My initial feeling is that it’s great if you only have one server, but if you have multiple servers like I do, you’re really going to need VirtualCenter to manage your hosts.

Moving VM’s from ESXi to ESXi servers is a huge pain. You can enable the busybox tech support shell, but it’s really limited. I haven’t seen how to import a moved VM into the inventory of a new server. The only way I’ve been able to move VM’s from ESXi to ESXi is to use VMWare Converter. It takes about 20 minutes per VM to move, and in the case of some of my Linux VM’s the MAC addresses changed, which is a pain to deal with.

My name is Dennis and I work with Dell’s Online Community Outreach program in our corporate headquarters here in Round Rock, Texas. My job is to work as a Liaison between Dell and internet communities in issues dealing with Enterprise Solutions.

I came across your blog and read through your concerns. I have reached out to Chris and Kyle. I received a response that you were able to speak to Scott Owen and have him address your concerns; also, you should have received another call from Scott to further discuss this matter. While transitioning account reps may happen regularly I agree that it would go a little smoother with better communication between you, your old rep, and the new rep. If you have any questions feel free to email me at Dennis_S@dell.com

I’m not really sure it’s so much “video streaming” as the player just opening a file and trying to shove as much as it can in it’s buffer while it starts playing. If you open a video in Quicktime and then open the inspector you can see it trying to fill it’s buffer. In my case it seems to load the first 5MB, then 50MB, and then from there on in seems to load it much faster.

The video starts to stutter and drops frames when the player reaches the end of the buffer.

I also think the H.264 decoder in Perian is not that great. I’m getting better results with xvid encoded videos.

Would have been interesting to see though if the stock firmware behaved just as poorly. It’s possible that the vendor would have better optimized for the hardware then the more generic DD-WRT platform (which is targeted to run on as many devices as possible).

Also bear in mind that streaming video is not the same as downloading files in terms of latency requirements. You might have high bandwidth but high latency, which you wouldn’t notice in file downloads but would be highly visible with real-time applications such as voice or streaming video.