Virtualization

• 
  The Console

• VMware, HP’s Converged Infrastructure, and the Private Cloud

  VMTN

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:01 am

  Posted by Steve Herrod Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D This week HP introduced their Converged Infrastructure Architecture, which is appropriately described as “a blueprint for chief information officers to create elasticity in their technology environments.” This blueprint unlocks currently siloed datacenter resources (including compute, storage and network components) and, with the help of virtualization, integrates them into a pool of very fluid resources that can be smartly and safely allocated to the applications running on top. Put another way, HP has…

• VMware's Desktop Vision

  VMTN

  21 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am

  Posted by Scott Davis VMware View Chief Technology Officer cross-posted from Scott's new blog: VMware View-Point Welcome to VMware View-Point, our Desktop Office of the CTO Blog.  My name is Scott Davis and  I’ve recently moved over to our Desktop BU as our overall CTO. So, who is this guy and what does he know about desktop computing and virtualization? Besides being an expert in operating systems, storage, virtualization and enterprise IT, I’m also an entrepreneur at heart and I am very excited about the opportunity in front of us; using virtualization insights and…

• Mobile Phones - The Next Frontier

  VMTN

  17 Aug 2009 | 2:51 pm

  Posted by Srinivas KrishnamurtiDirector of Product Management and Market Development You may have seen the announcement about the VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform in November 2008 or the MVP demo in Steve Herrod’s Future of Virtualization keynote at VMworld Europe 2009 and wondered what we were doing in this space, given our heritage in virtualizing x86 systems – desktops and servers.  I wanted to share our thoughts and vision for mobile phones to explain why we entered this space and what we intend to do. Why Mobile Phones? Mobile phones - then and now ... (source:…

• VMware to acquire SpringSource

  VMTN

  10 Aug 2009 | 1:03 pm

  Posted by Steve Herrod Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D Hi Everyone, I’m extremely excited to announce VMware’s intention to acquire SpringSource, a 5 year-old company rapidly becoming a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. The goal of this blog is to explain the complementary benefits of this merger to longtime VMware fans as well as to the vibrant Spring community who may know less about us. First, a quick introduction to SpringSource… SpringSource began as the commercial development team leading the innovative Spring…

• Support for Open Virtualization Format (OVF) 1.0 is out!

  VMTN

  28 May 2009 | 1:19 am

  Posted by Winston BumpusDirector of Standards Architecture, VMware With the launch of VMware vSphere™ 4 and the free VMware OVF Tool 1.0 this month, we have implemented support for the DMTF OVF 1.0 specification across a broad range of VMware products. The VMware vSphere 4 products, VMware vCenter™ 4 and VMware ESX 4, have built-in OVF support at both the API level and directly in the VMware vSphere Client. The stand-alone VMware OVF Tool 1.0 brings OVF 1.0 support to VMware Workstation, VMware Server 2.0, and earlier versions of VMware vCenter and ESX. As part of the VMware vSphere…

• 
  vSphere PowerCLI Blog

• San Diego VMUG October 2009 Recap

  Carter Shanklin

  28 Oct 2009 | 12:06 pm

  If you didn’t manage to make it to the San Diego VMUG you missed a pretty good show. Darin Pendergraft from Quest was there showing off EcoShell and I had cooked up a couple of demos of my own. One of the more popular topics was a script I wrote to determine LUN latencies and the VMs that are writing to particular LUNs. One of the trickiest challenges when adopting virtualization is the effective use and partitioning of shared resources. Technologies like VMware DRS address exactly this challenge, but it’s safe to say that we’re still nearer the beginning than the end when it comes to…

• Come see PowerCLI at the San Diego VMUG, October 22 2009

  Carter Shanklin

  15 Oct 2009 | 1:59 pm

  If you’re in the San Diego area next week don’t miss the San Diego VMUG because I, your humble servant, will grace you with my presence and the vast stores of wisdom one only obtains through thousands of lonely nights in front of the computer. I’ll be there to talk about – what else, PowerCLI and how it will help you automate your way to bliss. As always I’ll be spending a lot of time on hands-on demos that will give you a first hand feel for what PowerCLI is and how it works. I’ll be covering reporting, provisioning and storage management, three of the most popular topics among…

• When was the last time that VM was powered on?

  Carter Shanklin

  5 Oct 2009 | 8:57 pm

  People often want to know the last time that a VM was powered on. Unfortunately there is no completely fool-proof way to figure this out using just vCenter or ESX, but PowerCLI offers an approach that is pretty good, good enough that you can create a simple report and identify VMs that may be ready for that big hypervisor in the sky. This is also a popular topic on the PowerCLI community, where LucD offers a solution to the problem, which relies on using events to determine when the poweron took place. Since Luc gave this solution a few things have happened: The bug that caused Get-VIEvent to…

• How to run PowerCLI scripts from vCenter Alarms.

  Carter Shanklin

  25 Sep 2009 | 1:42 am

  BackgroundvCenter provides an alarm feature which causes vCenter to automatically look for certain events or conditions within your virtual environment, and automatically take some action when conditions are met. There are quite a lot of criteria supported, you can generate alarms based on vCenter's event stream, so for example you could create an alarm any time a virtual machine is powered off. Alarms could also be created based on vCenter statistics, for example an alarm can be generated if an ESX host's memory utilization is above 90% for too long.There are a number of actions you…

• Onyx Update

  Carter Shanklin

  24 Sep 2009 | 1:07 pm

  I've gotten a lot of questions around when people will be able to get their hands on Onyx. We collected about 50 names at VMworld, so we're very happy to see all the different people who are interested. We haven't forgotten about you, we haven't changed our minds, we're getting things in order to preview Onyx and invites will be going out soon.Thanks for your patience!

• 
  VMware Networking Blog

• Formation of VCE coalition

  Guy Brunsdon

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:40 am

  The Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition was announced this morning. This is a coalition between Cisco and EMC, together with VMware to accelerate customers’ ability to increase business agility. Apart from bringing a single point of contact for design, service, and support, the coalition introduces the notion of the “Vblock Infrastructure Packages.” These are ready-to-go infrastructure packages that are fully tested, integrated and validated. You can find more information (presentations, papers, videos, etc) at: Press Release Cisco’s VCE Coalition page EMC’s VCE Coalition…

• Special new ways to manage, monitor and configure virtual networks

  Guy Brunsdon

  9 Oct 2009 | 12:20 pm

  vSphere has SDKs and APIs for just about every component, feature and product (including the new vCloud API!). Just take a look at the VMware developer site. This is a powerful adjunct to vSphere enabling extremely powerful virtualization solutions. But this is a networking blog, so let’s talk about the vNetwork API. This is already a powerful toolset enabling you to extend the capabilities of your network. But we’re not stopping there. Those of you who caught Howie Xu’s (Director, R&D) presentation at VMworld would have caught a glimpse of how we are enhancing monitoring,…

• Blogging contest around the vNetwork Distributed Switch

  Guy Brunsdon

  5 Oct 2009 | 1:03 pm

  Apologies for the long time between posts, but this might get a few of you interested… Through to the end of this week, we are running a blogging contest around vDS (a.k.a. the VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch). All you have to do is blog about a novel technical or business ROI topic around vDS. Once you have posted your blog entry, send an email to vmtn@vmware.com to submit the entry for consideration. Remember, you have until Friday October 9, so get your thinking cap on and write away! You can find more information on the competition at this entry at the VMware vSphere Blog. You can…

• VMworld is almost here … here are your must attend networking sessions

  Guy Brunsdon

  26 Aug 2009 | 9:02 pm

  **updated 8/27 to include room numbers!** VMworld is upon us next week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. We have a fantastic assortment of sessions from beginner level right up to the very advanced—something for everyone. Breakout Sessions As usual, we have a good assortment of networking sessions hosted by ourselves and our partners. I’ve listed the sessions in chronological order (I’m presenting the first two and then I’m done!). Srinivas Neginhal’s “VMware vSphere 4 Networking Deep Dive” (TA2525) is a 90-minute session and is also repeated at Thursday at 4:00pm. Session…

• vNetwork API Community Website launched

  Guy Brunsdon

  26 Aug 2009 | 5:12 pm

  Feeling creative? Have a virtual networking problem or idea? If so, then the vNetwork APIs could be for you. The '”vNetwork API Community” is now open for business at the easy to remember url of vmware.com/go/vnetworkapis The vNetwork API Community is hosted under the VMware Developer Communities website where you’ll find APIs, code samples, and other developer goodies for a range of VMware products and technologies.

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  VROOM!

• Storage performance improvements in vSphere 4.0

  Devaki Kulkarni

  20 Oct 2009 | 4:17 pm

  We made a huge number of performance improvements in vSphere 4.0. The ESX storage stack was no exception. We ran a wide variety of micro and real world benchmarks to thoroughly evaluate and optimize vSphere’s storage subsystem. It is now even more efficient for the enterprise and ready to support the cloud. A wide variety of I/O intensive applications will run efficiently on vSphere with all the improvements.  You can find details on the architectural changes and storage performance improvements made in this white paper. Some of the noteworthy improvements are:…

• Comparing Performance of 1vCPU Nehalem VM with 2vCPU Harpertown VM

  Todd Muirhead

  21 Sep 2009 | 2:09 pm

  vSphere has a new feature called Fault Tolerance that allows for a VM to be running in vLockstep on two physical servers at the same time.  In the event of a failure of the primary VM, the secondary VM will immediately take over with no downtime for the VM.  There is a great whitepaper that covers FT architecture and performance.  There have also been a couple of blog posts on VROOM! recently that cover FT performance as well.  One uses VMmark to show how FT has excellent performance in a heavily loaded multi workload environment.  The other blog post shows how…

• Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4.0

  Harold Rosenberg

  18 Sep 2009 | 5:59 am

  Performance problems can arise in any computing environment. In a virtualized computing environment performance problems can arise due to new and often subtle interactions occurring in the shared infrastructure. Uncovering the causes of those problems requires an understanding of the available performance metrics and their relationship to underlying configuration issues. A new guide covering performance troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4, including ESX 4.0 hosts, is now available. This document uses a guided approach to lead the reader through the observable manifestations of complex…

• Performance Evaluation of VMXNET3 Virtual Network Device

  Yong Wang

  14 Sep 2009 | 3:49 pm

  vSphere 4.0 introduces a new para-virtualized network device - VMXNET3.  We recently published a paper demonstrating its performance characteristics, compared to that of enhanced VMXNET2 (the previous generation of high performance virtual network device from VMware).Some highlights of this paper are:(1) Throughput gains of up to 92% for 10G TCP/IPv4 Rx workloads with large socket buffer, which greatly improves bulk data transfer performance in a data center environment.(2) Dramatic gains across all configurations of IPv6 traffic, with significant CPU usage reduction and throughput…

• Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server

  Fei Guo

  8 Sep 2009 | 10:41 am

  Recently, we have published a whitepaper about how ESX server manages the host memory resource. This paper not only presents the basic memory resource management concepts but also shows experiment results explaining the performance impact of three different memory reclamation techniques: Page sharing, ballooning, and host swapping used in ESX sever. The experiment results show that:1) Page sharing introduces negligible performance overhead;2) Compared to host swapping, ballooning will cause much smaller performance degradation when reclaiming memory. In some cases, ballooning even brings zero…

• 
  VMBLOG

• Logicalis Launches UK Cloud Solutions And Services Group

  David Marshall

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:16 pm

  International solutions provider, Logicalis , today announces the launch of a dedicated cloud consulting, deployment and managed services group, to... Read more at VMblog.com.

• Xen.org Announces Project Golden Ratio

  David Marshall

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:22 am

  Project Golden Ratio is a new project within the Xen.org community to determine a set of metrics that allow the community to measure and evaluate... Read more at VMblog.com.

• IGEL and Quest Software Advance Virtual Desktop Management by Integrating Quest vWorkspace into IGEL Universal Desktops

  David Marshall

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:19 am

  IGEL Technology, the world's third largest thin client vendor (2008 by revenue, IDC), today announced a worldwide partnership agreement with Quest... Read more at VMblog.com.

• Siemens Strikes Virtualization Partnership with VMware

  David Marshall

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:18 am

  Siemens IT Solutions and Services has concluded a new partnership agreement with VMware to deliver innovative virtualization solutions to the... Read more at VMblog.com.

• New Syncsort Service Accelerates Benefits and Reduces Risks of Physical-to-Virtual Server Migration

  David Marshall

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:17 am

  Syncsort , a global leader in high-performance data processing, data integration and data protection and recovery software, today announced a new... Read more at VMblog.com.

• 
  Virtualization.com

• Siemens Strikes Partnership With VMware

  Robin Wauters

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:39 am

  Siemens IT Solutions and Services has concluded a new partnership agreement with VMware to deliver innovative virtualization solutions to the marketplace. The agreement between Siemens IT Solutions and Services and VMware includes developing new offers and implementing a common marketing and sales strategy, and will allow joint customer acquisition. VMware was a key partner with Siemens in its... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Xen Community Sets Forth Self-Evaluation Metrics (Project Golden Ratio)

  Robin Wauters

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:38 am

  Project Golden Ratio (inspiration) is a new project - PDF - within the Xen.org community to determine a set of metrics that allow the community to measure and evaluate itself. These set of metrics will allow the community to find areas of strength and weakness in an overall effort to improve community participation, growth, and success. As with all things open source, Project Golden Ratio will... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Syncsort Announces New Services For Physical-to-Virtual Server Migration

  Robin Wauters

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:37 am

  Syncsort, maker of high-performance data processing, data integration and data protection and recovery software, has announced a new professional services offering for organizations who are planning to deploy server virtualization. Syncsort's MVP (Migration, Verification and Protection) service is performed by technical specialists who help plan, manage, verify and rapidly deploy... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Server Technology Introduces Solutions for Powering Cisco’s Unified Computing System

  Robin Wauters

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:35 am

  Server Technology, announces the release of a series of application notes created to help design engineers, application engineers and data center managers power Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS). These application notes illustrate how to power and provide redundancy for Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis and 6120XP 20-Port Fabric Interconnects in multiple configurations using Smart Cabinet... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• F5 Debuts New Management Pack Solution for Microsoft Windows-based Virtualization

  Robin Wauters

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:18 pm

  F5 Networks today announced a new F5 Management Pack solution for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager that allows joint F5 and Microsoft customers to dynamically manage application delivery in virtual environments. F5 also updated its Application Ready Solution portfolio to support Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 
  virtualization news - Google News

• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May ... - TechRepublic

  7 Nov 2009 | 1:29 am

  Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May TechRepublicOverview: Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few years, but there are big differences in their use of the technology. Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation CriteriaTechRepublicReducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with vmware Virtualization SoftwareTechRepublicBuilding the Virtualized Enterprise with vmware InfrastructureTechRepublicTechRepublicall 37 news articles »

• Cloud computing, virtualization proponents getting antsy - San Francisco Chronicle

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:31 pm

  Cloud computing, virtualization proponents getting antsySan Francisco Chronicle(11-06) 09:59 PST -- While many organizations have only begun down the cloud computing and virtualization roads in the past few years, some in the industry and more »

• Brocade Unveils Storage Configurations Aimed At Oracle Deployments - ChannelWeb

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:33 pm

  Brocade Unveils Storage Configurations Aimed At Oracle DeploymentsChannelWebBy Joseph F. Kovar, channelweb Brocade Communications this week gave a boost to Oracle's virtualization and database strategies with new configurations and more »

• Red Hat Virtualization ... - InternetNews.com

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:09 pm

  SYS-CON Media (press release)Red Hat Virtualization ...InternetNews.comRed Hat execs explain why Linux vendor's Linux virtualization management solution runs only on Microsoft's rival OS. By Sean Michael Kerner: More stories by Red Hat Virtualization for Servers Goes GASYS-CON Media (press release)Red Hat continues to deliver on its virtualisation promisesOvumRed Hat Virtualization Manager Requires WindowsOS Newsall 4 news articles »

• Virtualization firm pushes high-performance computing towards the cloud - SearchCloudComputing.com

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:33 am

  Virtualization firm pushes high-performance computing towards the cloudSearchCloudComputing.comThe Cupertino, CA-based server virtualization firm scalemp claims that adding elasticity to its "Versatile SMP" (symmetric and more »

• 
  News

• Microsoft Security Report Released

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:37 pm

  Security experts commented on Version 7 of Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report, which was announced this week.

• Patch Tuesday: Expect Six Security Fixes

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:58 pm

  After a record-breaking Patch Tuesday in October, November's security update promises to be a bit lighter with six scheduled fixes, three deemed "critical" and three "important."

• IBM Brings ALM to the Cloud

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm

  IBM today launched application lifecycle management and test and development tools for its public and private cloud-based services.

• Telerik Offers Silverlight Advances and ORM for the Cloud

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  The Q3 release offers a native Silverlight report viewer and full ORM support for SQL Azure, among other enhancements.

• Microsoft Readies SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature-Complete Preview

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:52 pm

  Microsoft on Tuesday said it will release the feature-complete preview of SQL Server 2008 R2, the first major upgrade of its flagship database platform in nearly two years.

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  DABCC: Virtualization Analysis

• VMworld 2009 Vendor Spotlight: Dynamic Ops

  23 Oct 2009 | 7:07 am

  VMworld's Solution Exchange floor was packed with many vendors covering many aspects of virtualization. As I made my way around the floor talking to these vendors, I was very impressed with what one was doing. I stopped at the booth of DynamicOps and spoke to Rich Bourdeau about what DynamicOps is all about and what they bring to the industry....

• Citrix Licensing Changes for XenDesktop 4.0..Part Deux

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:20 pm

  Citrix has listened to the community and has created a flexible licensing model for XenDesktop 4.0...

• IT Is Still The Roadblock To Business Agility

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:52 am

  This week is the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando, FL. In this morning's keynote the "tweets" were flying, but one in particular caught my eye: "60% of CEOs believe that IT constraining their business", and that was duplicated throughout the early morning hours today....

• VMworld 2009 New Innovator Spotlight: Tranxition

  13 Oct 2009 | 1:40 am

  There were some amazing technology vendors at this year's VMworld conference. In this short article I want to share with you one of those vendors that I found to be doing the right thing at the right time. That company is Tranxition. Tranxition debuted their Adaptive Persona product at the show and I found it to be one of the best when it came to addressing the critical issue in doing virtual desktops; user personalities and related settings....

• Citrix Cuts Certification Benefits - Passes Costs to Test Takers

  24 Sep 2009 | 11:14 am

  I received an email from Citrix Education today detailing they will be no longer sending paper certificates to new Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) and/or Citrix Certified Sales Professional (CCSP). In exchange for the paper certificate the awardee will be given a ?PDF?. They even detailed ?benefits? to this change:...

• 
  blog.scottlowe.org

• Links for 2009-11-06 [del.icio.us]

  7 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  How to Use Google Apps in Beejive/Adium/Pidgin This article provides details on the SRV records necessary to make third-party chat clients work with the Chat service in Google Apps.

• GestaltIT Tech Field Day

  slowe

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:40 am

  In the event you haven’t heard, Gestalt IT has organized the Gestalt IT Field Day to take place next week, November 12 and 13, somewhere on the West Coast. This is a very exciting event that brings together multiple vendors and multiple bloggers to discuss their technology and their products in a non-NDA environment. This is a great way for companies to help increase knowledge and awareness of their products. Be prepared, though, to get both the good and the bad—most bloggers won’t hold back! The list of blogger attendees is an all-star list of folks like (in no particular…

• VCDX Design Exam Post-Mortem

  slowe

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am

  It’s a bit later than I would have liked (sorry Jason!), but I wanted to write up a brief post-mortem on the VCDX Design Exam, which I took—and passed with a score of 408—this past Tuesday. The exam wasn’t particularly difficult in the sense of needing to know specific details. For example, I saw very few questions asking about a specific command-line parameter, the output of a specific command, or how many X that feature Y supports. There were a few, but not many. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to know that sort of stuff, because you do—but in a…

• Links for 2009-11-03 [del.icio.us]

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  ESG - Cisco, EMC, and VMware to Accelerate Large-Scale Virtualization Deployments This analysis, by Mark Bowker of ESG, outlines the value of the VCE coalition to customers, but doesn't fully address the competitive ramifications. Google Voice Quick Reference Guide This is a handy reference to Google Voice's dial-in interface.

• A Few Quick Thoughts on the VCE Coalition Announcement

  slowe

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:36 am

  VMware, Cisco, and EMC made their official announcement of the VCE Coalition and the joint venture Acadia this morning. You can read one of the press releases here via MarketWire. Acadia is interesting, but it really isn’t the meat of the announcement, in my opinion. The real substance of the matter is the nature of the coalition. There are many interesting questions/thoughts circling in my head right at the moment: What impact will this have on VMware’s relationship(s) with HP, IBM, and Dell? “Throwing their hat in the ring” with Cisco’s UCS, so to speak, may…

• 
  Chris Wolf's Virtualization Tips and Ramblings

• Virtual Desktop NAS Guest Post - Kaviza

  Chris

  29 Oct 2009 | 3:55 am

  Kaviza is the third vendor to offer a submission to the Virtual Desktop NAS Vendor Challenge. Today’s guest post comes from Kumar K. Goswami, Kaviza Co-Founder & CEO. Kumar’s guest post begins below. —– Your  notion that many customers are just priced out of desktop virtualization and that much of the cost and complexity with VDI (sever-based desktop virtualization) has to do with it being layered on top of server virtualization was precisely the driving factor behind the genesis of Kaviza.  Our mission has been to drive down the cost & complexity of VDI and…

• The Time to Redefine Client Application Licensing is Now

  Chris

  7 Oct 2009 | 9:08 am

  There’s been plenty of fanfare surrounding the release of Citrix XenDesktop 4.0 this week. I plan to blog about the XenDesktop 4.0 technical features after I’ve spent some quality time with them in my lab over the next couple of weeks. However, I’d like to contribute to the XenDesktop 4 conversation by talking about its impact on client software licensing. It’s no question that user expectations for how they should access corporate resources are changing. Sometimes I need to quickly grab or view a doc from my iPhone. Other times I need to view resources on my laptop…

• Upcoming Webcast: Hypervisor Competitive Differences

  Chris

  11 Sep 2009 | 6:46 am

  If you missed our latest presentation on hypervisor competitive differences with regards to our evaluation criteria, you can see it for free next week at IT Virtualization Live. The webcast will run Tuesday September 15th at 12:30 ET. To see it, you can register here. The webcast will show our complete evaluation criteria list, and detail how vSphere 4.0, XenServer 5.5, and Hyper-V R2 stack up. The webcast also includes a series of tables that outline side-by-side comparisons between each hypervisor. If you’re interested, here is the webcast abstract. Hypervisor Competitive Differences:…

• Thoughts on the VMworld Day 2 Keynote

  Chris

  3 Sep 2009 | 6:58 am

  I was very impressed by the information disseminated in the second VMworld keynote, led by CTO Steve Herrod. Here’s a summary of the thoughts I tweeted during the morning keynote (in chronological order). Steve Herrod talked about a “people centric” approach. VMware’s technology needs to understand desktop user behavior. The existing offline VDI model (requiring a manual “check-out”) is not people centric. VMware’s announcement to OEM RTO Software’s Virtual Profiles was a good move. Burton Group considers profile virtualization a required element of enterprise…

• VMworld Day 1 Keynote – A Few Thoughts

  Chris

  2 Sep 2009 | 8:37 am

  VMworld got off to a strong start yesterday, with the Paul Maritz keynote setting an early tone for the day’s events. I used twitter to add commentary to the keynote and plan to do the same today for Steve Herrod’s morning keynote. Below is a summary of my thoughts/tweets on the day 1 keynote. VMware’s clear goal is to provide a complete platform for cloud-based computing. I’m hopeful that VMware will spend more time helping customers build internal clouds, which focuses on their immediate needs. Public clouds, while intriguing, is a future initiative for most Burton Group clients.

• 
  Gabes Virtual World

• Change blocksize of local VMFS

  Gabe

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:46 am

  During install vSphere now creates a VMFS partition by default on the local storage on which the service console partitions will be installed. When you want to use this partition to store your VMs on... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Is there enough support for ESXi already

  Gabe

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:38 am

  We all know that the future version of vSphere will probably only be the ESXi version. At least, this is what VMware’s aim is for ESX5. Because it is wise to already get used to ESXi now to get... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Review: Vizioncore vRanger Pro 4.0

  Gabe

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:13 am

  Part 3 of my backup products review has been released at SearchVMware.com. Follow the link below to see my review on “Vizioncore vRanger Pro 4.0″ Backup and replication product review... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Review: Veeam Backup & Replication 3.1

  Gabe

  29 Oct 2009 | 5:31 am

  Part 2 of my backup products review has been released at SearchVMware.com. Follow the link below to see my review on “Veeam Backup & Replication 3.1″. Backup and replication product... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Review of four backup products for a virtual infrastructure

  Gabe

  29 Oct 2009 | 5:26 am

  Just released on SearchVMware.com my latest review on backup products for a virtual infrastructure: “Backup has always been essential to maintaining IT infrastructure, but it is also the most... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 
  Virtual Black Hole

• My Thoughts on the VCE Announcement

  It seems the big news for the day is the Announcement of the VCE Coalition.  Seems I have been reading blog posts about this all morning with the last post being Scott Lowe's thoughts on the subject. I have been hearing that this has been in the works for a ...

• Some Thoughts on Thin Provisioning

  One of the enhancements or features in VMware's latest release, vSphere, is the option to create virtual machines with thin provisioned disks. I found the skinny on Thin Provisioning with vSphere on the VMware Blog by Michael Adams. vStorage Thin Provisioning optimizes storage costs through the most efficient use of storage ...

• Driving A Successful Virtualization Adaption

  This week's VMTN podcast was Title: #69 - The Virtualization Journey with Vittorio Viarengo was a discussion about the steps for driving a successful virtualization adaption.  You can also download the podcast on iTunes. For years now I have had a tag line that I use. It's my motto, if ...

• Extending A Volume On A VMDK

  I was combing through the VMTN community forums and came across a couple of posts on the best way to extend or expand a vmdk file.  This topic seems to come up on a regular basis, so I thought it might be a good idea to put together a blog ...

• Organizing vCenter

  I was recently asked what I thought was the best way to organize things in vCenter?  I personally have used several different methods to organize things in different ways. I started to wonder how other admins were organizing their own environments and if there was any common methods of madness ...

• 
  h0bbel.p0ggel.org

• Howto: Using ExtPart to Expand Windows Server 2003 VM Boot Volume

  Christian Mohn

  28 Oct 2009 | 6:28 am

  Over time the boot partition on a Windows Server 2003 installation might just turn out to be too small. There can be various reasons for this, but the fact remains that over time you will accumulate data on the boot drive that you didn't take account for when you set it up initially.Luckily I run almost all of my servers in a VMware based virtualized environment, where it's easy to expand the the virtual disks. The problem is that Windows Server 2003 doesn't let you easily expand the boot volume, at least not without downtime. I've previously talked about using tools like GParted to expand…

• Got Windows 7? Got USB device? Get Installed

  Christian Mohn

  22 Oct 2009 | 12:11 pm

  A little while a go I mentioned a great little tool called Novicorp WinToFlash.Seems like Microsoft figured out that was a great little idea, and in conjunction with todays official Windows 7 release, they've also made the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool available.Since you can buy Windows 7 and then download the ISO directly from the new online Microsoft Store (Can anyone say Apple?!) it makes sense that they have created their own little tool that enables you to install Windows 7 from an USB stick. The tool makes it easy to copy the ISO to a USB stick, and then use that to boot your…

• Temple of the Dog Reunion - Briefly

  Christian Mohn

  7 Oct 2009 | 1:31 pm

  Now this is something I don't often do as this is mostly a tech blog, but this is huge. Last night Temple of the Dog reunited when Chris Cornell joined Pearl Jam on stage.Temple of the Dog was Chris Cornell, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Matt Cameron, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder all of which were present at Los Angeles’ Gibson Amphitheatre performing “Hunger Strike” from the self titled album released in 1991.Now, can Pearl Jam please come play in Bergen, Norway? And, yes, I wouldn't mind it much if Chris Cornell came along for the ride too...

• Does your ESXi Need Have Have?

  Christian Mohn

  23 Sep 2009 | 3:56 am

  Nice little error message shown when trying to hot add a new HDD to a VM running on ESXi 4.0.How much need have have do you need?Addendum:Clearly I'm not the first to notice this rather peculiar wording in ESXi 4. Maish Saidel-Keesing posted the same screenshot back in May 2009 in his post called Hot Add and "Need have have".Read that post instead of mine, it also highlights what ESXi 4 is missing as well as poorly worded error messages.Funny thing is that I can even remember reading Maish post back when it was published, but I don't remember seeing that weird error message. Oh well. :)Thanks…

• ESX PSOD or Purple Screen of Death.

  Christian Mohn

  22 Sep 2009 | 3:26 pm

  vmwarewolf.com has posted ESX PSODs If you happen to search Google for one of the following phrases you might expect Google to return a list of official VMware Knowledgebase articles on the topic. crash debug screen machine crash screen ESX Server PSOD Purple screen crash report Decode purple screen error I know this is a direct copy of some of that article, but it's an attempt to help out getting ESX Server PSOD ranked in Google. I'm sure I'll be forgiven for the verbatim copy/paste job.

• 
  Malaysia VMware Communities

• VCenter Installation Error 28038

  Jas

  3 Nov 2009 | 12:06 am

  I’m getting an “error message: 28038″ just before the VMware VCenter Server installation end as screen shot below: Workaround: It’s pretty simple but it took me few hours(damn!). Please make sure your VCenter server have minimum one network cable connect to switches. Related posts:New experience on vCenter 4Database Upgrade during vCenter 2.5 Update 4 InstallationSlow performance on vCenter 4 Tags: error, ESX, Installation, vCenter, VMware, Windows 2008

• vForum 2009 in Malaysia

  craig

  1 Nov 2009 | 5:44 am

  There will be the vForum which organize by VMware in Malaysia at 17 th November 2009. The session will started from  8 :00 am to 5:30 pm. You can view more information from the official site. You can also register yourself from here. See you there. Related posts:1st Meet Up for Malaysia VMware Users GroupVMware Technology Day 2009VMware vSphere 4 Launch in Malaysia Tags: vforum, VMware

• Participate in new version of vSphere Beta?

  Jas

  27 Oct 2009 | 8:38 pm

  VMware vSphere 4 was released sometimes ago and the new version of VMware vSphere are coming soon. According to VMware vSphere Blog, they are looking for beta tester as below: Want to be a vSphere beta participant? We are looking for beta participants to test out some new vSphere features currently in development. Interested? If so, contact your VMware account team for further details. What are you waiting for? Contact your local VMware Account Team now! Good luck! Related posts:VMware Converter 4 Beta AvailablevSphere client on windows 7New vSphere Client Tags: Beta, tester, user, VMware,…

• NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC) for ESX ready for Download

  craig

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:06 am

  Netapp had official release the virtual storage console for VMware ESX host. You can view more information from here. If you are netapp existing customers, you can download the software from here Below is the summary I link from Netapp official blog site Summary of supported functionality in the 1.0 release includes: Support for ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 hosts. Limited support for ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 hosts (listed and details provided, but setting not set – requires using EHU for host settings) Viewing the status of storage controllers from a SAN (FC, iSCSI) perspective. Viewing the status of…

• VMware Workstation 7 Official Release

  craig

  27 Oct 2009 | 6:51 am

  Finally, the VMware Workstation 7 is landed. You can download the latest version of VMware Workstation from here. Have you downloaded? I am downloading now and will post my review after the test later. Have fun Related posts:Yo! VMware Workstation 6.5.1VMware Server 2 Vs VMware WorkstationSRM 4 is ready for VMware vSphere 4 Tags: VMware, workstation

• 
  NTPRO.NL

• VCDX Design Exam: been there, done that!

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:20 am

  With this blog post title I’m following the footsteps of my virtualization friends Jason Boche and Duncan Epping. I’ve passed the VMware VCDX Design exam yesterday with a score of 362.I’m not the only one who has passed the exam this week. Congratulations go out to Scott_lowe, FrankDenneman and VirtualKenneth. I’ve used WIKI to prepare for this exam, just look up every interesting word you can find in the exam blue print.The next public defenses will be offered at Partner Exchange in February in the US. More information will come out Mid November.

• vSphere DvSwitch caveats and best practices!

  29 Sep 2009 | 11:53 am

  While one of my readers (credits to Scoobie Guy) was exploring the features of DV switches he inadvertently discovered if you make major changes (or rebuild)  your virtual center instance, or remove a host from a VC instance you may end up with the following errors:The distributed Virtual Switch corresponding to the proxy switches d5 6e 22 50 dd f2 94 7b-a6 1f b2 c2 e6 aa 0f bf on the host does not exist in vCenter or does not contain the host. From this article: http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esxi40_vc40_rel_notes.html#knownissues Here is an explanation: Removing an…

• 
  RTFM Education

• Are DvSwitches “ready” for Production - Reader Email

  Mike Laverick

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:53 am

  This week I was asked in an email the following question: [By the way I hate Wordpress - even when I put paragraph returns in this post it ****ing well removes them!] Hope you been doing well. I have been busy, busy, busy. Got a question for you. Preparing to start a new vSphere farm and trying [...]

• Scripted ESX4 Installations & Partitioning - Reader Email

  Mike Laverick

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:13 am

  Occasionally, (more often than I would really like) I get people emailing asking me to help them on specific problems. Unless these are former customers/students I generally hit delete key!!! Sorry, I’m not being unhelpful but I’m not a one-man help desk guys! Then occasionally, when I’m bored/intrigued I do respond. It helps if email comes [...]

• vInternals - Virtual Hardware 7 Undocumented Feature Revealed!

  Mike Laverick

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:53 am

  I want to draw ALL my readers attention to Stu Radridge’s blog and in particular to a particular problem in Windows 2008. Although I hate the phrase this is real heads up… Basically, Stu has discovered that VM created on ESX4 with “Virtual Hardware 7 presents virtual disks as SAN devices – not as local disks. [...]

• Virtual Compute Environment - VMware, Cisco and EMC Coalition

  Mike Laverick

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:33 am

  I want to take sometime out from book writing, to share my observations about VCE. The book I’m (re)writing is the SRM 1.0 book, it’s been updated to the new version SRM 4.0 which is compatible with vSphere4. So you know this time I’m doing more work to make the book more “storage neutral” friendly - by including [...]

• Hot Air Balloonist & IT Support

  Mike Laverick

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:08 pm

  Well, I don’t really go in for this stuff normally. You know when friends FWD some really hysterical joke to everyone in their address book. You know, that kind of thing. But this one did make me laugh or was that snort with recognition. A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He [...]

• 
  SearchServerVirtualization Blog

• Red Hat virtualization: No Windows Server 2008, RHEL management

  Colin Steele

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:33 am

  The new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers platform made its debut yesterday, with Red Hat touting it as a “standalone, lightweight, high-performance hypervisor” that “provides a solid virtualization foundation for cloud deployments” and comes with software “for configuring, provisioning, managing and organizing virtualized Linux and Microsoft Windows servers.” Sounds good so far, right? Well, are a few things Red Hat neglected to mention in that press release. First, there’s this sentence buried in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization…

• VMware: Hyper-V turns Windows into DOS

  Colin Steele

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:29 am

  The trash talk in the Microsoft vs. VMware feud once reached Reggie Miller vs. Spike Lee heights. The two companies rarely passed up the opportunity to disparage, make fun of or even spread lies about each other. But things had quieted down lately, and a lot of the more recent trash talk just rehashed old criticisms and insults. That is, until VMware issued its “Competitive News Flash” about Hyper-V R2, which compares “Microsoft myths” to “VMware realities.” (Hmm, where have we heard that before?) The four-page document, marked “confidential,”…

• Blades vs. rack servers: A different perspective

  Colin Steele

  15 Oct 2009 | 7:12 am

  Our recent blades vs. rack servers face-off between Chris House and Rick Vanover has spurred some hot debate. Virtualization blogger Aaron Delp, a senior engineer at ePlus Technology, submitted this response on the topic of blades vs. rack servers: Here is how I see the rack vs. blades debate: No solution is right all the time! There are situations in which racks are better, and there are situations where blades are better. Before I go into the use cases, let me clarify one or two points for both architectures: Everyone’s prices are different based on a million different factors. No one…

• SearchServerVirtualization.com opens POY call for entries

  Lauren Horwitz

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:05 pm

  This year, SearchServerVirtualization.com is once again running its annual Products of the Year awards. Nominate your favorite product or your company’s product in one of the following categories: Virtualization platforms Virtualization management Virtualization security Hardware for virtualization Backup and storage for virtualization Desktop virtualization The call for entries is open now through Nov. 13, 2009. Products qualify if they were released between Nov. 1, 2008, and Nov. 1, 2009 (including beta). Click here for deadlines, details and criteria on Products of the Year. And…

• Data Center and Virtualization group hosts VMworld 2009 party

  Jeannette Beltran

  3 Sep 2009 | 11:14 am

  Following Tuesday’s VMworld 2009 keynotes and sessions at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, TechTarget’s Data Center and Virtualization Media Group hosted an after-party where attendees had a chance to wind down before another full day. If you missed this year’s VMworld action (or if you just want to re-live the memory), check out our staff photos from the event. RingCube Technologies was out in full force at TechTarget’s VMworld 2009 event (pictured here with TechTarget editor Jo Maitland). Brian Madden and others at TechTarget’s VMworld 2009 party. Jo Maitland…

• 
  vinternals

• ECV – Utility Emerging

  stu

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:51 pm

  Todays announcement from EMC, Cisco and VMware (ECV) amounted to a declaration of war on the datacenter players in the industry as we know it. But it wasn’t the only thing that it amounted to – I see it as the first true sign of utility computing, and if the rest of the industry just [...]

• Virtual Hardware 7 Undocumented Feature Revealed!

  stu

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:14 am

  So after my last post, VMware did some digging and the real reason for the initially odd behaviour was exposed – it’s a combination of the way Virtual Hardware 7 presents virtual disks to Guests, and the difference in default policy settings of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. So in [...]

• Virtual Hardware 7 Bug, Woeful VMware Response

  stu

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:05 pm

  UPDATE This post is actually woefully inaccurate – go read this one instead! I don’t like making posts like this, really i don’t. As much as I’ll sing the praises of VMware ’til I can’t sing no more, I’ll also point out the shortcomings – I don’t turn a blind eye just because I like the [...]

• VCP4 Exam Post Mortem (Yes, I Passed :)

  stu

  27 Oct 2009 | 11:58 am

  Pretty sneaky of me to post my thoughts on the exam material the night before sitting the exam eh? Well, not really, but at least I’m not going to make you all anxiously wait for the follow up post like I know you were. C’mon, I know it. Seriously. Somebody was. Other than me. And [...]

• VCP4 Exam Preparation…

  stu

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:57 pm

  I hate exams. Or rather, I hate the type of exam that is typified by pretty much all the IT certifications I’ve bothered to attain over the years. In fact I hate them so much, the only thing stopping me from swearing right now is that I don’t want to get John in trouble (again). [...]

• 
  The Virtual Troll

• VMs NIC disconnects after a VMotion

  Heino Skov

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:49 pm

  I had a customer calling me the other day about a weird problem. Some VMs disconnected their NIC after a VMotion. It was not possible to connect the NIC back on a again The customer was in the process of upgrading to vSphere, so used DRS/VMotion to put ESX hosts in maintenance mode, so they could be upgraded. After looking in log files, we saw the following errors: ————Edited/output ———— 6 10:19:21 esx1 vmkernel: 0:20:07:45.197 cpu3:6256)Net: 1317: can’t connect device: LAN: Out of resources 6 10:24:03 esx1 vmkernel: 0:20:12:27.267…

• vCalendar Widget added to Virtualtroll.com

  Heino Skov

  10 Sep 2009 | 3:54 pm

  Jason Boche over at http://www.boche.net/blog/ came up with an initiative to create a vCalendar. Its quite nice and if I had a work with a personal desktop, I would certainly try to get one of these. Instead I did the 2nd best option, because Jason also made a vCalendar Widget. I have now added this widget to my blog, so the dailiy tips, tricks, comments etc is shown on virtualtroll.com. So now you just need to come back here to virtualtroll to read the daily virtualization quote of the day Read more about it here Thanks to Jason for this initiative.

• Is VMworld Europe coming to Denmark in 2010?

  Heino Skov

  26 Aug 2009 | 1:42 pm

  My friend and fellow blogger Eric Sloof over at NTPRO.NL posted a quite interesting and good news today. On the last page of the conference guide, that he received for VMworld in US, reveals that VMworld Europe 2010 will be held in Bella Centre, Copenhagen (Denmark) That is quite interesting and very surprising for me. I live about 30 minutes from the conference center Read his post here Eric thanks for blogging about this.

• Passed the VCDX Design Exam!

  Heino Skov

  29 Jul 2009 | 10:48 am

  It has been a while since I last posted on my blog and I hope that I will get some time to do some more blogging in the future… Just now I had a great news, that I wanted to share with you all On 4th of April, I headed to London to participate in the VCDX Beta Design Exam and a couple of hours ago I received the results. I passed the exam! Congratulations. You have successfully passed the VMware Design 3 beta exam. A formal score report will be sent to you via Pearson VUE in August. This was the third of five components that you will need to complete in order to achieve the VMware…

• Blogger profile updated on Nicolai Sandager

  Heino Skov

  8 Mar 2009 | 4:17 pm

  Hi All, Back in december I introduced Nicolai Sandager as a new fellow blogger on this site. While he has been blogging some, he has just now finished up his own profile, which you can read here. I work with Nicolai at a smaller IT Company in Denmark called BusinessMann A/S and have been doing so for over 2 years now. Nicolai has for the last year been working on a rather huge ESXi installation in Denmark initially containing 42 ESX hosts. Over time this installation has grown to 60+ ESXi hosts in two datacenters. So once again, I’d like to welcome Nicolai and hopefully we will be…

• 
  Virtualfuture.info

• Bloggers-Battle: Desktop Virtualization is THE way to go!

  Sven Huisman

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:17 pm

  Before I start my first post in the VirtualFuture.Info Bloggers-Battle, let me first respond to Matthijs’  first post. And let me remind the readers, this is a Bloggers-Battle. Matthijs and I are trying to convince each other and the readers that one product is a better choice than another, just for this Battle. As consultants [...]

• VDI Blog Battle : Part 1 – Citrix XenDesktop 4 Introduction

  Matthijs Haverink

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:04 pm

  Okay Sven, the game is on! This is my first post in the VirtualFuture.Info VDI Blog Battle, to convince Sven, and all you out there, why Citrix XenDesktop 4 would be the right solution for future desktops. I’ll be talking about Citrix XenDesktop 4 this month and try to point out to you some of the unique [...]

• VMware Online Virtualization Forum: November 10th and 11th

  Sven Huisman

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:02 pm

  VMware is organizing an online virtualization event on November 10th and 11th: VMware virtual events are highly interactive events conducted online using only a web browser. They include all of the areas that you may find at a physical event, including an exhibit hall, auditorium, resource center and networking lounge. This event should especially be interesting for [...]

• Bloggers-battle: Citrix Xendesktop vs VMware View

  Sven Huisman

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:56 am

  My blogging activities were very low last month (close to none actually) and I apologize for that. It must have been because I spend most of the time crying because my co-blogger Matthijs left the company I work for and he decided to work for the competition. Being competitors at the moment, I thought it [...]

• Bookreview: VMware VI and vSphere SDK

  Sven Huisman

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:10 pm

  The VMware Infrastructure Software Development Kit (VI SDK) includes application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers and administrators to reduce the time and effort required to run and manage VMware platforms. The author of the book VMware VI and vSphere SDK  is Steve Jin, a senior member of technical staff at VMware, wrote this book [...]

• 
  VirtualizationAdmin Blogs

• Citrix Releases XenDesktop 4

  Jason Conger

  21 Oct 2009 | 5:53 pm

  Citrix released XenDesktop 4. XenDesktop 4 comes with many new features and some feature announcements. Some of the new features are: HDX user experience including HDX for 3D graphics FlexCast delivery Full blown XenApp is now included in XenDesktop 4 One of the overshadowing announcements however is the pricing model change. XenDesktop 4 is priced per named user (PNU) as opposed to concurrent user (CCU). more...

• VMware appoints new Virtual Desktop CTO

  Jason Conger

  29 Sep 2009 | 6:17 pm

  VMware is betting big on desktop virtualization (actually, a lot of vendors are betting big on desktop virtualization). To give focus to desktop virtualization, VMware has appointed a CTO dedicated to desktop virtualization. The new CTO is Scott Davis. Scott has spent more than two years at VMware as Chief Data Center Architect. Prior to that, Scott was the President and CTO at Virtual Iron. Scott has a blog where he recently spelled out VMware's Desktop Vision. more...

• Hyper-V - Routing VMs without a Router

  Jason Conger

  29 Sep 2009 | 5:40 pm

  If you are using Hyper-V in a test environment, you may have experienced difficulty testing LAN broadcasting (DHCP, PXE boot, NAP, etc.). This is due to how the virtual networks work with Hyper-V. You basically need a router. But, fortunately, you can use a Windows VM with a registry hack to get around actually running a virtual router. Chris Blankenship put together a nice article detailing more of this situation and the exact steps to alleviate this nuisance. Continue at source... more...

• Great new vApp / OVF 1.0 Features in VMware vSphere 4

  David Davis

  29 Sep 2009 | 5:31 pm

  vSphere 4 supports the OVF 1.0 format and this is how new vApps are imported into your virtual infrastructure. One of the cool things about the OVF 1.0 format is that you can deploy a new appliance without ever having to configure it (or you can configure it at deployment time). Either way, you don't have to go in once it is installed and configure the networking, etc on it. Watch this video to see what I mean- [youtube]AIQu9ANvekQ[/youtube]. more...

• Which is cheaper? Hyper-V or VMware vSphere?

  David Davis

  29 Sep 2009 | 5:22 pm

  Of course, this is the burning question that everyone wants answered. My humble opinion is that vSphere is going to cost less on a per-application basis. more...

• 
  Blogs

• Cloud-Based VDI, Part 2

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:57 pm

  Using hosted VDI for a few days, plenty of comments.

• Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops Test Drive, Part 1

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:57 pm

  Hosted VDI isn't exactly new, but made easy with current technologies.

• VMware Licensing Downgrade Notes

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:05 pm

  Current purchases must be vSphere, but downgrade is straightforward.

• P2V Timesaver: Block Level, Then Storage VMotion

  27 Oct 2009 | 3:17 pm

  Time sensitivity is key to successful P2vs; here is a trick.

• Rely on Storage System for VM Partitioning with ESXi

  22 Oct 2009 | 5:43 pm

  Thin hypervisor has less than optimal installation portioning schemes.

• 
  Security, Compliance and Best Practices

• Really? A LinkedIn invite from Bill Gates? How cool am I!?

  Chris Orr

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:30 am

  Seriously though…when an experimental phishing attack was tested against anti-spam and phishing filters it succeeded 100 percent of the time. http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4791&tag=nl.e539 Can you imagine if it were real?  I wonder how many people would really think that Bill Gates is taking personal time to send you (no matter how cool you think you are) an invitation to be part of his network?  Some times you have to wonder.  And one it succeeded either your LinkedIn account would be owned or some nasty malware would begin to percolate through your corporate network. Boy…

• Clouds gain steam as LA votes to go Google…

  Chris Orr

  29 Oct 2009 | 10:37 am

  Boy I do hope they get this right… any security issues will be problematic for the millions of folks being served by city of Los Angeles.  It will certainly raise the profile of cloud computing enough to get the attention of the Pirates that are out their…. Google’s IT Ninjas better be up to the task… http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=26641&tag=nl.e550 “Clearly, this is a big deal for the city of Los Angeles. But this vote is also monumental for cloud computing as a whole, which has gained popularity and widespread interest but still relatively little adoption…

• "VMware" is not a synonym for "cloud"

  Dwayne Melancon

  19 Oct 2009 | 10:10 am

  I was just reading a NetworkWorld article called “Internal clouds are more than just virtualization” and it’s got some pretty good data (and perspective) about how companies view internal clouds. One interesting (but not so surprising) quote in the article is this one: …when asked to define the internal cloud, IT executives typically replied “my VMware environment” Sure, many internal clouds will run on the back of VMware, but not all.  And VMware alone will not satisfy all of the business’s requirements for running an effective internal cloud. Why not?

• How on earth could this be a good idea?

  Chris Orr

  24 Sep 2009 | 10:16 am

  Maybe its just me but implanting a chip in my arm heralds the coming of the zombie apocalypse… http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/implanted-microchip-reminds-you-to-take-your-pills-via-text-message/1096/ So apparently you stick this thing in your arm and it texts you when its time to take your pills…wouldn’t a cloud based web application have the ability to do the same thing? And what else could be done with this chip… can you imagine what the pirates would be able to do if they were able to hack the dang thing?  If RFID gives folks the willies this…

• The Government has its head in the Clouds…

  Chris Orr

  16 Sep 2009 | 1:03 pm

  So my colleague Dwayne Melancon has been going on lately about Cloud computing, something that I really don’t think about much myself but I came across this little item from ZDNet about the launch of a new website based largely on government agencies being able to purchase cloud based applications from the likes of Google, Amazon and Salesforce…. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=24331&tag=nl.e539 for the cloud computing IT Ninjas I am guessing this is like the second coming of baby Jesus… Of course there are some folks who don’t have a lot of confidence in the…

• 
  VIRTUALIZATION PRO

• Freakonomics: How H1N1 boosts desktop virtualization adoption

  Bridget Botelho

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:43 pm

  Desktop virtualization vendors are spinning their wheels trying to get enterprises to adopt the technology, but it turns out, all they really needed was a good pandemic. I met with some of VMware Inc.’s desktop virtualization reps yesterday to discuss the next version of VMware View (4.0), which is due out next week, and learned there is a correlation between desktop virtualization adoption rates and the 2009 H1N1 flu (formerly known as Swine Flu).    Though he couldn’t share specific numbers, Raj Mallempati, the desktop virtualization marketing manager, said…

• Restoring individual files from image-level backups of virtual machines

  Eric Siebert

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:32 am

  Virtual environments can change the way you back up your servers by providing an additional backup method where you back up the single large virtual disk file instead of the individual files inside the VM operating system. There is sometimes confusion, however, when using this method as if individual file restores are possible and how difficult it might be to restore them back to a VM. There are two methods for backing up a VM, traditional backup methods that install an agent inside the OS and back it up file-by-file and image-level backups that back up the single virtual disk VMDK file.

• What are IP Pools and vApps?

  Eric Siebert

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:21 am

  While navigating in the vSphere client the other day I noticed a new tab. When selecting a Datacenter object, a tab called IP Pools appeared. When clicking on this tab you had the option to view and add IP Pools. Having never seen this before my first thought was, what are IP Pools? After doing some research I found out they were part of the new vApps feature in vSphere. I’ve heard a little about vApps but never looked at them in depth, so I thought I would take the time to research them and write about them. We’ll come back to IP Pools in a bit. First we’ll cover what a…

• Checking out PowerWF

  Hal Rottenberg

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  Screenshot of PowerWF In case you haven’t heard, a little company called Devfarm Software has been working on a product called PowerWF (pictured, right). They had a great demo at VMworld 2009, and I was so impressed that I gave them five minutes at the end of my own breakout session to do a demo for my audience. I’m a big PowerShell and PowerCLI nut, so why do I care about some graphical user interface (GUI) application? Well, there are two answers to that. One, PowerShell is an automation engine, not just the command-line shell. There are plenty of tools out there which use PowerShell…

• I/O bottlenecks in virtual environments

  Eric Siebert

  16 Oct 2009 | 8:31 am

  I saw in a poll taken for a recent SearchServerVirtualization.com article that input/output, or I/O bottlenecks are the number one challenge for VMware users. This didn’t really surprise me because I/O bottlenecks are sometimes not that obvious and can be difficult to find and troubleshoot. Why is that? Because most users don’t understand how to look for them or how to interpret the data that is presented to them from monitoring utilities that would indicate a bottleneck. Some of the most common causes of I/O bottlenecks are improperly architected/configured hosts and…

• 
  Virtually Speaking

• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers

  Dan Kusnetzky

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  Red Hat is attempting to use KVM as a weapon to defeat VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle and the like. Organizations will need proof that it is better.

• Cisco, EMC and VMware Announce Alliance

  Dan Kusnetzky

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am

  Cisco, EMC and VMWare launch alliance/coalition/joint venture.

• [Sponsored]

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

• Cloud computing making new alliances

  Dan Kusnetzky

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  Are we seeing suppliers trying to re-implement the mainframe using modular hardware and software?

• Oracle's Virtualization Story

  Dan Kusnetzky

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  Oracle VM, like the other virtualization technologies Oracle offers, is presented as an integrated, optimized, easy-to-manage part of an Oracle environment. It may not be the best choice for those expecting support the products from the industry leaders.

• 
  VM /ETC

• Real Thin Provisioning And Over Allocation – The VI Admin

  Rich Brambley

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:24 pm

  I’ve already mentioned (and posted) about the vSphere Blog Contest current topic of thin provisioning, but I’ve been thinking about another “product” that has always functioned thin provisioned – The VI administrator. That’s right, I’m talking about the guys and gals that manage all the hypervisor hosts, the server and desktop virtual machines, the networking, and the storage. Have you thought about the systems to administrator ratios we work under these days? Sure, server consolidation to virtual infrastructure has enabled doing more with less, but…

• Participate in GestaltIT Do You Know Contest For Chance To Win iPod Nano With Video

  Rich Brambley

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:29 pm

  The GestaltIT Tech Field Day is one week away. This time next week I will be just arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area and getting ready for 2 full days of storage and virtualization product sessions about which I will be reporting here on VM /ETC in the form of tweets and posts. Stephen Foskett, the event coordinator, has already hinted about special announcements and sessions during the event planning, but he’s not even letting the attendees know what’s exactly in store. Although we know the presenters, we haven’t received and agenda. All I know is I had to change my…

• HP Announces Converged Infrastructure Architecture Products

  Rich Brambley

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  HP is announcing it’s own Converged Infrastructure Architecture with associated services and partner offerings later today which will “integrate existing silos of compute, storage, network, and facility resources with unified management to deliver a virtualized, highly automated technology environment ..”. The timing of this announcement obviously serves as a “us too” response to the VMware, Cisco, and EMC (VCE) vBlock architecture announcement, but more importantly positions HP as the provider of the only private cloud infrastructure solution under a single…

• Does VCE vBlock Really Mean Cookie Cutter Architecture For The Cloud?

  Rich Brambley

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm

  So, we should all know what VCE stands for by now, right? Let’s say it together: “VMware, Cisco, EMC.” Using a bad analogy of Adam Lambert, a contestant on American Idol last season, the three companies “came out of the data center” today and publicly announced what we already knew; they’ve been working together to build the most integrated cross technology cloud infrastructure solution known to mankind. They are so integrated they’ve cross trained each other’s support staff so that anyone of the three partners can be a single “choke…

• Provision a Thin Provisioned Standby LUN For vSphere Thin Provisioning

  Rich Brambley

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:38 am

  VMware has been running a blogging contest in order to promote the new vSphere Blog. The current contest topic is vSphere Thin Provisioning. A lot has been written on this topic already, but I thought I would point out a storage design conclusion I’ve come up with based mostly from the explanations and recommendations of others about handling what happens when an over allocated, thin provisioned LUN runs out of space. This post first walks through an basic explanation of the administrative concern caused by thin provisioning and how built in vSphere monitoring and alerting can be used…

• 
  Yellow Bricks

• How to avoid HA slot sizing issues with reservations?

  Duncan Epping

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:21 pm

  Can I avoid large HA slot sizes due to reservations without resorting to advanced settings? That’s the question I get almost daily. The answer used to be NO. HA uses reservations to calculate the slot size and there’s no way to tell HA to ignore them without using advanced settings pre-vSphere. So there is your answer: pre-vSphere. With vSphere VMware introduced a percentage next to an amount of host failures. The percentage avoids the slot size issue as it does not use slots for admission control. So what does it use? When you select a specific percentage that percentage of the…

• The uncrowned king of PowerCLI is Alan Renouf

  Duncan Epping

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

  No, I am not exaggerating. Alan Renouf truly is the uncrowned king of PowerCLI. Although I’ve seen some amazing scripts from other people as well Alan always seems to bring that little extra to make him stand out. No this is not an Alan Renouf appreciation blog article, although he deserves one, this article is about his two latest additions. The first one is the Virtu-Al VESI & PowerGui Powerpack. If you are like me, not a powercli hero, this is what you were looking for all along. Alan has bundled all his script into a Powerpack which enables you to import all his scripts at once…

• VMTN Podcast number 71, vStorage API

  Duncan Epping

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm

  This weeks topic of the VMware Communities Roundtable was the vStorage API. It was most likely one of the most technical roundtables in months. Especially the part about the Virtual Disk Development Kit (aka VDDK) was educational! If you missed the episode you can download it here or subscribe to the podcast with iTunes here! Here are the links that were dropped in the chat window for those who are interested: VMware – vStorage API for dataprotection Anton Gostev – What is VMware vStorage API? Chad Sakac – So, what does vStorage really mean? VMware – Virtual Disk…

• Document it…

  Duncan Epping

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:16 am

  Something that I noticed over the last months while doing design reviews is that hardly anyone documents decisions in a design. Most designs I review are physical designs, which is understandable as most IT people are technical people who could not care less about logical designs. I am perfectly fine with that, although I do recommend taking a different approach, as long as you document why you are going down a specific path. There can be specific constraints or requirements (both technical and business related) which justify your decision, but if you don’t document these constraints or…

• New theme…

  Duncan Epping

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:07 pm

  Just like Jason Boche I thought it was time to renew my Blog theme. I had the old one for over 8 months already and it was time to renew it. I tried to keep it simple again and actually downsized the banners. Also removed some of the Google Adsense blocks as it was too much. Hopefully you guys like the result and of course I appreciate feedback! "New theme…" originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com.Support Yellow-Bricks.com and save 10% on select VMware Products at the same time.Learn how to fully utilize VMware vSphere with a Computer Based Training by Train Signal!Follow me on Twitter…

• 
  VMware Tips

• The New Player on the vBlock

  Rick Scherer

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:44 pm

  VMware, EMC, Cisco, VCE, Intel, Acadia….whew! what does it all mean?!  VMware, Cisco and EMC created a new marketing ploy called VCE (Virtual Compute Environment), this will provide technical innovations as well as integrated pre-sales services and support. What is the product? vBlock.  Think of vBlock as the plug and play data-center solution, it will consist of Cisco UCS/Nexus/MDS, EMC Storage and VMware Virtualization all within a pre-designed and built rack solution - simply drop it in your data-center, plug it in and deploy virtual machines.  This is not really any different…

• VMware ESXi 4 and HP Servers

  Rick Scherer

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:21 pm

  I’m proud to say that HP has full support for ESXi 4 installed on SD or USB Flash memory.  They even offer the installable ISO pre-built with their CIM providers, available here. There is a catch though, they only support their approved SD or USB Flash memory….sorry, but you cannot BYOF (Bring Your Own Flash).  This is reflected on their download page: HP VMware ESXi 4.0 solution requires the following: VMware ESXi 4.0 free downloadable product. To upgrade your license to Enterprise Plus, purchase HP VMware ESXi 4 product 571979-B21. HP ESXi 4 CIM Providers. Registration on…

• San Diego VMware Users Group Meeting

  Rick Scherer

  21 Oct 2009 | 1:46 pm

  San Diego VMUG Meeting The next San Diego VMUG meeting will be held on October 22nd, this will feature a recap of VMworld 2009 as well as special guest Carter Shanklin from VMware to discuss PowerShell and how to automate your vSphere environment. Date: Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 Time: 12:30pm - 5:30pm *Lunch Will Be Provided* Location: CareFusion - 3750 Torrey View Court, San Diego, CA 92130 Topics: PowerShell and VMworld 2009 Agenda 12:30pm - 1:00pm — Registration & Lunch Pick-Up 1:00pm - 1:15pm — Introductions 1:15pm - 2:00pm — Ask the Experts / Bloopers Session…

• Before Host Profiles there was vicfg-cfgbackup.pl

  Rick Scherer

  12 Oct 2009 | 12:36 pm

  This last weekend I was reminded of a RCLI command that creates a backup of your ESXi Host configuration.  A client had an ESXi host where the USB drive failed.  The system didn’t entirely crash, it pinged so HA didn’t kick-in however hostd and vpxa weren’t responding so management from vCenter was impossible. Performing a reboot of the host proved it was a USB failure when it failed to boot. So, HA kicked in finally when the host was powered off - however the remaining hosts in their cluster did not have adequate resources to power everything back on.  We needed to get…

• VMware Workstation 7 Tech Preview

  Rick Scherer

  25 Sep 2009 | 5:02 pm

  Update - Since Workstation 7 has now hit RC and is publicly available I can repost this blog!  Download the RC for yourself and check out the forums at http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/workstation A couple weeks ago I was sent an e-mail about a VMware Workstation Technology Preview.  I particularly love these tech previews, mainly because they are great previews of where ESX is going (remember Record/Replay -> FT). Here is a short list of enhancements found in Workstation 7: Aero support for Windows 7 and Vista Guests! Windows 7 support (as a Host and Guest OS) OpenGL and…

• 
  Citrix XenServer

• Help Scope the Next Generation of XenServer Training

  Mark Carter

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:52 pm

  Citrix Education is hosting the following 1-hour virtual sessions to scope the next generation of XenServer training: For Citrix customers: Tuesday, November 17, 1:00pm Eastern/10:00 Pacific For Citrix partners: Wednesday, November 18, 1:00pm Eastern/10:00 Pacific If you would like to participate in one of these sessions, then email me at mark.carter@citrix.com for registration information. In your email, state whether you are a customer or a partner and what level of XenServer experience you have. Each session is limited to 5 participants, so don't delay! Also, feel free to email me if you…

• Xen.org Announces Release of Xen Cloud Platform 0.1

  Stephen Spector

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:36 am

  Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) 0.1 is an effort by several community members to create a complete open source virtual infrastructure solution (Hypervisor + Management Toolstack) as a reference architecture for cloud deployments. This 0.1 release provides a stable platform on which to build, and to provoke community discussion about the final form that XCP 1.0 should take. Developers, testers, and users are all invited to try the XCP 0.1 solution and help drive the community toward the future release of XCP 1.0. The base platform proposed contains the following features: Latest Xen 3.4.1 Linux…

• Workflow Studio EVA available

  Peter Schulz

  31 Oct 2009 | 3:52 pm

  The Citrix Workflow Studio Evaluation Virtual Appliance (EVA) is now available. This EVA provides you with 30 days to evaluate a pre-configured virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 that has Workflow Studio 2.0 already installed and configured with all activity libraries and the sample workflows from CDN. Download the EVA and review the Getting Started guide . If you have any questions leave a comment or contact me directly View Online | Add Comment

• Don't Forget to Vote for Citrix!

  Tedd Fox

  20 Oct 2009 | 11:39 am

  Award nominations for Citrix Citrix wanted to let you know that some of our products have been nominated for the SYS-CON Virtualization Reader's Choice Award and the Cloud Computing Readers' Choice Awards. These awards recognize excellence in the virtualization and cloud-based software, solutions or services provided by the industry's top vendors. We wanted to let community members know about this nomination, since the final award winners will be determined through a public voting process. The voting period for these awards is now open and will end on Oct. 23 . If you feel inclined to vote…

• Webinar - What's New in the latest version of XenDesktop 4 11-6-2009

  Rich Crusco

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:46 am

  Don't miss this webcast as our Systems Engineers discuss the new technical features and benefits of XenDesktop 4. Find out why XenDesktop is the most flexible way to centralise and deliver your desktops. In this webinar you will learn: What's new in the latest version of XenDesktop 4 Best practices for upgrading to the latest release Click below to learn more: http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1857244 View Online | Add Comment

• 
  VCritical

• Layers and Layers of FUD

  Eric Gray

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:02 am

  Unbelievable.  That old tale about VMware adding an extra layer is still being told in the Microsoft Virtualization Comparison Brochure.  Pretty surprising, and not at all honest — using the term layer implies a particular order or hierarchy, not merely quantity.  And what on earth is the virtualization layer doing on top of applications? The case Microsoft is really trying to make here is that if you don’t have VMware virtualization, then you don’t have VMware.  True enough, I suppose.   But you still have the same number of layers. I took the liberty of making some…

• Which 50% will you virtualize?

  Eric Gray

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:40 pm

  PC World recently published an article on Hyper-V R2 competing with VMware vSphere.  I found this statement from Bob Kelly, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Infrastructure Server Marketing, to be remarkable: “That’s why I still maintain that at some point, you’ll be at 40 percent to 50 percent virtualized and you’re 50 percent physical, and that’s an important thing to recognize. If you recognize that, you can set the strategy. It’s not, ‘Oh God, we thought the world was going to be only virtual.’ That, fundamentally, is why I think VMware…

• Live Migration “significantly more complicated”

  Eric Gray

  23 Oct 2009 | 5:40 am

  It can be difficult to set up a complete Hyper-V environment.  There are a lot of user interfaces needed to perform the various configuration tasks — especially during initial deployment.  It’s great to see that the mainstream technology media has arrived at the same conclusion. Jason Brooks, Executive Editor at eWeek, recently reviewed Windows Server 2008 R2 and had the following to say about Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV): Live Migration was very easy to use, but I found the process of configuring and using Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2…

• Microsoft announces Windows Server 2008 R2. Again.

  Eric Gray

  22 Oct 2009 | 5:11 am

  Today is the big day — Windows Server 2008 R2 is generally available at last. Please, take a moment to acknowledge this release.  No, really.  I mean, if Microsoft thinks there is a single person left in the free world that hasn’t heard about R2 and free Live Migration, they might be forced to produce another wave of announcements. They may even resort to Tupperware-style home launch parties for the server next time.  Have the neighbors bring blade servers over for that one — you know, power and cooling issues in the living room. If you count beta and RC releases, this…

• Windows Server 2008 R2 — Windows 7?

  Eric Gray

  21 Oct 2009 | 2:39 pm

  Tomorrow is the big launch of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the next major Microsoft operating system releases. A significant change this time around is the simultaneous release of the client and server.  However, I may have inadvertently uncovered the truth today: Windows Server 2008 R2 will not be version 7 at all! Actually, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be version 6.1. Will it still be binary compatible with Windows 7? Sorry about that folks… don’t panic, Windows 7 is version 6.1, too. Related posts:Microsoft announces Windows Server 2008 R2. Again.Wild SCVMM 2008 R2…

• 
  VCritical

• Layers and Layers of FUD

  Eric Gray

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:02 am

  Unbelievable.  That old tale about VMware adding an extra layer is still being told in the Microsoft Virtualization Comparison Brochure.  Pretty surprising, and not at all honest — using the term layer implies a particular order or hierarchy, not merely quantity.  And what on earth is the virtualization layer doing on top of applications? The case Microsoft is really trying to make here is that if you don’t have VMware virtualization, then you don’t have VMware.  True enough, I suppose.   But you still have the same number of layers. I took the liberty of making some…

• Which 50% will you virtualize?

  Eric Gray

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:40 pm

  PC World recently published an article on Hyper-V R2 competing with VMware vSphere.  I found this statement from Bob Kelly, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Infrastructure Server Marketing, to be remarkable: “That’s why I still maintain that at some point, you’ll be at 40 percent to 50 percent virtualized and you’re 50 percent physical, and that’s an important thing to recognize. If you recognize that, you can set the strategy. It’s not, ‘Oh God, we thought the world was going to be only virtual.’ That, fundamentally, is why I think VMware…

• Live Migration “significantly more complicated”

  Eric Gray

  23 Oct 2009 | 5:40 am

  It can be difficult to set up a complete Hyper-V environment.  There are a lot of user interfaces needed to perform the various configuration tasks — especially during initial deployment.  It’s great to see that the mainstream technology media has arrived at the same conclusion. Jason Brooks, Executive Editor at eWeek, recently reviewed Windows Server 2008 R2 and had the following to say about Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV): Live Migration was very easy to use, but I found the process of configuring and using Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2…

• Microsoft announces Windows Server 2008 R2. Again.

  Eric Gray

  22 Oct 2009 | 5:11 am

  Today is the big day — Windows Server 2008 R2 is generally available at last. Please, take a moment to acknowledge this release.  No, really.  I mean, if Microsoft thinks there is a single person left in the free world that hasn’t heard about R2 and free Live Migration, they might be forced to produce another wave of announcements. They may even resort to Tupperware-style home launch parties for the server next time.  Have the neighbors bring blade servers over for that one — you know, power and cooling issues in the living room. If you count beta and RC releases, this…

• Windows Server 2008 R2 — Windows 7?

  Eric Gray

  21 Oct 2009 | 2:39 pm

  Tomorrow is the big launch of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the next major Microsoft operating system releases. A significant change this time around is the simultaneous release of the client and server.  However, I may have inadvertently uncovered the truth today: Windows Server 2008 R2 will not be version 7 at all! Actually, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be version 6.1. Will it still be binary compatible with Windows 7? Sorry about that folks… don’t panic, Windows 7 is version 6.1, too. Related posts:Microsoft announces Windows Server 2008 R2. Again.Wild SCVMM 2008 R2…

• 
  Vmware Scripting

• Re: how to create one vm-info report from several scripts?

  28 Oct 2009 | 12:17 pm

  very nice, great job!

• Re: how to create one vm-info report from several scripts?

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:10 am

  Quote from: R0Ge on October 28, 2009, 01:03:29 PMIn Virtual Center you can add Custom Fields (Global / vm level) to a vm. We have added 3 custom fields called User, Description, ROTAP at global level.Vmname      User     Descriptio...

• Re: how to create one vm-info report from several scripts?

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:03 am

  In Virtual Center you can add Custom Fields (Global / vm level) to a vm. We have added 3 custom fields called User, Description, ROTAP at global level.Vmname      User     Description     ROTAP(environment)vm1             RoGe    Powershell     Test...

• Re: how to create one vm-info report from several scripts?

  28 Oct 2009 | 8:15 am

  Quote from: R0Ge on July 10, 2009, 05:23:52 AMHi,I solved it with the following script.All the info in one file.Thanks [code]# *************   Start Process    *********************************************$report = @()$ROTA...

• Re: show portgroups VM's are connected to

  27 Oct 2009 | 2:50 pm

  dump them all, then sort using excel... make it easy.

• 
  Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft virtualization blog

• VIDEO: Hyper-V Virtual Networks Overview

  Ilija Brajkovic

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:43 pm

  As me and some of my readers noticed, lately I write a lot (or too much) about Windows 7. As this blog is about Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft virtualization, let’s get back on the track. I’ve just found nice video which has been made by Janique Carbone, where she describes Hyper-V virtual networks. In [...] Copyright © Ilija Brajkovic http://www.brajkovic.info

• 10 Free Windows 7 Chapters

  Ilija Brajkovic

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:53 am

  Many books are being written about Windows 7 at this moment, and many of them have already been written (Windows 7 for Dummies, for example). Today I’’ll give you links to some chapters from Windows 7 books, so you can learn more about it. Microsoft Press has added three more chapters to the Microsoft Learning [...] Copyright © Ilija Brajkovic http://www.brajkovic.info

• New Technet magazine: Gear up for Windows 7

  Ilija Brajkovic

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pm

  As Arlindo Alves stated on his blog, new Technet magazine has been published. And guess what, most of the articles are about Windows 7 . Here is the list of few articles for IT professionals: Windows 7: The 10 Things to Do First for Windows 7 Windows 7: Groovy [...] Copyright © Ilija Brajkovic http://www.brajkovic.info

• Windows 7 USB installation

  Ilija Brajkovic

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Do you have netbook without DVD drive? Do you want to upgrade/install Windows 7 on it? Till now, the only option was to attach external DVD drive to your netbook. Now, Microsoft officially supports installation of Windows 7 from USB stick. You will need Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT), free program which you can [...] Copyright © Ilija Brajkovic http://www.brajkovic.info

• How to deploy Windows XP Mode

  Ilija Brajkovic

  29 Oct 2009 | 6:58 pm

  Windows XP Mode is great new feature in Windows 7. It is Windows XP operating system that you can download from Virtual PC web site, and start it in Windows Virtual PC. Why do you need it? For example, if you have some applications that you can run only on Windows XP or older [...] Copyright © Ilija Brajkovic http://www.brajkovic.info