This morning I wake up to find an e-mail from the VMware Certification department, inviting me to take the VCP4 Beta Exam. This is pretty exciting, yet it disappoints me because it reminds me that I still have not received my VCDX Design Exam Beta results (going on 3 months now). However, I did talk to Tina at VMware on Tuesday and she sounded hopeful that these results will be available sometime in July.

It looks like the General Release exam will become available in August, based on the information provided in the e-mail from VMware;

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I’m a couple days behind on this, been extremely busy at work getting ready to go live with our SAP Deployment on July 2nd.  Anyways, enough crying to you about my busy schedule.   Nava Davuluri wanted me to help get the word out about the new VMware Sample Code website (titled Code Central).

This will be a site dedicated to the developer community, sample codes related to products such as the new vSphere CLI, vCLI, Perl Toolkit, Java Webservices SDK and much much more. Check out the site today for great code from other bloggers such as Eric Sloof and Alan Renouf!

Also be sure to check out the Code Central Blog!

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A big issue for companies making the upgrade to vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus from their existing VI3 Enterprise License wasn’t the low $295 price per CPU (VMware Part VS4-ENT-ENT-PL-UG-PROMO), it was the hassle of having to renew their SnS Entitlement! What if your company just renewed their 1 Year Enterprise SnS? You’d basically need to purchase another 1 Year Enterprise Plus SnS. Even though it would push out your support another year, this additional cost could be quite high for some companies, especially if you have dozens or even hundreds of hosts!

Customers complained and VMware Listened…

VMware will be releasing a 2 Month Enterprise Plus SnS package for customers in this exact boat.  The price will be reasonably priced at $140 per CPU for Platinum and $120 per CPU for Gold (both estimated retail). Well thank you VMware!  IMHO the best thing you could have done was just given all your Enterprise customers a free upgrade to Enterprise Plus, but I suppose this is the 2nd best thing I could ask for….seeing that I’m upgrading about 20 licenses in the next week.

For more information on the Enterprise to Enterprise Plus upgrade promotion, please contact your local VMware Retailer!  There is also an upgrade promotion that includes the Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch (VMware Part VS4-N1K-UG-C), this is priced at $795 per CPU.

Posted under vSphere, this blog has 470 views and 3 responses.

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Hey everyone, my marketing contact at VMware informed me of a video contest that they are putting on for VMworld 2009. The grand prize is $5000 cash and four other lucky people will win $1000 cash. Not to mention the fact that the 5 will be played at VMworld and the crowd favorite will win an additional $1000!  So you better enter now, entries must be received by July 20th, 2009. Even if you do not win, you do get a cool Run it with VMware T-Shirt. The only down-side I see is that you must be a US Resident.

Contest Name: Run It with VMware
Contest Website: www.vmware.com/go/runitwithvmware
Submit Videos by: 7/20/09
Eligibility: Open to ALL U.S. Residents (Don’t have to be a VMware customers)
Prizes: One $5000 Grand Prize, Four $1000 Prizes, One $1000 VMworld Favorite Prize, free t-shirt for all qualifying participants.
Topics: VMware is the best platform for business-critical applications.

Some key things:

1)      You don’t have to be a VMware customer to participate.

2)      You don’t have to run VMware vSphere in the datacenter to talk about it.

3)      You don’t have to represent the company you work for and talk about your experiences there if you’re not allowed to or don’t want to. There are many other ways to creatively show why VMware is the best platform for business-critical applications.

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I am proud to officially announce the VMworld 2009 - Ask the Experts Panel Session.  This session will feature virtualization experts Rick Scherer, Scott Lowe, Duncan Epping, Chad Sakac and Tom Howarth answering your questions on virtual infrastructure design.  In the next week or so we will be posting sections on our blog sites for you to submit questions for review during the session, so stay tuned!

Session ID: TA2259
Session Title: Ask the Experts - Virtualization Design
Track: Technology and Architecture
Abstract: Are you running a virtual environment and experiencing some problems?  Are you planning an upgrade from VI3 to vSphere 4 and have some questions about the infrastructure architecture changes required?  Do you have a virtual infrastructure design and want it blessed by the experts?  Come join us for a one hour panel session where your questions are the topic of discussion!  Join the Virtualization Experts; Rick Scherer from VMwareTips.com, Scott Lowe author of Mastering vSphere 4, Duncan Epping from VMware, Chad Sakac from EMC and Tom Howarth from planetVM.net as they answer your questions on virtualization design.

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Just a little note telling all of my readers to register and listen to my session on how The City of San Diego utilizes Virtualization for Consolidation and Application Deployment, tomorrow morning during the VMware Online Virtualization Forum. You can register online right now, FOR FREE, just visit this link.

Attend this free virtual event, right from your browser!

VMware virtual events are highly interactive events conducted online using only a web browser. They include all of the areas that you may find at a physical event, including an exhibit hall, auditorium, resource center and networking lounge.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about vSphere™ 4—The Next Generation of VMware’s market leading virtualization products!

Come see how companies within different industries like the Public Sector, Education, Healthcare and Technology are simplifying IT and increasing flexibility while cutting IT costs by 50%.

8:00am – 9:00am
Customer Spotlight: City of San Diego Uses Virtualization for Consolidation and Application Deployment

Attend the Online Virtualization Forum on June 9th and 10th. Don’t miss this opportunity to:

• Network with VMware product experts, customers, partners and other IT Professionals.
• Attend 30-minute presentations and get the latest info on VMware solutions, products and industry trends.
• Access real-time information from industry leaders without the hassle or expense of travel.
• Create a multi-media resource kit, including white papers, videos and podcasts.

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This is the 2nd of the vSphere Upgrade video set. In this video I will cover how to upgrade you ESXi hosts with VMware Update Manager. Upgrading your ESX hosts should only be done after you have successfully upgraded your vCenter Server to 4.0, an instructional video on how to upgrade your vCenter Server from version 2.5 to 4.0 can be found here.

You will need your VMware vSphere licenses after you upgrade your ESX hosts with Update Manager, by default they revert to the evaluation license - you can easily add the ESX license in your vSphere Client.

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Tony Dunn and the rest of the VMworld.com team have opened up a number of breakout sessions and labs from VMworld Europe 2009 and VMworld 2008 for public access.  That’s right, you can now gain access to a number of sessions and labs for FREE!  Check it out right now, go log into your VMworld.com account.

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Posted under Conferences, VMworld, this blog has 650 views and 3 responses.

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Most of you know that I was the featured guest on a Live TechTalk last week, NetApp has furnished me with the transcripts from the Q&A of the event - for those of you that submitted questions but were unable to get a response - the transcript below should have your answer.   I’m extremely excited to say that this transcript will only be available on VMwareTips.com and NetApp will even be sending the link to their customers, hopefully this will increase the traffic on the site.

If you have any additional questions in regards to the TechTalk event, please feel free to submit a comment to this post - or email me at rick (at) vmwaretips (dot) com.

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Posted under Conferences, NetApp, VMware, this blog has 821 views and 3 responses.

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Just received some exciting news from VMware,  my two submissions have been approved and are scheduled for VMworld 2009!   Looks like I have some work ahead of me.  One of the sessions will actually be an Ask the Experts panel discussion.   More information to follow, but here is what I received from VMware:

Dear Rick,

Congratulations! The session proposal below has been accepted for VMworld 2009, taking place August 31- September 3 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

Session ID: TA2259
Session Title: Ask the Experts - Virtualization Design
Track: Technology and Architecture

Session ID: TA2262
Session Title: vSphere Enterprise Stability - It’s all in the Design
Track: Technology and Architecture

I’m planning on putting together an Expert Panel of VM-Guru’s for the Ask the Experts session — so some of you may expect to hear from me soon!

Posted under Conferences, VMworld, this blog has 462 views and no responses.

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