It is that time of the year again, the last voting was over a year ago where we made it, thanks to you!, to the 13th place. Voting is now open again for the top VMware & virtualization blogs.  It would be nice and a great honor to get us in the Top 10 this year. So if you like our blog please vote VMGuru.nl (Various) using the BIG button on the left.

We all know Eric Siebert from his vLaunchPad were he publishes his VMware Top blogs. Your votes will help determine the new top 50 bloggers on vLaunchpad. Votes are weighted so a #1 vote counts as 10 points, #2 vote counts as 9 points etc down to 1 point for a #10 vote. The total points for each blog will be added up and will determine the top 50 order.

New this year there will be voting in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.

Today we received the press release of the new Starwind iSCSI software with the all new VM Backup technology.

Starwind is an innovative company and one of the first to offer an iSCSI initiator on the Microsoft Windows platform without a lot of hassle. Now, this product has come a long way since then and it now is a full blown storage solution, you could call it enterprise grade. The new version incorporates the VM Backup technique

Now, the previous versions already had best VMware support with their own HA technology. This new version also offers this technology for Hyper-V as well. The backup solution performs all operations on host level so no backup agents are needed in virtual machines.

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After VMware vSphere and View, VMware vCloud Director is the next big thing to setup and customers start asking for it. But the problem is that the knowledge and available resources are limited. So for real life implementations of vCloud Director we have to rely on VMware employees to show us the ropes.
First of all, what is VMware vCloud Director. In short, VMware vCloud Director gives enterprise organizations the ability to build secure private clouds as a base for a infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution. Coupled with VMware vSphere, vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services.

The vCloud Director architecture is shown below.

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On December 19th VKernel released version 4.5 of its vOps management software.

vOps 4.5 addresses the increasing volume of routine virtual machine management tasks in virtualized environments. This increase is caused by the enormous growth in the number of virtual machines. Nowadays we provision many more virtual servers than we ever had physical ones because they are easier and cheaper to deploy. All of these virtual machines require management tasks for maintenance.

The next step in virtualization is automation and vOPS 4.5 also cover this with the introduction of some new capabilities, like:

• New Automation Features
  vOPS’ virtual machine management automation capabilities are enhanced with auto-deletion of abandoned virtual machine images, auto-merging of unused snapshots, an additional automated remediation for performance issues and auto-calculation of future resource requirements;
• Automation Controls
  vOPS 4.5 also adds the ability to more finely control some automation processes. For example, virtual machines can be grouped, and then these groups set with minimum and maximum resource amounts that automated right-sizing will respect.

Additionally, vOps 4.5 introduces:

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This year has almost come to an end and what a year it has been.

During 2011 VMware released a lot of new great products like vSphere 5, View 5, Workstation 8, Fusion 4, Horizon App Manager, vFabric Data Director, etc.

We also visited some amazing events which resulted in great experiences and content. It was the second year VMworld visited Copenhagen and what an awesome VMworld it was. And at the end of the year we had a great dutch VMUG with a suprise visit of the MonsterVM.

Career wise, almost all of us started with our new employer, Imtech ICT, in 2011, bringing us new adventures and opportunities.

This all resulted in some great content which you all appreciate, according to the website statistics. We servered 1.3M webpages during almost 400.000 visits of 240.000 unique visitors, which resulted in 556GB of traffic. Great numbers with steady growth over the whole year.

We will keep up the good work and hope to see you again in 2012 to make it an even better year!
So, from all of us at VMGuru.nl, we wish you all a very happy and virtual new year!

Congratulations to our 2011 Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security winners, Edwin Broeken and Michael Jonker. Thank you all again who joined us at the Dutch VMUG 2011 event and whom retweeted the tweets. Also a big thanks go out to Trend Micro for giving away two copies.

During the Dutch VMUG event lunch the MonsterVM ate two copies of Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2012 for 3 PCs with 1 Year subscription.

During the Dutch VMUG event 2011 the MonsterVM was more or less party crashing on behalf of Steve Herrod. During the keynote Viktor got a call from Steve Herrod announcing that the MonsterVM was about to enter the Dutch VMUG event. During the lunch everyone who had the guts could get his picture taken with the famous MonsterVM.

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Today VMware’s partner Teradici announced a significant new releases from their PCoIP zero client and host card firmware and the PCoIP Management Console.

The following releases are now available for download on the Teradici support site (techsupport.teradici.com):

• Firmware 3.5.0 for PCoIP Zero Clients and PCoIP Host Cards.
• PCoIP Management Console 1.7.0

The new firmware update includes the following enhancements:

• USB2.0 with VMware View sessions
• Imprivata OneSign Virtual Desktop Access via proximity cards with VMware View
• IEEE 802.1x network security
• IPv6 support.

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It’s only one week until the annual dutch VMUG with a very impressive speaker line-up. Many international speakers are going to deliver great sessions and workshops at the Nieuwegein Business Center (NBC) on December 9th.

If you’re interest and work involves virtualization and you haven’t registered yet, you should!. This is an event you should NOT miss. Like last year the NBC in Nieuwegein will be packed with people and be host to great speakers in their field of expertise.

If you’re interest and work involves virtualization and you haven’t registered yet, you should! This is an event you should NOT miss. If you haven’t signed in yet you can do so here.

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This week Veeam released their latest version of their Backup & Replication software “Veeam Backup & Replication v6“. With their latest release they offer enhanced scalability and performance.

They also add support for Microsoft Hyper-V so you can protect your multi-hypervisor environment with only one product, from a single console.

New features in version 6 are:

• A new distributed architecture for better scalability. Deployment and Maintenance for remote office and large installations are simplified;
• Advanced replication by combining both backup and replication in to one solution;
• Multi-hypervisor support with the new support for Microsoft Hyper-V. The console let’s you manage both VMware and Hyper-V hosts from a single console;
• 1-Click file restore is an enhancement on the existing “Instant File-Level Recovery” reducing the number of steps needed from 10 to 1.

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During the last few years we published several Enterprise Hypervisor comparisons and we got very positive comments and feedback on it. With the release of vSphere 5, XenServer 6 and a service pack for Hyper-V it was time for an update.

It very interesting to see how some of the products have improved over the years and how the three major manufacturers look at each other and copy features. But you can’t trust all manufacturers by just a simple green checkbox. Some claimed features need third party add-ons, aren’t suitable for production workloads or are only supported on a limited set of operating systems. You have to investigate further and I hope I’ve done most of that work for you with this new enterprise hypervisor comparison.

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If you use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy software and updates for Microsoft products, VMware vCenter Protect Update Catalog expands your solution to deploy updates for 3rd party applications. Get started pushing updates for applications such as Adobe, Apple, and JAVA in just seconds.

SCCM does a great job of distributing software and deploying updates for the latest Microsoft operating systems and Microsoft applications like Office 2010. What about Adobe Reader and hundreds of other vulnerable applications?

vCenter Protect Update Catalog address a major business pain (keeping up with third party updates) and puts time back into IT admin’s schedule.

How? Read on..

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Last Wednesday, November 16th, VMware announced the availability of ThinApp 4.7 and Horizon App Manager 1.2. The combination of the two products enables cloud-based deployment of ThinApp packages with VMware Horizon Application Manager.

ThinApp 4.7 includes the following features:

• The ThinApp Setup Capture wizard includes an option to manage with Horizon Application Manager. When the checkbox is selected, ThinApp checks if the Horizon agent is installed natively on the client and is running. If the Horizon agent is found, the ThinApp package reports to the Horizon agent so that it can be controlled by Horizon Application Manager.
• Horizon Application Manager entitlement allows the delivery of ThinApp packaged applications to specified users and groups. The Horizon agent authorizes a ThinApp package to open, based on entitlements.
• ThinApp packages are registered by Horizon Application Manager and delivered to end points.
• The administrator can track usage of ThinApp packages by using Horizon Application Manager monitoring and reporting.
• The administrator can configure an Organizational URL for end points missing the Horizon agent.

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While browsing the Shavlik.com website I stumbled on a small but powerful hidden away gem in the pages named VMware Security Advisor.

Are you aware of all your security risks? Security Advisor provides you with the ability to perform a no-cost security scan on your machine, domain, or IP range. It instantly reports the following critical information, all ranked by severity:

• A snapshot of your environment including the number of missing patches, missing security patches and the average number of missing patches per machine as compared to the community
• Systems Center ranks machines by severity and identifies the machines requiring patches
• Software Center shows the software by vendor as well as the software titles requiring patches
• Patch Center indicates the percent of products missing patches not covered by WSUS as well the number of missing patches and number of vulnerable machines
• Community Center identifies how the security of your IT environment compares to the community

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Recently VMware released the latest version of vCenter Protect Essentials. This product is a combination of several technologies but the major part is from Shavlik Technologies, which VMware acquired earlier this year.

VMware vCenter Protect Essentials provides centralized patch management and asset inventory for SMBs/SMEs and departmental needs. vCenter Protect Essentials Plus adds anti virus, power management, ITScripts, and configuration management for both virtual and legacy physical systems in an integrated solution.

This includes centralized management for Windows operating systems and the most widely used Windows-hosted applications running on both virtual and physical servers and workstations.

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Over the years there have been a lot of outcries in the VMware Community to re-instate the VMware Technology Network (VMTN).

The VMTN started in 2005 and is much like Microsoft MSDN or TechNet, for a reduced yearly fee you could use the VMware software and run it for 1 year. Unfortunately VMware canceled the VMTN  program in 2007, reportedly because they didn’t want developers to use it for competitive products.

Right now many developers and techies with home labs use evaluation versions which expire after 60-days.

So, according to VMware CTO, Steve Herrod, VMware is now considering the return of the VMware Technology Network and I think it’s a good initiative. Why?

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Today VMware released a new client for the iPad and Android devices. Version 1.2 is optimized for VMware View 5, has support for iOS 5 including AirPlay and contains presentation mode for use with external displays and AirPlay.

VMware View Client for Android makes it easy to access your Windows virtual desktop from your Android with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network or across a Wide Area Network.

It requires at least VMware View 4.6 and only has PCoIP only connectivity for excellent interactive performance.

The VMware View client for Android can be found on the Android Market.

The VMware View client for the iPad can be found in the iTunes Store.

VMworld – Day Four – Thursday 20th October

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One of the announcements I missed at VMworld Europe 2011 in Copenhagen was the announcement of VMware and Nvidia delivering 3D graphics to VMware View. VMware announced that they are in a partnership with NVIDIA to deliver high-end virtual workstations with 3D graphics support in VMware View.

We’ve have the ability to deliver 3D graphics from workstations in the datacenter for years by using physical blade workstations. But now VMware is trying to deliver true 3D performance from the datacenter by using virtual workstation in VMware View by partnering with Nvidia. Nvidia is solving that with the release of their ‘Quadro Virtual Graphics Platform’, something they announced in August 2011.

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VMworld – Day Three – Wednesday 19th October

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