Eric Sloof

This morning I’ve taken the VCP4‐DT Beta Exam. The final VCP4‐DT exam is a core component of the VCP4‐DT certification. The certification requires a passing score on the exam. The VMware Certified Professional (VCP4) and the VMware Certified Associate – Desktop (VCADT) certifications are pre‐requisites.

The VCP4‐DT certification is a requirement for the upcoming (live lab?) VMware Certified Advanced Professional: Desktop (VCAP-DT). Note: Unlike the other VCAP certifications, VCAP‐DT is not required to pursue the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification.

The VCP4‐DT VMware Certified exam tests potential VMware Certified Professional ‐ Desktop (VCP4‐DT) candidates on their skills and abilities monitoring and managing a View 4.5 environment. Successful candidates demonstrate mastery of these skills and abilities.

The beta exam consists of 100 questions and a short pre‐exam survey consisting of 7 questions. The questions are fair but certainly not easy. Although there was a very time short notice, I had about a week to prepare for the exam. As a VMware Certified Instructor, I have access to the instructor training guide for the View 4.5 Install Configure and Manage training. I’m glad I went through it again, the training is well aligned to the exam. I also recorded a VCP-DT Prep Video – Installing the VMware View Composer which actually contains a few interesting topics. Besides that Mark Benson did a great job with his video about The VMware View 4.6 Security Server and PCoIP.

Conclusion: Don’t take this exam for granted - you have to know your stuff and have been around in a View environment. You don’t learn troubleshooting by reading a book or watching a cool Sloef video :-) True troubleshooting skill comes from attention to detail and experience.

In this video Mark Benson discusses the architecture and setup of View 4.6 Security Server to support remote access with PCoIP.

The cornerstone of the Xangati VDI Dashboard is its performance health engine that analyzes the health of VDI in an unprecedented four microseconds. Relying on Xangati’s memory-driven architecture, the performance health of the VDI is being continuously monitored across a broad spectrum of performance metrics to the unrivaled scale of 250,000 objects (which can include desktops and clients). In contrast, other performance management architectures are database-driven and unable to keep apace of dynamic interactions to scale that are fundamental to VDI.

The output of Xangati’s performance health engine is a real-time health index that is linked to the health of every client, desktop, network link, host, VDI protocol and IT server that can impact VDI end–user experience. In real-time – as an object’s health shifts – the health index changes to reflect the urgency of the performance issue. Moreover, the performance shift will trigger a real-time alert, which is uniquely paired with a DVR-recording.

The DVR-recording will show exactly where the performance problem stems from and present contextual insights about what is driving the sub-optimal performance. For instance, a specific user community is seeing obvious delays in screen presentation due to a high latency network link. These DVR recordings capture issues that are often outside of a VDI vendor’s software framework and can be passed to the appropriate IT function, e.g. to the storage team when storage latency is at the heart of the performance issue.

http://xangati.com/vdi_dashboard/

http://d4vu5i9co7ynd.cloudfront.net/VDI_Dashboard.mov

VMworld 2010 Copenhagen - At the labs with Xangati

VMware has released their VMware vSphere Client for iPad and it’s available for free at the iTunes App store now. The VMware vSphere Client for iPad is a companion interface to the traditional vSphere client, optimized for viewing and managing your vSphere environment on the go. With vSphere Client for iPad you can view key performance metrics and perform essential tasks in a simplified interface from anywhere. The  iPad Client is not meant to be functionally equivalent with the existing Windows client, but rather to perform the most common 80% of vSphere admin’s tasks. Virtual machines can be started, stopped and suspended.  vSphere hosts can be rebooted or put into maintenance mode.

Features

• Search for vSphere hosts and virtual machines in your vSphere environment
• Monitor the performance of vSphere hosts and virtual machines
• Manage virtual machines with the ability to start, stop and suspend
• View and restore your virtual machines’ snapshots
• Reboot vSphere hosts or put them into maintenance mode
• Diagnose vSphere hosts and virtual machines using built-in ping and trace route tools

Requirements

• vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) virtual appliance available from the VMware Labs: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma
• Network connection to the vCMA virtual appliance; can use built-in VPN client
• VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server
• iPad ;-)

VMware has released a new technical paper regarding the performance of Multiple Java Applications in a VMware vSphere 4.1 Virtual Machine. This paper shows the results of tests that investigate the performance impact of running applications on multiple JVMs in a single virtual machine. These tests were conducted using the Olio application running in VMware vFabric tc Server 2.0 on VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1. The intent of the investigation is to provide insight into the impact of sizing decisions when selecting the number of JVMs to deploy in a single VM.

Technical Paper - Performance of Multiple Java Applications in a VMware vSphere 4.1 Virtual Machine

The VMware vCloud Connector, a free plug-in that will allow all VMware vSphere administrators to immediately begin deploying and managing virtual machines (VMs) across VMware vCloud Powered cloud services from within the VMware vSphere Client. In this video I’ll show you how to configure both the vCenter server and the vCloud Director and how to upload a virtual machine to the vCloud Director.

This video is also added to my iTunes channel which can be found at Online VMware Training. It looks great on an iPad.

This video is a follow-up from "Video – Deploying the vCloud Connector"

In this video I’ll show how to deploy the vCloud Connector virtual appliance and connect it to a vCenter server instance.  vCloud Connector (vCC) allows the vSphere Administrators to use their familiar vSphere Client as a single pane-of-glass view across hybrid clouds. It’s also a great tool when you have to transfer virtual machines between multiple vCenter servers.

They can perform the following operations

• See a list of virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates on vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds (including vCloud Datacenter Services).
  
• Copy virtual machines, vApps, virtual machine templates, and vApp templates between vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
  
• Perform basic operations (for example, power on/off, suspend, reset, delete) on virtual machines and vApps in vSphere and vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
  
• Deploy vApp templates as vApps (fenced mode) in vCloud Director-based private and public clouds.
  
• Access vCloud vApp consoles
  
• Directly launch the vCloud URL

This video is also added to my iTunes channel which can be found at Online VMware Training. It looks great on an iPad.

Follow-up "Video – Using the vCloud Connector"

Next month, VMware will release three new training courses.

VMware vSphere: Automation FastTrack

This fast-paced, extended-hour training course includes the content of the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage and VMware vSphere: Automation with vSphere PowerCLI courses. This hands-on course explores installation, configuration, and management of VMware vSphere™ using the VMware vSphere Client and VMware vSphere PowerCLI. vSphere PowerCLI automation can reduce your IT costs while improving efficiency, availability, flexibility, and manageability. The course is based on VMware ESX™/ESXi 4.1 and VMware vCenter™ Server 4.1 and includes a prepaid voucher for the VMware Certified Professional 4 examination.

VMware vSphere: Advanced FastTrack

This fast-paced, extended-hour, lab-intensive course includes the content of the VMware vSphere: Manage for Performance and VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting courses. This course provides the knowledge and skills necessary to make fundamental design decisions that enhance performance and meet performance goals in a deployed VMware vSphere™ installation. This course also provides the knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the vSphere virtual infrastructure. This course includes a prepaid voucher for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Datacenter Administrator examination.

VMware View: Desktop FastTrack

This fast-paced, extended-hour training course includes the content of the following courses: VMware View: Install, Configure, Manage Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp VMware View: Design Best Practices This hands-on training course builds your skills in the VMware View™ suite of products: VMware View Manager, VMware View Composer, and VMware® ThinApp™. It will provide applicationsoriented administrators with the knowledge and skills to virtualize Windows applications with ThinApp and to choose the best deployment and updating processes for their environment. The course will also present a methodology for analyzing and designing a View solution for the VMware vSphere™ infrastructure. The course is based on View 4.5 and ThinApp 4.5 and 4.6. It includes a prepaid voucher for the VMware Certified Associate 4 Desktop examination.

http://www.vmware.com/education

VMware Labs presents its latest fling XVP Manager and Converter - that helps manage non-vSphere hypervisor. VMware vCenter XVP Manager and Converter provides basic virtualization management capabilities for non-vSphere hypervisor platforms towards enabling centralized visibility and control across heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. It also simplifies and enables easy migrations of virtual machines from non-vSphere virtualization platforms to VMware vSphere.

Key Features - Management of the following Microsoft Hyper-V platforms

o Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
o Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) with Hyper-V role enabled
o Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
o Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V role enabled

• Familiar vCenter Server graphical user interface for navigating through and managing non-vSphere inventory
• Ease of virtual machine migrations from non-vSphere hosts to vSphere inventory
• Compatible with VMware vCenter Server 4.0 & 4.1
• Scalable up to management of 50 non-vSphere hosts

Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - http://labs.vmware.com/flings/xvp.

https://www.youtube.com/user/vmwarelabs

VMware vSphere For Dummies is a plain-English guide to the market-leading virtualization and cloud computing technology. With virtualization, a single server can host dozens or hundreds of virtual machines running a variety of operating systems, and even hook them together in a virtual network or cloud infrastructure. This practical guide shows you how to create a virtual system using the VMware VSphere environment.  You'll find all the information you need to understand, design, and deploy one—without getting overwhelmed with technical detail. And once you’re up and running, this book is the perfect reference for maintenance and troubleshooting issues.  

• Introduces you to virtualization and VMware’s virtualization/cloud computing technology, the most recent version is VMware vSphere Shows you how to design a vSphere environment
  
• Covers installation, deployment, management, maintenance, and troubleshooting
  
• Provides what IT managers and system administrators need to roll out their first virtualized or cloud infrastructure, or to get up to speed on VMware’s technology
  

http://www.amazon.com/VMware-vSphere-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/047076872X