I hope you all enjoyed the webcast from yesterday about the next version of vCenter Server.
For those who never saw a VMware webcast: It’s a fun and easy way to further your knowledge about VMware and their range of products. Most of the webcasts are live in nature, but if you missed a webcast chances are that you can view it later at http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/recorded/
So: Enlighten yourself and view some of the great webcasts @ VMware.com
Yesterday Cisco revealed more details about their Unified Computing System. The term was announced some time ago but nobody really knew what Cisco was planning. Some people even thought that Cisco was about to take over VMware as we already talked about in this article. Luckily this is not the case and even the opposite is true.
Cisco and VMware join forces in Cisco’s Unified Computing System which will incorporate product engineering and integrated sales and support strategies for datacenter virtualization and unified computing. The resulting combination of the Cisco Unified Computing System with VMware’s virtualization platform will provide customers with access to a unique and powerful virtualized and physical computing system over an intelligent, unified network fabric.
The day before last I had to configure a VMware View proof of concept. For this we used HP hardware and a couple of thin clients from Wyse.
People always tell me that thin clients don’t need support, no management needed, nothing can go wrong. Well.. Don’t let me touch those things then. If I touch them they go boom.
The clients were preconfigured and autologon was enabled. Since we both didn’t know how to get out of the loop (or saw the logout option ) we thought: Well, let’s keep the shift button pressed during boot. On old clients this sometimes worked. The result is visible in the picture.. Scary.
This has been reason for discussions for quite some time now and I remember that during the ‘VMware unplugged’ session at VMworld in Cannes there were also some questions on this issue.
Paul Maritz’s comment on the question ‘Can you tell us more about the possible merger with Cisco’ was ‘I have not comment on that obviously, Cisco makes thier own decisions about what they want to do.’
There were also some rumors and theories on the split up between VMware and EMC based on the theory that the two companies would be more valuable when split up.
These rumors kept feeding on each other and the ‘story’ became bigger and bigger and some people saw Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum leaving VMware as an acknowledgment.
Tuesday EMC CEO Joe Tucci stated that VMware’s a Keeper and that EMC has no intention of parting with its roughly 84% majority stake in virtualization leader VMware. His comment:
“We will get more traction and more opportunities doing it the way we’re doing it,” claiming VMware helps sell EMC hardware.
I think this is good news for all who sell and use VMware product as we now have a strong base and a clear vision and future.
Word on the street is that Oracle has bought Virtual iron. At the end of last week and the beginning of this week there were rumors that Oracle signed a letter of intent to acquire Virtual Iron. Yesterday one of my tweets already reported that the deal was closed and today multiple source confirm that Oracle bought Virtual Iron.
Personally I don’t quite understand the acquisition. Oracle is one of the leading database vendors for large enterprises and Virtual Iron is a small business virtualization solution which claims to only have around 2,000 small and medium-sized business customers. In addition to that Oracle has never been much of a virtulization fan as their support and pricing clearly shows.
Anne Jan and I were asked last week ,while doing work at our companies Headquarters, how we thought about Citrix giving away XenServer Enterprise for free and positions it as “XenServer a complete free Enterprise Virtual Infrastructure solution”. So I asked them what is considered “free” and what are the needs of the customer with a complete data center/enterprise virtual infrastructure?
The question arose because they wanted to know if they made the right choice for a very big company to choose VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Enterprise above Citrix XenServer.
So looking at what customers answer me when I ask what their requirements are, are for me the best route to go, because customers are the only one who know their organization’s virtualization requirements.
Most given answers I get when I ask for the requirements are:
Erik pointed me to an article from Eric Grey (must be the name that makes it good ) on VCritical about using System Center Virtual Machine Manager for the management of your VMware virtual infrastructure.
Although Microsoft is advertising this as one of the good things of the product Eric thinks otherwise. I must admit, I was already biased, but after reading the articles I totally agree with him. I mean, You don’t wanna use a hammer to open bolts or using a screwdriver to change channels on your TV.
This morning my twitter beeped and showed a message form Eric Sloof. The message read VMware vCenter heartbeat released.Finally VMware released their new product to ensure high availability for the VMware vCenter Server which they presented at VMworld Europe 2009 at the end of February.
vCenter Server Heartbeat is an important addon which creates high availability for vCenter Server. vCenter Server Heartbeat monitors and protects VMware’s management platform against network, hardware, OS or application issues. This fully protects the infrastructure which helps VMware users to deploy critical applications on VMware.
Today VMworld.com released a great video of Brian Madden’s ‘VMware View vs Terminal Services‘ presentation at VMworld Europe 2009. I watched it and it is a very humoristic presentation and it is by no means a pro-VMware story. But the future Brian sees and the fast development of VDI solutions must be very alarming for Citrix. In short, at VMworld Europe 2009 VMware presented new VDI/View features and technologies, the first will be available at the end of 2009 and the last will probably be available June 2010, according to Brian. These features and technologies allow higher user density, much better graphic performance, offline usage and much more, THE desktop solution of the future. So if you meet people who claim that VMware has no vision and future with their View product, link them to this video!
Securing your IT infrastructure is always an ongoing process. One of the best practices that VMware encourages is to renew the SSL keys used for communication between VMware products. The renewal of SSL keys periodically, helps to improve data security of your systems.
While reading this I was wondering what is the extended value of having SSL communication inside your own network? The answer is pretty simple, most theft of data comes from people who already have access to your network (Alex just gave me a perfect example this day about a Exchange administrator with rights he should not have).
The slogan for VMworld Europe 2009 was ‘Virtually anything is possible‘ and after filling out the questionaire we all received a shirt with this slogan on it.
So is virtually anything possible? Apparently it is virually impossible to create a good VMworld shirt!
Gabrie already warned us not to put it in the dryer and after reading this I told my wife to be very carefull when washing this shirt and she did. But after the second washing the shirt came out all f*****-up. The print all wrinkled and barely readable.
So, one advice from me. Frame the shirt if you want to keep it as a souvenir!
Edit: I just heard from two collegues who’s shirts where also destroyed by the washing machine. So if you like it, don’t wash it!
A few weeks ago I downloaded the new ‘Diagram & Icon library’ from VMware, with this you can create the most amazing presentations. But what about Visio drawings to be used in design documents? I did have a Visio stencil with a few VMware shapes but the Powerpoint shapes looked so much better. So Anne Jan created a Visio stencil based on the Powerpoint shapes.
Update(MeAgain):Now you can see that I’m slow sometimes.. Both VF_Matt and maishk reminded me that I should post the stuff right away and not a couple of weeks later. Other people also did this and perhaps better than me
Go to the VI:OPS page to check them out too.
With the release of ESX 3 and VirtualCenter 2 we got a lot of new features but we lost ‘vmkusage’, a graphical interface which was a great help in solving problems. But today I read the release notes of vCenter 2.5 update 4 and now ‘vmkusage’ is back again! It is not available in the normal installation procedure but it is well worth the hassle.
Check this VMware article to see how to install ‘vmkusage/performance overview’ and mind the three notes at the end of the article.
After the installation you will see a Performance Overview tab, on host, resource pool or VM, which displays a single view of key performance metrics for CPU, memory, disk, and network without navigating through multiple charts. Just like the old days
Today I got some great news! Our employer, Centric, has been promoted to VMware VIP Premier Partner! This is great news as there are only 3 other Premier Partners in the Netherlands, SLTN, PQR and Imtech ICT Brocom. This is a great acknowledgment of our hard work so VMware and Maurice thanks for this ‘award’.
VMware Premier Partners have made a commitment to invest in the VMware partnership through dedicated technical, sales and support resources, and have demonstrated this consistently over time. VMware rewards Premier Partners with the highest level of enablement, support and rewards benefits.
Premier partners are authorized to sell the full VMware product line. Taking a solution-oriented approach, Premier Partners engage in complex solution offerings and demonstrate high levels of skill in areas such as:
VMware puts a lot of effort into the development of toolkits so you can write your own programs for the virtual infrastructure.
This morning all people who downloaded the VI Toolkit for Java received an e-mail stating that the technology preview of the next version of the VI Toolkit for Java is available.
Saturday I slept through most of the day and Sunday I put all of our video material on my computer. I created a video which will show you all our highligts of VMworld Europe 2009 in 10 minutes. Enjoy and thanks again for the support.
Yesterday Cisco revealed more details about their Unified Computing System. The term was announced some time ago but nobody really knew what Cisco was planning. Some people even thought that Cisco was about to take over VMware as we already talked about 
Cisco and VMware join forces in Cisco’s Unified Computing System which will incorporate product engineering and integrated sales and support strategies for datacenter virtualization and unified computing. The resulting combination of the Cisco Unified Computing System with VMware’s virtualization platform will provide customers with access to a unique and powerful virtualized and physical computing system over an intelligent, unified network fabric.
) we thought: Well, let’s keep the shift button pressed during boot. On old clients this sometimes worked. The result is visible in the picture.. Scary.
Word on the street is that Oracle has bought Virtual iron. At the end of last week and the beginning of this week there were rumors that Oracle signed a letter of 
intent to acquire Virtual Iron. Yesterday one of my tweets already reported that the deal was closed and today multiple source confirm that Oracle bought Virtual Iron.
) on 
A few weeks ago I downloaded the new ‘Diagram & Icon library’ from VMware, with this you can create the most amazing presentations. But what about Visio drawings to be used in design documents? I did have a Visio stencil with a few VMware shapes but the Powerpoint shapes looked so much better. So Anne Jan created a Visio stencil based on the Powerpoint shapes.
Today I got some great news! Our employer, Centric, has been promoted to VMware VIP Premier Partner! This is great news as there are only 3 other Premier Partners in the Netherlands, SLTN, PQR and Imtech ICT Brocom. This is a great acknowledgment of our hard work so VMware and Maurice thanks for this ‘award’.
