Archive for January, 2009

Here’s a video webcast about what I’ve been upto this week. Well, actually this was taken about 2 weeks ago – but only gotten round to uploading this very week. Been soooo overwelmed with work, and goddamn email it’s untrue!

My topics include:

• Plans Online Training
• Where I am on the Vi4book
• Experiences of View3 on Vi4
• Problems with Microsoft NLB
• When will the Ops Guide for Vi4 be released?
• Plans for the SRM Book
• Free Content funded by Sponsors/Adverts
• No Subscription
• World Domination…

If you perfer to use iTunes, and want to watch this video on your iPOD then fine – you need to right click this link here, and download and iTunes – video has some URLS it which might difficult to read/write down – so they are reproduced below this post (ps the size is 130MB, which I know is a bit hefty for a 20min download so I will be experimenting in a more audio lossy format without depreciating the video quality)

Online Video [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Last Friday we had the first ever meeting of the Virtualization User Group Ireland (VUGIE for short, sounds kinda cute doesn’t it!) The meeting was very well attended with nearly 60 or so people. I think that’s a pretty good showing for a 1st ever meeting. Due a slight cock-up on the flight/RyanAir front I was limited to doing a vNews presentation – a round-up of virtualization news of the last couple of weeks – with some links – together with some SRM stuff. The vNews is my creation and mimics the rather humourous round up of news which our membership secretary and master of cermonies does for our London VMware UG. For those that attend and heard me speak here’s the PPT file for vNews. I’m still waiting on approval from VMware for the SRM slides – but they may already be on the public domain in the VMworld website – I will try and dig up a link for that ASAP. At some stage I want to make vNews a regular slot so rather than blogging there will be 15-20 video-webcast which you listen to or synch to your EyeToons…

vNews PowerPoints with Lynks

ps I dunno way I’ve taken to spelling everything in a kidult way – perhaps its something in my tea or I’m trying to cover my appalling spelling or dyslexia – delete excuse as approriate!

I know you saying – what VMworld 2008 pictures – a bit johnny come lately – but you know what its like with digi-cams pics can hang around on SD Card for ages until you transfer ‘em and print ‘em. Anyway, I got to hang out with some great guys at the track at VMworld – and one our number finally got around to release them. I was hamming it up for the camera as ever…

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Well, it looks like the virtualization blogs jumped the gun the other day – following other peoples lead (yes, I’m a sheep) and not reading the vExperts web-page closely enough. I think many of us completely misunderstood the vExperts Program.

You see is a nomination process not an election/voting process. That is to say you only have to be nominated once to be considered and repeated nominations make no difference! The intention as an email and blogpost from John Troyer (who runs VMTN and related community initiaves) was to aviod merely creating a popularity contest. I can see John’s point.

Of course the first thing I did when vExperts was launched was nominate myself. This felt a bit wierd. A bit like when during the election you see the candidate voting for themselves. Like what the ****! So it does seem like vExperts will be coronation process where the great and the good will decided who’s getting with the program, and who ain’t. That’s fair enough I guess but it goes against my natural instinct as republican (small r, meaning I don’t really believe in the consituational monarchy we have here in the UK. The Queen, god bless her… where did I leave my Acme Guilotine?) and democrat (again with a small d). 

So accordingly, I’ve re-edit the original vExperts post – and in a wierdly Stalinist way edit the past so it fits more with my version of the future. I will be seeing the other vExperts shortly I hope in Room 101. Geddit?

I normally am the shy retiring type when it comes to promoting myself. [That's a bit of classic British irony by the way]. What I mean is I normally askew such labels as “guru”, “expert” or whatever. Simply because I don’t really believe in the concept. I guru is someone who just knows more than you do in my experience – very often they are just one page ahead of you in the great big manual of the world. My other nervous about the term is often I think you claim you are one – your potentially putting yourself on a precarious pedestial. One where people may be tempted to knock you from – or throw tomatoes from. Indeed, I’ve occasionally experienced “blowback” from being Mr RTFM. When I ask a question on the forums I’m always a bit worried that someone is gonna say – Mike, its on page 189 of the PDF guide – RTFM. But being a lazy fellow its often easier to ask than trawl through acres of product documentation.

I had thought it was gonna be called the VVP (VMware Valued Professional) – I like the idea of being valued, it makes me think like I’m antique on the Antiques Roadshow (British reference, do you guys get that in the US?) Now I’m feeling like its the Golden Globe or the Oscars. I promise not cry and do a very long speech if my nomination is accepted!

But heck, I’m sure YOU are someone who has contributed greatly to the VMware Community in some shape or form. Maybe your on a steering committee for a UG or you wrote PDF which was download by 100′s of 1,000s of people and killed your web-server… Come on don’t be shy… Nominate yourself today… Now why does that sound like some kind of Microsoft catch-phrase?

http://www.vmware.com/communities/vexpert/

This is straight from the VMTN on vmware.com’s website…

Join us this Wednesday, Jan 14, for another round of the VMware Communities Roundtable podcast, where a panel of experienced VMware admins come together for a weekly session — usually informative, sometimes funny, occasionally abrasive, never scripted. We have an increasing number of live listeners and chatters from all around the world. If Rod can set the alarm to get up from Australia, and Tom can call in from his hotel room in the UK, you have no excuse for not taking a break from work, so just drop by and say hi.

I’m working from home this week, on my new “Operations Guide” to VMware Virtual Infrastructure 4. I’ve been on the beta programme for some months – and the main body of the book is more or less completed and in the hands of some top-notch guys from the Forums and elsewhere who are reviewing what I’ve written so far. 

I’m moving off into documenting the brand new features such as Distributed vSwitches and Host Profiles – but before I started on those I turned my attention to adding a VDI chapter to the operations guide. It’s not intended as an all-you-need-to-know chapter – but as a “jumpstart” or “getting started” guide to VMware’s most current VDI offering – VMware View 3. It just so happened that that this time co-incided with the release of Microsoft Windows 7 Beta. 

So this is what I’ve done. I got Windows 7 Beta 64-bit installed and running on ESX4. Then I got VMware Viewer installed and working with VirtualCenter4. That was a big relief. I was worried that perhaps VirtualCenter had changed so much that View3 wouldn’t work. But it worked like a charm right out of the box. I think that’s a good sign that VirtualCenter is stablizing enough that it can change – but older systems that might not have been tested or QA’d agains a new release still function.

It wasn’t all plane sailing. Firstly, Windows 7 doesn’t like the USB Redirection Service which comes as part of the VMware Agent. So I had to opt not to install it. Secondly, the “pass-through” feature didn’t work with Windows 7. Pass-through allows the user to log in to the View Client, and have these credentials passed on to the Windows Virtual Desktop. I suspect that the GINA (the graphical log in DLLs that make up the ctrl+alt-del process) have changed in Windows 7 from Windows Vista – and that as consequence VMware will have to issue an update to the client when they decide to support Windows 7. Thirdly, I decided to install the Window 7 64-bit version. I used Windows Vista 64-bit as the guest operating system during the Windows 7 install – then install the 64-bit edition of VMware Tools. That worked like a charm. Also the VMware Agent installed to Windows 7 64-bit without a problem either. Finally, to get this Windows 7 virtual desktop recognised by VMware View I toggled the guest operating system pull-down list to be the Windows Vista 32-bit Edition. It was only half-way thru this build that I remembered that VMware VDM and View don’t currently support the 64-bit editions of Windows. Still I was able to “blag and bluff” my way round that lack of support/QA…

I’m hoping that Windows 7 might make virtual desktops more popular. Is time goes by its going to become increasingly difficult to hang on to Windows XP. But generally the corporate market has given Vista the thumbs down – not least with its disk and memory footprint. I’m hoping with thinly-provisioned disks being available in Vi4, that business will jump-over Vista – and go striaght from XP to Windows 7. That said I’m still find 2GB RAM is need to make Windows 7 workable….

Anyway, if your interested (?!?!) there are some screen grabs of my installation of Windows 7, and my VMware Viewer configuration…

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The other day my attention was drawn to some really useful documents surrounding Site Recovery Manager. They have been written by Cormac O’Hogan who is based Cork, Ireland. Cormac is pretty cool guy. I’ve come across him before – as he has spoken at VMworld Europe a couple of times, and he’s becoming increasing active in my speciality of VMware Education. Oddly, enough Cormac’s PDF files have found a home in the VI:OPS Blog rather than in the new “Uptime” blog which I flagged up the other week… Go figure. Anyway, at least someone has written them – which is the main thing.

Each of the DOCs show how to set up SRM with:

• FalconStor NSS
• Lefthand VSA
• EMC Celerra (iSCSI)
• NetApp

http://viops.vmware.com/home/community/availability?view=documents

Scott Lowe has an interesting blog post – about grabbing the image form the Installable Version of ESX3i and transfering it to memory stick… using an Apple MAC. At the moment ESX4i is being distributed in the beta programme as DD image file that you can use the DD command from Linux to transfer an image to the memory stick. I happen to have 4 memory sticks worth of ESX3i from VMworld 2007. It was realitively painless process – I hope when it comes to the time of Vi4 GA that they allow this DD version to circulate – as its the easiest way to update the sticks. It’s a kin to flashing them…

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/01/08/creating-a-bootable-esxi-usb-stick-on-mac-os-x/

If you are VCP already you probably got this email message in your inbox, but perhaps your email has changed sinced you got your VCP – and so it went under your radar. If you are VCP you qualify for €650 discount on the event – despite the fact that the early-bird discount period has ended. Here’s the content of that email that explains all:

Hello VCP,

In 7 weeks time the 2nd VMworld in Europe will be opening its doors! The early bird special offer is not available anymore, but like last year, we always take care of our VMware Certified Professionals with a permanent special offer. When you register with your VCP number, we will always give you a special VCP discount price of €650. In case you have lost your VCP number, I have looked it up for you : Your VCP ID is: VCPXXXXXX

This year we will offer even more hands-on labs at the event, where you can get your hands on the latest technologies. To create even more capacity all the labs will be self-paced, so you can come when ever you like and how often you like! We will provide terminals where you can sit down and work through these labs, but we will also allow you to connect with your own laptop. When you bring your own laptop there is even less chance of waiting in line. (Do make sure you run windows on your laptop, we will provide the VDI environment to connect to). 

We have made a short promo video about the hands-on labs @ VMworld that you can watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVMxrVuaxLI 

Besides the hands-on labs, we will again have an extremely exciting solution exchange with more then 100 vendors showcasing their virtualization technologies. This will be THE place to find out what is going on in our exciting virtualization industry!

There will be around 150 unique breakout sessions to make sure you can keep your virtualization skills up-to-date. From deep technical sessions about the latest technologies like VMware Fault Tolerant, VMmark, Distributed Virtual Switches and much more to real world practical sessions on how to best implement key applications in your environment. 

In the following weeks we will post more promotion sessions on YouTube about what will be going on during the event. If you want to stay up-to-date subscribe to our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/VMW0RLD. Part of the breakout session list will soon be posted on the vmworld.com website. Watch this space!

Hope to see you all in Cannes