Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

This evening I attended a Dutch VMUG meeting hosted by Sun Microsystems in Amersfoort. As usual I was able to collect some video footage. The speakers at this mini event were Viktor van den Berg, Jaap Romers, Sander van der Post and Mike Jansen. They delivered a good show.

I had the opportunity to see a great demo of the Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager. It connects users of Sun Ray clients to Windows virtual machines via the VMware View Manager. It provides a Sun Ray kiosk session that allows users to connect to their virtual machines. The kiosk session prompts the user for their Active Directory user name and password. Then the user is shown a list of available desktops, or is logged directly into their desktop, if there is only one available. The user does not have to enter their password again at the Windows login.

I downloaded a copy of this workflow package and did some tests with it, these guys are awsome.
PowerWF Studio for VMware is a suite of tools for automating and administering virtual machine operations and the guests within virtual machines. Leveraging the VMware's VIX API plus several other PowerWF activities packs, PowerWF Studio for VMware offers levels of automation typically only seen in enterprise class solutions. The product supports management of VMware Server, Workstation, Player, and Virtual Infrastructure (both ESX and vCenter).

The VIX activity pack furnishes building blocks that allow you to quickly develop complex workflows that automate virtual machine operations, as well as the guests within virtual machines. PowerWF supports all the functions available within VMware's VIX API with none of complexities. PowerWF protects your existing investments by giving you myriad ways to use your workflows, including within shell scripts, an existing .NET application, or integrated with PowerShell. 

I just received the official VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V4] training guides. If you're upgrading from VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere: What's New covers new features and how to perform the upgrade. If VMware vSphere is your first virtualization experience, VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage covers all the skills you need to get started.

Objectives

• Install and configure ESX
• Install and configure vCenter Server
• Configure and manage ESX networking and storage using vCenter Server
• Deploy and manage virtual machines
• Manage user access to the VMware infrastructure
• Increase scalability using vCenter Server
• Monitor resource usage using vCenter Server
• Apply patches using VMware vCenter Update Manager
• Manage higher availability and data protection using vCenter Server

If you living in the Netherlands, you might want to attend one of the first VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage courses and Join me at the vSphere ICM training in Nieuwegein.

The VMWorld 2009 Content Catalog has been released for public viewing, covering VMworld 2009 session and lab titles, abstracts and speaker bios.

https://vmworld2009.wingateweb.com/scheduler/public.jsp

When you take a quick look at the agenda, you’ll see VMware introduced an extra day, and day one has become developer day

Herco van Brug has released EDA version 0.9 which is ESX4 and ESX4i compatible. You can get your copy here : http://virtuall.eu/downloads

EDA is an appliance dedicated to deploying ESX servers fast and easy. It has a scriptbuilder to quickly create %post-scripts.

There is a lot going on in the server virtualization market these days. HP announced the new virtualization bundles that incorporate a Storage Virtual Appliance from LeftHand (acquired by HP). At VMWorld last fall, VMware started to promote the concept of Storage Virtual Appliances and presentations on vSphere 4.0 include Storage Virtual Appliances as an area of interest for VMware.

Why is there so much noise about it?
First of all, you need shared storage in order to take full advantage of the enhanced features of VMware. VMotion isn’t compelling if you’re able to move the application, but the datastore becomes unavailable. HP has already demonstrated that by incorporating a Storage Virtual Appliance they can offer bundles at prices that are attractive for SMB and branch office customers while providing access to VMotion and DRS at the same time.

Why is this important?
SMB customers and branch offices have had to go without the high availability and ease of management features they get with VMotion and DRS, because of the cost of the external shared storage. With a Storage Virtual Appliance, the cost of the shared storage is a fraction of the cost of a traditional SAN or NAS.

What’s still missing?
It’s still too complicated. Most of the virtual appliances have tried addressed the issue of leveraging the server’s resources, but haven’t addressed the complexity issue. Many are using them as a means to either demonstrate core functionality or to move customers into an external SAN.

At the end of the VMware Fast-track course I delivered this week, I did a Dry Run “Managing VMware vSphere 4 with The Virtualization EcoShell” which I will present next week at the Belgium User Group event. If you didn’t sign up yet and you’re interested in this free event you can register here. Maybe we can meet up and enjoy one of those Palm beers. All the content will be delivered in English.

Around a year ago Eric Siebert over at vSphere-Land started with the "Top 10 blogs that VMware administrators must read". The NTPRO.NL website ended up at the 6th place. In November 2008 NTPRO.NL went up two places and was staying at the 4th place. Eric expanded the top 10 into a top 20 recently, NTPRO.NL went up one place and is staying at the 3th place. If you’re a frequent visitor of my blog take the survey and cast your vote. Maybe you can encourage your friends and colleagues to do likewise.The results will be published on 6/30/09.

Liquidware Labs announced the availability of Stratusphere(TM) 4.2, a software solution delivering focused visibility into network, user, application, and desktop activity dramatically reducing the technical and financial risks associated with migrating to VDI.

"Our irrefutable method of measuring Network User Application Response Time (nuART(TM)) is extremely relevant in gauging potential VDI candidates and user experience," said David Bieneman CEO of Liquidware Labs. "Stratusphere further excels by combining these metrics to create a VDI Fit(TM) and VDI UX(TM) rating identifying good, fair and poor candidates for VDI and providing a measurement to gauge and keep user experience at a constant."

Continue reading "David Bieneman and Tyler Rohrer are building..." »

On Monday, June 8th Xtravirt will launch a global capacity planning service. This service will combine the knowledge/expertise from Xtravirt and the technology from Lanamark to make it easier for enterprises world-wide to get started with desktop and server virtualization.

“Capacity planning is an essential component for any organisation wishing to adopt virtualisation; whether it be desktop replacement or a server consolidation exercise,” states Paul Davey, CTO of Xtravirt. “We have kept the whole process as simple as possible,” continues Paul. “Collected data, consisting of performance metrics, are securely uploaded to the Xtravirt VReady Portal, where they are analyzed to produce a summary VReady Assessment Report. This can be subsequently extended and we can quickly produce a comprehensive analysis, including full what-if scenarios, solution optimization and licensing calculations. If a client wishes to use a particular brand of server, or server SKU, they can let us know and we can feed it into the design.”