In this part, I’m going to look at the new Virtual Machine options.
Virtual Machines
On the summay tab, I see two small GUI changes. First is that now the DNS name of a VM is mentioned, second it shows a “Memory Overhead” value. Not sure how this value is determined and what it would tell me :-)On the performance tab, I see the same changes as on the upper levels. Although the set of settings you can define yourself, is a new set. So you can have different sets at different levels. On the other tabs there are no new things to be found, so lets edit the VM settings :-)
Virtual Machine Settings: Hardware tab
First thing to notice is the max ammount of RAM I can give to the VM. We can now go to 64Gb RAM assigned to a single VM… that’s realy nice :-) Doubt if I’ll ever need it. There is also a change in the recommended values. There are now 4 values suggested by VC, see the screenshot below.
On the network properites, I see a new box to change the MAC Address for a VM. You can choose Automatic or Manual and when selecting Manual, you can change the MAC Address. Very nice, no more editting the VMX.
In the virtual disk properties, you can resize your VMDK ! That’s realy nice. You can only increase the size, not shrink it.
Virtual Machine settings: Options tab
On this tab I immediately noticed quite a number of extra options. Lets have a look. On the “VMware Tools” item, I see an extra section “advanced”. Here you can check to “Check and upgrade Tools before each power on” and “Synchronize guest time with host”. Next there is a new section called “Power Management”. Here you define how the VM should respond when the guest OS is placed on standby. You can choose to suspend the VM or Put the OS in standby mode and leave the VM powered On. Plus you can define which nic should listen for Wake On LAN signals.
Advanced section
In the advanced section of the options tab, we see a number of unchanged options. One of them is the general section, which only has a different view under the “Configuration Parameters” button. The CPUID section hasn’t changed.
A new option is the “boot” option. Two settings can be made here, first is the Power-On boot delay. Here you can enter the number of miliseconds the boot is delayed after a VM is powered on or reset. Default value is 0 ms. Next option is “Force BIOS Setup”. This is a nice feature. Ever had to reset a VM multiple times because you were too slow pressing ESC or F12 to get into the BIOS? That’s history now, just enable “The next time the VM boots, force entry into the BIOS setup screen”. Now it will go into the BIOS without keypress :-)
Paravirtualization
YES !!! WOW !!! We can now use the Paravirtualization technique if needed for a VM. Mostly Linux systems with kernel 2.6.21 and up, will be able to benefit from this. As the tab explains:
VMI is a paravirtualization standard supported by some guest operating systems. Guests that recognize VMI will gain significantly improved performance with VMI support. Guest operating systems which do not use VMI will gain no performance benefit from this support.
Fibre Channel NPIV
As the tab says: Virtual Machines running on hosts with Fibre Channel hardware that supports NPIV can be assigned virtual WWNs for advanced features.
Virtualized MMU
For cpu’s that support virtualizing the MMU, you can set if the VM will be using the automatic settings from the ESX host, force the use of this feature or forbid the use of this feature. I’m surprised that this MMU feature can be changed on a VM basis, very nice.
Tip: If you want to learn more about MMU and Paravirtualization, read this pdf:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware_paravirtualization.pdf
SwapFileLocation
The last option is the SwapFileLocation of the VM. Here you have three options:
- default, use the host settings
- always store with the VM
- Store in the host’s swapfile datastore
The first two options are self explaining I think, the third one is a bit strange I think. The explanation in the text is: “If a swapfile datastore is specified for the host, use that datastore. Otherwise store the swapfile with the VM.”. Wouldn’t this be the same as “default”. Because setting a swapfile datastore at host level, will also enable it. If there is no datastore, then the VM can’t store the swapfile in a different location.
Great series of posts! Thanks for the opportunity to read about and see the VI3.5 “experience” a little early.
Now I just need to find out who you coerced into giving you the early releases.
Crossing my fingers that I can grab a production build today.
Unfortunately even with access I don’t have spare hardware to run the dev/beta builds. Never enough hardware.