In a previous post, I said that cloud service business model is very much like that of office renting business. Just as big companies want to own their major offices, they want to own their major datacenters as well. That explains why private cloud will not only be there forever but also represent a major chuck of overall market in the future.
Cloud Commoditization
Let’s get back to the cloud service business, or so called public cloud. When the cloud technology getting mature, the cloud related services will increasingly become commoditized. This is especially true Read more... (770 words, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)
It’s common for companies to proxy HTTP traffics to external Web site, but not so for internal sites. Therefore, you rarely need to set up proxy for using vSphere API calls with an internal vCenter server. The uncommon cases do come up sometimes. This post explains how to set it up for vSphere API. Note that this is not really for VI Java API only but applicable for all Java applications.
There are two options and you can pick either of them per your use case: Read more... (223 words, estimated 54 secs reading time)
I got quite a few SPAMs on my twitter last week. While it’s annoying to be spammed, I did pay a little attention to the spammers and noticed that their commonality: big number of tweets, 0 following, 0 follower.
These characteristics reminded me of the Java virtual machine technology to garbage collect unused Java objects. In Java, you don’t need to explicitly de-allocate memory as in C++. The Java garbage collector (GC) takes care of this for you. It looks at the objects to see if there is any reference to it. If not, it deletes the objects.
In the Twitter case, a follower is Read more... (299 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)
There have been long debates on whether object oriented is the future of programming. Repeating it over here doesn’t make it any clearer. As you can tell from my blog, I am an OO bigot because it can significantly improve productivity. If you are not convinced about OO benefit, you can look around those top programming languages mostly support OO these days.
By reviewing the whole software lifecycle, however, you will find a gap between requirements and OO programming today. While describing application requirements, a business user almost always describe them in a number of steps (procedural). It’s not realistic to expect requirements described in an OO way. While developing, programmers write and see classes and objects.
How to bridge the gap between the procedural requirements and object oriented programming? It basically boils down how to Read more... (602 words, estimated 2:24 mins reading time)
It gives me great pleasure to welcome Cisco to our open source community. Given the brand recognition of Cisco, I don’t need to explain much about the significance of its becoming part of our community.
At the end of 2009, a development team at Cisco contacted me, and then started to use the VI Java API for integration with VMware vSphere. Like many other partners, they succeeded. Here is a paragraph I received from Andrew Levin (product manager) and Louis Jia (development manager). Thanks Andrew and Louis! Read more... (212 words, 2 images, estimated 51 secs reading time)
One of my colleagues asked me about vShield API and pointed me to the vShield API Programming Guide. I have of course heard about the vShield many times, but haven’t tried it out, let alone its API. But that doesn’t mean I cannot read it on demand. In fact, such questions motivate me to learn more beyond vSphere API. So keep your questions coming if you have one.
Here is what I found out after reading the programming guide. I have to admit I haven’t written any code connecting to a vShield test-bed, so I just share some basics of the API. Overall I found it’s similar to the vCloud API that I had worked with before in format and protocol.
Somehow the API does not, but I think should, Read more... (1320 words, estimated 5:17 mins reading time)
Last week an issue was reported with using vSphere SDK 4.1 to connect vSphere 4.0. The problem is related to the HTTP header called “SOAPAction” introduced in vSphere SDK 4.0. A recent KB article introduced this header, but with a minor error. I will talk about it in the end.
With vSphere SDK 4.1, the SOAPAction header has a value of “urn:vim25/4.1” while 4.0 has “urn:vim25/4.0”. For an older version of vSphere server, either vCenter or ESX/ESXi, it has no idea of the new value of SOAPAction, therefore refuse to serve. But the other way around works just fine because the newer version of vSphere knows about the older value but also support the older version of SDK directly. As a result, any application using older version of SDK works with newer version of vSphere. I am not saying your application can leverage new features. In fact, you cannot and must upgrade to do so.
From the SDK part, I found it’s a little disturbing when your newer SDK cannot work with older vSphere. We all expert newer SDK are better and back compatible. That is why Read more... (555 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)
Two weeks ago when I twitted about VMware View APIs, several folks asked me if and where they could find View APIs. While VMware does not provide a full set of APIs, but does offer PowerShell based CLI as documented in the VMware View Integration Guide.
Beyond that, the guide also introduces the event database with tables and schemas so that you can retrieve various events from the database directly; how to import/export LDAP data to/from View; and how to “use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor the state of VMware View components, including View Connection Server instances and security servers and View services running on these hosts.”
While trying the PowerShell CLI, Read more... (568 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)
I believe most of us learned at school the theory of big bang which tries to explain the formation of the universe. “According to the Big Bang model, the universe, originally in an extremely hot and dense state that expanded rapidly, has since cooled by expanding to the present diluted state, and continues to expand today.” (source: Wikipedia).
Now how does the theory relate to the cloud computing? More than you can think of. You can use the same theory to create (not just explain) a new cloud. Just like the universe, a cloud is created from almost nothing to a fully running infrastructure over time. Think about most enterprises which do not yet have a cloud today, they will need a big bang to create an enterprise cloud.
Basic Elements of a Cloud
It’s important to understand what you want before taking any action. To operate a cloud, Read more... (740 words, estimated 2:58 mins reading time)
In my previous post, I introduced how to change a virtual machine’s vmx file programmatically and promised to post a full sample in my presentation at VMware Parter Exchange 2011. Now that the conference is over, it’s time to post it.
The sample is based on guideline VMX03 in vSphere security hardening guide: disable copy/paste to remote console. To me, allowing copy and paste to remote console like vSphere Client is a nice feature which can save you a lot of time. When security is a concern, however, you may want to disable it.
I will not discuss when you should disable/enable it because it really depends on your requirements. In most cases, security and convenience contradict with each other. I leave it for you to decide the right balance, but show you how you can check the setting and change it here.
Like most samples I write, Read more... (467 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)
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