I recently did an eInterview for the guys at Xtravirt.com… What is an eInterview. Sounds fancy, huh. Well, its basically a list of questions. You right your answer inline, and then it gets published. Now is that a eMarvel of modern technology.

1. We received a copy of your new vSphere 4 Implementation book in the post this week. It looks like you have done a great job again! Can we expect to see other publications from you in future?
2. Back in January you announced that you had signed a deal with SearchVMware.Com. Can you tell us more about this?
3. What does a typical week in the life of Mike Laverick look like?
4. What do you think the biggest shift has been in Virtualisation over the past year?
5. What do you think will be the main focus area for virtualisation adopters in 2010?
6. We have seen a number of clients starting to seriously look at deploying Virtual Desktops. Any tips for people looking at doing this?
7. What do you feel is the most overlooked or misunderstood component of a Virtual Infrastructure?
8. For people new to virtualisation, what’s a good way for them to network with their peers?
9. What are your favourite ways to chill out after a hard day at the office?

and these are my answers:

http://xtravirt.com/einterview-with-mike-laverick-veteran-virtualisation-vexpert

This week I sat in on a TTT (Train-The-Trainer) session for a new VMware course called “Troubleshooting”. It’s part of my job as in instructor that I must attend these events to be able to deliver a particular course. So you know this new course has some hands on labs where you do some advanced configuring/reporting using various CLI tools, and it also contains PowerCLI scripts that the instructor runs which screws up vSphere4 environment, and students run about have to try and fix the problems. Its something I call “Instructor Revenge” – what it means is if you are an instructor and you have had “a***” on your previous course you can get your own back! What precisely is an “a***” on a course? An a*** on a course displays these annoying habits:

• The a*** tells the instructor how to do his job
• What ever you say, the a*** always contradicts it
• The a*** rambles on and on about problems he had, and how he resolved them – isn’t he just great!
• The a*** introduces himself by saying that he really shouldn’t be on this course, because he knows ALL this stuff already – and he is only doing it because of certification reasons
• The a*** interrupts the instructor every 10 seconds with a question – generally the very thing your about to say (because he thinks the instructor is too dumb to know it already)
• The a*** thinks instructor knows nothing about the “real” world
• The a*** only knows 20% of the product, but thinks he knows 100%

Anyway, you get the picture – fortunately most students are really nice and helpful – and a***s are few and far between. But when you get them, the troubleshooting course will be sweet revenge, because you can cripple his environment beyond repair and watch him struggle for four days. Revenge is dish best served cold, my friend.

Well, yesterday last week I had a real problem. Not a very serious one. So I left until today this week to resolve it. This is live blogging, by which I mean what is about to unfold is a journalistic account of how I fixed (or didn’t!) the problem. The idea of this to show how you troubleshoot a real problem – and the only way to do that realistically is to have one you haven’t seen before. I hope to learn as much as about this process and you do. So join me for this ride. The real thing I want to get across is the not the problem, but how I handle it. I might not handle it very well. Sorry about that. I do the best I can with the limited skills I have. But perhaps you can learn from my mistakes as well as my successes.

Let me start with a overview of what the problem is, and what I was doing when it happened – and what I think caused it.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weeks chinwagger is the internationally famous – Mr Sloof.

I first met Eric I think at the VMworld in Paris or what is Canne? Gee, I sound like an international jet setter myself! Me and Eric begin the “wag” with a discussion about how he got into virtualization, and we kinda took an unscheduled stop around his home lab – we also discussed life as an instructor compared to being out there in the “real world”. Finally, I asked Eric about how learned his impressive programming skills and to ask about his new “little tool” called vmClient. How like a Dutchman to want to talk about his tool?

If you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the podcast RSS feed which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them.

If you have never visited Mr Sloof’s blog you should – it here – http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/

Of course, like many of my chums in the blogger-sphere, he’s on the Twitter-Sphere too you can twitter with Eric here: http://www.twitter.com/esloof

Below is the chinwag video, and Eric has a video of his “cool utility”, now doesn’t that sound better than “little tool”.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This weeks chinwagger is the internationally famous – Mr Sloof.

I first met Eric I think at the VMworld in Paris or what is Canne? Gee, I sound like an international jet setter myself! Me and Eric begin the “wag” with a discussion about how he got into virtualization, and we kinda took an unscheduled stop around his home lab – we also discussed life as an instructor compared to being out there in the “real world”. Finally, I asked Eric about how learned his impressive programming skills and to ask about his new “little tool” called vmClient. How like a Dutchman to want to talk about his tool?

If you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the podcast RSS feed which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them.

If you have never visited Mr Sloof’s blog you should – it here – http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/

Of course, like many of my chums in the blogger-sphere, he’s on the Twitter-Sphere too you can twitter with Eric here: http://www.twitter.com/esloof

Below is the chinwag video, and Eric has a video of his “cool utility”, now doesn’t that sound better than “little tool”.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Vaughn Stewart is the Virtualization Evangelist for NetApp and a member of the Reference Architecture Team.  He is the co-author of several whitepapers on integrating VMware technologies on NetApp systems.  Vaughn publishes the blog: the Virtual Storage Guy, has a patent pending, and has earned industry certifications on technologies offered by Brocade, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, Sun Microsystems and VMware. In 2009 VMware identified Vaughn as a vExpert.

In the chinwag we discuss:

• VMware PEX
• The “Acquisition” of vExperts by EMC
• Virtual NetApp FSA…
• What’s on the horizon for NetApp in the current year specifically on virtualization (not necessarily just Vmware…)

If you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the podcast RSS feed which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them.

If you want to follow Vaughn’s blog it’s here: http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/

and he’s also on twitter too… http://twitter.com/vStewed

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hi there, and welcome to this months vNews.  A monthly round up of what’s going on in the world of virtualization. Yeah, I scan all the blogs – filter out what I can and then regurgitate it for you pleasure. That doesn’t sound nice. I do these occasionally for the user groups I’m speak at, it’s part news, part tips and part personal rant.

If you want the PowerPoints they are here… and if you just want the links they are here:

VMware + EMC Eats Itself

VI3.5 Support

Chris Wolf’s take on VMware’s cherry picking of EMC Ionix

Iomega vClone

TrainSignal vSphere4 Pro Series

NetApp & VMware vSphere – Best Practises

vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide – PDF Version

Foundations for Cloud Computing with vSphere4

vSphere Session Montor 2.0

Xtravirt RDP vSphere4 Plug-in

VMware PEX – Transparent Memory Compression (TMC)

Microsoft – Linux Integration Tools for RHEL

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack/64-bit App-V 4.6

Microsoft NVSPBIND.EXE

Citrix release virtual appliances

vPivot – How you cannot trust performance data inside the guest operating sysem

vPivot – Using the Paravirtual SCSI Adapter – Performance Implictations

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I recently made the move over to using an Apple MBP, and was able to find the full Mac Client for my new laptop. The wheels came off when it came to licensing. Seems like I had temporary license on my MBP which when it expired wouldn’t be cleared. It took some google-wacking to find how to clear the cached temporary Microsoft CAL and Citrix CAL before I could connect again. So partly for my own future referrence, and partly to help others I thought I would document this process…

Firstly, started by clearing out the BUCKETS for non-windows clients which is held on the Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation Servers. This is located in the registry in \HKLM \Software \Citrix \MS Licensing followed by the Bucket ID

Next on the Mac, delete the CitrixID file held in Macintosh HD/Users/UserName/Library/Preferences/Citrix ICA Client/

Then finally, for good measure delete the contents of the Windows location for licensing (used if you RDP into the Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation server this located in /users /Shared /Microsoft /RDC Crucial Server Information

Here’s a round up of my favourite articles on the TechTarget site. VDI is a hot hot hot topic this week. At the top of my agenda this year is getting familiar with the XenDesktop product – and these need to know articles do help in that process.

SearchVirtualDesktop.com…
What you need to know about Citrix XenDesktop 4
A relatively complete product, XenDesktop 4 may be the VDI platform for you. Find out what it offers and if it’s a good fit for your enterprise.

VMware vies for virtual desktop dominance with View 4.5
VMware’s View 4.5 won’t be out until later this year. But sources said the VDI software has better management and tighter integration with ThinApp.

On the humorous side the co.uk arm of the TechTarget team has this fun post/round of “news’. I think they work for the Onion down in that London!

From SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.uk…
The Virtual Vidalia: EMC recruits top 25 bloggers; VMware fanboy upset Hyper-V doesn’t suck
In this edition: EMC has offered all top 25 VMware bloggers according to vSphere-land.com jobs; a VMware aficionado is deeply saddened that Microsoft Hyper-V R2 isn’t a ‘humungous flop’; a virtualization architect’s family still doesn’t understand what he does despite multiple explanation attempts; CBS contemplates “Survivor Island: The Virtualization Administrator”; and the mystery behind who @jtroyer follows on Twitter.

In this quick little tip I show you how you can use EMC Storage Viewer – to bridge the gap between the information you see in EMC NaviSphere application and the information you see in vSphere4. For years VMware Admins have struggled to map their datastores in ESX to the underlying LUN on the storage array. Not any longer they don’t. And like NetApps RCU and VSC – the EMC Plug-in is for free!

Click Here to read more:

Well, OK – I guess now that View4 has been released you could say this is a little old hat. But… much I what I write about in View3 is much the same in View4! Honestly! Someday I plan to revisit this series of articles probably when VMware 4.5 is released… By then VMware will have thier PCoIP protocol working with the Security Server, and much better integration with ThinApp.

This was originally wrote for the vSphere4 book that recently became available on Amazon. But it never made the book because of length of the whole book, and difficulty of finding a good home for a chapter VDI. Thanks to the folks of TechTarget for taking my work and making it available.

Part 1: What’s new with VDI?
Part 2: Installing VMware View
Part 3: Publishing individual virtual desktops
Part 4: Publishing virtual desktop pools
Part 5: Basics of VMware Composer and linked clones
Part 6: Managing linked cloned desktop pools
Part 7: Using a Virtual Desktop offline
Part 8: Desktop restrictions with group policy objects
Part 9: Installing Connection and Security servers
Part 10:Creating and applying certificates
Part 11: Application virtualization