Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

The vimsh command documented by Xtravirt has now been updated to include the recently uncovered vmware-vim-cmd. This command replaces the need to enter the vimsh interactive shell, increasing performance and simplifying its use. vimsh is a highly useful API which can be used to report, configure and tweak many aspects of ESX server. This version has been fully re-written for ESX 3.5 and has been simplified in many areas. It also contains over 35 working examples.

VMware has removed the option to run ESX 3.5 on Workstation 6.5 but there is some light at the horizon. Jim Mattson  over at VMware didn’t make a promise but the final version of Workstation 6.5 might include support for ESX 3.5, in the beta I’m using at the moment it didn’t work tough.

The code to support this mode of execution no longer exists. However, as kma said earlier, "please stay tuned." No promises, but Workstation 6.5 is not fully cooked yet, and something may yet appear that suits your needs.

Brugh posted a nice "VA" on the Virtual Appliance Marketplace. EDA is an appliance dedicated to deploying ESX servers fast and easy. It has a scriptbuilder to quickly create %postscripts.

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) is a small and easy to use appliance that makes deploying ESX servers a breeze. It has a very intuitive web-interface that can configure and deploy dozens of ESX servers in minutes. It has a script-builder that will allow any admin to create %post-scripts that will do most anything one needs to get the ESX hosts up and running! Even if deploying with RDP/Altiris or the UDA, this script-builder can help setting those up very quickly.

To set it up, just attach a ESX3 iso to it. It will automatically mount it and with one click, import the PXE bootfiles and strip the HBA drivers to do a save install while SAN LUNs are attached!

This appliance is still in beta stage because there's a todo list. But it's fully functional and has been tested to work at least on HP DL380's, BL460, BL480 and Dell 2950 servers.

The VMware Virtualization Forum 2008 is for IT professionals and business decision makers interested in learning more about transforming a traditional, expensive IT environment into a fully optimized, cost-effective, virtualized environment.
Dates & venues (Spain, South Africa coming soon):
Stockholm, Sweden - 02 October 2008
Paris, France - 08 October 2008
Rotterdam, Netherlands - 15 October 2008
Dusseldorf, Germany - 22 October 2008
Vienna, Austria - 29 October 2008
Zurich, Switzerland - 05 November 2008
Milan, Italy - 12 November 2008
Warsaw, Poland - 13 November 2008
London, United Kingdom - 19 November 2008

Please note that VMware is planning to have partner days around the virtualization forum – more information to come soon. Partner Day is a one-day event which showcases the latest partner programs, training programs and marketing initiatives.

I selected some PortableApps tools and installed them on my VMware ESX 3i memory stick I received in San Francisco. Yes it’s definitely broken now Here is my selection that might become handy when you are the administrator at an ESX environment. I’m still trying to package the VI Client and make it PortableApps compatible.










InfraRecorder Portable - full-featured CD and DVD burner

7-Zip Portable - File archiver and compressor

WinSCP Portable - SFTP, FTP and SCP client

PuTTY Portable - lightweight telnet and SSH client

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - the award-winning web browser

FileZilla Portable - the full-featured FTP client

Notepad++ Portable - A full-featured text editor with syntax highlighting

vmSight™, the leader in business intelligence for virtual systems, today announced the 3.5 release of its product suite. The Virtual Network Intelligence product suite, built on patented technology, allows customers to easily monitor, alert and report on application and user activity in virtual environments. The vmSight product suite includes VMware®-certified virtual appliances for policy management and reporting and for monitoring.

vmSight Virtual Network Intelligence 3.5 adds the following key capabilities:

Application Performance Management – gather data on application response time, application uptime and network latency for all virtualized applications. Monitor, report and alert on service levels for specific applications, user groups and times of day. Measure end user experience and spot problems based on user satisfaction analytics and performance trends.

VM Sprawl Control – Sometimes referred to as “sprawl,� the uncontrolled proliferation of virtual machines can reduce the value and performance of Virtual Infrastructure. vmSight works to automatically and continuously monitor application performance trends and usage statistics to identify under-utilized applications and VMs. It identifies resources for reallocation and applications for consolidation to increase the cost savings of VM utilization.

VDI Diagnostics – continuously monitor VMware VDI deployments and infrastructure to ensure the success of VDI deployments. Capture information on RDP bandwidth, RDP connection results, network latency, and VMware VDM messaging results, as well as track all application activity from virtual desktops and bandwidth consumption by specific applications such as print jobs.

With the release of VirtualCenter 2.5, VMware offers third-party developers and partners the ability to extend the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) with their own product-specific menu selections or toolbar icons that provide access to external, Web-based functionality. These extensions, or VI Client Plug-ins, comprise the set of configuration files, URLs, icons, and Web-server-hosted resources that work together to display extended menu items, icons, and other user interface (UI) items in the VI Client and provide access to the external functionality.

Link to the technical Note that provides information about how to extend the VI Client. Provides background concepts as well as step-by-step instructions.

Link to the XML Schema Definition file that defines the elements and their usage for the VI Client Plug-in configuration file.

Andrew Kutz, the man behind viplugins.com is busy writing a new book. This book will be the definitive guide for systems administrators and developers eager to make use of the VI and CIM SDKs. The book shows their use with several popular languages, including the VI Perl Toolkit and VI Toolkit (for Windows) as well as C#, Java, and Python. Advanced topics, such as creating client plugins and communicating with VMware through its web service, are also covered.

This week I delivered a DSA training, one of the students was carrying an USB stick with all his favorite applications. When he plugged it into a PC he could run them immediately. I thought wow this looks like some sort of application virtualization. The beauty of it all is that you can get this for free at Portable Apps. Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use. The Portable Apps Suiteâ„¢ is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share.

The Virtual Disk Development Kit contains a tool called the VMware DiskMount Utility. This utility mounts VMware virtual disks under Microsoft Windows. VMware DiskMount is a utility for Windows and Linux hosts that allows you to mount an unused virtual disk as a separate drive or partition without needing to connect to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine. You can mount specific volumes of a virtual disk if the virtual disk is partitioned. After you mount a virtual disk, you can read from and write to a mounted disk as if it were a separate file system with its own drive letter or mount point on your computer. For example, you could scan the disk for viruses or transfer files between the host system and a powered off virtual machine. When you are finished using a mounted virtual disk, you should unmount it so the virtual disk can be used by virtual machines again. Here's the output :

vmware-mount.exe /?
VMware-mount [driveletter:] [path-to-virtual-disk] [options]
VMware DiskMount Utility version 3.0.3 build-84675
Copyright (c) 1998-2008 VMware, Inc.All rights reserved.
This utility mounts VMware virtual disks under Microsoft Windows.
Use "VMware-mount" without arguments to list the currently-mounted volumes.

  /v:N             mounts volume N of a virtual disk (default=1)
  /d               deletes the mapping to a virtual drive volume
  /f               forcibly deletes the mapping to a virtual drive volume
  /p               displays the partitions (volumes) on a virtual disk (local disks only)
  /L               lists the currently-mounted volumes
  /i:InventoryPath inventory path of the VM owning the virtual disk
  /m:[w|n]         mount in read-'w'rite or 'n'on-persistent mode
  /h:host          name or address of server to access managed virtual disk
  /u:userid        user name on the server
  /s:password      password on the server
  /P:port#         port number to access the server (default=902)
  /?               displays this usage information

The Virtual Disk Development Kit contains a tool called the Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment). Virtual Disk Manager manipulates virtual disk (VMDK) files, and has many useful capabilities. One key feature is the ability to enlarge a virtual disk so that its maximum capacity is larger than it was when you created it. If you need more disk space on a given virtual disk but do not want to add another virtual disk or use ghosting software to transfer the data on a virtual disk to a larger virtual disk, you can change the maximum size of the disk. Of course this is not possible with physical hard drives.Here's the output:

VMware Virtual Disk Manager - build 85132.
Usage: vmware-vdiskmanager.exe OPTIONS <disk-name> | <mount-point>
Offline disk manipulation utility
  Operations, only one may be specified at a time:
     -c                   : create disk.  Additional creation options must
                            be specified.  Only local virtual disks can be
                            created.
     -d                   : defragment the specified virtual disk. Only
                            local virtual disks may be defragmented.
     -k                   : shrink the specified virtual disk. Only local
                            virtual disks may be shrunk.
     -n <source-disk>     : rename the specified virtual disk; need to
                            specify destination disk-name. Only local virtual
                            disks may be renamed.
     -p                   : prepare the mounted virtual disk specified by
                            the drive-letter for shrinking.
     -r <source-disk>     : convert the specified disk; need to specify
                            destination disk-type.  For local destination disks
                            the disk type must be specified.
     -x <new-capacity>    : expand the disk to the specified capacity. Only
                            local virtual disks may be expanded.

The Virtual Disk API, or VixDiskLib, is a set of function calls to manipulate virtual disk files in VMDK format (virtual machine disk). Function call semantics are patterned after C system calls for file I/O. This API enables partners and software vendors to manage VMDK directly from their applications. These library functions can manipulate virtual disk on a VMware Workstation or similar product (hosted disk) or virtual disk contained within a VMFS volume on an ESX Server (managed disk). Hosted disk is an original VMware concept meaning a disk managed by the Workstation host for a guest operating system. The Virtual Disk Development Kit is a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage. The kit includes:

 The Virtual Disk library, a set of C function calls to manipulate virtual disk (VMDK) files.
 C++ code samples that you can build with either Visual Studio or the GNU C compiler.
 Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment).
 DiskMount utility to access files and file systems in virtual disks on Windows or Linux.
 Documentation about the Virtual Disk library and the command-line utilities.

VMware is pleased to announce the launch of the latest VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP) specialty track in Infrastructure Virtualization. In addition to completion of the Core VTSP courses, participants enrolling in the Infrastructure Virtualization specialty track will gain valuable insight in concepts relating to, advanced networking, consolidation estimation, data protection, high availability, and resource management. Partners can also enroll in VTSP training plans geared towards Desktop Solutions and VSLA Management. Check out the training tab on Partner Central today for more VTSP details.

VMware Technology Solutions Exchange is now enfolded into VMware Partner Exchange. Technical Professionals rejoice! VMware has folded the popular Technology Solutions Exchange (TSX) into VMware Partner Exchange and have added more value for their technical partner audience. With Hands-on Labs on Site Recovery Manager, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VMware ESXi and VMware Lab Manager, you will get hands-on training by VMware experts! Or attend the advanced technical level sessions (TECH300 series) which will help you design and architect solutions in a mock customer scenario. Along with your team members, you will compete with other teams for the best solution and whiteboard/implementation outline.

Check out the complete Agenda -- go to the official VMware Partner Exchange website for more information!