Eric Sloof

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the VMworld in Cannes. I had some great plans to shoot some real cool video’s out there but I enjoyed a skiing holiday instead. While I was in Austria I was under the impression that I was the only one who is shooting video’s at these events, but I’m not ;-). In the past few days some video footage has reached the surface and can be viewed on YouTube. Fabio Virgilio from Italy keep up the good work.

Comments: Thanks, Fabio, for re-uploading those, but the credit needs to go to Eric Nielsen and Tony Dunn from the vmworld.com crew -- see their channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/VMworldTV

Schley Andrew Kutz a Developing Consultant from Texas published the most complete and comprehensive list of VI plug-ins available at this very moment. Schley also created the VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Plug-in and Extension Programming Guide. With this guide you can create your own plug-ins. You can find it all at the viplugins.com website, have fun with it.

37migrations.com is a fun project created by the people who brought you VIPlugins.com. The purpose of this site is to allow people to upload their VMotion count to our database, which in turn allows them to plot said data on a nifty Google map, making it easy to see where in the world VMotion operations are occurring. The map plots all of the VMotion events that have occured between 00:00 and 23:59 of the current day. The 37migrations VI client plugin uploads the location id you provide when a VMotion event on your VI server occurs. This process increments your VMotion count on the 37migrations server by 1. The location you provide is not stored, instead it is turned into latitude and longitude coordinates and those are stored. We store the data in a MySQL server that only we have access to. Even if someone were to obtain the data, there is no way that it can be traced back to you. They are not out to collect data for malicious purposes, they simply think this is a neat idea.

Carter Shanklin added a blog entry to the VI PowerShell Blog and officially announced the beta to be released this month. Besides that the PowerShell team is very surprised by all the enthusiasm for the PowerShell lab at the Vmworld in Cannes.  You can also download the lab manual.

Hope you enjoyed the PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe.

We here on the VI Toolkit (for Windows) team know just how exciting PowerShell is, but sometimes we're surprised to learn just how many people agree. Our PowerShell lab at VMworld Europe was attended by over 250 students. What surprised me most though, was that we noticed at least 3 different people working on the PowerShell lab for over 3 hours each. Considering all the great sessions and other labs offered at VMworld Europe, this is really a testament to how important PowerShell is going to be for system management in the coming years.

THINK SERVICES' SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT WEST CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF THE 18th ANNUAL JOLT PRODUCT EXCELLENCE & PRODUCTIVITY AWARDS The 'Oscars' of Software Development Industry Honor Innovation and Technological Achievement.

SANTA CLARA, CA, March 6, 2008 /PRNewswire — Dr. Dobb's announced the winners of the 18th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards during last night's Award Ceremony at the Software Development West 2008 Conference and Expo, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center.  The ceremony was hosted by Robert X. Cringely, best-selling author, technology columnist, futurist and PBS personality.  The Hall of Fame award was presented to VMware Workstation by none other than C.J. Rapp, the president and CEO of JOLT.

The prestigious Jolt Awards recognize those products, books and websites that have "jolted" the industry in the past year.  Winners are selected by an esteemed panel of judges consisting of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders. JOLT, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software developers for sustenance during project development marathons, sponsors the awards.

'This year was an exceptionally exciting year for our judges, because there were so many strong contenders in every category," said Amber Ankerholz, conference manager for Dr. Dobb's Events. 'The winners reflect the great innovations thriving in the industry today, and it was especially satisfying to see industry leaders as well as newcomers changing how developers work by giving them great new products that reflect the changing software development landscape.�?

Save The Date - VMware Launches NEW Partner Conference for 2008 - Plan now for the VMware Partner Xchange 2008 - VMware's new partner event being held in San Diego, CA on May 5 to 8, 2008.

Every year, VMware holds a Partner Day the day prior to VMworld, which they will continue to do. They also host an annual Partner technical training event - TSX - every year. Last year, they received feedback from our partner community that one day isn't enough to get all the pertinent information needed to fully understand the sales, marketing and technical programs and offerings. They've decided to combine the 2 events and invite you to join them for the new VMware Partner Xchange 2008 and get the most from being a VMware VIP Partner.

eXpect more   More sessions, more content, more tracks and more time to see it all. The VMware Partner Xchange is now 2 ½ days full of content designed to provide you with the very latest in-depth sales and technical knowledge of VMware products and services. With the additional days, you will have more opportunity to network and meet with the right people to help you drive your business needs.

In simplest terms, “compatible CPUs�? for VMotion purposes means that source and target CPUs must have the same manufacturer (Intel or AMD) and be members of the same basic processor family (Pentium 4 or Core, for instance). Within a given processor family, the source and target CPUs must also have certain common and extended features implemented (or not implemented, depending on the specific feature) for VMotion to succeed.

To determine if the source and target CPUs meet VMotion requirements, VirtualCenter compares the target CPU to a default bit mask definition. The default bit mask has evolved with each version of VirtualCenter to support (or preclude) VMotion migration given a specific set of CPU features. For example, the VirtualCenter 1.x bit mask doesn’t flag the NX (Intel) or XD (AMD) bits, but the VirtualCenter 2.x bit mask does.

How do I override VMotion compatibility restrictions for CPU mismatch? By default, VirtualCenter allows migrations with VMotion between compatible source and destination CPUs only. This Knowledge Base article provides information about how to override CPU-compatibility constraints; when it is appropriate to do so; and provides links to additional information and resources.

Forbes Guthrie over at vmreference.com released a new version of the VMreference card. He has made several corrections, added a few extra snippets and dusted it with a sprinkling of handy tips and tricks. The biggest change is a small 3i section. He has been wanting to do this for a while, but hasn’t had a chance to play with 3i since its beta. There is quite a lot of information around about 3i now, but he just wanted to add the sort of stuff people would actual use. Forbes is also thinking about a release of the  "vmreference OnTap card", this OnTap card will contain information about the OnTap foundations course he attended last week.

Frane Borozan over at physical2virtual.backup has launched a new product called Terminal services log. It will provide exact information for your users activity on terminal servers, showing how much user was total connected on server, how much of that time was idle (not working anything) and how much user was active (working something on server).

Main features of terminal services log:
- Connection start (date and hour)  user  duration
- Total time connected
- IDLE time
- Active time
- Disconnected session time
- Connection end (date and hour)
- Status

Reports are available also as summary by each date. Summaries consist of:
- Times logged in
- First log in
- Last log out
- Total time on server
- Total time idle
- Total time disconnected

As you continue to grow your VMware ESX virtual environment, managing capacity grows increasingly important — and increasingly difficult. Which makes quickly identifying and resolving capacity bottlenecks essential. That's why Alex Bakman would like to offer you this free white paper: How to Resolve Capacity Bottlenecks and Ensure Great Performance in Your VMware ESX Environment. In this guide, Alex Bakman, a 27-year computer-industry veteran, discusses the impact of server virtualization on the data center and capacity management — one of the biggest headaches in a virtual environment. Plus, you'll get Alex's formula for:

- Finding current capacity bottlenecks
- Identifying future capacity bottlenecks
- Finding pockets of capacity in your current environment