB Memory per VM
  
• SmartCard support
• 256-bit AES Encryption
• Integration with Visual Studio, Eclipse, and the SpringSource Tool Suite
  (Hoping that eventually PowerShell Plus or some other PowerShell IDE will integrate)
• More Guest OS Support
• http://pubs.vmware.com/ws7_ace26/ws_user/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=ws_user&file=intro_sysreqs_ws.html
  

*Aero feature requires following hardware support

• Intel Dual Core, 2.2GHz and above or AMD Athlon 4200+ and above
• nVidia GeForce 8800GT and above or ATI Radeon HD 2600 and above
• At least 3GB of host system memory

Purchase Info:

• Buy for $189
• Upgrade from Workstation 5.x or 6.x for $99
• Free upgrade if you purchase Workstation 6.5 between October1, 2009 and November 30, 2009.
  http://www.rebates-vmware.com/ws7upgrade/
  
• Pass VCP for free license.
  

Release Notes
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws7/doc/releasenotes_ws7.html

Workstation 7 Documentation
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ws_pubs.html

Free Online Training from VMware
http://mylearn.vmware.com/register.cfm?course=53111

Workstation FAQ page
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/faqs.html

 Update:
Duncan Epping beat me to a post on VMware Player 3.  Check his post out at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/10/27/vmware-player-3-0/
Features are pretty comparable.

Dying Datacenter?? Not likely folks.

The virtualization world is going nuts talking about cloud computing and how it is going to destroy the datacenter. The possibilities are intriguing but I'm pretty sure that it could easily be a decade before people think of the cloud the same way that they look at virtualization in genenral.

I just came across this scream stream at FierceCIO.com simply mentioning the possiblity and with nothing to truly back it other than a slightly obscure report from UC Berkeley. This is certainly premature and I seriously doubt that too many CIOs and CTOs are going to ever feel very comfortable handing their datacenter over to a 3rd party regardless of the cost savings. I'm still waiting to see the Fax machine and paper disappear from the corporate world. We will continue to hold onto corporate datacenters for the same reasons. On the same note, even in the cloud your servers will be in a datacenter... Just someone else's. Read the article and my response below.

Article
http://www.fiercecio.com/story/will-cloud-kill-data-center/


My Comment:
I'd say it is premature to say that the cloud is going to kill the datacenter. What I expect we will see are some organizations taking advantage of this, primarily those who need space and have already consolidated into a virtual (VMware) environment. The cloud services as mentioned here would then allow them to upload their existing application servers that they feel comfortable with having offsite, and comfortable meeting SLAs. The corporate datacenter will go away about the same time that fax machines and paper will go away. People like things that they can touch. It makes these things more tangible and comforting when you can open the door and see the lights and hear the fans. Semantics can come to play and we can say that having servers off-site isn't part of the "traditional" datacenter, but let's check back in 3-5 years and see where this has gone. My bet is that the cloud will be used like storage rental facilities; great for when you're moving or you just need a little extra space.

USB in ESX - How?

Since we brought it up and since I feel like a slacker for not posting in several weeks I thought I'd share my experience on managing USB devices in an ESX environment. In my previous post I mentioned a posting about connecting USB devices to ESX hosts and the many different ways for doing that in both a temporary and permanent fashion. I've never had much need for temporary connection but for a rock solid permanent solution I highly recommend AnywhereUSB by Digi - website.

Priced at just a couple of hundred dollars you are able to assign one of these an IP (or DHCP which I don't recommend), install the supplied software on your guest VM, plug in your USB device and you're up and running. Ok, so in all honesty here are some gotchas and other things to keep in mind:

1. One AnywhereUSB device to one operating system at a time. You can mix and match between physical and virtual as long as they have the provided client and drivers but only one server can talk to one of these guys at a time. This also means that even though it has 5 USB ports in it you can not map them to individual servers. Hopefully someone from Digi will correct me on this but that's just the way it is.

2. Give it a static IP. It makes it so much easier to track it down and to keep track of which one is which. If you purchase multiples of these you had better label the unit as well. You'll thank me for this one.

3. Follow the instructions for installation. I know you're gitty to have this device but if you skip a step you'll be sorry. Refer to #5.

4. Just because you have a gigabit network, you're limited to the speed of the AnywhereUSB device. I vaguely recall seeing that you may get USB2 speeds of 400mbps but I have not seen that as the case in production. If you have a 100Mb network then you know what your cap is already regardless.

5. Make sure you load the Windows generic drivers on your guest VM. ESX does not present USB to the VM, and you're not adding it to your VM's settings unless you've been doing some unsupported hacking, so the generic drivers were not installed when your OS was installed. In order to do this you'll need to copy the usbd.sy_ file from the \I386 directory of the Windows CD to the \system32\drivers directory and CHANGE THE FILE EXTENSION to usbd.sys. Reboot and then install the software. If you miss this step you'll be sorry.

6. I found it quite refreshing the first time I installed one of these guys and had the presence of mind to try it out first on a test server a snapshot before taking the first step. Always a good practice when installing something new for the first time.

7. You have to reboot at least once to use an AnywhereUSB device. That should be all though. Refer to #5

If you've kept these things in mind and follow the instructions you'll have many happy years of giving your VMs access to critical USB devices without unsupported hacking or sacrificing VMotion.


Links
Original Post - VMETC.Com
http://vmetc.com/2009/03/11/connecting-a-usb-device-to-an-esx-hosted-vm/

Digi - AnywhereUSB Website
http://www.digi.com/pdf/wp_ESXServer_AnywhereUSB.pdf

USB in ESX - Why Not?

I was recently talking with a friend about the beauty of USB devices in Workstation and we quickly began talking about the difficulties of USB devices in ESX. This is a problem I had already tackled some years ago with AnywhereUSB but earlier this evening I found a post discussing USB connectivity to an ESX hosted VM and felt it time to talk about it with you.

http://vmetc.com/2009/03/11/connecting-a-usb-device-to-an-esx-hosted-vm/

In the post the author describes several means for connecting USB devices in both temporary and permanent scenarios. I personally have never had much need for one time connectivity but since many of our applications require USB dongles for their license managers it's safe to say that connecting through the host or through RDP just won't do as a permanent solution. This is especially true as virtualization continues to branch out into the desktop arena where USB devices are more than just a pretty face, they're often a non-negotiable requirement.

While the post was extremely helpful one of the items that I feel the author failed to discuss is why VMware would continue to not support USB connectivity to guest VMs from their ESX hosts. Why wouldn't they indeed?

My immediate belief is that like most things it is for our own protection. Just imagine how upset your management, or you if you are the management, would be if DRS did not properly balance your resources, HA did not restart your server upon a failure, or you were not able to put a machine into maintenance mode due to a USB device preventing Vmotion because of a device associated to a single host. I know I wouldn't want to tell the boss that the thousands of dollars I fought hard for to purchase these features were all done in because of a USB dongle. Note: I have not yet tested this scenario but it seems reasonable given the results I've seen from having VMDKs and ISOs on local storage.

The greatest strength of VMware over its competitors is that they control the hardware and control the drivers that the VMs see. They have worked hard on their hypervisor to make these features available and I'm pretty sure that they won't open their arms to USB devices on the host anytime soon. After all, there are clearly many different options out there that solve this issue. Where's the benefit in complicating their already growing datacenter OS further?