Day 0 is over and the official first day of VMworld 2010 is upon us. As I type this I’m getting ready to head over to Moscone for the first general session of VMworld 2010 and am excited to see what this day brings.

With that said, I wanted to do a quick recap of the past couple days.  It would be an understatement to say that I’ve been busy. vSpecialist core meetings, tweet-ups, meeting with customers, VCE parties….it’s all in a days work.

The biggest highlights so far have to be the VCDX Appreciation Party where I received my branded VCDX #21 leather jacket, then some private meetings with VMware CTO Steve Herrod (@herrod) and Acadia CEO Michael Capellas……and then there was a gorilla.

Needless to say I absolutely love the team of vSpecialists I work with, they are the most amazing group of people in the I/T industry.  And as the video says….we get the job done!

Posted under VMworld

First off I need to apologize for the lack of content lately.  It goes without saying that becoming a vSpecialist for EMC has definitely filled my schedule more than my previous role. I promise to continue to do my best in providing the latest and greatest virtualization, cloud and general information technology content.

With that said, VMworld always fills my notepads with hot new ideas, strategies, products and futures. Definitely keep an eye on the site the next few days as I will be live blogging as much as possible during Keynotes, Sessions and other events.

Keep an eye on my Twitter, TwitPic, YouTube and UStreamaccount for live streaming of information, pictures and videos! Also included below is my schedule at VMworld 2010, be sure to find me and say hello - I always love meeting readers of my blog.

Sunday
11:00am - Arrive SFO
2:00pm - Private vSpecialists Meeting
6:00pm - Extra Mile Reception
6:30pm - vExtravaganza

Monday
9:00am - Private vSpecialists Meeting

12:00pm - Design Consideration for Migrating to Windows 7
(DV7167 - Moscone West Room 2004)

4:00pm - Welcome Reception & EMC Hands on Lab booth duties
6:30pm - VCDX Special Event
8:00pm - EMC/Cisco Special Event

Tuesday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)
10:00am - EMC Hands on Lab booth duties

2:00pm - Infrastructure Technologies Purpose Built for Private Cloud
(SS1004 - Moscone North Room 134)

4:30pm - Virtual Data Warehousing – Improving Time to Data Mine!
(SP9667 - Moscone West Room 2002)

6:30pm - EMC Customer Appreciation Party

Wednesday
9:00am - Infrastructure Technologies to Long Distance VMotion – What Is “VM Teleportation”?
(TA8051 - Moscone South Room 104)

10:30am - Best Practices to Increase Availability & Throughput for VMware
(TA8133 - Moscone South Room 302)

1:30pm - Shrinking RTO/RPOs of VM Replication w/ WAN Optimization
(BC7950 - Moscone West Room 2022)

3:00pm - Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge
(TA8623  - Moscone South Room 301)

5:30pm - VMware CTO Special Event
7:00pm - VMworld Party with INXS

Thursday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)

10:30am - Modern Networking in a Virtualized Environment
(TA7962 - Moscone North Room 133)

1:00pm - Leaving VMworld for Santa Clara
8:00pm - vDodgeball at vGym

*Breakout Sessions are BOLD

Posted under VMworld

With VMworld 2010 right around the corner we’d love to hear what’s on your mind in regards to virtualization and your environment. We in the vSpecialist organization at EMC would love to hear from you, this survey will be completely anonymous and will possibly help shape the future of virtualization.

• What’s your IT infrastructure look like?
• What do you like about it?
• What frustrates you about it?
• What do you think we should be doing that we’re not (EMC, VMware, or heck, the whole IT industry)?
• What are YOU doing that’s cool?

To complete this survey please click here.

Posted under VMworld

Just about an hour ago VMware lifted the NDA on VMware vSphere 4.1 and made available all of the information on this latest release as well as the bits for download available to the public.

I will be covering a more in-depth review on this latest release really soon but I did want my readers to know that the bits are available for download from the VMware website.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4

The upgrade to ESX(i) 4.1 should be relatively easy by using traditional update methods such as VMware Update Manager (VUM).  However, the upgrade to vCenter Server 4.1 is more of a migration since it will only support a full 64-bit environment. Still don’t fret, a vCenter server migration is pretty simple just make sure you have a FULL backup of your vCenter Server database.

Also a little FYI….rumor has it that this will be the final build containing a full ESX install (Service Console). Today might be a good day to start planning that migration to ESXi.

Posted under vCenter, vSphere

For those of you who haven’t purchased your pass to VMworld yet do I have a surprise for you!  Being an employee of EMC combined with EMC being a great partner of VMware allows me to extend some good perks to my readers.  If you use the following link (http://www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa?sponsorCode=EMC) to register for VMworld and enter in the promotion code EMC_EB_US2010 you will save $300 from the regular admission price (reg $1,795).

VMworld 2010 is going to have some great sessions, including some awesome Ask the Experts sessions as well as the opportunity to meet a good majority of the vSpecialist team. You can even pick yourself up a copy of Mastering VMware vSphere and have it signed by Scott Lowe, Chad Sakac and myself! Or even a copy of the VCP-410 study guide from McGraw-Hill.

I hope to see all of you there, be sure to visit the EMC booth to meet up and chat about all things virtualization.

Posted under Conferences, EMC, VMworld

Sorry this took so long to get out, my new position at EMC has proven to be extremely demanding…which I LOVE! I love going out and evangelizing about what great things we’re doing in the virtualization space. Anyways, back to the review…

Two weeks ago (June 9th) I took the VCAP4-DCA Beta Exam at the Pearson Vue office in Anaheim, CA. The overall process was the same as taking any other VMware exam, you sign-in and verify your identity then they log you into a workstation where the exam awaits.

What’s immediately different about the DCA exam is that it is 100% lab based, no multiple choice questions on this one. Once the Vue administrator signs you into the exam you accept a few disclosures then a RDP-style connection is made with a system probably located at VMware HQ. You switch between the questions and the desktop session using a button located on the screen, you do use the same session for the entire test.

Without breaking NDA it is difficult to explain what’s covered in the exam, but I can say that you will need as much hands-on experience as you can possibly get. It covers many different areas including Installation, Firewall management, NMP management and even some of the add-ons like vShield Zones.

For the beta you get 4 hours to basically get through as much as you can,  I was able to get through about 40 of the questions. I personally haven’t heard how long the exam will be when it goes GA nor how many questions it will have but the one great thing about this exam and the entire VCAP certification is that it will definitely separate the book cramers and good exam takers from the true experienced administrators.

Posted under Certification

EMC is running a webcast hosted by Chad Sakac next Thursday and the topic should be of an interest to any VMware or Storage administrator.  If you haven’t heard about VAAI and it’s great offloading capabilities I strongly urge you to register for this webcast.

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 11:00 am ET

Host: Chad Sakac, VP VMware Technology Alliance, EMC

Register Now by Clicking Here

During this discussion, you can learn about vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI). There are some functions that your storage system can handle more efficiently than your virtual servers and their hosts can. VAAI are a set of APIs that allows VMware vSphere to offload specific operations to the storage system improving VMware performance and freeing up resources on your virtual servers by leveraging more efficient array-based operations as an alternative to VMware host-based operations.

Join EMC Virtual Geek, Chad Sakac on June 24 to get key updates and honest answers to your most demanding questions.

Register Now by Clicking Here

Posted under EMC, Storage, vSphere

Everyone in the virtualization blogosphere has already covered this but I figured I should let my loyal readers know…

Earlier today VMware became aware of an issue affecting users of VMware View after applying Update 2 to their ESX 4.0 hosts. The problem only effects PCoIP, RDP works normally. There is a discussion of the problem in the VMware Communities here.

While our IT Teams work to resolve the issue, the Knowledge Base Team has responded by creating an up-to-the-minute live document at: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1022830 and using @vmwarecares and @vmwarekb Twitter accounts to alert customers.

This Knowledge Base article will be updated as new information becomes available. If you have been affected by this, please read the KB.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

Posted under View, vSphere

VMware has just dropped the second major update bundle (Update 2) for their flagship virtualization management product, VMware vCenter server.  This update addresses a number of issues found since the release of Update 1 as well as a number of improvements, such as:

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
• SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
• SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
• Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

Here are some of the key issues that are resolved in this update;

Read More…

Posted under vCenter, vSphere

You’ve guessed it, VMware has released Update 2 of their flagship bare-metal virtualization product ESX and ESXi. This update addresses a number of issues found since the release of Update 1 as well as a number of enhancements, such as:

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.

Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.

Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).

Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Read More…

Posted under vSphere