Eric Sloof

Free Citrix product that allows for basic VM administration of ESX servers via a smartphone. You can download this cool VMware tool here. The Mobile VM Manager was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the VMware software development kit (SDK). The development of this application illustrates the advantages of using Visual Studio to develop applications that can be delivered to a smartphone through Citrix Presentation Server.

Viktor van den Berg is a busy guy these days. He contracted three new sponsors for the Dutch VMware User Group event 2007 in the Nieuwegein Business Center on December the 7th. Besides XTG, CDG, Dell, Etc and VMware the following three companies will be present with interesting new products: Equallogic, FalconStor and VeeAm. The speaker list is also available. Who is that intelligent looking guy at the bottom? ;-) Stay tuned for more information.

Did you ever wonder how your ESX server looks like when you lose one of your storage processors ? Well the past three weeks I  attended the SAN Technology training over at CoreEducation in Eindhoven along with 8 VMware trainers. On the last day Frederik Vos yanked out one of the storage processors from an EVA 5000.   In the picture taken by Viktor van den Berg (the professional photographer) you’ll see the paths vmhba1:0:1 and vmhba2:1:1 became red and Dead. When I plugged the storage processor back, within a few minutes the original path was restored and became active again. I learned a lot about SAN storage but the most important lesson was:  never let a bunch of trainers play with your equipment, eventually it will die. ;-)

SearchServerVirtualization is pleased to announce that their newest site,  SearchVMware.com, will be launching in mid November. This new site offers the Web's best independent resources on managing VMware environments.  You'll get expert advice on implementing VMware-related virtualization technologies for server consolidation, disaster recovery, lab and test, desktop centralization or other production usage. For more information on the upcoming SearchVMware.com and to sign up for VMware-specific newsletters, click here: http://go.techtarget.com/r/2366544/6232044

V-Ployment enables users to configure and rapidly deploy ESX Server builds to a consistent standard, whilst drastically cutting down effort, time and cost when provisioning or building additional servers. How Is V-Ployment Used? V-Ployment simplifies the build and configuration process of VMware's ESX Server (VI3), saving time and effort. It also reduces the skill level required to produce consistent ESX server builds and provides template examples containing over 5 years of VMware awarded best practice. V-Ployment is a fast, consistent and easy-to-use tool that allows you to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3.x servers rapidly in your environment. It is a .NET2 Windows application that processes configuration information from a formatted CSV file (supplied by Repton) and outputs the specified ESX host build scripts into a configured ESX boot image file (.iso).

The location where the Dutch Vmug conference will take place is the Nieuwegein Business Center. On the 7th of December over 300 enthusiastic Vmug members will enjoy a day full of virtualization. For the third year in succession you can attend a lot of really technical sessions. So if you are living near or in the Netherlands, you don’t want to miss out on this event. The agenda is online and when you take a close look at it you will see that Eric Sloof is going to talk about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. On more reason to attend ;-)

New Release of VMware Infrastructure Helps Enable SMBs to Simplify IT and Achieve Enterprise-class Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Management. VMware, Inc., the virtualization leader, today announced three new VMware Infrastructure product packages tailored for small and medium businesses (SMBs). The new bundles are designed to enable IT administrators and decision makers at SMBs to easily deploy virtual infrastructure and quickly reap its transformative benefits. The bundles are expected to be available later this year.

Simplify management of your virtual infrastructure by automating patches and updates with the new VMware Update Manager. This essential component of VMware Infrastructure makes it easy to manage tracking and patching of ESX Server Hosts, as well as select Windows and Linux virtual machines, giving you the ability to: Secure your data center against vulnerabilities, Reduce risks associated with patching of virtual machines, Reduce or eliminate downtime related to host patching.

Enable live migration of virtual machine disk files across storage arrays with VMware Storage VMotion. Building on the proven value of VMware VMotion, VMware Storage VMotion lets you relocate virtual machine disk files between and across shared storage locations while maintaining continuous service availability and complete transaction integrity. These capabilities make it possible to: Perform proactive non-disruptive storage migrations, Simplify array refreshes/retirements, Eliminate virtual machine storage I/O bottlenecks and Free up valuable storage capacity.

I have captured all the excitement and inspiration of VMworld 2007 and I uploaded my 10 minutes videos on how this year’s conference rocked my world like only the virtualization industry's largest event could do. Please rate my videos. You’ve got until October 14 to enter your rates and give me a shot at winning the Grand Prize: a fully loaded Alienware Gaming Laptop. Rock on.