VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘vmworld’

I’m late posting about this so I’ll be short. Tuesday 08/10/2010 is the deadline to enter and win a free conference pass, airfare, and hotel accommodations for VMWorld 2010 in San Francisco, CA. Go to GestaltIT.com and register NOW!

Here’s some various contest info as pasted directly from the post Announcing the Gestalt IT “Get Away to VMworld” Contest!:

“Here’s the deal: Thanks to our generous sponsors (Xsigo and Symantec), we’ll pay airfare, hotel, and registration for one lucky and deserving person out there to attend VMworld San Francisco 2010! That’s right – you get to go to VMworld for free!”

“Entrants must explain how they plan to “pay it forward” if they get to go to VMworld. Will you start a blog? Write some tutorials? Contribute to a forum or online community? Present to your local VMUG? Get creative and spread the wealth of knowledge you get from the event!”

“HOW TO ENTER

Ok, so how can you enter this contest? Here are the simple steps:

1. Consider how attending VMworld would help you and the broader community
2. Fill out the contest entry form
3. Plan on stopping by the Symantec and Xsigo booths at the show and thanking them for their support
4. Consider publicizing the contest by sharing this article with friends and associates
5. Consider subscribing to Gestalt IT with RSS, by email, on Twitter, or in iTunes
6. Consider supporting DonorsChoose.org and donating your swag to school kids in need”

“You have through Tuesday, August 10 to enter. The winner will be announced on the VMware Community Roundtable Podcast, Wednesday August 11 at noon Pacific time!”

Check out the whole GestaltIT post for more details and some fine print. Good Luck and I hope to see you there!

The VMUNDERGROUND invades VIRTUMANIA Episode 21 with a special VMWorld 2010 Warm Up Party announcement! Rick Vanover is my co host and we are joined by special guests Sean Clark and Brian Knudtson. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 21 – Announcing WUPaaS. Exploring vSphere 4.1. Denying ESXi. Predicting VMWorld. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of Rickatron.us are joined this episode by Sean Clark (@vseanclark) of VMUnderground.com and Brian Knudtson (@bknudtson) of Knudt.net. This week we talk about everything VMworld 2010, point out some changes introduced with vSphere 4.1, air some concerns about using ESXi in the future, and announce the 2010 theme of the VMUnderground VMWorld Warm Up Party. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Before, between, and after the important stuff we also have some fun with Sean’s hat, swagger wagons, iPads (again!), Dr. Seuss, VMworld 2010, and more!

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 21:

Read the rest of this entry »

Our weekly podcast is usually a loose and casual conversation, but VIRTUMANIA Episode 16 was definitely "off the hip". Regular co-host Marc Farley is back, Rick Vanover joins us as always, and very special guests John Troyer and Eric Siebert round out a great discussion. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 16 – The One About vExperts And VMWorld. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of StorageRap.com are joined by regular Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com. Very special guests this week are VMware’s John Troyer (@jtroyer VMTN Roundtable Podcast) and Eric Seibert (@ericsiebert) of vpshere-land.com. The conversation covers everything from VMware’s 2010 vExpert program, hyping VMworld 2010, to social media tools and preferences. Although no “stretched analogy” was used in the actual episode this week, the spontaneous recording is almost like a cafe conversation from an episode of Friends. Thanks to Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 16:

Read the rest of this entry »

Download The VMworld 2009 Presentation on IO DRS

A common question from those that did not get to attend VMware Partner Exchange 2010 has been “So, tell me about what you saw that you can’t tell everyone about!” Unfortunately, like Maverick in the movie Top Gun said, “It’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

On the other hand, more and more information is starting to surface on the web. I can neither confirm or deny that all features and version numbers will be available or released as reported, but the TechTarget folks have put together a couple of good summary articles for those who interested in a little more information on a possible future roadmap of VMware vSphere and VMware View. Check the following articles for a round up of general speculation and reaction during and after the PEX 2010 conference. Most of the sources used are credible. (That last comment will make more sense to you after you follow the links)

VMware to add memory compression, I-O resource management to next vSphere

“The next release of VMware’s vSphere will add memory compression, I/O resource management and better VMotion performance, according to attendees of last week’s VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas. If the company architects these features as promised, they could improve performance and resource utilization of VMware environments.”

VMware vies for virtual desktop dominance with View 4.5

“The upcoming version of VMware’s VDI software will better integrate its desktop and server virtualization software and expand the role of its ThinApp application virtualization software, all in an effort to extend its server virtualization dominance to the desktop.”

The above quotes are just the opening paragraphs of each TechTarget article. Read the rest for the details.

To use another quote from the movie Top Gun, Read the rest of this entry »

During VMworld 2009 I talked to Trend Micro about their virtualization protection solutions. Some of which are based in part on VMware’s VMSafe APIs. Trend told me about their protection against virus and malware attacks, network intrusion, firewall integrity, and application threats in VMware virtual machines (VMs). After researching some more about what I heard in the Trend booth at the conference, I discovered Trend also offers a free product, VM Protection, for a maximum of 100 guests.

Antivirus and Malware

At the Trend Micro booth I was introduced to Core Protection for VMware Virtual Machines, and I learned that although virtual machines still require Trend Real Time Agents (RTA) installed in each VM, the protection workload is now isolated to a dedicated “scanning virtual machine”.

The virtualization RTA on each guest is a specialized version responsible only for scheduling and status monitoring, and is not the same agent installed if using Trend’s physical server protection. The volumes and files of each guest are actually scanned directly on the VMFS datastore by the scanning VM, and not performed by the RTA running on each virtual server.

The following diagram was copied from the Trend Core Protection data sheet and shows the logical design of the solution. Read the rest of this entry »

By now you’ve seen the pictures, video (VMworldTV), and posts about the hardware in the datacenters that hosted the VMworld 2009 Labs. You should already know about the staggering number of virtual machines ( > 37,000 ) running on the ESX 4 servers ( > 770 ). But enough about the hardware.

If you are like me you probably would have loved to get the opportunity to use the vSphere client to connect to a vCenter server managing that entire virtual infrastructure (VI). Although I did not get to do just that, I did get the opportunity to do the next best thing – talk to the manager of the team that does. My VMworld ended by talking to Randy Keener, Group Manager of VMware’s GETO team (Global Engineering Technical Operations). Keener explained to me some of the VMworld 2009 virtual infrastructure design details that VI administrators would be interested to know.

Nested ESX in the Lab Manager Cloud

What Keener revealed somewhat surprised me. Although vCenter 4 server was a piece of the design, the true magic that supported the self paced labs, instructor led labs, and the Solutions Exchange was (arguably) an example of a private cloud created by

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One of the Solutions Exchange theater presentations I sat through was at the PHD Technologies booth. I watched a presentation on their latest product release, esXpress 3.6. Backing up virtual machines (VMs) is a constant and important concern of virtualization administrators, and esXpress offers a unique, award winning alternative. Up to 16 simultaneous live backups or restores per ESX host is possible without impacting ESX Service Console resources and without configuration of additional VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) infrastructure.

The secret to esXpress is the use of VBAs (Virtual Backup Appliances). A VBA is a prebuilt software solution running on it’s own Linux OS that runs as a VM along with the production VMs on each ESX 3.x /4.x host. There are no agents to install in the VMs being backed up, nor any dependency on APIs. A single Configuration Virtual Appliance must run somewhere in the environment to provide a esXpress management console that enforces global configuration settings across all the backup VBAs. A fourth VM appliance can also be added to the solution to serve as a deduplicated, backup destination target VM. Other possible backup destinations are SMB, SSH, FTP, and VMFS repositories.

Some other quick highlites of esXpress 3.6: Read the rest of this entry »