VMware Newsletter 6.01

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From the editors virtual desk

Hi everyone, welcome to the VMware Newsletter 2014 edition. This is now our 6th consecutive year bringing you all of the best weekly news from the word of VMware. I hope you all had a good festive season and managed to spend time with you family and friends and have a bit of a break. Well it is a new year and I am always excited about what the year will bring. Anyone want to send me their predictions, please do so and I will make a list that we can compare next year.

For those that might be new to the newsletter a reminder of what we provide. Every week (or at least most weeks) we collate the best from around the web that is related to VMware and put that together into a weekly digest so that you are able to easily keep up with all of the news and happenings in the VMware world. We also try and include local events and other local information for you but this is on a regional basis and may not be provided in your region. We also provide a summary of the latest KB articles which we always suggest you take note of and discuss with your operational team and your TAM to ensure there are no potential issues you need to be aware of that may affect your environment.

I really look forward to bringing you all of the VMware news for 2014 and I wish you a successful year working with our amazing technology.

Don’t forget to keep in touch, send me an email with any views or potential items to include to nisserow@vmware.com.

Virtually Yours

Neil Isserow

Senior Technical Account Manager

VMware Australia

Local Events

Local Training Classes

VMware Bloggers

VMware vCloud Blog: Top 5 Use Cases for Moving to a Hybrid Cloud Solution (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=3142)For many organizations, the move to a hybrid cloud has become a question of when, not if. Hybrid clouds provide users the unique benefit of on demand access to IT resources for the development of new applications, and as well as the ability to easily manage existing ones all in one place. The vCloud Hybrid Service, built on proven VMware technology that many organizations are already familiar with in their existing virtual environments, provides a secure, dedicated infrastructure-as-a-service hybrid cloud…

The Console: VMware Weekly News Recap: January 10 (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmware/?p=2004)VMware News We hope you enjoyed your holiday season and are gearing up for a fantastic 2014! And we’d like to take a minute to thank you for following the VMware Company Blog. In 2014, we want to create an … Continue reading →

VMware Education & Certification Blog: New FREE eLearning: vSphere Data Protection Advanced Fundamentals [V5.5] (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=3472)The vSphere Data Protection Advanced Fundamentals is a FREE two-hour self-paced course providing information about the vSphere Data Protection Advanced backup and recovery solution for virtual machines and describes the technologies it uses. See the course details and enroll. The price is right and only 2 hours of your time to learn about vSphere Data Protection.

VMware Consulting Blog: Inside VMware Professional Services – Connect, Empower, Focus (http://blogs.vmware.com/consulting/?p=1229)From Bret Connor Happy New Year! As vice president of VMware Professional Services for the Americas delivery team, I am fortunate to work with and lead a team of gifted, creative and downright smart professionals. How do we help our customers? Simple—we deliver faster results while cutting costs and accelerating business breakthroughs that have a material impact on your top line. I can go on but instead, we produced a visual guide that tells the story of the three cornerstone principles that…

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: New eBook: 5 Ways to Improve Business Continuity (http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/?p=2400)In a 24/7 business environment, small-to-midmarket IT pros must deliver secure solutions to keep the business up-and-running, and often at a cost-savings. Deploying virtualization solutions that enable reliable data protection, high availability, and disaster recovery are now more crucial than ever for ensuring infrastructures are protected in the event of a catastrophe. Why? According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 days…

VMware vCloud Blog: The Best Cloud for Test and Dev is… a Dedicated Cloud? (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=3122)By Angelos Kottas VMware vCloud Hybrid Service offers two distinct compute services: the Dedicated Cloud service provides users with exclusive physical compute nodes and a dedicated management stack, while the Virtual Private Cloud is a logically isolated, multi-tenant environment. As vCloud Hybrid Service grows in scale, we can pass on cost efficiencies to customers. Therefore, on January 1 st , 2014, VMware reduced pricing on Dedicated Cloud by 50 percent, to 7 cents an hour for a fully protected, fully…

VMTN Blog: VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast – #260 – Technical Influencer/Analyst/Writer Careers (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/?p=8251)Hosts John Mark Troyer, VMware @jtroyer Mike Gordon Laverick, VMware @mike_laverick Guests Howard Marks, @DeepStorageNet Stephen Foskett, @SFoskett News VMware taps its R&D chief for vacant CTO role Happy first birthday to the VMware Technical Journal! VMware Academic Program – Spring 2014 RFP Around the Community vBrownbag Podcast VMUG Local Meetings – Check it today AdaptingIT – Lauren Malhoit Podcast Virtualization Security Roundtable vCatchup Podcast – Craig Waters Stu McHugh’s…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Americas: Save 50% on VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale [V5.5] – BETA (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=3454)The VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale [V5.5] – BETA course is now available at a 50% savings. This Live Online course provides experienced VMware vSphere® personnel with the advanced skills needed to configure and maintain a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. The course is based on VMware ESXi™ 5.5 and VMware® vCenter Server™ 5.5. and prepares you for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Datacenter Administration [V5] certification (VCAP5-DCA) . Course…

VMware Cloud Ops Blog: Aligned Incentives – and Cool, Meaningful New Jobs! – In the Cloud Era (http://blogs.vmware.com/cloudops/?p=765)By: Paul Chapman , VMware Vice President Global Infrastructure and Cloud Operations Transforming IT service delivery in the cloud era means getting all your technical ducks in a row. But those ducks won’t ever fly if your employees do not have aligned incentives. Incentives to transform have to be aligned from top to bottom – including service delivery strategy, operating model, organizational construct, and individual job functions. Otherwise, you’ll have people in your organization wanting to work…

VMware vCloud Blog: Did You Know? Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2008 Are Available on vCloud Hybrid Service! (http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/?p=3129)Cementing itself as one of the most versatile hybrid cloud platforms on the market, supporting over 3,700 certified applications, VMware now supports Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on a monthly subscription basis for vCloud Hybrid Service customers. Running on vSphere, the vCloud Hybrid Service supports more operating systems than any other cloud computing platform in the market. With the addition of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2008, VMware is adding support for two of…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: VCDX-Desktop Coming in February (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=3370)VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) is the highest level of certification offered by VMware. VCDXs are part of an elite group of architects leading virtualization implementations around the world. And now, you can join this community of experts by earning your VCDX-Desktop certification. The VCDX-Desktop Design Defense Blueprint and the VCDX-Desktop Application & Handbook will be available for download on February 10, 2014. VCDX-Desktop applications from current VCDX-DCV or VCDX-Cloud holders,…

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: vCenter Operations Management Tech Tips: Tip #19 – vCenter Operations Manager and Business Critical Applications (Video Demo) (http://blogs.vmware.com/management/?p=2542)In the past we have shown you how to manage your Business Critical Applications (BCA) in vCenter Operations Manager. To do this right we walked you through modeling the application and building tiers, creating supermetrics and KPIs and adding business context to the applications by associating them with lines of business, regions, owners, support levels. We also helped you create custom dashboards for difference personas to help them understand the status and overall health of these BCAs (not too…

The Console: Introducing Ben Fathi as VMware Chief Technology Officer (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmware/?p=1985)Today we’re excited to announce that Ben Fathi has been appointed chief technology officer at VMware. Fathi joined VMware in 2012 and most recently served as senior vice president, R&D. As CTO, he’ll help drive VMware’s technology strategy and work … Continue reading →

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: 4 Ways Virtualization Can Take Your Organization Into the New Year (http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/?p=2390)Happy New Year to all of our readers! As you step out of ‘vacation’ mode and back into ‘work’ mode, you may be thinking about how you can make this year even better than the last. Perhaps you’ve resolved to shed those extra 10 lbs, or perhaps you’ve resolved to make your IT organization at your SMB more agile, more flexible, and more responsive than ever before, in order to meet growing demands in today’s ever-changing business climate. If this is the case, we wanted to share 4 ways…

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5 – Technology and Features (http://blogs.vmware.com/management/?p=2558)Today, we announced the general availability of vCenter Log Insight 1.5 . You can find the announcement by my colleague, Bill Roth, here . Our amazing engineering team put a lot of effort in creating this release, so I wanted to post a more detailed description of some of the newly introduced features and also provide more information about the technology behind Log Insight , even for some of the functionality that is not immediately visible to the user. Support for Microsoft Active Directory based…

VMwareTV: VMware customer case study: St Edmund's College (tag:youtube.com,2008:video:h-1W66r_Q-Q)VMware customer case study: St Edmund's College St Edmund's College needed to increase the efficiency and reliability of its IT estate, while enabling a new BYOD solution for pupils and teachers within the... From: VMware Views: 2 0 ratings Time: 04:24 More in Science & Technology

VMware for Public Sector Blog: VMware vCloud Suite Webcast – VMware and Carahsoft (http://blogs.vmware.com/publicsector/?p=144)On January 16, 2014 at 2:00 Pm Eastern / 11:00 Am Pacific VMware and Carahsoft will have an online seminar discussing the VMware vCloud Suite. The VMware vCloud Suite fulfills the promise of the software-defined data center by pooling industry-standard hardware and running each layer of the data center as software-defined services. This complete, integrated cloud solution accelerates services provisioning while simplifying IT operations and delivering the best SLAs for all applications. During this online…

The Console: VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5 is Generally Available Today! (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmware/?p=1971)By Bill Roth, Group Product Marketing Manager, VMware We’re pleased to announce the release of VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.5, which includes new features for enterprise readiness, and support for an additional range of enterprise log sources. You can download the … Continue reading →

VMware Support Insider: Installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion 6.0 (http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/?p=5954)Happy new year KBTV fans! A new year is upon us and with it brings some new videos! The first video of 2014 is for our VMware Fusion users and features a demonstration showing how you can install OS X 10.9 Mavericks as a guest operating system inside of a virtual machine running on VMware Fusion 6 . This video tutorial is based on VMware Knowledge Base article Installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion 6.0 (2056603) . Some things to note: Apple’s End User license…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Question of the Week: vSphere Storage Appliance (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=3290)This week’s question comes from the VSA Instructional Video series . If performing a “greenfield” deployment, which connections exist on vSwitch0? [a] A VMkernel port called “Service Console” [b] Two virtual machine port groups called “VM Network” and “Management Network” [c] A virtual machine port group called “VM Network” and a VMkernel port named “Management Network” [d] vSwitch0 should not have any virtual machine port groups or VMkernel ports Not sure of the answer?…

The Console: VMware Adds Industry Veterans to End-User Computing Leadership Team (http://blogs.vmware.com/vmware/?p=1938)By Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware Today, we announced that I am adding three industry veterans to our existing roster of talented individuals that comprise the VMware End-User Computing (EUC) leadership team and I’d … Continue reading →

VMware Support Insider: Top 50 Articles for 2013 (http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/?p=5947)Last week we posted our monthly Top 20 KB articles for the month of December. These posts are so popular we thought we’d provide the same list for the entire year of 2013 . We also expanded the list to include 50 of our top KBs. You’ll probably notice some familiar titles here. Downloading and installing VMware Fusion (2014097) VMware Fusion 6 fails to start (2058900) Installing Windows in a virtual machine using VMware Fusion Easy Install (1011677) Installing async drivers on ESXi 5.0/5.1/5.5…

VMware vSphere Blog: Have you checked the root password expiration on your 5.5 VCVA today? (https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/?p=11421)Hi, Now that 5.5 has been out a while and many of you have been making the move to the VMware vCenter Virtual Appliance (VCVA a.k.a. VCSA), here’s a friendly reminder to check the password expiration of the root account on the virtual appliance! If you’ve been following my blogs, you’ll remember in Part 2 of the “Virtual Appliances getting more secure with vSphere 5.5” series, I HIGHLY recommended that you check root password expiration ASAP! The VCVA/VCSA root password is set to expire 90 days…

VMware Education & Certification Blog: Make your 2014 Certification Plan Today (http://blogs.vmware.com/education/?p=3420)By Erik Ullanderson IT professionals need to spend around 10 hours per week educating themselves in order to stay relevant in today’s fast-changing technology landscape, David Day noted in his October blog post. As you look back on 2013 and think about making the most of 2014, I’ve got a couple questions for you: Did you stay on top of current trends and add new skills that will help you solve problems faster and better? If you wanted to get a new certification, did you achieve your goal? A goal is…

External Bloggers

Free e-learning course - vSphere 5.5 Data Protection Advanced Fundamentals (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2554-guid.html)

Are you afraid of the ballooning ghost? (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2537-guid.html)

Download vCloud Hybrid Service vSphere Client Plug-in (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2553-guid.html)

VMware vCenter Operations Manager and Business Critical Applications (http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/2552-guid.html)

The UK, now with more VMUGs (http://www.virtu-al.net/?p=3056)I am a big fan of the VMUGs, especially in the UK, my first VMUG was the London VMUG, I started attending a long time ago and traveled from the south west of England... The UK, now with more VMUGs 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 USA Amazon UK Sybex

Access Denied on wp-admin / wp-login page (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=14140)I have had this problem various times in the last 6 months on my WordPress blog. For whatever reason all of a sudden when I access my wp-admin page I receive an access denied on wp-admin / wp-login.php. Really annoying as you can imagine as it means you cannot get in to the back-end of […] " Access Denied on wp-admin / wp-login page " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

How about an All Flash Virtual SAN? (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=14122)Yeah that title got your attention right… For now it is just me writing about it and nothing has been announced or promised. At VMworld I believe it was Intel who demonstrated the possibilities in this space, an All Flash Virtual SAN. A couple of weeks back during my holiday someone pointed me to a […] " How about an All Flash Virtual SAN? " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

How to calculate what your Virtual SAN datastore size should be (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?p=14114)I have had this question so many times I figured I would write an article about it, how to calculate what your Virtual SAN datastore size should be? Ultimate this determines which kind of server hardware you can use, which disk controller you need and which disks… So it is important that you get it […] " How to calculate what your Virtual SAN datastore size should be " originally appeared on Yellow-Bricks.com . Follow me on twitter - @DuncanYB.

vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 root account locked out after password expiration (http://www.boche.net/blog/?p=4893)Thanks to Chris Colotti, I learned of a new VMware KB article today which could potentially have wide spread impact, particularly in lab, development, or proof of concept environments. The VMware KB article number is 2069041 and it is titled The vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 root account locked out after password expiration. In summary, the root [...] Post from: boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist Copyright (c) 2010 Jason Boche. The contents of this post may not be reproduced or republished on…

Nutanix: The Big Red Easy Button for Oracle Databases – Part 1 (http://longwhiteclouds.com/?p=2714)As you may have read in my article New Adventure to Redefine Radically Simple Architecture for Business Critical Apps with Nutanix I’ve started working at Nutanix. My primary role as part of the Solutions and Performance Engineering team is to help develop the platform, solutions reference architectures, and best practices for Business Critical Applications. One of the areas […]

New start at Coho Data (http://www.vreference.com/?p=2032)I’m excited to tell everyone that starting next week I’m joining the Coho Data team as their Technical Product Manager. Up until now, working as a Technical Architect but being so involved in blogging, authoring a few books , speaking at conferences, and generally communitizing the community ; I’ve often been asked if (actually, [...]

New Career Opportunity : Joining the fastest growing enterprise infrastructure company of the past decade (http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=5694)Dear Readers, I’m happy to announce the next step in my professional career as I start a new and exciting chapter. Starting next week I will be joining the start-up Nutanix as their Technical Alliances Director. I’ve enjoyed over 4 years with the EMC/VMware family in different roles. My most recent as a … Continue reading »

View Client Device Detector (http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=5687)I came across this desktop utility called ‘View Client Device Detector’ that allow users to easily collect PCoIP environmental variables from the Windows registry. This could be handy during troubleshooting process as sometimes administrators find themselves trying to located the right end-user terminal. (Click image to enlarge) According to the author Davoud Teimouri, … Continue reading »

Cameyo Application Virtualization – with online application catalog and online packager (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=33641)Today’s application virtualization packager company I’ll report is Cameyo, which is another alternative for home users or non profit organizations. For home users they not only provide free version of their product, but you can use their Online packaging tool for creating free 3 packages/month where you can submit your application to be packaged through […] Read the full post Cameyo Application Virtualization – with online application catalog and online packager at ESX Virtualization . Featured…

Thinapp Alternative Called Evalaze which also offers Free version (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=32301)If you’re not user of VMware Thinapp you might be interested in following application called Evalaze which is a virtualization packager, like Thinapp. But On the other hand, Evalaze offers free (limited) version. Thinapp Alternative Called Evalaze can virtualize unlimited number of applications, but not all the functions are active in the free version. I stumbled […] Read the full post Thinapp Alternative Called Evalaze which also offers Free version at ESX Virtualization . Featured Paper : vCPU…

Oracle Buys Corente – a SDN company capable virtualize LAN and WAN (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=33632)It seems that VMware NSX has a new direct competitor – Oracle. The company has announced the acquisition of Corente which is a specialist of network virtualization – WAN and LAN. As a result Oracle expects to provide complete technology for cloud deployments with SDN offerings with rapid deployments of global private networks which connects […] Read the full post Oracle Buys Corente – a SDN company capable virtualize LAN and WAN at ESX Virtualization . Featured Paper : vCPU Sizing Considerations

ESXi 5.x – How-to enable SSH pre-login message banner (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=33626)As a VMware admin you might be interested in this function. A message that could be used as a warning or informative purposes in your organization when someone tries to log into an ESXi host. When you SSH to ESXi host (in case the admin has enabled SSH) there is no message to the operator by […] Read the full post ESXi 5.x – How-to enable SSH pre-login message banner at ESX Virtualization . Featured Paper : vCPU Sizing Considerations

Light Firefox – stripped down version of Firefox starts faster and uses less memory (http://www.vladan.fr/?p=33614)Light Firefox might be your interest in case you’re not using some of the Firefox components that are normally part of full Firefox distribution. Those components are not present in the light version of Firefox called simply Light Firefox so it’s very fast to load and shall use less RAM. But on the other hand, for […] Read the full post Light Firefox – stripped down version of Firefox starts faster and uses less memory at ESX Virtualization . Featured Paper : vCPU Sizing Considerations

Automate ALL The Things #vBrownBag Follow Up – vCO Install & Config with Mike Preston (@mwpreston) (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=4149)Mike Preston joins us to review the installation and configuration of the vCenter Orchestrator appliance, how to integrate it with the vSphere Web Client and also reviews PowerShell integration and workflow execution. Video Referenced Materials You can find the Kerberos configs referenced during the show at: 5.1 - http://blog.mwpreston.net/2013/04/19/my-first-vcenter-orchestrator-workflow-part-4-a-look-at-the-powershell-plug-in/ 5.5…

#vBrownBag 2013 End of Year Give-Away Winners Announced! (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=4145)This post is by Jonathan Frappier At the end of December, the #vBrownBag crew, along with some awesome sponsors announced our annual end of year give-away. Our sponsors included the EMC Elect, Infinio, Pearson, Proximal Data, Simplivity, Pluralsight, Veeam and Zerto as well as members of our own crew Cody Bunch, Damian Karlson and Nick Marshall. […]

[Community] Learn about vSAN and Hyper-Converged Offerings, win the Deathstar! (http://professionalvmware.com/?p=4142)This post is by Cody Bunch David Davis, a long time supporter of the #vBrownBag effort, and “The Other” Scott Lowe are doing a vendor neutral, un-sponsored, community driven webinar around vSAN and Hyper-Convergence. (Registration here: http://www.virtualizationsoftware.com/convergence-webinar-registration/ ) From the signup page: Even while in beta, VSAN has become an overnight sensation thanks to its […]

Private Cloud – Getting Started Guide for the CIO (tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5819640694385843490.post-3369126142890662593)This is a re-post of my article, originally published on The Ravello Blog. Cloud adoption is on the fast track, companies of all size are seeking ways to adopt cloud while eliminating the traditional IT project risks. The largest enterprises in the... This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more!..

VMware KB Digest – New KB articles published for week ending 1/4/14 (http://vmwaretips.com/wp/?p=2250)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. Socialcast On Premise Email sent to Socialcast is classified as Bulk or Auto-Generated and is discarded (2065162) Date Published: 1/3/2014 [...]

KB Articles

Socialcast On Premise
Email sent to Socialcast is classified as Bulk or Auto-Generated and is discarded (2065162)
Date Published: 1/3/2014

VMware ESX
Starting virtual machine from command line on vmdk file/files fails with error: Bad address (2019003)
Date Published: 1/2/2014

VMware ESXi
Enabling the pre-login SSH banner in ESXi 5.x (2068379)
Date Published: 1/3/2014

VMware Service Manager
Individual officers in VMware Service Manager do not receive an email when a call, request, or task is forwarded to the group to which they belong (2068478)
Date Published: 1/1/2014
Officers in VMware Service Manager cannot action calls forwarded to their group when the call is in a different partition (2067682)
Date Published: 1/3/2014

VMware vCenter Orchestrator API
Best practices for using the vCloud Orchestrator configuration element (2068519)
Date Published: 12/31/2013

VMware vCenter Server
Logging into the vSphere Web Client as a user that is a member of an unreachable domain fails with the error: Client is not authenticated to VMware Inventory Service (2068530)
Date Published: 1/1/2014

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat
Removing protected services from VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.4/6.5/6.6 (2040525)
Date Published: 1/2/2014

VMware vCloud API
Cannot delete a vApp after invoking the vCloud powerOff API (2068521)
Date Published: 12/31/2013

VMware vCloud Automation Center
VMware vCloud Automation Center Designer fails to open with the error: CloudUtil.exe has stopped working (2068346)
Date Published: 1/2/2014
Provisioning a machine in VMware vCloud Automation Center fails with the error: Error has been caught, see event logs located on the vCAC server for detail (2068624)
Date Published: 1/2/2014

VMware Virtual Disk Development
Backing up disks of size 2 TB or larger fail silently and report success when using HotAdd transport (2068424)
Date Published: 1/1/2014

VMware vSphere PowerCLI
VMware vSphere Power CLI Get-ProviderVDC cmdlet displays null result for the storage properties of vCloud Director 5.1 (2068522)
Date Published: 12/30/2013