VMware Newsletter 5.38

From the editors virtual desk

Hi everyone, well I have recovered from last week's adventure which was truly awesome and in fact quite unexpected. I now have 2 weeks until I am in Sydney and presenting at vForum. For those attending I am presenting on a topic that is very important to me in my work at VMware around maintaining 100% uptime for a virtualised environment.

As a TAM my customers expect me to be there when the system fails but as their TAM it is my responsibility to ensure that this never happens. It is quite interesting to think that I consider my job done if my customers never get to call on me for an outage but that really is the case. To achieve this takes hard work but I believe it can be done. I hope those of you who come to vForum in Sydney will come to the session and I will make it available afterwards as well for those that missed it.

Have a great week everyone.

Virtually Yours

Neil Isserow

Senior Technical Account Manager

VMware Australia

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VMware Education & Certification Blog: Asia-Pacific Japan: Take 75% Off All VCP and VCAP Exams (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=2540)Save 75% on VMware Certification exams in Asia-Pacific Japan while attending VMware vForum 2013 and selected VMware Solutions Symposium 2013. While you can register at the event, seating is limited, so register today to ensure a seat and lock in the 75% savings. Visit your country site for offer details and registration directions: Australia/New Zealand ASEAN includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam China Hong Kong Taiwan India Japan Korean Register today…

VMware vSphere Blog: Are ESXi Patches Cumulative (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10528)Updated based on feedback. Thanks for the comments! I’d like to revisit the question “are ESXi patches cumulative”? This time I hope to hammer home the point with an example. In short, the answer is yes, the ESXi patch bundles are cumulative. However, when applying patches from the command line using the ESXCLI command you do need to be careful to ensure you update the complete image profile and not just select VIBs. There are two ways to update VIBs using the ESCLI command. You can use…

VMware Accelerate: How Intelligent is Your Automation? (http://blogs.vmware.com/accelerate/?p=1379)Author: Rich Pleasants When I talk with my enterprise clients about their IT as a service (ITaaS) strategies, service automation frequently comes up. Scripting might be done to make specific IT activities easier, but it does not necessarily address the need to orchestrate or fully automate a set of process steps that affect an entire process lifecycle timeline or set of quality measures. The true value of automation lies in functional build- and run-side automation: workflow automation user stories and…

VMware End User Computing: Closing the Digital Divide in Education with VMware Horizon View and Teradici PCoIP Zero Clients (http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/?p=3772)by Robert Philkill and Nick Pandher, Teradici Geoffrey Murase, Solutions Marketing, VMware VMware and Teradici have recently been awarded a contract through systems integrator Bitara for the Malaysia Ministry of Education (MoE) to deliver virtualized desktops to Malaysia’s K-12 students. MoE is the largest Ministry in Malaysia, responsible for 10,000 K-12 schools and roughly 5.5 million students. As you may know, Malaysia’s geography consists of two main parts separated from each other by the…

VMwareTV: VMware vCenter Operations Manager Training: Dashboard Badges & Capacity Settings (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:uXqG8PkqZN4)VMware vCenter Operations Manager Training: Dashboard Badges & Capacity Settings Watch this video prior to installing an evaluation/trial of vCenter Operations Manager to better understand how to read the dashboard badges and adjust capac... From: vmwaretv Views: 5 1 ratings Time: 29:59 More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Client Virtualization & VMware Horizon Suite (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:tgbT_T6cCLM)Client Virtualization & VMware Horizon Suite Join IDC's Brett Waldman as he learns more about VMware's end-user computing product strategy as it extends beyond VDI, including new mobility trends and use... From: vmwaretv Views: 5 0 ratings Time: 03:30 More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Client Virtualization in the Mobile Era (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:ooFYedWz9MM)Client Virtualization in the Mobile Era Brett Waldman, IDC Research Manager, provides an overview of today's client virtualization market including mobile trends and the challenges IT faces in this... From: vmwaretv Views: 6 0 ratings Time: 03:12 More in Science & Technology

VMware Network Virtualization Blog: Network Virtualization: The Holy Grail of Workload Agility (http://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/?p=574)This is a guest post from vCloud Service Provider Logicworks which originally appeared on the VMware vCloud Blog. You can read more from Logicworks on their blog, Gathering Clouds . Everyone is familiar with virtualization. It’s become the IT standard for achieving greater levels of resource efficiency and functionality. While it’s just a tool, the vast majority of new builds utilize it in some way. This holds true for managed service providers (MSPs) as well. The benefits of virtualization to an MSP…

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: Moving Beyond IOPs for VDI (http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/?p=2189)Post By Courtney Burry, Director of Product Marketing, VMware, and Tristan Todd, Reference Architect Engineer, End User Computing, VMware When it comes to desktop virtualization, one of the places you will end up spending a lot of your time is on storage planning and design. Given that over 50% of the cost associated with most VDI deployments comes from storage, it’s definitely worth the time and effort to do your homework in advance. Wading through the sea of storage vendors can often leave you…

VMTN Blog: VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast – 251 – VSAN (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/?p=8095)Hosts John Mark Troyer, VMware @jtroyer Mike Gordon Laverick, VMware @Mike_Laverick Guests Cormac Hogan, VMware @VMwareStorage News VMworld 2013 Photos VMworld TV on YouTube VMworld Mobile App Blog Posts from VMworld 2013 Blogger List Contributors VMworld 2013 Social Media & Community VMworld 2013 – Barcelona Podcasting for Cancer – Indiegogo – Consider donating today vBrownBag Automation Track – Check the schedule Around the Community vBrownbag Podcast VMUG Local Meetings – Check it…

VMware End User Computing: VMworld 2013 Europe, Now in 3D! (http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/?p=3795)Earlier this year, we announced Horizon View 5.2 which includes support for hardware accelerated graphics. Customers have been anxiously awaiting this technology as it opens up a lot of new use cases for desktop virtualization such as support for CAD and other graphically-intensive applications. At VMworld 2013 Europe, we’re pleased to offer several breakout sessions that highlight this technology. To give you an idea of what we’ll be talking about, watch this short video documenting the…

VMwareTV: VMware Horizon View vSGA Demo (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:S3VDWqr3DfA)VMware Horizon View vSGA Demo Rory Clements of VMware demonstrates the 3D graphics performance utilizing shared graphics (vSGA) technology in a virtualized desktop environment. From: vmwaretv Views: 8 0 ratings Time: 05:54 More in Science & Technology

VMware vCloud Blog: Accelerate Your Time to Value with VMware vCloud Hybrid Service – Register for the 10/16 Webcast! (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=2912)By now, you’ve heard of the vCloud Hybrid Service, VMware’s newly announced hybrid cloud solution, now available to all U.S. customers . A production-ready cloud environment compatible with your VMware vSphere environment, the vCloud Hybrid Service enables you to run your applications onsite, offsite, or both, using the same skills and processes you already know and trust. Still not entirely sure as to how the vCloud Hybrid Service can help you? On October 16 th , 2013 at 10am PDT , we invite you to…

VMTN Blog: VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast – 250 – Open Topic (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/?p=8080)Hosts John Mark Troyer, VMware @jtroyer Mike Gordon Laverick, VMware @Mike_Laverick Guests You, the community! News VMworld 2013 Photos VMworld TV on YouTube VMworld Mobile App Blog Posts from VMworld 2013 Blogger List Contributors VMworld 2013 Social Media & Community VMworld 2013 – Barcelona Podcasting for Cancer – Indiegogo – Consider donating today vBrownBag Automation Track – Check the schedule Around the Community vBrownbag Podcast VMUG Local Meetings – Check it today! AdaptingIT…

VMware End User Computing: VMware Horizon Mirage: Layering Explained (http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/?p=3724)by Sachin Sharma, Product Marketing, VMware Layering in Horizon Mirage is an important concept to understand. The layering technology that is implemented in Horizon Mirage gives IT great flexibility in managing physical and virtual endpoints. We’ll take this opportunity to provide more details on how layering works in Horizon Mirage. Let’s first take a look at what Horizon Mirage is: a solution for managing physical and virtual endpoints. Horizon Mirage is unique in its offering from an endpoint…

VMwareTV: Get Ready for the New Wave of IT (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:t-ArqVtw_is)Get Ready for the New Wave of IT As CIO, how do you enable organizational change management and the people and processes that are required to become a service provider? Accelerate strategist... From: vmwaretv Views: 6 0 ratings Time: 02:18 More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Transform Your Organization to the New IT (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:UNyevgUwdU8)Transform Your Organization to the New IT How can the "old IT" be competitive in a marketplace crowded with external cloud providers? The promise of agility, cost savings, as well as self-service cap... From: vmwaretv Views: 4 0 ratings Time: 03:20 More in Science & Technology

VMwareTV: Your Roadmap to the Software-Defined Data Center (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:8fL00fP0qD8)Your Roadmap to the Software-Defined Data Center Accelerate chief technologist Eric Ledyard explains why the software-defined data center is a reality today, and how the SDDC architecture can bring signific... From: vmwaretv Views: 5 0 ratings Time: 03:27 More in Science & Technology

VMware vSphere Blog: A few cautionary notes about replication performance (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10482)Now for the warnings about all this improved vSphere Replication performance. Why is this not unequivocally a great thing? Because you may run the risk of overloading certain systems with this. Let’s look at the technical issues at hand Let’s say you mass protect a few hundred VMs at the same time, what will happen? Well first of all your hosts will get very busy calculating the initial full sync. They need to calculate the checksum of every disk both at the source *and* at the recovery target…

VMware for Public Sector Blog: NSX Webcast – VMware and Carahsoft (http://blogs.vmware.com/publicsector/?p=93)Recently at VMworld 2013 in San Francisco we introduced you to NSX. We feel this technology is game changing and we would love the opportunity to show you why we believe this to be true. We would love to show you how NSX can reduce costs and increase network security in your agency. If you would like more information on NSX, click here On October 24, 2013 at 2:00 PM Eastern / 11:00 AM Pacific VMware Public Sector and Carashoft will have a webcast for VMware NSX. We will be discussing how NSX is cost…

VMware vSphere Blog: Learn all about VSAN at VMworld Europe (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10516)For those of you going to VMworld Europe in Barcelona next week, there are plenty of opportunities to learn more about Virtual SAN (VSAN), and to get up close and personal with the people involved in its creation and development. The following is a list of sessions and other activities that attendees can take advantage of: VSAN-related Breakout Sessions and Group Discussion STO5391 - VMware Virtual SAN STO5027 - VMware Virtual SAN Technical Best Practices EUC4688 - Lowering TCO for Virtual Desktops…

VMware vSphere Blog: VSAN Beta – iPad Winners from VMworld (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10499)The VMware Virtual SAN team would like to congratulate our 3 iPad winners: Brian Sweeney, Senior Technical Architect, AT&T Steven White, System Design Engineer, Philips Healthcare David Semanik, IT Manager, Nook All three were among the first 100 people to register for the beta. Enjoy your new iPad! Are you disappointed you didn’t win? Don’t be. We are giving away many more prizes to our beta testers. Right now, you can get into a raffle of five $100 Amazon gift cards. All you need to do is…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: VMware Training and Certification Offer Extended through the 2013 (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=2618)If you thought you missed the opportunity to take advantage of our Smart, Certified and Stylish offer, you’re in luck. Now through the first of the year, register and attend a VMware vSphere: Install, Manage, Configure [V5.1] or a VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V5.1] class in the U.S. or Canada and you’ll receive: a copy of The Official VCP5-DCV Certification Guide from VMware Press a free voucher to take the VMware Certified Professional (VCP5-DCV) exam your choice of specially selected…

VMware Cloud Ops Blog: A VMware Perspective on IT as a Service, Part 2: An In-house Example of IT Transformation (http://blogs.vmware.com/cloudops/?p=611)By: Paul Chapman , VMware Vice President Global Infrastructure and Cloud Operations Attending VMworld in Europe? Join me for two panel sessions: OPT5705 – “Balancing Agility with Service Standardization: Panel Discussion” on Wednesday, October 16 th from 12:30-1:30pm OPT5315 – “What Are the Critical Success Factors to Successfully Transform IT into a Service Broker?” on Wednesday, October 16 th from 2:00-3:00pm Hope to see you in Barcelona! – In this series of posts, I’m offering a…

VMware vCloud Blog: Clearing the Path to Cloud – Part 1; Understanding Security, Compliance, and Cost Control (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=2910)Many business are undeniably excited to transition to the cloud, as a move to the cloud allows for streamlined processes, improved flexibility, and reduction in capital costs, just to name a few benefits. However, with that excitement comes concerns, specifically around security in the cloud. According to a 2013 IDG Enterprise cloud computing research study, it was found that 66% of IT decision makers cite security concerns as a barrier to implementing a cloud computing strategy, and 56% say they won’t…

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: Have You Nominated your IT Hero Yet? Only a Couple More Opportunities to Win! (http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/?p=2178)Earlier this year, we announced our search for today’s unsung IT Heroes . We wanted to hear the stories of IT admins who go above and beyond the call of duty everyday, and who have taken their IT organizations to the next level using the latest and greatest technologies. Since then, we’ve selected five IT Hero winners and have turned the contest into a global effort, and are now searching for IT Heroes amongst our VMware Latinoamérica and VMware Brasil audiences! Here’s just a sample of some of the…

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: vCenter Operations Management Tech Tips: Tip #12 – Best Practices for vSphere Capacity Planning – Part 4 of 4 (http://blogs.vmware.com/management/?p=1805)This is part 4 of the mini Tech Tip series for vSphere Capacity Planning. In part 1 of this series I covered the importance of using the right metrics and tuning the knobs to assess your capacity risk. In part 2 of this series , I covered which visuals you can use in vCenter Operations to answer key questions around datacenter or cluster wide capacity usage and risk monitoring. In part 3 of this series , I covered insights on right sizing your VMs. I n this 4 th Tech Tip, I will cover a simple…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Question of the Week: Leveraging Shared Physical GPUs (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=2625)This week’s question of the week comes from the instructional video “What’s New with Horizon View 5.2, part 1. What VMware vSphere version is needed to leverage shared physical GPUs? a. vSphere 4.1 b. vSphere 4.0 c. vSphere 5.1 d. vSphere 5.0 _________________________________________________________________ Not sure of the answer? Watch the instructional video What’s New with Horizon View 5.2, part 1. Answer: c. vSphere 5.1

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Asia Pacific: Try It Again, FREE! (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=2642)Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and Korea: We know you are busy! We know the certification exams are challenging and perhaps you underestimated how much time was needed to prepare. Now you have a second chance to pass the exam at no additional charge! See the offer details and take the VMware certification exam with confidence!

VMware Horizon Tech Blog: Nexenta VSA for View (NV4V) (http://blogs.vmware.com/horizontech/?p=186)By John Dodge, Technical Marketing, VMware Recently my EUC Reference Architecture team had the opportunity to see the Nexenta VSA for View (NV4V) for Horizon View in action (see our Reference Architecture posting here ). I have to admit to being impressed by both the product and the enabling potential of a well-executed virtual storage accelerator (VSA) strategy. There are a couple of notable incumbents and newcomers in the VSA space. Atlantis Computing ILIO has enjoyed some great wins (check out their…

Virtualize Business Critical Applications Blog: Setting Multi Writer Flag for Oracle RAC on vSphere without any downtime (http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/?p=864)Oracle RAC Cluster using ASM for storage would require the shared disks to be accessed by all nodes of the RAC cluster. The multi-writer option in vSphere allows the VMFS-backed disks to be shared by multiple VM’s simultaneously. By default, the simultaneous multi-writer “protection” is enabled for all .vmdk files ie all VM’s have exclusive access to their .vmdk files. So in order for all of the Oracle RAC VM’s to access the shared vmdk’s , the multi-writer protection needs to be disabled. KB…

VMware vCloud Blog: Network Virtualization: The Holy Grail of Workload Agility (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=2907)This is a guest post from vCloud Service Provider Logicworks . Check out their blog, Gathering Clouds . Everyone is familiar with virtualization. It’s become the IT standard for achieving greater levels of resource efficiency and functionality. While it’s just a tool, the vast majority of new builds utilize it in some way. This holds true for managed service providers (MSPs) as well. The benefits of virtualization to an MSP are similar to what an enterprise would experience. Given the nature of…

vCO Team: How to use the SOAPInterceptor to see the SOAP Header and Body (http://www.vcoteam.info/learn-vco/how-to-use-the-soapinterceptor-to-see-the-soap-header-and-body.html)On a recent project, I was having trouble figuring out why invoking a SOAP operation kept failing with the vCO SOAP plug-in. The inputs I was providing appeared to be correct and worked just fine with soapUI. This short tutorial will teach you how to use the SOAPInterceptor to display the Header and Body that the SOAP plug-in is sending. SOAP Operation Auto-Generated Workflow A typical Invoke Operation workflow looks similar to the above image. This is an example of the workflow generated when you…

VMware Support Insider: Top 20 Articles for September 2013 (http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/?p=5835)Here is our Top 20 KB list for September 2013. This list is ranked by the number of times a VMware Support Request was resolved by following the steps in a published Knowledge Base article. VMware Fusion 6 fails to start (2058900) Downloading and installing VMware Fusion (2014097) Installing Windows in a virtual machine using VMware Fusion Easy Install (1011677) Installing async drivers on ESXi 5.x (2005205) Broadcom 5719/5720 NICs using tg3 driver become unresponsive and stop traffic in vSphere…

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: VMWorld Barcelona Preview: vCenter Log Insight (http://blogs.vmware.com/management/?p=1793)Next week, we see the arrival of VMworld Europe in Barcelona. For those of us who work on management products, it will be a big week. (But you have to stay tuned for why). That said, we will have several sessions which will introduce vCenter Log Insight , as well as troll the depths of its architecture. (And we have a promotion as well. Click here for more details , or scroll down.). Barcelona is an appropriate city for VMworld. At VMworld, VMware reveals its latest innovations to a sea of nearly-rabid…

vSphere PowerCLI Blog: PowerCLI Session at VMworld 2013 Barcelona (https://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/?p=1511)Following the amazing sessions at VMworld San Francisco and knowing that PowerCLI took the top spot from the VMworld sessions I wanted to again give you the information you need for VMworld Barcelona so you don’t miss out on the awesome PowerCLI content available. The Session Builder is live on the VMworld site and I thought it might be valuable to the PowerCLI fans out there to know which sessions and interesting PowerCLI related topics are out there and what is available to attend. Whilst PowerCLI is…

VMware Technical Account Manager Blog: User Interface Design and the change from desktop computing (http://blogs.vmware.com/tam/?p=800)By guest blogger, Christian Wickham, Technical Account Manager, South Australia and Northern Territory, and Local Government and Councils in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales at VMware Australia and New Zealand I have been working in IT for 22 years, and during that time there have been changes – more than a few. In the early nineties, I did a bachelor honours degree in IT – and my dissertation (thesis) was about user interface design. The main conclusion was along the lines of “users…

VMware vSphere Blog: Understanding vSphere Active Memory (https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10489)We’ve all seen “Active” memory reported within various vSphere interfaces, but how many us really know what it describes. I think you might be surprised. Let’s look at its definition to get us started: Active Memory - ”Amount of memory that is actively used, as estimated by VMkernel based on recently touched memory pages.” There are some very important details we need to breakdown here. Example: What is it used for? What does estimated mean? How do we define recently? Background : …

The Console: VMware Weekly News Recap: October 4 (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmware/?p=1319)VMware News With VMworld Barcelona rapidly approaching the VMworld Team outlined all the VMworld social channels you should be following to get involved with the VMworld conversation and stay up to date on what’s happening at the show, even if … Continue reading →

VMware Consulting Blog: Developing Defense in Depth for a Software-Defined Data Center (http://blogs.vmware.com/consulting/?p=898)By Jared Skinner, Cloud Management Sales Director – West The software-defined data center (SDDC) is on the tip of a lot of tongues these days, but the fact is, it’s not yet an end-point solution but rather a constantly evolving strategy. For that reason, I meet many customers who are excited about its potential but still wary of the unknowns—in particular around security. As we abstract different layers of the technological stack, namely storage and network, we must continue to manage security…

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: vCenter Operations Management Tech Tips: Tip #11 – Best Practices for vSphere Capacity Planning – Part 3 of 4 (http://blogs.vmware.com/management/?p=1760)This is part 3 of the mini Tech Tip series for vSphere Capacity Planning. In part 1 of this series I covered the importance of using the right metrics and tuning the knobs to assess your capacity risk. In part 2 of this series I covered which visuals you can use in vCenter Operations to answer key questions around datacenter or cluster wide capacity usage and risk monitoring. In this 3 rd Tech Tip, I will cover some insights into right sizing your VMs.There are 2 areas that I’d like to share 1) How does…

vCenter Orchestrator Blog: How Much Javascript Do I REALLY need to know for VCO?
I find vCenter Orchestrator to have an extensive library of workflows, actions, and plugins to do what I need. However, sometimes I do have to use the customizable Scriptable Task element to customize the behavior of a vCenter Orchestrator workflow. Thankfully, this is super easy to do as the Scriptable Task is a very powerful element that allows me a full range of programmatic manipulation using the simple, open language of javascript. When I use the Scriptable Task 99% of the time what I…

VMware Technical Account Manager Blog: “It’s All About the Applications!” TAM Day 2013 Executive Keynote at VMworld US (http://blogs.vmware.com/tam/?p=1393)Exciting times are here for those of us with an absolute passion for infrastructure – continued advancements in the virtualization of x86 workloads, software-defined storage and networking, coupled with management, automation, security and compliance. But let’s not lose sight of the purpose of the infrastructure within this wave of innovation – it’s there to run applications ! Paul Strong, our CTO of Global Field for VMware, kicked off TAM Day 2013 in San Francisco with an Executive Keynote and…

VMware vSphere Blog: vSphere Replication 5.5 Performance Findings (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10417)A few days ago I did a post on why VR is much quicker with version 5.5 than it had been in the past. Now let’s take a look at what the result of those changes is. VR Performance I replicated a single VM, 32 GB thick provisioned in size of which about 12 GB is actually allocated to disk. It took 44 minutes to copy that to the target location, including disk creation and setup time. Specifically, 11.77 GB over 44 minutes, 21 seconds. That’s about 4.56 MBps or 36.5 Mbps. Now, that’s pretty…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Education Helps Attract and Retain Top IT Talent – Stand Out with VCA (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=2519)If you are an IT manager, you’ve undoubtedly felt the pinch of the IT skills gap. You’re not alone. When CompTIA conducted its 2013 workforce study , more than half of the 1,256 business and IT executives surveyed reported being “concerned about the quality and quantity of IT talent available for hire.” Not surprisingly, many IT organizations choose to close the skills gap with retraining rather than new hires. In the high-demand mobility space, 57% of businesses said they would only retrain or…

VMware vSphere Blog: New Virtual SAN (VSAN) white paper available (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=10477)A new Virtual SAN (VSAN) white paper is now available. VSAN is a new storage solution from VMware that is fully integrated with vSphere. The paper looks at all aspects of the new VSAN architecture, including what the requirements are, the converged storage and compute aspects, the hybrid nature of using SSD & HDD, and the new storage policies, bringing to reality VMware’s vision for software defined storage. Also the considerations that must be taken into account when deploying VSAN are covered as…

External Bloggers

A peek inside EMC SE - Q4 message to the troops (http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2013/10/a-peek-inside-emc-se-q4-message-to-the-troops.html)One thing I'm passionate about is a culture of openness, transparency and partnering. In that spirit, here's the Q4 memo to all my fellow EMC SE brothers and sisters around the globe. It may not be a usual "virtual geek"...

VMware vCenter Operations Manager Training: Dashboard Badges & Capacity Settings (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2495-guid.html)

VMworldTV - VMware's IT Business Management Suite (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2494-guid.html)

Deploying Extremely Latency-Sensitive Applications in VMware vSphere 5.5 (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2493-guid.html)

vCenter Operations and the Quest for the Missing Metrics (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2403-guid.html)

VMworld 2013 Barcelona–Where I will be (http://www.virtu-al.net/?p=2930)After what I think has been my most enjoyable VMworld yet in San Francisco I am fully looking forward to VMworld 2013 Barcelona, I have lots of sessions to present and always enjoy the European VMworld as it seams to me to be slightly more technical, maybe people adjust their slides a little after the […] VMworld 2013 Barcelona–Where I will be is a post from: Virtu-Al . Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration" Buy it now from: Amazon…

No vMSC certification for vSphere 5.5 yet (http://vsphere-land.com/?p=4278)The other day I had someone ask if 3PAR was certified for vMSC with vSphere 5.5. So naturally I went to the VMware HCL and checked by selecting ESXi 5.5 for the version, then HP as the vendor and then the FC Metro Cluster Storage as the array test configuration. When I searched I got back [...]

Startup News Flash part 6 (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=13497)There we are again and just a short one this time, Startup News Flash part 6. VMworld Europe is around the corner so I expect a bit more news next week, I know of at least 1 company revealing what they have been working on… So what happened in the world of flash/startups the last […] " Startup News Flash part 6 " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

Designing your hardware for Virtual SAN (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=13757)Over the past couple of weeks I have been watching the VMware VSAN Community Forum with close interest and also twitter. One thing that struck me was the type of hardware people used for to test VSAN on. In many cases this is the type of hardware one would use at home, for their desktop. […] " Designing your hardware for Virtual SAN " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

Where is that Yellow-Bricks dude hanging out during VMworld? (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=13760)Some people have been asking what my agenda looks like, when my sessions are and if there are any specific social events I am likely to attend… Well here you go: My sessions / group discussions: Monday, Oct 14, 12:00 – 13:30 – TAM Day, Birds of a Feather Lunch Monday, Oct 14, 13:45 – […] " Where is that Yellow-Bricks dude hanging out during VMworld? " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

HA Futures: Pro-active response (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=13530)We all know (at least I hope so) what HA is responsible for within a vSphere Cluster. Although it is great that vSphere HA responds to a failure of a host / VM / application and even in some cases your storage device; wouldn’t it be nice if vSphere HA could pro-actively respond to conditions […] " HA Futures: Pro-active response " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

Using Puppet to Configure Ubuntu to use Apt-Cacher-NG (http://blog.scottlowe.org/?p=3307)Here's a brief snippet of Puppet code to configure your Ubuntu instances to use an apt proxy, like Apt-Cacher-NG, to speed up apt operations. This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org . Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies. Using Puppet to Configure Ubuntu to use Apt-Cacher-NG

Introduction to Networking: Part 2, A Few More Basics (http://blog.scottlowe.org/?p=3305)This is part 2 in a series designed to help VMware administrators understand some networking concepts. Part 2 builds on part 1 with a few more basic ideas. This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org . Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies. Introduction to Networking: Part 2, A Few More Basics

Using Puppet for Ubuntu Cloud Archive Support (http://blog.scottlowe.org/?p=3303)Want to use packages from the Ubuntu Cloud Archive, like OpenStack packages? Here's how to use Puppet to automatically add the Ubuntu Cloud Archive to your systems. This article was originally posted on blog.scottlowe.org . Visit the site for more information on virtualization, servers, storage, and other enterprise technologies. Using Puppet for Ubuntu Cloud Archive Support

HP finally killed the EVA (http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/?p=11776)Today Alex discovered a public secret HP has been denying for some time but now they finally killed the HP EVA. When HP bought 3PAR back in 2010 the rumors quickly spread that HP would replace the EVA with their newly acquired 3PAR storage solutions. But until a month ago HP sales was still actively pushing EVAs, denying it being End Of Life. Less than a year ago, December 2012, HP launched its 3PAR StoreServ range at HP Discover in Frankfurt but insisted that there are no plans to discontinue EVA in 2013.…

Site update – Build numbers (http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/?p=11628)Along with the new look of the website it was also time to update the build number database. In the last few weeks we have been working on updating the database, resulting in a increase with 387 entries making a total of 592 build numbers. But we didn’t stop there. On popular demand we changed the way the build numbers are presented, since there are devices that don’t support Flash. Therefore we abandoned Flash and created the site with HTML5. Now that we are using HTML5 every device should be able to…

Get-Scripting Podcast Episode 36 - (The VMworld Expedition) (tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-261470339069403116.post-790920387616698265)This is Episode 36 of the Get-Scripting podcast. Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about PowerShell. Download it here , subscribe in iTunes or via a different feed reader . Intro: Alan: VMworld Sessions Primalforms Jonathan: Using SSH to Access Linux Servers in PowerShell Clone a VM from a Snapshot using PowerCLI Automating the Pre-Requisites for vCAC 5.2 PowerShell News: PowerCLI 5.5 released Windows Server 2012 R2 with PowerShell v4 released PowerShell Summit N.A. 2014 Public Registration…

Video demonstrating Horizon View 3D Graphics with vSGA (http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=5497)vSGA stands for “Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration”. vSGA leverage physical GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) installed locally in each vSphere host to provide hardware accelerated 3D graphics to virtual desktops. The VMware SVGA 3D graphics driver is currently supported on Windows 7 and 8 virtual desktops for 2D and 3D and is used for both … Continue reading »

Forget BYOD and get ready for BYOW (Bring-your-own-Wearable) (http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=5479)As IT organizations and vendors start to finally grasp concepts around BYOD in the enterprise, I dare say – Forget everything you know and re-evaluate your organization’s mobility strategy. The truth is that current solutions to manage mobility (MDM, MAM, MIM etc.) will be overrun in a matter of months. I’m talking about wearables. Wearables … Continue reading »

Homelab Thoughts – VSAN (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32456)Beta of VMware VSAN publicly available through VMware communities gives an opportunity for installing and testing. But how to evaluate the hardware necessary to build 3 nodes and not to break the budget? Here are my thoughts of what’s available right now and what would allows to build a VSAN based cluster for homelab. It’s […] You might also like: Performance best practices for vSphere 5.5 – technical VMware VSAN Beta Community opens the doors VMware VSAN Video Read the full post Homelab Thoughts…

VMworld Barcelona – See You There! (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32441)As last year, I got that change and attend personally this year’s VMworld in Barcelona. I feel very privileged to be able to attend as many folks don’t have that possibility and stays home. While I don’t have an employer, it’s still my employer (myself) who pays for the travel and expenses… But most importantly, […] You might also like: VMworld 2012 San Francisco and Barcelona – more news VMware Now – If you can’t make it to VMworld… Last year’s VMworld sessions Free to watch Online…

Discover unRAID OS – an unique embedded Network Attached Storage (NAS) server operating system (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32434)I stumbled through this by surfing the web. unRAID is a NAS Operating System which allows storing digital files, videos etc… but with some huge difference at the RAID level as it allows mixing disks of different capacity. Similarly as Drobo does. unRAID embedded Network Attached Storage (NAS) server runs out of USB stick to provide […] You might also like: Drobo Elite – iSCSI SAN which supports multi host… Recover lost space from thin provisioned disks by using… Drobo B1200i at VMworld Copenhagen…

How to change the default password policies in vSphere 5.5 (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32423)I’ve recently installed vCenter server appliance (VCSA) to manage my lab environment running vSphere 5.5. It’s faster than instaling a vCenter under Windows and it’s the future. I was wondering how to change the default password policies in vSphere 5.5? The Default vCenter SSO configuration password policy is set to expire passwords in 90 days with […] You might also like: How-to backup and restore VCSA 5.5 internal database VCSA 5.5 Installation and configuration – Part 2 VMware vCenter…

How to Delete Libraries in Windows 7 easily with free tool (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32215)Windows 7 is good OS, but there is one feature that I don’t like. It’s the Libraries which are always on the way. It’s been a long time since I wanted get a post done which explains step by step how to delete libraries in Windows 7. How to get rid of libraries? The thing is […] You might also like: Veeam 7 Tape Support Use VMware online library as learning tool How to create ISO from folder Read the full post How to Delete Libraries in Windows 7 easily with free tool at ESX Virtualization…

How to share VMware Workstation VMs (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32366)VMware Workstation 10 allows sharing VMs on a network. It’s possible to allow (or not) users to access this shared VM or give them different set of privileges too. Useful if you deal with users which are for example students or and you don’t want them to break/delete the VM. Users of VMware Workstation might […] You might also like: VMware Workstation 10 and VMware Fusion 6 Released! Possible conflict with IIS by default when sharing VMs under VMware Workstation 8.0.1 Released Read the full post How…

vSphere HA Slot Size and Admission Control Video (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32323)VMware has recently published 3 new videos. I wanted to point to the third one which is very good for understanding the very interesting topic about slot size and admission control. If you ever wondered what does exactly that HA cluster policy called “Host failures the cluster tolerates” or how to understand slot size calculations, […] You might also like: VMware HA Slot sizes Official VMware VSAN Videos – VSAN config,… How Many VMs can you fit in virtualized environment Read the full post vSphere…

Automate All The VMworld US 2013 Session Downloads (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=3933)If you attended VMworld US 2013, all of the sessions have been posted online. Many of the sessions have MP4 video, MP3 audio, and PDF copies of the presentation available for download. Instead of manually saving off the content and session materials, you can use this PowerShell script. This script has been around since 2010, […]

vForum Sydney, after VMworld EMEA (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=3969)As I mentioned, I am not going to VMworld EMEA this year. For this quarter I must content myself with going to vForum in Sydney. This is a big vForum, two days long and over five thousand people attending making it about half the size of VMworld EMA. This year for the first time I’m […]

Automate ALL the Things #vBrownBag Follow Up – Introduction to PowerCLI with Josh Atwell (@josh_atwell) (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=3937)Josh Atwell (@josh_atwell) provides an overview of PowerCLI, its capabilities and then goes into a hands on demo. Download PowerCLI https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=285&downloadGroup=VSP510-PCLI-510 Google+ Community If you need help, have other questions or want to keep the conversation going, you can join the G+ Automate All the Things community: http://bit.ly/vBBAuto Video #vBrownBag Automate ALL the things – […]

vBrownBag at VMworld EMEA next week (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=3957)I hope everyone is locked and ready to go next week, VMworld Europe is a great event and I’m personally disappointed that I’m going to be asleep in New Zealand while my buddies are having fun in Barcelona. The vBrownBag crew will be there, Gregg has the shortest trip and will be joined by Kyle, […]

2013-oct-03 ProfessionalVMware #vBrownBag LATAM @ercruzv privilegios y roles en vCenter (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=3927)The following content is in Spanish, the language in which the webinar is presented. El pasado 10 de octubre en ProfessionalVMware #vBrownBag LATAM se presentó el tema Privilegios y roles en VMware vCenter por Randall Cruz Vega @ercruzv .

VSI 6.0 vSphere Web Client (http://www.2vcps.com/?p=1436)I didn’t get a chance to post this to the blog earlier this week. I wanted to share a demo I worked on this week showing how to install the new Web Client based Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI). We all know that the windows only client is in its last days (lived about a year […] Related posts: View Open Client 4.5 Beta 1.1 Now Out View Client on iPad with Bluetooth Keyboard Book Review: Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator

VMware KB Digest – New KB articles published for week ending 10/5/13 (http://vmwaretips.com/wp/?p=2201)In our effort to provide our viewers with up to the minute information on VMware related news and topics, we’re posting the following list of new KB Entries for this week, direct from VMware Support. Radware vDirect Plug-in for VMware vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) (2061333) Date Published: 10/2/2013 VMware ESX Creating an isolated network [...]

Triple Book Giveaway (http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php/Tech-Blog/triple-book-giveaway.html)Clearing out the shelves and want to give away some books to a good home. Brand new books just waiting to give the reader some good learning. So what 3 books will I get: VMware vSphere Design 2nd Edition Mastering VMware vSphere 5 Automating vSphere with vCenter Orchestrator Awesome, right? So how do I enter. Just enter your email address on the promotion page . You do not need to be a facebook fan to enter (but of course I strongly encourage it, but then again I'm biased). Contest ends on Sunday…

KB Articles

VMware ESX
Creating an isolated network between two virtual machines (2043160)
Date Published: 10/2/2013

VMware ESXi
Multiple OpenSSH vulnerabilities in ESXi 5.0 and 5.1 (2054170)
Date Published: 9/30/2013
OpenSSH common vulnerabilities and exposures in ESXi (2057246)
Date Published: 9/30/2013
vCenter Server 5.5 displays a yellow warning in the Summary tab of hosts and reports the error: Quick stats on hostname is not up-to-date (2061008)
Date Published: 9/30/2013
Missing API Definitions in vSphere SDK for Perl (2061631)
Date Published: 10/5/2013
Unable to edit virtual machine settings in ESXi 5.5 (2060713)
Date Published: 9/30/2013

VMware Horizon Workspace
Multiple Apache Struts vulnerabilities detected CVE-2013-2251 and CVE-2013-2248 (2056852)
Date Published: 9/30/2013

VMware Player (Linux)
Unable to license VMware Player for Linux (2060266)
Date Published: 10/3/2013

VMware Service Manager
Linked QD fields in a VMware Service Manager screen display 0 and prompt as mandatory when the fields are blank in the parent entity (2060157)
Date Published: 9/30/2013

VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager
Running vCenter Chargeback Manager reports in the vSphere Client report the error: Could not generate report as there are no entities in the given report period (2039859)
Date Published: 9/30/2013

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager
A UNIX dynamic patching assessment template deployed with the same name as a Windows template displays as type static with no bulletins (2053964)
Date Published: 10/3/2013
Creating a custom WCI collection filter name with a special character fails with the error: Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value (2057312)
Date Published: 10/4/2013
VMware vCenter Configuration Manager Installation Manager grants log on as a batch job rights to the Collector service account (2057316)
Date Published: 10/3/2013

VMware vCenter Operations Manager (Standalone)
Navigating to Admin > Support > Logs in vCenter Operations Manager displays a NullPointerException error (2045025)
Date Published: 9/30/2013