VMware

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.

 

Here’s a little write-up regarding my experiences with creating a WebApp and uploading it to the CloudFoundry.com website. The first step is to go to the website and sign-up for an account, after signing up, you will receive an email within one business day containing a user ID and a password. Besides the username and password, the email contains some additional information including a link to the getting stared guide on the CloudFoundry.com website.

To start using CloudFoundry.com you should first download the vmc command line tool and change your password. To learn how to download and use this tool please follow the instructions here:
http://support.cloudfoundry.com/entries/20012337-getting-started-guide-command-line-vmc-users

gem install vmc
gem install Sinatra

c:\Ruby192\hello>vmc services

============== System Services ==============

+---------+---------+-------------------------------+
| Service | Version | Description                   |
+---------+---------+-------------------------------+
| mysql   | 5.1     | MySQL database service        |
| redis   | 2.2     | Redis key-value store service |
| mongodb | 1.8     | MongoDB NoSQL store           |
+---------+---------+-------------------------------+

Put this in your pipe (taken from http://www.sinatrarb.com/)

require 'sinatra'
get '/hi' do
  "Hello World! (Eric Sloof-NTPRO.NL)"
end

c:\Ruby192\hello>hello
== Sinatra/1.2.2 has taken the stage on 4567 for development with backup from WEBrick
[2011-04-13 13:10:47] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2011-04-13 13:10:47] INFO  ruby 1.9.2 (2011-02-18) [i386-mingw32]
[2011-04-13 13:10:47] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=4676 port=4567
127.0.0.1 - - [13/Apr/2011 13:11:43] "GET /hi HTTP/1.1" 200 34 0.0068
EricSloof-PC - - [13/Apr/2011:13:11:43 W. Europe Daylight Time] "GET /hi HTTP/1.1" 200 34
- -> /hi
127.0.0.1 - - [13/Apr/2011 13:11:43] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 441 0.0010
EricSloof-PC - - [13/Apr/2011:13:11:43 W. Europe Daylight Time] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 441
- -> /favicon.ico

http://127.0.0.1:4567/hi
Hello World! (Eric Sloof-NTPRO.NL)

Now let’s push this WebApp to the cloud with c:\Ruby192\hello>vmc push hello and see what happens.

http://ntpro.cloudfoundry.com/hi
Hello World! (Eric Sloof-NTPRO.NL)

VMware Forum 2011 is the place to learn how VMware, the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, and our partners are building on virtualization to deliver cloud infrastructure and management solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity, improve security and accelerate how applications are being built, deployed and run.

Check out this page for the upcoming worldwide events because this is your chance to catch up with top speakers from both VMware and its partners. Over the course of just one day, they will deliver actionable information that will ensure you can get started on optimizing your infrastructure immediately. They will show you what steps to take in building an innovative IT department that adds value and leads the company towards growth and success.

 

VMware is happy to announce an updated version of VMware Labs. As you know VMware has launched flings a few months back and their goal has been to make VMware Labs a home for collaboration by sharing information and ideas. As part of this they have now expanded their offerings to include:

• Flings: You can now view those cool flings sorted by Top Rated and Most Commented plus addition of latest fling - XVP Manager and Converter

• Publications: Listing of academic and technical papers authored by VMware engineers.

• Academic: Find details on our collaborative work with academic institutues or review the request for proposals for research projects.

• Conference: Want to meet a VMware engineer? Find a listing of conferences sponsored by VMware where engineers are usually giving a talk or presenting a paper.

VMware Labs contains a wide range of information and we want to provide you with a centralized place to go for unique, cool and useful content. VMware's engineers are constantly coming up with new and interesting flings, papers, and other material. They encourage you to browse through, check out our flings and give them your feedback.

Alberto Farronato reports: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server For VMware Now Available To Many More VMware vSphere Customers - I am very happy to share some very exciting news for VMware vSphere customers: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware - VMware’s OEMed version of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) - is now available for free to customers with qualifying VMware vSphere licenses regardless of when these licenses were purchased.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for VMware is an enterprise Linux operating system based on the industry proven Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that VMware offers to qualified VMware vSphere™ customers, together with subscription to patches and updates, at no cost. Customers can also streamline their support experience by purchasing technical support directly delivered by VMware Global Support Services.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware is a highly reliable, interoperable and manageable server operating system built to power mission-critical workloads in virtual environments and optimized to run on VMware vSphere. With this affordable application foundation, companies can cost-effectively deliver core business services, enable secure networks, simplify heterogeneous infrastructure, and maximize efficiency and value. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware carries the same independent software vendor (ISV) application certifications of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-SLES-GettingStartedGuide-EN.pdf

There's also a VCP LinkedIn group which you can join. 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.

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.

The integration of SpringSource as a division of VMware has come to a point where VMware is offering a brand new workshop which is focusing on the development of applications that can run in the cloud. The new one day workshop; Developing for the Cloud is delivered in classroom format. This week Eberhard Wolff will kick off with the first one in New York and says:

"The move to the Cloud will change the way IT services are consumed - and developed. This workshop gives a good introduction to the challenges you face when creating Cloud applications - and of course how to deal with them."

You can find Eberhard's weblog at http://jandiandme.blogspot.com/

Overview

Moving to the cloud is the next major evolutionary step for IT systems. The cloud offers a lot of clear benefits such as better resource utilization and improved flexibility – both desired by businesses. Cloud computing also offers novel and smart approaches to technical problem such as scalability or fault tolerance. Therefore it is important to adapt cloud computing and by that gain a competitive advantage.However, developing software that runs well in cloud environments is a difficult and demanding task. Completely new levels of scalability must be supported. New approach and new architectures are emerging and need to be supported. This Workshop will teach the basics of cloud technologies and how to develop software for it.
 
 
Objectives    

•  Understand the advantages of Cloud technologies
•  Understand challenges when developing software for the Cloud
•  Learn about the impact of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) such as Amazon S3 or VMware vCloud on software development and how to use it efficiently
•  Comprehend the PaaS (Platform as a Service) approach and some typical implementation such as Google App Engine, VMforce or Cloud Foundry
•  Find out how to architect applications for the cloud and how to develop applications for the cloud using Spring Roo

A few days ago I’ve posted an article called “Hey Drummonds forget SSD – RAM is the future” on my website. In this article I’m showing a proof of concept with a recorded demo with some performance measurement on an VMFS with live virtual machines in RAM. It attracted a lot of comments. Of course I know when you lose power you also will lose your VMFS, but maybe that’s not a real problem. It’s depending on what type of virtual machines you are hosting and there’re other techniques like FT to create a higher level of availability to protect the virtual machines from host failures.

One of the people who commented on the article is Steve Jin, he’s running a great weblog called DoubleCloud. Steve has pointed me to a research project from Stanford University called RAMCloud. VMware founder Mendel is involved in this project. The paper “The Case for RAMClouds: Scalable High-Performance Storage Entirely in DRAM” can be downloaded from this location.

Disk-oriented approaches to online storage are becoming increasingly problematic: they do not scale grace-fully to meet the needs of large-scale Web applications, and improvements in disk capacity have far out-stripped improvements in access latency and bandwidth. This paper argues for a new approach to datacenter storage called RAMCloud, where information is kept entirely in DRAM and large-scale systems are created by aggregating the main memories of thousands of commodity servers. We believe that RAMClouds can provide durable and available storage with 100-1000x the throughput of disk-based systems and 100-1000x lower access latency. The combination of low latency and large scale will enable a new breed of data-intensive applications.

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.

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.

Flex is already in use in two VMware applications in the VMware management suite: VMware View (which delivers personalized virtual desktops as a managed service) and VMware vCloud Director (which enables provisioning, deploying, and managing virtualized workloads in internal and external clouds). Moving forward, the Flex footprint expands into VMware's broad customer base with its next-generation management console for vSphere. VMware's 25,000-plus strong partner and customer ecosystems will soon be able to leverage Flex to integrate their solutions into the VMware management UIs. Join the VMWare team to hear about how they use Flex to improve VMware product experiences. 
 

These are the official icons and diagrams of VMware, Inc. VMware allows the use of these icons and diagrams in derivative works by VMware Community members to illustrate virtualization concepts and IT architectures only if the VMware copyright and terms of use are clearly displayed. The VMware icons and diagrams cannot be altered in any way.

VMware PowerPoint Icons and Images - 3Q10 1 of 2

VMware PowerPoint Icons and Images - 3Q10 2 of 2

Eric Siebert over at vSphere-Land has published the results of the best VMware/Virtualization blog election. The winner is Duncan Epping over at Yellow-Bricks.com, followed by Chad Sakac from Virtual Geek at second and Scott Lowe at the third place. I’m maintaining my position at the fourth place. I want to thank all the voters and Eric Siebert in special for all his hard work.

vChat - Episode 8 - VMware Virtualization Blog Awards 2010

In this episode Eric, David, Simon and Special Guest, John Troyer count down the Top 25 VMware Blogs as voted by the VMware virtualization community on the vSphere-Land website.. We have a special introduction by VMware CTO, Dr Steven Herrod - WOW!

1.   @DuncanYB
2.   @sakacc
3.   @scott_lowe
4.   @esloof
5.   @Mike_Laverick
6.   @FrankDenneman
7.   @ericsiebert
8.   @jasonboche
9.   @alanrenouf
10. @gabvirtualworld
11. @SimonLong_
12. @hany_michael
13. @vmguru_nl
14. @Kiwi_Si 
15. @vStewed
16. @eric_gray
17. @drummonds
18. @rick_vmwaretips
19. @Forbes Guthrie
20. @rbrambley
21. @LucD22
22. @mikedipetrillo
23. @vladan
24. @lynxbat
25. @lamw

The card is available under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to copy and distribute this in paper or electronic format. Just check back frequently to www.vReference.com for updates, or subscribe to the RSS feed to be the first to know.

http://www.vreference.com/vsphere4-card/

The first official VMware training course I’ve delivered was back in 2007. We were just shifting from ESX 2.5 to ESX 3.0 back then. In the early days I delivered just one training course a month and the rest of my time was filled up with consultancy. In the past few years the numbers of attendees just exploded. These days you will find vSphere within every company and there’s a much higher demand for VMware training courses. The number of VCPs have increased in a high rate as well. The nice thing about being in the training business “for so many years” is, that with every new version, you see some familiar faces back in the classroom.

But let’s jump to the present. At the beginning of this year VMware has announced the EMEA VCI of the Quarter award program. The award recognizes exceptional VMware Certified Instructors from the EMEA region. Potential candidates are nominated by VATCs having demonstrated a combination of consistent excellence in customer evaluation scores and an ability to help students make the most of their VMware technology.  In addition candidates will be evaluated based on their contribution to the VCI community forums, early adoption of new training courses and a commitment to raising the quality of VMware’s education portfolio. Each quarter a VATC can nominate one directly employed and one independent VCI whom they have contracted with the nomination period. The VCIs nominated will undergo a thorough review process to be considered for the award. A panel that includes members of the EMEA VATC education team evaluates each nominee's technical expertise and contributions for the past 3 months. The panel considers the quality, quantity, and level of impact of the nominee's contributions.

I’m very lucky with Raymond Boelhouwer who works as a Business Development Manager over at Global Knowledge. He’s the one who has nominated me and says:  Although Eric is a freelance instructor he has taught many advanced and new VMware courses for Global Knowledge in the last quarter. All his deliveries are granted high scores by the attendees even for first deliveries which are not easy to do. For an organization as Global Knowledge it is easy to work with Eric and you can trust a job well done.

So last month I received an email from Kevin Johnson – VMware’s Northern Region Education Manager congratulating me as the best VMware Certified instructor of the quarter.

The winner for the Independent VCI of the Quarter is Eric Sloof. This was a very easy selection to make. Eric has been very busy over the last 3 months and has delivered 14 classes over a wide range of subjects, two of these classes were LoL. Eric’s scores were also consistently high. Eric is also very active in the VCI community.

You can imagine that  I’m very proud with being awarded as the Independent VCI of Q2 2010. This morning I’ve received the official "Award of Appreciation" plaque from Raymond Boelhouwer. I can only say one thing, many thanks to all, it was my pleasure.  

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager's (formerly EMC Ionix Server Configuration Manager) policy-driven automation detects deep system changes and identifies whether that change is within policy - an expected and acceptable behavior based on industry, regulatory, or your own self-defined best practices - or whether that change has created a compliance violation or security vulnerability.

http://www.vmware.com/products/configuration-manager/

Automate configuration management across virtual and physical servers, workstations, and desktops with VMware vCenter Configuration Manager. Increase efficiency by eliminating manual, error-prone and time-consuming work.

• Avoid configuration drift by automatically detecting and comparing changes to policies
• Maintain continuous compliance with out-of-the box templates and toolkits
• Automate and optimize server provisioning and application stack deployment in the datacenter

Also take a look at:

VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager

Quickly and accurately map your application dependencies to accelerate datacenter moves, precisely plan infrastructure consolidations and confidently virtualize your business critical applications.

VMware Service Manager

VMware Service Manager develops a 100% web architected solution that automates IT Service Management processes in enterprise organizations.VMware Service Manager is independently verified to the highest level of ITIL compatibility for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management, Service Level Management and Availability Management.