TheSaffaGeek

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Author Archives: Gregg Robertson


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London VMUG

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend the London VMware User Group (VMUG). I’ve been unable to attend the past few due to work commitments but yesterdays theme of “Your Journey to the Cloud” couldn’t have come at a better time as we’re currently looking at VMware’s vCloud Director product and a number of the sessions and talk were centred around this product.

The day started at 10am due to the number of presentations they were able to get in and the labs that people were able to take. The labs were a first and ran two different paths. The two labs and layout were described on the VMUG page as:

The VMUG are providing VMware vCloud Director Labs for all UG members to get a look and feel for the product.  COLT has very kindly agreed to host the labs on their infrastructure in the Cloud.  COLT are a certified VMware vCloud Datacenter Services Provider and the first in EMEA to provide this service.  The COLT team along with VMware vCloud Architects have provided two types of labs to provide the best experience possible.

Lab A – Consuming Cloud resources from VMware vCloud Director
This lab is tailored to provide a user’s view of consuming compute resource from the cloud.  It provides an insight into the ability provide resources via a self-service portal deploying virtual machines via vApps within private virtual datacenters.

Lab B – Administrating VMware vCloud Director
This lab provides the administrators view of vCloud Director.  The lab contains a virtual center server, vCloud Director server and an ESX host to create compute resources within the cloud.  It provides the ability to define different compute services in the form of vApp’s which can then be published within the vCloud Catalogue.

I personally didn’t attend a lab due to my wanting to get a number of my questions around vCloud Director answered and due to my already having done all the vCloud related labs at VMworld Copenhagen and so having already done large portions of the steps within the labs. I did however hear raving reviews of the labs from fellow attendees and when I arrived there was a line of people waiting to register for the labs which shows the interest in the labs.

The day kicked off with the standard welcome from Alaric Davies and Martyn Storey detailing the layout of the day and announcing the UK National VMUG being planned for Warwick for November 3rd .We then got straight into the first presentation from COLT who were presenting and demoing all about their vCloud environment’s implementation and inner workings. Greg Branch, Director of Architecture for Colt and Dan Senior, Virtualisation Architect for Colt did the presentation and demo’s together and I was really impressed with their offering and how they have used the vCloud technologies and products to be the first in EMEA to be a VMware vCloud Datacenter Services Provider.

Next was Paul Martin (@vzpaul) from Quest Software talking about “Private Cloud – Build for Success by Planning for Failure”. Pauls presentation was all about thinking and planning for things before and during the build out of your Private Cloud. Paul did leave me with a number of thoughts and things I need to research prior to us rolling out our own private cloud and how many differing parts of your environment can impact the running of it. Credit to Paul for not doing a marketing pitch for Quest software but rather giving valid points to look out for.

We then had a very quick refreshment break and then Simon Rahilly of EMC (@NoneOneMany) did his presentation all about the cloud and how the varying technologies from EMC from the storage, to backups to disaster recovery and high availability can help you with your journey to the cloud. I personally enjoyed the presentation and it was nice to hear a bit about the release of EMC’s Project Lightning also.

Lunch was then served at the event which was a very nice change as it meant everyone stayed in the rooms and I got to meet loads of people I follow on twitter and got to talk about all the things we’re currently doing in our VMware environments and gain some very helpful tips and tricks.

We were then given the option of two different tracks, each with different speakers and topics. I personally chose track two as I’ve always enjoyed hearing from Stuart Radnidge ( @vinternals ) and was keen to listen to Massimon Re Ferre’s presentation on the same track also. Stuart’s presentation was all about Rethinking Infrastructure and the experiences he has had with deploying a private cloud within his organisation. For anyone that knows Stuart you knew this was going to be a straight talking honest presentation and he didn’t disappoint as he gain some great pointers on how the business will ask for certain things and will expect things from your cloud implementation even though you “aren’t a web start-up”.

Next was Massimo (@mreferre )  who is a VMware vCloud Architect talking about vCloud and giving an overview of all the products in the “vCloud Family” and how each of them work. His presentation was very helpful to me to better understand vCloud Director and most importantly allowed me to ask all the questions I have been needing to ask about vCloud Director. I’m pleased to say Massimo and Martyn answered all my questions Smile

Last in the track was Richard Zuber from VMware Global Support talking about support issues they have been receiving from customers using vCloud Director and the solutions they used to fix the problems. The presentation was a little dull as hearing about support calls and solutions isn’t the most exciting of things but it did show that making sure your networking is correctly administered and deployed for your vCloud implementation is very important in making sure you don’t experience problems and faults.

We were all then released to go to The Pavilion End pub for vBeers and I got to talk shop with fellow VMware Admins and met Julian Wood (@Julian_wood) of http://www.wooditwork.com fame, David Owen (@vMackem) of http://www.vmackem.co.uk fame, Simon Davies (@EV_Simon) of http://www.everything-virtual.com fame,Luke Munro (@mnrmunro) a fellow Saffa and Ed Grigson (@egrigson) of http://www.vExperienced.co.uk fame to name but a few.

It was an amazing day and I would highly recommend anyone thinking of attending to register for the next one on July  14th. Also a special thanks to Jane Rimmer (@Rimmergram) for her hard work on getting this all done and then not being able to attend due to being ill.

Gregg


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VMworld Sessions Public Voting Now Open

Just a very quick posting to alert anyone that hasn’t noticed that the public voting for VMworld 2011 sessions is now open. Unfortunately I personally couldn’t get a good enough idea down to submit a session myself like I had hoped I would but from the amount of talk of it on twitter already today it looks like loads of the top people in the industry have submitted quite a few and they have all been approved to go through to the public voting phase.

To be able to vote you will need to have a VMworld account, which you should have already since I’m sure you’ll have all been watching all the previous VMworld session videos to hone your skills and knowledge. There are a substantial amount of sessions to select from once you have logged into the session selection page so I would recommend using the search options and selecting the kinds of sessions you would like to see to try save you time

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Good luck to all those who have got their sessions approved and hopefully all the sessions I’ve voted for will get through.

Gregg


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All Things Virtual 22

 

Yet again I’ve been a bit slack on my posting of an All Things Virtual every fortnight (a personal aim I made for myself) due to a few things namely, any blog site/twitter/nonstandard website being blocked due to heightened security at EMC after the RSA break in, my studying and sitting of the EMC Information Storage Management exam and good old work keeping me busy. Also the increase in my studying for the VCAP-DCA has meant a large portion of my spare time has been allocated to it.

A few of the below articles are a few weeks old but are still very applicable and ones I have been reading with interest and are ones I believe fellow virtualisation professionals will find interest and informative, which is the idea of these All Things Virtual postings.

As I mentioned in my reasons for the delay of this All Things Virtual, I set myself the goal of obtaining my EMC Information Storage Associate accreditation by sitting the EMCISM exam. I won’t go into detail about this as I have already done a posting all about the exam and my preparations and study resources here for anyone thinking of attempting the exam themselves. I will say though that it was something different to learn as I’ve never done a storage course or exam before and it did help me solidify a lot of knowledge I have learnt via work experience.

Early last week the applications for vExpert 2011 were opened and unlike years before VMware have now asked that everyone submit their own applications so VMware can get a better idea of your contributions to the community in 2010. I’m not going to go into depth about the process and criteria as I’ve already done a posting all about it, where you should apply and nominate someone for the award here. Good luck if you are applying.

As I’ve posted a number of times on this blog I try to attend and participate in the London VMware User Group’s whenever they are happening. I haven’t been able to attend the last few due to work commitments unfortunately but the next London VMUG has been announced and so far it looks like I’ll be able to attend. This VMUG is a bit different from the rest as it is aimed at “Your Journey to the Cloud” with live labs and differing tracks for you to do during the day. Chris Dearden of JFVI fame was the first person I noticed to have blogged about it so if you’re interested in attending or learning more then have a read of his London VMUG–May 12th 2011 “Your Journey to the Cloud” blog posting and hopefully I’ll see you there.

As mentioned in my previous All Things Virtual Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks fame and Frank Denneman have released an HA DRS book. For those of us who are a bit geeky and would rather have a kindle version of it, the Kindle version has now been released and is available for download. Frank has detailed the release of the kindle version on his blog posting here

One of the latest announcements from VMware is the release of VMware Cloud Foundry. I was fortunate enough to attend a fair portion of the VMware Communities Roundtable call where it was announced and detailed but seeing as I have yet to play with it and that talkshoe kept crashing me out of the call, I would recommend watching Eric Sloof’s video on Getting Started with VMware Cloud Foundry just like I will be when I have an opportunity and listen to last weeks VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast.

Another of the fairly recent announcements was the release of VMware vCentre Operations, a tool you can deploy into your VMware environment via a vApp downloadable from the VMware site which is supposedly going to be “Your Future Performance Dashboard” I am yet to have a chance to play with the product but Eric Sloof has yet again done a great posting on the product in his posting vCenter Operations – Your Future Performance Dashboard and Christian Mohn of vNinja.net and most recently vNinja.com fame has done a brilliant posting all about Installing and configuring VMware vCenter Operations

Next is the leak of a number of the VMware vSphere 5 future technologies and features. I saw loads of the tweets about this as it was announced that someone had posted these but due to the location of them, I decided against trying to access the link. Beth Pariseau from SearchServerVirtualization.com was happy enough to access the site and has listed all the features mentioned by the leak and given a description of them on her blog posting here. There are some very exciting features mentioned and I hope a number of them are true as they could really help make my daily job a lot easier and the running of my virtual environments a lot smoother. vSphere 5 is as you should know by now only going to have ESXi as vSphere 4.1 was/is the last release containing ESX. To help with this transition and the learning of all the features of ESXi, VMware have released a free VMware eLearning course and ebook offer. The course is an online one which people can obviously attend in their own time and once you have completed the course and done the quick survey you can obtain the free ebook all about ESXi. I’m planning to try doing the course in the coming weeks and getting myself the free ebook clip_image001

Vladan Seget has posted all about the release of the next version of the vSphere4.1 Hardening guide. As I mentioned in my VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security Course Experience posting, a large portion of the course is based around this Security Hardening guide and so this new version with feedback from the community is a must read for anyone looking to do the VCAP exams. I’ve already downloaded my copy. Talking of security Eric Siebert has written a great article on five ways to maximize VMware hypervisor security . A number of them should be obvious to people but as Eric mentions I’m sure a large amount of people have made their environments less secure by making changes to allow them to access their servers more easily and then have forgotten to re-enable those security features. The article is a must read for anyone looking after a VMware environment.

Lastly are two postings asking for the participation of the VMware community. One is from Duncan Epping asking people to fill out a survey all about virtual machine storage and snapshots and the other is a posting by Scott Lowe asking for the communities input in answering a reader’s design question. The survey is really quick and will help VMware better understand people’s needs and the design question should hopefully give those of us with less experience in the designing of VMware environments a better understanding of the things to know and think about in our designs

Gregg


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vExpert 2011 applications now open

 

A very quick posting to alert people who may not have seen it announced on twitter by John Troyer that the 2011 vExpert nominations and applications are now open. The vExpert 2011 is based on the amount you gave back to the VMware community in 2010. So if you have done really well this year but didn’t do much last year then you will only be able to add that to next year’s application obviously.

The vExpert, for anyone that doesn’t know it is “a way for VMware to acknowledge and help those who ‘go the extra mile’ and give back to the VMware user community by sharing their expertise and time. vExperts are bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, event organizers, speakers, tool builders, forum leaders, and others who share their virtualization expertise.”  Unlike last year VMware now want everyone to put in an application for themselves so that VMware can get a good idea of your participation in the community and the things you have contributed to it in 2010. There is also the nomination forms like normal where you nominate people who you feel deserve to be a vExpert.

So go apply if you feel you deserve to be in contention to be a vExpert and good luck to everyone applying.

Gregg


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Avamar Windows VMware Image backup fails with Generic 10013 error in Avamar administrator and "Unable to access file[Datastore location]" in vCentre

 

For the past day and a half I’ve been receiving the above error in my Avamar v5.0.3.29 server and in VMware vCentre every time I tried to backup certain virtual machines via the Windows VMware Image plugin. I searched all over the web and couldn’t find anything related to the problems I was experiencing and tried loads of different ideas and looked for similarities between the virtual machines that were failing but found nothing.

As is the case sometimes, once you ask for help you stumble across the solution on your own. As soon as I posted a discussion on the EMC Community Network about my problem and asked for some help/guidance on the problem and then found a posting on the ECN about a problem with the error code I was getting in Avamar Administrator (id 10013). The environment I’m running the backups in hasn’t been upgraded to version 4.1 yet so it did fit the criteria’s for the problem and fourth possible root cause and solution in the list was spot on and fixed the problem for me.

I was planning to write the exact steps I followed but while searching the internet I noticed one of the Varrow bloggers Hugh Griffin had beaten me to it and posted about the error and the same steps I followed(the second workaround).So due to my hating people who repeat my solutions to problems on their blogs with minimal credit I felt it was only fair to give him the credit so here is his blog posting of the solution “Avamar 5.0 VMware Image Backup Error” (Personally I have to put two dashes instead of one like Hugh did for it to work so it only works for me if i do –x22=8192)

Now for the upgrades to vCentre to make sure I don’t need to run the workaround  for much longer clip_image001

Gregg


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VMware vSphere client for iPad app released

The VMware vSphere client for iPad app has now been released. The first person I noticed to mention it on twitter and with an extremely in-depth blog posting covering it all was Jason Boche  (@jasonboche) in his Free VMware vSphere Client for iPad Available, even beating Scott Herrod VMware’s CTO to the punch(on the twitter announcement at least).

Jason has done such a great job covering it as has Eric Sloof in his VMware vSphere Client for iPad – Control your datacenter from the couch posting that I won’t even bother trying to cover all the features and rather just tell you to read through their blog posting like I have and will repeatedly today Smile

The app can be downloaded from the Apple App store although a number of people are stating it doesn’t show up but John Troyer (@jtroyer) has alerted people to the fact that the “ vSphere Client for iPad can take a few hours to show up in search, but here’s the direct link: http://bit.ly/igaqQP “. I’ve already downloaded mine and hope to be doing all my vCentre work via it today so I can used to how it all works.

Have fun playing

Gregg

*Update* You will need to download the vCMA to be able to use the iPad app to access your vCentre. It can be downloaded from here http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma and the guys from VMGuru.nl have done a great posting on how to set it all up here


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EMC Information Storage and Management(ISM) exam experience

 

Associate

For the past few weeks I have been learning and studying for the EMC Information Storage and Management(ISM) exam. I decided to set this goal for myself a few months back, as I felt that storage knowledge was lacking from my repertoire and due to it being a prerequisite for the EMC Cloud Architect certification I thought I should try obtaining it.

This morning I sat the exam and I’m very pleased to say I passed it clip_image001. The exam certainly tested me on some questions whereas on others it was quite simple and straight forward. The questions covered all the modules and technologies covered in the course/book fairly equally although there were a few things not covered in the book or course that I remember that was asked.

The resources I used for the exam were four things:

  1. The training course. Due to my working for EMC this allowed me to do the online training for the exam rather than attending the course. The online courses (I say courses as mine were split into four different modules whereas the training classes cover all four in the one course) were really good and allowed me to do it as and when I could, which is partly why it has taken me so much time to finally sit the exam after doing the online course. The course is really good and even though it does give you examples of EMC technologies/services which provide these capabilities (which some people may not like) it does give you a really good base knowledge if you’re a storage noob like me and the EMC examples are a small section of it all.
  2. The ISM Book. This in my opinion was the best resource for the exam as I read it cover to cover and used it extensively for writing notes and looking up different things. The course wasn’t enough for me personally and I’m pretty certain if I just did the online course I would have failed it. This may be due to my doing the online course rather than attending the instructor led one but I still think the book is a must read. Simon Long has done a quick write up on the book on his site if you want to know more about it and has attached a video review done by EMC vSpecialist Bas Raayman at EMC World 2009 on the book too clip_image001[1].
  3. The online practice exam. This helped me greatly with peace of mind in knowing I was prepared for the exam and was really helpful in showing me parts I needed to re-read and study more. You can take the exam as often as you like and if you get the questions wrong it will tell you where to look to learn more about the subject you got wrong.
  4. Research. Yes ok maybe a bit of a soft point but searching the internet and learning/researching more about different things I was unsure about really helped me understand some things much better (converting CHS to LBA) and helped me have more confidence in my answers in the exam. There were also a few people’s blog postings about their experiences of the exam and what they used to study that helped me greatly. The two main ones were
    1. Gina Minks’ blog posting on the exam was a really great resource and pointed me to the Proven Professional community where a large portion of the questions I had, had already been asked and answered.
    2. EMC vSpecialist Nick Weaver’s blog posting on his passing the exam was also helpful in my making sure there weren’t additional resources I needed to use before the exam.

For anyone looking to sit the exam, good luck it’s a good and fair exam. Next for me is my VCAP-DCA which unlike the gentleman writing the VCAP-DCA exam at the same testing centre as me, will require me to study more than a weekends worth of playing in my lab (he was a VMware instructor though)

Gregg


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VCAP-DCA & DCD Resources Page Updated

Just a very quick posting to alert people that I have now updated my VCAP-DCA and DCD resources page. The page is a list of resources that I have been constantly updating as I  have come across new resources and I have made my way through the  required amount of studying to be prepared (which is still on-going).So either click the “VCAP-DCA & DCD” link at the top of the page or click here if you can’t be bothered going to the top of the page and if you know of any other great resources please do comment so that I can add them and it can benefit the whole community.

Also a reminder that Kendrick Coleman is doing a VCAP-DCA Live Lab on Cody Bunch’s Brownbag tonight so go to his site and register as it’s sure to be a brilliant one

Gregg


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VMware View 4 Client for iPad finally released

Just a very quick posting seeing as other bloggers have done such good jobs of covering it I would be rehashing what they have already done.

That’s right, for all of us who watched with awe and wonder at the VMware View for iPad Demo’s at the two VMworld conferences then sat six months later wondering where it was, it has finally been released. Eric “the Scoop” Sloof was the first person I noticed to have blogged about it and as per usual has done such a great job covering it I would recommend reading his posting VMware View Client For iPad – The Best Of Both Worlds as he has covered it all with having already had a chance to use it unlike me and has posted some great videos showing loads of the features and capabilities.

You can download the VMware View 4 client for iPad now via the Apple app store here or obviously via your iPad’s App store.  There is also a document already uploaded by Tedd Fox from VMware on how to use the VMware View for iPad app

Edwin Friesen has done a great write up on the client also and have given some great tips on how to use the client here

Hopefully I’ll have some time to have a play around with it myself and will post my opinions in my next All Things Virtual.

Gregg


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All Things Virtual 21

 

I have been slacking on my All Things Virtual postings for the past few months due partly to me just being a bit lazy if I’m honest and due to my focusing a lot of my spare time after work on my EMC and VMware studies(blogs forthcoming). Due to the rate of new blogs coming out and things changing so fast, a large portion of the blogs I had on my list of things to read and thereby be in line to be included in this posting have now become obsolete/old news so my list was culled and is now a current as is possible.

First thing is a little bit of a plug of my VCAP-DCA & DCD resources page and a big thanks to a few people who have helped it gain so much traffic/views. The page has been receiving an overwhelming amount of views(at least in my eyes) and this is mainly down to many of the top people in the virtualisation industry very kindly pointing to it in their blog postings about the exams. So a big thank you to

Speaking of the VCAP exams and preparations for it, I was fortunate enough to attend the  VMware vSphere: Manage for Performance Course and wrote up my experiences of the course for anyone thinking of attending the course. One of the topics of conversation was how the impact of virus scans in your virtual environment can impact the performance of your environment drastically especially if all your virus scans kick off at the same time. Richard Garsthagen has posted a brilliant little blog posting this week all about Security designed for virtualization and how Trend Micro’s new product DeepSecurity 7.5 is using the newly available EPSEC API to save you having these performance hits and has added the performance benchmarks to prove. it

Next is the announcement of the soon to be released and much anticipated PowerCLIBook by industry experts Luc Dekens,Alan Renouf,Arnim van Lieshout, Glenn Sizemore and Jonathan Medd. For anyone remotely using PowerCLI they will know these guys are some of the best if not the best in the industry when it comes to PowerCLI and so this book is being tipped as the perfect book to use to teach yourself everything you need to know about using PowerCLI in the VCAP-DCA exam and to obviously help you build up your knowledge before the release of vSphere 5(or whatever it may be named). I’ve already pre-ordered my copy and will be using this book cover to cover before my VCAP-DCA exam and to teach myself PowerCLI.

Eric Horschman has done a brilliant posting on the VMware Blog pages all about Hypervisor Memory Management Done Right which is  brilliantly written and a perfect reference article for memory management and how it all works and what the kinds of impacts mismanagement can cause in your virtual environment. I’m still slowly reading through it myself and trying to apply some of the best practices into my own environments.This posting is a MUST read for anyone looking after a VMware environment or looking to build one.

The VMworld Europe dates and venue have now been announced and you can sign up to be notified when registrations open for it and the US event. I was very fortunate to attend last year and hopefully I’ll be approved to attend again. My aim this year (a rod for my own back comes to mind at this point) is to try have a session approved for VMworld Europe this year and to present it at VMworld Europe. I’ve decided to do this as I feel it’s a good thing to aim for seeing as the people I look up to in the industry and who I would like to be one day are obviously people who are doing these kinds of sessions and it will hopefully push me to try be a better presenter and hopefully advance my knowledge and skills. Now to just think of something to do for my session…

As I said at the start of this posting I’m busy doing some EMC studies and to not get into specifics seeing as I’m a bit superstitious and I’d like to save it for my planned blog posting one of the reasons for doing it is to hopefully prepare myself for the recently released EMC Cloud Architect certification. Chuck Hollis from EMC posted this past week an update for the certification detailing that the courses are now in full production and has linked to a few testimonials of people who have already attended some of the courses. The courses look really good and even if you feel cloud is just a buzz word at the moment I’d still encourage you to have a look at the certifications and Chucks blog postings about them before writing them off.

Scott Drummonds posted a twitter message this week asking for help finding whitepapers on the subject of VMware environments networking best practices. True to form the community responded and Scott has blogged about all the resources he was pointed to. It’s a great resource for all the VMware networking “best practices” and will prove to be a time saver for anyone needing to source this information for VMware builds. I’ve added it to my “VMware Design Best Practices” bookmarks already.

Last but not least is a blog posting by the infamous Duncan Epping of Yellow-Bricks.com fame all about managing the availability of your environment through vCentre alarms. I blogged a while back all about a document created by Horst Mundt a Technical Account Manager at VMware Germany on the VIOPS.VMware.com site detailing all the alarms and what they do in vCentre 4 and vCentre 4.1. Both are a definite must read especially if you aren’t currently using custom alarms in your environment. My favourite one at the moment is an alarm to alert you when snapshots get over a certain size which has saved me loads of headaches. There’s a great VMware KB article all about how to set this alarm up and even includes a very helpful video if you’ve never done custom alarms before. 

Well that’s my list of things that have interested me in the last week, for those people writing the VCAP exams soon good luck

 

Gregg