Eric Sloof

Kudos to cameraman @jpiscaer

There are a ton of tools for managing vSphere, both from VMware and from third parties. But what tools are the best tools and how can they help you? Save your time trying all these tools and learn about the top 10 free tools for managing vSphere in this breakout session.

http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/

http://twitter.com/KendrickColeman

Kudos to cameraman @jpiscaer

My VMworld started with the VMware Certified Instructor day.  It’s a great day for meeting up with fellow instructors and learn about newly released products firsthand.  There were some Q/A sessions about VMware View 4.5, the Cloud Service Director and VCDX with subject matter experts like Tommy Walker,  Michael Haines, Duncan Epping, John Arrasjid and Pang Chen.

The best VCI Awards were handed out by Andy Cary, Undeleeb Din and Chris Cottam . Brian Rice gave us an insight into the Education Road Map and the Certification Road Map. The VCI Program session was presented by David Day. Although a lot of information is still under NDA, I was able to shoot some video footage.

This afternoon, just after the VMworld Developer Day, I had an interview with Pablo Roesch. He’s responsible for all aspects of product marketing the powerful vSphere APIs. Enabling Partner and End User customers. Managing editor for VMware Developer Center Blog and the VMware Developer Community http://developer.vmware.com.

Follow him on twitter @heyitspablo

Kodus to cameraman Marcel Van Os

Yes, we’re on our way to VMware’s VMworld event. I’m travelling with Viktor van den Berg and we flew from Amsterdam to Copenhagen with a KLM Boeing 737-400. Just before boarding I did a little interview with Viktor who’s the head of the Dutch VMUG and also a board member of the global VMware User Group (VMUG). His daily job is Product manager / Technical  Trainer at XTG.  I asked him about his expectations.

Kudos to cameraman @jpiscaer

This article describes how to inject drivers into the VMware ESXi 4.1 installer. It’s written by Ernst Cozijnsen, he already published a great article regarding Deploying VMware ESXi 4.1 in the enterprise. All you need is a Fedora core 13 32 bit virtual machine which can be downloaded from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ . This website contains many ready to run virtual appliances with all kinds of open source operating systems.

The following part will show you how to:

- Extracting the driver from driver cd/dvd/floppy/tape/ls120/zip/jazz
- Extracting sys.vgz ESXi installer ramdrive
- Moving the driver(s) into place
- Compressing the newly build sys.vgz structure
- Inserting driver package in the imagedd.bz2 file

Continue reading "Injecting drivers into the ESXI installer" »

My ex-colleague and virtualization friend Ernst Cozijnsen who works a virtualization subject matter expert over at Capgemini did something awesome this week. We philosophised about unravelling the ESXi boot process in a few (long) phone calls the past few days and just before the start of the VMworld he actually did the unthinkable. Here’s his description about deploying VMware ESXi 4.1 in the enterprise.

Ok for us the time came to start deploying VMware ESXi 4.1 on some massive servers that rolled into or datacenter. Normally we use RDP (Altiris) for deployment of ESX (native) so naturally we also wanted to deploy VMware ESXi 4.1 in such a way. This article from Eric Wannemacher describes a way to inject ESXi into your RDP PXE boot menu and so giving you the possibility to PXE boot the ESXi installer and start your install.

The downside of this article is that the installer starts directly after booting the ESXi installer and destroys everything in its way including all files on your destination drive. The margin of error when using this specific method is very small and a catastrophic failure can be made very easily without any way of having a safety net. Since these kind of failures can have enormous consequences in a large enterprise environment we had to come up with a way that was more inside our "comfort zone".

Continue reading "Deploying VMware ESXi 4.1 the enterprise way" »

This five-day course will be released at the end of October and provides students with the knowledge and skills to utilize Windows PowerShell for administering and automating administration of Windows based servers.
The course is intended for IT Professionals already experienced in general Windows Server and Windows Client administration, including Active Directory administration. No prior experience with any version of Windows PowerShell, or any scripting language, is assumed. After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Explain how Windows PowerShell works.
• Use Windows PowerShell as an interactive, command-line shell.
• Use Core Windows PowerShell cmdlets for everyday purpose.
• Customize the output using Windows PowerShell Formatting Subsystem.
• Explain what Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is and how it can be used from Windows PowerShell.
• Manage Active Directory objects using Windows PowerShell cmdlets.
• Write basic Windows PowerShell scripts that execute batches of commands.
• Work with Windows PowerShell’s background jobs and remote administration functionality.
• Master the scripting language of Windows PowerShell.
• Use advanced techniques related to structured programming within Windows PowerShell.
• Automate Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration using Windows PowerShell.
• Identify the best practices for working with Windows PowerShell.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=10325A&Locale=en-us#tab1

VMware will announce an exciting new product, vCloud Request Manager, on October 12, 2010 at VMworld Copenhagen. vCloud Request Manager provides enterprises with enhanced governance and control of vCloud Director based Private Clouds. It does this by:

1. Adding sophisticated approval workflows to provisioning requests,
2. Automatically tracking software license usage as vApps are commissioned and decommissioned
3. Enforcing standardized settings on vCloud Director “Organizations” through the use of policies called “Blueprints”.

Attend this VMLIVE to understand key launch dates, positioning, FAQ and supporting collateral for this key Q4 launch.

VMware vCloud Request Manager - Enhanced Governance and Control of vCloud Director based Private Clouds