Virtual Architect

VMware has released another video on its channel on YouTube

So there will be a lot of labs available in Cannes, lab manager, stage manager, lifecycle manager, Site Recovery Manager, but also some to be released products like vCenter Chargeback and vCenter Orchestrator will be shown.

Besides the labs also some new sessions were announced by Richard Garsthagen. Eric Sloof gives the details about an accepted session by Viktor van den Berg.

source: http://www.run-virtual.com/?p=252 & www.vmug.nl

Today Ruben Spruijt a MVP from PQR announced on twitter Project VRC is live.

Two leading virtualization firms in The Netherlands PQR and Login Consultants have teamed up together and started “Project VRC” (Virtual Reality Check).

Their objectives according to the site:

The goal of Project VRC is to investigate, validate and give answers to the following questions:

• How does various Microsoft Windows Client OS’s  scale as a virtual desktop?
• How does a VDI infrastructure scale in comparison (virtualized) Terminal Server?
• Which performance optimization on the host and guest virtualization level can be configured, and what is the impact of these settings on user density?
• With the introduction of the latest hypervisor technologies, can we now recommend running large scale TS/CTX workloads on a virtualization platform?
• How do the two usage scenarios compare, that is Microsoft Terminal Server [TS] only, versus TS plus XenApp?
• How do x86 and x64 TS platforms compare in scalability on bare metal and virtualized environments?
• What is the best way to partition (memory and vCPU) the Virtual Machines the hypervisor host, to achieve the highest possible user density?

The first whitepapers are online, register and you can download them.

During the virtualization roundtable broadcast VMware announced to make a special community group available on VMTN dedicated to messaging (Exchange/domino and other enterprise messaging), which probably will end up in the general section.

Tonight’s roundtable theme focused on enterprise messaging. The major ingredient tonight was Exchange and Storage. Also clustering (exchange) was briefly touched. It was an interesting session and the hour was over before I noticed, I think a three hour session easily could be filled with this topic.

A couple of highlights:

• no performance difference between rdm’s or vmdk’s
• restoring a vm containing Exchange in a SMB scenario, you easily can use VCB or a backup-client from within the VM. VCB now makes use of vss (volume shadow copy services) through the VMware tools that are installed in the VM, which is no default enabled according to VMware. So VCB is now vss integrated. VCB talks to the exchange operator interface, and with vss you can safely backup the entire VM without having to worry about being left with a non-working vm when you restore the VCB backup of a VM on another host after failure.
• in order to meet support criteria, the shared storage in a MSCS must be RDM
• in case a VM booting from SAN this also should be a RDM
• array level backup also needs RDM for support reasons
• In case of high storage loads you should use dedicated lun’s
• Most issues with Exchange either virtual or physical tend to end up in storage configuration issues
• Start a design of a virtual system like it was physical. Start to identify the business requirements and the SLA-requirements, these are the most important factors that will influence the decision about the amount of mailboxes per vm, the use of clustering to mitigate risks, and therefore the amount of vm’s you will need to service your customer needs
• Best practices can be found in the best practices design guide from VMware
• As we speak VMware is busy creating some sort of a sizing tool for a virtual Exchange environment based on combined best practices from VMware and Microsoft.
• some best practices looking at the components and combining it with other parts of the infrastructure are aimed at affinity rules for cluster nodes to lower the risk of loosing an ESX host.
• Clustering was briefly mentioned, especially CCR on Windows 2008 was mentioned, CCR is build on MSCS so in that perspective it likely will be supported, but in the current version of ESX windows 2008 clustering is not supported. For Clustering there is a need for a special driver supporting shared storage and this driver is not included in the current version (ESX3.5) of ESX. CCR does not need shared storage so this cannot be an issue for not supporting it. The issue now is that it has to be extensible tested by QA before it can be supported. In the new release of VI windows 2008 clustering is supported. Win2003 with CCR is supported.
• Looking at how to provision your vm’s with resources, take the Microsoft recommendation take half of that and see how it works out.

But you can also listen to this (see sidebar)…

Tonight a new episode of the Vmware Communities Roundtable is scheduled. At 21:00 (GMT+2) the roudtable will set off hosted by VMware (John Troyer). For this episode a couple of guests with special knowledge about today’s subject are present to answer questions from the community.

Today’s subject is the virtualization of Exchange and other Enterprise messaging solutions. The roundtable is a live audio stream together with a chat channel with an option to dial in and give live audio comments.

Here’s the link to talkshoe where it is hosted, on this blog you will see an applet in the sidebar which you can use to listen to the broadcast.

No time to tune in? No problem, the session will be recorded and can be downloaded as podcast.

VMworld Europe 2009 is only five weeks away. Today I noticed (did I miss something? ) the session-scheduler on the special VMworld Europe 2009 website.

The list definitely will grow, a couple of interesting sessions is already being displayed here, together with a speakerslist. I think I will attend Brian Madden’s show: Terminal Services versus VDI.

There are still seats available. So register now you still can and don’t forget to mention your VCP number in case you are one, because this will get you a major discount.

If you are a VMware partner you may be able to visit the partnerday on monday, that’s if there are still seats available.

VCP fee: €650
Regular fee: €1095

Since this blog is running on WordPress I tend to read some articles about WordPress now and then to keep up with news. Recently I came across the WordPress.com site where I saw a promotion for the newly launched WordPress.tv site.  Security caught my attention hopefully yours too…

The WordPress.tv website is dedicated for video’s on tips, how-to’s and more about WordPress starting with video’s from WordCamp. WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.

I clicked on the promotion link to be send to the WordPress.tv website. Soon I arrived at the WordCamp video’s, picked some video’s, scanned through them and stopped to take a closer look whenever something interesting showed up. One video in particular got my attention when I scanned through it.

The video I’m talking about and also the main reason for this post is that the presenter talks about his experiences running a professional blog-network using WordPress .
The video is called “Running a Blog Network” by Jeremy Clark from Canada.

I chose to embed part two (it’s cut up into three parts).

In part two Jeremy is talking about WordPress security and about getting your WordPress Blog hacked. Also Jeremy gives some tips (do’s&don’ts) how to not be hacked.

Who’s the audience: anyone running a Wordpress blog (self hosted or hosted (e.g. via installatron)) as long as you are not using a WordPress hosting company/site like “wordpress.com” (they do the maintenance for you, and you are less flexible).

So is there no relation with virtualization at all? Sure there is I know at least one Virtualization blogger who experienced problems caused by being hacked. Maybe you noticed some time ago that Richard Garsthagen’s theme changed dramatically – from a enriched blog to a flat and simple blog. I believe the blog is restored in his original state now, but there you have some sort of virtualization link

So far the intermezzo, now some of the tips from Jeremy (watch the clip for more):

• Get the latest release of WordPress
  Just like windows WordPress is very popular and not only from an users standpoint but also for hackers, so keep your patch level up to date
• In relation to the previous point keep it simple and do not use a lot of plugins if you do not really, really need them. When upgrading to a new version of WordPress, not all plugins continue to work and they can cause a site shutdown
• Make a backup! Take a complete current version of your blog offline (a copy) or private in order to have a extra (clean and original) set of files available.
• You can easily create a backup by running a wordpress site on your laptop using a virtual appliance from the marketplace, beware with choosing the appliance you will have to put the files from your live blog into that appliance, so that must be possible.
• Test upgrades and changes first on your copy of the blog, and if they turn out to working properly you can change it in your live environment
• Use an existing template, for usability and compatibility, they have been pretested and verified to work with most known browsers

Source:
http://wordpress.tv/2008/10/30/wordcamp-ny-2008-jeremy-clarke-running-a-blog-network-part-two/

Let me know what you think!

Yesterday most of the active bloggers already mentioned the new name for the VMware’s Professional Program VMware: vExpert.

Today VMware officially announced the vExpert Program. Through this program people who contribute a lot to the community are able to be honored by giving them the vExpert title.

What does it mean? vExpert is a recognition of valuable work you’ve done to the VMware community. To be exact it is a recognition of expertise and contributing on top of a daily job. You’re entitled to use the vExpert title accompanied with a logo on your profile for a year. You also get access to extra resources within VMware.

More info and a nomination form can be found on the vExpert page: http://www.vmware.com/communities/vexpert/

Back in December Eric Sloof at NTPRO wrote about the announcement in the VMTN Roundtables by John Troyer. Back then John announced the VMware Virtualization Professional Program (VVP). Today John Troyer announced on twitter that the program will be called “VMware vExpert”. The VMware vExpert will be a program similar to Microsoft’s Most Valuable Person Program (MVP).

More details will be available soon.

Here’s a quick post about VMworld Europe 2009.

Only a month and some days away from VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes.

I’d like to share some of the cool things VMworld Europe 2009 will bring to you when you’re attending.

This year’s conference will offer even more hands-on labs than last year. This time it offers self paced labs (so no instructor led labs). Now you can start your labs anytime you want. One of the labs probably will cover VMsafe. I got an email today where Richard Garsthagen states that you even can connect using VDI, in this way you can get a chance to do some labs when all terminals are occupied (given the capacity of the lab-environment will be enough).

VMware even put together a ‘hands-on-labs’-promo video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVMxrVuaxLI

Lots of sessions of course and a solutions exchange (exhibit hall) with over 100 stands!

Keep in touch with the video channel on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/VMW0RLD

In case you’ve missed it, VMware Virtual Infrastructure containing ESX 4.0 (VI4) will be named VMware vSphere. From different sources both  inside and outside VMware, the rumour about VI4 being named vSphere is confirmed. This name change was to be expected after the major name change of all other products. Let’s hope the customers do not get too confused about the name changes. On the other side for people like me (being an consultant) there is a new opportunity/challenge to get rid of these confusions.

Several people in the blogging community already posted about the pro’s and con’s of the name change; here is a sum up:

Get Used to vSphere – blog.scottlowe.org – The weblog of an IT pro

VMware VI4- Nope, It’s Called VMware vSphere – VMblog.com

VMware Virtual Infrastructure to be renamed vSphere | VM /ETC

Interview with Bogomil Balkansky about vSphere – NTPRO.NL

Next generation of VMware Virtual Infrastructure named VMware vSphere – Boche.net

VMware vSphere- VMGuru.nl – I choose (a virtual) life!

VMware Infrastructure 4.0 becomes VMware vSphere 4.0 – virtualization.info

VMware Renames ESX 4.0 to VMware vSphere – dabcc.com

From K/L to VI4 to vSphere – rodos.haywood.org

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