VMware - 24

VMware launched a new referral program gives you rewards when you recommend VMware products to others.

It's as simple as 123:

1. Write an online recommendation of your VMware product.
2. Share it with their friends (via e-mail, IM, blogs, or social networks).
3. Allow their friends to sign up for a special offer.
4. Earn 10$ rewards when their friends sign up.

John Troyer says:

You get $10 credit (which can go straight to your PayPal account or to a gift card or charity) every time two VMware Store purchases are made from your referrals. (That $10 number tells me that we expect to moving more copies of Fusion and Workstation than VI Enterprise through this referral, but go crazy selling ESX if that's what you're into.) In any case, it's a great way to spread the word about the solutions you use every day that make your life easier and got you your last promotion.

The use of IP Storage for VM swap files is now allowed under VMware Best Practices. At one point there were published recommendations not to place the VM's swap files on NFS.  This recommendation is no longer VMware's best practice. Of course, best practices recommend designs that minimize VM swapping, including proper memory allocations, but VMware has removed the recommendation of not placing VM swap files on IP-based storage, and it is now an acceptable practice to locate VM's swap files of either NFS or iSCSI-based storage, as it would be with Fibre-Channel or Direct-Attached Storage (DAS). Bob Slovick, thanks for the update.

Dan Chu, VMware's VP of Emerging Business, intends to take an industry leader's perspective next week when he presents a breakout session at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (November 19-21, 2008) being held at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA. Chu will apply that perspective to the new disruptive trend in the market that everyone is calling cloud computing.

In his session, "The Enterprise Cloud: Applications On and Off Premise," Chu will uncover among other things VMware's plan to leverage its technology leadership in virtualization to deliver reliable, mobile technology to its customers and service providers worldwide. He will explore cloud pitfalls and uncover new methods for delivering applications on or off premise.

Continue reading "VMware's VP Speaking Next Week at SYS-CON's..." »

You can use this link to get access to the VMware Converter 4.0 Beta Program.

Welcome to the VMware Converter 4 beta program. We are excited to announce that VMware Converter 4 beta is now available. Your involvement in beta testing VMware Converter 4 is an important part of the release process, and your timely and thorough feedback is critical to the success of the beta program and to the release.

As part of this beta, we request you to extensively test several areas of feature enhancements including P2V support for Linux and Win 2K8 sources, hot cloning enhancements as well as workflow automation enhancements. Your active participation in this beta program is critical. We appreciate and value your efforts to install upon downloading the software and actively provide us with your valuable product feedback.

Continue reading "VMware Converter 4.0 Beta Program launched" »

VMware's upcoming release of VMware Converter 4.0 Standalone product includes many exciting
enhancements that our customers have been requesting including P2V support  for Linux and Win 2K8 sources, hot cloning enhancements as well as workflow automation enhancements. They are certain you will find participation in this beta program a valuable experience. They are looking forward to working closely with you during this beta program.

As part of this beta, they request you to extensively test several areas of feature enhancements including P2V support for Linux and Win 2K8 sources, hot cloning enhancements as well as workflow automation enhancements. Your active participation in this beta program is critical. They appreciate and value your efforts to install upon downloading the software and actively provide them with your valuable product feedback.

I’ve been looking for DRS Advanced Options but only found one setting. I think there’s no comprehensive list of advanced DRS options. VMware says the Advanced Options dialog box is helpful when you are working with VMware customer support on resolving an issue. Setting advanced options is not otherwise recommended.

What I found is the DumpSpace setting which has a default value of 20 MB. This is the size of the %TMP%\vpx\drmdump\cluster#\Control log directory .
When you know some additional Advanced DRS (Duncan not HA :-)) settings please drop me a note.

VMware is launching its newly-announced end-to-end enterprise desktop solution, VMware View which includes VMware VDI, ThinApp, and View Composer on December 2, 2008. Earlier at the VMworld in Las Vegas VMware announced new technologies to be introduced in 2009 – VMware View Composer, VMware Offline Desktop and Client Virtualization to build upon our leadership in virtual desktop infrastructure(VDI). Each technology provides additional functionality to make the universal client a reality – an end-to-end desktop solution that is easy-to-manage and cost effective, with the best end user experience, the strongest security, and the most efficient way to manage all of your desktops and applications.

Cisco and VMWare Interview at Next-Gen Data Center Security Virtualization event. Omar Sultan, data center solution manager at Cisco and , security specialist, VMware discuss the event and what their companies are doing in this space and how agencies can learn more about them.

Jainoxi (Joep Piscaer) an active member of the Dutch VMUG also created a home setup of VMware’s Site Recovery Manager. He used the LeftHand Networks Virtual SAN appliance as a storage solution. You can find a complete how to at his new weblog Virtuallifestyle.nl.

As a demo/test I wanted to build a complete SRM setup with both sites being protected. This requires two SRM installations and configurations and two replicated LUN’s. Since I am rather limited in available hardware at the moment, I needed to run every component in a virtual Machine on a single laptop. Luckily, LeftHand Networks has a virtual SAN appliance, which actually is supported by VMware SRM. This way, I can use a supported SAN, and still use ony one laptop. All used software (VMware ESX, vCenter, LeftHand VSA and Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005) are available for free (or as evaluation software).

Meet online with virtualization experts who use the technology every day. Share your experiences to gain exposure and strengthen your relationship with the community and VMware.

http://communities.vmware.com/home.jspa

Robert Dell'Immagine, Community Director about the new homepage.

It's a single place to find the latest content from VMware Communities, VMworld.com, GoVirtual.org (the academic portal), and VIOPS (the operations portal). A homepage to monitor your activity (be sure you're logged in). A place to find the top community experts This page will replace the Communities tab.

They rolled it out and continue to update and tune it based on your feedback.