After yesterdays debacle over the TimeBomb, Paul Martiz the new CEO of VMware says sorry, and offers a link to patch the problem
http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2008/08/letter-from-vmw.html
A number of readers have flagged up this error circulating the forums. It’s date related. Apparently, a Vi3 system can become unlicensed after an upgrade to U2…
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/162377?tstart=0
Starting this morning, we could not power on nor VMotion any of our Virtual Machines. The VI Client threw the error “A general system error occurred: Internal Error”.
Further digging lead us to messages like this one in /var/log/vmware/hostd.log, and the log file for any virtual machine we tried to power on or VMotion:
Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| http://msg.License.product.expired This product has expired.
Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| Be sure that your host machine’s date and time are set correctly.
Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| There is a more recent version available at the VMware Web site: “http://www.vmware.com/info?id=4“.
Here’s a weekly round up on interesting issues concerning virtualization…
PXE booting the ESX3i Kernel
From Chris Wolf’s website I’ve seen a couple for very interesting posts. Firstly, if your curious about PXE booting the ESX3i product, there’s this post:
http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=182
Oracle support for Virtual Machines
Chris also kicks some butt on the issue of poor quality support from Oracle for virtual machines
http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=181
Who has the most cost effective virtual infrastructure
There’s been a number of attempts the costs of various virtual infrasture platforms. I really have a lot of time for Chris assessment after he opened my eyes to some licensing gotchas in Canne this year
http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=180
Vi3book Review….
Chris has some very nice comments for our Vi3 book. There seems to have been a very high and unexpected and high demand for the book which has occasionally lead it to be sometimes in and that out of stock on various website. Bear with us we will get it to you!
http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=179
Meanwhile David Marshall has been bizzy on his blog too.
DR a hot topic:
Of interest to me personally, David flagged up a survey that shows that DR is THE top issue for organisations. As you might know I’m busy on writing my book on VMware’s DR tool, Site Recovery Manager. It’s nice to know I’m writing about a topic which is topical!
I passed out a first draft of my SRM book to reviewers this week, to harvest some corrections and initial feedback. David is on the list too, which prompted him to blog about it…
VMware Education Launch a New Certification Programme
Well, it been long its generation (I remember talk about this in 2006 at VMworld LA) but its finally out. I’ve been told that VMware does not expect the world and his wife to achieve the certification. Perhaps your a candidate:
VMware’s VDM wins Visual Studio Magazine’s 2008 Readers Choice Awards
This was a suprise to me. I wasn’t especially bowled over myself by VDM. It does the job that a broker does, I guess after many years of doing Citrix – getting an SSL channel to XP desktop doesn’t fire my passion as it should. Nonetheless the readers of the mag rated it
From MS Virtualization FUD Machine, er I mean Blog…
Heck, lets have this for the hell of it – its another one these curiously sounding customer testomonies – what’s curious about them. Well, they all have the seem tone… erm like they have been written by the same person in a PR team. Like companyname with other company name.
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/08/05/guest-post-maximumasp-and-hyper-v.aspx
Well, I guess in a couple months – the PR party will move on to some other MS offering like taking on google or the-next-big-buzz word. Let’s see that will be “cloud”…
From the Register – Symantec offer a Broker and Application Streaming
Is there anyone who doesn’t have a brokering offer and some way of streaming applications to that desktop? Heck, I think RTFM should have one if the world-and-his-wife-does. Anyway, Symantec has one now called AppStream. So that’s SoftGrid, ThinApp, AppStream. So I’m thinking I will call mine SoftApp or ThinGrid, SoftStream… 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/05/symantec_buys_nsuite/
From the VMTM Team Blog – Vi3.5 Update 2
Want to learn more about the new features in 3.5 U2… Well, he’s a round up of the key features and what they do for us
A source close to RTFM. We will call him “Deep Throat” for the purpose of this blog. [Incidentally, that's a Tricky-Dick Nixon reference, not a referrence to any porn you might own] Tells me there is a secret Vi4 Beta Program. NOW, the big question is how does someone has unimportant, uninfluential as my good self get enrolled to the secret program?
I hope to get an email asking me to meet a VMware employee at local gas station with a brown envelope sometime time soon. Of course, if that does happen I will go horribly silent and have to kill everyone who reads this post. You have been warned….
Well, I was wrong – the worldest largets corporation does not have “it in for” the worlds smallest techblog (actually I’m about 6ft something – I won’t discuss if I am small in other areas). It turns out that SiteMeter (who do my website hit counter) has a problem with IE7 or IE7 has a problem with it – I guess that depends much on your perspective. Well, I’ve removed the troublesome piece of code as a temporary work around. So my little blog shouldn’t crash the web browser any more…
This isn’t a rhetorical question by the way. Nor am I reporting a rumour – but a striaght up/stand up question. Is there a secret Vi4 beta program – or has VMware not opened one up to their favourite people?
Well, it finally happend. IE7 doesn’t appear to like my website anymore after a Windows Knack-your-computer-Update. Mozilla works just fine. Of course, it will be security thing I imagine. IE7 trying to protect you from the evil code behind my webpages. Clearly, I must be delusional. God, soon I will be ranting on about why Windows isn’t more like Linux – and how Bill Gate’s personifies the evil that is trying to steal away my computing freedoms. [Do not flame me - I'm only joking] 
Well, there’s fancy term for blogs about blogs. It’s aggregation. That’s where a blog wraps up in one bit size blog other bloggers content. It’s well know practise, and VMTN on VMWare.com is a good place to add to your RSS Feeder if you just want to keep an eye on the bloggersphere from one point. After all we live information overload. Heck, even I have started to do it myself – with virtinfo – a weekly(ish) round up of stuff I’ve seen online that I’ve found interesting. It’s a kinda of tipping my hat to the other bloggers out there. Of course what I’m really about its trying to create unique and valuable content on RTFM.
So I was somewhat suprised when I was looking at my WordPress Trackbacks (this allows to see who has linked to you) to see a post on another blog that had the EXACT same name as my post. Upon further examination it was a exact replica of post I’d done 5mins before. You know not just a link – but an entire cut & paste job. A kind of aggregation to far. Anyway, it looks like this guy has found away of creating a blog of blogs automatically (unless he does it by cut & paste). So with a bit a luck this very same post will be on his blog shortly.
So then we will really have a blog that blogs about blogs, that blogs and about blogs. Originality it isn’t what it used to be
http://vmware.dropcode.net/1/blogs-that-blog-about-blogs-that-blog-about-blogs-3156/
In about a months time I will be setting of to VMware’s location in the UK to sit in on a Train-The-Trainer Session on VMware’s SRM. The education programme within VMware is gearing up for what’s expected to be big demand for training on the new product. For years people have casually talked about virtualizing the DR, now there’s a tool from VMware that automates that process. Anyway, my fellow VMware Certified Instructors (VCI) will be attending the first TTT in mid-August (which I couldn’t make) and I’m on the one at the beginning of Sept.
As you might know I’ve been working for sometime with SRM (since March/April) with the beta and release candidate. I was very fortunately to be introduced to Adam Carter of Lefthand Networks, from LHN I aquired two NFR licenses for their VSA. In case you don’t know the VSA is virtual appliance (a virtual machine) which reproduces perfectly their iSCSI SAN/IQ environment. So with two VSAs, and a couple of clicks you can quickly have replication/snapshots of your VMFS volumes – which is great for evaluating and training the VMware SRM product. So even with a couple of servers can get a proof-of-concept style environment up and running in no time.
So what’s this free chapter for? Well, its for any VCI who’s looking for step-by-step guide to setting up the VSA (please consult the offical VMware VATC guides when they become available – FYI when its ready the will be a “at cost/authors edition available for VCIs prior to the main commerical release of the book) and for anyone out there who needs to quickly get to grips with SRM product but like me doesn’t have guru like storage knowledge or access to 50K+ worth of storage technology!
I was helping out some guy on the SRM forum this week with his VSA, and passed this chapter on to him to help out. It seemed a shame not to make this particular part available to everyone. What a generous kind of fellow I must be There’s a new version of VSA on its way in a OVF format. I’ve got a beta copy to play with from Adam. So with a bit of luck the setup will be even easier – and my book will be up-to-date with what the LHN guys are doing at time of publication.
Chapter 2: Install and Configure Lefthand Networks VSA
ps. This is a first draft/sample chapter of the book. The book has been read once by me, and proof-read by my partner. It’s not been technically proof-read by the LHN guys or VMware. That should start sometime next week…
pps. So you know I’m working on adding EMC Celerra, NetApp and Equallogic to the book…
There’s been a lot of changes going on in VMware recently – what with the departure of Dianne Green and the fact that ESX3i has been made freely available. Along with VMware’s faultering share price. That said have you seen the rest of the stock market recently? I’m waiting for the letter that comes thru post from my pension fund/provider. You know the one that says to get X in your pension pot as originally planned you would have to work extra 10 years. OUCH! I don’t know about you but sometimes I wonder if my pension fund would be better put into my matress. Anyway, joking/digression apart the recently changes have obiviously caused people to wobble a little bit, and the blogsphere (aka random ramblings of people not always connected to planet earth, has gone into overdrive. I won’t mention any names here – as a lot of these guys are friendly. But generally the fall into this catagory:
Hopefully, you see all through this. Especially, the predictions. You see no-one can see into the future, and not will happen. I imagine the bloggers who going off on one currently, will quitely forget their predictions when they don’t come true – or tout themselves as true psychics of virtualization when they are proved right. Like any bad scientist you can always make yourself look a genius if you choose to select the evidence that proves your half-baked theories…
You know what? I said I wouldn’t blog about FUD again. But here I am again doing again. Enough, already!
If you want to here the counter arguments check this out.
Recipe for a Catchy Headline: Top ___ Reasons Why VMware is ___ (Fill in the blanks)
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