Recently VMware warned about multiple security holes discovered in versions 4.0 and 4.1 of its ESX enterprise-level computer virtualization product.

Apparently the Service Console in ESX 4.1 on unpatched systems can be exploited by a local user in a guest virtual machine to gain escalated privileges, or by a malicious remote user to cause a denial-of-service condition or compromise a victim’s system. In its advisory, VMware notes that some of these holes, found in previous versions of the libxml2 XML C parser and toolkit used by the ESX Console Operating System (COS), have been closed by updating libxml2 to a newer release.

Versions 4.0 and 4.1 of ESX are affected; vCenter, ESXi and ESX 3.5 as well as hosted products such as VMware Workstation, Player, ACE and Fusion are not vulnerable. Patches are available for ESX 4.1 that correct these problems here: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2013057

Further information about the vulnerabilities can be found in the company’s security advisory here: http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2012-0008.html

Once again I find myself re-posting another of Eric Sloof’s great video posts. This one is a biggie too so make sure you have a good portion of your lunch break for it!

VMware recommends that the number of vCloud Director cell instances = n + 1, where n is the number of vCenter Server instances providing compute resources for cloud consumption. Based on the Service Definition, two vCloud Director cell instances should be sufficient and allow for upgradability (upgrading one vCloud Director cell, then the other) and high availability.

It is important for vCloud Director to be able to spread and run services in case of hardware failures and load balance them on available cells as best as it can. This article describes how the Kemp Loadmaster is able to balance client connections to the vCloud Director portal and ensures a highly available multi cell deployment by monitoring services an response times.

Today, Iain Mulholland, Director of the VMware Security Response Center, posted a VMware Security Note on one of the VMware corporate community blogs that announced a single file from its ESX hypervisor source code was leaked and posted online. And he alluded to the fact that even more proprietary files may be posted in the future. Mulholland wrote:

Yesterday, April 23, 2012, our security team became aware of the public posting of a single file from the VMware ESX source code and the possibility that more files may be posted in the future. The posted code and associated commentary dates to the 2003 to 2004 timeframe.

The fact that the source code may have been publicly shared does not necessarily mean that there is any increased risk to VMware customers. VMware proactively shares its source code and interfaces with other industry participants to enable the broad virtualization ecosystem today. We take customer security seriously and have engaged internal and external resources, including our VMware Security Response Center, to thoroughly investigate. We will continue to provide updates to the VMware community if and when additional information is available at http://blogs.vmware.com/security/

The potential risk of the leaked source code file really depends on what piece of the code was compromised. Is it part of the old Console? Or is it part of the VMM? VMware’s source code is proprietary and closed, but the virtualization giant does share it with a few select companies outside of their walls. VMware has a co-development program called the Community Source Program which provides access to source code for ESX to enable qualified partners to develop new features and/or advanced virtualization technology that can be integrated with VMware Infrastructure. For the most part, I believe the program was created to help support hardware vendors so that they could create drivers and such, as an example.

In 2008, VMware introduced a more slimmed down version of ESX, called ESXi. It was a more secure platform, having removed things such as the old console, and it’s smaller size allowed it to be distributed and embedded into server motherboards.

VMware is looking for the breach. Now we wait until we learn more about what exactly was leaked and if anything else is leaked in the coming days, weeks or months.

Eric Sloof ’s blog is one of the sites I always hit each day as he produces a wide range of informative and instructioal videos that can help improve an IT professional’s knowledge.

This one is part of his vCloud Director series.

The cloud consumer resources are dedicated vCenter clusters that host cloud workloads. These resources are carved up by vCloud Director in the form of one or more provider virtual datacenters, which is a vCenter cluster, and one or more attached datastores. Networking for the resource group will encompass vSphere networks visible to the hosts in that cluster. Provider virtual datacenters are further carved up into organization virtual datacenters, which are backed by vCenter resource pools. If you disable Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) on vCenter Clusters level you will lose all resource pools and you’re not able to deploy or power on vApps anymore.  This video will show you such a situation, don’t try this at home.

VMware has produced a new online publication with the purpose of raising the awareness among its customer and prospects about the new R&D areas where the company from Palo Alto is investing.

This first publishing covers distributed resource management, user experience monitoring and a couple of other topics:

1. Introduction
2. VisorFS – A Special-purpose File System for Efficient Handling of System Images
3. A Software-based Approach to Testing VMware® vSphere® VMkernel Public APIs
4. Providing Efficient and Seamless Desktop Services in Ubiquitous Computing Environments
5. Comprehensive User Experience Monitoring
6. StatsFeeder: An Extensible Statistics Collection Framework for Virtualized Environments
7. VMware Distributed Resource Management: Design, Implementation, and Lessons Learned
8. Identity, Access Control, and VMware Horizon
9. VMworld 2011 Hands-On Labs: Implementation and Workflow

VMware will try to publish this journal on a regular basis in the future.

Source: http://labs.vmware.com/publications/vmware-technical-journal

Another great video from virtual-video-master Eric Sloof! This one goes over the new release of VMware View Client for iPad which is the first iPad client with support for the PCoIP display protocol for tight integration with VMware View and increased flexibility for the end-user.

The View Client for iPad also allows end-users to simply and securely connect to their View-Based Windows desktop from an iPad with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network (LAN) or across a Wide Area Network (WAN).

Check out Eric’s take on it!

IgniteVM is used by database administrators to ensure service and availability of database instances running in VMware virtual machines. It shows the DBA what the database response time delays are, and what the contributing causes are at the instance, virtual machine, and physical layers.IgniteVM is a 24/7 monitoring tool, based on industry best practice Performance Intelligence and Wait-Time analysis methods. IgniteVM supports Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 LUW and Sybase databases across all operating systems, running in VMware vCenter Server or stand-alone ESX/ESXi host environments.

Wait-Time Analysis and Virtualization Visibility
Wait-time analysis is an approach to application and database performance improvement that allows users to see where users are waiting the most. Traditionally, database performance is measured in the number of events and hit ratios. While somewhat meaningful and easy to capture, these statistics do not reflect a relevant view of the end-user experience nor do they reveal with any precision where the problem originated.IgniteVM gives DBAs visibility to see virtual server operation correlated with database instance wait-time analysis data. Assessing database performance without visibility leaves database administrators (DBAs) guessing about the root cause, hampering their ability to take action to address their most important user-oriented problems.

This week Antone Heyward has reviewed PHD Virtual Backup for VMware on his website “The HyperAdvisor“.

Along with the review he posted up this video which takes you through the backup and restore process!

The new VMware vCloud Client for iPad app. allow users to view and inspect their VMs, provision environments, and perform basic workload operations from the convenience of the versatile Apple iPad.
Existing vCloud users can quickly install the client from the Apple App Store and immediately access their vCloud environments.

PHD Virtual Technologies have just released PHD Virtual Backup and Replication version 5.4 which includes some exciting new features and improvements that make data protection for virtual IT environments faster, easier and more extensible than ever before.  Version 5.4 delivers a robust application programming interface (API) that makes it easy to integrate backup, recovery and replication into your Enterprise, Public Cloud or Private Cloud infrastructure.

What’s New in Version 5.4:

Extensible API Integration – The new PHD Virtual API and SDK makes it easy to integrate backup, recovery and replication with your existing infrastructure, tools and applications.  It also provides additional flexibility to extend and customize data protection for your virtualized applications.

• Public Cloud, Private Cloud – Integrate data protection with backend systems, management infrastructures and self-service portals.
• Enterprise – Integrate data protection with existing systems, tools, processes and application infrastructures.

License Manager – A new license management interface makes it easy to centrally administer and manage your PHD Virtual Licenses across your entire deployment.

Management Console Performance Improvements – New optimizations improve the interaction and responsiveness of the management console for larger deployments.

Get more information about the new PHD Virtual Backup version 5.4 here: http://www.phdvirtual.com/phd-backup-replication