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

 

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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

 

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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

Here’s all the articles I wrote about the NetApp Rapid Clone Utility 3.0 available on TechTarget.com. The three articles build as series to show you the full functionality of the NetApp RCU 3.0. At the time I wrote this – 3.0 was in beta but I imagine it has GA’d now.

Part one of the series describes what the RCU can do, and how its setup. Part 2 covers how you can provision new volumes from the NetApp Filer, and mount them to each and every ESX host as click of mouse. Finally, part 3 covers how you can quickly clone many VMs using the RCU – and then make those cloned desktops accessible by VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop

Part 1: Initial First-Time Configuration

Part 2: Deploying new datastores

Part 3: Cloning Virtual Machines

According to popular mythology many people mistaken think Al Renouf is French. He is in fact British, and his name probably reflects many centuries of Gallic influence in the United Kingdom. You might know Al by his punning website and twitter handle – virtu-al. When he’s not chasing spiders out of his son’s bedroom – Al’s busy adding more useful scripts to his webpage. Probably his most famous contribution is his “daily report” PowerShell script – that outputs file detailing the kind of handy information a VMware Admin needs. I meet up with Al occasionally at the London VMware User Group when we can…

In this week’s chinway we mainly talk about his project to virtualize Citrix WinFrame/MetaFrame/Presentation/XenApp (pick you name based on your age group…) servers into VMware… we also talk about how the server-based compute model still has a lot of value on virtualized platform, and how VDI still has a long way to go to catch-up with some of the functionality of the server-based computing model…

http://www.virtu-al.net/

Al’s passion is for virtualization and for PowerShell and VMware’s PowerCLI. I frequently bombard the poor guy with requests to figure stuff out for me! I would rate Al up there top bloggers writing about PowerShell and PowerCLI. If you want to follow Al on twitter here’s here:

http://twitter.com/alanrenouf

This weeks chinwag with Al is audio only – we had some troubles with webcams – so it was easier just to go for the audio instead.

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.

 

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Following on from my recent “Chinwag” with Gabrie Van Zanten, this blogpost compares the relative merits of VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop. It raises the issue that a VDI project does offer the tempting possibility of considering other virtualization vendors other than VMware. It also posits the idea that by diversifying your virtual portfolio to be more multi-vendor you might reduce your dependency on a single virtualization vendor, build the virtualization team out of the striaght-jacket of being a VMware-One-Trick-Pony – and although your organization to really play one virtualization vendor of against another from a licensing perspective.

Read more at:

There’s a live Q&A with the Microsoft virtualization team next Tuesday (23rd February) from 4pm to 7pm on Vistaheads. Representatives from Microsoft, including Senior Product Manager for System Center Virtual Machine Manager Edwin Yuen, will be fielding questions and contributing to discussions about the future of the virtualization industry. Topics for discussion will include:

• Security – Are you ensuring that your VM is as secure as your physical machines? How are you managing this?
• Cloud – Is the cloud the future? Is virtualization yesterday’s news?
• Live Migration – has the introduction of Live Migration to Hyper-V made Microsoft competitive?
• Features – What features would you like to see included on Hyper-V? What would provide the most benefit to you and why?
• VDI – What are your experiences of using VDI?
• General – Any other comments or advice for users on using Hyper-V and virtualization platforms

The event will be taking place here: http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-virtualization-q-tues-23rd-feb-2010. This even will provide the virtualization community with a chance to engage directly with key decision makers at Microsoft.