Archive for August, 2010

Well, arrived here on Saturday. And my mate, Geoff picked me up from the hotel. He lives up at Half Moon Bay, outside of San Francisco. After a quick shower and brush up – we headed out to meet up with John Troyer, and his partner Kathleen – at a little Mexican in HMB. My pal has only lived there for a short while, and John has been there for a while – so it was really good to hook up with him, and have some great food and just chill-out before madness of VMworld proper kicked off…

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Here’s a special offer – If your one of the 1st 25 people to attend my session at VMworld, I will give you a free copy of my SRM 4.0 book. Talk about daylight bribery huh?

Remember I’m doing two sessions – one one Monday and another on Wednesday. So I have 50 copies in total to hand-out. VMware are sponsoring the books, and royalties from this will be going to my chosen charity this year – UNICEF. So its all in a good cause.

Don’t forget I will be doing a book signing slot at 4pm on Wednesday…

Session ID: BC7773

Title: VMware Site Recovery Manager: Misconceptions and Misconfigurations

Abstract: In the session, Mike Laverick (author of the only two books on VMware SRM) will discuss popular misunderstandings about what is possible for a configuration of SRM, and popular misunderstandings about the product. Drawing from his book, Mike will outline some of the limitations that SRM possess, and how you can work around these with a combination of PowerCLI and the SDK. Finally, Mike will discuss what he thinks future versions of SRM will attempt to deliver, and how thinks the technology will evolve in the next 5 years.

This weeks winner is Gary, Heron – CONGRATULATIONS GARY!

I will be sending the TrainingSignal DVDs to Gary on my return to the UK, after VMworld

He’s been using VMware for 7 years. Last year he passed the VCP410 exam and he’s currently studying for the VCAP-DCA and then the VCAP-DCD.   He’s been with his current employer for 12 years and works in a team of 5 who are responsible for the EMEA Data centre based in the UK. Being a small team they support all the server, storage and network hardware as well as the operating systems and applications. They also provide 3rd line support to the IT staff in EMEA.  They  have used VMware since ESX 2.5 and upgraded through 3.0.2 and 3.5.
Their current EMEA Data Centre environments run ESX 4.0 and 3.5 on ageing Proliant and EMC hardware. This hardware hosts ~100 virtual servers and they have now reached the maximum number of machines we can run. With physical servers still waiting to be virtualized we will be replacing the hardware next month with HP DL380 G7s and bigger EMC SANs.

They are also in the process of consolidating the servers in the larger European offices on to DL380s running ESXi 4. VMware has allowed us to replace all the servers (4 to 7 servers per site) on to a single machine. This gives them savings on replacing all the server hardware and maintenance support while making remote support and management much easier.

It’s been a bizzy, bizzy week – and VMworld 2010 hasn’t even started!

I’ve been doing a couple of podcast this week. The first over on the APAC VMware Communities Round-table. In the podcast I basically air my views on VMware Site Recovery Manager and DR generally. It’s a bit of sneaky preview of my session at VMworld next week. So if you can’t VMworld this year, toddle over to their webpage where you can listen again – heck you might even be inspired to subscribe to their iTunes Podcast.

In the same day, I did a podcast with Colin Steele at SearchServerVirtualization.com. Also on the show was VMware Communities Big Cheese – John Troyer… I was talking with Colin about VMware’s forthcoming cloud announcements, and desktops too – whereas John was talking about the social aspect of the VMworld event.

Then in the evening I was “on” the VMware Communities Round-table. Well, I say “on”, it wasn’t really my show – but VMware’s CTO Steve Herod. I managed to get a question in about how I feel the SMB market is being ignored in the cloud debate, but how I feel that the SMB market might have the MOST to gain from a cloud infrastructure.

It was this point that John Troyer asked if I was stalking him. As we kept on bumping into each at the same virtual social media events! I guess that’s testament to how much my life has change since hitching my wagon to TechTarget in Feb, I’m slowly evolving (or is that degenerating!?!?!) into a full-time freelance writer, blogger, podcaster, video, social media type guy. It’s an interesting learning curve, I can tell you!

Note: Ricky is the  guy on the left… He is the winner with the longest ever chinwag. Longer than even Tom Howarth. You know what its like. Two Northerns in chat, they never know when to shut the * up…!

This weeks chinwaggee is Ricky-El-Qasem. Me and Ricky have been pals for a while. We first met back in the days of the VMware TSX event that happened in Paris/Disney World. I think that was 2006. It was a blast we had free run of the park! Back then we were both instructors (VMware Certified Instructors). Since then a lot has changes for myself and Ricky. Ricky is now at Veeam – based in EMEA but seems to spend a lot of his time in St Petersberg recently…

In his own words he is:

Director of Global Education Services with Veeam Software. 18 years in the business and started using VMware about 9 to 10 years ago and have the scars to prove it. I sport a plethora of certifications including GOLD MCSE, CCEA, RHCT, VCP/VCI, vExpert, Qlogic CP, Xenserver CCA and many more. Like to be known as a jack of all trades master of none ( or VMware ) In my spare time I webmaster my own virtualisation blog site which has been running for 5 years http://www.virtualizeplanet.com <http://www.virtualizeplanet.com> and have been known to write my own Private Cloud virtualisation applications. I’m well acquainted in the virtualisation industry and well liked by all (not sure about Steve Chambers though ;-0). Follow me on twitter.com/rickyelqasem – That’s my eldest daughter in the picture which some people believed VMware would be her first word. Unfortunately her first word was “bob” as in SpongeBob.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

In this weeks chinwag we chat about the tension between being a jack-of-all-trades in IT, as compared to being a Master/GUR/WarriorMonk… we also talk about how Ricky got into making applications with angle specifically on virtualization…

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

Well, I’m spending today preparing for VMworld US. If you are going perhaps you would like to meet me. That’s going to be tricky, because as ever I’m awfully busy! However, I have sometime where I’m not due to be anywhere in particular. In that time you will find me at the VMware Communities Lounge. It’s the general place where bloggers, user group and their ilk hang out.

This is my schedule. The red bits are when I will be a free man. I will be at the WuPasS gathering at the Thirsty Bear. I will be giving away a copy of my vSphere4 book as part of the competition they have there. Monday, I will be attending the private VCI (VMware Certified Instructor) day, but I will be shelling out to deliver the 1st SRM presentation . I have an evening meal with Jacob Jenson of VMware (he’s got management oversight over things like SRM), and then I want to drop-by at the EMC vGeekFest to say a big YO! BRO! to all my vSpecialist chums – I hope to end the evening by making the Official TweetUp for VMworld 2010. Then SLEEP!

Tuesday I will be at the opening keynote. Expect something VERY big there! And then me and TechTarget crew assemble to hit the Solutions Exchange Floor as part of the VMworld “Best in Show” Awards scheme. This is my second time judging, and this year I’m in the “Cloud” catagory. I’ve got a quick lunch time met with Marc from TechTarget before carrying on with the judging. In the evening I will be attending the NetApp event. I’ve RSVP’d but its on a first-come first served basis – and hope to get an invite to the Veeam Party. I’ve just sent them a cheeky email to see if I can get a ride along. Then SLEEP!

Wednesday. In the morning I’m free til lunch – so I will do the key note, and then hang out at the VMTN Communities Lounge. At 12noon I have the 2nd SRM presentation – and then a little wee gap before showing my face at 3pm for  TA8623 – Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge – where Cody Bunch, Chad Sakac (EMC), Vaughn Stewart (NetApp) and Adam Carter (HP Lefthand). I hope the bout will be clean and sportsman like. I’ve got a slot to sign books directly after that session so I will have haul ass over to the book store. Then its the VMworld Party – I will be at large. Look out for a guy who has “RTFM Education – Mike Laverick” on his polo shirt!

Thursday – Well, it looks like I’m up to nothing. But I’m actually holding part of this day free so I can make a trip to Alcatraz. I’m hoping one of my buddies from North Carolina will be able to join me.

If you want to contact me during the show – best bet is twitter – I’m @mike_laverick

Well, there’s been a little bit of confusion about what to call this thing. vCenter Hearbeat Service? vCenter Server Heartbeat? vCenter Heartbeat – and of course, from then comes an alphabet soup of acronymns – but as I guess so long as the letter v is lower-case I should be just fine. Right? Anyway, I will be soon be jetting of vMwOrLd soon :p

I’ve written a ton load of stuff about vCHB – about 5K of words – which is way over my allocation with TechTarget, but fortunately my long suffering editor has cut me some slack. So what do we have. Well, a 4-part article with Part1/2 appearing in this months edition of SearchVirtualDataCentre, and the next two parts in September when I get back from VmWoRlD. Part1/2 concern the setup and post-configuration of vCHB, and significance to VMware customers in the round. Parts 3/4 cover my experiences of the product caused by me doing various tests (i.e braking stuff) to see how vCHB copes with an outage.

Here’s Part1 and here’s Part2

Yes. I’m launching a special draw. Heck, it might even be a weekly thing. Here’s how it works. As an exceedingly well-known, influential and modest member of the virtualization community I occasionally get freebies. I mean nothing fancy. I’ve never been offered an IPAD but I would take one if someone offered me it! But I get other stuff – books, DVDs, and so on. To be honest I might never even use them or if I do I might casually glance through them. So my idea is to give them away as prizes on my website.

This weeks competition is to win a copy of the TrainSignal – VMware vSphere Pro Series Vol.2. I have two copies. One for me, and one to give away.?

The draw closes on Friday, 27th August 2010 at 5pm GMT. The winner will be announced shortly after on this website…

How do you enter the draw. There’s two ways. Subscribe to RTFM or  follow me on twitter and send me tweet. You also will need to answer a question correctly set by me. All correct entries will be entered into a special virtual “hat” and the winner will be sent the DVD. I will contact you via email or twitter for your shipping. Simplez!

If you already follow me, then subscribe. If you already subscribe and follow me. Then, er – get another email address and subscribe again???

At some stage I want to add a question process to my subscription page on RTFM – so I can make a competition rather than lucky draw.

What do I get from this. Well, I get to reduce the amount stuff in my office, and also build my list of subscribers/followers – so I can send you all special offers on Viagra, Nigerian money transfers and penis enlargement deals.

Last week the folks over at TechTarget set me a little assignment. Look at how Microsoft can manage VMware via the SCVMM. For those not acquainted with the acronym. That’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager. I’ve always been a bit put of my acronym. SCVMM looks too much like SCUM or roman numerals for my taste!

I’m really loving the way the guys at TechTarget have marked up this week article – normally I get tiddle thumbnails which you can hardly read – but this week they are nice big full size graphics – really make the piece come alive. Just like an RTFM post does! :-p

Read on MacDuff….