Bloggers to watch out for
Virtualization bloggers to watch out for.
vmwarevideos from David Davis. Sample post: VMware’s Official Free E-Learning Video sites (yes, that's a scoop):
VMware has a couple of free video training sites that have been brought to my attention and I want to share both of them with all the VMwareVideos.com readers.
These videos have some good tips in them. There are about 13 videos at the YouTube site and at least that many over on Blip.tv. ... I applaud VMware for posting these free videos and I hope to see more!
Virtual Enthusiasm by Clint Eschberger. Sample post: Can Virtualization Help My Small Business?
The first question is easy, yes! You can quickly add some features to a small business that has only been available to enterprises before. Depending on the needs you can really gain some benefits and savings from virtualizing a small group of servers.
- Backup and Disaster Recovery – You quickly gain the ability to have full backups and disaster recovery for your server. Since the servers are essentially files, they are more portable and easier to build a process for DR around.
- Gain Resources – This sounds funny since you are essentially consolidating multiple physical servers into a few physical servers running a virtualization technology on it. However small businesses generally do not have as large of a budget for buying a lot of physical servers to handle new tasks. This leads to consolidating many apps on each server and causing potential problems or not getting the needed application. Now adding an additional server is much cheaper.
VMware World by Jack. Sample post: Legacy of Teaching.
(Hey, folks, be careful about using VMware in your name. Someone could be confused that you are a VMware employee or otherwise speaking for us. I don't even speak for VMware. We'd prefer you pick some other V-word when starting your new blog.)
If you pass on your knowledge of VMware to those you work with, they in turn will be better able to support the environment and assist those who may need help. Also, they can begin to serve as “ambassadors” of VMware to management and non-management which can come in very useful when you are attempting to prove the concept of a new VMware implementation. We all know some companies are resistant to changes. Therefore, anything you can do to increase understanding of a new system will benefit you. By taking the time to teach those around you about the VMware you widen the knowledge and acceptability of the platform.
One of the biggest challenges I faced starting out at the organization I am with now was gaining the trust in VMware from upper management. ...
vmhero by Ryan. Sample post: The Time is Now
For decades, we have launched new ventures and moved forward with a malignant carelessness for the sustainability of it all. I believe that one of the biggest challanges ahead of us is to keep the momentum of this innovation going while simultaneously fueling a revitalization of the environment and creating sustainable practices in IT.
With Virtualization maturing and penetrating data centers worldwide, the time is now! I urge you to consider the “Green” aspects of your virtualization initiatives and make it part of your plan.
virtualization stuff by Mark Mac Auley. Sample post: Actual ROI of Virtualization
The cost savings moved the discussions along from ‘What is this virtualization thing everyone is talking about’ to ‘How do we build a plan to virtualize parts of our infrastructure?’. I will say that in my personal experience, the impacts were pretty dramatic in a data center move I was a part of. Here are the numbers:
Overall Consolidation ratio: 20:1
1,000 Wintel boxes into 50 Sun Blades running VMWare
8,000 square feet to ~200 Square feet
Cooling is 1/10 of what it was
Power is 1/10 of what it was
Virtualization Pro by a team of bloggers brought together by SearchVMware.com. Sample post: Use the VMware Converter bootable CD for the difficult conversions
Depending on the scope of your virtual environment, it is likely that physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions have taken place. The P2V process truly enables VMware administrators to put physical systems into virtual environments. However, you may have come across a system that for some reason will not go through the normal conversion. In such cases the VMware Converter bootable CD may be an option. It provides a zero-transaction state that may be a favorable environment to perform P2V conversions.
Good candidates for using the VMware Converter bootable CD include:
- Systems that run a database engine,
- have real-time systems that may not convert correctly,
- or systems where the VMware Converter agent otherwise fails.
x86 virtualization is no newcomer. Sample post: New Job Title: Virtual Network Administrator
Potential future job posting:
Virtual Network Administrator
Responsibilities: A virtual network administrator oversees virtual computer networks to ensure that they function smoothly. A virtual network consists of a grouping of virtual machines that communicate with each other on a physical computer known as a virtual machine host server, on which computer files, programs, and other information are stored. A network may be as small as two or three virtual machines or as large as hundreds when paravirtualization is used.
InformationWeek's Virtualization Blog by Joe Hernick. Sample post: VM Sprawl?
You were at that wall. You needed a boost. Your business partners needed faster turn around, your budget dollars got crunched. Everyone else was doing it. Maybe you just though it would be cool.
You virtualized your first production server.
And it was good. It was great. You repurposed some VMware licenses from your test lab, grabbed some under-utilized hardware and went to town. Print servers? Check. Ten to one consolidation. Secondary domain controllers? Why not put one on the print host? Great. Marketing database running at single-digit CPU loads? Why not guest that on the new eight-way box in the lab; Marketing will never know...
vinf.net by Simon Gallagher. Sample post: How to Convert Virtual Center from Evaluation to Licensed Version
I can’t believe I missed this, on a couple of platforms I’ve built I’ve had to start with an eval licence and then move to a proper licence but could never find how to change virtual center from eval to licenced mode.
ESX itself was fine you can do that via the VC GUI (below)
But despite a lot of googling I could never find out how to set Virtual Centre itself to use a licence server - so I ended up reinstalling/repairing and then selecting the option to use a licence server, my bad - it’s actually in the VI client GUI d’oh as Homer would say!
vinternals by Stuart Radnidge is ripping us a new one lately. Sample post: VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1 - Upgrade Process Still Sucks! For anyone running VC 2.5 already, it's not worth upgrading IMHO. The
release notes really don't provide any compelling reason to upgrade
you're running a lot of ESXi and want non-experimental HA (which
suggests that the HA code has been moved into the VC agent). For anyone
doing fresh installs or upgrading from 2.0.x it would be worth going
straight to Update 1 though. Desktop Virtualization from an unnamed blogger who is welcome to contact me. Sample post: New features in VMware Server 2.0 beta 2 - VMware Infrastructure Web Access has gone through truly amazing transformation - it’s very responsive and much more intuitive - I really like it
- Independent console - I’ve been longing for this
functionality since the very beginning. It only makes sense that you
can detach your console window from the rest of your browsing
environment. Now, that’s a remote console as it should be, definitely! VM-Aware by Paul Shannon. Sample post: MCS StorageView Alongside a few other cool tools MightyCare Solutions have released StorageView. This handy little app will give you visibility of your Virtual Machines’ disk status in a very friendly GUI.
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