Entries from Eric Sloof

VMware is pleased to announce the launch of the latest VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP) specialty track in Infrastructure Virtualization. In addition to completion of the Core VTSP courses, participants enrolling in the Infrastructure Virtualization specialty track will gain valuable insight in concepts relating to, advanced networking, consolidation estimation, data protection, high availability, and resource management. Partners can also enroll in VTSP training plans geared towards Desktop Solutions and VSLA Management. Check out the training tab on Partner Central today for more VTSP details.

VMware Technology Solutions Exchange is now enfolded into VMware Partner Exchange. Technical Professionals rejoice! VMware has folded the popular Technology Solutions Exchange (TSX) into VMware Partner Exchange and have added more value for their technical partner audience. With Hands-on Labs on Site Recovery Manager, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, VMware ESXi and VMware Lab Manager, you will get hands-on training by VMware experts! Or attend the advanced technical level sessions (TECH300 series) which will help you design and architect solutions in a mock customer scenario. Along with your team members, you will compete with other teams for the best solution and whiteboard/implementation outline.

Check out the complete Agenda -- go to the official VMware Partner Exchange website for more information!

Achieving Business Performance Goals through Virtualization Management Best Practices. In researching this paper, EMA spoke with James, a senior technical engineer for a large global consumer products company (full names withheld on request). As the lone support person for 400 VMware ESX virtual machines, James found VirtualCenter did not provide enough detail or insight, so he had significant problems monitoring, reporting, and predicting performance. As James described it, they were “flying blindly.�? After a formal evaluation, James selected the eG Enterprise Suite with eG VM Monitor solution from eG Innovations.  As a VMware technical administrator, he says the environment is now “easier and faster to manage and administer,�? and the reporting facilities alone will save him almost a day’s work every month. From the IT service manager’s perspective, the solution allows them to “load up multi-CPU systems with multiple virtual systems,�? increasing utilization and cost savings while confidently meeting SLAs.

Undeleeb Din over at VMware presented the VMware Update Manager training module at the VDM TTT this week in Frimley. I captured some video footage which can be viewed here. The VMware Update Manager keeps systems up-to-date and reduces the number of vulnerabilities. VUM is all about Automated Patch Management and Patches ESX hosts and the VMs and templates hosted on them.

Peter Rudolf over at mightycare-solutions released another great (freeware) Tool from Mightycare Solutions to display the logical Partitions of all virtual Maschines on VMware ESX 3.x or Virtual Center 2.x . The Tool can display how many Gigabyte the Customer can save when he decrease the logical partition to a size the VM really need.

This evening Thomas Hagedorn over at Magirus Nordic treated us a nice Italian dinner. We had a lot of fun especially the four birthdays in the same restaurant  led to a lot of singing and handclaps. Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Mike Laverick about the battle of the RPD protocols. He also shared his findings about the Virtual Desktop Manager 2. Finally I couldn’t resist asking him about the upcoming Advanced Technical Design Guide, and why it’s taking so long ;-). I recorded the interview and you can download it here.

Today I attended the Virtual Desktop Manager 2 Train The Trainer course at VMware in Frimley (UK) delivered by Andy Cary, Undeleeb Din and Richard Garsthagen.  It was a great day with lots of discussion about Group Policy’s and mandatory profile’s besides that we looked at the classroom setup. As always I brought my camera with me and made some pictures during the course. I even managed to collect some video footage and posted it on Blip.tv.

Monday the 7th of April I’ll fly to London Heathrow. I’m staying at the famous Lakeside International Hotel. This hotel is also known from the Frimley Green Darts Tournament. On Tuesday I’ll attend the Virtual Desktop Manager Train the Trainer. This hands-on training course, aimed at experienced VMware Infrastructure 3 administrators, covers installation, configuration, and management of a VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) using VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM). I’m among the top VMware trainers from Europe, so stay tuned, because I’ve packed my camera and microphone.

Last moth Dell released an updated version of “Installing Dell™ OpenManage™ Software in a VMware® ESX® Server Software Environment�?. This document provides installation steps, usage, and support information for the Dell™ OpenManage™ systems management suite on VMware® ESX Server software. Dell OpenManage is a suite of system management applications for managing Dell PowerEdge servers. This section lists the features available in Dell OpenManage and details what is supported and what is not supported when running Dell OpenManage on VMware ESX Server software

This morning I posted an article about the Yankee Group report regarding the comparison between Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn) and VMware ESX. This report contains a lot of errors and is pulled from the Yankee Group site to be reworked. But why is the report still available at the Microsoft website ?