Since my last All Things Virtual there has been a massive amount of news coming out of the virtualisation arena. One of the main sources of these were due to VMworld Europe happening from the 11th to the 14th of October. I was fortunate enough to attend and I was very pleased with the amount of views my All Things VMworld Europe Day1, Day 2 and Day 3 blog postings received.
The week prior to me attending VMworld I was able to attend a day arranged by VMware and Alan Renouf where some of the top VMware GURUs came to London and gave some exclusive presentations on VMware API’s, performance, PowerCLI and Onyx. The day was seriously in depth and really opened my eyes to the amount of data and things you can get and do with the VMware API’s and ESXTOP. Alan has posted the slide decks from each session ran on the day on his blog.The sessions are listed below with their links, these are something I am planning to get through in my preparations for the VCAP exams
-
VMware Session 1: Exploring VMware APIs
-
VMware Session 2: vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring
-
VMware Session 3: PowerCLI & Onyx
-
VMware Session 4: Advanced performance troubleshooting using esxtop
Due to there being such a large amount of time between All Things Virtual 18 and All Things Virtual 19 (a month and a half) there are a few articles on my list that are a few weeks old but nevertheless still brilliant and so I kept them on here.
As I have said before I ,like a large number of other professionals in the virtualisation field am preparing and studying for the VCAP exams. For my own usage and because amazingly a few people sent me messages saying that my VCP4 Study Resources(Part 1, Part 2) proved very helpful with their preparations for their VCP4 exams and were asking if I planned to do the same for the VCAP exams. So I have created a dedicated page for all the resources I will be using in my preparations and will constantly try to update it with any new resources I find. The page has only been up for a month and a half and already over 1000 people have viewed it which is really great and hopefully it is helping people find out about great podcasts/blog postings/videos that will help them be prepared for the exams.
Duncan Epping of Yellow bricks fame posted a very small but very important posting all about Storage IO Control Best Practices. If you attended either of the VMworld conferences then I would recommend watching the session Duncan speaks of in his posting “Tech Preview: Storage DRS” and another session i watched all about SIOC “prioritizing Storage Resource Allocation in ESX Virtual Environments using Storage I/O Control”. Speaking of SIOC Luc Dekens has posted a brilliant posting on how to automate SIOC.
While at VMworld Europe Mike Laverick of RTFM.com fame went around and got himself a bag full of Swag and is raffling it all off in aid of UNICEF. The competition is open to anyone worldwide so go get yourself a ticket and donate to a very worthy cause at the same time.
Eric Sloof posted all about the availability of the the Technical White paper for Application HA. My knowledge of Application HA has only started growing very recently after attending VMworld this year and actually seeing some of providers stands and exhibitions of the technologies and their capabilities. I haven’t as yet read the white paper but like so many of these great resources it is on my technical reading list. Eric has also posted a video of the installation of Symantec Application HA.
Simon Seagrave of TechHead fame posted about some great free NTP Time Sources and the NTP Pool project. I’ve already been using the same source for my NTP synchronisation for my home lab and it works a charm
During VMworld Europe David Davis of Trainsignal’s VMware vSphere Video Training fame was able to do a video interview with VCDX001 Mr John Arrasjid. The video is a brilliant one for anyone looking to take on the VCDX certification as John is one of the main people involved in the VCDX and gives great insight into the certification and how it is all done.Jason Boche was also interviewed by David at VMworld US all about the VCDX certification here. These are two really great resources and have been added to my VCDX study list .
Speaking of Jason Boche he posted a brilliant posting all about the conversion of CPU ready to %RDY in ESXTOP. I am currently learning and strengthening my knowledge on ESXTOP and how to utilise it for my daily job and Jason’s posting is a great resource for learning all about how the %RDY value is calculated. I would recommend reading through a posting I did a while back about Understanding and using ESXTOP/RESXTOP as this will give a great base knowledge before going through Jason’s posting.
Steve Jin of DoubleCloud.org Fame posted all about using vSphere APIs to Collect vCentre and ESX Logs.After having attended the VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security Course last week I’ve gained an even keener interest in learning all about collecting logs for security reasons as well as troubleshooting reasons and Steve’s posting was right on time for my interest in learning more about it all. I would recommend everyone learns how to do this as it will be a life saver at some point for you.
Vladan Seget posted all about a whitepaper by VMware on the top ten most forgotten things when building your disaster recovery plan. The white paper is a really great resource and has some very good pointers and recommendations when you are building out your disaster recovery plan. If you have a disaster recovery plan or are planning one then I would highly recommend reading the white paper.
The next is an unusual one but one that I experienced myself and therefore feel I should link to it here even though I have already added it to my Upgrading from ESX,VMware Update Manager and Virtual Centre 4.0 to Version 4.1 posting. VMware have put out a KB article on an error where after upgrading your Virtual Centre Server to version 4.1 the transaction log for the vCentre Server database grows excessively large. Thankfully someone posted the KB article on twitter and i noticed it and fixed the problem before it severely impacted my Virtual Centre server.
Bas Raayman posted some really nice installation tips for installing VMware vCloud Director. I am yet to install vCloud Director to my home lab and so the installation tips are now part of my build documentation to go through when i finally get round to installing it.
Duncan Epping of Yellow-Bricks.com fame posted one of the best articles of the year over a week ago now all about VMotion, the story and confessions. The post covers the initial idea and building of a VMotion(misspelling intended) prototype to a number of top bloggers confessions on how amazed they were when they first saw or heard about VMotion and how it has impacted their work life and for some their career paths.
Well that’s all the postings of the past few weeks that have gained my interest.
Gregg