Well VMworld part 2 (aka Copenhagen) has wrapped up this week, and once again was a huge success. The largest IT tradeshow in Europe is now at a population north or 7000 attendees and the excitement of the event continues from where it left off in Las Vegas. I have been following all of the blogs, tweets, youtube video’s etc from afar, but I think my favorite highlight of the event (outside of technology) was the interview with the vMafia. Classic!
On with the Top 5 of the week…
Kevin Kelling – vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3 — Experiences and Recommendations – Is vCenter Server a mission-critical application for which you cannot afford downtime? It depends on the environment, but for many organizations the availability of vCenter Server is becoming more and more critical. For starters you lose a single point of management for all your ESX hosts, DRS and potentially quite a bit more. Let’s take a look at some specific impacts of vCenter Server being unavailable.
Mike Laverick – VMware Auto Deploy: ESXi installation made easy – VMware vSphere 5 includes a new feature called Auto Deploy, which automates ESXi installation and host configuration. Through PXE booting, VMware Auto Deploy delivers the entire ESXi hypervisor across the wire, meaning the host can be completely diskless. I’ve been tinkering with VMware Auto Deploy for a new book I’m working on, and I think VMware admins will find it easier to configure than storage area network-based booting.
Cody Bunch – Orchestrator – Install the vCO vApp – In case you missed the announcement, the barrier to entry for vCenter Orchestrator was just lowered significantly with VMware’s release of the vCO 4.2 vApp. Here, we’ll talk about installing it. Basically, I’m assuming that you have an edition of vSphere that is licensed for vCenter and have downloaded both the OVF and VMDK files from the VMware download page.
Julian Wood – VMworld Buzz: VMware announces vCenter Operations Management Suite – VMware’s major announcement at VMworld is billed as “The Biggest VMware Management Launch Ever”. What that means is VMware has announced its new version of vCenter Operations which it is now calling vCenter Operations Management Suite and will be released later this year or early 2012. vCOPS as it’s called is the technology VMware bought from Integrien in August 2010.
Eric Gray – VMware vMotion: Over 5 Times Faster Than Hyper-V Live Migration – In a new head-to-head comparison published by independent technology assessment firm Principled Technologies, VMware vSphere once again trounces challenger Hyper-V by delivering superior speed, performance, and reliability for zero-downtime virtual machine migrations.
