TheSaffaGeek

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All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 3

 

Yet again (I’m not sure why I keep doing this) I decided to get up early and into the conference so i could get my Day 2 blog posting out and be awake enough for Paul Maritz’s keynote. A number of my fellow LonVMUG colleagues also made their way in early and we ended up watching the keynote from the food hall on the big screen. I decided against trying to cover the keynote and give my opinions as seeing as a large portion of it was customers talking about their experiences with VMware technology and then Paul’s chat was exactly what was said at VMworld US. Therefore, i would recommend watching the keynote here and if you missed Steve Herrod’s or Raghu Raghuram’s from Tuesday and Wednesday respectively then you can watch them.

After this, i made my way to my first and only session of the day (due to the time my flight left i only had enough time for the 11am slot unfortunately) which was VSP1708 VCDX Panel Defence Preparation. The session was everything i had hoped it would be and a little more. One of my future aims is to obtain my VCDX (looking like VCDX 5 due to time constraints now) and so I really wanted to attend the session to get a good idea of the process and what happens on the day and what the panelists are expecting and looking for. If you are going to watch one VMworld session video and are thinking of doing the VCDX one day then this has to be it as it scared me a little but also gave me an amazing idea of what i need to do and aim for now to be ready to build, defend and obtain my VCDX. The biggest tip I got out of it that john Arrasjid said was “start building your design now as the people who rush to build their designs are normally the people who fail and don’t fully understand their designs”

After the session, i had some lunch and hung out at the bloggers lounge and even almost got onto one of the vSoup videos but instead decided to watch from a far and was mentioned by the guys on it here. I still say if they don’t announce the band, it is only right to make wild speculations of who the band will beclip_image001.

After chatting to a number of the bloggers and vExpert’s I made my way to the airport and after my flight being delayed by two hours and the pilot having to abort our landing at the last second i made it back to the UK after a very successful and tiring VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 2

As I did with Day 1, for day 2 I also got in around half seven to be able to get into the labs as they opened. It seems that loads of other people had the exact same idea though as by half eight there was a waiting queue in the waiting area of over 50 people and loads more in the line outside. My first lab was all about deploying Nexus 1000V via Distributed Switches and was really really good and is one I would highly recommend. After I finished the lab, I walked straight back in and got myself on “Optimising Your Network Structure and Consolidating Network Management”. The lab mainly went through deploying standard virtual switch networking, then creating, and migrating it to distributed switching whilst keeping the hosts up and running as well as the virtual machines. I had learnt loads of this for my VCAP but it was really good practice in preparation for my retry of my VCAP-DCA.

Next, I wrote up my All Things VMworld Europe Day 1 posting in the bloggers lounge whilst chatting to a number of fellow bloggers and vExpert’s. Talking of Day 1 the recording of Steve Herrod, “CTO and Senior VP of R&D at VMware” and
Maurizio Carli (Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA ) keynote is now available here and Raghu Raghuram, (Senior VP and General Manager of Cloud Platforms for VMware) from Tuesdays morning session is up also.

After having some lunch I attended the session “Design, Deploy and Optimise SharePoint 2010 on vSphere”. The session was highly interesting as we do a number of SharePoint 2010 deployments on VMware at present and it was good to see and hear what they experienced and the best practices for it. Once the sessions go up on the VMworld, website i would recommend watching this one and going through the slidedeck before doing a SharePoint 2010 implementation in your own environment.

The VMworld TV summary of Day 2 has also gone up and covers all the news and even a super hero guest appearance.

After the session I wandered around the solutions exchange chatting to a few people and also chatted to a number of the guys I know operating the EMC booth and even got one of the guys a good contact for some work for EMC. The day slowly quieted down from here, as a number of people seemed to have left to go change and get ready for the VMworld Party. The party was help at the Carlsberg Museum in downtown Copenhagen and was set out in an eighties retro style of Blade runner meets Tron styling. The evening was a great one personally, as it let me meet even more of the top bloggers and VMware experts like the infamous Dave Hill and Chris Colotti of vCloud Director Fame to name but two.The night was a real success even though there was no big band like the US.

clip_image001

For all the VMware people I met last night it was great meeting you all clip_image002

Gregg

 


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All Things VMworld Europe Day 1

 

Day 1 started early for me as I wanted to get in early and make sure I got a full day out. So I arrived at the Bella Centre at 7:45 and got myself onto a hands on lab as it opened.

The lab I took was Deploying ESXi hosts via auto deploy (not the official name but it’s close). The lab was really informative and I would highly recommend it as it gives you a great overview of how the whole auto deploy feature with vSphere 5 works and all the things you will need to do in your own environment to enable this feature. The lab also gave me a whole load of things to think about and start preparing to allow me implement auto deploy in my own environments.

After the lab I made my way to the bloggers lounge to start writing up my All Things VMworld Day 0 posting and also chat to some of the vExpert bloggers. There’s nothing like sitting at the same table as Mike Laverick,Scott Lowe and Jason Boche to name but three and as I’ve said before, this for me is one of the biggest features of VMworld.

After posting up my blog posting and having talked shop with a number of the fellow bloggers I made my way to my first session of the day "#CIM2363 Building an Enterprise Hybrid Cloud for Dummies: 10 Steps (or Less)" the session was good but obviously when they said for dummies they weren’t kidding as it was the real basics of vCloud director and what it’s all made up of. If you have never used vCloud Director and want to get a great overview of all the necessary components then I would highly recommend the session.

Then it was lunch where I spotted the MonsterVM character wandering around and sat and chatted with the PowerCLI guru’s of Alan Renouf, Luc Dekens and Jonathan Medd over lunch. I then wandered back to the bloggers lounge and chatted to a few fellow bloggers about each of the sessions we’ve all been to and what we thought of them. I then went to Alan and Luc’s session "VMware vSphere PowerCLI Best Practices" The session was really good and the guys gave some really great tips on things to look out for and best practices. I hope they’ll upload their slidedeck as they had so many best practices (42 in total) that they couldn’t cover them all.

Next was the General session keynote by Stephen Herrod. The keynote was largely a repeat of the VMworld US one with even the same jokes being said. After about an hour and half of the keynote the first new announcement was announced with it being vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0. Fellow vExpert and London based Saffa Julian Wood has done a really great posting about the suite and what it does here. The next announcement was vFabric Application Management Suite. As I’ve yet to play with it thereby be able to give you a good description of all it’s features etc. the best resource I’ve found is the VMworld TV video all about it

The last announcement of the day was the VMware IT Business Management Suite. So far there doesn’t seem to be a large amount of information out about it apart from the VMware product page about it here. All three suites look amazing and it looks like VMware is definitely aiming to take some of the management market away from people such as vKernel and Xangati to name but two. One of the topics that was covered again like Vegas was Horizon Mobile and it looks like the deals are already growing as VMware have now signed deals with Verizon in the US and Telefonica in Europe to give their users the ability to have Horizon Mobile on their phones.

After the keynote was the welcoming party with drinks and some snacks  in the Solutions Exchange to allow everyone to speak to the exhibitors. I spoke to a few exhibitors but the two that had some interesting products which I may try out in my lab are vKernel’s vOperations Suite and Embotics’ V-Commander tool which I’m hoping will be helpful for creating baselines and understanding how things were provisioned and if I can claw back some resources in certain areas.

I was then fortunate enough to attend the VMware vExpert 2011 meeting and meet loads of the European based (and a few Americans and Australians who also flew over) vExperts and talk about all the announcements and how we saw the market going and what it will mean for our roles. We then all made our ways to our respective parties and that was the end of Day 1 at VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld Europe Day 0

Yet again, i have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to attend VMworld Europe. I really enjoyed my time last year and knowing what to expect made it even more exciting for me than last year. Monday is Partner day and they definitely made sure all the partners felt welcome with free drinks, loads of top sessions and awards at the end of the day. I only arrived around 2pm so i had already missed one or two of the sessions and felt like a number of the VMworld sessions that I can watch them off the VMworld website in my own time later on and i would rather meet up with fellow vExpert’s and some of the top bloggers and talk shop. One confirmation that I am a real nerd is that I got Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman to sign my copy of the VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive book clip_image001. Day 0 went by very quickly and I had been invited to two of the parties. The official VMUG party hosted by the Danish VMUG and the vGeekfest run by EMC. Seeing as EMC were so nice in sending me yet again and because a number of the people I really wanted to meet and chat to were going to the vGeekfest party. After getting lost trying to find the party, I finally found it at the Apollo Brewery. A very nice location and the whole ground floor was allocated to us with home brewed beers and very nice food. The main thing I really enjoyed about the evening though was meeting loads of the top bloggers and social media experts so I’m sure I’m going to miss out a few but I was fortunate enough to meet Aaron Demp,Fred Nix (@nixfred) ,Delon Karrim (@delonk) , Travers Nicholas (@travern),Simon Rahilly (@noneonemany), Scott Lowe,Bas Raayman, Simon Long ( aka the SLOG) ,Steve Chambers, Craig Stewart and Simon Seagrave to name but a few clip_image002. The VMworld TV team have already posted a video of Day 0 although due to it not being the official first day they don’t cover very much of the technology yet but more the conference centre and what they are hoping to see and here

If you are at the conference and see some nerdy Saffa walking around stop me and say hi, as I’d love to meet as many people as possible

Gregg


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All Things VMworld US 2011 Day 3

 

Well that’s VMworld coming to an end. It seems to have gone by so quickly but it also means that now we can start talking about VMworld in Copenhagen and I don’t have to keep hearing about the killers playing the VMworld closing party (I’m not jealous at all Winking smile ) . Day 3 is normally the day where everyone hits the solutions exchange, the sessions and the hands on labs. For me day 3 is great for all the videos that are put out as now they can show us all the new products and announcements mentioned in the keynote by Steve Herrod on VMworldTV and even an interviews with Steve himself detailing all the announcements he made.

  • First is the preview of Horizon mobile by Samsung and LG who are the two mobile phone providers working with VMware to bring out Horizon Mobile
Horizon Mobile
  • The next video is done by @the_anykey and is the interview with VMware CTO Steve Herrod. This is a must watch as it gives you a brilliant idea of the announcements he made and what they will mean for peoples daily lives (Horizon mobile for one)
Steve Herrod
  • Next is the VMworldTV video all about Project Octopus. As I said in my Day 2 posting I think this is the best announcement so far and will be changing a lot of peoples way of working in the near future.
Project Octopus
  • Next is an interview with Scott Davis, VMware’s CTO of end user computing and is all about AppBlast with a really awesome demo of it too! I’m really looking forward to this technology being released.
AppBlast
  • The next has to be my favourite, probably because of the highly amusing appearance of “PowerCLI man” and my knowing of Alan due to him being a fellow London VMUG attendee and former EMC vSpecialist. Alan gives a great overview of all the new features in PowerCLI 5 and even mentions one of my firm favourites the vCheck script. Also as said there’s even an appearance by PowerCLI man Smile
PowerCLI
  • Another twitter and Fellow vExpert friend of mine Kendrick Coleman was also interviewed by VMworldTV all about the free tools available out there for people to use. Kendrick and David M Davis of Trainsignal fame are doing their Top 10 free tools sessions again and from this Kendrick mentions a few of them in the video and even mentions a few that have been developed by people all by themselves like Ricky El Qasem’s vSphere Plugin Wizard which is mentioned by Kendrick. It’s very sad to hear that the session Kendrick and David have done in VMworld Us has been cut from VMworld Europe. Hopefully they get one of the slots for most popular session again
Kendrick Coleman Free Tools
  • Last but not least is the Day summaries of the Past three days at VMworld. As mentioned in my Day 2 posting these are a great way to find out what’s been announced and is happening if you don’t have a lot of time to read up on what’s come out.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Well that’s everything for Day 3 of VMworld US 2011.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld US 2011 Day 2

 

Wow day 2 of VMworld really stepped it up and the keynote announcements did not disappoint at all. Some amazing announcements during the keynote by VMware CTO Steve Herrod and even a really classic line by Vittorio (Product Manager for EUC at VMware) stating a yellow Ferrari he supposedly hit as part of one of the demo’s isn’t a real Ferrari due to it being yellow. So here are all the things that caught my eye from the news of VMworld day 2:

  • The main news of the whole day in my opinion has to be from the keynote by VMware CTO Steve Herrod. Due to it being in the morning unlike Paul Maritz’s the day before I was able to watch the keynote streaming and personally (possibly because new technology keeps my attention a million times more) a lot more interesting. If you haven’t watched the keynote, you can still see it and Paul’s by registering here. I’m not going to give a minute by minute detail of the keynote but in my opinion the big announcements of the keynote were:
    • The announcement of VMware View 5. Steve did a demonstration of View 5 in his keynote where he provisioned a pool of virtual desktops using a “technology called linked clones” as he said. It did look quite good but wasn’t very much of an in-depth demo in my opinion and gave more of a look of it rather than what it can do. Vladan Seget has done a great blog posting all about the announcement of VMware View 5 and has given some great details all about it if you are interested here. Some of the new features do look amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing more about it in the coming weeks. The VMware View team also did a very light hearted video of a Rock Parody here
    • Next was the demo of Project ThinApp Factory (love how they refuse to call it an app store clip_image001). This demo was much more interesting and is very exciting, as it will be using ThinApp and Horizon to extract your applications from your windows systems and move them into an application portal where you can provision the applications to your users. This also enables you to access these applications via your mobile device with the Horizon Application Manager and Horizon mobile. LG and Samsung are already working with VMware to enable horizon mobile on their devices and supposedly a load more are due in the future.
    • Steve then mentioned what i think was the announcement of the keynote and it was Project Octopus. Where you can offer a corporate DropBox style repository to your users and your clients. It will supposedly be available via the public and private cloud and will have a load of security enhancements and features to keep your companies security team happy in the knowledge that only the correct people will be able to access the applications. You can sign up now for news and the beta of project Octopus here.
    • Vittorio (Product Manager for EUC at VMware) then took to the stage and gave a great users perspective of all these new announcements as well as Project AppBlast which converts your traditional desktop applications into HTML5 to allow you run them on any HTML compliant device. I would highly recommend watching the keynote for this part as it’s great to see how it all works and looks and also the breakdown of it all by Steve afterwards gives you a really good idea of how it’s all done. VMware’s description of the technology is:
      • “Project AppBlast will provide the universal delivery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any device supporting HTML5, enabling instant remote access to applications without the heavy footprint of the underlying operating system. Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra™ and Mozy™to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Additionally, Project Octopus will offer easy integration with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service. These two projects promise to dramatically simplify the access and sharing of information across people and mobile devices, contributing to the Connected Enterprise.”
    • Next Steve showed off the new vSphere iPad Client and how you can now vMotion virtual machines from the client. Personally no matter what people may try to say to convince me otherwise i do think that doing these kinds of tasks via your iPad is more of a gimmick than a very useful day-to-day tool. However, I guess if the masses want to try using their iPad to do their daily work then this is obviously going to be a very popular announcement for some. As a number of people on twitter were saying it does lend itself to “oops sorry boss my kid just migrated the oracle DB server by mistake via my iPad’s vSphere client”
    • VMware Go was then shown and covered. The offering will allow SMB’s to use a web based tool to scan their environment and allow them to work out what machines can be virtualised and give them a “for dummies” admin portal to do this all in. Also as part of this drive to help the SMB market Steve mentions the VSA that was released with vSphere5 and how it will allow users to utilise three hosts local storage to create a virtual storage array for their usage. You can read up more about the VSA here
    • There is more talk about new features that were released with vSphere5 from auto deploy to the “monster VM” capabilities that vSphere5 has now enabled. I’m not going to really cover these as there’s loads of resources out there about the new features due to it being released last week before VMworld.
    • One part of the new features that was very interesting though was the announcement of the VXLAN which will allow encapsulation of L2packets into L3 packets and will supposedly remedy the identifier=location problems. I have to be honest I’m not very much of a networking guru and so this is something I’m going to need to read up more on before i can fully understand it’s capabilities. VMware have however submitted the specification to the IETF here for those who are more networking based and might understand it a lot better than what I do.
    • Steve then announces SRM 5 and its new capability of automated Failback and uses the recent hurricane Irene in the US as a great example of the benefits of having a technology like this. You can read more about SRM 5 here. I’m not going to attempt to cover it, as there’s a fair amount of features that come with it and it’s easier to go through the datasheet of it than my repeating what is already covered in there.
    • Lastly, Steve goes into vShield 5 and the changes and enhancements that are now available with the new release. The biggest part for my out of this is the news that vShield App will now incorporate DLP technologies (via RSA) to enable additional protection.

Well that’s all the big news out of VMworld that caught my interest.

Gregg


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All Things VMworld US 2011 Day 1

 

Yep seeing as loads of people seemed to like my postings from last year I thought I would do it again and it should also help me to list all the news I need to read up on seeing as my twitter feed for VMworld is going crazy and is going to be a nightmare to keep up with. So here is all the news from day 1 of VMworld US 2011 that I want to read when I have a chance and caught my eye:

  • First has to be a number of postings covered by Vladan Seget of Vladan.fr fame as he has already posted some great postings about announcements happening at VMworld. His first is all about the announcement by vKernel of their new version of their flagship product vOps- vKernel Operations Suite. Vladan has detailed all the new features in his blog posting so have a read through it as it looks to be an amazing product. Second is his covering of the announcement that David M Davis and  Elias Khnaser have now released their VMware vSphere 5 Trainsignal videos. As I’ve mentioned numerous times and even in my review of one of David videos yesterday I really enjoy these videos and owe a large portion of my passing of my VCP4 to David’s videos. So I cant wait to get my hands on this new set especially seeing as I’m going to need to know it not just for my daily job but also for my eventual upgrading of my VCAP’s to version 5. Talking of vSphere 5 certifications Vladan covered that the registration for the VCP5 exams are now open. I’m hoping that the rumours of being able to achieve the VCP5 automatically by upgrading my VCAP exams are true but as I say those aren’t confirmed as yet.
  • Next is all the great sites and links that can be used to keep up with all the latest news from VMworld US.
    • You can register and watch Paul Maritz’s keynote and Steve Herrods session today here if you possibly miss it like I did Paul’s last night.
    • There is the live stream from VMworld with interviews and news and even a link to the Keynote by Steve Herrod the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D for VMware from 8am-9:30am Vegas time tomorrow.Plus all the videos from the past few days so make sure you have a look at them all here and make sure you’re watching the keynote.
    • There is also the VMware Community TV booth run by John Troyer and Alex Maier. These ones are my favourite as it covers all types of things from the vExpert daily podcast (where a number of the 2011 VMware vExperts give us their views on the announcements of the day and what they think it might mean to the future of virtualisation) to Mike Laverick’s Chinwags and the vChats by David Davis, Eric Siebert and Simon Seagrave. The schedule for it all and when it is happening can be found here.
    • VMworldTV is also running again on YouTube and already there’s a number of videos up including Day1 Summary of VMworld 2011 in Vegas and the very exciting news that a load of us have all been waiting for that VMworld Hands-on Labs will be going public in 2012 (also it’s great to hear a fellow Saffa Mornay van der Walt ,Senior Director of R&D for VMware describing it all) . I really enjoyed the videos from VMworld TV last year as they covered loads of the great news really quickly allowing me to get a very good high level view of the things happening and then I could further research the things I wanted to know more about.
  • Next is a number of announcements from EMC all about the compatibility of it’s service offerings with VMware vSphere5 and all the new features they are releasing. So as to not explain things incorrectly and to make this posting non biased I’ll let you read the postings by Chad Sakac himself in his EMC and vSphere5 what’s supported when posting as well as his EMC virtual storage integrator version 5 posting. Some really exciting stuff and personally I’m loving the free licence period for PowerPath
  • Some of the top bloggers have given their perspective’s on the first day and even given their opinions on some of the sessions they attended. Duncan Epping of Yellow-bricks.com fame posted all about his VMworld Day 1 experiences and gave some brilliant insight into his session with Frank Denneman (one I’m definitely planning to attend in Copenhagen) as well as other sessions he attended. Scott Lowe also blogged about Duncan and Franks session in his posting  VSP1682: VMware vSphere Clustering Q&A. Scott also did a brilliant posting all about Monday’s General Session. Some amazing facts and figures mentioned in the General Session.
  • Last but not least is something people may miss during all the news coming out of VMworld and that is that the vExpert Spotlight postings are still being published every other day and already there’s been some really great ones with Jane Rimmer’s last Friday and James Bowling’s yesterday. So keep an eye out for them as there really are some great tips and advice from the 2011 VMware vExperts

Gregg


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All Things Virtual 26

 

As you would expect there has been loads of news about the release of vSphere 5 and all the new features. A large amount of it early on and all over the VMware communities and the vExpert community has been about the vRAM licencing model.

  • Last week Wednesday the rumours that VMware were going to make changes to the licencing model came true. A massive amount of people blogged about it and VMware also posted a blog posting about it. So seeing as they did such a great job of it and to save me repeating what has already been covered, here is the official VMware blog posting about the changes as well as a brilliant posting from fellow vExpert Eric Siebert all about how VMware has a change of heart on licensing. From these two postings I think I’ve finally got my head around the new licencing model and how it will impact my environments.
  • William Lam the master of vMA and ESXCLI posted about the new features and enhancements in vSphere 5 for ESXCLI and some awesome tips and tricks for vMA 5. For my VCAP-DCA study preparations I’ve been forcing myself to try do as much of my daily job via the vMA and it really is an amazing tool and with the tricks William has listed you can do pretty much anything you want in your VMware environment with ease and on mass.
  • Scott Drummonds has written up a really great posting all about what he feels are the Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to vSphere 5. This is a great list for anyone who needs to explain to their boss on management why they need to upgrade to vSphere 5 apart from the obvious eventual expiration of vSphere 4. There really are some amazing new features and enhancements that are going to make daily tasks so much easier and faster.
  • When you’ve convinced your boss and management that the upgrade to vSphere 5 is well worth their while and you’re planning on using auto deploy to create your ESXi hosts then Paul Richards’ (@eprich) posting all about 3 Design Considerations for Your vSphere 5 Auto Deploy Environment. These are really great tips and things that may seem obvious but are also easily forgotten or missed in your design planning.
  • Eric Sloof has done a brilliant list of all  the videos he has done for vSphere 5 from migrating to vSphere 5 to Storage DRS. Eric’s videos are always really great especially for someone like me who likes to see the actual steps and features before trying them out for myself. Duncan Epping has also done a list of all the vSphere 5 Coverage he has done since the announcement. These two are some of the best in the industry and their blogs are rightfully in the top ten VMware blogs in the world so the articles and videos they have created are some of the best you’ll find out there.
  • For those who are fortunate enough to have been approved to go to VMworld 2011 in Vegas this year or if you’re like me and will be tweeting and blogging about it all from the comfort of your desk then add your twitter handle to the VMworld 2011 Vegas twitter list and the bloggers list . I’ve already added my information and it makes sure your tweets and blog postings about VMworld are shown on the VMworld page and streams to make sure people can find and read your postings easily.
  • If you are going to VMworld for the first time this year then these tips for first time attendees and possibly anyone who hasn’t been for a while will be very helpful. The tips came about from a discussion on the vExpert community from a fellow vExpert asking for tips seeing as he was attending for the first time. Christopher Kusek listed all the responses that were given to Bilal Hashmi into his posting VMworld Tips, Tricks and Prize winning. Bilal also listed them and more in his  VMworld Tips by vExperts (title edited due to my not wanting four billion spam messages)
  • Just a very quick plug that I’ve now created a VCAP5-DCA & DCD Resources page to start listing all the resources that I’ll be using in my preparations once the exams are released. If you know of any materials I haven’t listed on it please leave a comment on the page and I’ll make sure it’s added.
  • Lastly is a posting by Tom Howarth on How to Report an Issue to a VMTN Moderator. This is sometimes a necessary step on the VMware communities due to people either publishing NDA information about new releases or exams. Or the occasional spam message that is unfortunately posted.

Well that’s all the things that have caught my interest in the past few weeks and the things I need to finish reading to try keep up to date. If you want to follow me on twitter my handle is @greggrobertson5.

Gregg


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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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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