Eric Sloof

I have written a few articles about VMware and the PowerShell command let’s and at the VMworld 2008 EUROPE in Cannes you can explore the  PowerShell interfaces for VMware Infrastructure in the Automating VMware with PowerShell: Hands-On Lab. But the downside of PowerShell is that there isn’t a nice user interface. Wouldn’t it be great to use the PowerShell .net library’s and connect to your Virtual Centre server with Visual Basic Express 2008. It isn’t documented but I have found a way to connect to VC using the following code :

Public Class Form1

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

        Dim Config As New VMware.VimAutomation.Client20.VimClient

        Config.ConnectivityService.Login("https", "VC.NTPRO.LOCAL", "443", "Admin", "vmware")

        MsgBox(Config.ConnectivityService.IsConnected)

        MsgBox(Config.ConnectivityService.GetApiInfo.ApiVersion)

    End Sub

End Class

If everything goes well you will receive two message boxes, the first one will tell you “True�? so you’re connected and the second one will display “2.5�?, this is the version of the API. The remainder of the code is up to you, please let me know if you can stop and start a VM. The beta version of the VI3 Windows Toolkit will be launched in March.

Pearson was kind enough to send me a review copy of the Vmware ESX Server in the Enterprise book. This book is written by Edward Haletky and all I can say is that he really did a great job. Since some of the information in his book is based on VI3 (ESX 3.0) I asked him how the readers are going to be updated to the ESX 3.5 version. I received his answer a few minutes later and at this moment he is working on the Errata. You can find it online at his website. John Troyer conducted an interview with Edward last week which can be found here.

Frane Borozan over at physical2virtual.backup created process for backing-up physical servers into virtual machines using VMware converter and VMware server. The whole process is described on the www.p2vbackup.com website. This process only uses free tools and scripts written by Frane. VMware importer will be used for importing data into virtual machines, and VMware server will be used for managing data imported into virtual machines.

I asked Frane why he created the website ?

" I created the website to help system administrators implementing backup and disaster system because backup is a very important segment of every network infrastructure. As our bosses always want the best and the most cheap solution the only way to do this right is to choose virtualization and virtual servers for backup cause in the start they are giving us big savings in one way or another. "

The official statement  from CA about VMware integration is : “Enhanced VMware integration provides increased levels of data protection and backup efficiency within virtual environments�?. But what does it mean?  Well, in the latest release of ARCserve, CA is boosting its support of the VMware virtualization platform. ARCserve r12 provides a feature that enables physical-to-virtual server restore. That means that during a disaster recovery scenario, an enterprise can initiate bare-metal recovery of physical server backups to VMware virtual servers.

Vizioncore announced vConverter, the fastest, easiest and most reliable tool for performing physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to virtual (V2V) machine conversions. Customers working with VMware, Microsoft, XenServer or Virtual Iron environments can use vConverter to significantly simplify, automate and accelerate the machine to machine conversion process, maximize system availability and eliminate any potential impact on physical systems.  As customers increasingly look to standardize on virtual infrastructures, the reliability and performance of conversion tools are critical factors in ensuring that migration projects are as non-disruptive and require as few man-hours as possible. Server consolidation initiatives often allow only a few hours at weekends in order to perform conversions, so a fast, reliable tool that automates many of the manual pre- and post-migration tasks is critical to achieving maximum successful P2V conversions per time window.

With the launch of VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5 comes a new version of VMware’s hypervisor, ESX Server 3.5. One of the core focus areas for Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 is to enable greater uptime and agility in the management of the virtual infrastructure environment. VMware has addressed this by bringing new levels of flexibility and connectivity options to Virtual Infrastructure 3 version 3.5.  This document provides information about the following storage enhancements in VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5:

o Storage VMotion
o N-Port ID virtualization support
o InfiniBand support
o SATA support
o Round robin load balancing
o VMotion with swap files on local storage
o Network based storage performance enhancements

Mastering VMware Infrastructure 3 offers a strong design component followed by an in-depth look at the day-to-day tasks that make virtualization a key technology for any enterprise. Having access to a massive server infrastructure, the authors are able to provide real-world examples and best practices that apply to the integral parts of the virtual administrator's professional life. Topics include creating and managing virtual networks, creating and managing storage devices, migrating and importing virtual machines, managing and monitoring resource access, and protecting data.

The Most Complete, Practical, Solutions-Focused Guide to Running ESX Server 3. VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise is the definitive, real-world guide to planning, deploying, and managing today’s leading virtual infrastructure platform in mission-critical environments. Drawing on his extensive experience consulting on large-scale ESX Server implementations, Edward L. Haletky brings together an unprecedented collection of tips, best practices, and field-tested solutions. More than any other author, he illuminates the real issues, tradeoffs, and pitfalls associated with ESX Server–and shows how to make the most of it in your unique environment. Haletky covers the entire lifecycle: planning, installation, system monitoring, tuning, clustering, security, disaster recovery, and much more. Throughout, he supports his recommendations with examples from real-world deployments. He also provides detailed checklists for handling crucial issues such as caching, networking, storage, and hardware selection. Many of his techniques and practices apply to all current virtualization platforms, not just ESX Server. This book will be an indispensable resource for every network architect, administrator, and IT professional who works with virtual servers. ESX Server newcomers will find the soup-to-nuts introduction they desperately need; experienced users will find an unparalleled source of field-tested answers and solutions.

Since Thinstall is acquired by VMware I was wondering what Thinstall’s advice for a virtual  SetupCapture server  would be and found the following how to : When creating a Thinstall project using SetupCapture, they recommend using a "clean" install of Windows. If you don't already have a clean PC sitting around for this purpose, they recommend using a product like VMWare to maintain a clean image of Windows.  With VMWare, you can install Windows into a virtual machine one time and take a "snapshot" of the entire machine in its clean state (no application installed). Then after you have used Thinstall's Setup Capture application to capture an application's install, you can use VMWare to discard your changes and revert the virtual machine to a clean state where it is ready to capture a new application.  The guide shows how to install and configure VMWare Server with a base clean OS. As of this writing, VMWare Server is available for free from VMWare. MSDN subscribers can also obtain a free license to a similar product from Microsoft called VirtualPC. They recommend VMWare over VirtualPC if you have a choice in selection....

Schley Andrew Kutz  over at Lostcreations introduced Monét - Monét (as in "Count de...") stands for "Monitors Events and Tasks" and monitors an ESX or VirtualCenter? server, recording tasks to standard out, a syslog server, or a Windows event log server. This application teaches several important VI3 SDK concepts: creating property filters, waiting on updates, and creating multi-threaded VI3 SDK utilities. Monét comes in a variety of flavors; it is currently implemented using Microsoft .NET with C# 2.0, the VI Perl Toolkit, and Java. There is running a tread about Monét and vm4all.com has been updated.