Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

VMware Compatibility Guide 2.0 Preview is now available, including the enhanced user interface and navigation with additional features and enhancements.

Rick Blythe over at VMwarewolf reports:

VMware has rolled out a new and improved compatibility web page. It is hoped this makes it easy to find compatible systems, I/O devices, storage and guest operating systems.   The 2.0 guide offers an enhanced look & feel, improved performance and new program information. The final preview is available now at this link.

http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/search.php

Charging for cloud storage must account for two costs: the cost of the capacity used and the cost of access to that capacity. For the cost of access, current systems focus on the work requested, such as data transferred or I/O operations completed, rather than the exertion (i.e., effort/resources expended) to complete that work. But, the provider’s cost is based on the exertion, and the exertion for a given amount of work can vary dramatically based on characteristics of the workload, making current charging models unfair to tenants, provider, or both. This paper argues for exertion-based metrics, such as disk time, for the access cost component of cloud storage billing. It also discusses challenges in supporting fair and predictable exertion accounting, such as significant inter-workload interference effects for storage access, and a performance insulation approach to addressing them.

 http://labs.vmware.com/publications/exertion-based-billing

Simon Long and Simon Seagrave have launched a new website today. The website is called vBeers and was created to provide an opportunity for virtualization enthusiasts and professionals to meet and enjoy discussing all things virtualization and anything else in the world of tech.



Simon Long:

vBeers was created as a non-commercial event and is intended as something for the virtualization community by the community.  Despite the reference to beer in the name vBeers isn’t about just drinking beer but in fact encompasses all beverages alcoholic or non-alcoholic, it really doesn’t matter as the focus of vBeers is all about the socializing, meeting others and having a good conversation or two in a pleasant social setting.

vBeers meet ups are in no way intended to be exclusive to a particular virtualization hypervisor vendor and as such is open to everyone, so whether you are a VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer user/fan or none of the above it really doesn’t matter as “it’s all about the virtualization”.



vBeers.org is the place where vGeeks arrange their own worldwide vBeers meet-ups.

When you’re building a new home lab or adding a new white box to your private cloud, you want to put as much memory into your servers as you can. It’s the same story as in most of the datacenters, CPUs are idling while your ESX servers are running out of memory. Intel has released a new chipset that might be worth a closer look. The Intel Desktop Board DQ67SW supports four 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets which can hold 8 GB each. That means 32 GBs of system memory based on  DDR3 1333 or 1066 MHz DIMMs on one board.
 
Based on the latest Intel® Q67 Express Chipset with Intel® vPro™ technology, Intel® Desktop Board DQ67SW is designed to showcase the superior performance quality of the 2nd generation Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor family, enhance office productivity, and lower the total cost of ownership for your business PCs with the newest Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) 7.0.

Designed with exceptional stability and compatibility, Intel Desktop Board DQ67SW equipped with the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s ports with RAID support. Dual independent display capability with DisplayPort and dual DVI ports.

Deploying a new VM in the vCloud is very easy. Just go to your Catalog, select one of your vApps Templates and choose “Add to My Cloud”. But what if you want to move an existing virtual machine from your local vCenter server or private vCloud to BleuLock’s vCloud Datacenter? It’s also very easy. Launch the vCloud Connector from your vSphere client and move your existing virtual machines wherever you want.

The VMware vCloud Connector is a free plug-in that will allow VMware vSphere administrators to immediately begin deploying and managing virtual machines across VMware vCloud Powered cloud services from within the VMware vSphere Client. In this video I’ll show you how to configure both the vCenter server and the vCloud Director address and how to upload a virtual machine to BlueLock’s vCloud. Once you virtual machines are running in the BlueLock’s vCloud Datacenter, administrators can use the vCloud Connector to perform the following operations:

• See a list of virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates on vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds (including vCloud Datacenter Services).
• Copy virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates between vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
• Perform basic operations (for example, power on/off, suspend, reset, delete) on virtual machines and vApps in vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
• Deploy vApp templates as vApps (fenced mode) in vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
• Access vCloud vApp consoles
• Directly launch the vCloud URL

The second tier of the latest VMware Desktop certification program, VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop (VCP4-DT), is now available.

VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop (VCP4-DT) is directed toward Virtualization Systems Engineers who seek to demonstrate their ability to install and configure the VMware View environment and enable View Client users. Candidates must also be able to configure the vSphere environment, possess a deep understanding of VMware core components and their relation to storage and networking and be proficient in datacenter design methodologies.

VMware Desktop Certification Overview

VMware Certified Associate 4 – Desktop (VCA4-DT) is the first step toward gaining expertise in desktop virtualization and earning the respect and recognition that comes with being VMware Certified. There are no course requirements in order to take the exam. Learn more and register today.

VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop (VCP4-DT): After earning your VCA-DT and VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4, you are ready to take the VCP4-DT exam. If you meet the pre-requirements, register for the VCP4-DT exam before September 1, 2011 and take advantage of the $50 discount. Learn more and register today!

Coming Soon: VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop (VCAP-DT): is directed toward Virtualization Architects who seek to demonstrate their deep knowledge of VMware vSphere and VMware View design. Candidates will be able to expertly manage all aspects of the vSphere and View environments from installation and configuration to maintenance and troubleshooting. Candidates will also possess a deep knowledge of virtualization architectures and components and be able to architect VMware desktop solutions to meet specific customer business requirements.

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=21427&ui=www_cert

VMware Labs present its latest fling InventorySnapshot. InventorySnapshot is a useful tool that allows user to "snapshot" a given vCenter inventory configuration and then reproduce it. Inventory includes datacenter folders, datacenters, clusters, resource pools, vApps, hierarchy, roles and permissions, configuration settings, and custom fields. If you have an inventory with a given set of hosts and VMs organized into a group of clusters, InventorySnapshot will reproduce the complete environment, including cluster settings and any custom roles you may have defined.

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

To learn how to run InventorySnapshot, read this document.

VMware Press (Twitter @VMwarePress) is the official publisher of VMware books and training materials that provide guidance for the critical topics facing today's technology professionals and students. With books, certification and study guides, video training, and learning tools produced by world-class architects and IT experts, VMware Press helps IT professionals master a diverse range of topics on virtualization and cloud computing, and is the official source of reference materials for completing the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) Examination.

Storage Design and Implementation in VMware vSphere 5.x
By Mostafa Khalil • Technology Deep Dive • Fall 2011
 
In this technology deep dive book, expert architect Mostafa Khalil teaches everything an administrator or architect needs to know about design, management and storage maintenance in the vSphere 5.0 virtual environment, including detailed procedures and guidelines, architectural design elements, best practices, common configuration details, and more.
 

Administering VMware SRM 5.x
By Mike Laverick • Technology Hands-On • Fall 2011
 
In this practical and technical guide to installing and configuring VMware's Site Recovery Manager 5.0, expert Mike Laverick takes readers through set-ups for multiple vendors, disaster recovery, common pitfalls and errors, while along the way explaining why things happen, and how to fix them.
 

Automating Day-to-Day Administration of VMware vSphere 5.x
By Cody Bunch • Technology Hands-On • Fall 2011
 
This hands-on technical guide to automating vSphere with Orchestrator teaches administrators how to save time and resources by automating their virtual infrastructure. Automation expert Cody Bunch teaches valuable practices and tool use through a combination of real world automation examples and case studies.

Via Scoopmeister Duncan Epping over at Yellow-Bricks :-)

Fabrice Bellard has created a PC emulator written in Javascript. The emulated hardware consists in:

 • a 32 bit x86 compatible CPU
 • a 8259 Programmble Interrupt Controller
 • a 8254 Programmble Interrupt Timer
 • a 16450 UART.

The code is written in pure Javascript using Typed Arrays which are available in recent browsers. It was tested with Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 11 on Linux, Window and Mac (it does not work with Chrome 12 beta, it is a bug in the browser). In any case, a fast Javascript engine is needed to have good performance. Fabrice has compiled a 2.6.20 Linux kernel . An uncompressed kernel image is used instead of a compressed one to have a faster boot. It is generated with "objcopy -O binary vmlinux vmlinux.bin".

Javascript PC Emulator - Technical Notes

http://bellard.org/jslinux/ <- How much time takes your browser to boot Linux?

Enabling a new way to work in the cloud, VMware announced on May 17, 2011, VMware Horizon App Manager -- establishing an open, user-centric management service for accessing cloud applications and services from any device, where and when a user needs it.

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/horizon/

Today I attended the Dutch edition of this year’s Partner Exchange event where VMware was sharing their strategic direction and discussed about how they are already taking customers on the journey to the cloud. The VMware Partner Exchange events provide tailored educational tracks for business owners, sales, technical and marketing professionals within their partner community. I’ve recorded some video footage and took some pictures.

 

Last January the cool people over at FREESCO have released a new version of their highly popular router floppy. This new version (0.4.3) contains some bug fixes and lots of new features. FREESCO was developed in the open source tradition as an alternative to routing products offered by Cisco, 3-Com, Accend, Nortel etc. While all of these companies offer products that are well made, the overhead and overall costs can be expensive. FREESCO is open source, stable, inexpensive, easy to use, extremely versatile and flexible ... and best of all, FREESCO is FREE. FREESCO is based on the Linux operating system. And incorporates many of the features of other Linux distributions into software that fits onto a single 1.44 meg floppy diskette. With FREESCO, you can configure:

 • a simple bridge with up to 10 Ethernet segments
 • a router with up to 10 Ethernet segments
 • a dialup line router
 • a leased line router
 • an Ethernet router
 • a dial-in server with up to 10 modems.
 • a time server
 • a dhcp server
 • a http server
 • a ftp server
 • a dns server
 • a ssh server
 • a print server (requires TCP/IP printing client software)

FREESCO also incorporates firewalling and NAT, which are resident within the Linux kernel, to help protect you and your network. All of these features can be used in conjunction with each other or individually.

FREESCO has an official ext2 package that can be installed directly from the floppy package menu. This is the best and most reliable way to install FREESCO onto a hard drive. The ext2 package does not require any pre-preparation of a hard drive. The ext2 package also is capable of scanning the drive for errors during boot-up to prevent any type of file corruption. Using the ext2 package avoids any hassles associated with needing a DOS/Win9x bootable hard drive or any extra file and disk management tools and using ext2 is the recommended file system.

I’ve installed FREESCO inside a VMware virtual machine on a virtual disk (VMDK) formated as EXT2 and created an OVF and OVA file from it. This way you’re able to setup a virtual router within you vSphere environment very easily.

Virtual Disk: 256 MB Thin
Memory: 256 MB
Network Adaptor 1: DHCP Client on VM Network
Network Adaptor 2: DHCP Server on Internal - 192.168.1.1
Management GUI: http://192.168.1.1:82
Username: Admin Password: vmware
Shell login: Root/vmware

Available for Download at http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/FREESCO/

StarWind Free iSCSI SAN provides an Enterprise Feature set to Evaluate the Benefits of SAN’s, Virtualization and fast Disk-to-Disk Backup. StarWind has announced the release of Free iSCSI SAN software that allows you to build an iSCSI storage appliance based on the Microsoft Windows operating system, with full snapshot and backup capabilities, which can be optionally upgraded up to StarWind HA (High Availability) for dual node redundancy and off-site data replication.

StarWind provides a free and open architecture to eliminate vendor lock-in when selecting SAN hardware, reducing the need to overpay for disks, controller hardware and software licensing. Total cost savings with StarWind allow desktop virtualization to become a reality since one of the biggest hurdles to virtualizing desktops has been the cost of SAN hardware. Not to mention all the other solutions StarWind is ideal for such as providing shared storage for virtual servers to leverage live migration, physical servers to consolidate direct attached disks, server clusters such as SQL or Exchange or for fast backups to disk.

StarWind Free iSCSI SAN offers a unique set of features, including:

• Host operating systems: any modern Microsoft Windows OS is supported.
• Works with all the leading Hypervisor vendors: VMware, Microsoft, VMware.
• Data De-duplication (fully supported, variable block size). Data Deduplication is a specialized mechanism of data-reduction, reducing storage capacity requirements by eliminating duplicated data within and between files.
  Unlimited storage capacity & Unlimited number of supported concurrent iSCSI connections.
• Full Production use is allowed.
• Support - Free version is covered with a basic support plan (an open public community forum). Support upgrades are available for paid per-incident plans or switching to any commercial version with extended functionality where an annual support plan is included.
• Caching - StarWind has a multi-level cache mechanism implemented. The cache can use gigabytes of RAM and converts it into to extremely fast level 1 write-back or write-through cache, providing superior storage performance over many conventional SANs.
• CDP (Continuous Data Protection) and Snapshots that are completely compatible with VSS (Volume Snapshot Services).
• VTL (Virtual Tape Library) and WAN replication are offered as paid upgrade options.
• iSCSI boot is fully supported with iSCSI boot capable NIC.

“Currently no other vendor is offering free iSCSI SAN software with the same robust feature set as StarWind’s. Such companies as Microsoft, VMware, Citrix offer their hypervisors free of charge and now StarWind Software presents absolutely free iSCSI storage software, with a full set of enterprise features including snapshots to complement the growing need for storage to work with hypervisors or even standalone,” said StarWind's CEO, Artem Berman.

Customers can now test and use iSCSI storage in a production environment without any financial hurdles to evaluate the benefits of SAN’s before investing money into additional storage, support costs and high availability features. The free edition of StarWind iSCSI SAN will further help reduce IT costs, improve data availability and ensure business continuity.

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-free

While I was prepping the delivery of an upcoming VMware vCloud: Architecture in the VMware Cloud training course, I was searching for a diagramming tool, which could be used during the laboratory exercises. I was about to step away from Visio, because I didn’t want to be creative with trail licenses and after some searching and testing I stumbled upon Gliffy. The biggest plus of this online diagramming tool, is that students must work in teams and collaborate during the design laboratory workshop, with Gliffy it can be done instantly with anyone. Gliffy comes from the word glyph, a symbol or character that imparts information non-verbally. Gliffy is an online diagramming service that helps users communicate with a combination of shapes, text, and lines. With Gliffy online diagram software, you can easily create professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more. The online diagram editor makes it easier than ever to create great looking drawings.

Easy to Use : Creating diagrams is simple with Gliffy. Just drag-and-drop shapes from an extensive library and point-and-click your way to format, just like in the office software you are familiar with. No expertise needed.

Extensive Shape Library : Access a complete library of shapes, including networking, UML, user interface, process flow, entity-relationship, floor plans, and more. You can even import your own images, like logos and backgrounds, to complement your diagrams.

Full Feature Set : Robust features give you the power and flexibility to create professional-looking diagrams.

• Extensive shape library
• Large drawing area
• Drag and drop ease  
• Shape alignment   
• Auto line connections
• Gradient color fills   
• Convenient publishing capabilities   
• Document manager   
• Revision Control

Publish Easily : With just a click, Gliffy gives you a URL to a read-only version of your diagram, so you can share it with anyone. You can also easily embed your image into your wikis, blogs, and hosted office applications.

Incorporate Diagrams into Other Documents : Enhance your word documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and web pages by adding your diagrams directly into your files. Whether you are using desktop applications or hosted online software, you can save your diagram as a .JPG, .PNG, or .SVG or include a URL to the most current version of the diagram. You can even save your diagrams and open them in illustration programs.

Collaborate Instantly with Anyone : Enter the email addresses of your collaborators and Gliffy will automatically notify them you have invited them to collaborate. They'll receive a URL and temporary password to a free account.

Protect and Track Changes : If you invite others to edit your diagram, don't worry. Gliffy's Revision Control feature automatically keeps a copy every time a document is saved, so you can track changes or revert to an earlier version.

No Compatibility or Access Issues : Gliffy works through your web browser, so Mac and PC users can all work together. And since you access Gliffy via the Web, clients, vendors, and co-workers at different sites can all view and edit the files.

More Reliable than Email : Know that you are all working off the most current version of the document. And you don't have to keep emailing the file back and forth!

http://www.gliffy.com

Update

I’ve received a great comment from Lisa who pointed me at LucidChart. This online diagramming solution has the same features as Gliffy, but on top of that it also supports:

• HTML5 and web standards make LucidChart fast, smooth, and reliable
• Work simultaneously with as many people as you want.
• Access your documents anytime, anywhere, from your PC or Mac (browser independent).
• Import Your Microsoft Visio Documents
  

Now you don’t have to recreate all of your previous documents generated in Visio and you can still enjoy the ease and benefits of working in LucidChart! In addition, you will be able to access your diagrams from anywhere using a web browser, and you can easily share your diagrams with others and collaborate in real-time.

https://www.lucidchart.com/

I’ve created an OVF and OVA version of the highly popular Damn Small Linux distribution. Normally you run this OS which is only 50MBs in disk size from an ISO or pen drive but I’ve seen more and more people experimenting with the vCloud Director and really need some small test VMs. Damn Small Linux is ideal for this purpose although it’s very small, it contains some great tools like a browser and shell access.

(Taken from http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

DSL has a nearly complete desktop, and a tiny core of command line tools. All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed. Damn Small also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD. In our quest to save space and have a fully functional desktop they've made many GUI administration tools which are fast yet still easy to use. What does DSL have?

XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers, games, system monitoring apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, some wireless support.

Root password: www.ntpro.nl
DSL user password: www.ntpro.nl
Hardware Version: 7
Disk size: 256 MB Thin
Memory: 256 MB
Network: VM Network (DHCP)

Download location: http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/DSL or Damn Small Linux OVF

Chad and Wade demonstrate the Iomega StorCenter px6-300d at EMC World during the Chad's World presentation. Chad and Wade launched 100 VMs from the px6-300d.