After posting the video demonstrating SRM, I received a lot of feedback and new tips and tricks. One I thought I should share with you all. If you really got exited after watching my video about SRM (which I hope of course 
) then you should check this out:
http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1235
It is a document that explains how you can run ESX servers with the entire SRM setup on your laptop
Hello Everyone,
After more then a year making the vi3demo video, we finally made some time to shoot a new video about the new VMware Site Recovery Manager. This video hopefully explains what SRM can do and also of course give a live demo of the product in Action
Eric Siebert at Virtual Strategy Magazine has created a great overview of the top 10 powershell scripts for you VMware environment. Powershell is really getting more and more interest from people managing their IT environment and especially in the virtual world Powershell is awesome. If you have not looked at powershell yet, I can highly recommend it.
So here some useful links to get started with powershell:
Eric Siebert’s Top 10 PowerShell scripts that VMware administrators should use
NTPro.nl Powershell posts
VMworld 2008 - Managing VMware with Powershell session
As you can imagine, we are at full speed organizing the next VMworld Europe event in Cannes, France from February 24 - 26. Registrations are going well and many sponsors are signing up, which is really great as VMworld really is more then just sessions about VMware Solutions. We will have 100+ technology partners and virtualization vendors and pretty much all the virtualization big shots will be there
To make sure we also will have a lot of content related to real world experiences we (VMware) are looking for people in the real world to share your experiences with us all. If you are interested in presenting in Cannes next year, please have a look at our call for participation. For more details about submitting a session, please read this document.
Hope to see you all in Cannes
Finally after a long time, I made some time to do some programming again. I have updated and renamed my “VMotion Info” to “VMware CPU Host Info”. The program will help you identify what kind of processors you have in your ESX servers, without having to reboot and start some silly CPUID CD. It will show you if you have any differences in functionality between your processors.
In this new version, you can combine information from multiple virtual center environments into one consolidated overview. It also shows you if your processors are VT capable, but more important if VT is also enabled in your BIOS. I have found that many of my servers by default do not have VT enabled.
One other final (experimental) addition, is that this program will tell you if your servers will be able to run FT enabled virtual machines (VMware’s upcoming Fault-Tolerant feature). This feature requires you to have harpertown or newer processors.
Back in September for VMworld 08 a team of engineers at VMware setup a demo to showcase VMware’s power management features. This demo drives a heavy, mixed workload for an eight-hour day and shows metered power usage throughout. The workload used was VMmark and the total power savings were over 55%! This feature (DPM) is available experimentally in VI3 and will be fully supported with the next release.
Hi Everyone,
Sorry I haven’t posted for a while, but have been really busy with all the virtualization events that are going on, from VMworld to the European VForum show we are doing at this current moment. So at least I wanted to share with you a bit of these shows. We recorded the keynote session last week in sweden, so if you would like to listen to me explaining what VMware is about and what our future developments are, enjoy the video:
Want to go to VMworld Las Vegas for free? or just a nice $5000 cash price? Well start writing some cool Powershell scripts that do awesome things against your VMware Infrastructure
VMware’s Powershell extension for VI3 is really great. It combines the power and ease of PowerShell with the long list of API for VI3. So get creative and make some cool script that you can show off to the entire virtualization community!
To help you get started:
Download the VMware Powershell toolkit
VMworld Europe Power Shell presentation
The VMware Powershell blog
The VMware Powershell Forum
The contest if open until august 30th! To enroll into the competition go to: http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/toolkit_contest.html
Tripwire to released Tripwire ConfigCheck for VMware ESX
Tripwire ConfigCheck is a lightweight version of Tripwire Enterprise For VMware ESX Server —a security and compliance-checking application designed to evaluate large server installations. Tripwire ConfigCheck is designed to sift through the hundreds of configuration settings within VMware’s ESX Server and identify those that are not set according to VMware’s recommendations.
The new tool also provides guidelines users can follow to fix the problems, if they choose to do so.
EliasKhnaser.com is about to release a new Computer Based Training on VI3.5 and they made this really cool trailer to promote the training
The CBT contains 10 videos as follows:
* Module 1: Introduction to Virtualization
* Module 2: Installing and Configuring ESX
* Module 3: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networking
* Module 4: Configuring and Managing Storage
* Module 5: Installing and Configuring VirtualCenter 2.5
* Module 6: Creating and Configuring Virtual Machines
* Module 7: Migrating Physical and Virtual Machines with VMware Converter 3
* Module 8: Designing and Implementing a VirtualCenter Security Strategy
* Module 9: Managing Host & Virtual Machine Resources
* Module 10: Creating and Managing VI Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
* Module 11: Monitoring & Troubleshooting a Virtual Infrastructure
* Module 12: Additional tools for Virtualization & Useful ESX Server commands
** The Site Recovery Manager videos will be made available one week after the release of the VI3.5 DVD and will be free to anyone who purchased the VI3.5 DVD
The training will cost $449
