VMLive is VMware's interactive webinar series designed specifically for our partner community. There are two versions of VMLive - Tech Edition and Sales Edition. Tech Edition is intended for the System Engineer and Technical Consultant audience; the Sales Edition is intended for sales, marketing and business audience. VMLive is available exclusively to VMware partners.
Saturday, March 15. 2008
VMware's interactive webinar
VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.0 Beta
John Troyer has written a great post on the VMTN Blog about the Windows VI Toolkit based on PowerShell. Besides a link to my articles he summed up everyone who is experimenting with this toolkit.
Well, once Carter spilled the beans, everybody is now waiting with bated breath for VMware to release the beta of our new curiously-named VI Toolkit (for Windows). The toolkit is powered by Windows PowerShell, a shell/scripting technology that Microsoft appears to have gotten very right indeed. The VI SDK, while extremely powerful, is not for the faint of heart. This toolkit takes that power and wraps it up in a very simple syntax which creates a compelling tool for VI admins.
In total there are 102 PowerShell cmdlets in the Beta that cover all aspects of Virtual Infrastructure management. The most important thing is that you can now easily write scripts, tailor made to your problems, that save you time and frustration, whether that means saving you 10 clicks or 100. Once you've had a chance to kick the proverbial tires, don't forget to visit the Community Page to give your feedback or to talk with other Beta testers. Last but not least, congratulations to the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team for all your hard work on this release!
Wednesday, March 12. 2008
Finally some video footage from Cannes
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the VMworld in Cannes. I had some great plans to shoot some real cool video’s out there but I enjoyed a skiing holiday instead. While I was in Austria I was under the impression that I was the only one who is shooting video’s at these events, but I’m not ;-). In the past few days some video footage has reached the surface and can be viewed on YouTube. Fabio Virgilio from Italy keep up the good work.
Comments: Thanks, Fabio, for re-uploading those, but the credit needs to go to Eric Nielsen and Tony Dunn from the vmworld.com crew -- see their channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/VMworldTV
Tuesday, March 11. 2008
The plug-in Pandora's box is open
Schley Andrew Kutz a Developing Consultant from Texas published the most complete and comprehensive list of VI plug-ins available at this very moment. Schley also created the VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Plug-in and Extension Programming Guide. With this guide you can create your own plug-ins. You can find it all at the viplugins.com website, have fun with it.
37migrations.com is fun
37migrations.com is a fun project created by the people who brought you VIPlugins.com. The purpose of this site is to allow people to upload their VMotion count to our database, which in turn allows them to plot said data on a nifty Google map, making it easy to see where in the world VMotion operations are occurring. The map plots all of the VMotion events that have occured between 00:00 and 23:59 of the current day. The 37migrations VI client plugin uploads the location id you provide when a VMotion event on your VI server occurs. This process increments your VMotion count on the 37migrations server by 1. The location you provide is not stored, instead it is turned into latitude and longitude coordinates and those are stored. We store the data in a MySQL server that only we have access to. Even if someone were to obtain the data, there is no way that it can be traced back to you. They are not out to collect data for malicious purposes, they simply think this is a neat idea.
Monday, March 10. 2008
Great interest for the PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe
Carter Shanklin added a blog entry to the VI PowerShell Blog and officially announced the beta to be released this month. Besides that the PowerShell team is very surprised by all the enthusiasm for the PowerShell lab at the Vmworld in Cannes. You can also download the lab manual.
Hope you enjoyed the PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe.
We here on the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team know just how exciting PowerShell is, but sometimes we're surprised to learn just how many people agree. Our PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe was attended by over 250 students. What surprised me most though, was that we noticed at least 3 different people working on the PowerShell lab for over 3 hours each. Considering all the great sessions and other labs offered at VMworld Europe, this is really a testament to how important PowerShell is going to be for system management in the coming years.