VM /ETC » promos

Free Virtualization Whitepapers and Magazines From Tradepub.com

Rich Brambley — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:43:00 +0000

This is just a quick note to announce that VM /ETC is continuing it’s partnership with Tradepub.com in 2010 in order to provide readers a great selection of free virtualization related whitepapers and magazines.

Also check out the VMETC.com whitepapers page often in the future for a rotating selection of publications that can be be downloaded or subscribed to as appropriate.

Drobo Bo! Bo! Merry Christmas! Discount Code For VM /ETC readers

Rich Brambley — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:14:14 +0000

The GestaltIT Tech Field Day (TFD) is the gift that keeps on giving! From now until the end of the year (2009), VM /ETC readers can use the promotional code BRAMBLEY when buying a Drobo from Data Robotics and receive a discount.

For those that don’t already know about Drobo storage and the BeyondRaid technology, I posted about the Data Robotics TFD presentation a few weeks ago.

When you are ready to purchase just go to the Data Robotics store. The VM /ETC reader code is good until the end of the year (2009) and offers the following discounts:

Drobo $50 off <> Drobo S $75 off <> DroboPro $150 off <> DroboElite $350 off

Just enter BRAMBLEY in the Promotional Code field when placing your order.

For the record, I have not received any compensation for this post nor will I receive compensation from the use of this code. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Vote Up Virtualization in Obama’s Citizen Briefing Book

Rich Brambley — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:01:08 +0000

Mike Dipetrillo posted about an idea for pushing a Government wide virtualization initiative that was entered in the Citizen Briefing Book being assembled for Barack Obama. It may be too late since the book was being closed at 6 pm on January 19, but I wanted to help get the word out for support both now and in the future, and I am asking all VM /ETC readers to take less than 60 seconds to try to still move it higher on the list by clicking the Vote Up button.

The idea:

“Push a government-wide IT virtualization initiative to reduce the carbon-footprint of our planned digital health records system by 80+%.

Mandate a review of existing federal IT infrastructure to find opportunities for consolidating servers and reducing datacenter energy requirements with a minimum 10 to 1 consolidation ratio.“

Mike’s post is titled Help the US Government Go Green.

According to the Change.gov web site’s Newsroom Blog post Wrapping up the Citizen’s Briefing Book by Dan McSwain:

“The Citizen’s Briefing Book will be open for ideas, comments, and voting until Sunday at 6pm. President Obama will later receive the Citizen’s Briefing Book: a unique compilation of the ideas and feedback submitted completely by the Change.gov community.We’re eager to carry this community’s enthusiasm forward in the coming months and years. We invite all Americans to join the new administration online at WhiteHouse.gov after President-elect Obama is
sworn in.”

I regret that I did not discover this virtualization initiative sooner and that the timing of this post is past the Jan 19 deadline, but I am hoping that an increase in activity such as Vote Up clicks and popularity points along with trackbacks and comments can make a difference in mandating the US Government going green with virtualization.

To see the most popular ideas in the Citizen Briefing Book sorted by points go here. Quoting from the web site once again, “over 125,000 users submitted over 44,000 ideas and cast over 1.4 million votes”.

President Obama’s Inauguration is Tuesday January 20, 2009 (tomorrow) in Washington, DC.

VM /ETC introduces the UGG/UGH awards and DISQUS comments

Rich Brambley — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:14:05 +0000

Ugh!

Hey, it’s been a week of announcing new virtualization awards so I had to chime in with my own announcement, right? VMware announced the vExpert reward, vinternals.com announced the humerous vIdiot awards, and now I am announcing the UGG (Ugly Green Guru) and UGH (Ugly Green Hero) awards.

Can you think of a better award for stressed out, overloaded, virtually insane virtualization professionals who take the time to help others?! Maybe you’re not a vExpert (and hopefully not a vIdiot!), but everyone should recognise the value of publicly announcing a good “UGH”!

The winners will be announced Quarterly and will get a special t-shirt so they can proudly display their accomplishment.

Here’s the details for determining the winners:

Take the time to comment on posts here at VM /ETC. Help others, add information and links, answer questions, and keep me straight.
If you’ve already commented in the past, claim your profile on DISQUS by creating a free account. (More on DISQUS comments later in this post) Otherwise open a new DISQUS account.
Make sure I add you to my DISQUS Community Friends.
Keep an eye on the Top Commenters via the PEOPLE tab of the multi widget in the VM /ETC left column.
Award clout points to other comments. I willl do the same. Participate in the discussions.
The top commenter wins the UGG Guru award, and the second and third place finishers get the UGH Hero award.
The fine details of using clout points versus number of comments to determine the winners will be subjective and my call – it really depends how I well I can track my comments.
I will mail the shirts to the winners.

I am not trying to become the next VMTN Communities or virtualization forum. I have no illusions about that! I just want to recognise and thank those that help make this blog informative and helpful for both myself and all subscribers and readers.

So, what is DISQUS? Why did I switch to it for VM /ETC and why should you sign up?

Here’s some general info from Disqus.com:

“Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites. In minutes, connect your community with those of over 45,000 other websites.Track conversations across the web, plus bridge discussions with your favorite services such as FriendFeed and Plaxo. Threaded replies reveal the conversations in your comments. And now it’s easier to keep the discussion alive with email and mobile replying. Features such as ratings and video comments make comments interactive and expressive.”

There are various administrative benefits for VM /ETC to switch to DISQUS, but what’s in it for you? The best way I can describe DISQUS is that it aggregates all the comments that you make, not only here but for all other web sites or blogs that also use DISQUS, into your own web / social profile page. When you link your other social networking profiles and feeds DISQUS also displays them too. Alot of commnets could be classified as blog posts anyways, so having a web page with all of your comments is like an instant blog. Your DISQUS Profile even has an RSS feed. Check out my profile here as an example.

If you are thinking “I do not need to sign up for another social networking site”, believe me, I understand. So even if you don’t open an account DISQUS makes discussions easier for you on VM /ETC. If you just leave a comment with a valid email address you will be able to follow other’s comments from that post in your inbox, and a simple reply will automatically post a new comment from you. If you have a profile, you can sign in with your account to leave a comment. Don’t worry, I don’t want your email address and will not use it for spam or marketing.

There are already a handful of virtualization related blogs that use DISQUS. A few that come to mind are:

If you know of other sites using DISQUS too let everyone know with a comment. Once again, the value of using DISQUS is it is not just for one blog.

Like I mentioned earlier, if you’ve ever commented here at VM /ETC you already have an unverified profile. When I switched I imported all of the existing comments from vmetc.com. Claiming that profile is explained, along with some other helpful info, from the DISQUS help page:

How do I claim a profile?

If you’ve made a comment on a blog using Disqus, you automatically have a profile. To claim the comments and profile, verify your identity by clicking “Claim” on the profile. Once the profile is claimed, no one else will be able to use that profile or email address to comment aside from you.

What are clout points?

Clout (measured in points) is a person’s reputation across the Disqus network of blogs. Clout is determined by a few different things, but mainly by the rating of comments by others.

Clout helps blog moderators separate top commenters from trolls. This number also helps our system detect spam and unsavory behavior. Since it may imply greater legitimacy, a higher clout will allow for more privileges in the near future.

I plan on designing the t-shirts over the next few weeks, and I’ll post what they look like then. I’m sure there will be some details about this I have not thought of yet. Just leave me a comment or send me an email. This will be an evolving program I am sure.

I want to thank Sean Clark for inspiring me to try this (maybe I’ll end up blaming him later on) with his tweet from earlier this week:

vseanclark: @rbrambley How about a points system for VMETC comments? You could pay me with ugly green t-shirt to wear at VMworld next year.

As always, thanks for reading, subscribing and participating on VM /ETC!

Last chance for Hyper9 Beta participation. Sign up by Jan 22.

Rich Brambley — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:05:49 +0000

updated 01.23.09 – The beta registration period has ended. Thanks to all the readers that signed up!

VM /ETC readers have one last opportunity to get an advanced look at the Hyper9 browser based virtual infrastructure management tool before it is released to the public. According to the Beta newsletter I received, the product launch is scheduled for sometime in February. The newsletter also mentioned additional product functionality, savings for beta testers, and changes to the Hyper9 Community web pages.

Once again I am providing an automated form for interested readers to sign up for a copy. Filling out the form with a valid email address will result in an auto reply containing additional instructions about the program and a link to register. The beta registration form will only be available until midnight January 22.

updated 01.17.08 – I have moved the sign up form to it’s own page. Please click here to fill in the form.

I also discovered that the auto reply was not working properly for all the form entries that have been collected. I manually forwarded all the applicants directly to Hyper9, so if you submitted your information but never received an email reply I have been informed that Hyper9 will now be following up with you.

For more information and screen shots of this awesome VI management tool check out my previous post First look at Hyper9 beta for VM /ETC readers. or check out these additonal Hyper9 links:

Veeam Monitor free version now available

Rich Brambley — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:06:32 +0000

free Veeam tool unwrapped

The VMware administrators holiday gift from Veeam has been revealed. As promised, I received an email this morning announcing that a new free version of Veeam Monitor 3.02 is available for download. A description of the tool can be found on the products web page:

“Veeam Monitor is an easy to deploy, framework-independent VMware monitoring solution that was created expressly to help you better manage the health and performance of your VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) environment. Veeam Monitor provides support for troubleshooting and issue resolution, as well as trend reporting and capacity planning – equipping you to proactively manage ESX / ESXi infrastructure system health and performance today and over the long term.”

The product’s Release Notes reveal the limitations of the free version:

Veeam Monitor 3.0.2 features a new free functionality mode which is automatically enabled if you install the product without a license, or if your your license expires. Veeam Monitor Free Edition has the following limitations compared to the full version:

Performance history lookup is limited to 24 hours

Number of alarms is limited to ten

Performance and trend reporting is disabled

Alarm modeling is disabled

Guest OS process management functionality is disabled.

Veeam Monitor requires a SQL 2005 database or installs SQL 2005 Express by default. It is my understanding

that allthough the Free Edition has the already mentioned limitations, all data required is collected and available for analysis once a license is purchased and the full version is activated.

Of course, I can’t resist the opportunity to say “I told you so!” A few tweets from this morning sum it up best:

“@VMDoug @veeam So how many registrations for the Veeam gift did you guys end up with? BTW, I feel like I should say “Elementary, Watson””

rbrambley (rbrambley)
22 December 2008, 7:15 am

“@rbrambley Not sure on the total number of registrations, looks like enough to bring our downloads to a crawl…youre blog was top referer.”

VMDoug (Doug Hazelman)
22 December 2008, 7:20 am

“@rbrambley And yes, you did figure it out on Friday, congrats on following the clues Sherlock ”

VMDoug (Doug Hazelman)
22 December 2008, 7:22 am

Thanks to all VM /ETC readers who made Veeam’s viral marketing campaign a huge success! Fee free to leave feedback here about your experience with Veeam Monitor. There’s a good chance Doug Hazelman will be monitoring the comments and probably be able to help answer any questions about the product.

My guess on what Veeam has “nworks” for VI Admins on Dec 22

Rich Brambley — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:23:29 +0000

what could it be?

The more readers handle the free VMware administrator mystery present from Veeam the more the wrapping paper is getting torn. All that present shaking and examining trying to guess what it could be has been bad for the intended surprise by the folks at Veeam, or has it? Honestly, I have no inside information, and I am just as stumped as the rest. I do have a guess I’ll share, however.

First, to see a full size image of the present with the latest rips in the wrapping go to boche.net’s post Further unwrapping of the free tool from Veeam.

As for my guess on what it could be – well, based on the fact that the latest paper rip reveals some monitoring information and that Veeam recently purchased nworks which is known for it’s system monitoring tools,

I’m going to guess a “lite” version of Veeam Monitor 3.0. In fact, this screenshot from the Veeam Monitor 3.0 web page looks pretty familiar doesn’t it?

Veeam also recently announced the release of nworks Connectors Version 4.0 recently:

“… announced general availability of version 4.0 of its nworks enterprise management connectors, the first major update since Veeam acquired nworks in June. Version 4.0 includes new features and updates for the nworks Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager, and the nworks Management Pack (MP) for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. The new MP includes breakthrough functionality that enables end-to-end monitoring from ESX servers all the way through to enterprise applications running inside virtual machines.”

Here’s some more quick information copied from Veeam’s press release about the relationship between the Monitor and nworks Connectors tools:

“The nworks Management Pack (MP) and Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware are complementary to Veeam Monitor. Depending on their requirements, customers can use the nworks connectors, or Veeam Monitor, or both solutions to manage and monitor VMware performance. Customers currently on maintenance for the MP or the SPI can receive the new version at no additional charge.”

If you haven’t heard, to get your copy of the Veeam free tool you need to register here. Then on Monday December 22 you will get an email with instructions for obtaining your copy.

Guess what free tool from Veeam will be available on Dec 22?

Rich Brambley — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:56:56 +0000

I’ve now seen posts from both Scott Lowe and Rick Scherer about Veeam’s free holiday gift for VMware Admins that will be available Dec 22. To make sure you get your copy you need to register at http://www.veeam.com/xmas/default.html. Scott and Rick both got an email announcing the free tool. Read their posts to see the whole email, but what caught my attention was

We’ll be unveiling what the new free tool is on Dec. 22 – everyone who registers will automatically receive a download link that day via e-mail. This holiday gift is marked “do not open until Dec. 22.”

The email also mentions the 50,000 plus downloads of Veeam’s FastSCP which is their currently available and popular free tool for ESX file management.

If you follow Veeam’s Doug Hazelman on Twitter you might have seen his tweet from earlier today that possibly has let the “cat out of Santa’s bag”.

Doug, I imagine that was quite a beta test.