VMworld 2010 in Copenhagen is over.

It was a huge success as far as us here at VMGuru.nl concerns. We had a fantastic time. Although it was very demanding at times, the team pulled through together. During VMworld, we generated more than 20 posts here at VMGuru.nl. Edwin’s dairy posts gave a bit of an insight in what we did every day. In general, we were on our feet from 7:30 AM up to 01:30 AM. During these long days, we shot a huge amount of photo’s and video’s. Most material has already been posted and we hope we have made a difference with our posts.

Our goal was to give you, our visitor,  an idea of what was shown at VMworld 2010, the keynote sessions, the solution exchange and the overall experience. If we did it right, you might even have had the feeling you were there with us at the conference. We tried to interview the interesting people and show new products you might want to hear about and look at. Nevertheless we hope to see more of you in person at VMworld 2011, wherever it may be. Wouldn’t it be great if VMworld Europe got bigger than the US version?

On a personal note ….

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We are now one week from the start of VMworld Europe 2010 in the Bella Center in Copenhagen.

We’ve started packing our bags, preparing all photo-, video cameras and laptops and charging all batteries. This to make this a trip to remember as we will be awake from 6 AM to late in the evenings so we will not miss a thing and to give you all a sublime ‘live’ report from Copenhagen.

Our trip to Copenhagen will start on Sunday October 10th so we can attend the Partner Day of Monday. Throughout the week we will bring you articles, photos and videos ‘live’ from the breakout sessions, the labs, off course the solutions exchange and maybe some parties but we don’t want to give you the wrong impression

So check out VMGuru.nl from October 11th – 15th for ‘live’ reports from THE European virtualization event, VMworld Europe 2010!

We are very proud and honored to tell you that VMGuru.nl finished 13th in Eric Siebert’s blogger contest on vSphere-land.com which was won by Duncan Epping!

Last week we all asked you to vote for us if you appreciated our blog and apparently a lot of you did.

We appreciate your votes and want to thank all who voted for us and of course Eric Siebert.

Select the Vimeo video below to watch the vChat episode where Eric, David, Simon and Special Guest, John Troyer count down the Top 25 VMware Blogs as voted by you. The fragment where VMGuru.nl is awarded 13th place is at 25:35.

We are finally going to VMworld 2010 in Copenhagen! No thanks to our employer but many many thanks to Richard Garsthagen who provides us blogger invitations.

So we are counting down the days as we are very exited to attend VMworld again this year. I’m looking forward to Sunday October 10th as we drive to Copenhagen the day before the Partner Day.

To get in the mood here’s a video of the highlights of VMWorld Europe 2009.

Check out www.VMGuru.nl from 11 to 14 October  for ‘live’ reports from VMworld 2010 Copenhagen!

It is time again for a new top blogger voting survey. Eric Siebert started the second competition of this year and again your votes will decide the winners and help decide the Top 25 VMware bloggers.

Last time we, at VMGuru.nl, were very honored to enter the list on a respectable 18th position but we want to climb the chart. Our goal is to enter the Top 15!

Since the last blog competition we published 72 articles and our website is visited by approximately 13.500 unique visitors per month. Because of our efforts VMware awarded us the vExpert status for the second year in a row.

So I hope you appreciate our time, effort, quality and content and vote VMGuru.nl #1 at  vSphere-land.com.

Hello Folks!

In the past we had several major and minor issues regarding the website performance. As we have also moved to new hardware a few months ago, we had to reconfigured the complete backend construction. Last weekend I spend some time rounding up the last details on this and on the website’s configuration.

When I compare it to our old server, the performance in the backend is significantly better and after the last tuning activities last weekend, I think the website is performing very nicely. However, speed is always subjective. I think it’s fast, but you may think it could be better.

So, let us know what you think! Are we slow where you are? Tell us about it. We like to know!

While designing and writing administrator guides, I often use pictures instead of words. In my opinion: a picture says more then 1000 words. When VMware vSphere 4 went live I started collecting pictures from  Sphere and the Virtual Infrastructure client, I combined them in a Microsoft Visio 2007 shape so I could track off them and use them more often in pictures and designs accompanying virtual infrastructures.

Using them in memo style documents to tackle known issues or incorrect handling is quit effective. Also with the new menu driven style of the vSphere VI Client combined with VMware vCenter Server some administrators are looking for the right path to get to the correct content.

This Visio stencil is a combination of different icons, shape and such. You can design a Host and Clusters drill down with it or use components to use in manuals or troubleshooting documents.

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Hello folks,

Yesterday we noticed a huge increase in the amount of traffic. After some in-depth investigation, we discovered that some ‘friends’ in China found a loophole which quadrupled our traffic within a few hours.  Fortunately no real harm was done. Our systems were not compromised.

During this investigation, we also noticed several attempts that were made from within China to ‘probe’ our security. Although China is one of the biggest upcoming markets in the world (if not the biggest), this apparently comes at a price. So, we here at VMGuru.nl decided that we will be avoiding China for the moment. We therefore blocked all known IP ranges appointed to China from accessing our site.

We’re sorry for any genuine followers of VMGuru.nl in China, but the amount of attempts was too big to ignore.

Update: The problem seems to be solved! We will continue to monitor the web server but it looks like we’re back in business.

Since last week we are experiencing problems with the stability of our web server.

Sorry for the inconvenience, we’re working hard to find and correct this problem.

Until then, we will restart the web server manually once or twice a day.

Again, sorry! We hope to be up, running and reliable as soon as possible.

Well, it’s done, as far as we’re concerned. The migration to new hardware is a fact. You might see a significant speedup in the site (we do). We’re very happy with the results, allthough we had some issues, but then again, which migration hasn’t?

We made some pics during the swap. The quality is pretty poor but you can’t expect much from a mobile phone. Here they come! (more…)

Good news! Our brand new server is finally ready for production! Next Friday we will replace the old workhorse with a brand new one, with many thanks to our friends @ Dell (a big hurray and thank you to you all over there!) Our new infra will, of course, be fully virtual. Since we have more processing power AND more RAM, our site should benefit a lot in terms of speed and stability.

We hope that service will hardly be interrupted but as with all migrations, you never really know until it’s over

Work starts Friday at 10:00AM CET and ends when it’s ready

Update 15:41 CET+1 (AJ): Basic functionality of the site is up again. We’re still doing some tweaking during the next couple of days. If you get an 404 error, just try again.

January 3rd, Eric Siebert, started the Top 25 VMware/Virtualization bloggers contest. During two weeks everybody in the community could vote for their favorite Top 10 and the challenge was to get VMGuru.nl into the Top 25 and to knock Duncan Epping from the top spot . This last challenge proved to be very very difficult and again, Duncan took the top spot. So until July 2010 Yellow Bricks is the #1 blog in the community.

And how did VMGuru.nl do? Due to all your votes we finished at a respectable #18 in the Top 25 VMware/Virtualization bloggers and we’re very proud of it.

So, for everyone who voted for us, thank you very very much!

You can check out the complete score list here.

Eric Siebert over at vSphere-land is running a new blog contest which let you decide who the most favorite blogger is. Can anyone knock Duncan Epping from the top spot? With the last elections VMGuru.nl entered the voting list so make us proud and kick VMGuru.nl into the Top 25. Your votes will decide the winners and help decide the Top 25 bloggers.

You can pick your 10 most popular bloggers based on your points Eric Siebert will create a vSphere-land blogger top 25.

Please cast your vote and make a change to win a copy of the TrainSignal vSphere DVD training course.

Here’s how it works, you pick your top 10 favorite blogs, to vote simply number your 10 favorite blogs from 1 to 10 with 1 being your most favorite blog (VMGuru.nl of course ).

hey folks!

First of all, a happy newyear to you all!

With 2009 behind us, we look forward to a new and intense 2010. Personally, I think 2010 will be a very interesting year. With the world economy leaving the ruins of the crisis and alot of new trends and technology introductions ahead, we are in for quite a treat. Also, we are eagerly looking forward to VMworld in Copenhagen, later this year. We hope to see a lot of you in Denmark!

However, a quick look back is in order too. (more…)

The VMGuru.nl-crew wishes all of you a very happy new year!

A brand new year to perform your virtual fireworks!

The VMGuru.nl crew wishes you a merry Christmas.

During the coming two days it’s all about the VMware Virtualization Forum 2009.

VMware Virtualization Forum event is a free, interactive full day event where you can learn about virtual infrastructure from experts, industry analysts and companies like yours. No matter what your company size, there’s a virtualization solution for you—from the desktop to the datacenter. You can visit the VMware Virtualization Forum 2009 and attend hands on labs in Orange County, CA.

If you join onsite you can join the Virtualization Forum online. During this highly interactive two-day event, you’ll experience all of the areas you’d find at the onsite event.

Plus during these two days, there will be an ask the experts panel. VMware gathered seven vExperts/bloggers to answer your questions.

These vExperts are:

• Sven Huisman – Virtualfuture.info
• Carlo Costanzo – VMwareinfo.com
• Tom Howarth - PlanetVM.Net
• Michael Keen
• Douglas Brown
• Brian Knudtson – knudt.net/vblog
• and of course Erik Scholten – VMGuru.nl

Visit the VMware website to register for the VMware Virtualization Forum 2009 or check out the schedule.

Don’t miss your chance to:

• Learn about VMware vSphere™ 4 — The next generation of the market leading virtualization platform
• Attend introductory sessions on virtualization and learn how you can cut costs at companies of all sizes
• Get practical advice on choosing a virtualization solution for everything from the desktop to the datacenter
• Learn how to add capacity on demand to your IT infrastructure with cloud computing

One year ago, October 13th, we announced our new website/blog called VMGuru.nl and October 15th we posted our first article ‘No guest customization after upgrade to Update 2′. Much has change since then….

The birth of VMGuru.nl
When, in August 2008, I changed my Internet provider I had to look for a new place to host my personal website. Luckily a colleague, Alex, has a web server on-line and offered to host it for me. The only thing I needed was a domain name, so I registered at NederHost and tried some domain names. Most were already taken but my first good one was VMGuru.nl, however I discarded the idea because my personal website has nothing to do with virtualization. After registering Motor-Freak.net I decided to keep VMGuru.nl just for the fun of it. Maybe in the future me and some colleagues could do something nice with it.

When I mentioned the domain name again in the beginning of October 2008 Alex grabbed the opportunity and quickly deployed a website using WordPress. The idea was to use it to  share our knowledge and experiences with colleagues as we don’t have a good enough Intranet to do that. Quickly the idea broadened and we decided to share with the VMware/virtualization community which required us to write in English.

My first steps
From the start reactions were positive, with 851 visits and 80.316 hits for the remaining two weeks of October we were very surprised. In November the number of visitors grew to 4.538 and in December we had almost 10 times the number of visitors we had in October, 7.059 . In these first two and a half months we wrote 72 articles with subjects like ‘What if life was a virtual machine..‘, ‘VC Upgrade went haywire‘, ‘Faulty HP ESXi 3.5 USBs‘ and ‘Hyper-V, not in my datacenter!‘.

My first fight
In the beginning of February we ran into a nasty comment in the community claiming that we ‘stole’ someones domain name. It turned out to be a comment of Scott Herold (VMGuru.com) who, after finding out a colleagues had registered ‘vmgu.ru’ just to annoy him, discovered VMGuru.nl. All ended in a fizzle, after explaining our intentions and the idea that we could both contribute to the community, each in our own way, all was well. Scott turned out to be a decent guy and we planned to meet up at VMworld in Cannes at the end of the month. We even did a video with him on VESI.org!

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