Having only got into the virtualisation community with the past year and a half I’m obviously a relative newcomer compared to the likes of Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks Fame and Scott Lowe of ScottLowe.org fame to name but two. But the way the community has shared their knowledge and helped me to grow to a point where I’ve been selected as a vExpert I think comes down to the leadership and excellence of one man and the honorary leader of the VMware Community and the owner of the vExpert community John Troyer. I first got to know about John and his hard work via the VMware Communities Roundtable podcasts that he hosts every week. As a true leader he’s always working to make the community better and puts in a substantial amount of work every week for the podcasts, hosts the live interviews from both VMworld US and Europe,has been spreading new about virtualization at the VMTN Blog since 2005 and makes sure the vExpert community is giving back to the whole VMware community while making sure the vExpert community is a place you want to join and stay a part of.
I was very fortunate to meet John in person at VMworld Europe last year and spoke briefly to him and told him how it was my first year and my impressions of it all which he was highly interested in. From this interest he even got me to give my opinion on being a first year attender to the conference and what I enjoyed for the conference on the VMworld Europe wrap up roundtable podcast.
So on his birthday along with all the other vExperts and wider VMware community I’d like to thank John for all his hard work and dedication in making the VMware community somewhere like no other community I’ve ever been a part of and for his hard work on the roundtable’s and the vExpert community. Also a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Yes I decided to get rid of the roman numerals and go with the old trusty numbers from now on as I think it looks better and it’s more user friendly for the five people who read these posts 🙂
It’s been two weeks since the last All things virtual posting due to work constraints and my studying for my MCITP: Enterprise Administrator exam. Unfortunately the exam was cancelled unbeknownst to me so I’ve had to reschedule for a few weeks time (i know loads of people are going to think I just failed and don’t want to say it but I’d honestly say it if I had). Anyhow since it’s been two weeks since the last version there has been loads of really top class postings and information to have come up in the virtualisation arena.
Firstly as I said in my posting yesterday the second vBeers is happening TOMORROW,July the 1st. I was fortunate enough to have made it to the first one and it was awesome to meet and chat to loads of the guys I follow and chat to via twitter,their blogs(My blogroll holds my favourites) the VMware Community forums or in the VMware community roundtables. If you’re near the London area tomorrow evening I’d highly recommend going along.
Next is a brilliant posting by Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks all about troubleshooting and recognising is a vm is swapping and if so how to work it out as it isn’t as simple as looking and seeing if the SWCUR value in esxtop is giving out values. As I stated in my blog posting a few weeks back I’m learning to use ESXTOP and better my skills in using this tool to manage my environments and be able to spot these kinds of things via this tool.
Eric Sloof blogged all about the release of the Maximum vSphere book. The book was written by Simon Seagrave of Techhead fame and Eric Siebert of vsphere-land.com fame. Simon wrote the chapters on ‘Performance in vSphere’ and ‘Building Your Own vSphere Lab’ and Eric wrote all the remaining chapters. John Troyer has also written the forward for the book. I haven’t personally read Eric’s VMware® VI3 Implementation and Administration book but these guys are top of the industry and their blogs are some of the best out there so you know the content is going to be amazing. Hopefully I can get my hands on a copy of this once it’s released.
As I blogged almost a month ago now about the latest versions of vCentre and vSphere having been released, Update 2. Chad Sakac of Virtual Geek fame posted a brilliant write up all about the release also and has added some very helpful fixes to issues that may arise from updating to update 2. I’ve managed to update most of my home test environment to update 2 but unfortunately haven’t had the time to fully play with /break it yet. Talking of new versions William Lam of Virtually Ghetto fame has posted a very interesting posting all about the possible imminent release of vSphere 4.1. If rumours are true then this release will be the non COS release. Kind of crazy to put an update out then release a new version in my opinion especially for all of us that have to keep environments up to date whilst not breaking anything in the process. Jason Boche of Boche.net did a nice little posting all about how a simple Google search gives plenty of proof that the COS is going away.Duncan Epping also posted that DRS sub clusters are supposedly due tin the next version also.
A fair number of the guys and I’m friendly with and/or follow on twitter were fortunate enough to have been invited to take the VCAP-DCA beta exams over a week ago now . Jason Boche, William Lam and Chris Dearden are a few that I noticed who blogged about it and from their comments and rants it sounds as if the exam is going to be a real test and that to pass this you are going to need to have used,played,configured and fully understand all the technologies and features that the vSphere family of products have to offer. Even though this means I’m probably going to end up spending innumerable hours playing around with my lab(which i kind of do out of nerdy fun already anyways) and also means that people can’t just learn answers to questions from cheat sites and post 500 out of 500 scores even though they misspell VMware and will hopefully also help me to increase my skills and knowledge which is what all exams/certifications should do for you.
One of the biggest banes of any VMware administrators life is the managing and controlling of snapshots especially if you allow them to be created by the users of the vm’s as i have to in our environment. I’ve posted before all about the great ways I use to ease the management and monitoring of VMware Snapshots. Last week Mike Bean posted a brilliant guest posting in the VMware communities blogs all about VMware snapshots and what they are meant for and what they are not meant for and how they are created and maintained. I’ve saved this one to my favourites as it’s got all the reasons you need to explain to a user in why they can’t have five snapshots on one vm and keep it for months on end.
Duncan Epping posted all about the new SIOC (Storage IO Control) feature due to released in most likely the next version of vSphere. I had seen this video before the posting as it was obviously all over twitter very quickly and I’m really excited and pleased that this feature is coming.
Last but not least a big congratulations to Simon Long in his announcement that he is joining VMware as a Senior Consultant. Wow if memory serves me right that takes him from being made redundant and looking for a role to being a VMware employee in 12 months!! Congrats Simon!
The whole community has been buzzing with the news of the vExpert’s for 2010. As I said in the last all things virtual I didn’t think I was going to become one and I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t become one. I wrote a blog posting about the reasons I feel I didn’t get it and how I think if I keep trying hopefully I will be selected as one. One encouraging part from this past week was a twitter message from John Troyer the leader/owner of the vExpert community saying he thinks I’m off to a great start on my way to becoming one. Thanks John it really means a lot to me 🙂
Scott Lowe whose book Mastering VMware vSphere 4 was a massive help for my in my preparation for my VCP4 posted a very thought provoking posting all about blogging for the right reasons. This isn’t virtualisation per se but it does relate well to people blogging just for the sake of possibly becoming a vExpert or for getting a new job/role. Speaking of Scott’s book his book is now available as an Ebook.
Arnim van Lieshout posted all about the latest release of the vEcoShell and the new features it has. The vEcoShell is a brilliant tool and is one I’m trying to strengthen my knowledge on due to the great customisations you can do with it and the power it has for running scripts via PowerCli in your virtual environment.
VMware have also released the latest version of the VCP on vSphere 4 Exam Blueprint Guide. These blueprints are amazing and are the best way I feel in making sure you know and have the required knowledge and skills to pass the VCP4 exam.
VMware have also announced that there is now support for VMware SDK’s via the support team tasked with this support. Mike DiPetrillo has written a blog posting all about this release and what it means for people like himself helping people prepare their applications and services for the cloud.
Rick Scherer has posted a blog posting all about EMC’s new technology EMC VPLEX. This was released at EMC world and allows the infamous long distance vmotion. I won’t try describe it capabilities as Rick has explained it great in his posting and the video from EMC world in which Nick Weaver (@lynxbat) had a major role in setting up and making sure it ran smoothly. The video is below
Jason Boche has posted up how to win yourself a free pass to this years VMworld.I’m sure a staggering amount of people are going to be entering as most companies are still weary of spending money on these kinds of conventions so this is a great way for someone to make it. I’ve been given the nod to make it to this years one which I’m extremely excited about and hopefully I can generate some really good blog postings while there like the ones I read so much for last years one.
While catching up on my VMware Communities Roundtable podcasts I was listening to the podcast from a few weeks back about the VCAP exams and was very pleased to hear that live labs are going to be a large part of the exams to stem the tide of people using “braindump” materials.
Colin Steele was the first person I saw to have posted a blog on an error is saw pour in at the VMware communities about a Microsoft patch that was preventing vSphere client logins. VMware have also created an official knowledgebase article on the problem and how to fix it.
Lastly a friend of mine who also works in virtualisation Kivian Johnson of First Rand Bank alerted me to a very helpful and possibly integral free tool by Foundstone a division of McAfee’s VIDigger. The tool is “designed to help administrators check the configuration of ESX server and the virtual machines hosted on ESX server against the VMware Infrastructure Hardening guide and other best practices.” I am yet to fully try it out in my lab environment but if it really does do all the things they say it will be a brilliant tool for any virtual infrastructure administrator.
