VMware - 29

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Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell over at Sysinternals created Desktops v1.0. Desktops allows you to organize your applications on up to four virtual desktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do work in your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of the windows you’re not using. After you configure hotkeys for switching desktops, you can create and switch desktops either by clicking on the tray icon to open a desktop preview and switching window, or by using the hotkeys. Run Desktops now from Live.Sysinternals.com

First reports coming in from people who passed the VMware Enterprise Administration Exam.

Thank you for your interest in the VMware Certified Design Expert program. I am pleased to inform you that you have PASSED the Enterprise Administration Exam. Your score report is attached. Congratulations!!

Your next step will be to take and pass the Design Exam. We will be emailing you the registration details by September 15th. I have included the Design Exam Blueprint for you to review. If you have any questions or comments regarding the blueprint, please let us know.

Alessandro Perilli  over at virtualization.info just published the Meet the Evangelists page with the first round of influencers.

The Virtualization Congress  (http://www.virtualizationcongress.com) is the world's first vendor independent virtualization event, bringing together the industry's biggest selection of virtualization players, from the recognized leaders to the newest start-ups. The conference, to be held at London's ExCel, 14th-16th October, 2008, presents an ideal opportunity for current and prospective users of virtualization technologies to hear directly from the companies at the cutting edge of their development; at the same time, in the same place for the first time ever.

New book by David Marshall, Stephen S. Beaver and Jason McCarty. Based on actual experiences with implementing and managing large scale projects and environments, this book emphasizes the design, implementation, and management of a VMware ESX server, offering technical and consultative points of view. Providing practical guides and examples, the chapter organization focuses first on introducing a concept and background for that concept, before providing a real-world scenario on which the planning and implementation example is based. Finally, for more technical readers, the book includes advanced topics and additional resources.

Available in pre-order at Amazon.

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.

Eric Sloof created three LinkedIn Groups and would like to invite you to join them. 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.

VMware has re-issued the entire ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 release (ISOs, upgrade tar and zip files, and patch bundles). ESX 3.5 Update 2 (build 110268) /ESXi 3.5 Update 2 (build 110271) are available for download.

VMware would like to inform you that they are experiencing a delay in releasing the new version of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2. Their testing of this release is taking longer than anticipated. They are now targeting to release the update between 2:00 AM PDT (0700 UTC) August 14 and 8:00 AM (1500 UTC) August 14 PDT. They apologize for the delay. VMware engineering teams are working around the clock to deliver this new version. They will continue to keep you informed of developments until this issue is fully resolved.

In our last update, we referred to an initiative by our support and engineering teams to find an option to apply the patch without the necessity of entering maintenance mode and VMotion of VM’s to other servers, or VM power-off and re-power-on. Our earlier tests have not found a consistently successful way to address this. We continue to investigate this possibility, as we know that it would reduce the maintenance burden on our customers who may not have a patched server available for VMotion.

An issue has been uncovered with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 that causes the product license to expire on August 12.  VMware engineering has isolated the root cause of this issue and will reissue the various upgrade media including the ESX 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESXi 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESX 3.5 Update 2 upgrade tar and zip files in the next 36 hours (by noon, August 13, PST).  They will be available from the page: http://www.vmware.com/download/vi.  Until then, VMware advises against upgrading to ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2.