Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

This evening I had a cool GoToMeeting with Tintri’s David Friedlander and VP of Engineering Pratik Wadher. They showed me their new Tintri VMstore, it’s the first VM aware storage system. The VMstore T440 is an 8.5 TB hardware appliance that is designed from the ground up for hosting virtual machines through 10 GigE NFS.

Tintri uses virtual machine abstractions. VMs and virtual disks in place of conventional abstractions such as volumes, LUNs or files. This allows the VMstore to measure and control I/O performance individually for each virtual disk in the system. In effect, the only layer of abstraction in a Tintri device is the virtual disk itself. Other solutions rely on storage abstractions that create a fundamental mismatch between the storage and VM layers.

I’m very impressed by their appliance, hundreds of VMs in 4U - An intelligent hybrid flash and disk architecture provides enterprise flash performance at disk prices.

http://www.tintri.com/

Using Private VLANs doesn’t consolidate the number of VLANs used or does it? If you want to add security between virtual machines on the same subnet without exhausting VLAN number space, VMware advises to use Private VLANs. Private VLANs are an excellent way to provide layer 2 network isolation between servers in the same subnet. In this video you will learn that using Community Private VLANS doesn’t consolidate the number of VLANs used. On the other hand, when using Isolated Private VLANs you won’t exhaust the number of available VLAN IDs.

With SugarSync, you can backup, sync, access and share all your files on-the-go, instantly and securely from any device including PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and more. SugarSync matches the way you organize your files and folders. You can sync any file or folder from any of your computers and access those files and folders via your Personal Cloud.

DESKTOP
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Mac OSX
WEB
Internet Explorer 7.x
Internet Explorer 8.0.x
Chrome 8.0.x
Firefox 3.6.x
Safari 5.0.x
MOBILE
iPad
iPhone
BlackBerry
Windows Mobile
Android
Symbian
SugarSync Mobile Web

https://www.sugarsync.com/free/

This morning I’ve taken the VCP4‐DT Beta Exam. The final VCP4‐DT exam is a core component of the VCP4‐DT certification. The certification requires a passing score on the exam. The VMware Certified Professional (VCP4) and the VMware Certified Associate – Desktop (VCADT) certifications are pre‐requisites.

The VCP4‐DT certification is a requirement for the upcoming (live lab?) VMware Certified Advanced Professional: Desktop (VCAP-DT). Note: Unlike the other VCAP certifications, VCAP‐DT is not required to pursue the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification.

The VCP4‐DT VMware Certified exam tests potential VMware Certified Professional ‐ Desktop (VCP4‐DT) candidates on their skills and abilities monitoring and managing a View 4.5 environment. Successful candidates demonstrate mastery of these skills and abilities.

The beta exam consists of 100 questions and a short pre‐exam survey consisting of 7 questions. The questions are fair but certainly not easy. Although there was a very time short notice, I had about a week to prepare for the exam. As a VMware Certified Instructor, I have access to the instructor training guide for the View 4.5 Install Configure and Manage training. I’m glad I went through it again, the training is well aligned to the exam. I also recorded a VCP-DT Prep Video – Installing the VMware View Composer which actually contains a few interesting topics. Besides that Mark Benson did a great job with his video about The VMware View 4.6 Security Server and PCoIP.

Conclusion: Don’t take this exam for granted - you have to know your stuff and have been around in a View environment. You don’t learn troubleshooting by reading a book or watching a cool Sloef video :-) True troubleshooting skill comes from attention to detail and experience.

In this video Mark Benson discusses the architecture and setup of View 4.6 Security Server to support remote access with PCoIP.

While I was prepping for my upcoming VCP-DT (beta) exam, I couldn’t resist recording a new video and here it is. The VMware View Composer, a key component of VMware vSphere 4.6, is tightly integrated with VMware View Manager to provide advanced image management and storage optimization. VMware View Composer reduces storage requirements for virtual desktop machines by up to 90 percent and enables organizations to more effectively manage their desktop images.

The cornerstone of the Xangati VDI Dashboard is its performance health engine that analyzes the health of VDI in an unprecedented four microseconds. Relying on Xangati’s memory-driven architecture, the performance health of the VDI is being continuously monitored across a broad spectrum of performance metrics to the unrivaled scale of 250,000 objects (which can include desktops and clients). In contrast, other performance management architectures are database-driven and unable to keep apace of dynamic interactions to scale that are fundamental to VDI.

The output of Xangati’s performance health engine is a real-time health index that is linked to the health of every client, desktop, network link, host, VDI protocol and IT server that can impact VDI end–user experience. In real-time – as an object’s health shifts – the health index changes to reflect the urgency of the performance issue. Moreover, the performance shift will trigger a real-time alert, which is uniquely paired with a DVR-recording.

The DVR-recording will show exactly where the performance problem stems from and present contextual insights about what is driving the sub-optimal performance. For instance, a specific user community is seeing obvious delays in screen presentation due to a high latency network link. These DVR recordings capture issues that are often outside of a VDI vendor’s software framework and can be passed to the appropriate IT function, e.g. to the storage team when storage latency is at the heart of the performance issue.

http://xangati.com/vdi_dashboard/

http://d4vu5i9co7ynd.cloudfront.net/VDI_Dashboard.mov

VMworld 2010 Copenhagen - At the labs with Xangati

Just as VMware’s virtual machine technology decouples the operating system from hardware, VMware ThinApp breaks the bond between software applications and operating systems to deliver the same benefits of flexibility, portability and isolation.  ThinApp’s agentless/serverless approach enables corporate IT and ISVs to plug into existing Application Management systems to deliver untethered applications across a variety of similar OS versions (NT, XP, Vista) to enable applications to move with users as needed while complying with corporate directives.

Mightycare has released a cool free to use tool which is able to see the anatomy of a ThinApp package. With MCS-ThinView you’re able to explore the contents of a ThinApp package. It also enables you to Register, Unregister, Install or Uninstall these packages.

Features

• Information about the Package
• Register / Unregister ThinApp Package
• Install / Uninstall ThinApp Package
• Shortcut List
• Restive Virtual Registry entries
• Retrieve the virtual File system
• Retrieve the contents of the package.ini
• Retrieve the  icon
  
  ntpro.nl's MCS-ThinView photoset
  http://www.mightycare.de/downloads/mcs_thinview

VMware has released their VMware vSphere Client for iPad and it’s available for free at the iTunes App store now. The VMware vSphere Client for iPad is a companion interface to the traditional vSphere client, optimized for viewing and managing your vSphere environment on the go. With vSphere Client for iPad you can view key performance metrics and perform essential tasks in a simplified interface from anywhere. The  iPad Client is not meant to be functionally equivalent with the existing Windows client, but rather to perform the most common 80% of vSphere admin’s tasks. Virtual machines can be started, stopped and suspended.  vSphere hosts can be rebooted or put into maintenance mode.

Features

• Search for vSphere hosts and virtual machines in your vSphere environment
• Monitor the performance of vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Manage virtual machines with the ability to start, stop and suspend
• View and restore your virtual machines’ snapshots
• Reboot vSphere hosts or put them into maintenance mode
• Diagnose vSphere hosts and virtual machines using built-in ping and trace route tools

Requirements

• vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) virtual appliance available from the VMware Labs: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma
• Network connection to the vCMA virtual appliance; can use built-in VPN client
• VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server
• iPad

VMware Labs presents its latest fling Thinapped vSphere Client. This fling uses VMware ThinApp to package vSphere Client into a single portable EXE giving you instant access to your virtual infrastructure from any computer.

Run vSphere client 4.1 in a snap. No install, just download the EXE and double-click. Place the ThinApped vSphere client on any network share and it will automatically stream to any Windows PC with no installation, agents, drivers, or specialized servers required. Carry ThinApped vSphere client and your customization on USB stick and now your vSphere client is available on the GO!

Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - http://labs.vmware.com/flings/thinapp-vpshere.

The world of monitoring tools is changing fast - after last week’s release of VMware Operations - it’s now VKernel’s new Performance Analyzer who makes its debut. The VKernel Performance Analyzer monitors, diagnoses and resolves performance issues in virtual environments.  Performance Analyzer compliments monitoring and alarming capability in vCenter, it can not only diagnose problems but also resolve them. I’ve created a short demo video of the Performance Analyzer which is bundled in the VKernel vOperations Suite or vOPS 3.0. 

 The audio is a bit crappy because my headset isn’t working anymore.

VMware’s Nathan Small who works as a Staff Engineer at Global Support Services has put together a great presentation about Advanced Root Cause Analysis. The presentation was designed to give you more insight into how a VMware Technical Support Engineer reviews logs, gathers data and performs in-depth analysis. Nathan is hoping to show you the skills they’re using every day to help determine the root cause for an issue in your environment. With this core knowledge, you will become more self-sufficient within your own environment and be able to diagnose an issue as it occurs rather than after the damage has been done.

VMware is offering a free second chance if you fail for your first attempt and believe me the exam isn’t easy. I’ve seen a lot of VCP candidates fail at their first attempt. To be eligible for a free second chance, you must use a special promotion code when booking the first one. For a limited time, VMware is giving you a free second chance at the VCP4 exam when you register for a full-priced exam by following the steps below.

• Register to take the VCP4 exam at a Pearson VUE test center for the full price (no discounts apply) using the promotion code: VCPTAKE1.
• If you fail your first exam, simply schedule your “second chance” exam with the promotion code “VCPTAKE2” and it’s free! Please note that this discount will only be valid on retakes of exams that were initially scheduled using the “VCPTAKE1” promotion code and must be taken before July 31, 2011.

WaveMaker has recently been acquired by VMware. This partnership is the result of discussions that have been going on between WaveMaker and the SpringSource division of VMware for more than a year. WaveMaker is a visual development tool that lets everyone quickly build and deploy great-looking web and cloud applications. With WaveMaker, you can build a complete, 3-tier web application in minutes! Let’s see how it works – in this video I’ll show you a short WaveMaker demo. The community version of WaveMaker is available for download at: http://www.wavemaker.com/downloads/

Today, after a week of extensive blogging and prepping I’ve passed my VCAP-DCD exam :-) The exam consists of over one hundred questions ranging from "the simple multiple choice" and "choose all that apply" ones to the "create a diagram for the following situation" challenges. It’s hard to prep for this exam, either you know how to create a design or you don’t but a proper design is built upon up-to-date knowledge and that’s where you should work on if you don’t feel confident.

The exam is based on vSphere 4.1 so make sure you have in-depth knowledge about all the great features this release has brought us. The blueprint has links to PDF documents about LBT, Storage IO Control and Network IO Control to name a few and reading those document really has helped me passing the exam. Reading is not enough, create your own scenarios and configure things like shares and reservations in your lab, by learning this way it is much easier to memorize all the information from the PDF documents.

As a VMware Certified Instructor I’ve delivered the vSphere Design Workshop many times and although other people speak differently, I think the exam and the Design Workshop are perfectly aligned. After attending the Workshop, I would recommend to go through all the best practices and the Design Workflow once again before doing the exam. It will definitely help you. Although this exam wasn’t mandatory for me (VCAP-DCA is mandatory for delivering the advanced courses) it is a prerequisite for the VCDX defence and that’s my next goal.

VMware has released a new technical paper regarding the performance of Multiple Java Applications in a VMware vSphere 4.1 Virtual Machine. This paper shows the results of tests that investigate the performance impact of running applications on multiple JVMs in a single virtual machine. These tests were conducted using the Olio application running in VMware vFabric tc Server 2.0 on VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1. The intent of the investigation is to provide insight into the impact of sizing decisions when selecting the number of JVMs to deploy in a single VM.

Technical Paper - Performance of Multiple Java Applications in a VMware vSphere 4.1 Virtual Machine