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Greetings from the Australia Technology Park in Sydney Australia! The Hands-on Labs have gone “Down Under” this week for VMware Partner Exchange.
The Technology Park here in Sydney is an awesome venue that has been constructed within the locomotive shops that have occupied the site since the 19th century. The juxtaposition of a 100-year-old steam boiler with the latest tech start-ups really is inspiring. They have preserved the history of the site while supporting the innovators of the future.
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Folks,
Just wanted to list out some of the very cool new features that the guys have been adding over the last few weeks.
Feature Name: SPEED-TEST (Experimental Mode)
This is got to be one of my favorite debugging self serve tools the guys are working on. I like it because it gives the user a way to determine how things are going relative to where they are taking a lab. We are still working the kinks out in this feature so please keep the feedback coming. You will need to log into your account, once you are in go to: https://www.projectnee.com/speed-test
Please remember in order to ensure you have a great lab experience you will need to have the following:
- 300 – 500 kb dedicated bandwidth connection per client
- Better than 200ms latency – pretty typical of most web applications now days.
We are looking to expand our datacenter footprint across the globe in the near future but for now we are serving labs out of North America (Washington)
Feature Name: “THE J TIMER”
This just came out and I have to say it is very fun to watch the clocks run as your lab gets provisioned. We use this feature to determine how things are going and to help our users get a sense of how much time it takes to build a lab in HOL. As a rule of thumb our labs will load roughly between 3 – 5 minutes if all things are going well. If you think about it, that is pretty amazing considering what is going on under the covers. The application is actually building a new vAPP with a fully provisioned vSphere / Cloud Infrastructure for you to explore. You can imagine how much fun our guys have when we compete with each others data centers (we have multiple test data centers) Will tell you the story behind the name when we see you at VMworld 
Feature Name: “Console Refresh”
You will find this feature once you start the lab, it works the same way a browser refresh button would work – If things are going wonky you can try hitting the refresh button and the console will come back – hopefully in a better state.
Feature Name:“Split My Screen”
Description: This feature lends itself more to when we are hosting labs at an event, this will allow a user to have two monitors; one for the display, the other for the lab manuals. The guys even created an option that lets you use your tablet to read the manual as you take the lab…
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Folks,
We are extremely happy to announce the availability of our newly minted VMware Horizon Labs. A huge thanks goes out to our HOL Lab Captains for putting these together…
Details on the Labs……….
VMware Hands on Labs:
Just Added!
Title: Discover VMware Horizon Workspace (HOL-EUC-04)
Abstract: Explore The VMware Horizon Workspace through this 60 – 75 minute lab module. In this lab you will gain hands-on experience using, administering and integrating with the VMware Horizon Workspace. You will explore the environment to understand the layout and use different clients/browsers to work a day in the life of the administrator helping his end users quickly gain access to the applications they need.
Title: Manage Desktops with VMware Horizon Mirage (HOL-EUC-09)
Abstract: Explore VMware Horizon Mirage through this 60 minute lab module. In this lab you will gain hands-on experience using VMware Horizon Mirage to address three of the most common use cases facing desktop administrators.
Title: Take a Guided Tour of VMware Horizon View 5.2 (HOL-EUC-10)
Abstract: Explore VMware Horizon View 5.2 through this 60 minute lab module. In this lab you will gain hands-on experience using VMware Horizon View 5.2 to learn about many of the new features in the latest release. You will have 60 minutes to complete this lab. The lab manual will highlight the new features of Horizon View leaving you free to explore this live environment. This lab is an open book to learn about Horizon View 5.2.
We are adding hundreds of users every week,, if you have not registered for an account please do so now.
Hands on Labs Resources:
Join our HOL Online Community: Account Registration, Lab Manuals, Feedback, Questions http://hol.vmware.com
Follow us on Twitter for latest Updates: VMwareholAs always enjoy your labs !
Pablo Roesch
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Folks,
Wanted to share with you our plans for Partner Exchange. We are very excited about providing the Hands on Labs for our Partners… here is what to expect.
Format
We will be in the Lagoon Ballroom in Mandalay Bay. This is a 10K SF room dedicated to HOL. We are planning for 120 concurrent seats of capacity for the PEX event. Of the 120 seats 80 of these will be Traditional seating using the latest Dell Wyse P25’s with dual 22” monitors running View. The remaining 40 seats will be dedicated to the very popular Bring You Own Device (BYOD). The BYOD will be a relaxed environment where you will be able to take labs using your favorite device.
Devices Supported:
Bring any modern device that supports Safari, FireFox, and Chrome (Support for Internet Explorer is on plan but not available as of yet) I find that a larger format device such as a 13” or larger laptop tend to work best.
Bring your headphones:
We encourage you to bring your own head phones, some labs have videos to listen to and sometimes its just a good idea to bring if need to cancel out the noise your neighbor might make.
Products Experts on the Floor
We will have over 60 Product experts on the floor to help with any questions on the labs you take. This is a great opportunity to meet the experts, ask questions and share feedback. We went through a great effort to bring our engineers to the event and hope you take advantage of this opportunity
Experts Table
We are introducing the idea of an Experts Table PEX, the table will be staffed with friendly, helpful and knowledgeable people to help make your Hands on Lab experience one to remember.
New Labs for 2013 and some of the Best from 2012
We have been working on our Lab catalog and have some great labs for our partners to take. We are also hosting the famous Lightning Labs for folks on a hurry and the very popular scenario based labs. List of Labs for Partner Exchange.
See you in Vegas..
Pablo Roesch
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Folks,
We survived the holiday break and have been getting ready for Hands on Labs at Partner Exchange Las Vegas. We will have a massive 10,000 S/F room dedicated to all things Hands on Labs and invite you to attend.
Top Reasons to Attend Hands on Labs at Partner Exchange:
Looking forward to seeing you at Partner Exchange Las Vegas 2013
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Folks,
We wanted to keep everyone in the loop on our progress and as always look for your feedback.
Beta Users:
We have started adding folks that have registered for our beta and have currently hit our first milestone of 500 registered users. THANK YOU. We will continue to add more folks but waiting for a few changes coming in the next few hours to ensure the portal is running like a top.
“Wacky Wednesdays
As we stated in previous post we plan to update the portal on Wednesdays and it may require we bounce the application – this means that we might have to shut off service to make updates and do some general house keeping. Once the updates are made all services will be restored.
New Features Enhancements Coming:
New Content:
We currently have 10 VMworld Labs and will be adding more during the next few weeks – in total we plan to have all 36 labs and add more along the way – lots of fun. We will need your help picking which labs to start with.. stand by for a poll in our HOL Community -> http://vmware.com/go/hol
Minor fixes:
We are fixing the issues with our user accounts settings so things will be back to normal shortly. For folks having problems logging in we thank you for your patience!
Updated Icons:
We are updating our content to reflect some cool new images our creative team put together for our lab categories – hope you like them.
We thank our users for your feedback and most of all your patience getting in,, as always please keep the feedback coming.
Keep up with the latest news follow us on Twitter @VMwareHOL
Regards
The VMware Hands On Labs Team
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Folks,
We are very excited about bringing online our Hands on Labs Portal and wanted to give our early users a quick tour and some helpful tips to make your experience much easier and most of all fun for you….
A little bit about the Hands on Lab Portal…
The Hands on Lab Portal is using the Project Nee Application developed by Mike D. and Curtis P. who have been part of the VMworld Hands on Labs Program for over 4 years. The Application is built for the web (HTML 5) and can run its workload from any vCloud resource (all you need to do is connect to a vCloud API and you are set) What I really like about the design in the portal is that it can serve many different use cases (think SalesForce model) – the first of which were the Education Environment and our VMware Hands on Labs. And if you are wondering about the name NEE – it is exactly what you think it is,,,
Our stack is built using the newly released vCloud Suite and runs out of our North America Data Center operated and hosted by VMware.
The front-end portal is all based on HTML 5 – highly customizable and ready for the web.
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About the Labs….
We will be hosting all of the VMworld 2012 Labs over time but decided to start with a few just to get our feet wet. We are still integrating out lab manuals but you can take a look at the complete list on our Community Site http://vmware.com/go/hol See Resources
Some Helpful Tips….
Notification:
You will get a notification from our admin team notifying you that your account has been created. Make sure you change your password and verify your account using the link provided in the email. The email will be from our projectnee domain – its us so you might want to remove it from your spam filter.
Log into the Portal – Please make sure you use the correct URL otherwise you will get very strange errors – the correct URL:
https://www.projectnee.com/HOL/
Labs Loading:
If you find yourself waiting for a lab to load longer than 5 minutes you might want to try to grab a beer / glass of wine and enjoy the moment. Once you have taken your first sip hit the refresh button this sometimes will clear up the connection and get you going again (this is bad practice but it is all we have for the moment) The guys are building a progress bar but this will not be in place for a while so for now all we ask is that you are patient with our Beta.
Advanced User Settings:
At the moment these are not enabled but shortly you will be able to set your language preferences for your browser.
Lab Manuals:
We plan to integrate all lab manuals shortly at the moment this is not the case. If you are interested in a Lab and the manual is not available use the lab manual on the website. http://hol-cme.cloudfoundry.com/index.html
Strange Behavior:
You might encounter some strange behavior while logging in from time to time – we find that if you clear your cache/refresh your browser the problem will go away and be fine. If this does not do it check our twitter, or blog posts for messages regarding out down times and user notifications.
Wacky Wednesday:
As our Beta is still in development we will need to have a day in the week when we will need to bounce the application to apply changes and do some general maintenance. As our engineers hardly sleep and work weekends we kind of agreed on using our Wed as a day to expect things to be down or bounce around a few times. So you have been warned – if things are a little crazy with our portal check the date on the calendar.
The famous CTRL + ALT + DELETE button:
I am a new MAC BOOK Pro user and this really stumped me when I logged in…. if you are like me take a deep breath and scroll down to the left hand side … here you will see the little button that will send the signal to the screen. BTW the passwords are in the bottom of the screen or posted on the manuals. These buttons take some getting use to and after a while they will work just fine (remember what I said about hitting the refresh button)
Browser Support
Well the guys have gotten latest versions of Safari, Chrome and FireFox to work, the Portal has a detecting mechanism to check to see if your browser will run – notice I left one out – we have not gotten the websockets to work with IE yet so for now its off the list and still working on it but it might be a good idea to get the latest version of the browsers mentioned.
Where to get help…
We created a VMTN community dedicated to the Hands on Labs and look forward to having you participate. Here you will find links to documentation, links to labs for you to comment. Our community is monitored by VMware R&D, and various Product Teams – join us http://vmware.com/go/hol
Help us improve our portal experience…
Please keep the feedback coming – we have built this portal for our community and need your feedback to help make it better…
Follow us on @VMwareHOL
Thanks for your support
Pablo Roesch -
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Today, during the keynote at the Portland VMUG conference, we shared the exciting news that the HOL Online Public Beta is now open. If you registered with our interest list at http://hol.vmware.com/ you will receive your login credentials over the coming weeks. We are adding people slowly at first to ensure a smooth and functional launch.
Once you receive your invitation, we ask that you login, explore the catalog and provide feedback. Specifically, please comment on the user interface, lab manual content and overall experience of taking Hands-on Labs from the comfort of your own home or office.
Looking forward to a successful public beta!
Sincerely, The VMware Hands-on Labs Team
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To all fans of the VMware Hands-on Labs-
At VMworld 2012 we announced that the Hands-on Labs experience will soon be available online. Today we are taking the first step toward making this a reality. I am excited to let you know that registration is now open and you may add your name to the interest list here:
VMware Hands-on Labs – Public Beta Interest List
This interest list will help us to anticipate demand for the new HOL Online portal so that we can provide you with a consistent, high quality user experience. When the public beta opens, we will begin to add users from the interest list. We are counting on you to take lots of labs, exercise the portal interface and provide quality feedback.
After registering on the interest list, be sure to participate in the HOL Communities site at http://www.vmware.com/go/hol and follow us on twitter @VMwareHOL.
Looking forward to labs in the cloud!
Andrew Hald
@vmxl
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Folks,
It’s been a while since I publish my Top 10 list and thought it would be good to do so now that VMworld is back in SF. I have lived in SF most of my life and tend to prefer high value low dollar neighborhood restaurants and establishments dedicated to refreshments – below is my list…
Please keep in mind that most of these places you will have to take a cab from Moscone – most are about 15 minutes away – this could also be part of the fun.
Food
• Than Long – This one of my all time favorite neighborhood restaurants in Ocean Beach – The food is always great and great the place has a neighborhood feel. I highly recommend the Pepper Crab and Garlic Noodles you just cant go wrong. Please be sure to tell the staff you are attending VMworld and that you plan on taking a Hands on Lab !
• Burma Super Star – This is the pride of the Clement street area. Burma does not take reservations so come early – if you are in by 5 PM you will not wait long in line. My favorite dishes are the Pea Shoots, Tea Leaf Salad and Walnut Prawns !
• Slanted Door – I started going to Slanted Door when it was on Valencia – the Spring Rolls are superb, the Jicama Salad is spot on and the Shaken Beef rocks it. The Menu has gone up in prices since the it was in the Mish,,, ,,now expect to pay $30 for Shaken Beef but I guess it’s due to the high rent in the Ferry Building. Slanted Door is more of a place to take your customers / partners to. Be sure to get your reservations in early. The best cocktail here is the Ginger Limeade – there was a time when you could order it by the large jug.
• Pancho Villa Taqueria – 3071 16th Street – San Francisco. I grew up always in the Mish and getting good Mexican food was never a problem. The one place that always stood out was Pancho Villa Taqueria – the food is always fresh, the line moves pretty fast. Be sure to bring your tennis shoes, in case you have to run,, the area can get kind of funky / strange after dark.
• Balompie 3 3801 Mission St. – These are the Best Pupusas in San Francisco and the neighborhood is not so bad. They have Sierra Nevada on Tap – Sit at the bar and watch the cooks make your pupusas.
• The Sentinel – I always describe this place as THE BEST DELI. The place is less than 150 S/F and the staff look like they are European Super Models working day jobs. My favorite is the Roast Beef Sandwich when its available. It’s a nice place to go if you are in the area – open only for breakfast and lunch – no seating, no parking, no bathrooms, just really good sandwiches
Refreshments (Bars)
• NocNoc - Great name for a bar if you are in IT ☺ This is in the Lower Haight – so bring your tennis shoes in case you have to move around fast – The nice part about NocNoc is the atmosphere – its pretty much like a dark jungle cave. The beers are great, and if you don’t like this place there are 20 other bars next door.
• Tosca – Tosca is pretty much the Temple of Irish Coffee’s and is only a few long minutes from Moscone. This place will make you feel human again after a long day at VMworld. – keep in mind you might run into movie stars here or politicians, they wont bother you if you don’t bother them.
• Vesuvio – This is a superb bar right across the street from Tosca. I enjoy sitting on the second floor enjoying a few moments of quiet time watching traffic go by – soon we will all be able to take a Hands on Lab from places like this.
Working all of these calories off…
Broadway and Lyon St. – Yes I admit it I try to count my calories now days, 1900 per day is where I need to be at, but during VMworld this goes out the window. My favorite places to take back some of these calories are the monster stairs on Broadway and Lyon. The views are superb and the neighborhood is not too shabby… There are tons more places to burn off calories..this is just one of my favorite at the moment…
We are looking forward to a great VMworld – hope you enjoy your stay in SF ! Please do share your favorite places to go…
Enjoy the show !
Pablo
