Archive for September, 2010

This year I had my all-new SRM 4.0 book at the VMworld BookStore. As you might know this book is sold not-for-profit. Instead all the royalities are donated to my chosen charity this year of UNICEF. Sadly, those folks at FedEx were unable to get the books to the Moscone until Wednesday. That was fortunate in one respect as at least there were some books there for me do my signing event. The downside is the missed 2-days worth of selling opportunities!

I’ve already had a cheque from the guys at the bookstore – for the copies sold during the event. We just need to clear the remaining stock, and then I will get a second cheque… The end of my financial year is April, 2011 – and I will be announcing how much I’ve raised then, and gathering all the various amounts together to make a single sum.

Anyway, the chaps who run the bookstore have some hard copies of the SRM 4.0 book in their store – and so to clear that stock I’m re-pointing the links on RTFM to there store.

So if you want a hard-copy of the SRM book the place to visit is here

If you would prefer a soft-copy of the book the place to go is still LULU.com over here

This weeks chinwag is with Stu McHugh. I know Stu from the London VMware User Group where he’s a regular attendee. At the last VMUG, Stu presented (for the first time, well done Stu!) about his experiences of rolling out a virtual desktop solution in his environment. It was the kind of gold-dust real-world customer focused thing which is short supply. So I was keen to get Stu on the chinwag to share his unique experiences with others.

His blog is located here: http://stumchugh.wordpress.com/

And he’s also on twitter: @stu_mchugh

This is the list of questions I had for our chinwag:

1. I understand you use local storage for your virtual desktops – what decisions lead you down this route, and why did you discount shared storage
2. What thin and zero clients have trialed – and what have your experiences been like?
3. Your project use WinXP, I was interested to know why you didn’t use VDI as jumping off point for Win7?
4. It looks like you backwards and forwards between RDP vs PCoIP – what caused you fall along the lines of PCoIP…?

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

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Well, now were all back from VMworld, the videos and pictures are steadily coming through…

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This weeks competition is a little bit different. It’s to win a copy of Brian Perry’s, Chris Huss, and Jeantet Fields “VCP – VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 – STUDY GUIDE”.

So how is the competition different. Well, this time to enter what you need to do is comment on this post. But not any old comment will do my friend! Your comment is going to have to be about a particular subject – and the prize will be awarded to who I think has written the best comment on the roll. Here’s the subject.

My thoughts have been turning increasingly to the fact that in within next year or so there is likely to be a new version of vSphere. Probably vSphere5. Now my question is what kind of book should this be. Should it be your ye olde – how to install ESX, vCenter, Create VMs, Set-up Clustering and VMotion etc etc. OR should it take it another approach? Have the days of writing a book which documents in detail how to create a VM had their day? Would you prefer to see a “cloud” book that would emphasize how to setup VMware vCD, vCO, vShields, ChargeBack, AppSpeed and so on and so forth. Is a book something you really want any more? Who reads books? Wouldn’t you prefer step-by-step videos? Who has time for those?

Anyway. Share your opinion in the form of comment – and enter the competition at the same time! Try to limit yourself to 500 words or less…

UPDATE: I forgot to say what the closing date was. It will be 21st of September at 5pm GMT.

Last weeks winner of Eric Siebert rather wonderful book was Brian Springa of the UK… Brian is a specialist in VMware after working with the product for over 5 years within the investment and financial sectors. He also attends the London VMUG when work commitments allow.

Congratulations Brian. Expect are wee parcel very soon!

Well, its that’s time of year again. Time to vote for your top virtualization bloggers on Eric Siebert’s vsphere-land.com – a site worthy of vote if there ever was one…

I’ve been very busy this year. Writing articles for TechTarget on a weekly basis, and I’ve been point to them from RTFM since my recent switch over. Many bloggers have this year become affiliated to large companies like VMware and EMC, but as for me I essentially remain independent. TechTarget don’t give me any steer on what I do on RTFM. This year I launched the successful video-podcast series on RTFM – the Chinwag and Vendorwag. They go out on a weekly basis. Last week I hit upon the idea of getting my articles for TechTarget. So that will be a regular event – so long as the article works well in that format. After all who wants to listen to narrated article about PowerCLI! These are now going out as part of my weekly podcast…

Additionally, I’ve released two books this year – Implementing vSphere4 with McGraw-Hill, and also my own self-published Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0. The SRM book was given away for free, with a voluntary donation recommended of $10 of UNICEF. Last week I gave away another guide to View 4.5 this time with a mandatory $9.99 donation to UNICEF. I think this how I will be operating in the short term – writing long, very detailed guides which are largely free…

I’ve also made it part of my regular week to tune into the VMware APAC and VMTN Communities Roundtable Podcasts – and try to chirp in when I see I can add value. I’ve twice been a guest on the APAC podcast – once just talking about my book work and tie-in with TechTarget and then the second time giving a preview of the SRM session I delivered this year at VMworld 2010 – San Francisco.

You can learn all about the contestants and the voting process here – http://vsphere-land.com/news/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-bloggers.html

My pal, Carl over at ultimatedeployment.org has been busy. He’s built a brand new version of the UDA that now supports ESX 4.1 and ESXi 4.1 installable…

I’ve updated the files he has and converted them in the format that ESX recognises and bundled them in the .OVA format (albeit in zip file) first.

You can find the new build of the UDA on the welcome page. Alternatively, if you want to run the UDA under VMware Workstation – visit Carl’s website.

This week vendorwag is with Camden Ford of Xsigo.

In the vendorwag I asked the following questions.

Q. When people buy Xsigo – what is the main thing they are buying – reduced cables, more pipe or improved management?

Q. Some folks are anxious about Xsigo’s use of InfiniBand, perhaps because it’s a technology that they are unfamiliar with. How does Xsigo use IB, and how would you allay their concerns?

Q. Some folks might say that “converged networks” and “virtual I/O” is no different say from HP Virtual Connect, Dell FlexAddress and IBM OpenFabrics – how would counter this (mis)perception?

Q. Some customers are confused about who should manage this new network – the virtualization guys, the network guys or the storage guys. What’s your take on this management question?

Q. What do you think is best fit for a customer using Xsigo? When is it the best time to introduce the technology?

Q. Who would say was your main competitor – and how do hit back against them?

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

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[Special Note to Bloggers: Please link to this blog post NOT directly to LULU. It means I get the hits rather than LULU which help with my Google Analytics stats. Thanks!]

Today I’m releasing my very long guide to View 4.5. I’m kinda loathed to call it a “book” because its no way as detailed as my previous works on Vi3, SRM and vSphere4. For me its still very much a work in progress. With that said, I like to mark product GA days with a release of one my guides, and so that’s why I’m releasing it to day. It runs to some 190 pages of text and graphics, and I’ve been working on it since I joined the View 4.5 Beta Program. It contains 21 “chapters” but I’m not being grand here, sometimes these chapters are just a couple of pages long. I’ve tried to use the chapters to outline the major steps you go through in building out a View environment.

Here’s a chapter list:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtual Desktops
Chapter 2: Install a Connection Server
Chapter 3: Post-Configuration of Connection Server
Chapter 4: Install Agent into Virtual Desktop
Chapter 5: Install the Local Mode View Client
Chapter 6: Publish an Individual Virtual Desktop
Chapter 7: Publish a Dedicated Virtual Desktop Pool
Chapter 8: Publish a Floating Virtual Desktop Pool
Chapter 9: VMware Composer and Linked Clones
Chapter 10: Refresh, Recompose and Rebalance
Chapter 11: Enabling Local Mode
Chapter 12: Enabling Kiosk Mode (TBC)
Chapter 13: Publishing Terminal Servers/Remote Desktop Services
Chapter 14: Microsoft Group Policies
Chapter 15: VMware View User Experience
Chapter 16: Install a Connection Server Replica
Chapter 17: Install a Security Server
Chapter 18: Load-Balance Security Servers
Chapter 19: Create and Apply Certificates
Chapter 20: Virtual Application with VMware ThinApp
Chapter 21: Managing VMware View with PowerCLI

So it’s an author’s edition in the sense that’s it almost there, but I feel there is still work to be done – to polish it up. But at the same time, I felt it was “good enough” to release to day. The content has yet to be QA’d against the GA release for start, and I recently had the opportunity to submit the manuscript to VMware – and hoping for some quality feedback from them – from which I improve what’s there already, and at the same time add additional content here and there…

Today I also made a change to the way I distribute both the SRM book and the View Guide. They are STILL BOTH available for PDF download, but now the donation to UNICEF is mandatory. It’s come to my attention that a small minority have been downloading the PDF version of the SRM 4.0 book without doing their moral duty and donating the $10 to UNICEF as I hoped. So because of those small number of people I’ve decide to make this a mandatory – $9.99. Of course this shouldn’t bother the good folks who would have donated anyway, right?

If you do download the View 4.5 Guide please keep a record of your purchase. When the full version is ready you will be welcome to contact me with your proof-of-purchase, and I will send you a private link where you can download the full PDF version at no additional charge. I don’t think you should have to pay twice for the PDF where there might be only 10-20 pages of additional content and bug fixes. At this time I will also make available a print version together with a more fancier cover. In the meantime if you click the graphic below that should take you to the download page on LULU.

The other good news is that with the GA,  VMware View 4.5 finally got the seal of approval from the folks at Gartner. This is a bit of shaggy dog story. But at the beginning of the year, Gartner declared a plague on both the houses of Citrix and VMware. Declaring that neither product possessed all the required criteria to be regarded as Enterprise ready. Later in the year Citrix release SP1 for XenDesktop – beating VMware to the finish line. Some people say suspiciously so. There was a rumor that Citrix was tipped the wink on View 4.5 delays, and given the nod that if they were able to push out SP1 early, then they would score points over VMware. Anyway, whether there is any truth to this rumor is anyone’s guess – I just enjoy spreading them! Anyway, recently the scales will tipped back in balance with Citrix, with VMware receiving the same thumbs up from those folks at Gartner.

Today VMware’s View 4.5 product which was “announced” at VMworld last week, has been GA’d. Whoop-Whoop!

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_downloads/vmware_view/4_5

If you want to learn more about View 4.5 offers, today TechTarget published my article all about the product…

You can hear a computer generated text-to-speech version of the article below..

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