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Get Alive! Free VMware Alive VM with Qualifying editions of vSphere

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

VMware announced a promtion to get free VMware Alive VM when you purchase an eligible VMware vSphere product.  The promotion indicates you can receive VMware Alive VM allowing you to manage up to 50 virtual machines and one year of basic support at nor additional charge.  This is a great way to get in on a production product without any additional investment.

As I stated a few days ago with the release of VMware Alive 7.2, Alive is a uniquely designed product that enables the VM administrator to have a comprehensive view of the overall performance of their complete vSphere environment.

  • Indicators of health, workload and capacity
  • Heat maps to easily locate trouble areas
  • Mapping of virtual machines to host to cluster and datacenter to get to root cause analysis
  • Trending and analytics for quick and effective problem solving

To qualify, you must purchase an eligible product between Nov 23, 2010 and March 1, 2011.

Promotion Details: http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/vsphere-promotion/
Eligible products for vSphere Promotion

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SecPoint WPA Portable Penetrator released in VMware VM

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

SecPoint releases their WPA Penetrator as a VM that can be run from almost any Laptop.

WPA Cracking VMware Portable Penetrator from secpoint on Vimeo.

WPA Cracking VMware Portable Penetrator.
The Portable Penetrator now runs on VMware

http://www.secpoint.com/wpa-crack-portable-penetrator-vmware.html

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vCenter Configuration Manager 5.4 Released

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

Another quick release note. vCenter Configuration Manager 5.4 released yesterday.

Downloads available here:
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vcenter_configuration_manager/5_0

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VMware Alive Enterprise 7.2 Released! Former Integrien Alive fully assimilated!

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

The Integrian Alive product was offically released as a VMware product today as Vmware Alive Enterprise 7.2.

VAE 7.2 Download Page:
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/vae_7_2/ZEB0YnRlaGViZGoqZA==

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ESX Performance Troubleshooting.. and a Cheatsheet!

Posted by cgrossmeier in Everything Else | Virtualization - (Comments Off)

VMware vSphere Performance Resolution Cheat SheetAfter taking an ESX performance Troubleshooting course a few years back, I regularly find that most of the issues we encounter in the field are related to vSphere admins not knowing what is the root cause of their performance issues.  Sure, you could take the wild guess and point at Disk or CPU Saturation, but often, the issue is much more obscure.  As a result, I started working on a small cheat sheet to assist customers in troubleshooting the root cause of their performance issues in ESX.

Armed with my trusty putty.exe and my cheat sheet, I set out to validate a few performance issues with a friend’s server.  Stepping through the diagnostics and output of ESX top quickly took us to an HBA issue.  All along we were blaming the disk. 

I’ve gotten so much value from this little gem, I am sharing it with the ESX Community! 

Download my VMware vSphere Performance Resolution Cheat Sheet.PDF

Additional resources:
VMware vSphere 4 Performance Troubleshooting Guide form VMware

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vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive Book Available!

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman have been working hard on delivering a book on called VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive (Volume 1).  Their hard work has paid off and their book is available this week through Amazon and CreateSpace!  I saw Jason Boche just picked his copy up yesterday and I just placed my order.
Here are some details on the book!  It looks great Duncan and Frank!

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive zooms in on two key components of every VMware based infrastructure and is by no means a “how to” guide. It covers the basic steps needed to create a VMware HA and DRS cluster, but even more important explains the concepts and mechanisms behind HA and DRS which will enable you to make well educated decisions. This book will take you in to the trenches of HA and DRS and will give you the tools to understand and implement e.g. HA admission control policies, DRS resource pools and resource allocation settings. On top of that each section contains basic design principles that can be used for designing, implementing or improving VMware infrastructures.

Coverage includes:

  • HA node types
  • HA isolation detection and response
  • HA admission control
  • VM Monitoring
  • HA and DRS integration
  • DRS imbalance algorithm
  • Resource Pools
  • Impact of reservations and limits
  • CPU Resource Scheduling
  • Memory Scheduler
  • DPM

Praise for the HA and DRS technical deepdive:

Marc Sevigny (senior staff engineer VMware HA group): “Duncan Epping’s intimate knowledge of VMware HA internals, plus his experience working with HA installations in a wide range of configurations make him the de facto HA guru. Anyone considering or using VMware HA should become one of his devout followers.”

Anne Holler (senior staff engineer VMware Distributed group): “Frank Denneman has extensive knowledge and experience across a wide range of VMware products from ESX to vCenter to  DRS. He has written an indispensable reference for using and understanding DRS and DPM.”

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive (Volume 1)

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LG and VMware enables 2 phones in 1 device

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

LG and VMware have announced the relationship to develop a cellular phone capable of running two unique hand set systems on the same device. This enables a true Employee Owned or Bring Your Own Device (BYO Device) business model for business where employees can buy their own phone and manage their own phone number om a platform while still allowing the Enterprise to manage a corporate profile on the same device.

LG and VMware have announced the relationship to develop a cellular phone capable of running two unique hand set systems on the same device. This enables a true Employee Owned or Bring Your Own Device (BYO Device) business model for business where employees can buy their own phone and manage their own phone number on a platform while still allowing the Enterprise to manage a corporate profile on the same device.

Maybe someday I can have all the sexiness of an iPhone and the customization and choices of Android with the corporate management of a Blackberry.

Emerging Devices:
http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/cto-srinivas/2010/12/07/vmw-partners-with-lg-to-bring-virtualization-to-smartphones

 Maybe some day I can have all the sexiness of an iPhone and the customization and choices of Android with the corporate management of a Blackberry.

Emerging Devices:
http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/cto-srinivas/2010/12/07/vmw-partners-with-lg-to-bring-virtualization-to-smartphones

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Twin Cities VMUG, Dec 17th, 2010 @ Bloomington Hilton

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

Q4 2010 Minneapolis Area VMware Users Group meeting
Friday December 17th, 2010 1:00 – 5:00 PM

Jason Boche, Minneapolis area VMUG leader – Email:  jason@boche.net

1:00 – 1:15 General business, Updates, Open Floor Discussions
1:15 – 2:00 Presentation: Chris Grossmeier/Jeff Whitman, VMware, Inc.: “VMware Updates – vCloud Director/vCloud request Manager”
2:00 – 2:10 Break
2:10 – 2:55 Security Presentation: Edward Haletky, The Virtualization Practice, LLC: “Security Threats and How the Hypervisor Protects itself”
2:55 – 3:05 Break
3:05 – 3:50 Security Presentation: Ken Sigel, Systems Engineer, Hytrust, Inc.: “Virtualize compliance-related workloads with the help of HyTrust Appliance”
3:50 – 4:00 Break
4:00 – 4:45 Case Study Presentation: Paul Gerth: “Lab Manager at Siemens PLM Software”
4:45 – 5:00 Q & A, Door Prizes, Closing

Stick around to win great door prizes!
(Please bring business cards to enter your name in the door prize drawings)
Meeting Location, Snacks, and door prizes provided by Train Signal, Inc., HyTrust, Inc., The Virtualization Practice, LLC, and VMware, Inc.

  • http://trainsignal.com/ – Computer Training Videos – Microsoft, VMware, Cisco, CompTIA & more!
  • http://hytrust.com/ – The leader in policy management, access control, and audit logging for virtual infrastructure
  • http://astroarch.com/ – Consulting, development, and training services for all aspects of the Internet, Security, and Virtualization
  • http://www.vmware.com/ – The planet’s most innovative virtualization solutions ever

Meeting Location:
Hilton Minneapolis/Bloomington
3900 American Boulevard West
Bloomington, MN  55437
952-893-9500

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/MSPBWHF-Hilton-Minneapolis-Bloomington-Minnesota/index.do

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VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.5 Release

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

Somehow I missed this announcement last week!  VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.5 released on Dec. 2nd, 2010.

vCenter CapacityIQ 1.5. CapacityIQ helps customers analyze, optimize and forecast capacity in their vSphere environments. This release adds compelling new capabilities around storage and reporting:

  • Storage Analytics – visibility into storage capacity, forecast, bottlenecks via disk space and storage I/O trending
  • Resource Optimizations  – storage aware workload modeling and what-if scenarios, detection of constrained and underutilized hosts and outlier detection
  • Scheduled Reports – automated delivery of capacity utilization and optimization reports

https://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-capacityiq/

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VMware vCloud Request Manager 1.0.0 is GA! (General Availability)

Posted by cgrossmeier in Virtualization - (Comments Off)

On Dec 1st, VMware released VMware vCloud Request Manager (vRM) 1.0.0 (Build 90).  This is the initial release of the governance, provisioning, automation, software license tracking, and standards enforcement suite to manage vCloud Director.  While this is a 1.0 Release, it is a feature rich release for the organization looking to add policy and automation around their user request process for virtual machines.

First and foremost, vRM is a self-service portal.  This means that end-users and consumers will have a browser based portal to request and service their individual VM’s.  With a simple UI, the users will be able to request, manage, and decommission their virtual machines.  No learning vCenter or worrying about granting too many rights to the end user.  With integration in to Active Directory, you control the resources the end user sees and what they are entitle to do in the portal.

One of the features that has long been asked for is License Management.  With vRM, you can associate third-party software licenses with each vApp template and the provisioning workflow will automatically allocate the appropriate licenses each time a new vApp instance is provisioned based on that template. If there are no licenses available, the request will be denied to maintain license compliance.

vCloud Request Manager will also detect when a vApp is deleted, either automatically through the expiration of its lease or manually from the vCloud Director console, and will free up the associated licenses for re-use. Automating the tracking of software license helps ensure you always stay in compliance with third-party software license agreements.

Automation can also incorporate email approvals and notifications for IT staff, managers, and procurement.   Approval and success notifications are sent via email, with data and links automatically inserted. In an increasingly mobile workforce, cloud consumer can stay better informed and managers can respond to approval requests directly from their hand-held devices.

Product Overview at : http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-request-manager/overview.html

Interesting note, I did see iPad Safari 4.0 and Above were listed as supported browser platforms.  This is good news for the tablet device users who were afraid that the solution would be built upon Adobe Flex/Flash.

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