Archive for July, 2009
Get To VMworld 2009 Early – Sunday and Monday Stuff
July 28th, 2009 | 
Author: Even though VMworld 2009 doesn’t officially start until Tues 9/1 there is still plenty to do for early arrivers. I’ll be getting to San Francisco early so I thought I’d pass along a couple of events on both Sunday and Monday that I am looking forward to.
Sunday Night 8/30/09
Theron Conrey has been the mastermind of the VMworldUnderground get together for the last 2 years, and he is raising the bar with this year’s VMworld 2009 Sunday Night Warm Up Extravaganza at the Thirsty Bear in San Francisco.
“This year we’re looking to break the mold. I’ve enlisted a crack team of party planners to help me get this under control. We also have a fantastic group of vendor sponsors pitching in to put this over the top. Head over to our main page for all the details.
Same simple rule as last year:
Technology talk and networking with your peers is strongly encouraged, however if you’re talking about a product you sell, you’re buying drinks (sponsoring vendors excluded of course), We will hear no excuses (seriously, we’ve worked out a deal for you to work it off in the kitchen). Vendor engineers are excluded from this rule again this year as they tend to be extremely funny after a few pints, and can’t help themselves.”
Theron is asking for RSVPs in the form of replies to the event thread at VMworld.com (linked above). Leave a reply and also enter yourself in a drawing for the giveaways. Leave your response in the form of a limerick and recieve 2 entries for your effort. I think I read that the best limerick also wins a prize, and I’m so proud of mine I had to write it again here on VM /ETC.
vExpert, VCP, and vSphere.
VMworld soon will be here.
Sunday before bed
Put the cloud in your head.
Meet me at the Thirsty Bear for a vBeer!
I will be fashionably late Sunday due to meetings, but will definitely be there.
Monday 8/31/09
After Sunday night some may have to create “thin provisioned, linked clones” of themselves for Monday morning, but for those that get it together the technical content starts early and is worth the attendance.
If you are a VMware Partner you have the traditional partner content to look forward to, but this year VMware has turned Monday into a VMware Technology Exchange Developer Day as well.
Nava Davuluri explains the event on the VMware Communities Developer Day page and blog:
Detailed P2V Analysis Flowchart for the “Fruit in the Canopy”
Virtualization can be credited for popularizing the phrase “low hanging fruit” as a referral to the set of physical servers so underutilized they are easy virtualization candidates. Now, as virtual infrastructures (VI) mature and larger, more resource intensive applications are being considered for physical to virtual (p2V) migrations, administrators and application owners need to figure out how to adapt existing VI designs to accommodate the “fruit” still left in the “tree canopy”.
Anyone who has already “harvested” their own “low hanging fruit” knows there is so much to consider. The p2v tool and process are the tip of the iceberg, change control is just below the surface, and there are many more technical challenges hidden in the depths. I’ve blogged in the past about treating the migration to VI the same as you would changing physical data centers. It’s not just server builds and operating system installs.
These same challenges experienced during the initial consolidation are still there for the rest of the bunch, but most likely on a much more public and political scale. In fact, since more times than not these same servers were left out of the first consolidation scenario as “bad virtualization candidates, it’s likely time to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in capacity analysis, capacity planner, P2V, vmetc.com | 
Tags: capacity planning, consolidation, P2V, virtualization | 
6 Comments »
Image Counseling for VM /ETC UGG Winners ;)
Or maybe it’s just a cleaning service for the popular Australian boots!
Image Counseling Service for VM /ETC UGG Winners?
Besides, Ugly Green Gurus don’t mind a little mud on them once in a while.
Jason Boche sent me this photo. With 2 consecutive UGH awards, Jason probably already has an annual pass at this establishment!
I wonder if any VM /ETC UGG/UGH winners actually own any UGGs?
The Laws of vMotion? Veeam to Support Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
If comparing the v12n community to a religion makes sense, then using Sir Issac Newton’s Laws of Motion to explain Veeam Global “Scientist” Doug Hazelman’s guest post on the Windows Virtualization Team Blog shouldn’t be a stretch either. Hazelman, one of the VM /ETC Q2 UGH recipients, announced the following in the post R2 Veeam Too:
“While Veeam has continued to build some of the best software for data protection and management of VMware infrastructures, we realize that customers are now faced with more virtualization choices. By fully supporting Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere, Veeam can help you manage heterogeneous hypervisor deployments and clouds with the innovative solutions you’ve come to expect from Veeam. The management and R&D teams at Veeam have a long history of working with Microsoft going back to the Aelita days, and we’re all excited to be working with Microsoft again.”
Imagine your favorite Physics teacher or professor at the chalkboard in an UGLY GREEN lab coat explaining:
Newton’s Laws of Motion are:
Posted in hyper-v, microsoft |
Tags: hyper-v, hyper-vserver2008, microsoft, veeam, virtualization |
11 Comments »
Facebook Mini Blogs – vSphere Host Profiles without Enterprise Plus Edition
VM /ETC recently opened a Facebook page that is open for anyone to add as a friend. Since, unlike Twitter, Facebook allows more than 140 characters while micro blogging I’ve decided to try a series of VM /ETC Mini Blogs. These will be anything from random virtualization thoughts to short burst of infornation.
To give an idea of the type of content I am talking about check out my first Mini Blog titled vSphere Host Profiles without Enterprise Plus Edition.
I may post about the Facebook Mini Blogs here on VM /ETC from time to time to widen the discussion, but to be sure to catch them all become a fan of the VM /ETC page or browse it from the web on a regular basis! The series will be mostly exclusive to Facebook.
The page also aggregates my normal blog feed as well.
Best Practices for vSphere (ESX 4) Service Console Partitions
One of my popular posts on VM /ETC has been Best Practices for ESX Host Partitions. Now with vSphere, VMware has changed the recommended ESX 4 Service Console partitioning slightly. So, consider this post an update to the first one. As in the past, I’ve taken this information from the VMware Partner services delivery IP available to partners on VMware Partner Central. Specifically I am taking information from the vSphere Essentials PoC delivery guide(s) found in the vSphere 4 Services Kit.
Quoting myself from the first post, some things are still worth mentioning up front:
“Installing ESX is fast and simple. By default you could click through the installer GUI changing only your local time zone and end up with a stable, dependable host. However, there are some recommended partitioning best practices that should be followed in order to make sure you minimize possible future headaches and create a repeatable and scalable environment.”
When you install ESX 4 you should choose Advanced for the installation type so you can delete the default partitioning shown in the following screen shot:
After deleting / changing the default s you can then create custom partitions as recommended.
Announcing the 2009 Q2 VM /ETC UGG & UGH Winners
click to see back of shirt
Continuing the “storied tradition” established in Q1 2009, VM /ETC Ugly Green Guru (UGG) and Ugly Green Hero (UGH) award winners have been decided. Regular readers will recall I announced these new quarterly awards for Top Commenters on vmetc.com when VMware announced the vExpert program this past January.
The 2009 Q2 winners (tallied by email address) with the number of comments made April through June :
- Dracolith – 18 – UGG
- Jason Boche – 8 – UGH
- Doug Hazelman – 4 – UGH
- Sean Clark – 4 – UGH
As before, the winners will receive an email from me this week requesting a shipping address and a t-shirt size. I’ll get the shirts delivered from Cafepress.com as quick as possible.
The reader with the most comments each quarter earns Ugly Green Guru status and will receive a unique t-shirt with UGG on the pocket instead of UGH (as pictured).
Dracolith and Sean Clark have simultaneously become the first commenters to “hit for the cycle”. In Q1 Sean won the first ever UGG title and Dracolith achieved UGH status. Jason Boche is “batting 1.000″ by winning his second UGH award. I wonder what these guys will wear to work the other 3 days of the week from now on? 
Doug Hazelman has always been an honorary Ugly Green Hero at VM /ETC for his efforts to try to get me to understand how the ISV game works. I’m glad to see he won a shirt legit!
If you just have to have a VM /ETC t-shirt and can’t wait until you win in Q3, check out my CafeExpress.com store and order one of several different styles for yourself. I’ve recently added a $13 value shirt to the inventory. You can even order a UGH shirt like the winners, but I’m keeping the UGG version exclusive for the top commenters
Q3 2009 winners will be announced in October, so start commenting on the posts now. You don’t have to leave anything profound to win. Just help answer questions, add your experience, or just express how a topic is relevant to you.
As always, thanks to all the readers who comment on VMETC.com posts!
