Eric Sloof

I met Michel Roth (thincomputing.net) at the XTG V-Event last week and we were talking about blogging :-) and his white box. He finally managed to build it and it looks impressive. It’s small aesthetical, pleasing and under $1000.

In my day (and night?) job working for Quest I get to demonstrate the Virtual Access Suite (VAS) a lot. In short this means that I have to demo a VAS infrastructure at the very least consisting of a VAS Connection Broker, a VAS Terminal Server, a VAS Virtual Desktop, a Domain Controller, a VirtualCenter server and a ESX host. With a lot of time and patience one would be able to get pretty far with this with a decent laptop up until ESX. ESX will not run on "normal laptop hardware". Period. So let me share how I found my ultimate ESX Whitebox.

Kodiak, from BlueBear, enables unprecedented visibility into and control over virtualized infrastructures, regardless of size or composition. As the industry's only application that's both hypervisor-agnostic and cross-platform, Kodiak sets a new standard in versatility, pushing virtualization out of the datacenter and catalyzing it's widespread adoption throughout the information technology landscape. BlueBear believes useful software should be available to anybody who needs it, and at no cost; hence Kodiak's price, totally free!

http://www.bluebearllc.net/kodiak/video/

VMware launched a brand new website for their upcoming VMworld Europe 2009  Cannes, France. You can take a peek at http://www.vmworldeurope.com. The registration page is already active and there's also a rough version of the agenda online.

Virtually anything is possible at VMworld Europe 2009 From the datacenter to the desktop, virtualization is having an increasingly profound impact on information technology design and management. Now in its second year, VMworld Europe will continue to set the virtualization agenda, inspiring all IT professionals looking for actionable ideas, innovative products and best practices for virtualizing your enterprise.

So join Europe's largest virtualization community from 24-26 February at the The Palais des Festival, Cannes, as VMware hosts VMworld Europe 2009.

The /n software NetCmdlets extend the features of Microsoft Windows PowerShell with a broad range of network management and messaging capabilities. The current release contains more than 30 Cmdlets providing access to network and host protocols such as SNMP, LDAP, DNS, Syslog, HTTP, WebDav, FTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, Rexec/RShell, Telnet, and more.

NEW: NetCmdlets V2.0 - BETA

NetCmdlets V2 is packed full of exciting new features including PowerShell Server (formerly PowerShell Remoting), Parameter Sets, Object Pipelining, and new Cmdlets for SSH Enabled Remoting and Amazon Web Services (S3) Integration.

Today VMware invited their Benelux Partners at the VMware Partner Forum 2008 which was held in the Brasschaat, Belgium. I attended the forum and managed to collect some video footage. You can see a part of the opening keynote from Bas van Kesteren, Marc Groetelaars and the infamous Richard Garsthagen. During this Benelux VMware Partner event, the attendees were informed of VMware’s vision & strategy, market opportunity, product roadmap and also marketing activities. They also learned about new sales, presales and marketing tools, and had the opportunity to network with peers and the Benelux VMware team.

VMware Partner Forum 2008 Video from Eric Sloof NTPRO.NL on Vimeo.

The Dutch VMUG event attracts a lot of attention. In September 2005, the first time this event was held the number of attendees was around 50. This number has risen over the years. The next event will take place on the 12th of December and is open for registration. The Dutch VMUG expects around 600 attendees. It looks like the Dutch VMug has become some sort of mini VMworld. :-)

Update : 502 attendees already have signed up for the Dutch VMUG event.

VmwAROS is a pre-configured AROS desktop envirnoment available in two formats: a bootable live-CD installable on the hard drive, and a disk image for VMware. The AROS Research Operating System is a open source lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level, while improving on it in many areas.

VmwAROS VE (Virtual Environment) is a complete AROS desktop environment running on VMware virtual machines. Targeted to final users and to developers, VmwAROS allow testing and using the AROS Research Operating system without really installing it on the hard drive. It can be a reliable way to access this interesting OS for people with powerful, but yet not supported hardware.

You can use OVF to distribute and import virtual machines and appliances. For example, you can create a virtual machine within VMware Infrastructure, then use OVF Tool to export it into a bundle for installation, either within your organization, or for distribution to other organizations. OVF facilitates the use of virtual appliances, which are preconfigured virtual machines that package applications with the operating system they require. Because OVF runs on multiple platforms, you can make a virtual appliance ready to run without significant additional configuration.

The son of a former Zimbabwean farmer, Maritz, who in the 1980s and 1990s served as one of Bill Gates’s top executives at Microsoft, has been appointed CEO of VMware, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech companies.

The University of Cape Town computer science graduate and Hilton College old boy was in SA this week on VMware business. He admits he misses Southern Africa, though he emigrated in 1977 to seek a career in hi-tech. After a brief stint in the UK, he moved to California to take a job at chipmaker Intel. “Through Intel I met these two crazy guys in Seattle, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, and, in 1986, right after it had gone public, I joined Microsoft,” he says. “I remember thinking that the ride was already over. But, as it turns out, I was literally involved in the birth of the industry.”

Read the full story here.

We can expect some challenging one-liners again since Hugo Peeters is back from his vacation. Hugo was offline the past few weeks enjoying the luxury live in California. During the VMworld in Las Vegas Hugo’s site peetersonline.nl was mentioned in the PowerShell presentation from Carter Shanklin. After Carter’s presentation ended I was able to attend a little interview where he mentioned Hugo’s site again. Hugo already posted two new articles:

Some advice on creating Powershell scripts

Creating a Powershell script CAN be quite difficult. How to get the output you want? Where to start? Let me try to get you started by providing a structure you can follow. I’m not saying this is THE way, but it’s MY way. Hope it helps you and please do comment if you have additions or another way!

Changing your VMware license server

Hi everybody, I’m back! Before you ask, I’ve had a great holiday, thank you. Now let’s continue having fun with Powershell and the VI Toolkit! I’ve showed you a trick earlier that allows you to find your Virtual Center Server Settings. The License Server settings for instance. But changing these settings can prove to be quite a challenge.