Many a nerd has thrown punches over the question of whether containers (e.g. Docker, LXC, etc.) are actually virtual machines. The conventional wisdom is that although containers are similar to virtual machines, they’re fundamentally different. I beg to differ. Are containers virtual machines or not? There’s a common …

I think it’s time to stop using the term “network function virtualization”. Why? Because it doesn’t exist, at least not in the way the term suggests. The term is a category error, and when people try to make sense of the term, confusion and frustration ensue. Think of it like this: what’s the difference between a …

If you have a home lab and don’t need vCenter, thee ESXi Embedded Host Client gives you web-based access to hidden features of your standalone ESXi host… without having to spin up a real vCenter server. As most everyone knows, the old VMware vSphere C# client has been on its way out for years. One of the things keeping …

If you are running XenServer 5.6 FP1 or later, there is a little trick you can use to improve network throughput on the host. By default, XenServer uses the netback process to process network traffic, and each host is limited to four instances of netback, with one instance running on each of dom0’s vCPUs. When a VM …

Citrix Provisioning Services is very nice, but it does come with a slightly annoying quirk: All of your provisioned XenApp servers end up with the same STA ID! This will cause all sorts of problems for Citrix Access Gateway, Citrix Receiver, and anything else that may depend on having unique STA IDs. The good news is …