Eric Sloof

Operations Management disciplines are converging in the cloud. Performance, capacity and configuration management are becoming inseparable due to the dynamic nature of converged infrastructure. Traditional tools and processes designed for silo-ed, static physical infrastructures don’t provide the automation and control needed to effectively manage highly virtualized and private cloud environments.  This guide will walk you through some key use cases for VMware vCenter Operations Standard to help you conduct a successful product evaluation. The content includes an overview, installation and configuration, and key use cases of VMware vCenter Operations Standard to demonstrate how to diagnose and correct performance problems in the virtual infrastructure.

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10178 (via @VMwareStorage)

Stephane Lalonde has been a Senior SE at VMware for 4 years. In previous roles he has worked for Citrix for over 4 years and have done extensive work on their SSL VPN solution. Stephane has also worked at one of Cisco's largest VARs where he implemented various solutions.

Stephane has created a presentation called "Networking From Physical to Virtual", the goal of this presentation is to cover networking in a VMware environment and showing the transition from a fully physical datacenter to a virtualized datacenter from a networking perspective.  The talking points are all in the speakers notes and all slides are screen captures or images to help describe the networking environment.

 

Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s command line shell and scripting language. PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and helps in system administration. By providing full access to COM (Component Object Model) and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), PowerShell enables administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems.

Administrators can manage the computers in the enterprise and perform administrative tasks from the command line using built-in cmdlets, which are specialized .NET classes. Unlike most other command line interfaces, PowerShell commands have been standardized using a verb-noun naming convention known as a cmdlet. This convention provides a clear description of the cmdlet, and enables access to different Windows components like the registry, file system, services, processes, and others. There are sufficient cmdlets to support most administrative activities.

VMware View PowerCLI cmdlets are provided by a dll, which is installed as part of the VMware View Connection Server (Server\bin\PowershellServiceCmdlets.dll) under the VMware Connection Server installation). This dll, once registered with PowerShell, allows all VMware View PowerCLI cmdlets to be run on the VMware Connection Server.

 This technical paper covers the integration of VMware View with Windows PowerShell and PowerCLI.

SlideRocket was founded in 2007 with the vision of building a better presentation experience, one that provides for every part of the presentation lifecycle and helps you make great presentations. SlideRocket is committed to providing the best presentation experience to individuals and businesses around the world through innovative and compelling software-as-a-service.

Today, we are thrilled to announce that SlideRocket has been acquired by VMware, marking a dramatic acceleration in SlideRocket’s mission to reinvent presentations and change the way businesses and individuals communicate. VMware and SlideRocket share an affinity for seizing big opportunities to reinvent how people work, and we are aligned in our vision for the future of cloud applications – it’s a future where work becomes collaborative, social, mobile, and even fun!

Continue reading "SlideRocket has been acquired by VMware" »

VMware Labs present its latest fling PXE Manager for vCenter. VMware PXE Manager is a management tool that supports automatic PXE boot (network boot using PXE) and automatic customization of large numbers of ESXi systems, other features are:

• Automated provisioning of new ESXi hosts stateless and stateful (no ESX)
• ESXi host state (firmware) backup, restore, and archiving with retention
• ESXi builds repository management (stateless and statefull)
• ESXi Patch management
• Multi vCenter support
• Multi network support with agents (Linux CentOS virtual appliance will be available later)
• Wake on Lan
• Hosts memtest
• vCenter plugin
• Deploy directly to VMware Cloud Director
• Deploy to Cisco UCS blades

 VMware PXE Manager


Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - http://labs.vmware.com/flings/pxe-manager

 

Continue reading "VMware Labs present its latest fling - PXE..." »

This self-paced training course covers the requirements and effects of transitioning your VMware vSphere™ environment to VMware® ESXi. It provides the knowledge necessary to make fundamental design decisions and successfully add ESXi to a deployed vSphere environment. This course is based on ESXi 4.1.

Special Note: For those who prefer to learn this content in a classroom environment, whether virtual or face-to-face, there are several two-day classes scheduled worldwide.  For a fee, you will receive the added value of hands-on lab exercises as well as interaction with fellow students and an instructor.

Module 1: Transition to ESXi Overview
Module 2: Compare and Contrast VMware ESXi and VMware ESX
Module 3: Install and Configure VMware ESXi
Module 4: Script Interfaces and Command Line Tools
Module 5: Performing Management Tasks

Become a true ESXi expert with the new FREE VMware eLearning course and ebook offer!

At the end of the course, you should be able to:

•  Identify ESXi installation and configuration procedures
•  Leverage scripting interfaces to manage ESXi
•  Identify risks when migrating to ESXi
 
Who Should Attend? System administrators, systems engineers, technical support engineers, and consultants responsible for managing and supporting a vSphere installation.

Check the compliance of your IT infrastructure against specific standards and best practices that are applicable for the environment. The Compliance Checker is a free, downloadable, fully-functional product for checking compliance of your environment to help you ensure that it remains secure and compliant.

This product is a robust utility providing detailed compliance checks against the VMware vSphere Hardening Guidelines. Unlike other free tools in the market, Compliance Checker for vSphere is a fully functional product. For example, you can print the reports that Compliance Checker produces, and can run compliance checks across multiple ESX and ESXi servers at once.

VMware Compliance Checker for vSphere lets you:

• Check compliance for multiple VMware ESX and ESXi servers concurrently - Run compliance check on up to 5 ESX or ESXi servers at a time and produce reports.

• Supports VMware vSphere hardening guidelines - Perform checks on VMware ESX and ESXi servers to conform with the latest VMware vSphere hardening guidelines.

• Analyze compliance assessment results - After a compliance run, you can view the assessments by ESX/ESXi hosts, plus guests.

• Save and Print assessment results -  You can save and print the compliance assessment reports to your team for review and they can be saved for archival needs.

http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere-compliance-checker/

VMware Certified Associate 4, Desktop Exam LIVE. No pre-reqs, but skills required. Get certified! VMware offers world-class Desktop certifications designed to validate and recognize individuals with the technical capabilities and real-world experience needed to increase efficiency, reliability, and availability when delivering desktops from the datacenter as a managed service.

VMware Education recommends the listed courses in preparation for the VCA4-DT exam but there are no course requirements in order to take the exam.

 
 VCA4-DT Resources

VMware Labs present its latest fling, the Ruby vSphere Console - RVC is an open source project. Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) is a console UI for vSphere, built on the RbVmomi bindings to the vSphere API. RVC is a console UI for VMware ESX and vCenter. The vSphere object graph is presented as a virtual filesystem, allowing you to navigate and run commands against managed entities using familiar shell syntax.
Features:

• Tab Completion
• Marks
• Ruby Mode
• VMODL Introspection
• Multiple Connections
• Extensibility

This video will show you how to get up-and-running. You'll learn how to install the Ruby vSphere Console and how to connect to the vCenter Server. I'll also show some basic tasks like powering off and -on virtual machines.

Update: Rich Lane has released RVC 1.3.5 which fixes a bunch of bugs on Windows, including VMRC support. He has created a wiki page at https://github.com/vmware/rvc/wiki/Running-on-Windows

Arista vEOS is a virtual-machine-based or switch-integrated implementation of Arista EOS that integrates with VMware vSphere to provide the network operator visibility and configuration access to the virtual switches within the virtual server environment. In this video I'll show you how to deploy the vEOS virtual appliance.