VM /ETC

Archive for September, 2009

A recent partnership announcement between Cisco and the Miami Dolphins was showcased last night before the Monday Night Football game. The Dolphins have created a unique fan experience using Cisco TelePresence to enable virtual meetings between fans and Dolphin’s players. More from Cisco’s official announcement follows in this post, but I experienced Cisco Telepresence first hand during VMworld 2009 when I participated in a virtual meeting with people in 9 different locations all over the U.S. and Canada.

In my case, I and 2 co-workers took a break from attending VMware’s conference and sat down in Cisco’s TelePresence booth in San Francisco. We were able to participate in a live meeting with groups of customers hosted by fellow employees in locations such as Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, and Montreal just to name a few. Our meeting was actually about creating a unified data center with Cisco UCS  and VMware vSphere. TelePresence truly created a face to face experience by displaying the individuals talking and managing the conversation as others chimed in.

Participating in virtual meeting from VMworld

View of participants in other cities

It’s great to see Cisco’s technology used for NFL game entertainment. Like the NFL’s use of IBM bladecenters reported at last year’s Superbowl, I’m hoping my Atlanta Falcons will soon follow in the Miami’s lead for the Georgia Dome. According to a related feature article by Cisco titled Cisco Helping Stadiums Compete with the Couch, “some of the biggest teams in professional sports [omitted] are turning to Cisco Systems to wire new state-of-the-art stadiums and digitize older ballparks. In recent months the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays have connected their stadiums from the locker rooms to the concession stands with Cisco technologies.” Falcons, I’d love to help!

Here’s some info on what exactly the Dolphins have created for fans from Cisco’s press release. Note the mention of fans sharing Flip Video at the end of the quote as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Day 1 of the Cisco UCS Bootcamp partner training was mainly an introduction to the hardware, but also established the concept of UCS Server Profiles and Statelessness. Converged Network Fabric and the Cisco’s CNA (Converged Network Adapters) models were covered, and the day ended with a lab exploring the UCSM (Unified Compute System Manager).

I promised to report in the style of the “For Dummies” series. To do that I am going to borrow the common feature “The Part of Tens” always found at the end of those books. The “Tens” are usually a list of concepts suggested for further research. I’m going to use this more as a list of what “sticks” with me from the bootcamp topics. As in the books I hope I motivate VM /ETC readers to research further. If you count My “Tens” it might not even equal 10 items – no promises. I’ll add some opinion and scenario when motivated to do so.

Many others already have provided technical details on the Cisco chassis, blades, modules, adpaters, and the other components, and I’m not about to add anything new to what is already known. In fact, I found myself supplementing what I was being told in class by cross checking various blogs ande other documntation already on the web. Nevertheless, the first “Tens” covers the overview of the UCS parts and concepts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like Scott Lowe earlier in the year, I am in Silicon Valley this week attending Cisco’s UCS Bootcamp training for partners. This post starts a series I will publish as I learn about the Unified Compute System (UCS). Instead of focusing on the technical details of the UCS blade chassis, servers, and it’s various components I plan to maintain a solution oriented, comparison focus in my reports. That is, my intent this week is to answer some questions that many VMware admins have (based on my own conversations) about what makes Cisco UCS a solution to be considered. Put simply – Most administrators understand the benefits of consolidating data center hardware with blades, but why is Cisco’s solution unique?

Some questions I hope to answer:

• Why would an IT shop benefit from deploying UCS blades over other established blade chassis and server hardware solutions already available today?
• What’s the big deal with FCoE and why would I want to use it over iSCSI or NFS?
• Does Cisco really want to sell IT Departments all the hardware in the datacenter?
• What administrative, configuration, and logistical changes does UCS create for VI administrators, and is UCS the best choice for VMware?

I plan to relay what I discover this week in the way that the popular instruction series “For Dummies” tackles technical subjects. VM /ETC readers should understand a major difference from the book series: the guy writing these posts is actually one of the “dummies” too.

I’m also going to point out that I have no hands on experience with UCS and Cisco Blades yet, and for the most part I am reporting in good faith about the material presented to me by Cisco and from the experience of the hands on labs I perform. I will attempt to link to others like Scott that have been able to set up this hardware and have blogged about the technical details.

Can you better understand IT geeks by watching Dr . House and his team of experts?

J. Ello’s Computerworld.com article titled Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks has hit home. In fact, reading Ello’s advice for understanding and motivating IT Pros was almost like a long stare in the mirror for me. Obviously, my opinions are biased in favor of engineers and administrators, but Ello doesn’t dismiss IT geek stereotypes. He reinforces them, but also does a great job of explaining why geeks act the way they do. Ello then offers great suggestions for professional harmony.

At one point in the article, Ello likens hiring IT Pros and Managers to medical professionals. He even assumes most IT Pros would idolize Dr. House from the hit TV Series. The more I think about that comparison and the way that House operates in a never ending cycle of high stakes, team leading, rule breaking, colleague mentoring, and maverick -like individualism the more I realize could understanding IT Pros be as simple as thinking ‘what would House do in this scenario?” I’m sure I seem like House at times to those around me!

I highly recommend VM /ETC readers, whether you hold a position of CEO/CIO/CTO, VP/IT Director, Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, Management, or Engineer, take the time to read this posting with an open mind. Ello provides something of value to all, and he actually helps each position understand how perception, impression, and opinion varies between the different vantages of business responsibilities.

Read the entire article at the link above and the lengthy discussion in the comments, but here are some of my favorite quotes from Ello: Read the rest of this entry »

Every once in a while I end up installing a standalone instance of SQL 2005 Express. It could be for the back end database of a virtualized vCenter or a separated instance of VMware Update Manager (VUM). In the past I have wasted time waiting to download the .NET Framework, SQL 2005 Express, and the SQL Native Client from the web, but I recently explored the vCenter 4 install DVD and discovered those components are all already there on the media! I knew all of these were automatically called by the vCenter installer, but I had no idea I could easily invoke these pieces independently and therefore eliminate the downloads.

Here is an overview for installing a standalone instance of SQL 2005 Express using the vCenter media with some screen shots. I also briefly mention using the free SQL Server Management Studio Express edition to easily create multiple databases, logins, and permissions. Finally I skim through enabling remote connections and creating ODBC connections for the vCenter and / or VUM installation. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been several posts in the v12n community providing study recommendations, materials, and practice exams to help prepare for VMware’s VCP 4 certification. This post is a quick list of blogs that provide posts with multiple certification preparation links. I’m publishing this mainly for my own future reference, but hopefully others can take advantage of it too.

Links to other’s study material lists:
Professional VMware -VCP4 Resource Page
ESX Virtualization – VMware vSphere 4 passing VCP Exam training links
The SLOG (SimonLong /blog) – VCP vSphere 4 Practice Exam
VMware Training and Certification Blog – Studying for the VCP on vSphere 4

Let me know of any other must visit sites to prepare for the VCP 4.

Thanks to the bloggers who put these posts together for all of us.

Check out the Paths To VCP on vSphere 4 Certification if you are not sure what prerequisites you need to meet before taking the VCP 4 exam.

This post is just a quick how to reference for manually changing the VMware Update Manager (VUM) patch repository download location. Admins usually need to do this when the vCenter server is low on disk space on the partition that VUM was originally installed on, but there is a second partition that has enough capacity. To move the VUM patch repository follow the following steps found in the VUM Administrators Guide:

When you install Update Manager, you can select the location for downloading patches. To change the location after installation, you must manually edit the vci-integrity.xml
file.

Procedure

1. Log in to the Update Manager server as an administrator.
   
2. Stop the Update Manager service.
   
   1. Right-click My Computer and click Manage.
      
   2. In the left pane, expand Services and Applications and click Services.
      
   3. In the right pane, right-click the VMware Update Manager Service and click Stop.
      
3. Navigate to the Update Manager installation directory and locate the vci-integrity.xml file.
   
   1. The default location is C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager.
      
4. Create a backup copy of this file in case you need to revert to the previous configuration.
   
5. Edit the file by changing the following fields:
   
   1. yournewlocation
   2. The default patch download location is: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Data\
      
   3. The directory path must end with \.
      
6. Save the file in UTF-8 format, replacing the existing file.
   
7. Copy the contents from the old patchstore directory to the new folder.
   
8. Restart the Update Manager service.