Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

This book title is due to publish during Sept. 15th, 2008 and will be launching at the VMWorld 2008 event in Las Vegas. You may pre-order this title now and you will be able to pick it up at the VMWorld Bookstore at the event. Deploying the VMware Infrastructure is an introduction to the world of VMware virtualization technology written by hands-on experts in the field. This booklet explains virtualization, enumerates its many benefits, and describes a set of real-world use cases. (Via Yellow Bricks)

Alessandro Perilli  over at virtualization.info just published the Meet the Evangelists page with the first round of influencers.

The Virtualization Congress  (http://www.virtualizationcongress.com) is the world's first vendor independent virtualization event, bringing together the industry's biggest selection of virtualization players, from the recognized leaders to the newest start-ups. The conference, to be held at London's ExCel, 14th-16th October, 2008, presents an ideal opportunity for current and prospective users of virtualization technologies to hear directly from the companies at the cutting edge of their development; at the same time, in the same place for the first time ever.

New book by David Marshall, Stephen S. Beaver and Jason McCarty. Based on actual experiences with implementing and managing large scale projects and environments, this book emphasizes the design, implementation, and management of a VMware ESX server, offering technical and consultative points of view. Providing practical guides and examples, the chapter organization focuses first on introducing a concept and background for that concept, before providing a real-world scenario on which the planning and implementation example is based. Finally, for more technical readers, the book includes advanced topics and additional resources.

Available in pre-order at Amazon.

Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people using the web, your phone, or IM. Join today to start receiving vmworld's updates. After signing up you can keep in touch with other Vmworld attendees to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." TIME Magazine says, "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app," and Newsweek noted that "Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter." What will you think?

For those who haven’t had much exposure to the Powershell Toolkit and what it can do, there is a recording of a webinar presented by the Carter Shanklin at this link. It is pretty basic and intended for those with little or no exposure to the toolkit.

If you’ve ever wondered what it is or why you might want to use it (like disconnecting the CD from 45 or 50 VMs so you can VMotion them without having to deal with the right-click – pick-from-the-pop-up-menu process manually 45-50 times) then you might want to check this out.

More recorded webcasts are available on : http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/recorded/

During the past week VMware have had to make some changes to the VMworld Breakout Session Schedule and as a result you may need to re-register for some of your sessions. They recommend that you log back into the Schedule Builder and check your schedule as soon as possible. According to the details from Lab A I’m beginning to wonder...

Lab A Session Title:  VMware® Datacenter Tech Preview

Schedule Information:  

Tuesday, 9:30
Tuesday, 13:00
Tuesday, 15:30
Wednesday, 9:30
Wednesday, 13:00
Wednesday, 15:30
Thursday, 9:30
Thursday, 13:00
Thursday, 15:30

Length:  2 Hours
Level:  Advanced

Abstract:  The next generation virtual datacenter from VMware will encompass exciting new technologies that further extend the flexibility, efficiency and dynamism of IT environments. A preview of these new server, networking and storage related technologies, how they work and how they can be configured to deliver higher levels of availability, resource efficiency and simplified management in IT environments will be provided.

Vizioncore will be demonstrating a number of new and updated products at VMworld next month, and also offering ‘sneak previews’ of a couple of near term products. 

• Backup/Recovery with information about the re-engineered vRanger Pro 4.0
• VM Optimization and Storage Reclamation with the all new vOptimizer Pro designed for ESX in the data center
• Virtualization Performance Monitoring & Vizioncore's future chargeback capability
• P2V Server Consolidation and Disaster Recovery with vConverter 4.0
• Virtualization Workflow Automation and a new automation studio
• Heterogeneous Administration & Control and a new orchestration console

Members of this group have gained the in-depth skills and industry-recognized certification on VMware technology. The VMware Certified Professional Program is designed for everyone who wants to demonstrate their expertise in virtual infrastructure and increase his potential for career advancement. If you are a VCP you can join this group.

Eric Sloof created three LinkedIn Groups and would like to invite you to join them. If you don’t know what a LinkedIn group is, here is a short explanation : Many professionals advance their careers and business goals by counting on industry and professional groups, alumni organizations, industry conferences and corporate alumni groups to help them make vital new business contacts. The VMware LinkedIn Groups offers extra features stay in touch with one another and discover powerful new business contacts within their groups and beyond.

Schedule Builder is a quick, easy way to plan your VMworld experience. You can search sessions by topic, speakers, and other key parameters, so you can customize your VMworld experience to suit your specific needs and interests. You can even print, email or export your schedule to your PDA, Smartphone or other calendar. Sign in to Schedule Builder today and create your schedule now. To guarantee your spot in the sessions of your choice, we strongly encourage you to build your schedule prior to arriving onsite. Sessions and labs fill up quickly and space is limited, so build your schedule today!

VMware is challenging the world’s VI administrators to a contest of skill, creativity and raw scripting talent. The following 8 PowerShell contesters have already uploaded their script.
The panel of judges; Antonio Dias, Carter Shanklin, and Hal Rottenberg must make a choice from the following list:

• Alanrenouf - Report into MS Word 
• Hugopeeters  -Get-StorageInfo 
• Chris Uys  -Find snapshots and send email to user/users with 
• RobMokkink - Deploy VM's based on a template from a .csv 
• RobMokkink - HBA Loadbalance script 
• Esloof  Dynamic - Resource Pool Calculator
• MorDrakka - Find Orphaned VMDK's
• Dbbaskette - powerVDI

I’m running with the Dynamic Resource Pool Calculator, this script recalculates all your resource pools. Depending on the numbers of virtual machines per resource pool, the number of reservations for memory and CPU is automatically lifted after running this the Dynamic Resource Pool Calculator.

VMware has re-issued the entire ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 release (ISOs, upgrade tar and zip files, and patch bundles). ESX 3.5 Update 2 (build 110268) /ESXi 3.5 Update 2 (build 110271) are available for download.

VMware would like to inform you that they are experiencing a delay in releasing the new version of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2. Their testing of this release is taking longer than anticipated. They are now targeting to release the update between 2:00 AM PDT (0700 UTC) August 14 and 8:00 AM (1500 UTC) August 14 PDT. They apologize for the delay. VMware engineering teams are working around the clock to deliver this new version. They will continue to keep you informed of developments until this issue is fully resolved.

In our last update, we referred to an initiative by our support and engineering teams to find an option to apply the patch without the necessity of entering maintenance mode and VMotion of VM’s to other servers, or VM power-off and re-power-on. Our earlier tests have not found a consistently successful way to address this. We continue to investigate this possibility, as we know that it would reduce the maintenance burden on our customers who may not have a patched server available for VMotion.

VMware’s interactive Birds-of-a-Feather discussions will be held in the seven networking lounges, designed around the seven VMworld Tracks. They are designed to stimulate ideas and insight into a variety of virtualization topics and expand upon the knowledge you gain during sessions and labs. You can attend scheduled discussions covering specific topics, or more informal topics that you can suggest when you visit the lounges. Become an active part of the discussions about virtualization and share your knowledge and ideas with everyone.

An issue has been uncovered with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 that causes the product license to expire on August 12.  VMware engineering has isolated the root cause of this issue and will reissue the various upgrade media including the ESX 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESXi 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESX 3.5 Update 2 upgrade tar and zip files in the next 36 hours (by noon, August 13, PST).  They will be available from the page: http://www.vmware.com/download/vi.  Until then, VMware advises against upgrading to ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2.

Imagine you work in an environment with more than 1500 virtual machines and the numbers are still rapidly growing. When you work with a lot of resource pools, it’s an administrative burden to recalculate all your pools after you deploy some new virtual machines. This Dynamic Resource Pool Calculator recalculates all your resource pools. Depending on the numbers of virtual machines per resource pool, the number of reservations for memory and CPU is automatically lifted after running this the Dynamic Resource Pool Calculator. VMware is challenging the world’s VI administrators to a contest of skill, creativity and raw scripting talent. I uploaded the script, let’s wait and see.