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…

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