Eric Sloof

I’m was one of the of the lucky bloggers who was asked to review Eric Siebert’s new book.

The Definitive Guide to Planning, Implementing, Securing, Maintaining, and Troubleshooting VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3

This is the most comprehensive guide to planning for, implementing, securing, maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting VMware VI3 in any IT environment. Written by Eric Siebert, a veteran VMware system administrator and one of only 300 vExperts named by VMware in 2009, this book will help IT professionals make the best possible decisions about VMware every step of the way.

Siebert presents extensive coverage of the upfront planning and architectural tasks that can make or break VMware deployments, sharing practical insights you’ll never find in the official documentation. Next, he presents dozens of tips, tricks, and best practices for everything from migration and configuration to backup. Along the way, Siebert introduces advanced techniques for optimizing both the efficiency of VMware system administration and the effectiveness of VMware virtual environments.

VMware ESX 4 Version: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164009 Download

VMware ESXi 4 Versson: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164009 Download

VMware vCenter Server 4 Version: 4 | 2009/05/21 | Build: Log in for build number. Download

VMware Consolidated Backup Version: 1.5 Update 1 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 150805 Download

VMware Data Recovery Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 164675 Download

VMware vShield Zones Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: R1.0G68 Download

Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Ethernet Module Version: 1.0 | 2009/05/21 | Build: 27-0.4.2 Download

With great pleasure I took notice of the fact that I’m still in the high ranks of Eric Siebert’s VMware top blog list. NTPRO.NL is staying at the third place. In June 2007 I was the first blogger who wrote about the start-up of vSphere-land. Since then Eric collected an immense number of links to all kinds of information related to VMware. He recently re-branded VMware-land to vSphere-land, you can quickly access any of the blogs from his site at the vLaunchpad. At VMworld in Las Vegas I had the pleasure to meet Eric in person, he was one of the speakers at the Vmtn Community Experts Panel. While I was attending this session I recorded the introduction on video.

VMware is pleased to announce the general availability for VMware vSphere 4 is 21 May 2009. VMware vSphere 4 extends the previous generation VMware platform – VMware Infrastructure 3 – along three dimensions: it delivers the efficiency and performance required to run business critical applications in large scale environments, it provides uncompromised control over application service levels, and it preserves customer choice of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.

Paul Davey over at Xtravirt has dropped me a quick email to ask if I have seen their new updated website and the Presentation Pack that they are giving away for free, be sure to take a look. :-)

There are 4 individual packs which contain extensively detailed icons and imagery to illustrate any virtualisation solution.  In total, there are over 350 icons to choose from.

Another great Tool from Mightycare to display all Snapshots of  virtual Maschines on VMware ESX 3.x or Virtual Center 2.x . You can see all Detailinformation, like Age and Size of Snapshots and you see also how many Gigabytes  with all Snapshots the  virtual Machine are using.

VMM offers administrators remote monitoring and support - browser-based management that works on a wide variety of mobile devices.  Developed by virtualization infrastructure expert Andrew Kutz, VMM offers:

- Monitor and manage on the go
- Monitor multiple host and VM performance stats (CPU, Memory)
- Understand datacenter health Mobile

- Monitor Host and VM Performance Statistics (CPU, Memory)
- Control VMs and Take Action on the Go (start, stop, pause, reset, disable network)
- Optimized for Mobile Devices (Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices)

The VMM beta is available to the entire VI admin universe today. If you’re willing to provide Hyper9 with a little feedback, send me an e-mail. The first 15 responders will get 50% off pricing on the already low pricing, automatic entry into Win a Mobile Device contest and a limited edition Hyper9 T-shirt.

In this economy, who wouldn’t like to win a free trip to VMworld 2009 in San Francisco? Tell Veeam why you love them and get a chance to win a free full pass to VMworld 2009 or Flip video camera!

How to participate

Between now and June 15,

Create a video about any Veeam product you love. See Contest Rules for details. Send a link to your video at video@veeam.com

Continue reading "Veeam Video Contest. Win a FREE trip to VMworld..." »

I received a great tip from Carter Shanklin via Twitter >> “Someone was asking if there was a way to detect VMs with no guest. That would be another good use for the blue screen detector". So I figured that would be indeed a great idea, the Blue Screen detector could be used to discover guestless virtual machines. A guestless virtual machine is a virtual machine without any operating system installed. I ran some tests, the image shows a virtual machine without an operating system. When the image is processed by the OCR software, the sentence “Operating System not found” is easily discovered.