Eric Sloof - Entries from November 2014

Thursday, November 27. 2014

Reference Architecture: Creating a VMware Software-Defined Data Center

This reference architecture describes an implementation of a software-defined data center (SDDC) usingVMware vCloud® Suite Enterprise 5.8, VMware NSX for vSphere 6.1, VMware IT Business Management Suite Standard Edition 1.1, and VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0 to create an SDDC.

This SDDC implementation is based on real-world scenarios, user workloads, and infrastructure system configurations. The configuration uses industry-standard servers, IP-based storage, and 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking to support a scalable and redundant architecture.

An overview of the solution and the logical architecture as well as results of the tested physical implementation are provided. Consult with your VMware representative as to how to modify the architecture to suit your business needs.

Saturday, November 22. 2014

VMware Learning Zone

The VMware Learning Zone is a new subscription-based service that gives you a full year of unlimited, 24/7 access to official VMware video-based training.

Top VMware experts and instructors discuss solutions, provide tips and give advice on a variety of advanced topics.

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Your paid subscription also gets you:

Training on the latest products and technologies with new titles added all the time giving you the most up-to-date information on how to optimize your VMware solutions.
Powerful search functionality to find what you need – and fast. Quickly search for keywords across our entire video library or search within a specific video and drill down to your keyword.
Content that delivers the help you need on relevant and advanced topics including troubleshooting, deployment and configuration helping you effectively resolve issues, extend functionality and increase productivity.
Mobile and community access that allows streaming to your tablet, smart phone or laptop along with functionality that lets you take notes, make comments, create bookmarks and join channel discussions.

Friday, November 21. 2014

New Training Course - VMware Mirage [V5.0] and Horizon with View [V6.0]: Fast Track

This extended-hours, hands-on training course provides students with skills that they need to deploy a unified image management system using VMware Mirage as well as installing, configuring, and managing the VMware Horizon View component of VMware Horizon.

Students learn how to configure security, manage images, perform a Windows migration, set up endpoint protection, and perform various management functions with Mirage.

Students will also gain practical experience with View concepts through the completion of hands-on labs that include VMware View Manager, VMware View Composer, and the View security server.

Wednesday, November 19. 2014

VMworld 2014 - Advanced Network Services with NSX

Applications are today complex and require on the network side much more than switching and routing. Clouds should be able to host any applications, including your complex applications.

NSX offers a wide range of network services, such as but not limited to firewalling, load balancing and vpn.

In addition with its distributed model of network services NSX can scale to the most demanding applications and thus support your most complex and high-demanding applications.

Friday, November 14. 2014

Free e-learning course - vRealize Orchestrator for vRealize Automation [V6.1] Fundamentals

The VMware vRealize Orchestrator for vRealize Automation Fundamentals eLearning course is designed to educate students about important workflows that can be accomplished out-of-the-box with vRealize Automation. It provides examples of how vRealize Orchestrator can be used to extend the power of the product with customized workflows.

There are three lessons in this course.

Assess the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Anything as a Service (XaaS) extensibility features for vRealize Automation.
Describe Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Anything as a Service (XaaS) functionality with vRealize Orchestrator.
Describe Anything as a Service (XaaS) functionality with Advanced Service Designer (ASD).

Register here

Thursday, November 13. 2014

Cloud Automation Savings Calculator

This calculator shows the size of your physical and virtual IT environment and projected growth rates. These assumptions are for the next 12 months. The results are presented in the "Cloud Automation Savings Report"

The results in this report are based on the cost savings that can be achieved by deploying an on-demand cloud infrastructure that automates the delivery of IT services within predefined governance policies.

Brain Graf about PowerActions

PowerActions integrates the vSphere Web Client and PowerCLI to provide complex automation solutions from within the standard vSphere management client. PowerActions is deployed as a plugin for the vSphere Web Client and will allow you to execute PowerCLI commands and scripts in a vSphere Web Client integrated Powershell console.

Furthermore, administrators will be able to enhance the native WebClient capabilities with actions and reports backed by PowerCLI scripts persisted on the vSphere Web Client. Have you ever wanted to “Right Click” an object in the web client and run a PowerCLI script?

Now you can! For example I as an Administrator will be able to define a new action for the VM objects presented in the Web client, describe/back this action with a PowerCLI script, save it in a script repository within the Web client and later re-use the newly defined action straight from the VM object context (right click) menu.

Monday, November 10. 2014

VMware Workspace Portal 2.1 Reviewer's Guide

The VMware Workspace Portal 2.1 Reviewer’s Guide is comprehensive technical overview of VMware Workspace Portal. Workspace Portal enables you to build a self-service app store that provides your end users with access to any application from any device. As an IT professional, you can use Workspace Portal to deliver, manage, and secure enterprise assets and support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives from a central location.

This guide provides a hands-on evaluation of some of the key features of Workspace Portal. It walks you through a series of exercises, each building on the one before. When you complete the exercises, you will have a working configuration and an understanding of the key features and capabilities of Workspace Portal in the context of meaningful use cases.

The installation and configuration sections present a basic deployment of a Workspace Portal appliance. You can then use your Workspace Portal appliance to entitle users to managed multi-device access to Microsoft Windows applications and VMware Horizon with View desktops. In the remaining sections, you set up additional services in Workspace Portal to provide access to Remote Desktop Services (RDS)-hosted applications, VMware ThinApp packages, and Citrix published applications.

This guide is designed for evaluation purposes and based on minimum resources to enable you to evaluate the capabilities and concepts of Workspace Portal without a dedicated test lab. This evaluation environment should not be used as a template for deploying a production environment.

vSphere Replication Calculator

Storage and network bandwidth requirements can increase when using vSphere Replication. Besides the network transfers of replicated data from the primary site to the vSphere Replication server, and the transfers from the vSphere Replication server to the ESXi host, the host writes the data to storage once and then, due to the use of redo log snapshots, reads the data back and rewrites it to storage.

The amount of network bandwidth that vSphere Replication requires to replicate virtual machines efficiently depends on several factors in your environment.

Network-based storage
Size of dataset
Data change rate
Recovery point objective (RPO)
Link speed

To further help you to estimate the amount of bandwidth that vSphere Replication requires, VMware provides the online vSphere Replication Calculator.

Thursday, November 6. 2014

Scott Lowe speaks to VMworld TV about his VMworld experience

Talking with Eric Sloof, VMware's Scott Lowe discusses his VMworld so far.

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