VM /ETC

vExpert Meeting Location, and Panoramics So Far

VMware PEX officially starts today, but it’s been a full 2 and a half days of pre conference sessions, meetings, and get-togethers for me already. This post is a random mix of video, information, and links. Sorry for the mess!

Video: PEX2010 Panoramics So Far

Here’s a quick 30 second video of my conference so far. The photo quality stinks because all I have is my Blackberry to take pictures, but the video is fast and the music is upbeat.

vExpert Meeting Location and time

I’ve been emailed that somewhere around 30 vExperts are attending PEX2010. Tonight there will be a vExpert meeting with VMware at the Alumni Lounge starting at 5:30 pm. Watch for more information from me and others on Twitter or here in this post.

update: The Location of the meeting is changing since not all vExperts will be able to get in to the Alumni Lounge. I’ll post here again when I know the new spot.

latest update: The vExpert meeting will take place in Breakers K. This is apparently a VMware employee room. The meeting time is still set for 5:30 PM.

Saturday was my travel day to VMware Partner Exchange 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. I left Atlanta at 1:30 pm EST and finally checked into my room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel around 4:30 pm PST. All it took was a couple of tweets and I was able to make plans with Theron Conrey for dinner. Like Theron, several others were already in town for the 3 day Virtual Infrastructure Design Boot Camp. So, in about 90 minutes we had a group of nine headed over to the Nine Fine Irishmen at the New York, New York Hotel & Casino. I did not realize last night’s “Night of Nines” until writing about it just now.

Memorable pre-conference tweet ups tend to happen around Theron, and although this one was small in scale compared to his VMworld 2009 party, I had a great time.

Theron tweeted a couple photos of the group, and I used Windows Live Photo to make the above panoramic stitch (an easy to use and free photo editor if you haven’t tried it BTW!). Loosely moving from left to right (not everyone uses twitter?!) in the photo are @bknudtson @vConsult @wolfbrthr @ryancoates, and myself. Not shown is @theronconrey because he was taking the pics.

As always, the conversation was fast, funny, and informative. These informal gatherings are invaluable to me personally and professionally, but they sort of remind me of a Nascar race at Bristol Motor Speedway. For those readers that are “South Eastern U.S.” challenged, imagine a .5 mile race track crammed into a stadium that holds 100,000 people.There is so much happening that you have to force yourself to focus on a driver or two. Out of the corner of your eye the bumping and banging of another group of cars catches your attention, and then you watch that group for a while. By the end your neck hurts!

Although I’m sure I missed a lot, here are a few of the random virtualization related conversations that stuck out for me last night.

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It’s not quite VMworld, but if you work for a VMware partner in North America chances are good your are going to Las Vegas next week for VMware Partner Exchange 2010 (PEX2010) at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. I’m sure there are more than a few that are traveling from overseas to attend as well. I’m headed out this Saturday, and a full week of PEX2010 starts for me early Sunday morning.

Follow the event posts here on VM /ETC or catch my "micro blogging" on Twitter (@rbrambley). Be sure to watch the hash tag #vmwarepex as well as the event’s twitter account @vmwarepex2010 in this Tweetgrid. Partner Exchange is always limited in what information can be made public, but there is always something interesting being talked about via social networking during the event.

If you are going to be there let me know. Here’s a quick list of what I know I will be doing next week. Maybe our paths will cross?!

If my tweets start to seem a little strange Sunday afternoon there’s nothing wrong. Check the end of this post to understand why.

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The LackRack

Most of my colleagues have a home lab with at least some equipment that is rackable, but because of expense, room size, or the decor concerns of a much smarter significant other purchasing a data center rack is not possible (or advisable). In fact, our servers, storage and switches are stacked under a desk, piled in a corner, or hidden in a coat closet. Virtualization and server consolidation has helped reduce the total amount of hardware we need running at home, but we still end up with a makeshift and cluttered workspace that keeps us in the dog house.

Now, imagine this conversation:

Yes, going to IKEA with your Love is a dangerous undertaking, but it’s a reality to consider for your home lab.

The IKEA Lack tables are the perfect size

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Before the Alliance, Coalition, and Partnership start the Cloud Wars, everybody raise your Guinness and say “Brilliant!”

YouTube Guinness Brilliant Six Pack Commercial

It’s obvious now that Cloud Computing is no longer just a concept. Amazon EC2 has been around for a while, vCloud Express was announced late last year, Microsoft is moving full steam ahead with Azure, and new internal cloud infrastructure and storage solutions are appearing on the scene weekly. CTOs and IT Directors are starting to see legitimate solutions for offloading some or all of their development and production workload and infrastructure to alternatives in The Cloud.

Put yourself at the helm of one of the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEMs) that have made their money selling server, switch and storage hardware in the private data center to date. Faced with the future possibility that companies will have an option to run applications and services on infrastructure they don’t buy, build, or maintain, what would be your strategy for generating reoccuring business in the future?

I bring it up because of all the cloud architecture announcements. EMC announced a coalition with Cisco and VMware, NetApp has a Secure Multi Tennancy alliance with Cisco and VMware, and HP has announced an Integrated Infrastructure partnership with Microsoft. The storage OEMs are the first out the gate with the snap together infrastrucure for the cloud, but I imagine other hardware partnerships are not too far behind. VMware and Cisco UCS may already be the first with Microsoft and HP? Microsoft and VMware conveniently can run on top if it all.

Before the Alliance, Coalition, and Partnership start the Cloud Wars, everybody raise your Guinness and say “Brilliant!”

It’s brilliant because Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t always covered all the vCenter, VirtualCenter, and ESX/ESXi updates in the past. Several updates have been released since the last time I did. VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6’s announcement caught my attention because of a fix to uploading files with the datastore browser. This issue has been reported in one of the longest comment threads here at VM /ETC. More on that later in this post, but I received the following email notification that VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 was released:

VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 is Generally Available

We are pleased to inform you that VMware VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 (English and localized) is generally available as of late night January 29, 2010.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 provides the following improvements:

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements
• Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access
• Bug and security fixes

For details regarding the new fixes and improvements, please refer to the release notes.

VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 is available for download.

For details regarding compatibility, please view vSphere Compatibility Matrixes.

Thanks,
VMware Infrastructure Product Management Team

Some of the highlights for me when reading the Release Notes are:

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I created a Windows 7 virtual machine in VMware Player, ran it for a while on my Windows notebook, and then decided to move it to one of my Ubuntu machines and host it in VirtualBox. I had no problem copying the folder and files between the different host based hypervisors. VirtualBox can use a virtual disk in the VMware .vmdk format so it was just a matter of file transfers between computers. VirtualBox has it’s own Guest Editions (or host tools) to add functionality and improve performance, so I needed to make that switch inside the VM too. My problem was that I did not remove the VMware Tools before I moved the VM.

When I went to uninstall VMware Tools after powering the VM on Ubuntu and in VirtualBox I received a message that “no VMware Products were detected”. Luckily, I quickly figured out I wasn’t the first to attempt this move and experience this hurdle. The post Uninstalling VMware tools when not running on a VMware host tells the same tale and provides the answer.

“I added the VMware Tools ISO to that VM and opened a command prompt. Then I found the “setup.exe” or “setup64.exe” files on the cd. Run those in the cmd window with a /c switch. (example:  ”setup64.exe /c” )  This will remove the Tools.  I installed the VirtualBox additions and then reboot.  On my Windows 2008 server it crashed on first reboot, then then I tried again and it loaded up just fine.  Network works and everything! Yay!”

On my Windows host with VMware Player installed (VMware Workstation has a similar location) the windows.iso file was found at C:\program files(x86)\VMware\VMware Player\windows.iso. Your path needs to be adjusted based on whether you have a 32 bit or 64 bit OS obviously. Mine was a 64 bit host even though the directory was at c:\program files(x86), by the way.

I’ll let you figure out your preferred method on how to copy the windows.iso file to the Ubuntu host, but once you do you can:

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