One of my readers recently contacted me about how SRM communicates to vCenter both during an install, and then afterwards once the service is up and running. The odd thing is this… During the install the communication to vCenter appears to be non-secured on TCP port 80, but after the install is on the secured port of TCP 443… In the book I conjecture that some redirection takes place, its actually a little bit more sophisticated than that…

Here’s what the offical guide says: 

Port 80 is provided as the default to use for the initial connection to the remote site. After the initial HTTP connection is made, the two sites establish an SSL connection over port 80 to use for subsequent connections.

Duncan Epping on his Yellow Bricks site has this more revealing statement:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/11/srm-faq/

Why is Port 80 used in the install but port 443 later? During install of SRM port 80 is specified and you cannot type in 443, but after the install is complete than SRM talks to VC on 443, so why is 80 specified in the install? Even though SRM uses SSL when it communicates to VC, it does not use port 443. SRM establishes a TCP connection to port 80, than uses an HTTP CONNECT request to establish a tunnel to the VC servers, then does an SSL handshake with the VC over that tunneled connection. The SRM installation enforces these semantics.

Thanks to Bas Vinken for bring these two bits of information to my attention. Quite why the communcation is this done this way isn’t really explained. But I guess it is a reminder that port numbers are some what arbitary, and they follow a convention of being associated with certain services – I guess you would calll them the “well-known ports”. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing hard coded about these ports and how they are used..

If first meet Ed Czerwin in the flesh last year at the Boston TechField Day. We bumped into each other again in VMworld, and I’ve been planning to have him on my show for a while. Ed is prolific blogger and is co-host of virtualization podcast vSoup.

If you want to follow Ed on Twitter then you can locate him here

We chat around a number of topics including:

• Is a multi hypervisor datacenter a real future option
• What is virtualization adoption in Asia pacific like? Where are they on their journey?
• Is vSphere5 is proving as popular as vSphere4?
• What’s your opinion on the whole VMTN Subscription Movement?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

Podcast Video [ 38:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You might not know this but in VMware View 5.0 the screws have been tightened light bit more with regards to View Client and SSL certificates. Up until this point you could get away with using the bulti-in certificates generated by the installer. That’s no longer the case, because just as with web-browsers – the new clients all check to see if the certificate matches the name that your connecting with and whether or not the certificate is trusted.

Users can find these sort of pop-ups alarming, and you can guarantee a certain proportion of them will find up at the feet of the help desk people. In this article on techtarget’s site I take you though the process of requesting, importing and configuring SSL certificates for View 5.0.

Good news! The Toronto VMUG has its announced its date for its User Conferrence – it’s on the 7th Feb to be held at:

8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Hyatt Regency Toronto
370 King Street West,
Toronto, Ontario M5V 1J9

Map & Directions are here…

Agenda has yet to be set but I will be speaking – mostly a key note… Click at the big image above to register and keep an eye on the event as the agenda is worked on…

Today I received my first hard copy of the new SRM 5.0 book. Certainly nice to see it in the flesh, compared to having it on my IPAD on via the Kindle App. Along side the final book was stack of F&Gs… What’s F&Gs you ask? It standard for “Folded & Gathered Sheets”.

These are like little “pamplets” each one went put together as whole becomes a completed book during the binding process.

Publishers use F&Gs to allow the author to record any corrections wanted in the second printing of the book. The author (that’s me) marks his or her changes directly on the F&Gs and then sends them back to the publisher. I’ve got to return my F&Gs by the 14th Feb at the latest. [Yes, it seems odd to have chosen Valentine's Day as the cut off point] Of course this could be all done digitally but the publishers have found this hard-copy method is the most precise way of relaying corrections.

Anyway, if you spot any errors or typos in the book please feel free to send me them to me, and I will endeavor to include those in the F&Gs. You can send me your corrections by email to mikelaverickATrtfm-edDOTcoDOTuk or tweet them to me at @mike_laverick. Just give me a sample and page number and I will take a look.

One of my favourite musos is Jools Holland. He has a regular “New Years” show called the “Hootenanny” [Incidentally, its not live but recorded before New Year, and its become a thing a fun to spot continuity errors - such as people wishing each other happy new year... before 12 O'Clock has struck].

I was catching up on the show some days after the show. Everyone was great – he has the best guests. But this lady from the Netherlands really struck out. I think she has a very classy voice, and of course Jools Holland’s Big Band is a great accompaniment.

Sadly, the video won’t play embedded on my site – but it will take you to youtube to view it…

Another great track by her is “That Man” – which apparently is played a lot on Radio 2 – I should listen to that station more!

This song has kind 20s/30s retro feel about it which I really like… Makes a change from the X-Factor approach to music!

In this vendorwag I chat to Jay Judkowitz, Product Manager for Nimbula. Before Nimbula, Jay was at VMware for over eight years where he drove products like Site Recovery Manager and Storage VMotion.  Before that, he was at Scale 8, an early innovator in what would now be called cloud storage.  Jay started his career as a hands on IT practitioner at Intel for four years where he gained first hand experience with the real challenges of managing a dynamic large scale IT deployment.

As every I had a range of questions for Jay including:

Q.  Given your team is built on ex-VMware and ex-Amazon folks – how does that inform the vision of the company – who do you feel your competing against – Amazon?

Q. I notice your solution currently only supports KVM. Whilst I know that the cloud isn’t just about virtualization. Can you explain how that support decision came about – and will you be supporting Xen, ESX, HyperV in the future?

Q. I’ve been recently concerned about fault-tolerance and redundancy is being delivered to the “cloud layer”. How does Nimbula achieve that…

Q. Nimbula has its own method of how to segment the network without excessive use of VLANs – could you give us a quick demo of how to setup VMs within Nimbula, and get them communicating on the network

Q. Can you explain how “Collaborative Permissions” work – I think I need to another example – for the penny to drop

Q. Let’s talk about Federating different cloud vendors together – how do you see authentication working?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

This week we have two flavours of the vendorwag. The first is the full version which includes an “elevator pitch” from Jay together with my Q&A with him. The second is Jay’s elevator pitch on its own. So depending on how much time you have it’s up to you which one you watch…

Full Version Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Podcast Video Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today I got an email from Microsoft announcing the all-new TechNet Subscriber Portal Experience – initially I thought it was going to be reminder to renew my subscription. The new features include:

• Browse Product A–Z: all products listed alphabetically
• Browse Product categories: the familiar category view
• Top Products: quick access to the most common products
• New Downloads: RSS feed of the latest releases
• New Products: products that have new downloads available
• Search: fastest way to find a download when you know what you’re looking for
• Faster search results via autocomplete & acronym recognition
• Easier access and management of account information
• Simpler purchase and upgrade experience

That first one made me smile. If products weren’t listed alphabetically in the past, how were they listed? Randomly?

Joking apart it’s nice to see Microsoft make continued investment into their TechNet subscription system, even if it does mean knowing that the letter A comes before the letter B in the alphabet!

Today, one of my editors at TechTarget asked what was happening on the VMTN Subscription Movement. The original post I made on the community forums now boasts 8,995 views, and 237 replies. Last year there was a group concall of VMware vExperts where folks dialed into express their views, and I had one-to-one chat with a VMware representative who is gathering information about the concept to write a report & present to senior management. Interestingly, its movement has triggered a much broad reassessment of how VMware manages access to its software generally – something that surprised and delighted me. I’ve yet to hear back on this – but I did offer to look over the report and add my own thoughts and views.

At the time I did suggest that VMware look at other vendor programmes like TechNet to avoid any “wheel reinventing”. I pleased to hear that VMware with typical gusto would prefer to do something better than Microsoft. So at the moment there’s no firm news or announcement. All I do know is that VMware are listening (which is the main thing) and seriously considering their options…

If you were at either of the VMworld events last year, you might have been lucky enough to pick up an early “rough cut” edition of my book. At the same time you should have received a voucher that would allow you to access to digital copy of the completed book. Here’s how you redeem your voucher.

1.    Go to http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/vmwoffer

2.    Complete web form, including the unique code displayed there (sticker w/ code was affixed to the coupon)
3.    Submit the form

Pearson will be processing the form submission over the coming weeks – so you will receive an email in the next week or so with instructions on how to download the ebook…

I’m pleased to say that my new book on SRM 5.0 has been released on the VMware Press. It’s one of the first books on the press which VMware has founded with the logistical help of Pearson Publishing. I started working with the very early betas of the product towards the end of last 2010, so for me this work has been really years worth of work. I originally started out with self-publishing the SRM books, and its great to finally have big company like VMware and Pearson behind the work.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the very many people who helped me along the way. No author is an island, as anyone who has written anything of length will tell you. I’d like to thank Carmel (my long suffering girlfriend) who puts up with my ramblings about virtualization – and had a huge influence in the previous books on SRM. I’d like to thank Joan Murry of Pearson for making the process so smooth, especially in the early stages. I’d like to thank the many people at VMware who helped as well (you know who you are!), a special mention goes to Lee Dilworth here in the UK who has been my primary link every since the alpha edition of SRM 1.0 shipped many years ago. I’d like to thank Jacob Jensen who manages the BC/DR group at VMware – it was his backing in 2010 who helped kick start the process.  I’d like to thank the vendors too – especially Luke Reed of NetApp, Alex Tanner of EMC and Will Urban of Dell. A special thank you goes to Dell Equallogic – who was a new vendor to the book, and helped immensely in the process of getting their kit up and running, and getting me up to speed.

Finally, I’d like to thank my readers. Honestly, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it would be read. It means so much to me when folks email or stop me at events to say thanks. As an author you can spend many lonely hours at your desk, never really sure if you stuff is actually hitting the mark or helping. So it means so much when those emails or thanks yous come through.

You can buy the book either digitally or as hard-copy from many sources. The book actually started “shipping” from the printers to the retailers on schedule on the 28th Dec. It does however take time for the retailers to update their various websites to change the status from “In stock from…” or “Pre-order…”. With digital editions such as the version for the Kindle, it is available to purchase and download immediately.

Pearson.com

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Waterstones (UK)

WH Smiths (UK)

Blackwells (UK)

As for me – well I’m working on the completion of another book co-authored with Barry Coombs (UK vExpert), about View 5.0/ThinApp4.7. That will be a “community” based project that will be self-published, with all monies raised going to UNICEF. We’re currently in the early “reviewing” stage at the moment, but we hope to have it available by the end of March (if not sooner). After that? Well, I think I will be dividing my time equally between creating videos and writing book based on my “Hotel California” idea. That’s a biggy. I don’t expect it to be finished until the end of this year, beginning of next.