Virtualization

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  • Introducing the vFabric Suite 5.1 and vFabric SQLFire

    The Console Blog
    VMTN
    15 May 2012 | 5:00 am
    Posted by Jerry ChenVice President, Cloud and Application Services In 2009, VMware acquired SpringSource because we saw a fundamental change in the way our customers were building and running their applications.  More than ever, our customers were using technology to build new applications to improve their business, respond to competition, and get closer to their customers. These new applications were built for mobile, used social networks and leveraged enormous volumes of real-time data to make better decisions.  The underlying frameworks and technologies powering these…

  • Retrieving License keys from Multiple vCenters

    VMware PowerCLI Blog
    Alanrenouf
    17 May 2012 | 3:15 pm
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing A question I receive all the time is: How can I list all license keys I have for all of my Virtual Centers in my Infrastructure ?   Luckily PowerCLI enables us to work with multiple vCenters all at one, we can connect to many vCenters or hosts and pull back information on all of these at the same time, to do this you need to set the PowerCLI Configuration to work in multiple mode and then you can connect to more than one vCenter at the same time, to do this see the following example: Once we are in multiple configuration mode we can then use…

  • VMware Security Update

    VMware Security & Compliance
    Iain Mulholland
    3 May 2012 | 8:22 am
    On April 23, 2012, our security team became aware of the public posting of a single file from the VMware ESX source code dating back to 2004, and the possibility that more files may be posted in the near future. Ensuring customer security is our top priority. As a matter of best practices with respect to security, VMware strongly encourages all customers to apply the latest product updates and security patches made available for their specific environment. As part of its regular program of providing patches for security and other issues, VMware has accelerated the delivery of a set of…

  • Sorry Microsoft; Not Only Does vSphere Cost Less to Buy, It Also Costs Less to Operate.

    Virtual Reality
    Eric Horschman
    16 May 2012 | 12:58 pm
    Microsoft’s wildly exaggerated claims of providing a less expensive virtualization platform than VMware vSphere have been hard to miss if you’ve spent any time on the web lately. We’ve previously pointed out the flaws in their math and our public Cost Per Application Calculator clearly shows how deploying a virtual infrastructure built with vSphere will cost about the same as one built using Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center (or even much less when vSphere’s proven VM density advantage over Hyper-V is factored in.) Now we’re pleased to share recent independent test results that…

  • View 5.1 Performance

    VMware VROOM! Blog
    Lawrence Spracklen
    18 May 2012 | 1:34 pm
    In addition to the numerous enhancements detailed here, View 5.1 debuts a number of significant enhancements and optimizations to the PCoIP protocol. In this blog, we detail some of the most beneficial:  PCoIP efficiency Continuing refinements to compression protocols and general performance optimization deliver further improvements in PCoIP efficiency and corresponding reductions in CPU consumption. While already performing better than the VDI competition (as illustrated here and here), these enhancements deliver up to an additional 1.3X reduction in PCoIP overheads. Client…
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    The Console Blog

  • Introducing the vFabric Suite 5.1 and vFabric SQLFire

    VMTN
    15 May 2012 | 5:00 am
    Posted by Jerry ChenVice President, Cloud and Application Services In 2009, VMware acquired SpringSource because we saw a fundamental change in the way our customers were building and running their applications.  More than ever, our customers were using technology to build new applications to improve their business, respond to competition, and get closer to their customers. These new applications were built for mobile, used social networks and leveraged enormous volumes of real-time data to make better decisions.  The underlying frameworks and technologies powering these…

  • Preserving Multi-Cloud Choice and Flexibility with Cloud Foundry “Open PaaS”

    VMTN
    26 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am
    Posted by Steve HerrodChief Technology Officer It has been nine months since we launched Cloud FoundryTM - the industry’s first open platform as a service (aka PaaS).  Cloud Foundry debuted with both the CloudFoundry.com service and as an open source project via CloudFoundry.org and we have seen a rich ecosystem of technology providers and service providers emerge around Cloud Foundry.  Offering a choice of clouds, developer frameworks and application services, Cloud Foundry, currently available in beta, makes it faster and easier to build, deploy and scale applications.

  • It's Time to Rethink IT Management

    VMTN
    18 Oct 2011 | 7:00 am
    Posted by Steve HerrodChief Technology Officer The past few months have been very exciting at VMware. In July, we launched vSphere 5 and the industry's first cloud infrastructure suite. At VMworld in August, we unveiled our vision and products to liberate and support end-users in the Post-PC era. And today during the opening keynote of VMworld Europe (where we have more than 7000 registered attendees!) we are adding to the fun. We are announcing three new product suites that deliver a new approach to IT management – an approach that is specifically targeted at the “cloud era.” As…

  • An Oasis of Innovation in the Desert

    VMTN
    30 Aug 2011 | 4:36 pm
    Posted by Steve HerrodChief Technology Officer Each year there is one event I look forward to more than any other – VMworld.  VMworld brings together the leading industry innovators to share virtualization and cloud best practices, showcase breakthrough new technologies, get hands-on in the Labs, and catch up with old friends.  This week in Las Vegas we're hosting the biggest VMworld to date, with more than 19,000 virtualization and cloud geeks gathered to push the industry forward together (I remember being shocked to see 800 people attend just a few years ago!).

  • Towards Virtualized Networking for the Cloud

    VMTN
    30 Aug 2011 | 10:00 am
    Posted by Steve HerrodChief Technology Officer VMworld 2011 is well-underway with more than 19,000 attendees gathered in Las Vegas to learn about, celebrate, and drive the future of both virtualization and cloud computing. The amount of news has been staggering, but I want to take more time to focus on one particularly important announcement in this blog; a new vision and approach for networking in the cloud era. Cloud computing holds the promise of accessing shared resources in a secure, scalable, and self-service manner, and these core tenets place huge demands on today’s physical network…
 
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    VMware PowerCLI Blog

  • Retrieving License keys from Multiple vCenters

    Alanrenouf
    17 May 2012 | 3:15 pm
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing A question I receive all the time is: How can I list all license keys I have for all of my Virtual Centers in my Infrastructure ?   Luckily PowerCLI enables us to work with multiple vCenters all at one, we can connect to many vCenters or hosts and pull back information on all of these at the same time, to do this you need to set the PowerCLI Configuration to work in multiple mode and then you can connect to more than one vCenter at the same time, to do this see the following example: Once we are in multiple configuration mode we can then use…

  • Working with VM Devices in PowerCLI

    Alanrenouf
    4 May 2012 | 10:47 am
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing Recently I was asked if it was possible to list all VMs which had particular devices attached to them, and further to this, was there any way to remove the device from the VM or multiple VMs on mass. To address this question lets look at the types of devices which can be used by a VM: Some of these devices are more popular than others, most VMs will have a Hard Disk and an Ethernet Adapter but I rarely see a VM with a Parallel or Serial port, so lets see which of these items we support out of the box in PowerCLI. Floppy Drives CD/DVD Drive USB Device…

  • Preparing the hosts in Provider VDCs with PowerCLI

    Alanrenouf
    27 Apr 2012 | 1:49 pm
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing Following my previous post where I showed how easy and quick it was to create a Provider VDC there was a step which we needed to complete before the Provider VDC would be available to use, if you took note of the last screenshot it looked the same as below: The more attentive of you will have noticed the system alerts on the status, this is because we had not prepared the hosts within our cluster to be used with vCloud Director.  When first adding ESXi hosts to a VCD Provider VDC an agent is needed on the hosts, Chris Colotti explained recently…

  • PowerCLI Webcasts

    Alanrenouf
    19 Apr 2012 | 4:38 pm
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing Recently there have been some great webcasts on PowerCLI, I wanted to make sure that these were available for everyone to watch.  Firstly I will start off with the BrownBag Webcasts, if you don’t attend these I highly recommend you check them out, the BrownBag Webcasts were started by Cody Bunch and are a weekly webcast which goes through various VMware products and technologies in around 1hr (sometimes they run over). You can find a full list of the BrownBag Webcasts and detail on how to attend these here:…

  • Working with vCloud Metadata in PowerCLI

    Alanrenouf
    30 Mar 2012 | 4:56 am
    Posted by Alan Renouf Technical Marketing Yesterday William Lam created a great post which showed us how easy it was to work with vCloud Director (vCD) Metadata, he outlined how easy it was to add/update and remove metadata from the various objects which supported this function in vCD. As he explained, we can use this to assign various useful information to our vCD objects, one of these was the contact information.  In this post I will show example scripts and how the code would look in PowerCLI when working with vCD Metadata. In our example we will have a list of VMs starting with…
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    VMware Security & Compliance

  • VMware Security Update

    Iain Mulholland
    3 May 2012 | 8:22 am
    On April 23, 2012, our security team became aware of the public posting of a single file from the VMware ESX source code dating back to 2004, and the possibility that more files may be posted in the near future. Ensuring customer security is our top priority. As a matter of best practices with respect to security, VMware strongly encourages all customers to apply the latest product updates and security patches made available for their specific environment. As part of its regular program of providing patches for security and other issues, VMware has accelerated the delivery of a set of…

  • VMware Security Note

    Iain Mulholland
    24 Apr 2012 | 10:39 am
    Yesterday, April 23, 2012, our security team became aware of the public posting of a single file from the VMware ESX source code and the possibility that more files may be posted in the future. The posted code and associated commentary dates to the 2003 to 2004 timeframe.The fact that the source code may have been publicly shared does not necessarily mean that there is any increased risk to VMware customers. VMware proactively shares its source code and interfaces with other industry participants to enable the broad virtualization ecosystem today. We take customer security seriously and have…

  • VMware Releases vShield 5.0.1

    Matt Dreyer
    23 Apr 2012 | 4:14 pm
    VMware is proud to announce the immediate availability of the 5.0.1 versions of vShield Edge, vShield App, vShield Endpoint, and vShield Data Security.  Each of these updates introduces a number of new features and bug fixes. Check out the new reporting capabilities in vShield Data Security! Highlights of the 5.0.1 release include: Automation Simplified automation using new REST API calls for vShield Data Security workflows, including triggers for completion of scans. Enable download of vShield VIBs (host modules) from vShield Manager, a key step in support for Autodeploy…

  • VMware (CP&C) Releases PCI 2.0 FREE Compliance Checkers!

    George Gerchow
    10 Apr 2012 | 9:41 am
    Hola Amigos y Amigas, Today we are going to give you access to two (That’s right, DOS!) FREE downloadable tools that help you get started on the journey to achieving PCI 2.0 Compliance. The PCI 2.0 Compliance Checkers for Windows and LINUX are fresh off the virtual assembly line and compiled by the good folks at VMware’s Center for Policy & Compliance! (CP&C)  Here is how they work:  The Compliance Checkers run an assessment on 5 Guest systems at a time! The assessment is based on a predefined subset of the PCI 2.0 Content that currently exist today in vCenter…

  • vCenter Configuration Manager 5.5 is now Generally Available

    George Gerchow
    19 Mar 2012 | 6:23 am
    As you are probably aware, back in October we unveiled the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite designed to deliver integrated performance, capacity and configuration management for virtualized and cloud computing environments.  What is less well known is that VMware vCenter Configuration Manager is the anchor for the “configuration” management capabilities within the suite.  Having been part of Configuresoft for several years before it was first purchased by EMC and then sold to VMware, I feel a bit like a dad watching his baby grow up.  The technology that was…
 
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    Virtual Reality

  • Sorry Microsoft; Not Only Does vSphere Cost Less to Buy, It Also Costs Less to Operate.

    Eric Horschman
    16 May 2012 | 12:58 pm
    Microsoft’s wildly exaggerated claims of providing a less expensive virtualization platform than VMware vSphere have been hard to miss if you’ve spent any time on the web lately. We’ve previously pointed out the flaws in their math and our public Cost Per Application Calculator clearly shows how deploying a virtual infrastructure built with vSphere will cost about the same as one built using Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center (or even much less when vSphere’s proven VM density advantage over Hyper-V is factored in.) Now we’re pleased to share recent independent test results that…

  • Far out, man! Microsoft’s wasted 1970s campaign to diss VMware. Can you dig it?!

    Mark Chuang
    13 Apr 2012 | 10:02 am
    It was hard to miss. As I was getting my daily dose of tech news yesterday, I started seeing the Microsoft “Tad” ads. I saw it first on NetworkWorld, then on InformationWeek. I later heard that it was also on Tech Republic, ComputerWorld, ZDNet, a big ad in the Wall Street Journal, and who knows where else Microsoft spent a bunch of its hard-earned money, just to malign VMware. The ads lead back to a custom microsite that Microsoft built… more money spent on VMware. (Hmmm… I’m seeing a trend/complex here as Microsoft’s own virtualization website mentions VMware as many times as it…

  • 7 Reasons Why Microsoft’s Cloud Math Needs Remediation

    Chanda Dani
    9 Apr 2012 | 5:18 pm
    Microsoft has published a white paper claiming Microsoft’s private cloud solution costs much less than VMware’s. It is interesting to see that 75% of the white paper is actually about VMware! The white paper uses distorted cost comparisons such as comparing Microsoft’s unreleased products with VMware’s released products, comparing Microsoft discounted prices with VMware’s list price, comparing dissimilar features and comparing software only costs and ignoring the total cost. When fairly calculated, the total cost of using VMware’s solution is actually 15% less than that of…

  • Oracle VM – 4x More Marketing, 4x Fewer Substantiated Facts

    Avi
    3 Apr 2012 | 8:07 am
    The good folks in Oracle’s marketing department deserve a raise for their efforts around promoting the latest release of the company’s virtualization solution, Oracle VM (OVM) 3. They certainly are aiming high, claiming OVM 3 is four times more scalable than VMware, four times cheaper to deploy than VMware, and is architected for efficiency while VMware is prone to inefficiencies. Not bad for a product that did not even exist until 2009 and is only on its second release (why the second release is called OVM 3, I don’t know). Unfortunately for Oracle Marketing, there’s a problem,…

  • Setting SolarWinds straight on how SMBs prefer VMware over Microsoft

    Chanda Dani
    22 Mar 2012 | 5:05 pm
    SolarWinds recently published a blog claiming VMware ceded the SMB market to Microsoft Hyper-V. Unfortunately the SolarWinds blog is not accepting comments, so we are posting our response here. The blog misquotes Gartner, makes incorrect statements about VMware products and packaging and makes unsupported claims on how VMware will play in the SMB market. Firstly, Gartner’s estimates of hypervisor SMB market share are far different from those made in the blog. Gartner states, “By 2015, at least 75% of Hyper-V VMs will be installed in enterprises with fewer than 1,000 employees” in the…
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    VMware VROOM! Blog

  • View 5.1 Performance

    Lawrence Spracklen
    18 May 2012 | 1:34 pm
    In addition to the numerous enhancements detailed here, View 5.1 debuts a number of significant enhancements and optimizations to the PCoIP protocol. In this blog, we detail some of the most beneficial:  PCoIP efficiency Continuing refinements to compression protocols and general performance optimization deliver further improvements in PCoIP efficiency and corresponding reductions in CPU consumption. While already performing better than the VDI competition (as illustrated here and here), these enhancements deliver up to an additional 1.3X reduction in PCoIP overheads. Client…

  • IBM solidDB Universal Cache on VMware vSphere 5.0

    Vincent Lin
    2 May 2012 | 11:48 am
    VMware recently released a white paper showing the performance scalability of virtualized IBM solidDB Universal Cache and IBM DB2 on the IBM System x3850 X5 server with MAX5, using VMware vSphere 5.0.  This paper shows that the virtualized IBM solidDB Universal Cache environment achieves excellent performance and scalability on a typical online transaction processing (OLTP) system in today’s enterprise. The test results show superior performance when adding the solidDB Universal Cache feature into an existing application server configuration.  The throughput of the solidDB…

  • vMotion Performance Discussion on VROOM! Videos

    Todd Muirhead
    6 Apr 2012 | 12:26 pm
    This episode of VROOM! Videos is a discussion about vMotion performance.  We talk about some of the key metrics to consider when measuring the performance of vMotion and some of the reason why the performance of vMotion is so important.  We also had an unexpected guest show up in the middle, who just so happened to have some interesting information to add to the conversation.   References from the video: vMotion Architecture, Performance, and Best Practices in VMware vSphere 5 - Blog and White Paper Virtual Machine Migration Comparison - White Paper by Principled…

  • Exploring FAST Cache Performance Using VMmark 2.1.1

    Rebecca Grider
    5 Apr 2012 | 1:22 pm
    A system’s performance is often limited by the access time of its hard disk drive (HDD). Solid-state drives (SSDs), also known as Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), tout a superior performance profile to HDDs. In our previous comparison of EFD and HDD technologies using VMmark 2.1, we showed that EFD reads were on average four times faster than HDD reads, while EFD and HDD write speeds were comparable. However, EFDs are more costly per gigabyte.Many vendors have attempted to address this issue using tiered storage technologies. Here, we tested the performance benefits of EMC’s FAST Cache…

  • Comprehensive User Experience Monitoring

    Lawrence Spracklen
    2 Apr 2012 | 4:55 pm
    In previous posts and VMworld presentations we have talked about scaling VDI solutions, various VDI performance considerations, and bandwidth/quality tradeoffs.  In the inaugural issue of the VMware Technical Journal, we talk about the techniques we have developed to enable the automated monitoring of user experience for virtual desktop deployments (VDI), application remoting, cloud computing & even video streaming and online gaming. The paper can be found here.
 
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    blog.scottlowe.org

  • It’s Not Too Late

    slowe
    18 May 2012 | 5:32 am
    It’s not too late to sign up for Spousetivities at EMC World 2012! The conference is upon us next week, and if you have a spouse/partner/friend/family member traveling with you then you owe it to them to check out Spousetivities. More information on the activities, costs, and the ability to actually register for activities can be found on the registration page. Go sign up now! Here’s a preview of what will be available next week: Welcome Breakfast on Monday Wine excursion Horseback riding in Red Rock Canyon Spa services through Canyon Ranch Spa at The Venetian For more information…

  • Technology Short Take #22

    slowe
    3 May 2012 | 11:16 am
    Welcome to Technology Short Take #22! Once again, I find myself without too many articles to share with you this time around. I guess that will make things a bit easier for you, the reader, but it does make me question whether or not I’m “listening” to the right communities. If any readers have suggestions on sources of information to which I should be subscribing or I should be following, I’d love to hear your suggestions. In any case, let’s get into the meat of it. I hope you find something useful! Networking Trying to learn MPLS? (I am.) I found this article…

  • Carolinas VMware Users Summit 2012

    slowe
    30 Apr 2012 | 12:25 pm
    This year I have the opportunity to once again join a veritable “who’s who” in virtualization at the Carolinas VMUG Summit on May 15, 2012, in Charlotte, NC. (You can register for the event here.) There’s quite a line-up planned for this year: Morning keynote from Satyam Vaghani and Vinay Gaonkar of VMware on the past and future of VMware storage An afternoon keynote from Jake Howering of Cisco (this should be a good talk on data center interconnects) Self-paced labs (provided by Varrow) Instructor-led labs (provided by eGroup, also a Spousetivities sponsor) A series…

  • Updated launchd Property List File for Synergy

    slowe
    30 Apr 2012 | 7:00 am
    After posting my article on running the Synergy server automatically on OS X Lion, a reader added a comment suggesting that it wasn’t recommended to use a shell script to launch a process via launchd. I haven’t been able to find any information to back up that recommendation, but I did create a new launchd property list file that doesn’t require (or use) a shell script to start synergys. Here’s the updated property list file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer/DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"…

  • Spousetivities at EMC World 2012

    slowe
    27 Apr 2012 | 7:00 am
    This year at EMC World 2012 (being held once again in Las Vegas, NV), Spousetivities returns for their second year at EMC’s user conference. As usual, my wife Crystal—who founded and runs Spousetivities—has a great set of activities planned for any spouses, partners, family members, or friends that will be traveling with EMC World conference attendees. (EMC’ers: those of you attending the TC Conference can have your traveling companions attend Spousetivities too!) If you haven’t heard of Spousetivities, it’s a company that Crystal created to organize and…
 
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    Gabes Virtual World

  • New design for GabesVirtualWorld

    Gabrie van Zanten
    17 May 2012 | 3:53 pm
    After running the “Private Investigator” design, a film noir theme, for almost 2 years, it was time for a redesign. I asked my good twitter friend Jenneke van Wijngaarden (@JennekePenneke) for help and ideas. Jenneke is well known for her graffiti art on walls and paintings, but she had never before created a design for a website. Nevertheless she took her pencil and drew a few designs and after looking at the beautiful curves of the lady in red, I just had to choose for the design you’re currently looking at. Jenneke is very experienced on several disciplines in art and is…

  • Discover game changing replication for vSphere VMs

    Gabrie van Zanten
    15 May 2012 | 1:01 am
    (Copied from the Veeam announcement) Need to change your disaster recovery practices? Join VMware vExpert Gabrie van Zanten, a principal consultant at Open Line for this LIVE webinar and discover how a strong replication strategy will improve your DR practices. Gabrie van Zanten is a VMware virtualization expert, the author on his ownweblog Rick Vanover, Veeam Product Strategy Specialist with extensive virtualization expertise Steven Duckaert, Veeam System Engineer with a focus on VMware and Microsoft technologies 22 May 2012 at 16:00 CEST / 10:00 EDT / 15:00 BST Topics include: Your…

  • VMware HA Admission Control and VM reservations

    Gabrie van Zanten
    9 May 2012 | 3:38 pm
    Did you know about VMware HA admission control coupled to VM reservations? To be honest I thought I knew, but recently I was pointed to some details that showed me I was wrong. What I’m talking about is the cluster setting of “HA Admission Control” and how “Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity” and “Host failures the cluster tolerates” are related to the CPU and memory reservations at VM level. These settings will make sure that your HA cluster will reserve enough resources to recover from host failures, depending on how high you set the % of…

  • How too many vCPUs can negatively affect performance

    Gabrie van Zanten
    4 May 2012 | 4:01 am
    Customer with small vSphere environment of just two hosts had performance issues and they asked me to investigate the situation. When looking at the technical specs at first glance, you would suspect that this configuration should work. With just two hosts, each dual Quad core CPU, the enivornment had a total of 16 CPU cores. In total there were only 9 VMs running using a total of 23 vCPUs. Usually you can easily run 5 vCPUs per core, if not more. Turned out there were a number of VMs with 4 vCPUs and 2 vCPUs that really didn’t need them. You can easily discover this by checking READY en …

  • Adding ESXi host with dvSwitch through Auto Deploy fails

    Gabrie van Zanten
    26 Apr 2012 | 1:03 pm
    Been fighting some problems with VMware Auto Deploy lately which turned out to be an easy to solve issue. I installed the first host in the cluster, which would NOT be deployed with Auto Deploy but had a local hard disk in it. Configured it the way I like it, set all the logging and network coredump location to be the vCenter host and then created a host profile. The network configuration consisted of just two vmnics (10Gbps) in a dvSwitch. The vmkernel port was of course on the dvSwitch. After this host was working fine, I copied the host profile and used this copied profile as the reference…
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    Malaysia VMware Communities

  • New Generation of Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1240

    craig
    26 Apr 2012 | 8:54 am
    Cisco UCS had updated the product line up with VIC 1240, VIC 1280 and LOM expander which allow a single half width blade to aggregates up to 80Gbps total bandwidth to deliver high performance and high throughput requirement for the server system. The New VIC 1240 come with the following capabilities.   Advanced Support for Virtualized Environments The Cisco UCS VIC 1240 implements the Cisco VM-FEX, which unifies virtual and physical networking into a single infrastructure. It provides virtual-machine visibility from the physical network and a consistent network operations model for…

  • Private Cloud Computing Consideration

    craig
    13 Apr 2012 | 10:02 am
    Cloud computing had been the top priority in most Enterprise IT spending now. While rushing to evaluate or roll out the Enterprise private cloud, you should always have the detail level of understanding and future consideration to decide the right technology platform to be adopted. I had been spoken to quite a number of users, which initial thought the cloud computing should drive the IT spending down compare to the legacy methodology they are doing today. After a detail study and analysis, they realize the upfront investment and additional tools may cost them more compare to the current…

  • EMC VSPEX offering

    craig
    13 Apr 2012 | 9:29 am
    EMC had announce VSPEX offering days ago. What is VSPEX? vBlock and Flexpod had been in the market for years which focus on highly integrated, tested and proven technology to bring Virtualization solution as a single solution stack to cover Networking, Storage and Compute. EMC had partnered with VMware and Cisco by offered vBlock to the market to simplify the ordering and deployment cycles to the user who want a reliable system with simple ordering method. At the same time, Netapp  had partnered with VMware and Cisco to provide Flexpod offering to the market. Flexpod are more focus in…

  • Cisco UCS Product Update with B200M3

    craig
    9 Mar 2012 | 7:12 am
    I just received an email from my Cisco Counter Part today, which Cisco had released the B200 M3 to their UCS line up. First thing I did, is to launch the Netformx design tools from my Laptop which provide myself the direct access to the latest configuration and price list online and authenticated by Cisco. I notice there are couple of significant improvement from this new generation blade as below 2 sockets base blade servers to provide up to 16 cores with Intel E5 chip by utilizing 1600Mhz DDR3 memory It provide up to 384 GB of memory with 16 GB memory module IO interface through put…

  • Hitachi Storage Manager for VMware vCenter

    jlchannel
    21 Nov 2011 | 7:46 am
    Finally Hitachi Data System(HDS) released the Storage Manager Plugin for VMware vCenter server. Hitachi Data Systems announces the availability of specific integration for VMware’s vCenter called “Hitachi Storage Manager for VMware vCenter”. Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi Data Systems jointly developed this functionality in which this will be installed as a separate plug-in for VMware vCenter. Customers upgrading to vSphere 4.1 and vSphere 5.0 using the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform or Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V will automatically be able…
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    Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

  • Registration is now open for the VCAP5-DCD Exam

    19 May 2012 | 11:57 am
    VMware Certified Advanced Professional on vSphere 5 – Datacenter Design (VCAP5-DCD) VCAP5-DCD is designed for IT architects who design and integrate VMware solutions in multi-site, large enterprise, virtualized environments. Successful candidates possess a deep understanding of datacenter design principles and methodologies, as well as VMware core components and their relation to storage and networking. Successful candidates also have broad knowledge of applications and infrastructure services, and how they relate and integrate with the virtual infrastructure. Achieving a VCAP5-DCD…

  • VMware Released vCenter Operations Manager for View

    17 May 2012 | 1:43 am
    VMware vCenter Operations Manager for View provides end-to-end visibility into the health, performance and efficiency of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). It enables desktop administrators to proactively ensure the best end-user experience, avert incidents and eliminate bottlenecks. Designed for VMware View, this optimized version of vCenter Operations Manager improves IT productivity and lowers the cost of owning and operating VDI environments. http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/vcenter-operations-manager-view/overview.html
 
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    RTFM Education

  • Vendorwag in the Valley – Pure Storage

    Mike Laverick
    16 May 2012 | 7:49 am
    As with the other videos in the “Vendorwag in the Valley” we have diced & sliced them into 3 course, or one jumbo portion. First video is the “elevator pitch” which gives an introduction from the CEO about who Pure Storage are, what they do, and what their unique value-proposition is. What this video if you have never come across Pure Storage before. The second video is a slightly more technical video were we discuss in detail the advantages and disadvantages of the solution. The third video is for the geeks who are in technical stuff – learn more about how…

  • Columbus Ohio & Austin Texas Bound…

    Mike Laverick
    14 May 2012 | 2:33 am
    I’m getting all setup for my next trip to the US of A. First stop is to speak at the Columbus, Ohio Regional Conferrence/VMUG on the 22nd May. The agenda for the meeting has been released over here and it will be held at: Hyatt Regency Columbus 350 North High Street Columbus, OH 43215 I will be speaking about SRM again, and hope to have an updated deck of slides based on a recent NDA/Roadmap session with VMware that I did a week or so ago. Lets just say the future is very bright and very interesting. I will be joined by fellow vExpert and virtualization guru, David Davis who will be…

  • Vendorwag in the Valley – Nlyte Software – iTunes/iPod/iPhone/iPad/AppleTV Edition

    Mike Laverick
    11 May 2012 | 12:53 am
    If you missed the youtube version of my vendorwag with Nlyte Software, its now available to listen to via my iTunes subscription. I chat with Craig Ledo and Claudia Hanson There’s three videos – the Elevator Pitch, the Product Lowdown and the Techknowledgy Demo.

  • vNews – April 2012

    Mike Laverick
    7 May 2012 | 2:55 am
    With Mike Laverick of RTFM Education and Stu McHugh of stumchugh.wordpress.com/ Stu McHugh and I discuss a whole series of stories including: Gabrie Van Zanten – Auto Deploy Adventures Alan Renouf’s vCDAudit New Books & Publications Brian Madden’s VDI Delusion Book & the new CDL License from Microsoft Chad Sakac and VSI Andre Leibovici and Windows8/View5.x Duncan Epping and vShield App “Excludes” and Stretched HA/SRM Designs Scott Lowe and TrainSignal Videos Microsoft Virtual Machine Migration Toolkit Windows Embedded Device Manager Citrix acquires…

  • Vendorwag in the Valley – Xangati

    Mike Laverick
    4 May 2012 | 10:36 am
    In my last day on the Vendorwag in the Valley I toddled down to X to see guys at Xangati. Xangati delivers the leading infrastructure performance management solutions designed to overcome virtualization stall for both server virtualization and VDI environments. Xangati’s ability to track cross-IT silo interactions in 360° in a live and continuous fashion is entirely unique in the market. Xangati’s IPM solutions track the performance health of a given infrastructure and automatically alert an administrator when a performance shift occurs. These alerts are wholly unique as they are…
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    The Virtualization Room

  • VMware Forum 2012: In case you missed it

    Keith Kessinger
    16 May 2012 | 1:20 pm
    VMware Forum 2012, a traveling conference for VMware customers and partners, stopped in Boston this week. If you weren’t able to attend, here’s a look at what you missed: VMware rolled out the red carpet for attendees at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, which vaguely resembles an airplane hangar. Attendees milled around before the general session, which kicked off the event. One keynote speaker, Benjamin Gray, principal analyst at Forrester Research, spoke about how organizations are shifting toward more BYOD- and cloud-based models. And Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of…

  • No additional VMware source code leaked on May 5

    Beth Pariseau
    7 May 2012 | 1:51 pm
    When an Anonymous hacker leaked a page of VMware’s source code along with other documents from a compromised Chinese company in early April, he threatened that the leak was “just a preview,” and that more documents were coming on May 5. Then, the hacker claiming responsibility for the leak reportedly told Kaspersky Labs’ Threatpost blog that among those files, a terabyte in all, there were 300 megabytes (MB) more VMware source code. Thus, it was widely anticipated by the VMware community (including this blog) that 300 MB of VMware source code would be released on Saturday. On May 3,…

  • VMware releases slew of security updates, references code leak

    Beth Pariseau
    3 May 2012 | 12:23 pm
    VMware Inc. issued a security update Thursday afternoon that referenced the recent leak of its source code as the impetus for unleashing a bevy of critical patches for its products. Affected products include ESX and ESXi versions 3.5, 4.0, 4.1 and 5.0, Workstation and Player. A further description of problems associated with the patches and linked from the security update blog describes remote procedure call (RPC), SCSI driver and network file system (NFS) vulnerabilities which could potentially allow an unauthorized user execute code on a virtualized host. With the post’s repeated use of…

  • All eyes on VMware as source code exposed

    Beth Pariseau
    25 Apr 2012 | 2:55 pm
    Enterprise IT has its eye on VMware’s next move following its confirmation that ESX server source code was leaked by a hacker this week. The leak could pose a security threat to companies with virtual infrastructures based on vSphere. The code, which dates to 2003 or 2004, was apparently stolen from “a variety of compromised Chinese firms,” according to a Threatpost report. The code was confirmed as genuine by the director of VMware’s Security Response Center in a blog post yesterday. Although only a single file has been released publicly, the hacker claims to have another 300 MB of…

  • VMware SRM 5 encounters potential security conundrum–UPDATED

    Beth Pariseau
    12 Apr 2012 | 12:21 pm
    Update: A draft of Version 5 of the VMware Security Hardening Guide has been posted, which no longer recommends turning off the VIX API. Conundrum resolved. Security-conscious VMware shops may encounter an issue when upgrading to Site Recovery Manager 5, which uses an API to reassign IP addresses to VMs during the disaster recovery process. The vSphere 5 edition of VMware’s Security Hardening Guide is still in the works, but one blogger brought up a potential conflict between the API, called VIX, and a recommendation against enabling it in the Hardening Guide issued with vSphere 4.1. “SRM…
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    Virtualfuture.info

  • VMware View 5.1 new features highlighted

    Sven Huisman
    2 May 2012 | 12:43 pm
    Today VMware announced VMware View 5.1. A lot of great new features in this update. In this blogpost I was going to highlight the new features of this release but that has already been done a lot by other bloggers. ...

  • Free tools for VMware View

    Sven Huisman
    22 Mar 2012 | 1:30 am
    In these days of recession I thought it would be a good idea to sum up a couple of free tools which you can use designing, implementing and maintaining a VMware View Infrastructure. I’ve divided the tools in the following ...

  • Free Load balancing for VMware View with Citrix Netscaler VPX Express

    Sven Huisman
    21 Feb 2012 | 7:54 am
    A load balancer for VMware View is not a requirement in a VMware View infrastructure with less than 2000 users. Even when there are multiple VMware View Connection servers for high availability, a single VMware View Connection server can handle ...

  • VMware View Local Mode – Lessons learned

    Sven Huisman
    26 Jan 2012 | 1:43 pm
    I’ve been working with VMware View Local Mode for couple of weeks now and I wanted to share my experience. VMware View Local Mode allows a virtual desktop to be downloaded to a laptop or desktop and to be executed ...

  • VMware ThinApp online bootcamp

    Sven Huisman
    31 Oct 2011 | 5:52 am
    VMware is organizing a six-part bootcamp about ThinApp, VMware’s Application Virtualization solution. “…we show you how to use, deploy, and optimize VMware ThinApp. The  session will include everything from deployment best practices, tips & tricks for performance enhancement, and improving ...
 
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    The State of Security

  • Tripwire: Leader in IT Security–and Style!

    Kate Carson
    18 May 2012 | 11:45 am
    As I have often mentioned, one of the things that makes Tripwire unique is its people.  Our company is a mash-up of talent, intelligence, drive, wit and style.  As I have also mentioned, my blog is focused on the people and culture of Tripwire, not the security aspect of our company.  I’ll leave that to [...]

  • PCI Compliance — More Than Just a Tick Box Exercise?

    Cindy Valladares
    18 May 2012 | 11:24 am
    “Compliance” is sometimes considered a dirty word in the information security world, particularly when companies take a “tick box” or “check box” approach to achieving it before an audit instead of treating continuous compliance as a part of business as usual. Infosec expert and ‘cynic’ Javvad Malik interviews Neira Jones (@NeiraJones on Twitter), Head of [...]

  • How To Deal with a Security Incident

    Cindy Valladares
    17 May 2012 | 2:00 pm
    “Incidents are bound to happen, there’s no avoiding it!” Are you prepared to deal with a security breach? Infosec expert and ‘cynic’ Javvad Malik interviews Brian Honan (@BrianHonan on Twitter) internationally recognized information security expert, during Infosecurity Europe conference to offer tips on how to respond to security incidents. First tip? Identify if the problem [...]

  • The Best Information Security Advice (European Flavor)

    Cindy Valladares
    17 May 2012 | 11:28 am
    As hundreds of security professionals gathered for the 2012 Infosecurity Europe conference in London, infosec expert and ‘cynic’ Javvad Malik surveyed the pros with a simple question: “What is the best security advice you have ever been given?” A surprising handful of answers revolve around items as simple as passwords. Check out this video to see [...]

  • Play it again OpenSAMM – The Fundamental Things Apply

    Adam Montville
    17 May 2012 | 8:30 am
    OK, so “play it again OpenSAMM” is a twist on a misquote from Casablanca, but the song Sam sings in that movie does say, “fundamental things apply.” One fundamental in our world, which seems often overlooked, is that of software assurance. Enter OWASP and it’s Open Software Assurance Maturity Model (OpenSAMM). Before you roll your [...]
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    ZDNet | Virtually Speaking Blog RSS

  • Librato

    Dan Kusnetzky
    18 May 2012 | 4:05 am
    We are facing a world of increasing IT complexity. Librato believes that its Silverline and Metrics products will help IT administrators monitor IT operations and quickly find the reasons for slow downs and outages.

  • Public cloud execs dish out Top 10 tips for enterprises building hybrid clouds

    Paula Rooney
    17 May 2012 | 11:55 am
    “Enterprise-class” or “cloud class?” Enterprises are now looking to public cloud providers to figure out how to build the best hybrid cloud. At InterOp recently, executives from Rackspace, Terremark and NetScout were happy to offer up a list of to-do’s in this complicated process.

  • Xangati updates management dashboard

    Dan Kusnetzky
    16 May 2012 | 3:27 am
    Applications have become very complex and highly distributed. Each application might be segmented and virtualized in different ways. This means performance management has become a major problem. Xangati believes it has the answer.

  • ADARA Networks - is it bigger than a breadbox?

    Dan Kusnetzky
    15 May 2012 | 3:51 am
    ADARA Networks appears to be doing its best to do just about everything for everyone, everywhere, always. While an interesting concept, I have to wonder about a company trying to have such a broad reach.

  • Embrane and the software defined data center

    Dan Kusnetzky
    14 May 2012 | 4:01 am
    Today’s modern data center is very complex. No supplier offers tools that can directly address everything there. This means that organizations are likely to need a combination of tools from several suppliers. Will they work together and make life easier for the facilities and IT management team is the key question.
 
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    Yellow Bricks

  • Why is my pathing policy limited to “fixed” or “MRU” with things like MSCS cluster?

    Duncan Epping
    17 May 2012 | 6:49 am
    Yesterday I received an email from someone. He wanted to know why he was limited to using either the “fixed” or “MRU” pathing policy for the LUNs attached to his MSCS cluster. In his environment they used round-robin for everything and not being able to configure all of them with the same policy was against their internal policy. The thing is that if round-robin would be used and the path would switch (by default every 1000 I/Os) the SCSI-2 reservation would need to be re-acquired on this LUN. (MSCS uses SCSI-2 reservations for their cluster devices) As you can imagine…

  • KB article about SvMotion / VDS / HA problem republished with script to mitigate!

    Duncan Epping
    16 May 2012 | 10:09 am
    Just a second ago the GSS/KB team republished the KB article that explain the vSphere 5.0 problem around SvMotion / vDS / HA. I wrote about this problem various times and would like to refer to that for more details. What I want to point out here though is that the KB article now has a script attached which will help preventing problems until a full fixed is released. This script is basically the script that William Lam wrote, but it has been fully tested and vetted by VMware. For those running vSphere 5.0 and using SvMotion on VMs attached to distributed switches I urge you to use the…

  • vCenter Infrastructure Navigator throws the error: “an unknown discovery error has occurred”

    Duncan Epping
    10 May 2012 | 7:10 am
    I was deploying vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) in my lab today and the following error came up after I wanted to check dependencies for a virtual machine: Access failed, an unknown discovery error has occurred I rebooted several services but nothing seemed to solve it. Internally I bumped on a thread which had the fix for this problem: DNS. Yes I know always DNS right. Anyway, I used “DHCP” for my VIN appliance and this DHCP server pointed to a DNS server which did not have the IP/name of my ESXi hosts listed. Because of this the discovery didn’t work as VIN tries to…

  • Navigating your application landscape…

    Duncan Epping
    9 May 2012 | 12:46 pm
    I was on a holiday the last two weeks and slowly catching up on everything that happened. Some of you might think it wasn’t a lot, but in the world of cloud and virtualization it was. Not only was there a huge EUC launch event but also a new version of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator was released. Somehow it has been amazingly quiet around this product. Something I didn’t really understand, especially not after reading the release notes of version 1.1 of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator. Two things stood out: vCloud Director support Infrastructure Navigator discovers VMware…

  • Problems using the vCenter Web Client

    Duncan Epping
    7 May 2012 | 6:38 am
    I was doing some upgrades in my lab and ran in to an issue. Whenever I started the vCenter Web Client I got a message that the vCenter Inventory Service wasn’t running. I looked at my Services section in Windows 2008 and found that it wasn’t started. Starting it gave me a new error: 1067. This is very generic but I figured I would google it anyway. That actually brought me to our own documentation, yes I should check that first next time, and it mentioned I could reset the inventory service as follows: Stop the service (was already stopped) Delete the entire contents of the…
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    VMware Videos - Virtualization News and How-To

  • VIDEO: New Xangati Management Dashboard (XMD) Version 9 (@XangatiPress)

    David Davis
    17 May 2012 | 6:17 am
    I’m a big fan of free tools and, being a network guy originally, I have always been impressed with Xangati’s management dashboard (XMD) – a vSphere performance management tool – because it has the ability to collect Netflow data from the virtual network and intergrate that with more traditional performance stats. Additionally, it deploys as a virtual appliance and it can scroll performance stats of the virtual infrastructure back in time, like a DVR (you have to see it). This week, Xangati released an all new & updated version of XMD, now at revision 9, and it…

  • VMware CTO Steve @Herrod Interviewed by @ericsiebert @hpstorageguy

    David Davis
    16 May 2012 | 4:15 am
    In this video taken before the Silicon Valley VMUG, VMware CTO Steve Herrod is interviewed by HP’s Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert) and Calvin Zito (@hpstorageguy). Watch to find out what Steve has been up to and the latest happenings at VMware, from the perspective of the CTO. Herrod even says that he has already been preparing for the VMworld keynote and has big news planned…

  • vChat – Episode 26 – Big Fat Geeky vChat

    David Davis
    14 May 2012 | 1:02 pm
    In vChat Episode 26 David Davis, Simon Seagrave, and Eric Siebert cover the latest news and happenings in the world of virtualization including EMC World prep, HP Discover, regional VMUGs, and much more (don’t forget home labs and iPads) – don’t miss it! In this vChat we covered: EMC World Labs HP Discover TrainSignal New Courses – vCloud Director, Advanced vSphere Networking and Scott Lowe’s Designing vSphere Infrastructures Varrow Madness 2012 Upcoming Charlotte Regional – May 2012 – Scott Lowe, Alan Renouf, William Lam, and Eric Siebert & Other…

  • @Drobo Announces Automated Data-aware Tiering Video

    David Davis
    3 May 2012 | 9:30 am
    This week I got an announcement that Drobo, producer of SMB to mid-size shared storage arrays, was now offering Automated Data-Aware Tiering in their product line. This new data tiering option uses both SSD and traditional hard drives in the same unit and intelligently stores the most accessed data on the higher performing drives, allowing SMBs to “immediately and dynamically optimize application performance”. Certainly, I had heard of storage tiering before but it was always a “high end” storage feature – not something I thought I would see in an SMB-to-mid-size array. I inquired…

  • Live Webinar- Desktop Virtualization for SMB with @DellSMBus @DavidMDavis

    David Davis
    26 Apr 2012 | 11:18 am
    Yesterday I recorded this LIVE webinar with experts from Dell and TrendMicro where we discuss the benefits, sizing, ROI, and security issues related to desktop virtualization. I hope you enjoy it and I welcome your feedback! You can register for the Dell Vostro 3550 laptop mentioned in the webcast between now and May 2, 2012 by going to Dell Webcast Giveaway. For more webinars from Dell, follow @DellSMBus and visit the Dell Ustream.TV webpage.
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    VMwareTips

  • Life Events Cause Priorities to Change

    Rick Scherer
    8 May 2012 | 3:46 pm
    If you haven’t noticed I’ve been lacking in the content department for VMwareTips.com and for that, I apologize. Most of my readers and friends in the industry know that when I joined EMC I’ve had some fundamental issues with content due to my new job. Frankly it was way easier to talk as a customer and end-user with tips, tricks and issues that I found when using the products on a daily basis. As an employee I’m doing a lot more evangelizing than hands-on, and the time I do spend in the lab is doing very specific projects with lab equipment..which means I either…

  • vSphere-land Voting for Top Blogs

    Rick Scherer
    2 Feb 2012 | 8:35 am
    As most of my vFriends would know, I’m a huge fan of blogging and social media in general. I think it’s a great mechanism to reach out to the masses for the means to educate, and to push out messaging in a wide scale. I can honestly say that if it wasn’t for blogging and social media, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today professionally (thanks Chad). With that said, my good buddy Eric Siebert over at vSphere-land has opened up voting for his top blogs lists called the vLaunchPad, and I’d like to reach out to my readers and frequent visitors to please go out…

  • vSphere 5 Video Series – VMware vSphere 5.0 Auto Deploy

    Rick Scherer
    27 Dec 2011 | 1:58 pm
    Happy Holidays! This video is a continuation of my vSphere 5 Video Series, in this video I cover how to properly leverage VMware vSphere 5.0 Auto Deploy to automatically deploy ESXi hosts in your infrastructure. Auto Deploy is a new feature found in the Enterprise Plus edition of vSphere 5, it allows administrators to deploy stateless images that are deployed via gPXE directly to the RAM of the host. That’s right, ESXi hosts do not require a local HDD/USB/SDCARD to operate as they can simply download their image and configuration (via Host Profile) into RAM and automatically be placed…

  • vSphere 5 Video Series – Install vCenter 5.0 in Around 5 Minutes

    Rick Scherer
    13 Oct 2011 | 1:30 am
    In this video we’re going to cover the installation, configuration and usage of the VMware vCenter 5.0 Server Appliance (vCSA). The vCSA is a brand new production ready Virtual Appliance that allows you to stand up vCenter Server in literally a few minutes. Once you watch the video you’re going to be like, “Hey Rick, that was more than 5 minutes!”.  For that I do apologize, but when you do watch it you will realize we’re doing a lot more than just installing vCenter 5.0. First a little disclaimer. vCSA is not for everyone, but in my opinion it should definitely…

  • vSphere 5 Video Series – Installing ESXi 5.0 in Under 5 Minutes

    Rick Scherer
    10 Oct 2011 | 6:00 am
    This is going to be the first of many in my vSphere 5 Video Series where I’ll cover the basics to getting vSphere 5.0 installed, configured and operating. In this video see just how easy it is to do a bare-metal installation of ESXi 5.0. Out of all of the install and upgrade options available for vSphere 5.0 this by far is the easiest and cleanest method in my opinion. Upgrading can be extremely easy as well, by leveraging VMware Update Manager (VUM) it allows existing configurations to be migrated and will even allow you to migrate from ESX to ESXi. One thing to keep in mind when doing…
 
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    VCritical

  • 3 CPUs and 12GB RAM is the New Tier-1 App

    Eric Gray
    9 May 2012 | 5:15 am
    In what can only be regarded as a breakthrough in hypervisor performance technology, it is now possible to run tier-1 applications on minimal resources and without regard for high-availability of any kind! A fascinating new report from Enterprise Strategy Group reveals that one particular hypervisor is suddenly capable of running tier-1 applications on just 3 virtual CPUs and a mere 12GB RAM — power and efficiency at its finest.  Not only that, the New Tier-1 App no longer requires application-level clustering to meet stringent SLAs!  Simply throw your mission-critical SQL Server…

  • Great VMware Opportunity: Networking, Security, VXLAN, vShield, vSphere, vCloud

    Eric Gray
    30 Apr 2012 | 4:58 pm
    The newest member of my team at VMware just finished new hire orientation today, but there is still one more opportunity for a top-notch technologist.  This time I’m looking for a person that loves working with networking, virtualization, VMware vSphere, cloud computing, firewalls, and VPNs. If you know that VXLAN offers a better approach to network virtualization than NVGRE and you listen to Packet Pushers during your Silicon Valley commute, dust off your resume and take a look at the job description — contact me directly with any questions.   Related posts:Job Opportunity…

  • Missing: “Private Clouds” at the MMS 2012 Hosted Cloud Pavilion

    Eric Gray
    27 Apr 2012 | 9:08 am
    Last week at Microsoft Management Summit 2012, attendees were directed to the “Microsoft Hosted Cloud Pavilion” for information on secure, enterprise-ready private clouds built on Windows and System Center. I spent some time talking to these hosting providers, expecting to hear about how they have System Center 2012 deployed and ready to integrate with App Controller for amazing Infrastructure-as-a-Service hybrid cloud nirvana.  Much to my surprise, none of these companies were talking about this at all.  One was promoting an OpenStack initiative and all of them were happy to…

  • Missing: System Center 2012 Hybrid Cloud

    Eric Gray
    26 Apr 2012 | 5:30 am
    In a typical discussion of cloud computing, the question inevitably arises: “what is cloud anyway?”  Not too surprising, considering the fact that the term is hurled around on billboards, television, and everything in between.  “The Cloud” comprehension varies for a simple reason — there are different types of cloud computing that cover a wide range of uses. The National Institute of Standards and Technology took the initiative to provide recommended definitions of cloud computing models.  They’re probably not perfect, but it looks like the industry is…

  • Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”

    Eric Gray
    24 Apr 2012 | 1:55 pm
    Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), the annual user conference focused on System Center technologies, just wrapped up.  Based on the technical content, it sure seemed like 2011 all over again.  I suppose that’s one of the inevitable consequences that come with the practice of marketing future versions of products in order to compete with more mature and proven solutions. Back at MMS 2011 we heard about System Center 2012 — which was supposed to ship by the end of 2011 – and how the various products would revolutionize private clouds everywhere.  The sessions in 2011…
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    Virtualization

  • Bombarded with the term Cloud. But what is Cloud again?

    Roy Mikes
    14 May 2012 | 12:23 pm
    We are bombarded with the term Cloud some years now. But what is Cloud? I feel almost no longer taken seriously if I use the word Cloud. It is becomming a real buzzword, or not?! A lot of entrepreneurs sees Cloud computing as hype. All signs show that this virtual Cloud will not just blow over. No it’s going to stay. Recent figures from Microsoft show that small and medium sized organisations who already work in the cloud are very satisfied and this number is growing daily. Basically it comes down to this; Cloud computing is a metaphor used by Technology or IT Services companies for…

  • Understanding Stretched Clustering and Disaster Avoidance

    mbroeken
    7 May 2012 | 1:01 pm
    Stretched clustering is one of the most challenging topics I get when meeting with customers. Many customers think that stretched clustering is the ultimate disaster recovery solution and that it makes SRM obsolete. This is due to the fact that people think that HA will solve all their problems when it comes down to DR and that they still have the advantage of vMotion to have workload mobility between two data centers. This is NOT true. BUT stretching it makes a very good disaster avoidance solution!!! a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is a typical solution which still needs a good DR…

  • Private Cloud and Server Virtualization, What’s the Difference?

    kcoleman
    3 May 2012 | 1:09 pm
    Last week I was sitting at the Louisville VMUG listening to some vendors speak. Even when he was gauging the crowd, he asked the question “what type of cloud is everyone running today?” Everyone responded with the same answer “Private Cloud”. That got me fired up enough to send out this tweet that read “I want to express this very important point. Server Virtualization != Private Cloud” Of course, everyone is going to have their own opinions on this topic because the term “cloud” is always open for debate. Let me give you a take on what I think.

  • Ecosystems for Both VMware and Microsoft Hypervisors

    sbeaver
    3 May 2012 | 1:03 pm
    Since the start of the Windows 8 Public Beta, there has been a great deal of discussions and comparisons galore.  There have been points made that Microsoft Hyper-V will be good enough to draw good consideration in companies looking to the future.  For me personally, feature comparison was not my first consideration. One measurement that I consider is the eco-structure of the technology, or in other words, how large is the 3rd party partners and products supporting both the technologies? Just last week, SolarWinds announced the latest release of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (what used…

  • KEMP’s Virtual Load Balancing

    Roy Mikes
    17 Apr 2012 | 2:29 am
    KEMP’s market focus includes small-to-medium sized businesses, Fortune 1000 enterprises, remote enterprise branch offices and managed service providers, who view end-user satisfaction and IT web and application infrastructure reliability and optimization as mission-critical to their long-term success. KEMP leads the industry in driving the price/performance value proposition for application delivery and load balancing to levels that their customers can afford. Their products’ versatile and powerful architecture provide a very high value, while enabling customers to optimize their…
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    The SLOG - SimonLong/Blog

  • Goodbye VMware PSO – Hello VMware EUC Global CoE!

    Simon Long
    3 May 2012 | 6:52 am
    Now that yesterdays VMware EUC announcement hysteria has subsided, I thought this would be a good time to make my own VMware EUC announcement. (For those of you who were under a rock yesterday, here is my favorite post talking about What's new in View 5.1 (Beyond Marketing). After nearly two years of delivering customer projects with VMware Profesional Services (PSO), I have been given the opportunity to join VMware's EUC Global Center of Excellence (CoE). This is a move I am really excited about. So what will I be doing? From my understanding, I will be working closely with…

  • London VMUG – Thursday, May 17th, 2012

    Simon Long
    13 Apr 2012 | 3:36 am
    Agenda  From 10am….. Using vShield to Drive Efficiency and Costs Savings – Stephen Porter, Trend Micro Desktop Transformation with Liquidware Labs – Dan Falconer, Liquidware Labs Tintri Presentation VMTurbo Labs The vCenter Appliance – Hugo Phan, VMware Climb the Stack and Pimp your Cloud with VMware vFabric – Peter Holditch, VMware Flexpod: The Flexible Converged Infrastructure – Chris Kranz Help, My VDI Project is Hell! – Julian Wood Management and Orch’n – What, Why & How – Steve Bryen The vMarket…

  • NorthWest England VMUG – Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

    Simon Long
    11 Apr 2012 | 9:06 am
    I just wanted to bring this to peoples attention.  Registration Now Open: Northwest England VMUG Meeting  Join us for the inaugural Northwest England VMUG meeting taking place on Wednesday, May 2, 2012.  Registration is now open and available to all VMUG members. This is a great opportunity to meet with your peers to discuss virtualization trends, best practices, and the latest technology! Meeting Agenda 13:30 Registration 13:50 Introduction to VMUG 14:00 IBM Presentation 15:00 Refreshment Break 15:20 EMC Presentation 16:20 VNews 16:50 Questions and Wrap-Up 17:00 vBeers at…

  • VMware Configuration Maximums – Not Targets

    Simon Long
    12 Mar 2012 | 2:27 pm
    Something I've noticed a lot work creating designs for customers is the customer focusing on vSphere Configuration Maximums and the aim to reach those maximums. This concerns me a lot when I hear this and also the regularity that I hear this. VMware Configuration Maximum's are values that have been tested by VMware QA to verify that the product will function correctly.   Yes, this can mean that VMware's software may continue to function adequately above the maximums. However because this has not been tested, VMware cannot be certain it will function correctly and therefor…

  • PCoIP: Troubleshooting – Part 2

    Simon Long
    23 Feb 2012 | 12:46 pm
    This is the second part of the PCoIP Troubleshooting set of post that I will be working on over the coming months. In this part I am looking at how to use the new PCoIP Log Viewer to view Real-Time/WMI PCoIP Stats.  I'll take you step-by-step through the PCoIP stats, explaining what each counter means. To read on please use the following link: PCoIP Troubleshooting – Part 2. For those of you who many not be familiar with the Teradici PCoIP display protocol, you can find some good links here: http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/pcoip/ The other parts to this…
 
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    United Virtual Office

  • Get A High Profile and Reputed Business Address in Orange County

    admin
    18 May 2012 | 2:04 am
    Orange County is a prestigious location, both commercially and residentially. Located in the heart of Southern California, every entrepreneur longs for a business card with an Orange County address... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Why Businesses Need to Find Their Perfect Employee

    admin
    10 May 2012 | 2:41 am
    In the current economic and business climate we find ourselves in, finding and retaining that perfect employee we all love so much has become much harder. There are strategies, however, to find great... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • How Unanswered Phone Calls Only Hurt Your Business

    admin
    26 Apr 2012 | 7:49 am
    There has been some very good news on the economy lately. Things are slowly improving; however businesses are still struggling and cannot afford to lose any customers. Also, as technology continues... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Business Flexibility Really Improves Your Overall Health

    admin
    17 Apr 2012 | 4:03 am
    Starting a business can be an expensive affair. From office space, transportation, hiring employees to paying rents and wages, the list is endless. And the most crucial issue? Time. That’s... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Phone Answering Services: Why Virtual Offices Are Perfect For All Professionals

    admin
    28 Mar 2012 | 2:05 am
    A Phone Answering Service is a telecommunications package offered by Virtual Office Services. You can either avail an automated one or a live phone answering service where a real person answers your... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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    Virtualization Tips

  • VMware VCP 5 study guide book review

    Brian
    17 May 2012 | 7:54 pm
    I was contacted by Brian Atkinson to review his new VCP 5 study guide book from Sybex. They sent me a copy that I plan on giving away in some fashion now that I’ve examined the book. I was never a big fan of books focused just on helping you pass an exam. I tend to come from the school of work hard gain the knowledge through actual hands on experience and pass the test. I was surprised by the in depth content that Brian put into this book, its not an exam cram type book. The study guide is 700+ pages of VMware content that would be very useful to admins even if you are not studying for…

  • VMware vShield App best practices list

    Brian
    17 May 2012 | 8:47 am
    After a couple of recent projects that implemented vShield app in various ways I thought it would be good to start building a list of best practices. These are some of the suggestions that I have collected in working with different customers and VMware people. I will continue to update as new things come to light. Consider reading my list of vCloud best practices when you are done with this list, since they are used together often. vShield Manager Do not deploy vShield manager appliance to a cluster that it will be protecting, can cause connection to itself and vCenter to be lost. (With…

  • VMware Orchestrator ideas for workflow automation samples

    Brian
    14 May 2012 | 7:38 am
    I’ve been talking to a lot of customers lately on the  possibilities of VMware Orchestrator. Things like do they use it now, what they might be able to use if for in their current environment. But most of the discussions are in tandem with a vCloud design. Orchestrator has been a mystery for the last few years but VMware has been working on changing that since vSphere 5 was released. It is now being talked about more and 3rd parties are actively developing plug-ins to expand its abilities to automate other infrastructure. I don’t plan on teaching you how to use Orchestrator,…

  • Open letter to Vendors on training classes and partner enablement

    Brian
    11 May 2012 | 5:38 am
    To be open I work for a partner and on a regular basis get introduced to new products. For this I spend a decent amount of time researching these products, playing with them in a lab and tacking training from the Vendors. There are a few vendors that do a good job with their training and there are a lot that don’t do a very good job. Yesterday one of my co-workers mentioned something to me about how he thought these training programs should be structured. What it comes down to is there are a few layers or roles within partners and customers that need to be trained on a new product.

  • How vShield App updates rules on appliances

    Brian
    9 May 2012 | 9:38 am
    While working on a recent project this question came up. If you create new vShield App rules in vShield manager how does it push these rules out to the vShield App appliances? As an example you have a large environment with several clusters and you create and publish some new rules that affect only a couple of VMs. Will vShield manager push the rules out to every App appliance in the vCenter Datacenter, every cluster or just the cluster or host that has the VMs affected? The answer is vShield manager only pushes out the rule updates to the vShield appliances that are affected. So only the…
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    vmware admins

  • How to measure Citrix Provisioning Server performance

    Eric Sarakaitis
    9 May 2012 | 6:23 am
    To make Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS), you must rely on block I/O cache. In this case, we will be using Windows 2008 R2 X64. When an endpoint logs into PVS, the read I/O for that device then points back to the vDisk hosted on the PVS server. Doing this, you need to make sure you have plenty of memory available for the PVS server to cache this I/O. That way, when read I/O’s come in; they are served out of memory rather than going back to disk. This being said,  you then need to be able to determine just how much of your I/O is coming out of cache versus how much I/O Stream…

  • Citrix XenDesktop Machine Creation Services Deep-Dive

    Eric Sarakaitis
    8 May 2012 | 3:34 pm
    So… with vmware View, you have a connection broker that connects to vCenter that connects to the ESX hosts using vSphere API which then tells whichever ESX host to build whichever linked-clones from the replica-vm to which ever destination datastore they are supposed to be on… right? Well… with Citrix XenDesktop Machine Creation Services (MCS) its a little-bit different… well a lotta-bit different. With MCS, you have a connection broker (DDC) that connects to the XenServer Pool Master using XenServer API which copies the replica-vm to which ever destination datastore…

  • Need a VDI questionnaire for potential customers

    Eric Sarakaitis
    8 May 2012 | 1:24 pm
    Some beginning questions, not limited to: Operational Will this be utility priced? What are the end user experience requirements? Should desktop customizations be available (personalization) How are profiles/user data managed? What is the endpoint OS going to be? XP? 7? What AV products do you currently use? Is two –factor authentication a requirement? Hardware What hardware do you currently use? Blades? rack mounts? Is there a preferred hardware vendor? Storage What brand SAN? What protocols are supported? (FC/NAS/ISCSI/FCOE) What speed of protocols are available? (1/2/4/8/10gb) Network…

  • Generate SSL CSR within OSX

    Eric Sarakaitis
    8 May 2012 | 1:21 pm
    Needed a CSR for a new certificate today, what the heck? OSX has openSSL built in! openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout mykey.pem -out myreq.pem

  • Changing the XenDesktop XenServer pool master memory configuration

    Eric Sarakaitis
    8 May 2012 | 12:54 pm
    By default, XenServers dom0 memory limit is set to 752M. Thus limiting the performance of dom0. Especially when publishing desktops within XenDesktop using Machine Creation Services. It is advisable to up this amount to the limit of 2940MB for each XenServer, that way if your pool master changes, you will have plenty of memory available. per: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126531 By using the sample provided in CTX124086 – XenServer Single Server Scalability with XenDesktop, modify the Xen command-line that is found in /boot/extlinux.conf to contain dom0_mem=2940M. To modify the…
 
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  • News Round-Up

    GCattelain
    27 Apr 2012 | 10:49 am
    Today’s news round-up is all about four letters that continue to make quite a splash in the enterprise scene – B, Y, O and D. The concept may sound simple enough, but if you’ve been following our news round ups, you know that this trend is a hotly debated issue in the tech world. Let’s get started on security – a big BYOD concern. While security has been written about numerous times before, it’s been viewed as a main concern of BYOD. To stir up the debate a bit is an article from David Needle at TabTimes. Needle’s article outlines a new survey released by AirTight Networks that…

  • News Round-Up

    GCattelain
    20 Apr 2012 | 11:20 am
    This week we’ll be discussing VDI, BYOD and two Microsoft announcements that are getting IT pros riled up. First up – an overview of VDI and whether it is still viable. Bruce Hoard of Virtualization Review wrote a great article about the viability of VDI.  First, Hoard addresses the issue of expense. Many experts say that the large expense associated with VDI is the biggest obstacle to its success, although this is a hard issue to quantify. Some companies report a gain in savings and productivity, while others maintain that virtual desktops cost 1.4 times the amount of physical PCs.

  • News round-up

    GCattelain
    13 Apr 2012 | 12:24 pm
    With the rise in popularity of BYOD, quite a few articles have popped up exploring the myths and policies (or lack thereof) that come with a BYOD program. Today, we’ll introduce a different side of BYOD as well – BYOD in schools. Let’s get started with the latest on BYOD myths and benefits. Tom Kaneshige wrote an interesting article about the myths of BYOD on ITworld. Kaneshige evaluated the many benefits CIOs tout for BYOD and analyzed whether they are legitimate benefits or just myths. The first benefit Kaneshige analyzed was the potential cost savings companies may experience after…

  • News Round-Up

    GCattelain
    6 Apr 2012 | 12:20 pm
    Consumerization of IT and BYOD are at it again as some of the biggest topics of the tech world. People can’t stop talking about both of these rising trends so let’s get started. First let’s tackle this week’s COIT news. Doug Dineley at InfoWorld wrote a great overview of consumerization of IT and striking a balanced relationship between users and IT. Dineley explains that as technology such as Google Apps, DropBox, and Salesforce.com become more accessible, people are more likely to make IT decisions on their own. This relatively open access to technology is quite the challenge to IT…

  • News Round-Up

    GCattelain
    30 Mar 2012 | 10:41 am
    This week BYOD and VDI were big topics in the tech world, so let’s get started. Brian Madden wrote a piece on the top 5 reasons people use VDI. In previous posts, Brian argued that VDI isn’t about saving money or making desktops easier to manage. Instead, the primary reason he provides this week to use VDI is the ability to host desktops in a data center rather than dealing with Remote Desktop Session Host. Other benefits Brian lists for VDI are: security, the ability to have users instantly work anywhere, allows users to use whatever devices they want, and allows users to install…
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