Entries from Eric Sloof

Carter's team created some really cool VI Toolkit 1.5 video's.

Managing Storage with VI Toolkit 1.5
Some important fixes in VI Toolkit 1.5
Get-Stat Improvements in VI Toolkit 1.5
Resizing Guest Disks with Invoke-VMScript
HA and DRS in VI Toolkit 1.5

Carter Chanklin, Product Manager at VMware's End User Enablement, released a new version of the VI toolkit. The VI Toolkit 1.5 team has added 32 new cmdlets, enhanced the existing cmdlets, and fixed tons of bugs. If you’re the sort of person who loves fine print, you can also have a look at their release notes. The release notes has a great table that shows all the differences between 1.0 and 1.5.

The VI Toolkit 1.5 team

More and more companies are choosing to virtualize and consolidate their server environments with VMware to achieve smaller footprints and reduced operating costs, but optimizing the virtualized environment is nearly impossible without a solid strategy in place. This complete guide to VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) teaches readers how to plan for, implement, secure, maintain, monitor and troubleshoot a VI3 environment.

VMware VI3 Implementation and Administration By: Eric Siebert Last Updated on Safari: 2008/12/12 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub Date: June 26, 2009 (estimated) Pages: 400

"VMware delivered a solid fourth quarter to cap off a successful 2008. We have been executing well in a difficult economy," said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware. "Customers continue to make VMware a strategic priority because our solutions - used by more than 130,000 customers - help reduce capital and operational costs."

"In 2008, we made strategic investments in our technology, partnerships and business operations that position us well for 2009 and beyond," continued Maritz. "We are making solid progress on our three key initiatives to build on our virtualization leadership in the datacenter, the cloud and on the desktop. We are executing on our product roadmap, strengthening our ecosystem of partners, and bolstering our management team - both globally and operationally. VMware is well-prepared for the opportunities and challenges ahead."

Continue reading "VMware Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year..." »

I just received an email from the lovely Tina :-) , Education Coordinator  over at VMware. She was pleased to inform me that I have PASSED  the Enterprise Administration Exam and congratulated me. Whoohoooo, after just 10 days, I may call myself a VMware Enterprise Administrator.

On January 14th, Tina offered me an exam seat in Frankfurt. So with no preparation at all I jumped into my car, drove 450 KM and took the exam, which isn’t an easy one, even for an instructor like me.

This is the second of four parts required to achieve the VMware Certified Design Expert designation. The release of the Design Exam will probably be next month.

Forbes Guthrie over at vmreference.com has released an update of his vmreference card. There over a dozen corrections, updates, and a few small additions. He wants to thank everyone who has emailed him since the last release, particularly Simon Price and Peter Vroomen.

Wil is a software developer who has a passion for Open Source and VMware. The VI-Toolkit.com wiki can be used as a location to store scripts and snippets of source code for managing VMware hosts and their virtual machines. This new site will contain information for developers and administrators about extending and managing their VMware virtual environments. This includes everything from automation on virtual machines in VMware player up to managing your Virtual Infrastructure using the available Software Development Kits from VMware.  The focus is trying to provide examples about the source code. Over time this will hopefully include a repository of scripts and helpful snippets of code for all of you. There are currently 389 pages stored in the wiki database. Almost all of the pages are categorized, so using the categories landing page to navigate is a good way to quickly see what is currently available for you.

Usually, when you need to use any USB device (like scanner, flash-memory, etc) you plug it into USB port of your computer. But for all that,  what if you want to use an USB device in a virtual machine? FabulaTech has resolved this problem in a different way.
They've created “USB over Network” which allows to work with remote USB devices over a local network or Internet. All you have to do is to install the “USB over Network Server” software on the PC where USB devices are plugged in. “USB over Network Client” must be installed in the virtual machines, you want to give access to those very USB devices you've already plugged in.

That's all. Now any virtual machine which has installed the “USB over Network Client” can work with remote USB devices as if they were connected directly to his local PC.

Just select USB device you want to share and click share button. Click the image to enlarge.

Erik Scholten, one of the bloggers at VMGuru.nl has revealed some details about the upcoming VMworld Europe 2009 party.  Yesterday he received the latest info about the Party.

After all that learning, you’ll want to party! Come to the VMworld Europe Party on Wednesday February 25, 20:00 – 24:00 at the Ronda in Palais des Festivals. Come and enjoy music, food, refreshments and find out all about Cloud9!

Any ideas about this year’s theme, Cloud9?

Viktor van den Berg, Product Manager and Technical Trainer at the Xpert Training Group is going to present a session about the Unattended Deployment of VMware Infrastructure 3 at the VMworld Europe 2009 Cannes.

An unattended deployment of VMware infrastructure 3 reduces the time needed for installation and configuration of your VMware ESX and vCenter server(s). It also reduces the risk misconfiguration. Unattended deployment of these products will gain you a consistent configuration. At Xpert Training Group, an indepedent VMware Authorized Training Centre from The Netherlands, unattended deployments of VI-3 are used on a regular basis. In this session you will learn how to automatically deploy your ESX servers and how to connect these fresh installed ESX servers to a vCenter server. After the introduction of a step-by-step plan for unattended deployment, this session will focus on some useful scripting techniques used in a unattended deployment scenario. Expect some bash and powershell scripting in this session.