The first decade of a new century of a new millennium has recently ended.

The past ten years have been the most challenging, painful and yet most rewarding in my entire life. I’ve lost many friends, but I’ve gained many new ones. I’ve lost love, but have found new love that is deeper than ever before. I’ve found a greater respect for family and being together. I’ve also seen the world reach an all time high, then crash lower than it ever has before.

All of the situations, feelings and things that someone would normally endure over a lifetime, I’ve experienced in 10 short years.

Recently I’ve had to make a number of life changing decisions. Decisions that not only affect me, but will also affect my family, friends and a number of other people. Decisions that people typically handle one at a time.

For me, this was all thrown in my face at once.

One of the most stressful things to do in ones life, purchase a home, almost got the best of me. But, with a big sigh of relief we have recently closed escrow on a beautiful new home (two weeks later than we should have, adding additional unwanted stress to the situation). Now we get to choose carpet, paint, appliances and all of the other great things that home-ownership brings.

So, enter the second piece of the puzzle. For the past 8 years I’ve enjoyed a great position as a Solutions Architect in local government. In these past years, I’ve grown as a person as well as a professional. The things I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made will last a lifetime, but, it is time for me to continue to grow as a professional and take the next leap in my career.

Starting on February 1st, I will become an employee of EMC Corporation. I will be joining fellow bloggers such as Scott Lowe and Ed Saipetch, working as a VCE Architect in Southern California.  As Scott mentioned in his blog, this change in employment will not affect the blog in any way. In fact, it’ll let me blog even more as I’ll be reporting on exciting things coming out of the lab and in the industry in general.

It will be extremely hard leaving all that I have with my current employer, but like I said, this will be an enormous leap for my career and family. I want to thank everyone that has coached me along the way and the friendships that were made. I hope we can continue to work together in the future and continue to keep in touch.

As you can see, quite a bit of change all happening at once. Now that it is behind me I feel that a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and I am excited to see what this new decade will bring.

Hello 2010…
Hello New Home…
Hello New Opportunity!

Posted under Good Reading

First of all, thank you very much to our sponsors for putting this together, EMC/IOMEGA and VEEAM.

Now the part you’ve all been waiting for.

Our third place winner, taking home some Veeam Backup and Recovery licenses is:

Gil Salazar from Tucson, AZ

Our second place winner, taking home a Veeam Management Suite license is:

Abe Lister from Glen Burnie, MD

(drum roll please)…and, our Grand Prize winner, taking home an IOMEGA IX4-100 is:

Herbert Tucker from Keyport, NJ

Once again, thank you to the sponsors and a very special Thank You to all the participants. Thank you for making VMwareTips.com so successful in 2009.   Happy New Year and here’s to a very prosperous 2010.

Posted under Good Reading

Wow, I cannot believe it is already 2010. I believe this year is going to bring some great things. For me it will bring a new home and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, I can’t wait!

I also feel it’s going to be the year of VDI and that virtualization is really going to hit the world even harder than it has already. I’m excited to see what’s in store for I.T. this year, and I’ll be even more excited to blog about it.

With that said, Eric Siebert at vSphere-Land.comis looking to update his Top Bloggers list. I’ve held positions #11 on the list for quite some time, and I’d love to maintain (or even go up on the list).  So please, go vote for VMwareTIps.com on his website, click here to vote.

Thank you for taking the time to vote, I really appreciate all of my readers visiting the site as well as e-mailing me comments and suggestions. It is because of you that the site has grown to over 85,000 visits per month from over 20,000 unique visitors. Cheers to you!

Posted under Good Reading

VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference, written by Scott Lowe, Jase McCarty and Matthew Johnson is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I was fortunate enough to work on this book as a technical editor, and must say that it is the perfect vSphere quick reference book for both the beginner vSphere admin as well as the seasoned veteran. Be one of the first to get your own copy, and order it now for under $20, it makes the perfect holiday gift!

Posted under Good Reading, Training, vSphere

I know this isn’t a topic on virtualization, however I know a lot of companies that were waiting for Exchange 2010 so they could merge their upgrade and virtualization project into one.  Well, the day is here. Exchange 2010 is out and is ready for your upgrade.

Posted under Good Reading

VMware, EMC, Cisco, VCE, Intel, Acadia….whew! what does it all mean?! 

VMware, Cisco and EMC created a new marketing ploy called VCE (Virtual Compute Environment), this will provide technical innovations as well as integrated pre-sales services and support.

What is the product? vBlock.  Think of vBlock as the plug and play data-center solution, it will consist of Cisco UCS/Nexus/MDS, EMC Storage and VMware Virtualization all within a pre-designed and built rack solution - simply drop it in your data-center, plug it in and deploy virtual machines.  This is not really any different than purchasing HP Servers, NetApp Storage and VMware licenses separately. Ultimately it is the same solution, but now with a single SKU that partners will be able to sell.

I can’t say that VCE is really innovative, but it is brilliant from a business standpoint.  It will allow partners to sell a single source solution quickly and easily - no longer will VARs need to bring in multiple vendors to sell the entire design.

Click Here to Learn more about VCE from the CEO’s of Cisco, EMC and VMware.

OK, so where does Intel come into this? Well with some venture capital from Cisco, EMC and Intel a new organization called Acadia is being formed.  Acadia will bring the vCloud into the private data-center.  In a phone conversation today, Chad Sakac informed me that Acadia will provide a pay by usage solution for Enterprise users that aren’t ready for the public cloud. The solution will be completely supported and provided by Acadia and the customer will only be billed for what they use.  Pretty much a vBlock will be dropped into the customers data-center, the end-user will have a self-provisioning utility to create virtual machines and then they’ll receive a bill for actual utilization.  So no capital expense at all, your data-center now turns into a full 100% operating expense.

I didn’t plan on writing a full explanation on who/how/why. Chad Sakac covers all of these topics extremely well on his blog and I invite you to check out the following links;

VCE-An Insiders Take

VCE-Technology Innovations

VCE-Integrated Sales/Service/Support

VCE-Acadia

VCE-Partner Ecosystem

Posted under Good Reading

VMwareTips and the website…

Thought I’d give all of my avid readers an update on VMwareTips and my personal life.  For those of you that attended VMworld 2009 you already know there wasn’t too many exciting announcements made.  We have VMware View 4 coming with PC over IP (PCoIP), SRM 4 with its NFS support and more hype of the vCloud and VMware Go, a tool for ESXi users to deploy and manage your systems via a web based tool. Expect some write-ups soon on View 4 and SRM 4, those are set to be released before the end of the calendar year.

As of August 2009 we’ve hit over 70,000 visits per month and over 18,000 unique visitors!  The growth of the site has been phenomenal over the past year and I have no one to thank but my readers!  I pledge to you that the next year will only be better!

Mastering VMware vSphere 4

Earlier this month Sybex published Scott Lowe’s masterpiece “Mastering VMware vSphere 4″which is available on Amazon.com. I had the honor to be the technical editor of this great book and I truly feel this is a great tool for those of you just learning VMware vSphere or simply need a quick reference tool.

VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) Study Guide

I’ve been asked by McGraw-Hill to be the technical editor on an upcoming publication focused on the VCP-410 exam. This book “VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) Study Guide”should be released by January 2010 and will be available on Amazon.com.  Don’t forget that the requirements for the VCP4 certification are successful passing of the VCP-410 exam and also sitting through a certified VMware training session.

VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference

In what would be the third VMware book I’ve worked on, Sybex has once again asked me to be a technical editor on Scott Lowe, Jase McCarty and Matthew Johnson’s upcoming release “VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference”.  Think of this as a smaller pocket guide of the Mastering book. Perfect for those crunch moments, or perhaps some light bathroom reading? Pre-order now on Amazon.com!

TrainSignal vSphere Training

David Davis is at it again with the next edition of their popular video based VMware training series. TrainSignal has asked me to be the Technical Editor for this product and I promise we’ll provide nothing but the best video based training available for VMware vSphere.  Also be sure to keep an eye out for the Cisco Nexus 1000V video training which I will be authoring, this will be included in the vSphere series and should be added around mid November.

I’ve saved the best for last…

Most of you already know, via Twitter, but it is official.  I am now a VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX).  I am one of a few select bunch (< 25), I couldn’t be happier to be part of this elite crew!

Posted under Good Reading

I’m proud to announce the release of the latest series of video based training from Train Signal… VMware vSphere! This video series will include over 18 hours of vSphere training, jam packed on to 3 DVDs. You also get the videos in multiple file formats such as iPod Video, Mp3 Audio, WMV and high quality AVI. Finally, you get the instructors notes in PDF format to help you follow along with the videos and take more organized notes!

Instructor and fellow vExpert David Davis takes you through the entire course, covering over 36 different topics. On a side note, I know that you’ll really enjoy this video series….why do you ask? Because I was the Technical Editor on this video series, so I know you’re getting quality. This video training series gets the VMnut Stamp of Approval!

Not only do you get over 18 hours of vSphere training, with every paid purchase you also get FREE Downloadable updates to the vSphere Series!  What this means is that any time a new video (or update) is added to the vSphere series, you will get the chance to download it absolutely free!

Don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself with the video sample below. When you are ready to purchase visit the Train Signal website and use discount code VSPHERE25 to take $25 off your purchase. Think of this as our little way of saying Thanks. You better do it fast though, the offer ends 09/07/09.

For those of you attending VMworld 2009, here are some events that Train Signal is helping - be sure to check them out!

• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Sunday night extravaganza
  http://www.vmunderground.com/vmworld-2009-sunday-night-extravaganza
• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Run
  http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1786485
• David Davis will be doing a Video Signing on Wednesday (9/2) at the VMworld Book store from 12 to 1

Posted under Good Reading, Training

Just wanted to write a brief post apologizing to my readers for the lack of updates the past week or two.  Many of you know that I passed my VCDX Design Exam,  so that means I must submit my application for defense (by Friday!)—this has pretty much taken up 75% of the past week, leaving the other 25% to finish up my VMworld presentations (3 of them) and still maintain a full time job!

Well, the end is near… I’ve finished my VMworld presentations and my VCDX Defense Application will be completed by tomorrow evening….that means starting fresh on Monday morning I’ll be back in action and updating the site as much as possible!

Thank you for continuing to make this site grow! If it wasn’t for my avid readers, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Rick Scherer
VMwareTips.com

Posted under Good Reading

I know this isn’t related to Virtualization, but it is still pretty cool.  At the office I use Outlook, which is connected to an Exchange 2007 server.  I have my entire calendar live and up to date in that thing and one problem I’ve always been faced with is accessing Exchange via Outlook on my Home PC.  Due to security limitations I need to use Outlook Web Access (OWA) from outside our firewall, however I still use Outlook at home for access to my other IMAP accounts and Hotmail - but if I ever want to look at my calendar, I need to sign into OWA…it’s a PITA if you ask me.

Well, Google released a Calendar Sync tool that syncs your Outlook calendar to Google Calendar. I decided to start using this because my homepage is iGoogle, thus I can see my calendar from home right on my homepage without having to log-in. 

Now lets take it a step further, I installed Google Sync on my Home PC and now I have all my calendar entries from Exchange sync’d to Google Calendar and then sync’d to my Home PC - editable from any device (with 2-way sync enabled).

Posted under Good Reading, Microsoft