Eric Sloof

I’m in the middle of delivering the “VMware vSphere 4 : What’s New” course. This hands-on training explores the new features of vSphere 4 as well as how to upgrade to vSphere 4. I made a little movie with my Mino Flip. In this video you’ll see the complete vmguru.nl crew. :-)

At the end of the day, Erik Scholten a Solution Architect for Centric Managed ICT Services, interviewed me about my about the first vSphere training day. You can watch the complete interview here.

DB2 Express-C 9.5.2 (free to develop, free to deploy, free to distribute) contains a full-function DB2 data server, which provides an entry-level product for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. It comes with simplified packaging, and is easy to transparently install from within an application. It is available on Linux and Windows platforms, is fully compatible with, scalable to, and has all the autonomic manageability features of its higher priced family of offerings.

These documents describe how to configure an IBM DB2 v9.5 for Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW) Data Server to Work with vCenter Server. These configuration tasks are mandatory to use a DB2 database with vCenter Server.

db2_prereq_connection_configuration.txt

DB_and_schema_creation_scripts_DB2.txt

After creating a Distributed Switch I was looking at my storage and noticed a new folder called “.dvsData”. It looks like this folders contains the configuration of the Distributed Switch. I think it will be used when the vCenter server is down. I extracted one of the files so you can take a look at it. 134 :-)

I’m prepping the upcoming delivery of the “What’s New in VMware vSphere 4” training course. I decided to migrate the existing virtual adapters like the kernel port group and the service console port group from a vNetwork Standard Switch to a vNetwork Distributed Switch. I also switched over the virtual machines by configuring virtual machine networking on a vNetwork Distributed Switch.

This is a short walk through from the ESX configuration guide.

Photos from all over the World (Aarhus, Austin, Bulgaria, Israel, Lausanne, London , Pune and Palo Alto Behind the Scenes) taken by VMware employees, kicking off the vSphere launch.

       

Chad Sakac, EMC Vice President, VMware Technology Alliance, explains the tight integration between EMC PowerPath/VE and VMware vSphere and points out its dramatic performance and availability potential. Learn how your infrastructure behind vSphere can meet your performance and availability requirements.

PowerPath/VE will be available in June. Pricing starts at $2,100 per physical server for new PowerPath customers and $1,430 for current customers.

In VMware vSphere Web Access (which looks very cool btw), administrators can generate a customized Desktop Shortcut to share with other users. You can generate a Desktop Shortcut that displays only the console, enables or disables access to the workspace, or enables or disables access to the virtual machine inventory.

To activate Web Access on a VMware vSphere ESX server, you have to check if the Web Access daemon is running with : service vmware-webAccess status. If it isn’t started, you can start it with the  following command : service vmware-webAccess start. You can now log in to the VMware vSphere ESX Server using your browser. Select a Virtual Machine and click; Generate Virtual Machine Desktop Shortcut. Et voilà, there’s a link on your desktop.

What's New in VMware vSphere Part 1: Overview

Learn how VMware vSphere helps IT cut capital and operational costs by over 50% for all applications while improving control over application service levels and preserving customer choice to use any hardware, OS, or application. Also learn how VMware vSphere enables cloud computing by enabling IT to build an efficient internal cloud that can be federated with external cloud infrastructures for ultimate scalability and cost savings.

What's New in VMware vSphere Part 2: vSphere Editions

VMware vSphere is available in multiple editions, including two editions specifically designed for small businesses. Listen to this podcast to learn which edition is right for your business.

VMware vSphere 4 Demonstrates Industry-Leading Application Throughput, Virtualization Efficiency and Hardware Support, Enabling Large Applications to Be Run in the Cloud.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr. 21, 2009-- VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today heralded a new era in virtualization performance with the introduction of VMware vSphere 4, extending scalability limits for servers and virtual machines. (See press release, “VMware Unveils the Industry’s First Operating System for Building the Internal Cloud— VMware vSphere 4.”) With industry-leading support for new hardware virtualization assist features and a highly-optimized I/O system, VMware vSphere 4 is the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud. These new architectural enhancements enable even the most business-critical, transaction-heavy applications, such as SAP, Microsoft Exchange together with their SQL and Oracle databases, to be run on a 100 percent virtualized internal cloud powered by VMware vSphere 4.

Reliable and Affordable Enterprise-Class IT Operations for Small IT Environments Available Starting at $166 per Processor.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr. 21, 2009-- VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today unveiled VMware vSphere^TM 4, with new features and product editions that deliver “Always On IT” for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and remote and branch office (ROBO) IT environments. (See press release, “VMware Unveils the Industry’s First Operating System for Building the Internal Cloud—VMware vSphere 4.”) VMware vSphere 4 will deliver zero-downtime application availability and enterprise-class data protection managed under a single pane of glass, providing simplified and truly affordable disaster recovery previously out of reach for most small IT organizations.