Entries from Eric Sloof

TekUberGeek compared the user experience of XenDesktop to VMWare VDI over several different WAN links and latencies. The wan is simulated with Shunra VE Desktop - He started of with 1 ms of latency then work up to 150 ms. You can watch a higher res version (with notes) here. This is his first entry into the Citrix XenDesktop Video Tips contest.

VMworld is the largest annual industry conference on virtualization, attended by IT professionals and executives, technology providers, industry experts, researchers, press and analysts from around the world. VMworld 2008 in its fifth year, is expected to draw more than 12.000 attendees. Don’t miss the only industry conference dedicated to virtualization. It will take place September 16-18 in Las Vegas. Sign up to be notified when registration opens for this event. VMware will be posting the new VMworld 2008 Conference Web Site soon with information about registration, pricing, agenda, sessions, sponsors/exhibitors, hotel and travel. You can submit any conference questions you may have.

VMworld 2008
September 16-18
Venetian Hotel and Resort
Las Vegas, NV
http://www.venetian.com/

VMware is the king when it comes to virtualization. Windows PowerShell has gotten huge accolades as an extremely powerful tool for automation of IT tasks. These two technologies make a lot of sense together, and VMware is now making that happen with the release of their VI Toolkit for Windows. In "Managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell", you will learn how to perform everything from simple ad-hoc reporting at the command-line ("are any of my virtual machines powered off?") to complex scripts to automate a a massive deployment of hundreds of virtual machines. Simple, yet powerful; concise, yet robust; you will enjoy using this new language to solve your old problems using less code than you thought possible. If you are a system administrator responsible for managing a VMware Virtual Infrastructure (version 2.0 or above), or a standalone ESX Server (version 3.0 or above), then you need this book. Aimed at scripters of every level, the book starts off with a PowerShell primer and continues well into the internals of virtualization on the VMware platform.

More PowerShell Goodness: The SAPIEN Blog includes a complete section on Windows PowerShell news and tips, and the SAPIEN Knowledge Base has a growing list of PowerShell-related articles. You may also enjoy www.ScriptingAnswers.com, which offers discussions, training, and free resources for administrative scripting - including Windows PowerShell.

VMLive is VMware's interactive webinar series designed specifically for our partner community. There are two versions of VMLive - Tech Edition and Sales Edition. Tech Edition is intended for the System Engineer and Technical Consultant audience; the Sales Edition is intended for sales, marketing and business audience. VMLive is available exclusively to VMware partners.

John Troyer has written a great post on the VMTN Blog about the Windows VI Toolkit based on PowerShell. Besides a link to my articles he summed up everyone who is experimenting with this toolkit.

Well, once Carter spilled the beans, everybody is now waiting with bated breath for VMware to release the beta of our new curiously-named VI Toolkit (for Windows). The toolkit is powered by Windows PowerShell, a shell/scripting technology that Microsoft appears to have gotten very right indeed. The VI SDK, while extremely powerful, is not for the faint of heart. This toolkit takes that power and wraps it up in a very simple syntax which creates a compelling tool for VI admins.

In total there are 102 PowerShell cmdlets in the Beta that cover all aspects of Virtual Infrastructure management. The most important thing is that you can now easily write scripts, tailor made to your problems, that save you time and frustration, whether that means saving you 10 clicks or 100. Once you've had a chance to kick the proverbial tires, don't forget to visit the Community Page to give your feedback or to talk with other Beta testers. Last but not least, congratulations to the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team for all your hard work on this release!

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the VMworld in Cannes. I had some great plans to shoot some real cool video’s out there but I enjoyed a skiing holiday instead. While I was in Austria I was under the impression that I was the only one who is shooting video’s at these events, but I’m not ;-). In the past few days some video footage has reached the surface and can be viewed on YouTube. Fabio Virgilio from Italy keep up the good work.

Comments: Thanks, Fabio, for re-uploading those, but the credit needs to go to Eric Nielsen and Tony Dunn from the vmworld.com crew -- see their channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/VMworldTV

Schley Andrew Kutz a Developing Consultant from Texas published the most complete and comprehensive list of VI plug-ins available at this very moment. Schley also created the VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Plug-in and Extension Programming Guide. With this guide you can create your own plug-ins. You can find it all at the viplugins.com website, have fun with it.

37migrations.com is a fun project created by the people who brought you VIPlugins.com. The purpose of this site is to allow people to upload their VMotion count to our database, which in turn allows them to plot said data on a nifty Google map, making it easy to see where in the world VMotion operations are occurring. The map plots all of the VMotion events that have occured between 00:00 and 23:59 of the current day. The 37migrations VI client plugin uploads the location id you provide when a VMotion event on your VI server occurs. This process increments your VMotion count on the 37migrations server by 1. The location you provide is not stored, instead it is turned into latitude and longitude coordinates and those are stored. We store the data in a MySQL server that only we have access to. Even if someone were to obtain the data, there is no way that it can be traced back to you. They are not out to collect data for malicious purposes, they simply think this is a neat idea.

Carter Shanklin added a blog entry to the VI PowerShell Blog and officially announced the beta to be released this month. Besides that the PowerShell team is very surprised by all the enthusiasm for the PowerShell lab at the Vmworld in Cannes.  You can also download the lab manual.

Hope you enjoyed the PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe.

We here on the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team know just how exciting PowerShell is, but sometimes we're surprised to learn just how many people agree. Our PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe was attended by over 250 students. What surprised me most though, was that we noticed at least 3 different people working on the PowerShell lab for over 3 hours each. Considering all the great sessions and other labs offered at VMworld Europe, this is really a testament to how important PowerShell is going to be for system management in the coming years.

THINK SERVICES' SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT WEST CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF THE 18th ANNUAL JOLT PRODUCT EXCELLENCE & PRODUCTIVITY AWARDS The 'Oscars' of Software Development Industry Honor Innovation and Technological Achievement.

SANTA CLARA, CA, March 6, 2008 /PRNewswire — Dr. Dobb's announced the winners of the 18th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards during last night's Award Ceremony at the Software Development West 2008 Conference and Expo, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center.  The ceremony was hosted by Robert X. Cringely, best-selling author, technology columnist, futurist and PBS personality.  The Hall of Fame award was presented to VMware Workstation by none other than C.J. Rapp, the president and CEO of JOLT.

The prestigious Jolt Awards recognize those products, books and websites that have "jolted" the industry in the past year.  Winners are selected by an esteemed panel of judges consisting of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders. JOLT, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software developers for sustenance during project development marathons, sponsors the awards.

'This year was an exceptionally exciting year for our judges, because there were so many strong contenders in every category," said Amber Ankerholz, conference manager for Dr. Dobb's Events. 'The winners reflect the great innovations thriving in the industry today, and it was especially satisfying to see industry leaders as well as newcomers changing how developers work by giving them great new products that reflect the changing software development landscape.�?