VMware - 51

With only one month ahead of us the Dutch VMUG event in getting closer and closer. One of the presenters on this day (December the 7th) is Eric Sloof. At exactly 14:15 he’s going to talk about Virtual Desktop infrastructure, in particular his presentation will take a close look at VMware VDM, the Virtual Desktop Manager that will be launched by VMware next year. When you want to attend the Dutch VMUG event, you have to be quick, there are only 30 places left. I hope to see you at the Nieuwegein Business Centre on the 7th of December.

If you're using VMware ESX extensively but haven't deployed a chargeback tool, or at minimum a system for monitoring resource consumption and available capacity, you will lack valuable ammunition come budget time. Usage measurements can justify infrastructure expansion, help recover costs, even transform IT into a profit center. The VKernel Capacity and Chargeback Virtual Appliance is ESX-specific software that reports on capacity and resource consumption. It also provides chargeback totals based on a user-defined unit cost for four core metering sources: CPU, RAM, storage and network usage. An unlimited number of custom fields are available for monitoring cooling costs, administrative services, software licensing or whatever else you can dream up. VKernel says the product can handle as many as 300 hosts, so there's definitely room to breathe. Read the complete article at the source.

Thevirtualsearch.com - A New Tool for Finding VMware Information. Thomas over at Scale The Mind created a wonderful way to search for information regarding VMware products and technologies. The search engine is based on Google and uses 200+ hand-picked sites which are elevated in the search results. 

The Dutch VMug event attracts a lot of attention. In September 2005, the first time this event was held the number of attendees was around 50. This number has risen over the years. The next event will take place on the 7th of December and is nearly overbooked! The Dutch VMug expects around 400 attendees. It looks like the Dutch VMug has become some sort of mini VMworld. The VMug also contracted Virtuozzo and Vizioncore as new sponsors. I have spoken with Viktor van den Berg (professional photographer an car-racer ;-) ) who is in charge of organizing the VMug event and he told me to expect one or two special surprises. I’m not going to disclose any information, but when you get the chance, register before it’s too late.

Uberpulse posted two video fragment on You Tube, in the first one Diane Greene is talking about EMC’s VMware acquisition. In the second one Diane is making a short comment about the possibility that VMware is going to buy EMC.

You can preregister for the VMworld Europe 2008 in Cannes held from 26 February till 28 February. Don't miss the first VMworld Europe - where thousands of your peers, technology providers and industry experts from around the world will gather in Cannes, France to experience the latest and greatest in virtualization technology and business solutions. VMworld Europe will also incorporate VMware TSX Europe, the company's annual technical symposium, making it ideal for attendees of all levels of experience in virtualization - from business decision-makers to technical experts and systems architects.

It’s not just a certification, like the slew of them we can all put on out resumes to impress the next interviewer, it’s a career-enhancing move. Does the certification make you any more of an expert than you may or may not be? That’d be debatable on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis, but it’s definitely a mark that you know what’s hot, and aren’t “stale�?. The hotness-factor of the VCP is high, the demand is there in the market, and the value a VCP can add to your career makes it worth the time and effort to earn. Read the rest of this great post from Joe Foran here.

Free Citrix product that allows for basic VM administration of ESX servers via a smartphone. You can download this cool VMware tool here. The Mobile VM Manager was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the VMware software development kit (SDK). The development of this application illustrates the advantages of using Visual Studio to develop applications that can be delivered to a smartphone through Citrix Presentation Server.

Did you ever wonder how your ESX server looks like when you lose one of your storage processors ? Well the past three weeks I  attended the SAN Technology training over at CoreEducation in Eindhoven along with 8 VMware trainers. On the last day Frederik Vos yanked out one of the storage processors from an EVA 5000.   In the picture taken by Viktor van den Berg (the professional photographer) you’ll see the paths vmhba1:0:1 and vmhba2:1:1 became red and Dead. When I plugged the storage processor back, within a few minutes the original path was restored and became active again. I learned a lot about SAN storage but the most important lesson was:  never let a bunch of trainers play with your equipment, eventually it will die. ;-)