Entries from Eric Sloof

With only one month ahead of us the Dutch VMUG event in getting closer and closer. One of the presenters on this day (December the 7th) is Eric Sloof. At exactly 14:15 he’s going to talk about Virtual Desktop infrastructure, in particular his presentation will take a close look at VMware VDM, the Virtual Desktop Manager that will be launched by VMware next year. When you want to attend the Dutch VMUG event, you have to be quick, there are only 30 places left. I hope to see you at the Nieuwegein Business Centre on the 7th of December.

If you're using VMware ESX extensively but haven't deployed a chargeback tool, or at minimum a system for monitoring resource consumption and available capacity, you will lack valuable ammunition come budget time. Usage measurements can justify infrastructure expansion, help recover costs, even transform IT into a profit center. The VKernel Capacity and Chargeback Virtual Appliance is ESX-specific software that reports on capacity and resource consumption. It also provides chargeback totals based on a user-defined unit cost for four core metering sources: CPU, RAM, storage and network usage. An unlimited number of custom fields are available for monitoring cooling costs, administrative services, software licensing or whatever else you can dream up. VKernel says the product can handle as many as 300 hosts, so there's definitely room to breathe. Read the complete article at the source.

Thevirtualsearch.com - A New Tool for Finding VMware Information. Thomas over at Scale The Mind created a wonderful way to search for information regarding VMware products and technologies. The search engine is based on Google and uses 200+ hand-picked sites which are elevated in the search results. 

Since Antonio Dias and his colleagues are is still busy with writing the VMware command-let’s for PowerShell we have to find an alternate way to use PowerShell in combination with ESX server. TechProsaic created a PowerShell script that uses plink to communicate with ESX server. This script can do some basic things like snapshots and get a list of VM’s.

The Dutch VMug event attracts a lot of attention. In September 2005, the first time this event was held the number of attendees was around 50. This number has risen over the years. The next event will take place on the 7th of December and is nearly overbooked! The Dutch VMug expects around 400 attendees. It looks like the Dutch VMug has become some sort of mini VMworld. The VMug also contracted Virtuozzo and Vizioncore as new sponsors. I have spoken with Viktor van den Berg (professional photographer an car-racer ;-) ) who is in charge of organizing the VMug event and he told me to expect one or two special surprises. I’m not going to disclose any information, but when you get the chance, register before it’s too late.

After three successful meetings of The VMware User Group Belgium , it is time for another one! They would like to invite you to attend the 4th VMware User Group meeting on the 31st of October 2007, 13.30 o´clock at www.lerayonvert.be The agenda of this meeting:

• DataCenter Optimisation & Disaster Recovery. ((Derrick Struys (netapp) & Dirk Demeirsman (VMWARE))
• Best Practices – Netapp & VMWARE (Bart Van Praet (Uptime))
• VMWORLD 2007 (Bert Arnauts (VMWARE)) Expected end time : 17.00 o'clock

Uberpulse posted two video fragment on You Tube, in the first one Diane Greene is talking about EMC’s VMware acquisition. In the second one Diane is making a short comment about the possibility that VMware is going to buy EMC.

Since Antonio Dias and his colleagues over at VMware are very bussy with creating PowerShell command-let’s I thought lets take a dive into this new scripting language. Windows PowerShell introduces the concept of a cmdlet (pronounced "command-let"), a simple, single-function command-line tool built into the shell. You can use each cmdlet separately, but their power is realized when you use these simple tools in combination to perform complex tasks. Windows PowerShell includes more than one hundred basic core cmdlets, and you can write your own cmdlets and share them with other users. Like many shells, Windows PowerShell gives you access to the file system on the computer. In addition, Windows PowerShell providers enable you to access other data stores, such as the registry and the digital signature certificate stores, as easily as you access the file system. There is a powerful Tool available on the internet, called PowerGUI. It is a Free GUI (Graphical User Interface) PowerShell Tool sponsered by Quest. The PowerGUI allows we to use the Windows PowerShell in a familiar and intuitive GUI, like a MMC console. To download the PowerGui, we can check the new version out, at the official site: http://www.powergui.org/

Sean Clark over at the Pella Health center uploaded a really cool video demonstrating how VMworld 2007 rocked their world. You can watch it at the VMworld 2007 what rocked my world video contest home. But don’t rate them to high otherwise I can say goodbye to that fully loaded Alienware Gaming Laptop. I still make a change if you rate the esloof video’s with five stars ;-) The video contest page is still unchanged and the contest remains open. Due to unforeseen vacation plans, The people behind the contest only recently started to have work begun on having the contest page updated. So as a result, they have been still accepting submittals after the end date until they get the page updated. The judges also have been also been staggering their vacations so they have had to push out the judging and hence the winner announcement. The landing page will be updated next week (10/29) and a winner will be identified/announced the following week (week of 11/5).