The Cloud Eh!?

Category: VMWARE

Stay Connected with Edmonton VMUG

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I want our community to be like this!

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Not like this!

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We are working to provide an option for everyone to connect with the Edmonton VMUG. People use different means to socially connect, and we have done the following to help!

Email: Edmonton@VMUG.com

Twitter: @edmontonVMUG

Meet-up: http://www.meetup.com/Edmonton-VMware-User-Group-Meetup/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4615988

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/254278611574863/

VMUG: http://www.vmug.com/edmonton

We can do more, but I think this is a good start. I don’t see the need for anymore at the moment, and of course I do have to keep all this updated Smile 

Now… What do I need from the community. I need you to be active and just pick one, only one to stay connected with us and spread the value of the community.

Please share!!

Life is about change… Another one for me

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Veeam Backup and Replication has been a love of mine since I first ran into them at VMworld 2009, since that time I have not used anything else to protect my virtual infrastructure. To the point that early 2013 I started to work for Veeam. Let’s say that working for Veeam has not changed my feeling about the company or product one bit. If anything I think more highly of them today. Before I go into the change I am making, I want to say this has nothing to do with Veeam as a company or product. My family has decided they would rather see more of me…… very surprising but they seem to like me around the house, must be my stunning looks, no don’t think it is…. more honey “to do list” I think. Long story short, that leads me to leaving Veeam Software and joining Nimble Storage.

I figured instead of just saying that I was joining Nimble Storage, I should give some of my reasoning behind why Nimble.

I started hearing about Nimble Storage late 2010, when a couple of guys showed up to my office for a meeting with me and my Manager, at the time we were to invested in our current storage provider to consider them even though the product pitch sounded amazing.

In 2011 I started with a new company, after my first couple of weeks, I knew I needed two things, a better data protection strategy and storage. Of course the first thing I did was go ahead and buy Veeam and deploy. But the storage decision took more thought and consideration because at this time the storage start-ups were numerous. I started to scour the internet and do my research, and everything I wanted landed in the Nimble Storage playground. Went ahead and looked up my old contacts and called them in and ended up going with Nimble for my storage. I have condensed the story, if you want to read the rest I did a blog a long time ago “Nimble Storage My Story”

I have been asked by a couple of people, why would I want to sell a box….. Ummm found that very interesting because I don’t consider Nimble’s offering as a box. Sure it is a storage appliance, sure it includes everything you need for you storage needs. But one key piece of the puzzle those people have been missing is the way Nimble has been developed from the ground up to use compute resources as the cap for the amount of IOPs you can get from a disk subsystem. Plus the amount of features they have added at no cost to current customers, and no need to rip and replace the old hardware they purchased. It’s not just a box, it is a end to end solution for all your storage needs no matter what performance you may require.

The Nimble device that I bought back in early 2012 was a CS220, what did it come with?

  • Disk of course
  • 1GbE
  • Compression
  • Web Interface
  • Integrated Protection

Doesn’t seem like much, but wait to see what has been added over the last 2 years, I may be missing things that’s for sure…..

  • Scale-to-fit, and Scale Out (Add Capacity, Increase Cache and Compute, Storage Clusters)
  • Nimble Connect Manager for VMware/Windows
  • InfoSight (Your Dashboard for your entire Nimble Infrastructure)
  • Increased Compression
  • Increased Performance
  • vCenter Plugin (greatly reduces administration effort for VMware)
  • All Flash Shelves
  • New product lines (CS215, CS300, CS500, and CS700)
  • Cloud Storage Solutions
  • Not to mention feature enhancements (Triple Parity RAID, VLAN Tagging, Simplified Configuration, Role Based Authentication, and the list goes on)
  • Nimble Connect (Community driven forum)

Plus they have also talked about other things that are coming

  • VM/VMDK statistics collection inside of InfoSight
  • Storage sizing tool
  • FC protocol

Please look at the Nimble Storage presentations that just occurred at Storage Field Day 6 for more detailed information

Just to add to this, I have stayed close with the company that I implemented the CS220. When I was there we did add capacity to it by means of a shelf. They have recently upgraded the controllers to 10GbE, and also just added a CS300 to the infrastructure. The nice thing about all these upgrades, and changes, it never required one maintenance window or downtime. Even though the CS220 is over 2 years old today, it still benefits from the features and enhancements that Nimble has built in over the years, even more performance, and storage space savings.

This all comes down to why I am joining Nimble Storage. It is another great company that is adds innovation into their product line, and not just looking for ways to generate more profit. They care about their customers by providing extra features at no cost, and I believe one of the best support models in the market.

I look forward to watching the company grow and flourish, but I didn’t want to watch from the side lines anymore.

Don’t forget to head over to www.NimbleStorage.com and have a look for yourself.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

Want to present at a VMUG? FeedForward can Help!!

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Everyone enjoys coming out to the VMUG, I know in Edmonton we get great community involvement at every event. We all get a chance to talk with old friends and meet new ones.

The normal agenda for a VMUG, is the leaders get some vendors to come out and support the community, we listen to a technical session or two, we chat, ask questions, share experiences,  and at the end we try to do our best to persuade one of the community members to get up and present at the next meeting…… The room normally turns to silence….. why?

It’s not because our members don’t have anything to present, its usually the fear factor of getting up in front of a room full of people, and having to present. We all remember the high-school days, where we go and hide the minute the teacher is looking for someone to get up in the front of the class.

Well…. time to change and get up and speak at your next VMUG. Plus get mentoring from some of the best presenters out there.

I remember the first time I had to get up in front of a room full of people, it was gut wrenching! However I made it through it and have presented more times now than I can remember. But you know what I wish I had during that time, a MENTOR! Learning the hard way was fun, or funny for the people who were watching me learn my way.

This all leads me to FeedForward, something that was started by Mike Laverick, Scott Lowe, and Duncan Epping, to help community members with their presentations, and mentor them though the process of presenting. The great thing about this program is they aren’t going to provide feedback after your present, they are going to help before the presentation, sounds smart doesn’t it Winking smile

You may be asking, how do I find out more, and how can I join this program and start developing some amazing presentation skills and not just be a fly on the wall at the VMUG, and be the person up there doing the talking.

Join the Program: http://www.vmug.com/feedforward

Find out more on the program: http://vmugvoice.vmug.com/2014/February14.htm

Now Mike, Scott, and Duncan can’t mentor everyone that’s why there is a call out for more mentor’s. I tossed my hat in the pile. Either way go check it out and decide how you would like to participate.

Also please follow FeedForward on Twitter @feed4ward, and use the Hashtag #FeedForward

Look forward to seeing you at the VMUG.

VMUG Workspaces–Connect with your Community

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Why do we all go to the VMUG Meetings? I know why I go, I enjoy talking with people from my local community, who are like of mind. I gain so much value from being around such a smart group of people, who are usually trying to accomplish the same thing I am trying to do. It’s great to pick their minds and see what they are doing, and what is working for their environments but also what isn’t, no need to go down a rabbit hole if someone else has.

Us IT folks love to talk about what we are doing…. We don’t always do well in the normal social circles, but in our own, when we talk the talk, and people understand what we do, and why we are passionate, we just can’t stay quite. Just look at Twitter, the proof is in the pudding. We use social networking, and reach out to people across border’s and oceans, which is amazing……. and it gives us the ability to reach out to people normally we wouldn’t be able to.

Ok where am I go with this? Local VMUG Workspaces!!!

Local VMUG’s usually only have 4 meetings a year. Is that really enough? Yes, we are all busy in our Careers and personal life. But do you still want to reach out to your local community? I know I do, and that is why I head over to my Local VMUG Workspace, and post a discussion. This way I can easily reach out to my Local peers, and see what they are up too… see if anyone is up for a vBeer, if they can help me with an issue I am experiencing, any study tips for certifications, and so many other things. Couldn’t we also do this with Twitter? We sure can, but why not also post it to your local community and maybe get someone locally to assist who may not use social networking as heavily. I’m not saying lets move away from twitter, but lets give a little bit of love to a great solution also provided to us free of charge.

If you agree with this, head over to your local VMUG workspace when you have a few moments, update your profile, subscribe to the ListServ, and start a new discussion. You may be surprised what may come of it.

If you are reading this, and you aren’t a member of the VMUG head over to www.vmug.com and register today! It opens up a wealth of connections and knowledge. You will get to know your local VMware Reps, Local Members, and more vendor connections then you could imagine.

Feb-27-2013 VMUG Meeting Recap – Dell

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imageFirst of all want to thank everyone for coming out to our 1st Quarter Meeting. In total we had 25 Members come out, it was a good showing but I know we can get more people attending. Everyone who enjoys the VMUG please support the group by telling your peers and friends to come out to the events. You can register for the VMUG by heading over to www.vmug.com and pick your local chapter, join in on the discussions and get ready to meet some great people.

This meeting was Dell sponsored and focused on VDI and the capabilities Dell can offer. We also had a very special guest! We had the honor to have Eric Gales (VP and GM of VMware Canada) come out to the event and talk with us, and then he had a Q and A session.

Eric Gales

First of all Eric got up and did a quick overview of VMware and himself, and left the floor opened for questions. Below I am going to list the questions he was asked and provide the answers he provided in a reduce format. Disclaimer: **** Below is my understanding of his responses ****

Q: Does VMware have Cloud Availability in Canada

A: VMware does offer Cloud Availability within Canada but it is not VMware owned, it is third-party. In time VMware plans to open up their own offering for a public Cloud, but they plan to do this within USA first, and then move it to other locales.

Q: Can you go into a High Level overview of SDDC

A: In a nutshell the SDDC is taking everything that VMware is already famous for, and implementing that across the entire datacenter, and giving you the ability to use your CapEX in a more efficient matter while lowering your OpEx, but not just for your Servers everything from your Switches, Load Balancers, Proxies, Firewalls, Routers, Storage…… and whatever else you can dream of running in the datacenter. One of the main reasons they can now move all the datacenter constructs to Software is because almost everything runs the x86 architecture. This will not happen overnight, and will take time to get up to speed, but VMware is helping drive the future of the Datacenter.

Q: How is VMware positing themselves against Citrix related to Virtual Applications?

A: Not once did he say anything against Citrix. He basically said that ends users want to be able to access their data on any device they please. The End-User experience however is one of the most important things, not all data needs to be accessed in the same way, and this is where Horizon Suite comes into play by allowing the end user access in many different ways; Virtual Application, Virtual Desktop, SAAS, Data, or even XenApp published applications with a portal connection within Horizon Workspaces. The VMware solution reduces the complexity of the setup for the Administrators. This is bringing the ability to not manage the endpoint, and just worry about giving the end user the ability to get to access to information from any device and any where.

Q: How is the third-party support for the SDDC related to Networking?

A: As long as the Third-party vendor supports the x86 architecture they can run it with VMware. VMware will offer solutions that you can also use, with their purchase of Nicira they are ahead of the game. In the vSphere suite over the next 18 months thing will start to appear that will provide these solutions. In some setups you may have no choice but to use a hardware solution to provide the service, however VMware is working with these vendors to utilize API’s to plug into the VMware Software layer.

Q: What should Canada expect from the organizational changes at VMware?

A: The biggest challenges for businesses moving into Canada are the size of the country, and the two languages. Canada should expect to see much better resources that will be able to get to know the customers better. VMware will then be able to understand the Business needs with these customers, which allows them to provide solutions that fit.

Q: What do you think the biggest challenges are for VMware in the next year?

A: Translating the vision of the SDDC into reality, every business wants to spread their CapEX further, and reduce the overall OpEX, and provide end users with their information everywhere, but every environment is different and will take different steps to get towards that vision.

Eric made us all think about the SDDC, and what the Horizon Suite can bring to our Organizations. Below I am just going to provide a little overview of the Horizon Suite, and the idea of the SDDC.

Horizon Suite

The main purpose of the Horizon Suite is to empower IT and users with advantages that move the business forward. It provides a lower TCO of existing PC’s and applications, while providing a robust and reliable end-user computing on any device securely, while allowing centralized management of physical and virtual desktops keeping to business polices.

The pieces that make up the Horizon Suite are the following. Click on the links to head to the VMware Site and get all the information.

Horizon View: This product was formerly known as “View” it’s main purpose is to simplify desktop and application management.

Horizon Mirage: A layered image management solution that separates the PC in logical layers which are owned and managed by either IT or the end user.

Horizon Workspace: Combine applications and data into a single enterprise-class workspace. Provides simpler, centralized, policy-based management for the Administrator, and gives freedom of mobility to the End-User.

VMware Blog for Horizon Suite

Software Defined Datacenter

SDDC is where all compute, storage, networking, security, and availability services are pooled, aggregated, and delivered as software. In very simply terms everything will run in Software! We all know how VMware helped change the role of a system administration, now they are trying to do the same with the entire datacenter, I think we will all enjoy the journey.

Head over to VMware site to see more on the vision of the SDDC

Is your Organization ready for the SDDC

Products to help build the SDDC

VMware vCloud Suite

VMware VMware vSphere

VMware vCloud Networking and Security

VMware vCloud Director

VMware vCloud Connector

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

VMware vCloud Automation Center

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite

VMware vFabric Application Director

VMware vFabric Application Performance Manager

VMware IT Business Management

Dell Wsye

First off Dell was up with Geoffrey Bruce and Jerry Landry with the Wsye group. Geoff started the presentation with Mega trends driving IT today; Location based services, social media, mobility, mass consumerization, and big data. Which lead into introducing “Dell cloud client computing” which empowers the IT Department to allow the end user to use any device, from anywhere.

With Dell cloud client computing your users can access data from Thin/Zero Clients, cloud PCs, personal computers, mobile clients, smartphones, tablets, and virtual machines. You can define user types such as task workers, office workers, power workers, or mobile workers. Then apply profiles to those users that will grant access to applications, peripherals, and content. Lastly you can identify the solution the user will use to access their data it could be presentation, VDI, cloud PC, Shared, or Web based.

Next up was Jerry, he talked about Wsye hardware. You have three types of Wsye hardware; flexible thin clients, dedicated zero clients, and familiar cloud PCs. His main focus was on the dedicated zero clients, which includes the P25 and P45. These devices are designed for VMware View and based off the PCoIP hardware tehnology.

Top 3 Benefits

  • Hardware zero client is the most secure endpoint available suitable for government, defense, healthcare, finance and other secure-sector deployments
  • Highest performance client endpoint for virtual desktop and remote workstation deployments
  • Easy to manage and quick to deploy with no OS malware protection or patches required

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All your Wsye clients can be managed from a central location. Below is a product overview for management. This management comes built in with the Dell cloud client management.

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If you would like to learn more about Dell cloud client computing.

Dell vStart and ASM

The last presenter of the day was Jeff Davey with Dell, he talked about Dell vStart, and Dell Active System Manager 7.0 (ASM)

Dell vStart gives you a pre-integrated solution for any size business, Dell helps take the risk out of sizing your virtual deployment.

vStart Hardware
Dell vStart 200, 100 and 50:

Dell vStart 1000:

Your vStart rack is installed in your data center by our expert technicians, who make sure your vStart installation is ready to receive your virtual machines.

To learn more about ASM 7 have a look at the following link ASM

To learn more about vStart have a look at the following link vStart

VeeamZip Video Demonstration

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Ok… well I always wanted to post up a video to my blog, so this is more of test than anything. But figured just as well share it with the world. Is it great… No is the audio perfect No, the back ground noise is my Lab…. If I do more I will make it better.

Veeam with the release of 6.1 has come up with a great new FREE!! product called VeeamZip which comes as part of the Veeam Backup Free edition (can be converted to Full edition with a license file), it will allow you to take a ad-hoc backup of a live VM, and place it on any removable storage.

This backup will also be deduped, compressed, and captures all the VMDK’s into one file, which can then be restored to any host. Not only can you restore the full VM, you can also perform File-Level Recovery. Just think of all the things you can do with this.

Did I mention that it is Free! Head over to Veeam and download a copy today http://www.veeam.com/free-vmware-esxi-backup.html

VeeamZip Video Demonstration

VMUG Meeting Recap 27-Sept-2012

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On September 27th 2012 we had another great VMUG Meeting. In total we had about 40 Members attend. At this meeting we had the great pleasure to have David Davis join us from TrainSignal, and Keith Aasen and Neal Martyniuk from NetApp.

TrainSignal – David Davis @davidmdavis

David joined our meeting with the use of a Skype Call. It worked out very nicely with only a few issues related to Internet quality. He presented on “VCP – Why You Should Get it and How to Pass the First Time” It was a great session and had information related to the Certification change made by VMware at VMworld 2012. He spoke about all the great resources you can use to pass the first time, and outlined the Blue Print for the exam and basically said use that as the bible.

Below are some of the resources he mentioned in his presentation, they are great and not just for your VCP they can be used to stay in tune with what is happening with Virtualization.

SLOG by Simon Long – www.simonlong.com

This place is a great resource! He has practice exams that will help during your VCP journey. It helped me pass my VCP4 and VCP5.

ProfessionalVMware BrownBags by Cody Bunch – http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

This is the place where you get to hang out with amazing and smart people and get to learn while you are there. You can join live on Wednesdays, and even watch it offline at your leisure if you can’t make the show. Available over iTunes.

APAC Virtualization Podcast by Alastair Cooke – http://apacvirtual.com/

Another place where you can watch live or download a podcast to view later. Either way a place to listen to everything Virtual from astounding people.

VMware Community Roundtable by John Troyer – http://blogs.vmware.com/

VMware experts talk about virtualization live every Wednesday at noon CA time. I always listen to this one on my drive to work! You can subscribe from iTunes to get the latest podcast.

vChat – http://www.vmwarevideos.com/

vChat is a regular virtualization video chat covering VMware vSphere, Cloud Computing, Virtualization News, and maybe some geeky humor. Regular contributors are 3 vExperts– Simon Seagrave (TechHead.co), Eric Siebert (vSphere-Land.com), and David Davis (VMwareVideos.com).

vNews & Chinwag – www.rtfm-ed.co.uk

Join Mike Laverick and learn some more great things. You will now have to visit him over at Blogs.vmware.com for the newest information.

Local VMUG – www.vmug.com

Head over to your local VMUG for help, there are people there that are certified and will be more than willing to help

VMware Documentation – http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/

All the information you will need from the Vendor

NetApp – Keith Aasen and Neal Martyniuk @keith_aasen

This was an amazing presentation that kept you involved at all times. Neal was the first to get up and do the introductions and get the ball rolling. Next Keith came up and did about 1 Minute of PowerPoint and the rest was the Keith Aasen and Whiteboard show! The presentation was talking about the NetApp Release of OnTap 8.1 and Cluster-Mode, it was a deep dive into how this has been designed. He started with a couple of Boxes on the board that before you knew it there was no whiteboard space left, and this was a full wall whiteboard! He drew the controller design and how that all interacted with each other controller in the Cluster and how the vServer would extend across all controllers in the cluster and hide all the changes from hypervisor level. I really wish I had to record this session, and share the full experience.

To learn about Cluster-Mode head over here, better than I can do to explain it http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-fas6200-running-dataontap8-clustermode-1112.html

Now once he was done with Cluster-Mode he built Flash Cache on top of that. With this is talked about 3 Types of Cache.

  • Controller Flash Cache
  • Flex Cache
  • vSphere Host Cache (Not sure this is released yet) it will use a agent inside the VM to make this happen. It uses a sync process to make sure the Host Cache is kept in sync with the Cache on the controller level

To learn more about this have a read of http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-1008-intelligent-caching-flash-cache-hk.html

During Keith’s entire presentation he was up for Q and A, then after the presentation he stayed around for an hour or more answering questions.

Keith also did a great presentation at VMworld 2012 and was in the top 10! View the session http://www.vmworld.com/community/conference/us/learn/top10

VMUG Housekeeping

At the VMUG meeting this time we also talked to the members about where they would like to head with VMUG. As a Leader I am here to do the heavy lifting with the Team of Avram, and Donald. We will get the times squared away, the location, the vendors, but we would love to make this a community where we have our local members giving the presentations, I want to see what my peers are doing in their environments and the things they have learned. Our Local community has all the answers we need. We just need to start sharing with each other. I see great things for the VMUG in the upcoming months. I look forward to meeting more and more people each event. Please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Edmonton@vmug.com

@EdmontonVMUG

http://www.vmug.com/Edmonton

Veeam One Free Edition and More

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imageEveryone needs insight into their virtual infrastructure, but not all the small shops have the budgets to get this in place. Well…. That is all changed with Veeam One which now has a free version. Does this give you everything, no…. But does it give you enough, sure does. Plus if you get to the point you want the full version just go ahead and purchase your license and apply it to your production install of Veeam Free Edition.

By no means is this going to be an in-depth review, I’m going to show you how easy the install is and how quick you can be up and running. I will also let you know what you are missing between the Free Edition and the full Edition. If you go ahead and install the product and want to find out more information on how to use the product, please visit the Veeam website, they have all the resources you need. http://www.veeam.com/virtualization-management-one-solution/resources.html Don’t want to read? look no further some training videos for Veeam One http://www.veeam.com/university/how-to-manage-virtual-machines.html?ad=one-nfr-page

Install

  • First of all we need to get the install, point your browser to http://www.veeam.com/virtual-server-management-one-free.html and start the download, you will need a Free Account. If you don’t have one you can register at this point.
  • The download is in the ISO format, and is close to 1.3 GB in size, once you have the file downloaded, go ahead and pick a VM to install it on. In my lab I choose my Veeam B&R server as the VM. I used the VI client to present the ISO to my VM from my Local workstation drive.

System Requirements

  • The requirements for the server are pretty low, you don’t need a whole lot of resources to host the server.
  • If you are not sure if you meet all the software requirements, that’s fine as you go through the installer it will run some tests to see if you do, and if you don’t the installer will fix that right up for you. I love when Installers give you this option! Thanks Veeam.
  • The requirements listed below are right from the Veeam One Installer.

Veeam ONE Server:

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Veeam ONE Monitor Client

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Supported Virtualization Platforms

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Ports

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Permissions

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Install Screenshots and Steps

  • Go to the location where you mounted the ISO and launch the install.

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  • You should now have the Installer Menu on the screen.
    • Veeam One Server: This will be the full install, if you run this option it will install the server and the monitor client.
    • Veeam One Monitor: This option will just give you the monitor components. This will allow you to view the Veeam One Server from another workstation, it could be a Management Station, Laptop, or anything else you want to have the capability to view your Veeam One Server from. Just make sure it sticks to the requirements for the install.
    • For this example I am going to choose the Veeam One Server Install.

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  • Click Install Veeam One Server, you will see the screen below as the binaries are loading.

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  • Of course have a read, and click next.

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  • Again have a read and agree to the EULA, no worries they aren’t asking for your first born.

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  • For this pick the Free Mode, again you can change this at any time if you want to go to the full version without have to do a reinstall.

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  • We have selected the Free Mode, and you don’t get options to choose in the free mode.

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  • Next is the system configuration check, as you can see I missed a software install. But no problems there, just click install and the issue will be resolved.

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  • Enabling the missing features for me, without me having to leave the installer, add a feature and run everything from scratch again.

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  • All is well, time to continue with the install.

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  • I have decided to change the install path, to another disk on my server that has more space. You may do the same or keep the default of the SysVol.

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  • Please put in an account that has Local Admin rights to the server, and System Admin on the SQL Server.

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  • You can choose to install SQL Express as part of the installer if you need a SQL server to host the database, or you can choose an existing SQL server. In my case I am installing on my Veeam B&R server so I will use the same SQL Express Install.

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  • You can change the ports that the Reporter Web Portal, and the Business View Web Portal uses. You only need to change this if you have a port conflict.

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  • Now you get to choose what the Veeam One Server is going to monitor it can be a VMware vCenter Server, or Standalone vSphere Host, also the Free Hypvisor version. As you can see you may also pick a Hyper-V Server. Nice thing is it’s all from one console.

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  • Once you make your selection just go ahead and put in the required username and password.

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  • At this point that is all the installer needs. Time to go get a Tea and wait for the installer to do it’s thing.

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  • Waiting, with progress.

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  • If you see this screen it means all is good to go.

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  • You will now see the new icons on your desktop. This can all be done in about 15 Minutes, depending on the speed of your hardware.

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Veeam One Monitor

This is where you can view all the Real-Time Data and Historical data. In the Free version it will only go back 7 Days. Veeam One Monitor gives you the ability to complete Virtual Infrastructure Analysis, At-a-glance views of health and performance with Dashboards, Advanced Alerting Capabilities, and storage Monitoring.

  • Once you launch Veeam One Monitoring you will see the following splash screen.

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  • Then you will see the portal. This is where you can get all the data to keep you alert of issues that may arise. This will give you the opportunity to resolve issues before your end users even notice. Again just giving a quick overview of what you get with Veeam One, not a deep-dive.
  • But below I have provided some screenshots of what you will see.

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Veeam One Business View

Business View gives business-oriented views of the virtual environment, for monitoring and reporting from the different perspectives of your stakeholders. This application will allow you to gain a business view of your virtual environment, set and forget dynamic categorization, and prioritize resource allocation and control VM sprawl.

  • I haven’t set anything up for this in my Lab, so it doesn’t show much, but this is a Web Portal where if you setup category’s for your VM’s things will start populate.
  • The Business View can also been seen with Veeam One Monitor, Select the Business View Tab on the Left side.

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Veeam One Reporter

Reporter Discovers, documents, and analyzes your entire virtual infrastructure, this is all automated and eliminates labor-intensive error-prone and ineffective manual reporting processes, and can all be viewed with Customizable dashboards.

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Full Version vs. Free

The Free version is great for the SMB that doesn’t have the budget, but the cost of Veeam One is fairly cheap easily if you bundle in Veeam Backup and Replication and get yourself an essentials license. So… you may be asking yourself what do I get with Veeam One Full Version. The following Document will clear that up.

Quick overview

  • Alarm modeling and custom alarms
  • Full access to the knowledge base
  • Management of guest, host and vCenter processes
  • Historical change management beyond the most recent 24 hours
  • Microsoft Visio reports for multipathing, network, vMotion and datastore utilization
  • Automated report generation and distribution

Detailed

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Upgrade from Free to Full

Now… its time to see how easy it is to upgrade from Free to Full.

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  • You will then see the license you currently have.

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  • If you are running the free version there will be no license.
  • Click the install License, and browse to the location of your key file.

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  • Then you have a full version!

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Conclusion

Veeam has made it very ease and cheap to give you a single pane of glass for reporting, capacity planning, and troubleshooting. If you are not using anything right now, why not! Install Veeam One at no cost to you and within Minutes have a very good view of virtual infrastructure. If you are using something, and you think Veeam One may be better, again install and have a look!

VMworld 2012 “What Happened”

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VMware put on another amazing conference this year. It was 5 days of Data overload! Here is my way of putting all that data into usable Information. I figured I needed to compile this for myself, just as well share that information, and hopefully someone else with get use out of it. I got to meet and see some great people of the VMware Community, my only regret was I didn’t get to sit and speak with everyone.

What’s New

With the release of vSphere 5.1 VMware has added some new features and products to the mix. Below I will go into a little detail.

Please read the following information from VMware related to the new Features!

Larger Virtual Machines/Host

You can now scale VM’s up to 64 vCPU and 1 TB of vRAM. Not only can the VM’s get bigger but so can the Host, You can now have a host with 256 Physical CPU’s. With the ability to have such large VM’s VMware has also introduced a way to reduce Memory overhead for these large workloads. Before vSphere 5.1 this memory overhead was locked into the physical host memory, now vSphere 5.1 gives you the option to swap this memory to disk, and save up to 1 GB of physical memory when the host is under  memory pressure. To use this feature you need to manually create a swap location with the following command. “esxcli sched swap system set -d true -n <datastore name>” The Swap file get’s created on the root of the datastore specified and is normally between 500 MB to 1 GB in size.

Virtual Machine Hardware

Hardware Version 9 provides support for larger VM’s, CPU performance and virtual shared graphics acceleration. You can always move ahead with your vSphere 5.1 upgrade without the worry of Hardware Levels, vSphere 5.1 will support hardware level 8,7 and 4, this way you can take your time and upgrade your levels and host inline with your maintenance windows. Please check our Mike Laverick’s blog for more detail

VDI Space Efficient Storage

A new disk format that enables the correct balance between space and efficiency. The new disk format is called Space-Efficient Sparse Virtual Disks (SE sparse disk). Traditional thin provisioning does not address reclaiming stale or deleted data within the guest OS, leading to a gradual growth of storage over time. SE sparse disk has encompassed a reclaim feature that will allow this data growth to be reclaimed with a wipe and shrink process. For more information on this feature please look at the vSphere 5.1 Storage Technical Whitepaper.

vSphere Distrubuted Switch

vDS 5.1 adds Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and recovery, and LACP support. For more information please read VMware vSphere® 5.1 – Networking

Single-root I/O Support

Single root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a standard that enables one PCIe Adapter to be presented as a multiple separated logical devices to VM’s. The HyperVisor manages the physical function while the virtual functions are exposed to the VM’s. SR-IOV capable devices offer benefits with direct I/O which reduces latency and reduced host CPU utilization. You may say well we already have VMDirectPath that offers this ability, both are very close in function, the big difference is that SR-IOV can share a physical adapter with many VM’s whereas VMDirectPath can only have a one to one relationship.

vSphere vMotion

vMotion has a new enhancement that allows Migrations without the need for shared storage configurations. This works by combining vMotion and svMotion together, there are a few requirements like anything, but in most cases they will not impact you. You can only move within the same vCenter Server, the target and source ESXi Host need to be in the same Layer 2 network, 2 simultaneous moves, and if you are using the virtual distributed switch the VM’s need to be on the same one. But now we have a better way to move VM’s from one Cluster to another, also the performance is near identical to a vMotion and svMotion today!

vSphere Data Protection

vSphere 5.1 has released a new way to protect your VM’s called vSphere Data Protection (VDP), it is fully integrated into vCenter, agentless, disk-based backup, that resides on deduplicated storage. It can protect powered-on and powered-off VM’s, Deduplication is shared across all Jobs, it utilizes CBT, Full VM backups and File-Level Restores, Based off of appliances, VDP appliance and backups are protected using checkpoints and rollback, Windows and Linux files can be restored by end user with a web browser.

VDP can protect up-to 100 VM’s across 10 deployed appliance installs within vCenter. The initial install of the appliance is done with the vSphere VI Client, however the Configuration and other daily activities are managed with the vSphere Web Client. VDP appliance is deployed with 4 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM, three configurations exist 5TB, 2TB, and 1TB with usable capacities of 3,100GB, 1,300GB, and 850MB. You need to make sure you pick the correct capacity in the initial setup, capacity cannot be added later. However you can add another appliance. VDP is a great solution for SMB, but may not be suitable for larger enterprise clients, there is still a need for third party solutions, such as Veeam, vRanger, and AppAssure.

vSphere Replication

Provides built-in capability to continually replicate a running VM to another location, it can store the replica within the same local datastore, or another site. vSphere replication enables the ability to setup replication on a per-virtual machine. All the configuration for vSphere Replication is done within the new vSphere Web interface.  It leverages Microsoft VSS to ensure applications like Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server are quiescent and consistent when replica data is being generated. The replication is WAN-Efficient where Changed Blocks from the running VM are replicated to the offline copy of the VM. The vSphere replication consist of an agent that is part of the core install of vSphere which is responsible for sending changed data from the running VM, and utilizes a set of virtual appliances that are responsible for the replication of data and applying the data to the offline VM. You can replicate up to 500 VM’s, and the configuration is as simple as a right click and selecting the destination for its replica. The RPO can be set as low as 15 Mins to 24 Hours, and if you are replicating over a slow WAN link, you can always place a seed copy at the destination, and then point the replica to that location, then the Changed blocks will be replicated. Each VM Disk can be set to replicate or not, this even gives you more control of the replica and allows you to conserve WAN bandwidth. Another great feature is the ability to replicate a thick provisioned disk as a offline thin provisioned disk, also the server hardware does not need to be identical because the protected VM will be cold-booted.

Zero-Downtime VMware Tools Upgrade

No more reboots needed to upgrade VMware Tools! Of course this will happen once you upgrade to the VMware Tools included with vSphere 5.1, but after that no more reboots!!!!

vShield Endpoint

Delivers a proven endpoint security solution to any workload with an approach that is simplified, efficient, and cloud-aware. vShield Endpoint enables 3rd party endpoint security solutions to eliminate the agent footprint from the virtual machines, offload intelligence to a security virtual appliance, and run scans with minimal impact.

vSphere Storage DRS

DRS 2.0 enable interoperability with vCloud Director, vCloud Director now can detect datastore clusters and make recommendations that could increase performance.

vSphere Auto Deploy

Auto deploy in vSphere has added to new deployment methods; Stateless Caching Mode, and Stateful install Mode.

Stateless Caching Mode

With Auto Deploy in vSphere 5.0 a host would not be able to boot if the PXE boot failed, or the Auto Deploy Server was not available. This has been resolved with the ability to store a cache boot image on a dedicated boot device, if there is a problem with the Auto Deploy server or PXE boot the host can now boot from the cached image which can reside on Local Disk, USB, or SAN Storage. This is very similar to the stateless mode, the only difference is you will need a dedicated boot device, and you will need to configure the BIOS to boot from PXE, however on the second attempt use the dedicated boot device.

Stateful Install Mode

This mode will allow you to provision a host with Auto Deploy but after the install is complete it will never PXE boot again until it can’t find a image on the dedicated boot device, and the BIOS is set to PXE boot on the second attempt. This mode is giving Administrators the ability to provision host very quickly, without the need to use kickstart, or custom scripts, and just use the auto deploy polices.

vSphere Web Client

The new vSphere Web Client is where VMware is going, and you can tell this in the vSphere 5.1 release. Most of the new features and enhancements can only be configured and used from within the new client. The vSphere VI Client is not gone, but you can see the writing on the wall and it soon will be.

  • Capacity to work within a heterogeneous Environment
  • A flexible and extensible foundation to enable customization
  • ready access to information
  • Manage a large number of objects across geographically dispersed datacenters
  • Tags: Many can be applied to Objects that you can then use for queries
  • Inventory Lists: Dynamic list of objects that relate to the navigated objected, organized by Inventory type. basically means you will have less tabs to navigate
  • GUI Customization: Enables the user to customize their visualization of the user interface in a way that best suits their role and responsibility
  • Common Action: Now you have a place to pin a repetitive action!
  • Work-in-Progress Workflows: We now have a place to PAUSE an action! We have all been there, where we start a process, and now we want to do something else, well now we can pause and go back instead of cancelling.
  • Advanced Search: Ability to create complex searches and be able to save them, that way when you need them again they are still there.
  • Extensibility: This will allow Third party vendors an easier way to intergrade their tools into vCenter.

Supported Browsers

vSphere Web Client runs as an Adobe-Flex-Based application. Will run within Internet explorer installed on Windows, and Mozilla Firefox and Chrome within Windows and Linux.

When using the Windows vCenter install, the vSphere Web Client binaries must be installed on a supported 64-bit system. If using the vCenter Server Appliance you only need to make sure the appropriate service is enabled and started.

vCenter Single Sign-on

Allows users to log in once and access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further authentication. A background service makes this all possible, a discovery service maintains a list of all vCenter server components and automatically populates the vSphere web Client with the vSphere 5.X vCenter servers to which users have been granted access. End-Users have a single pane-of-glass view of their entire vCenter environment and this does not require linked mode unless users share roles, and permissions.

vCenter Orchestrator

Orchestrator simplifies installation and configuration of the powerful workflow engine in vCenter Server. Newly designed workflows enhance ease of use, and can also be launched directly from the new vSphere Web Client.

vSphere Storage Appliance

The changes to VSA 5.1 address issues related to enhancing the current offering to fully address SMB, also to support markets that could use the VSA in remote office/branch office.

  • You can now have 8 X 3TB disk per ESXi Host, or 12 per Host if the disk is no greater than 2TB. Also you can add an external expansion chassis with up to 16 Drive bays, in total if using 2 TB or less disk you can have up to 28 Drives per host. However these 28 Disks will still be one large VMFS-5 volume using multiple extents.
  • You can now add capacity after the cluster is deployed!
  • You can convert existing RAID 10 Configurations to RAID 5/6. This conversion will destroy the data sitting on that Host, but you can then reconstruct the data from the existing replicas. I would really want to fully test this in the Lab before I would attempt this, also make sure you have current backups ready.
  • You can now manage multiple VSA clusters by a single vCenter Server instance. This makes the solution very attractive for ROBO.
  • You can now set aside a chunk of Local Storage to keep separate from the VSA Cluster. This will give you the ability to install vCenter Server on the local disk. You can then move the vCenter Server to Shared Storage and reclaim the local storage into the VSA.

Licensing and Suites

Ok…. well this is one of the changes that made everyone very happy. It was the removal of the vRAM (vTAX) we can now go back to loading up our Host with memory!! This also brought along the bundle of VMware vCloud Suite. First of all lets see what we get with the different vSphere Editions.

vSphere Editions

We still have the Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise+, Let the picture explain the rest! But basically even the standard is giving a good option for the SMB.

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Cost

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vCloud Suite

For enterprises wanted more from their Virtual environment this is the new way to go! The Suites come in the following editions Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise. I would have like the editions to follow the vSphere edition names just to make it easier to compute, but we can’t have everything Winking smile 

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Cost

For a limited time if you have vSphere Enterprise+ you get a free upgrade to vCloud Suite Standard but you need to act before (The vCloud Suite Upgrade Promotion is available from September 10, 2012, through 11:59PM PT on December 15, 2012.) For more Information Click Here

Below is all retail pricing.

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Certifications

I’m not going to focus on this very much. Just going to provide some information. The road map for VMware Certifications has taken a much more granular approach, now it is more based on your role and not generic certifications covering everything.

If you want to learn more head over to VMware Certifications

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Top 10 Sessions

VMware has posted the “top 10 sessions” for anyone to watch. I have watched them all and I recommend that anyone who didn’t see them watch them! Great information from the top names in Virtualization today.

NET2207: VMware vSphere Distributed Switch—Technical Deep Dive | Slide Presentation
Speaker: Jason Nash, Varrow

STO2980: vSphere 5 Storage Best Practices | Slide Presentation
Speakers: Chad Sakac, EMC Corporation, Vaughn Stewart, NetApp

VSP1168: Architecting a Cloud Infrastructure | Slide Presentation
Speakers: David Hill, VMware Inc, Aidan Dalgleish, VMware Inc, Rawlinson Rivera, VMware Inc, Duncan Epping, VMware Inc, Chris Colotti, VMware Inc.

VSP1800: vSphere Performance Best Practices | Slide Presentation
Speaker: Peter Boone, VMware Inc.

VSP2825: DRS: Advanced Concepts, Best Practices and Future Directions | Slide Presentation
Speakers: Ajay Gulati, VMware Inc, Aashish Parikh, VMware Inc

VSP1683: VMware vSphere Cluster Resource Pools Best Practices | Slide Presentation
Speakers: Rawlinson Rivera, VMware Inc, Frank Denneman, VMware Inc

STO1430: Tracking Down Storage Performance Issues: A Customer’s Perspective | Slide Presentation
Speakers: Keith Aasen, NetApp, Scott Elliott, Christie Digital

EUC1305: What’s New and What’s Next for VMware View | Slide Presentation
Speakers: Lebin Cheng, VMware Inc, Sunil Satnur, VMware Inc, Narasimha Krishnakumar, VMware Inc

VSP1232: Avoiding the 19 Biggest HA & DRS Configuration Mistakes – 2012 Edition | Slide Presentation
Speaker: Greg Shields, Concentrated Technology

VMUG

This year I had the pleasure of attending my first of 4 VMworlds as a VMUG Leader. It was a privilege and an amazing opportunity. VMware has an astounding community, and the VMUG enhances this greatly! I got to spend an hour Monday helping with the VMUG booth, an Hour wasn’t enough I wanted to stay there the entire event and talk with other amazing Leaders.

The leader reception on Monday night was a time to relax and meet some of the leaders from around the globe. I spend hours just sitting and talking with leaders and getting ideas on how to make the Edmonton VMUG chapter even better. I spend a considerable amount of time with one leader and can learn so much from him, Thank you for talking the time with the Edmonton Chapter Angelo Luciani @AngeloLuciani

The VMUG Leader lunch will be something I will never forget. We had the opportunity to sit in the room with Paul, Pat and Steve of VMware and have a personal Q and A with less than 150 people there.

If you are not a VMUG Member head over to www.vmug.com today and register, you will not regret it.

VMunderground

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It was an amazing event and what a way to kick off VMworld. I loved the opportunity to have all the vExperts, and community leaders in one room. Did I get to meet them all….. No… But the ones I did have the opportunity to meet was a great experience. I always have next year to meet the rest Smile

I wanted to take this moment to thank the guys for setting this up, Theron Conrey @theronconrey Sean Clark @vseanclark and Brain Knudtson @bknudtson I know there are more that helped, but I can’t recall everything from VMworld!

 

Veeam

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Another great reception put on by Veeam, again another room full of great conversations. I want to thank @Veeam Rick Vanover @rickvanover and Doug Hazelman @VMdoug

 

 

 

 

 

VMworld Party

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The VMworld ending party was another great event. Got to see Jon Bon Jovi, plus head off to a quite area to chat. I really enjoyed hanging out in the Hangout lounge where you could chat with folks.

VMworld 2012 Schedule

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With only one week left to go until VMworld it’s time to sit down and finish up my Schedule. This year is going to be a busy year.

Count Down to VMworld

Sessions

Below is my session list, will I get to every single one of these hell no, but I wanted to make sure I had a full day planned with breaks, one’s I do miss I can view when they go online. I need to save time for HOL’s, Vendors, VMUG duties, and just chatting.

Session Start End Location
Monday      
GS01  —  IT Transformation as the Enabler of Business Transformation 8:30 10:00 Moscone North, Hall D
INF-STO1430  —  Tracking Down Storage Performance Issues: A Customers Perspective 11:00 12:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2022
INF-BCO2065  —  Disaster Recovery for All VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 Puts Real-Time Replication and Disaster Recovery Within the Reach of Every Business 12:30 13:30 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2022
VMUG Booth 12:00 13:00 Booth #1817
SPO3336  —  A Healthcare Providers Perspectives on Going Beyond VDI with Unified Workspaces 14:30 15:30 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3007
INF-NET2207  —  VMware vSphere Distributed SwitchTechnical Deep Dive 16:00 17:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2009
EUC1688  —  Tackling Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Initiatives with the VMware View Mobile Secure Desktop 17:00 18:00 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3006
Tuesday      
GS02  —  Delivering the Promise of the Software Defined Datacenter 8:30 10:00 Moscone North, Hall D
INF-STO1521  —  vSphere Storage Appliance – Deep Dive and Best Practices 11:00 12:00 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3001
INF-SEC2813  —  Beyond the Hypervisor: Three Key Areas to Consider When Securing Your Cloud Infrastructure Platform 12:30 13:30 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3018
INF-STO3345  —  Understanding Storage In Virtual Environments 14:00 15:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2022
INF-STO2192  —  Tech Preview of a Software-defined Storage Technology 15:30 16:30 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3001
APP-CAP1676  —  VMware vFabric Server Best Practices for Security, Stability and Sanity 17:00 18:00 Moscone South, Level 3, Room 306
Wednesday      
SPO3275  —  I Did It My Way 8:30 9:30 Moscone South, Level 3, Room 307
INF-BCO2382  —  VMware vSphere HA Recommendations to Maximize Virtual Machine Uptime 10:00 11:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2022
INF-STO1198  —  vSphere Storage Features & Enhancements 11:30 12:30 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2006
SPO3355  —  Unleash the Power of VMware Management Tools with VblockTM Systems 13:00 14:00 Moscone South, Level 3, Room 307
INF-STO2564  —  Supercharged SAN: Fine-tune Your VAAI Enabled vSphere SAN with This Collection of Configuration and Performance Best Practices 14:30 15:30 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3006
ITT3239  —  On-Demand IT: Leveraging Cloud for Efficient Self-Service IT  16:00 17:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2003
Thursday      
GS03  —  Genius Machines 9:00 10:00 Moscone North, Hall D
SPO3291  —  Case Study: Networking, Storage and Backup for 1,300+ VMs 10:30 11:30 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3002
APP-BCA1516  —  Virtualizing SQL 2012 : Doing It Right 12:00 13:00 Moscone West, Level 2, Room 2016
OPS-CIM1926  —  5 Must Know Design Considerations for Planning Capacity When You are 50% or More Virtualized 14:00 15:00 Moscone West, Level 3, Room 3006

 

Gatherings

This year I don’t know if it is just me, or are there more gatherings put together than years past.

Below is the list of gatherings I will attempt to attend. I didn’t just pick the best parties, I picked the ones that relate to my job. It’s a great chance to meet IT professionals dealing with the same problems and solutions as myself.

If you have not signed up for any after hour events have a look at this. http://www.vmworld.com/community/gatherings 

Some of the parties are invite only, contact your vendors and see if they are having any, and get on the list. Things are pretty full at this point.

Gathering Start End Location
Sunday      
Welcome Reception in Solutions Exchange 4:00 PM 7:00 PM Moscone
VMunderground 8:00 PM 11:00 PM 175 Fourth Street, Suite 1070
San Francisco, 94103
Monday      
VMUG Leader Reception 7:00 PM 10:00 PM DUCCA – Outdoor Patio
50 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Tuesday      
DTCUG-IP at VMworld 4:30 PM 7:00 PM Westin at Market Street
50 Third Street
San Francisco, CA
Veeam Annual VMworld Party 8:00 PM 11:00 PM Mezzaine San Francisco
Nimble Storage/Accel Partners VMworld 5:30 PM 8:30 PM SF MOMA
151 3rd St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
Wednesday      
VMworld Party 7:00 PM 10:00 PM Moscone 

 

Social media

http://www.vmworld.com/community/socialmedia

Twitter

http://www.vmworld.com/community/twitter

Start with Twitter and setup a search for #VMworld that will be the hashtag used for all items relating to VMworld

VMworld Session & Lab Hashtags

#vmworldinf: Infrastructure Sessions
#vmworldops: Operations Sessions
#vmworldapp: Application Sessions
#vmworldeuc: End-User Computing Sessions
#vmworlditt: IT Transformation Sessions
#vmworldsponsor: Sponsor Sessions
#vmworldhol: Hands-on Labs
Verticals & Solutions Hashtags 
#vmworldsmb: Small and Midsize Business
#vmworldgov: Gov’t & Federal
#vmworldhealthcare: Healthcare IT
#vmworldfinance: Financial Services
#vmworldedu: Education Services
VMworld "3-Word" Game
Tweet about VMworld 2012 with just 3 words and add #vmworld3word

SocialCast

https://vmworld.socialcast.com/login

This is just for VMworld attendees and will give you a chance to look at discussions and ask questions.

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While at VMworld make sure to stop by the VMUG booth, if you are a member please update your profile, and if you aren’t a member, why not it’s free! If you want to save even more money and get some great deals become a VMUG advantage member and get savings on Training, Learning, and software.

http://www.vmug.com/p/cm/ld/fid=10

If you hurry you can even get a free VCP 5 Exam Voucher!!!