Category: News

Upcoming Denver Regional VMUG – I pity the fool that misses this one

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On Tuesday 6/28 we will be having our first regional VMUG in Denver. A regional VMUG is much bigger than a traditional VMUG and is a full day event. VMware’s MyVMUG group puts a lot of time and effort into organizing regional VMUGs and the end result is a great event that is full of awesome information. Regional VMUGs are like mini-VMworld’s, we have multi-track sessions, labs, vendor areas and much more. Here’s what you can expect at out upcoming regional VMUG:

  • Hands-on, self-paced labs – EMC & Wyse are sponsoring the labs where you can sit down and get actual hands-on training in a variety of different areas. There will be staff on-hand as well to help with any areas that you may need assistance with while completing the lab. Their is no better way to get training then with labs, this alone makes the event worth attending.
  • Scott Lowe from EMC – One of the top VMware bloggers in the world, Scott has written several books and has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share. Scott will be giving a vendor independent session on virtual networking design that will help you properly understand and configure your virtual networks. Got a question about how to architect something in your environment, Scott is the person to ask and can help you with just about anything.
  • John Troyer from VMware – VMware’s head cheerleader and social media strategist, John’s knowledge and experience combines VMware technology, humor, social media and a passion for virtualization that you must experience first hand. John organizes all of VMware’s blogs and helps maintain the VMTN forums as well as the Planet V12N and Planet VMware feed aggregates.
  • Sessions from VMware – Four awesome sessions presented by VMware personnel on a variety of topics:
    • Cloud in the Real World – Tom Ralph
    • VMware View Reference Architecture – Cale Fogel
    • Performance Best Practices for vSphere – Leah Schoeb
    • Transitioning to ESXi – Kyle Gleed
  • VMware Global Support Services – We are lucky to have one of the few HQ for VMware’s Global Support Services (GSS) in Broomfield, CO. These are the smart guys who answer your phone calls when you call in for help. They will have people onsite to answer any questions that you may have about VMware products. So if you have problems, need advice or just want to chat, come on by the VMware Genius Bar and talk to them.
  • Vendor expo – Looking for a solution or product to use it your virtual environment to help you overcome a challenge or fill a need? Over 20 vendors will be on-hand that will have tables in the vendor expo where you can get information about their products. Vendors include HP, EMC, Virtensys, Veeam, Juniper Networks, Appsense, Bluesocket, Xangati, Commvault, FalconStor, Quest, Wyse, Symantec, Solarflare, RES Software, Vkernel, Embotics, Xiotech, Vision Solutions and 10zig Technology.
  • Vendor sessions – All those great vendors won’t just be exhibiting their products, they’ll also be presenting sessions as well. Come learn about products, services and virtualization technology from these great sessions. Not into vendor product pitches? Don’t worry, many vendors will be presenting on non-product specific topics that will educate you and help you overcome challenges that you may experience.
  • Networking – This is an awesome opportunity to mingle and network with vendors, VMware employees, bloggers and customers. Ask anything you want, share your experiences or just listen to what others have to say, either way you are sure to gain from talking to anyone attending the event.
  • Giveaways – Hey who doesn’t like free stuff. Besides vendors giveaways we will also be giving away an iPad2, a Kindle and more at the end of the event.

So head on over to the MyVMUG site and sign up for this can’t miss event. You will get more from this FREE all-day event than you will get doing anything else that day.

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Off to HP Discover

I leave bright and early to attend HP Discover this week in Las Vegas. I’ve been to VMworld many times but this is my first trip to HP Discover. I look forward to seeing all the HP new technology and learn more about how there storage line is shaping up after the 3PAR acquisition. I’ve always felt HP has been weak in the virtualization space compared to other companies like EMC & NetApp that seem very well integrated with VMware. It may be that HP is just as integrated but they sure don’t market it like the other companies do. So I’m interested to find out as much as I can about HP, virtualization and in particular their server and storage products. So stay tuned for my reports over the next week, I’ll be a guest in The Cube with Stuart Miniman on Wednesday at 2:45pm PST.

One thing I found about out HP Discover already is they have a native app for all smartphones, more information is available here. You can find it in the Apple app store by searching on HP Discover.

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Using SSD technology to support memory overcommitment in vSphere

With applications becoming increasingly memory-hungry, memory always seems to be the resource in the shortest supply on a host. In a virtualized server environment, the lack of sufficient physical memory can have a real impact on project ROI, since it will limit the density that you could otherwise achieve.

That’s because, while CPU sockets can support an ever-increasing number of cores, for maximum efficiency, a host has to have a balance of resources available to virtual machines (VMs). If a resource shortage occurs in any one area on a host — such as RAM — the number of VMs that the host can run will be restricted despite plentiful resources in other areas.

The technique of memory overcommitment in a virtualized environment can help mitigate the problem, and using SSD to handle memory overcommitment can produce better results at a lower cost than memory overcommitment on mechanical disk.

Let’s examine the memory limitations of server hardware, how memory overcommitment works, and how solid-state drive (SSD) technology can address the problem.

Read the full article at searchvirtualstorage.com…

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Hyper-V dynamic memory allocation vs. VMware memory overcommit

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is Microsoft’s answer to VMware memory overcommit.

Dynamic memory allocation and memory overcommit both aim to improve memory management in virtual server infrastructures, and they even use common technologies. But they take different approaches and offer very different user experiences.

These differences — plus the fact that Hyper-V lacked dynamic memory allocation until this year — have spurred much debate among VMware and Microsoft users about the merits of each feature. In this face-off, two virtualization experts debate the pros and cons of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and VMware memory overcommit.

Hyper-V dynamic memory allocation: A superior approach
vs.
VMware memory overcommit: Do it right to begin with

Read the full article at searchservervirtualization.com…

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2004: A VMware Odyssey

VMware products have come a long way since the mid-2000s. Back then, virtualization was more of a niche technology with a cult following.

Today server virtualization has become ubiquitous, and VMware products dominate the market. The company has capitalized on this success and now offers other data center platforms, tools and services. Currently, VMware is making a concerted push into the cloud-computing market with products and initiatives such as vCloud Director, VMforce and Cloud Foundry.

Recently VMware has enjoyed record growth, as demonstrated by its recent acquisitions and Q1 revenue. To trace the company’s success, let’s review its recent milestones, product launches and initiatives. We’ll start in 2004, with the first VMworld conference.

In the Beginning: VMworld 2004

The first VMworld had 1,400 attendees — which isn’t bad, but far less than the 17,000 attendees in 2010. Over the past seven years, VMworld attendance has increased dramatically, which reflects the growing popularity of virtualization (see Table 1).

Read the full article at searchvmware.com…

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Oracle VM VirtualBox 4: An overview

Oracle VM VirtualBox is a hosted virtualization product along the lines of VMware Player, Workstation and Fusion and Microsoft Virtual PC. But VirtualBox has some unique features and use cases of interest to server virtualization admins.

Oracle VM VirtualBox is a lightweight application that allows you to run virtual machines (VMs) on a variety of host operating systems. Following Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, VirtualBox was officially renamed Oracle VM VirtualBox, and in February 2011, the company released version 4.0.4. VirtualBox is free and open source, but there’s also a free, closed source extension pack available with additional VirtualBox features.

Read the full article (Part 1Part 2) at searchservervirtualization.com…

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The importance of a vSphere health check to VARs

Your customer’s vSphere environment may seem healthy enough at first glance, but external appearances can be deceiving. Hidden problems may lurk under the cover that can eventually cause the environment to become unhealthy.

Not all problems that can occur are obvious to VARs because virtualization is much more complicated than traditional computing environments. There are many more moving parts that can lead to more complications. Seemingly trivial things such as simple configuration settings can have a ripple effect on the environment if they aren’t set correctly. Virtualization is all about sharing a limited set of resources amongst many virtual machines (VMs) and ensuring the optimum performance and availability you need to ensure the environment stays healthy.

A vSphere environment health check is one of the most valuable services that you can offer to customers because vSphere needs constant maintenance to keep it operating efficiently and problem-free. A good health check should be done on a periodic basis and is similar to a home inspection in that it documents the environment and checks the many different vSphere components to identify any existing or potential problems that can occur. Health check results can also be used to identify potential optimization and performance improvement opportunities that VARs can turn into value-adds.

Read the full article at searchsystemschannel.com…

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New vBookshelf launched

I just launched my new vBookshelf section of vSphere-land which can be found under the vInfo drop-down menu. I’ve gathered together over 30 books related to VMware and virtualization and have links and information on them. I think I’ve put together a pretty complete selection of good books that are available but if I’ve missed any please let me know. I’d also like to highlight 4 good books that have been recently released.

Click here to access the vBookshelf section of vSphere-land.com

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Title: Visible Ops Private Cloud: From Virtualization to Private Cloud in 4 Practical Steps

Authors: Andi Mann, Kurt Milne, Jeanne Morain

Publish Date: April 8, 2011

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Title: VMware vSphere Design

Authors: Scott Lowe, Maish Saidel-Keesing, Forbes Guthrie

Publish Date: March 8, 2011

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Title: VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration

Authors: Luc Dekens, Alan Renouf, Glenn Sizemore, Arnim van Lieshout, Jonathan Medd

Publish Date: April 12, 2011

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Title: VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment of Virtualization Servers (2nd Edition)

Authors: Edward Haletky

Publish Date: February 18, 2011

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