TheSaffaGeek

My ramblings about all things technical

Tag Archives: Virtualisation


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All Things Virtual 25

 

After a much needed two week holiday I’ve come back to an overwhelming amount of news from the virtualisation arena and in particular the announcement of VMware vSphere 5. Having been on the beta for vSphere 5 and vCloud 1.5 I had a feeling the announcement was due to happen while I was away but due to only having got onto the vSphere 5 beta late and only having played with it indirectly via the vCloud 1.5 beta I felt it was better to let some of the more informed bloggers out there do a better job than I could.

  • First on my list is one that even after over two weeks of letting it set in I’m still excited about like a child on Christmas day. On the 1st if this month the VMware vExpert recipient emails went out and I was selected as one. I did a blog posting all about my honour at being selected here if you’re interested and as mentioned on that posting if you want to see all the other recipients and their blogs so as to follow them (which i would HIGHLY recommend as they are pretty much the best ones) and their twitter handles to also follow them then Arnim van Lieshout’s vExpert page is where you can find all these. If plans go ahead I’m hoping I’ll have a very exciting new feature to mention very soon off of this so keep your eyes out for it as it’s something I truly believe in and is something close to my heart.
  • Next is the release of vSphere 5. As you can imagine there is a STAGGERING amount of information about it and I was planning on doing a list of all the best resources but as is the case someone has beaten me to it and seeing as it’s the list I’m currently using to get myself up to speed on it all it only makes sense to link to it. So if you’re like me and are currently trying to catch up on it all then Eric Siebert’s vSphere 5 Links is the best place to go.
  • One of the parts off of this release is also the release of the VCP5 exam and I notice a fair amount of the vExpert’s have either already started sitting the Beat exam or are due to sit it very soon. Obviously I’m not going to mention anything about the exam but if your like me and now have loads of question about what this means for people who have their VCP4 and what the upgrade paths are and if you’re even more like me and are due to write your VCAP-DCA very soon and are now wondering if it is worth your while doing it still or if you should wait then these links will answer all your question like they have for me
    • Fist is all about the upgrading of your VCP4 to VCP5 by Scott Vessey (@vmtraining) . Thankfully VMware are following the same policy as they for the VCP3 to VCP4 path and allowing people with the previous VCP accreditation to write the test without having to attend any compulsory training until February 29th 2012
    • Next also from Scott is the upgrading of your VCAP4 to VCP5 and VCAP5-DCA. Personally this is most likely the path I’m going to follow seeing as I hope to have my VCAP4 and seeing as it will allow me to get the VCP5 at the same time as my VCAP5-DCA makes the most sense for me.
    • Then the big question “Is it worth doing vSphere 4 certifications?” . Scott gives some great things to think about and it does come down to the answer of “it depends” as obviously people are at different points of their knowledge and studies.
  • Kendrick Coleman has done a great posting all about how to set up your SQL server DB for use with vCloud Director 1.5 now that support for SQL DB instances is available. Having had to fiddle with this myself during the beta to get my test environment working I can assure you his steps are really helpful in making sure you do it correctly in the first place as i had to rebuild me whole one due to a simple mistake with the DB and making sure you select the right collation is REALLY important.
  • Next is a competition run by Greg W Stuart for the chance to win a Free Conference Pass to VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, Air Fare and 5 Nights Hotel Accommodation. Greg won his way to VMworld last year via Jason Boche’s contest and from this he’s embraced blogging and the community so much he was awarded by becoming a VMware vExpert for 2011. So get your comment submitted as it finished THIS SUNDAY JULY 24th and good luck.
  • I did say I wouldn’t mention vSphere 5 again but seeing as it’s such great resources I have to point out the vSphere 5.0 Storage Features series of blog postings and due them being updated on the coming weeks and months it is something to keep an eye on. The first five have already been posted and are brilliant for getting yourself up to speed on the new features (of which there is a substantial amount)
  • Next is a friendly reminder for those of us going to VMworld to register for the sessions you want to attend as unlike in previous years VMware are enforcing session registration and if you don’t register and the session is full then you wont get in. Simon Gallagher has blogged all about this here.
  • Last but certainly not least is the announcement that The Brownbags WebEx’s made popular by Cody Bunch are coming to Europe and are being hosted by the illustrious Tom Howarth. So get yourself registered  http://tinyurl.com/62qmotk

Well that’s my summary. .Good luck catching up with all the vSphere 5 features and news and good luck to those writing the VCP5 beta and those of you writing your VCAP exams. Remember I’ve done a VCAP-DCA and DCD resources page if you’re interested in the resources I’m using for my studies.If you would like to follow me on twitter my handle is @greggrobertson5

Gregg


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vExpert 2011. Stunned…

Early this morning I received the mail that I have been selected as a VMware vExpert for 2011 Open-mouthed smile.

I have to be honest I really wasn’t sure if I would make it or not as the amount of top people who contribute to the VMware community as a whole is insane to say the least. But I’m overwhelmingly honoured that I’ve been selected and cannot wait to be a part of such an awesome group of my peers. For those of you who don’t know what the vExpert award is, here is the definition from the vExpert site:

The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book authors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts have gone above and beyond their day jobs to share their technical expertise and communicate the value of VMware and virtualization to their colleagues and community.

A massive thanks to the people that recommended me and to John Troyer and his team/panel for selecting me Open-mouthed smile. Also a massive congratulations to all the other people selected especially all the ones from the London VMUG. Also you can see the list of the other vExpert awardees on Arnim van Lieshout’s vExpert page

Gregg


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All Things Virtual 24

 

Just a very quick All Things Virtual as I haven’t been able to read as many blogs as I had wanted due to work commitments and the studying for my VCAP-DCA taking up a large portion of my time.

 

First is the delay to the vExpert results. The results were said to be released on the 6th of May yet were delayed by two weeks and then last week the guys from the vSoup podcasts spoke to John Troyer at the Boston Gestalt IT Tech Field Day and he explained that due to a number of the VMware employees who were selected to give their opinions on the candidates still not having replied it has been delayed for another two weeks (John said two weeks last week Friday but I have a feeling it will need another week above that). It is a shame this has been delayed so much and is a let down for the people who give so much of their spare time to the VMware community, for VMware to then take an extra month and a half to give the results of the vExpert nominations. John did however promise they would be out before VMworld Smile

Talking of VMworld the Session catalogues for VMworld US and VMworld Europe have been posted. There’s a number of very exciting sessions happening and it’s great to personally see so many people I know form the London VMUG and via twitter whose sessions have made it after the public voting. If you’ve never heard of VMworld or have never been before I blogged about each of the days happenings when i went to my first one last year if you’re interested in getting any idea of what an average day at the conference is like All Things VMworld Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3.

The next London VMware User Group has been announced for the 14th of July. Unfortunately I will be away on holiday over this time but as I’ve stated many times in a number of blog postings on this blog the VMUG’s are an awesome day out and the amount you learn from the sessions and from fellow attendees is well worth your time. I was able to attend the last one on the 12th of May and wrote up a blog posting about the day if you want to get an idea of what happens during the day. If you are likely to be around the London area on the 14th of July I would highly recommend registering on the VMUG site and attending.

I’ve been trying to fill my slightly ADHD mind with all things VMware in preparation for my sitting of the VCAP-DCA exam and as mentioned in my VCAP-DCA and DCD Resources Page I’m a massive admirer of David Davis’s Trainsignal videos as they allow me to spend as long or short on each topic as I want and allow me to watch them via my iPad or laptop whenever i have a chance. David has recently released his VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring Training. I’ve only briskly looked at the video’s in the set as I’m trying to complete his VMware vSphere Troubleshooting Training set of videos first before starting the new ones but the videos look as amazing as ever and as sad as it is I’m actually excited to watch them. If you haven’t used David’s videos before I would HIGHLY recommend them especially if you are looking to do your VCP4 or your VCAP-DCA

Gregg


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VCAP-DCA&DCD Resources Page Updated

 

Just a quick posting to alert people that I have just updated my VCAP-DCA & DCD Study Resources page with new resources and great tips.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 now in full swing).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.

Gregg


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vBeers.Org website launched

 

As I’ve mentioned many times on this blog the Virtualisation fraternity have a monthly meet up on the first Thursday of every month and after a VMUG to have a vBeers meet up. Simon Long and Simon Seagrave have now created a vBeers.org website dedicated to this event and to allow fellow virtualisation geeks to meet up and talk to people who won’t fall asleep once you start talking about vCloud’s and your migrations from ESX to ESXi to name just two Smile They have also created a twitter account @vBeers_org that people can follow so that they can stay up to date with announcements posted on the website. If all goes to plan I’ll be attending the next London vBeers due to happen this Thursday

If you’ve never heard of vBeers before here is the “official” definition of vBeers:

http://www.vbeers.org/about/

Hope to meet loads of you there and spread the word and lets get as many people there on Thursday as possible

 

Gregg Robertson


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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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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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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