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Wednesday, June 23. 2010
New Training Course VMware vSphere: Transition to ESXi
This two day hands-on training course covers the requirements and effects of transitioning your VMware vSphere™ environment to VMware® ESXi. It provides the knowledge and skills necessary to make fundamental design decisions and successfully add ESXi to a deployed vSphere environment. The course is based the future version of ESXi.
Course Outline
Working with VMware ESXi
• Identify differences between ESX and ESXi
• Recognize tasks and procedures when moving to ESXi
Installing and Configuring VMware ESXi
• Analyze ESXi Installable and ESXi Embedded
• Install and configure ESXi Installable and ESXi Embedded
• Recognize the steps for upgrading to ESXi
Performing Management Tasks
• Identify hardware monitoring techniques
• Discuss system management and backup methodology
• Distinguish the log files
• Recognize security methodologies
• Employ file management practices
• Perform basic troubleshooting with the direct console user interface
Large-Scale Deployment of VMware ESXi
• Identify scripted installation programs for ESXi (SDK and Weasel)
• Analyze the commands to perform scripted installation
• Discuss best practices for large-scale deployment
Using Scripting Interfaces
• Identify the scripting interfaces for ESXi
• Discuss primary scripting interfaces
• Install VMware vSphere Management Assistant
• Identify differences between commands used with ESX and those used with ESXi
• Recognize custom commands and how to substitute VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface commands or vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets for them.
At the end of the course, you should be able to: Analyze ESXi and its benefits for your environment, Identify ESXi installation and configuration procedures, Use scripted installations for large-scale ESXi deployments, Employ scripting interfaces to manage ESXi and Identify risks when migrating to ESXi.
New Training Course VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security
This three day course with 60% lecture and 40% lab exercises shows you how to follow best practices for secure design, deployment, and operation of a VMware vSphere™ environment. Through lecture, discussion, and hands-on practice, you will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the security and compliance goals of your organization.
Course Outline
Module 1: Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Online resources for security and compliance
Module 2: Security in a Virtual Environment
• Review of information security and risk management concepts
• How virtualization affects security and compliance
• Top vulnerabilities in a virtual environment
• Basic guidelines for securing a virtual environment
• Security tools and technologies
Module 3: Secure Virtual Networking
• vNetwork security architecture
• Network segmentation and traffic isolation
• Secure virtual network configuration
• Traffic isolation with private VLANs
Module 4: Protecting the Management Environment
• vCenter Server authentication, authorization, and accountingWorking with SSL certificates
• Hardening the vCenter Server system
Module 5: Protecting VMware ESX/ESXi Host Systems
• ESX and ESXi security architecture
• Controlling access to storage
• Hardening ESX and ESXi hosts.
Module 6: Hardening Virtual Machines
• Virtual machine security architecture
• Configuring security parameters
Module 7: Configuration and Change Management
• Configuration and change management goals and guidelines
• Maintaining the proper configuration of vSphere components
• Monitoring logs for security-related events
• Configuration and change management tools and technologie
Tuesday, June 22. 2010
VCP LinkedIn group surpasses the 8000 member mark
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.
Sunday, June 20. 2010
New 2X CloudClient OS - A USB Stick is All You Need!
2X Software has announced the release of its Linux-based 2X CloudClient operating system. It can easily be used as a VMware View Client running from USB. I didn’t had the time to check it out, but it looks great.
Go to http://www.2x.com/ccos and instantly install your FREE personal 2X CloudClient operating system on a USB device (no larger than 512 MB). Your portable CloudClient operating system can then be run from any computer that can boot from a USB device, allowing you to instantly connect to hosted virtual desktop applications, such as Google Apps, Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware. It serves as your personal cloud client you can carry in your pocket wherever you might need it.
Alternatively, burn the 2X CloudClient OS to a bootable CD-ROM, or install it on a local hard drive and run it as a Network Boot OS from your local network.
Features:
• Supports Web applications, such as Google Apps, Microsoft Live, Web browsers, and more.
• Installs and boots from any type of USB device, or from a CDROM and hard drive.
• Converts standard PC’s, laptops, netbooks or thin clients to a cloud device.
Includes virtual desktop and application clients, such as Microsoft RDP, VMware View, Citrix XenApp and the 2X VirtualDesktopServer Client.
Wednesday, June 16. 2010
StarWind iSCSI multi pathing with Round Robin and esxcli
If you don’t have a fancy physical iSCSI target in your lab but still want to do some testing with the esxcli command, Starwind software offers a great iSCSI alternative with their StarWind iSCSI SAN software. It can be used as shared storage for almost any application, it is fully compatible for use with VMware.
After you have created a StarWind iSCSI target, it’s ready to service connections. You can established a connection to an iSCSI target and it appears as a new datastore on your ESX server. I’ll show the operations you need to complete to create and format the datastore in the way your ESX server can create virtual machines on it.
I’m also going to show how the esxcli command can be used for PSA (pluggable storage architecture) management and explain how to use the vSphere Client to manage the PSA, the associated native multipathing plug‐in (NMP).
In this online training we’re going to take a look at the multi pathing policy, in this particular case we’re using round robin. For this setup, because multipathing plugins do not have direct access to physical NICs on your host, you first need to connect each physical NIC to a separate VMkernel port. You then associate all VMkernel ports with the software iSCSI initiator using a port binding technique. As a result, each VMkernel port connected to a separate NIC becomes a different path that the iSCSI storage stack.
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/iscsi-san-for-microsoft-windows-multipathing
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial