Entries from Eric Sloof

Rock Cookie Bottom is a musician and songwriter. He Has been writing a song a day since January 1st, 2009 and has partially turned the project into a business.

If you’re running a vCenter server in combination with the free SQL 2005 Express Edition which is installed by default, there are a few drawbacks. The first problem is sizing, the SQL 2005 express database cannot grow above the 4 Gb limit. You can use the database calculator to check if the number of ESX servers and virtual machines will fit into the 4 Gb. The second drawback is the absence of an SQL agent which can be used to create a scheduled backup for your vCenter database. I’ve found a little free tool which is capable of creating a scheduled backup of the vCenter database  even though it’s hosted on the SQL 2005 Express edition.

The SQLScheduler v0.2.0.0 – Beta is a fully functional client/server application written in C# that allows administrators to schedule various SQL jobs for SQL Server Express and other versions of SQL Server. The server component (SQLScheduler.WindowsService.exe) is a Windows service that is responsible for executing jobs and sending success or failure notifications to server operators. SQLScheduler.exe is a graphical front-end that allows to easily schedule different jobs.

This weekend I've picked up the VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Instructor Manual at DHL in Rotterdam. I did a quick review and it looks very advanced, this is going to be a good one.
Technical personnel who respond to incident reports in VMware vSphere deployments are typically system administrators whose expertise focuses on Windows or Linux system administration. These personnel must be able to rapidly and effectively troubleshoot issues. This new course will help prepare vSphere system administrators to troubleshoot a variety of problems caused by mis-configurations and hardware failures.

The Goals of this new course is to prepare you with the advanced knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the vSphere virtual infrastructure and to increase your skill and competence in using the command line to analyze and configure VMware ESX and ESXi hosts.

VMware education services has launched a new course: VMware vSphere Troubleshooting

Next week I’m going to present at the Dutch VMUG event. My session is dealing with the Virtualization EcoShell. At the end of my session the famous Scott Herold will appear on stage to inform you about the upcoming features in the next release of the Virtualization EcoShell. So be sure to attend, you can find me in the Grand Hall "Voor" at 10:50-11:50.

Managing VMware vSphere 4 m.b.v. de Virtualization EcoShell
Eric Sloof - VMUG / ntpro.nl

Eric Sloof zal in deze sessie laten zien dat het werken met PowerShell in een VMware omgeving niet moeilijk is. Sterker nog, met de Virtualization EcoShell wordt alle PowerShell code automatisch gegenereerd. Het creëren van een rapport in Visio of het uitvoren van een configuratie aanpassing op een groot aantal VMs of ESX servers wordt met de EcoShell nauwkeurig en automatisch uitgevoerd. Je kunt al vast een kijkje nemen op http://www.thevesi.org/

This morning I’ve recorded a real cool VMware View 4 PCoIP demo delivered by Willem van Engeland. In this demo Willem shows what impact a limited bandwidth of 5Mb/s and 1Mb/s can have on the performance of your view virtual desktop. The great part is that he switched back and forth between the RDP protocol and the PCoIP protocol. This way you get a real good comparison between both protocols and you can see how PCoIP improves the video quality even though the bandwidth is limited. The video is presented in the Dutch language and the audio quality is poor but take a peek at it, it’s really great stuff.

Azlan has invited me to attend the “VMware View 4 launch event”. This morning I charged my camcorder and drove up to “De Olifant” in Breukelen. After the opening speech presented by Robert Snel and a market overview of desktop virtualization, VMware’s System Engineer Ton Hermes delivered a real good session called “What’s new in the View 4 Solution”.

    

After a short break Willem van Engeland did a real cool live demo of View 4. The morning ended with a POC and a wrap-up session followed by a good lunch. During this event I’ve shot some pictures and have captured 10 minutes of video footage.  I’ve also recorded Willem's complete View 4 demo with my Flip.

This evening I’ve received a vCalandar from my fellow vExpert and virtualization friend Jason Boche and I’m really proud of it. The vCalendar is a collection of VMware virtualization facts, tips, best practices, configuration maximums and historical events delivered to your desktop daily. The rumour goes that the vCalendar will be widely available at the Dutch VMUG event, the 11th of December.

http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/vcalendar/

http://boche.net/blog/

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1000258 This video provides steps for configuring networking in ESX using the command line from a remote console. The video provides the commands for creating a vSwitch, portgroup, and vswif.

Just used http://twilk.com to put my friends' faces on my Twitter background. Check it out!

The name Twilk is a combination of Twitter and milk. Milk has nothing to do with the service other than the creator of Twilk really likes milk. It helps that the domain name is short, and was available.

How are people arranged on the background?

People are sorted by how much you mention their user name ( @ replies, retweets, etc ) in your Twitter feed. It goes from top to bottom starting in the first two columns on the left. If you mention people the same amount (or not at all), the order of those people will be random.

This cool video was taken at the French VMware User Group meeting last Thursday. It shows VMware's bare metal view (client) hypervisor running on a laptop.