Punching Clouds

Now that it’s official that VMware vSphere 4, will be available to the public this quarter, it’s time to upgrade! If you didn’t catch the announcement and launch event yesterday, you missed some of top industry players gathering for VMware’s launch of vSphere 4, the industry’s first cloud operating system. I’m thrilled that the rest of the world will have access to a fantastic product that I’ve been working with for the past year. vSphere 4 truly is a labor of love. With over 150 new features, it soars miles above VI3. The following features will allow you to reach some amazing new heights:

• vStorage Thin Provisioning
• VMware Fault Tolerances
• vNetwork Distributed Switches
• VMDirect Path I/O
• vCenter Data Recovery
• 8-way vCPU Virtual Machines
• Storage Plugable Architecture
• vCenter Linked Mode
• vShields Zones
• Distributed Power Management
• vCenter Orchestrator

With these and other excellent features, VMware has established itself as an industry leader. With its talented staff of employees and engineers lead by Paul Maritz, Steve Harrold, and others, the clouds are now getting closer: what we have on our hands is an operating system and a platform built specifically to make clouds computing an attainable solution. Start with the internal cloud and then lets see what you, the customers, can achieve with the platform VMware has delivered.

So as the process begins, how do you go from VI3 to vSphere 4? Well, some migrations will be simple while others will be more challenging. The ease of migration really depends on the size of environments and on whether or not the VMware solutions you currently have deployed are 100% compatible with vSphere. VMware has simplified the migration and upgrade process so that customers can gradually and very easily get their vCenter 2.5 Servers and ESX/ESXi 3 Servers upgraded to vCenter 4 and ESX/ESXi 4 Servers.

Below are links to a four part video series provided by VMware that details the transition process from VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) to vSphere 4.  This series covers the vCenter Management components, ESX migration methods, the upgrade of the Virtual Machines, and implementing the new licensing for VMware vSphere 4. Enjoy!

VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 to VMware vSphere 4 upgrade video Series

Migration Video Part One: VMware vCenter Management Components

Migration Video Part Two: VMware ESX host Migration Methods

Migration Video Part Three: Virtual Machine Upgrades (VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware)

Migration Video Part Four: Implementing VMware vSphere Licensing