Archive for March, 2010

This weeks chinwagge is Steve Bryen.

I first met Steve at last months London VMware User Group. He’s an IT professional based in London, UK. And he’s passionate about virtualization and is very keen to share his experiences and personal opinions on Various Virtualization products. He was first introduced to Virtualization back in 2008. He got sent onto a VMware Training Course that he knew nothing about and was amazed by what he saw. This was when he made the decision that he wanted to be involved with this new up and coming technology. It didn’t take long until he really got addicted to Virtualization, and the great community that support it. He started working with it more and more and even managed to get the word Virtualization into his  job title

As relatively new comer to virtualization – I thought it was good to see that the technology is bringing new blood and fresh generation into the community. I thought that with a fresh pair of eyes, Steve could give us a less jaded view of the world of IT. Hopefully, it hasn’t made him cynical and jaded (like me!) already! Not to be outdone Steve already has a blog up and running:

And he’s also on twitter too:

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 via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link.

On the chinwag we chat about how Steve got into virtualization – Steve shares with us some of the challenges he’s faced in automating the ESX/vCenter/VM deployment specifically to do with sudo permissions and enabling iSCSI from the ESX firewall. Later on we discuss the future of automation, and Steve share’s his opinions on the cloud – finally Steve describes the “Icecube Datacenter Container”

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as cannibalised from Tom Howarth’s planetvm.net blog:

http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=1404

I think I might be speaking – just doing the Virtualization News slot – not sure yet!

This weeks chinwagger is Rynardt Spies, he’s a Virtualisation Technical Consultant at ComputaCenter (UK) Ltd. He’s been in IT professionally for the last 9 years and I’ve been working with VMware Enterprise products since early 2005. As well as being a VCP in both VI3 and vSphere 4. he also specialises in post sales design and implementation of VMware vSphere solutions. As a virtualisation consultant, his client list includes companies and organizations such as Hays Specialist Recruitment, Liberata, SEGRO, Lehman Brothers In Administration, BAA & Nationwide Building Society. He is also the founder of VirtualVCP.Com and last year was awarded the vExpert status for his efforts in the virtualisation community. Like me Rynardt is also active on twitter:

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 via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link.

In the chinwag we chat about how Rynardt got into virtualization, and how he built his home lab. Additionally, we discuss the challenges of trying to learn new blade systems such as HP Matrix or Cisco UCS. Towards the end we chinwag about the merits of NFS vs VMFS, and VMware’s plans to discontinue the Service Console version of ESX, in favour of ESXi.

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I’m pleased to announce the general availability of my new book. It’s free to download as a PDF file – and if you prefer a hard-copy you can print a physical copy of the book from LULU.COM.

Both the PDF and the hard-copy are available from the LULU.COM website.

Some stats:”

• The book is just short of 100,000 words
• 400 pages
• 6 months to complete from start to finish
• Additional 100 pages of text and supporting graphics from the SRM 1.0 book
• Additional 3 chapters

What’s New?

• All graphics updated to vSphere4
• All new theme of the New York and New Jersey – Protected and Recovery Site
• How setup replication for EMC Celerra, Clariion CX3, NetApp Filers and HP Lefthand VSA
• Integrated with these three storage vendors  – so I cover what happens in EMC, NetApp, and HP when recovery plans are tested or run
• Coverage of the new “Shared Site” configuration
• Integrating PowerCLI scripts to the Recovery Plan
• How to automate VMware SRM using the SRM SDK API
• Updated PowerCLI chapter specific to the new vSphere4 Distributed vSwitches

This time around I won’t be taking a royalty for the new book.  I would however, strongly urge you to donate money to my chosen charity. That charity is Unicef and this is what they do:

“UNICEF works with families, communities and governments in more than 190 countries worldwide to protect and promote the rights of all children. We are guided throughout our work by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantees every child the same rights: to an education, to a childhood, to be as healthy as possible, to be treated fairly and to be heard. UNICEF works in all these areas, and does so in a joined up way to achieve the best possible outcomes for children.”

So before you begin to read book, please pause to think of the millions of children you help by making a relatively small donation.

The recommended donation is $10 (US Dollars) or the equivalent in your currency.

http://www.supportunicef.org/forms/whichcountry2.html

Click the graphic to download/order the book, but before you do – please consider a donation of some kind.

This weeks chinwaggee is Tom Howarth.

He’s a VMware User Communities moderator, and run his own blog called PlanetVM.net – Infinite possibilities in a Virtual world. I have Tom’s blog on my feedburner, and we also keep in touch via twitter – if you also want to follow Tom here here:

http://twitter.com/tom_howarth

If you have ever met Tom you will know (like me) that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly – and he’s isn’t shy of an expressing his opinion – all that makes him excellent Chinwag material! I’ve met Tom a couple of times in recent years, usually he has son in tow who works with him. The most memorable time for me was when we found ourselves on the same plane to San Francisco for VMworld. I was sat next to a guy from IDC, and cross the way were a couple of my VMUG friends – and Richard Garsthagen. It was like the plan was just full of virtualization guys! Anyway, mid-way through the flight we ended up having  a two hour chinwag on the plane about virtualization.

In this weeks chinwag – Tom tells me about his “brown bag” series with Cody Bunch all about the VMware VCDX process – we discuss certification generally. I also asked Tom for his opinions on VMware View in the light of some of Brian Maddens rather stinging comments about about VMware’s virtual desktop solution. It turns out that Tom is writing a book about View, so as fellow author we talked about the challenges – not least Tom’s frustration at not being able to get on to the VMware View 4.5 Beta Programme! Finally, we finished up with a chat about the VMware Community.

This is quite a long chinwag – and quite a funny one too – what with door bells and phones going off. It just show how laid back and relaxed we are on the ‘wag…

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 via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link.

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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.

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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”.

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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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