Eric Sloof

Lanamark  a provider of virtualization capacity planning and IT assessment software, announced general availability of Lanamark Suite 2009. The new version includes support for monitoring Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX, supplements server information with power consumption, form factor, age and warranty metrics, and simplifies capacity planning with significant user experience and reporting automation enhancements.

At VMware Partner Exchange 2009 you will be given an opportunity to meet face-to-face with the VMware Sales Executives and team members. On Tuesday, April 14, get first-hand information on go-to market strategies in your region. VMware Area Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents of the Americas Commercial Sales and Partner Directors will present and be available to answer your questions.

VMware Partner Exchange will take place April 14-16, 2009 in Orlando, Florida. Check out the official VMware Partner Exchange website for more information.

This afternoon, I was jammed in traffic again. Luckily I burned the MP3 of the PowerScripting Podcast with Carter Shanklin on a CD and listened to the broadcast in my car. At one point Carter was referring to a new verbose logging option which enables you to intercept the soap traffic between you VI-Client and the vCenter server. This gives you the opportunity to find out how to call the really advanced stuff from PowerShell. Carter used it to fix a bug in a resize command-let. When I finally got home, I had to find out the command options and was staring at one of the most beautiful log files I ever saw, it’s brilliant.

Just start your VI-Client with the following options and you will receive massive output.

VpxClient.exe -log +sd

You can find the log files here: C:\Users\Eric Sloof\AppData\Local\VMware\vpx vi-client.txt

PowerShellPlus v2.1 Beta is live and publicly available! here's the exciting information about an early look at what the PowerShellPlus team has been working on. PowerShellPlus version 2.1 introduces several new and cool features focused on reducing the PowerShell learning curve, increasing the productivity of PowerShell development and exercising the capabilities of PowerShell 2.0. The new features include:

• Code sharing – Enables you to leverage the wealth of scripts that reside in the PowerShell.com and PoshCode.org libraries. Increase your productivity by quickly and easily searching and grabbing the scripts from those libraries. You can also submit your own scripts to the PowerShell.com library directly from PowerShell Plus Editor
• Visual Basic support – The PowerShell Plus Editor can now edit and run Visual Basic scripts
• STA mode support – Enables you to produce pretty cool looking GUI’s with Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) using PowerShell 2.0.
• PowerShell Assembly Detection – Gives the Learning Center an auto-upgrade path if PowerShell v2 CTP3 is detected and then displays the most up-to-date information
• Learning Center Auto-Load - Makes searching for a request with a single match much easier to use since the topic will load automatically, saving extra keystrokes
• Cmdlet parameter position – Shows you additional information in the code completion popup window about parameters including position and type
• Console size overlay – Shows you the height and width of the Console when you resize it
• Additional Sample Scripts - Active Directory, IIS 7.0 and MySQL
• PowerShell v2 CTP3 Support – Including Block Comments and the $Profile variable  

In this way VMware is enabling Partners to Optimize Devices for VMware View and Provide Low-Cost Desktop Solutions. VMware View enables IT organizations to safely host user desktops in the datacenter, while letting users access their personalized desktop environments from almost any device, at any time – all at a lower cost of ownership than traditional desktop environments. Now, VMware is providing VMware View Open Client for partners, enabling them to use VMware View source code to optimize their products to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to users. In addition, partners will be able to use the source code to help accelerate the development and delivery of solutions for enterprises to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely and at substantially lower operating costs.

Tom Howarth already spread the word. Richard Garsthagen has confirmed, the VMworld Europe VMTN Panel gets green light. It’s not going to be a break-out session, VMware choose another format for this year’s VMTN Panel. It will be more like a meet and greet. Richard is working out the details. In the picture you can get a glimpse of the VMworld Europe Community Lounge. Looks cool, doesn't it. The attendees so far are:


Duncan Epping of Yellow Bricks fame
Alan Renouf of powershell fame
Steve Beaver of Tripwire
Eric Sloof of NTPRO.NL
Tom Howarth The community King and the driving force behind PlanetVM.

Xtravirt released a breakthrough for hosting ESX 3.5 Server as a VM on VMware Player. Xtravirt, known for their 'VI in a box' methodology whereby a full version of ESX Server 3.5 can be installed within a VMware virtual machine.

Xtravirt's CTO, Paul Davey comments about the great benefits of this new release. "'ESX on Workstation' was a very popular way of providing a learning and demonstration environment for VMware VI3. 'ESX 3.5 on Player' takes this to a whole new level - VMware Player is freely downloadable and utilises thin disk provisioning, so now the entire package is not only free, but incredibly lightweight.".

Paul also goes on to say, "Current indications from the ESX 4 BETA also look very promising for this to continue."

Additionally Xtravirt have written installer software which fully automates the deployment of the VM, making the process as simple as possible.

The white paper with installer can be downloaded from http://knowledge.xtravirt.com/white-papers/esx-3x.html.

This morning I finally received an email from the VMworld Content team.

Thank you for submitting your session for VMworld Europe 2009!

Your submission: VMware Lab at Home

How to VMotion from your kitchen to you bathroom? This session is filled with tips and trick about building a VMware lab environment at your own home. The average VMware fan doesn’t have enough money to buy hardware that’s on the Hardware Compatibility List. In this session you will learn how to Install VMware ESX on cheap hardware and still get the performance you want. I also will be looking at installing VMware ESX in workstation. There’s also a special focus on SATA and IP storage. These storage techniques can be used to setup shared NFS or ISCSI servers. Like in a production environment, the home lab’s power consumption, noise and heat are most important otherwise you partner may be the one who will pull the plug.

Your submission: VMware PowerShell tools integration

This presentation focuses on the tools that are currently available for PowerShell. It also gives you an insight at the VMware PowerShell extensions and presents a short induction to PowerShell as a scripting language. We are going to take a look at PowerShell integration in the vClient and a lot of other tools like AdminScriptEditor, PrimalForms, PowerGUI, PowerShellPlus and PowerGadgets

We received over 400 submission, but can only select 100 sessions and I am sorry to say that your session(s) did not make the selection. While your session(s) cannot be presented at VMworld Europe, you can still post your content to VMworld.com to share with the VMworld community and virtualization industry as a whole.

View Manager 3.0.1 includes the following enhancements:

• Integrates the ThinPrint Virtual Channel Gateway module so that View deployments can communicate with ThinPrint server. Important: ThinPrint's .print engine for VMware View must be installed on the target print server prior to installing View 3.0.1. Print jobs originating from virtual machines are subject to different licensing criteria on ThinPrint server. In order to provide the print server with information about the origin of a print request, View uses the TPVCGateway module as the print provider.

Continue reading "What's New in View Manager 3.0.1 " »