For 10 years VMworld has been the source for the knowledge and connections you need to leverage virtualization and cloud computing technologies in your business. You can try out several new or improved solutions through the Hands-On-Labs (HOL) get deeper insights through great breakout sessions and of course meet several people including the VMGuru.nl crew for networking and to hang out with discussing the future of IT or just to chill.
This year’s theme is: Defy Convention if you translate that to dutch you get multiple options including surviving VMworld. The VMGuru.nl team is scheduled to be at VMworld San Francisco and VMworld Barcelona this year again, lets see if we survive!
If you want the latest news, scoops on products and solutions from the Solutions Exchange, technical deep dive information and many more keep tuned in to www.vmguru.nl
It is done! VMworld 2012 in Barcelona is over and today I will fly back home. Yesterday I mainly bested by visiting suppliers and sponsors of VMguru.nl.
The things that really matter to me and jumped in my daily work directly also can use were:
So yesterday was relationsmanagement/networking time and at the end of the day I said goodbye to the rest of the VMware Community. Most of them I see probably next year again until the next VMworld.
If I will be going again or if it’s going to be a VMworld in Barcelona or San Francisco I do not know. It was another great VMworld but I’m going home with mixed feelings.
Today I visited the Cisco booth here at VMworld 2012 in Barcelona and got a inside view of the UCS Central. UCS Central is a tool Cisco is working on to manage multiple Cisco UCS systems/domains. At the moment it is still in beta but they expect to release it Nov/Dec 2012.
UCS Central is serves as the UCS central nervous system and integrates all UCS components across multiple UCS domains, managing server blades, VMs, storage and networking—across multiple chassis—as a single logical domain. UCS Central provides an intuitive GUI with a command-line interface (CLI) and XML API options. It enables real-time configuration and reconfiguration of resources. The built-in XML API provides an open management framework for customers, developers, system integrators and managed service providers to interoperate with Cisco Unified Computing System resources.
Wednesday evening is traditionally the evening for the VMworld party. At VMworld we work very hard but we party harder but yesterday it got a bit too wild. This morning I woke up with a large VMGuru-logo-tattoo on my arm
There’s just no limit to my dedication to VMGuru.nl I suppose ….
Today NetApp will present a new baby FlexPod called the Express Pod. It’s a small FlexPod ideal for smaller customers for whom the full scale FlexPod is too big and expensive.
In April 2012 I wrote:
So, Cisco and NetApp now include cheaper storage and server components in FlexPod solutions, this leaves the ever expensive Cisco Nexus 5000 network components needed. I would love to see Cisco and NetApp take the last step and also introduce an entry-level Cisco Nexus network based on e.g. the Cisco Nexus 3000 series switches.
It looks like they listened because the new (minimum) Express Pod configuration consists of:
2 x Cisco Nexus 3000 switches;
2 x Cisco C220 rack servers;
1 x NetApp FAS2220.
By using Cisco Nexus 3000 switches and eliminating the expensive components like the Fabric Interconnects and the Nexus 5000 switches you need to create a FlexPod, they were able to drop the price of the new Express Pod under $100k.
Yesterday at the VMworld 2012 Europe event in Barcelona I spoke with an engineer from QNAP at their booth. He told us that QNAP will be introducing a new firmware release for their Pro line. The version number will probably be 3.8 (current version is 3.7.3) and it will contain full VMware VAAI support for vSphere 4 and 5. Also, QNAP will introduce a plugin for the vSphere Client software so users can manage the QNAP from within the client.
For those of you who don’t quite remember what VAAI is, VAAI stands for VStorage API for Array Integration. It is a hardware acceleration functionality that can dramatically improve the storage performance with VMware vSphere. More info on VAAI can be found here. This makes a QNAP Pro NAS even more suitable for SMB and Lab environments.
The exact release date is not known yet, but it is expected to be in Q4 2012. So, if you own a QNAP Pro NAS, keep your eye on the QNAP Website.
Transcript of this mornings General Session with Steve Herrod.
There are all kinds of discussions about access, applications and infrastructrures and how that looks. In the past the pc was the device of access. IT could dictate the rules. Now the user or consumer dictates IT with tablets and smartphones. From IT perspective this has a load of challenges.
Safety is a big issue. IT is struggling with BYOD and secure access approach. It usually ends up in point solutions or IT to ask users not to bring specific devices in. The problem is pretty clear, how to handle secure access with freedom without point solutions.
This can be broken down into three steps:
Take the apps and transform them into services (legacy into service);
Licensing Oracle servers in a virtualized environment has always been a difficult issue. Edwin wrote an extensive article on that in the past. At VMworld 2012 in San Francisco an Oracle employee made some statements regarding Oracle licensing on VMworldTV but they were forced to withdraw the video. This is how difficult and complex it can be.
So VMworldTV got a lot of questions on that topic so Eric Sloof interviews a lawyer and a licensing consultant to try to answer this question. A must see if you are virtualizing Oracle workloads.
As we heard in the keynote this morning you can now manage multiple hypervisors with VMware vCenter.
Eric Sloof visited the VMware booth and got a demo.
Is it hard for you to locate the latest VMware documentation? Wouldn’t it be great to have the VMware documentation with you on your mobile device?
Now you can! VMware just published a cool application which just does this all, the VMware Mobile Knowledge Portal. You can now watch videos and read collateral on how to install and use VMware products, stay up to date on what’s new at VMware, and explore best practices for our products and solutions. At home. In the office. On the go. Offline or online.
Today at the keynote at VMworld 2012 in Barcelona VMware announced the expansion of their cloud management software suite and the brand new vCloud Suite with some new updates. VMware also adds a product to the series called VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, and updates it’s VMware IT Business Management Suite which further simplifies and automates the management of the software defined datacenter. VMware also expands the possibilities of VMware vCenter server which enables companies to deliver and manage services from multiple, heterogeneous clouds.
To manage hybrid and heterogeneous cloud solutions, VMware focuses on three important areas:
Cloud Service Provisioning – Automating the allocation and control of the infrastructure, applications and desktops as a service;
Cloud Operations Management – Monitor and analyse the behavior of the cloud infrastructure to guarantee the performance compliance and efficiency;
Cloud Business Management – Control and manage cloud services as a crucial element of the business running IT.
The VMware vCloud Suite gets improved Service Provisioning and Operations Management which connects all the components that customers need to build, operate and manage their cloud infrastructure.
The most important changes to the VMware vCloud Suite are:
During VMworld 2012 in San Fransisco Trend Micro announced the next version of their hypervisor based security product. They announced a lot of new and cool features and improvements which are probably gonna make into the final product.
I just got a demo at the Trend Micro booth here at VMworld in Barcelona and it look very promising.
(Please remember that the product is not released yet. Things may change before it is generally available.)
vSphere and Cloud support
Deep Security 9 supports vSphere 5.1 and vCloud Networking and Security 5.1. Next to the support for vSphere 5.1 there is also support and integration for vCloud Director and Amazon cloud services.
De-cluttering of the interface
I’m not sure if you would classify this as a new feature, but in my opinion it should be high on the list. Trend Micro redesigned the interface a bit. Now the system configuration and tweaking no longer is a two day trip through al configuration tabs. I didn’t count them, but in the demo today I saw less tabs.
Storage and server teams have historically had difficulty working together and often end up “finger-pointing” to each other. Today vKernel/Quest released the new vFoglight Storage 2.0 which can perform end-to-end performance monitoring across the entire data path from application to disk. Many issues originate in storage, vFoglight Storage 2.0 can connect the server data to the storage array to determine what is causing the issue.
VMware announced a move towards tighter integration into EMC storage arrays for data collection at EMCWorld 2012. vFoglight Storage 2.0 currently delivers “out-of-the-box” support for multiple storage vendors already, fulfilling on VMware’s “vision”.
The new vFoglight Storage 2.0 introduces features and integration that enables application to disk performance monitoring. This will allow server and storage teams to literally work on the same page to troubleshoot, manage and plan for VM performance.
