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This little tutorial comes thanks to virtuallyghetto.com

The ability to connect to a virtual machine using a VNC client has been available since the early days of VMware GSX as described by this VMware KB article. The required .vmx configuration can also be applied to virtual machines running on ESX(i), but is not officially supported by VMware. With ESXi 5, this continues to work but there is one additional caveat users should to be aware of, which is the new firewall that has been introduced in ESXi 5.

In addition to the three .vmx configurations:

• RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = [true|false]
• RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = [port #]
• RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = [optional]

Users need to also enable the ports selected for each virtual machine on the ESXi firewall. Here is an example of a firewall rule that needs to be created:

Here are a few screenshots of configuring the .vmx configurations and using a VNC client to connect to the powered on virtual machine.

Only the first two .vmx configurations are required, if you do not set a password, anyone can connect to the virtual machine as long as they know the hostname/IP Address of your ESX(i) host and port.

To connect to a specific virtual machine, you will specify the hostname/IP Address of the ESX(i) host and port for the given virtual machine. If you set a password, you will need to also provide that before you can connect.

Freenas 8.0.3 brings new features and an impressive list of upgrades and fixes. The product still do not the provide multimedia features which many people waiting for. In fact, the multimedia support like Bittorrent, iTunes, and DLNA/uPNP is available in the 8.0.3, but only by modification of the config files through the CLI. The Full GUI support is on the road map in the 8.2 version.

FreeNAS 8.0.3 Release Notes

How to upgrade to the 8.0.3 ? You can upgrade from the console or via the GUI.

After Logging in the GUI just go to the Settings > Advanced > firwmare update.

Download:

Pano Logic has announced the release of version 5 of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) platform Pano System.

Version 5 now provides monitoring of the Pano Zero Client device by introducing Pano Maestro, providing a single pane of glass for monitoring these devices. It integrates with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, vCenter Server or XenDesktop Studio.

Maestro can monitor multiple so called Pano Controller Groups, where each group can contain up to 6 Controllers, Maestro also provides access to the functionality of Controller using a standard SOAP based webservice API. For controlling access to Maestro it is possible to use Active Directory.

Version 5 also introduces a new modular architecture, which is called Pano Controller, a virtual appliance working with the desktop brokers VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop of Pano’s own Virtual Desktop Broker and the hypervisors from VMware, Citrix or Microsoft. Controller connects users, desktop virtual machines and both Pano Zero Clients and the Pano Remote Keys.

Pano Logic claims that Version 5 will reduce bandwith utilization with 30-40% providing better computing experience and 25% better video framerate quality.

Support was also added for VMware vSphere 5 and View 5.

On October 27th the 4.1.2 release of SRM was published.  It’s a fairly small update, but has a few nice bug-fixes included:

• Site Recovery Manager 4.1 Test Failover Fails
• Recovery Fails When NFS Datastores are Mounted on Two Hosts with Different IP Addresses
• Rolling Back the Uninstallation of the SRM Service Fails
• Timeout During Network Customization of SUSE Linux 10 Virtual Machines
• Recovery Plan OS Heartbeat or IP Customization Timeout Settings Greater than 2000 Seconds Wait Forever
• Running the vCenter Site Recovery Manager dns_update script fails with the error “\VMware\VMware was unexpected at this time”
• Creating a Protection Group or Protecting a Virtual Machine Fails with the Error: Operation Not Supported on the Object
• vCenter Server Session Does Not End when the vSphere Client Closes if the Remote Site is Unavailable.
• Unclear Error Message when Installation Fails Because the SRM User Account Does Not Have Administrator Privileges
• SRM Server Fails to Start the SRM Service if a Datastore Name is Invalid
• SRM Stops Responding During Failover when the Storage Array on the Protected Site is Offline
• SRM Uninstaller Does Not Remove Old SRM License Asset Data from the User Interface.
• Customization Specification Does Not Configure the Gateway for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x.

Check out the release notes here:

and download it here:

Microsoft also showed a glimpse of the new features for its upcoming server OS, dubbed Windows Server 8. Windows Server 8 will contain the next version of Hyper-V, version 3.0. and will provide the following new features from a virtualization and VDI point of view:

• Support for up to 160 logical processors on Hyper-V hosts

• Support for up to 2TB RAM
• Support for 32 vCPUs with up to 512 GB RAM per VM
• Support for NUMA in the guest, so that the VM has processor and memory affinity with the host

• Support for multiple concurrent Live Migrations

• Support for Storage Live Migration,without a requirement for a shared storage backend.

• New virtual disk format, called VHDX breaking the 2TB limit for the currently used VHD format, with a maximum of 16 TB. VHDX also provides better performance, support for large block sizes and is more resilient to corruption.

• Introduction of Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX), which enables Hyper-V to offload storage features to the backend storage subsystem, comparable with the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) functionality provided by VMware.
• Virtual Fibre Channel Support, where each VM can have up to 4 virtual Fibre Channel host adapters, and direct access to SAN LUNs using Multi-Path I/O (MPIO)

• VM boot support from fiber channel and iSCSI SANs

• Updated virtual switch, providing multi-tenancy capabilities providing network isolation and network virtualization. Comparable to the VXLAN functionality introduced by VMware/Cisco and others. The virtual switch is also extensible providing capture, filter and forwarding extensions, using an API provided by Microsoft.

• SR-IOW for privileged access to PCI devices
• CPU metering

• Resource pools

• Support for Data de-duplication, providing compression of data stored on a Volume, with no significant performance implications. This also will reduce backup windows dramatically.

• Offloaded Data Transfer, providing direct data transfer between servers.

• Support for NIC Teaming, load balancing and failover in the OS, which until now was only supported by 3rd party vendors like Broadcom and Intel

• Build in support for JBODs, and Thin Provision on JBODs.

• Support for Bitlocker on Clustered disks.

• Cluster Shared Volume 2.0 with support for built-in replication and hardware snapshotting.
• IP address management UI (IPAM)

• Support for SMB storage using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks.

• Hyper-V replica providing asynchronous/consistent replication functionality

• Remote Desktop Session Host now fully supports RemoteFX and is enabled out of the box

• Template feature for Virtual Desktops from a gold master image on disk and instantiated in memory as a single VM. Individual sessions can be customized using roaming profiles, customized desktops and apps and personal storage using system policy.

• Windows Server 8 provides the ability to turn on and off the GUI, basically providing Server Core, with a GUI on demand when needed.

• Active Directory will be virtualization aware, providing snapshot support for VMs running Domain Controllers, and support for DC cloning.

Vmware Workstation 8 Video:

VMware Workstation 8.0 has been released.

You can head right to the download here.  Here’s the what’s new section from the release notesfor all the details:

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support.

• Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards
• Virtual Hardware Improvements
• New User Interface
• What Happened to Teams?
• Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart
• Remote Connections
• Upload to vSphere
• Documentation Changes

Installation Changes and Enhanced Keyboards

The hardware requirements to install this version of Workstation have changed. Workstation now requires a relatively modern 64-bit CPU. See Installation Requirements for details.

The keyboard filter driver is no longer installed by default. When the driver is not installed, the enhanced keyboard functionality is unavailable and you must press Ctrl-Alt-Ins instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del to send a Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke to the guest. To use the enhanced keyboard functionality, you must perform a custom installation and select the component. If you select the component, you must reboot whenever you install or uninstall Workstation.

Virtual Hardware Improvements

This version of Workstation includes many hardware improvements. To try new hardware features, you must upgrade the hardware version of your virtual machine or create a new virtual machine that uses the latest virtual hardware version.

• The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
• Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
• An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
• USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
• Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.
• You can now enable Virtual VT-X/EPT or AMD-V/RVI in the processor settings interface. With this feature, applications running in a guest can take advantage of these virtualization technologies. You can also run 64-bit guest operating systems inside of vSphere running inside Workstation.

New User Interface

The Workstation user interface has been updated to include new menus, toolbars, and an improved preferences screen.

• The favorites sidebar has been replaced with a virtual machine library. Instead of identifying every virtual machine created in Workstation as a favorite, the library is a comprehensive list of all of the virtual machines that Workstation users create, open, or access.
• A new folder summary page helps you to better manage a group of related virtual machines. Live thumbnails make it easy to see what is happening in running virtual machines.
• The full screen toolbar has been updated so that you can do more without having to leave full screen mode. Quick switch mode is no longer needed.

What Happened to Teams?

Although at first it might appear that the teams feature has been removed, you can add team attributes to any virtual machine in this version of Workstation.

• The team structure has been converted to a simple folder of virtual machines.
• A new advanced settings dialog box has been added for network adapters to let you throttle the bandwidth of incoming and outgoing transmissions and simulate packet loss.
• You can perform power operations on several virtual machines at the same time by selecting virtual machines on the folder tab and pressing the power button on the toolbar. If all of the virtual machines in a folder are in the same power state, you can select the folder to perform a power operation on all of the virtual machines in the folder.
• You use a global Workstation preference to configure the delay between powering on virtual machines.
• To implement LAN segments, you can use traditional VMnets or put all of the virtual machines that you want to communicate on the same custom VMnet.

Shared Virtual Machines and AutoStart

You can share virtual machines with remote users in this version of Workstation. A shared virtual machine can be accessed remotely by other instances of Workstation. Workstation moves virtual machines to the shared virtual machines folder, where the VMware Host Agent service manages them. The VMware Host Agent service is used by other VMware products, including VMware Server and vSphere, and provides additional capabilities required by professional users. An extensive permissions interface lets you control the users who can access and use shared virtual machines.

You can use the new AutoStart feature to configure shared virtual machines to start with the host system. You can also configure AutoStart for shared virtual machines on remote hosts running Workstation and ESX 4.x and later.

Remote Connections

In this version of Workstation, you are no longer constrained to working only with virtual machines that your computer has enough power to run. You can use the new Connect to Server feature to connect to remote hosts running Workstation, ESX 4.x and later, and VMware vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote host, all of the virtual machines that you have permission to access are displayed in the virtual machine library.

Upload to ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server

VMware OVF Tool is now integrated with Workstation so that you can upload a virtual machine from Workstation to a remote server running ESX, ESXi, or vCenter Server. After connecting to a remote server, you drag the virtual machine from the local My Computer section of the virtual machine library to the remote server. A wizard walks you through the process.

Documentation Changes

This version of Workstation includes several important documentation changes.

	(NEW) Getting Started with VMware Workstation	Describes how to install and upgrade Workstation, create a typical virtual machine, and perform common virtual machine operations.
	Using VMware Workstation (previously VMware Workstation User’s Guide)	Describes how to create typical, custom, and shared virtual machines, add virtual devices, configure network connections, connect to remote servers and use remote virtual machines, upload virtual machines to remote servers, and perform all virtual machine operations.
	Getting Started with VMware Player (previously VMware Player Getting Started Guide)	Now contains complete information on installing and using Player.
	Online help	Has been redesigned to provide context-sensitive help and information on performing common tasks. For complete information on using Workstation and Player, see the guides.
	(NEW) Installing and Configuring VMware Tools	Contains comprehensive information on installing, upgrading, and configuring VMware Tools.