Eric Sloof

Community Website for Benchmarking Virtual Machine Resource Allocations CompareMyVM.com, a free website tool that allows visitors to exchange and compare VMware ESX Server virtual machine (VM) resource allocations with that of the community at large. If you’re unsure about how much resource capacity (CPU, memory, and storage) to allocate to an Exchange VM supporting 1000 users as an example, you can use CompareMyVM to find detailed information on similar VM profiles submitted by the user community. When you visit CompareMyVM, you can take the following actions on the site:

• Submit – Anonymously contribute by submitting VM profiles via the ‘Snapshot My VMs’ Java applet or manually loading the info.

• Browse – Peruse the community submissions to learn how other are allocating resources and how to better provision specific application VMs.

• Edit – Make changes to your VM profile submissions as you change resource allocations.

• Vote – Help rank user submitted VM profiles based on proper resource allocations

The download seemed to take forever and after the first 30 MB it stalled. It took more than two hours to receive the full 100 MB. Finally I installed Veeam Monitor with the local SQL2005 Express database. I tried to monitor a vSphere server but after the initial connection, it greyed out. Adding an ESX 3.5U3 server succeeded. I could even add my VC server. The tool looks great and has a feature I didn’t see before. Veeam implemented the remote console ActiveX object. I tried out some features like generating a report and alarm modelling. Everything works great, good job Veeam.

Veeam Monitor 3.0.2 features a new functionality mode which is automatically enabled when you install the product without a license, of if your license expires. Veeam Monitor Free Edition has the following limitations compared to the full version.

- Performance history lookup is limited to 24
- Number of alarms is limited to 10
- Performance and trend reporting is disabled
- Alarm modelling is disabled

Veeam is pleased to announce a new free version of Veeam Monitor. The Veeam Monitor Free Edition is an easy-to-use VMware monitoring solution designed to meet the day-to-day needs of VMware administrators who need real-time performance monitoring and alerting. Built from the ground up specifically for the virtual world, Veeam Monitor provides a bird’s-eye view of key performance metrics across your virtual ESXi infrastructure.

With Veeam Monitor, you can view real-time resource usage data for any virtual infrastructure object or collection of objects, as well as known infrastructure events, all on a single screen. This allows you to finally see your virtual infrastructure as a unified entity, not just a collection of isolated hosts and guests.

Take screen captures and recordings in just one click using TechSmith's Jing Project. Designed to automatically work with Screencast.com, every time you create a new capture or video with Jing, it uploads to Screencast.com. You can share or organize files however you want, using all the options available with Screencast.com. (Via Cody Bunch)

Wow, the yellow ball really rocks, just try it out. It’s one of the coolest apps I’ve seen. Maybe even better then Veaam’s upcoming free monitor tool. ;-)

I’ll give you a short demo how easy it is to create a PowerShell user interface with the free PrimalForms from Sapien. At the 4th of November Sapien released their first public version of PrimalForms.

After last night’s launch, I’ve downloaded and imported the new version of PowerGUI’s VMware Infrastructure Management PowerPack.  Upgrading and importing of the PowerPack goes straight forward. Many elements in the three are completely restructured, it really rocks and it’s also vSphere compatible. Here’s a screenshot of my vSphere server running on Workstation 6.5.1 managed by PowerGUI. :-)

I just wanted to send everyone a bit of Christmas Cheer!

Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeest
English: Merry Christmas
German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
French: Joyeux Noel
Flemish: Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom
Spanish: Feliz Navidad
Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai or souksan wan Christmas
Turkish: Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad

Vsphere targets the mobile user with live feed "WHEN" the user wants it. The mobile device can be undefined, the mobile browser undefined as well as any computer [ Local / Remote ] should be able to connect to vsphere. How does VSphere Work ? VSphere functions at 3 levels:   The Image Server.   The camera System.   Connecting Clients - Local and Remote. Vsphere converts the computer on which it is loaded into a image server. The application then connects to the attached cameras. You can specify video codec, video display, video format and the video source for each camera connected. The properties page that will be displayed for each element will depend on the type of camera[s] connected to the system.

Just wanted to let you know that the download and updated information is available on the PowerGUI website at the following link.

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•  Reorganized the PowerPack structure to facilitate easier management of multiple hosts and to allow users to retrieve objects from one or more of the hosts they are managing whether they are already connected or not.
• Added support for browsing the VMware Inventory hierarchy (includes Hosts and Clusters, Virtual Machines and Templates, Networks and Datastores), including being able to browse directly into the file system on the datastores.
• Added many new links and actions.
• Exposed many more VMware Infrastructure objects through topological views and through integration in the hierarchy.
• Improved the performance of many nodes, links and actions.
• Added single sign-on support (note that connecting to multiple hosts using the same username but different passwords is currently not supported, but we are working on that and will provide support for this soon).
• Tested management against Virtual Center 2.0, ESX 3.0x and 3.5, ESXi 3.5 and Virtual Server 2.0 (note: management of Virtual Center 2.0 requires version 1.0 of the VMware VI Toolkit).
• And more!

Continue reading "PowerGUI’s VMware Powerpack available for download" »

I received a message from Twitter telling me that lasrstr is following my updates. Before I’m following back, I checked out his profile and discovered vmfaq.com. This website is all about frequently asked questions regarding VMware like “I need more performance out of my VMware environment”. Lars Troen from Norwegian also created a nice little tool called vmktree, a free web tool that shows you the graphs of resource usage of VMware ESX Server, VMware Server (on Linux), GSX Server (on Linux) and a few other data center devices (ilo/ilo2/rsa2/ds4000). On VMware Server (and GSX) and ESX 3.x vmktree provides it’s own agent that collects system statistics and does not depend on vmkusage like it does on ESX 2.x. The version for ESX3.x is still in beta and is available for download here.

Rich Brambley over at VM/ETC did some great research, he found out what Veeam’s Christmas holiday gift will be. It’s Veeam’s Monitor 3.0, a tool for performance monitoring, capacity planning and troubleshooting for your entire VMware Infrastructure Veeam Monitor is an easy to deploy, framework-independent VMware monitoring solution that was created expressly to help you better manage the health and performance of your VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) environment. Veeam Monitor provides support for troubleshooting and issue resolution, as well as trend reporting and capacity planning - equipping you to proactively manage ESX / ESXi infrastructure system health and performance today and over the long term.

Veeam will be unveiling a new free tool is on Dec. 22 – everyone who registers will automatically receive a download link that day via e-mail. This holiday gift is marked “do not open until Dec. 22.”

veeam @rbrambley Veeam does not comment on speculation or rumorsvr, dec 19 15:16:54 from digsby in reply to rbrambley rbrambley @veeam no comment is all I needed to hear ... LOL!vr, dec 19 15:18:18 from TweetDeck in reply to veeam