Gregg's Blog

All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 3

Gregg Robertson — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:05:00 GMT

Yet again (I’m not sure why I keep doing this) I decided to get up early and into the conference so i could get my Day 2 blog posting out and be awake enough for Paul Maritz’s keynote. A number of my fellow LonVMUG colleagues also made their way in early and we ended up watching the keynote from the food hall on the big screen. I decided against trying to cover the keynote and give my opinions as seeing as a large portion of it was customers talking about their experiences with VMware technology and then Paul’s chat was exactly what was said at VMworld US. Therefore, i would recommend watching the keynote here and if you missed Steve Herrod's or Raghu Raghuram’s from Tuesday and Wednesday respectively then you can watch them.

After this, i made my way to my first and only session of the day (due to the time my flight left i only had enough time for the 11am slot unfortunately) which was VSP1708 VCDX Panel Defence Preparation. The session was everything i had hoped it would be and a little more. One of my future aims is to obtain my VCDX (looking like VCDX 5 due to time constraints now) and so I really wanted to attend the session to get a good idea of the process and what happens on the day and what the panelists are expecting and looking for. If you are going to watch one VMworld session video and are thinking of doing the VCDX one day then this has to be it as it scared me a little but also gave me an amazing idea of what i need to do and aim for now to be ready to build, defend and obtain my VCDX. The biggest tip I got out of it that john Arrasjid said was “start building your design now as the people who rush to build their designs are normally the people who fail and don't fully understand their designs”

After the session, i had some lunch and hung out at the bloggers lounge and even almost got onto one of the vSoup videos but instead decided to watch from a far and was mentioned by the guys on it here. I still say if they don’t announce the band, it is only right to make wild speculations of who the band will be.

After chatting to a number of the bloggers and vExpert’s I made my way to the airport and after my flight being delayed by two hours and the pilot having to abort our landing at the last second i made it back to the UK after a very successful and tiring VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VMworld 2011,VMworld,VMworld copenhagen,VMworld 2011 Sessions,vSoup,vExpert,keynote,LonVMUG

All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 2

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:43:47 GMT

As I did with Day 1, for day 2 I also got in around half seven to be able to get into the labs as they opened. It seems that loads of other people had the exact same idea though as by half eight there was a waiting queue in the waiting area of over 50 people and loads more in the line outside. My first lab was all about deploying Nexus 1000V via Distributed Switches and was really really good and is one I would highly recommend. After I finished the lab, I walked straight back in and got myself on “Optimising Your Network Structure and Consolidating Network Management”. The lab mainly went through deploying standard virtual switch networking, then creating, and migrating it to distributed switching whilst keeping the hosts up and running as well as the virtual machines. I had learnt loads of this for my VCAP but it was really good practice in preparation for my retry of my VCAP-DCA.

Next, I wrote up my All Things VMworld Europe Day 1 posting in the bloggers lounge whilst chatting to a number of fellow bloggers and vExpert’s. Talking of Day 1 the recording of Steve Herrod, “CTO and Senior VP of R&D at VMware” and
Maurizio Carli (Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA ) keynote is now available here and Raghu Raghuram, (Senior VP and General Manager of Cloud Platforms for VMware) from Tuesdays morning session is up also.

After having some lunch I attended the session “Design, Deploy and Optimise SharePoint 2010 on vSphere”. The session was highly interesting as we do a number of SharePoint 2010 deployments on VMware at present and it was good to see and hear what they experienced and the best practices for it. Once the sessions go up on the VMworld, website i would recommend watching this one and going through the slidedeck before doing a SharePoint 2010 implementation in your own environment.

After the session I wandered around the solutions exchange chatting to a few people and also chatted to a number of the guys I know operating the EMC booth and even got one of the guys a good contact for some work for EMC. The day slowly quieted down from here, as a number of people seemed to have left to go change and get ready for the VMworld Party. The party was help at the Carlsberg Museum in downtown Copenhagen and was set out in an eighties retro style of Blade runner meets Tron styling. The evening was a great one personally, as it let me meet even more of the top bloggers and VMware experts like the infamous Dave Hill and Chris Colotti of vCloud Director Fame to name but two.The night was a real success even though there was no big band like the US.

For all the VMware people I met last night it was great meeting you all

Gregg

All Things VMworld Europe 2011 Day 1

Gregg Robertson — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:33:59 GMT

Day 1 started early for me as I wanted to get in early and make sure I got a full day out. So I arrived at the Bella Centre at 7:45 and got myself onto a hands on lab as it opened.

The lab I took was Deploying ESXi hosts via auto deploy (not the official name but it's close). The lab was really informative and I would highly recommend it as it gives you a great overview of how the whole auto deploy feature with vSphere 5 works and all the things you will need to do in your own environment to enable this feature. The lab also gave me a whole load of things to think about and start preparing to allow me implement auto deploy in my own environments.

After the lab I made my way to the bloggers lounge to start writing up my All Things VMworld Day 0 posting and also chat to some of the vExpert bloggers. There's nothing like sitting at the same table as Mike Laverick,Scott Lowe and Jason Boche to name but three and as I've said before, this for me is one of the biggest features of VMworld.

After posting up my blog posting and having talked shop with a number of the fellow bloggers I made my way to my first session of the day "#CIM2363 Building an Enterprise Hybrid Cloud for Dummies: 10 Steps (or Less)" the session was good but obviously when they said for dummies they weren't kidding as it was the real basics of vCloud director and what it's all made up of. If you have never used vCloud Director and want to get a great overview of all the necessary components then I would highly recommend the session.

Then it was lunch where I spotted the MonsterVM character wandering around and sat and chatted with the PowerCLI guru's of Alan Renouf, Luc Dekens and Jonathan Medd over lunch. I then wandered back to the bloggers lounge and chatted to a few fellow bloggers about each of the sessions we've all been to and what we thought of them. I then went to Alan and Luc's session "VMware vSphere PowerCLI Best Practices" The session was really good and the guys gave some really great tips on things to look out for and best practices. I hope they’ll upload their slidedeck as they had so many best practices (42 in total) that they couldn't cover them all.

Next was the General session keynote by Stephen Herrod. The keynote was largely a repeat of the VMworld US one with even the same jokes being said. After about an hour and half of the keynote the first new announcement was announced with it being vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0. Fellow vExpert and London based Saffa Julian Wood has done a really great posting about the suite and what it does here. The next announcement was vFabric Application Management Suite. As I've yet to play with it thereby be able to give you a good description of all it’s features etc. the best resource I've found is the VMworld TV video all about it

The last announcement of the day was the VMware IT Business Management Suite. So far there doesn’t seem to be a large amount of information out about it apart from the VMware product page about it here. All three suites look amazing and it looks like VMware is definitely aiming to take some of the management market away from people such as vKernel and Xangati to name but two. One of the topics that was covered again like Vegas was Horizon Mobile and it looks like the deals are already growing as VMware have now signed deals with Verizon in the US and Telefonica in Europe to give their users the ability to have Horizon Mobile on their phones.

After the keynote was the welcoming party with drinks and some snacks in the Solutions Exchange to allow everyone to speak to the exhibitors. I spoke to a few exhibitors but the two that had some interesting products which I may try out in my lab are vKernel’s vOperations Suite and Embotics’ V-Commander tool which I’m hoping will be helpful for creating baselines and understanding how things were provisioned and if I can claw back some resources in certain areas.

I was then fortunate enough to attend the VMware vExpert 2011 meeting and meet loads of the European based (and a few Americans and Australians who also flew over) vExperts and talk about all the announcements and how we saw the market going and what it will mean for our roles. We then all made our ways to our respective parties and that was the end of Day 1 at VMworld Europe 2011.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VMware,VMworld 2011,VMworld copenhagen,embotics,Horizon Mobile,VMware IT Business Management Suite,vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0,vFabric Application Management Suite,VMware vSphere PowerCLI Best Practices,All things VMworld,VMware vExpert

All Things VMworld Europe Day 0

Gregg Robertson — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:07:35 GMT

Yet again, i have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to attend VMworld Europe. I really enjoyed my time last year and knowing what to expect made it even more exciting for me than last year. Monday is Partner day and they definitely made sure all the partners felt welcome with free drinks, loads of top sessions and awards at the end of the day. I only arrived around 2pm so i had already missed one or two of the sessions and felt like a number of the VMworld sessions that I can watch them off the VMworld website in my own time later on and i would rather meet up with fellow vExpert’s and some of the top bloggers and talk shop. One confirmation that I am a real nerd is that I got Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman to sign my copy of the VMware vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive book . Day 0 went by very quickly and I had been invited to two of the parties. The official VMUG party hosted by the Danish VMUG and the vGeekfest run by EMC. Seeing as EMC were so nice in sending me yet again and because a number of the people I really wanted to meet and chat to were going to the vGeekfest party. After getting lost trying to find the party, I finally found it at the Apollo Brewery. A very nice location and the whole ground floor was allocated to us with home brewed beers and very nice food. The main thing I really enjoyed about the evening though was meeting loads of the top bloggers and social media experts so I’m sure I’m going to miss out a few but I was fortunate enough to meet Aaron Demp,Fred Nix (@nixfred) ,Delon Karrim (@delonk) , Travers Nicholas (@travern),Simon Rahilly (@noneonemany), Scott Lowe,Bas Raayman, Simon Long ( aka the SLOG) ,Steve Chambers, Craig Stewart and Simon Seagrave to name but a few . The VMworld TV team have already posted a video of Day 0 although due to it not being the official first day they don't cover very much of the technology yet but more the conference centre and what they are hoping to see and here

If you are at the conference and see some nerdy Saffa walking around stop me and say hi, as I'd love to meet as many people as possible

Gregg

VCAP4-DCA Exam Experience

Gregg Robertson — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:27:53 GMT

I decided to wait until I got my results before I wrote up this blog posting as I felt writing it up straight afterwards would mean I might miss something out and to see if VMware would give me credit for doing things in another way even though I made a mistake. Firstly, unfortunately I failed the exam by 23 points. This was mainly down to my making a major mistake very early in the exam and VMware not giving me the ability to fix it even though I knew how and the ability to know how to fix it is one of the exam objectives. I agree that if I make a mistake it’s only right that now I should use up my exam time fixing my mistake but not giving me the ability to fix it when in a real world situation you would have this ability isn’t very fair in my opinion.

Study Resources:

But enough of that as it’s done and seeing as I made that mistake so early on and still got so close is pretty pleasing in my opinion. For my studying of the exam, I decided I wanted to cover everything and so set myself a month and a half to study for the exam. I covered everything in my VCAP-DCA study notes list and went through both Sean Crookston and Ed Grigson’s study guides. I did all four of the VCAP courses trainsignal videos (these were honestly the best for it and taught me things so in depth that even questions in the exam that was very unusual I knew them because of these videos). I also researched anything I didn’t understand and as linked to in both Sean and Ed’s study guides I read up on loads of blogs, watched loads of YouTube videos from people like Eric Sloof (you can find these by just searching for Eric on YouTube as he has loads of them up) and watched a whole load of VMworld videos. Using all of these resources prepared me amazingly; the only thing I didn’t do enough of which was mainly to blame for me making my major mistake was not enough lab hours. I’ve got so used to question and answer exams that even though I obviously knew the exam would be 100% lab based I never realised the real importance of my practicing all the tasks twenty times until I knew it without even thinking as trust me the pdf’s give you nothing apart from the real basics and if you don't know those you won’t pass the exam anyhow.

The Exam:

The exam was hard and is probably the hardest IT exam I have ever done (previously this title was held by my MCSE 2003 upgrade exams) but I think it is only right it is as tough as it is as it really does separate the men from the boys and really shows if you know your stuff or not. As mentioned by every one, time is extremely tight and you won’t finish all the questions unless you skip certain ones. One bit of advice I was given which was really helpful was, if you don't know how to do the question mark it down on your notes and carry on as rather do the ones you can do rather than waste time on ones you are unsure of as I knew how to do some of the last questions just before time ran out whereas if I had sat and tried to work my through ones I didn't know I probably wouldn’t have even had the time to see and do the ones I could.

Summary:

If you do all the study resources I’ve listed in my study resources page and put in loads of hours deploying and playing around with every single thing on the blueprint in your lab then you’ll pass it. I’ve already started rebuilding my lab to get in a serious number more hours of practice for my re-sitting of the exam and making sure that the stuff I was unsure of in the exam I now know 150%. Good luck for anyone writing

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VCAP,VCAP-DCA,Trainsignal,VMware,VCP,Virtualisation,virtualization

Upgrading from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5

Gregg Robertson — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:13:00 GMT

Yep the time has yet again come round that the bi yearly mass upgrade of all of my VMware environments needs upgrading to the latest version. Thankfully this upgrade process hasn’t been too difficult but seeing as so many people said they found my posting all about the upgrading of my environments from 4 to 4.1 helpful I thought I'd keep the idea going and do one for my upgrading to 5 and give people some hints on things that slowed me down and things to plan for before doing the upgrade

First is the upgrade notes, I would recommend reading through this and following it step by step and using it as a reference guide as it really does flag up all the things you need to think about and know before during and after the upgrade.
Second is the Licencing. If you haven’t upgraded your licencing then I would recommend going to the licencing page where you can get all the answers to your licencing questions and concerns.
Next is the checklist to make sure you have planned for everything and you won’t get any nasty surprises
The upgrade follows the same steps as previous upgrades with:
- Upgrade the vCentre Server: I already have my vCentre on x64 etc so there was no need for major changes this time if you do need to follow the steps then I covered them in my upgrade from 4 to 4.1 posting)
- Upgrade your VMware Update manager Server: This was straightforward to do and is really helpful to do prior to the upgrading of your hosts, as there are already two patches for ESXi 5.
- Upgrade your hosts to ESXi 5: This can be done in numerous ways, the one major snag I hit was that 80% of my hosts needed their BIOS updated to the latest version to be able to run ESXi 5. Not sure when they added this as ESXi 5 beta worked on them so they must have changed something last minute before GA but I wrote about all my steps in my posting PSOD while trying to install vSphere ESXi5 on a Dell PowerEdge 1950 and OMSA 6.5 installation. As the title states there is also a currently unsupported version of OMSA for ESXi 5 (OMSA 6.5) which I would highly recommend installing prior to upgrading your host and the new variable to allow you to connect to the host via the Dell Management Console (DMC). Also don't forget to verify your hosts so that HA is enabled, I spent a bit of time scratching my head for why the HA agents were failing on my hosts until I remembered the step to verify them, Administration->vCentre Server Settings-> SSL –> verify the hosts in the bottom box
- Upgrade your Virtual Machines: This also follows the same steps of update all the vmtools on your virtual machines, then upgrade the hardware version to version 8 on all of them. If you have machines you don’t want to take down then it’s not a train smash as vSphere 5.0 fully supports running virtual machines with VMware Tools version 4.x as well as versions hardware versions 4 and 7. So you’ll have plenty of time to plan for that outage upgrade window to do the work at a later date.
- Upgrade your Datastores : Personally, I’m waiting this out as we change datastores relatively often so when the time comes to make change I'm going to upgrade them to VMFS 5. The steps to do it are really simple and vSphere supports VMFS 3 up so you can take your time upgrading your datastores, although obviously, the new VMFS does have all the new features and capabilities so don't wait too long.
There are two videos created by VMware detailing how to upgrade you hosts to ESXi 5 with the installer and with VUM which are really great to watch before you do the upgrades and give you the peace of mind you’re doing it correctly.
Also there is the VMware upgrade community which is a great place to see problems people have had and the fixes they found for them if you hit any problems or if you just want to have a look and see if there is anything that may apply to you and will save you having the same problem

That’s my list and how I’ve done my upgrades. Apart from the need to have a large number of my hosts on the latest BIOS revision, the process was fairly simple in my opinion.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: vSphere,vSphere 4.1,vSphere 5,upgrade,ESXI 5 PSOD,ESXi,VUM,OMSA 6.5

PowerEdge 6950 shows 112GB of RAM even though 128GB is installed

Gregg Robertson — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:42:00 GMT

For the past few days we’ve had the above problem where we upgraded one of our PowerEdge 6950 server to 128Gb of RAM but once we booted it it only showed 112GB of RAM. My colleague James Voll and I tested to try work out which RAM bank may have been causing the issue and found one where if we removed the two RAM sticks it still only showed 112GB so we contacted Dell and got an engineer out who replaced the motherboard for us but still after the replacement it wasn’t showing the full amount. In actual fact due to the motherboard coming with the basic BIOS update it only showed 12GB!! So we updated the BIOS to the latest revision and it was still showing 112GB. I logged into the BIOS and went to the memory settings for the server and noticed “Server Memory Test” was enabled so decided to disable it and reboot the server to see if possibly it would change something and remarkably it seems it did as now the server showed 128GB of RAM and booted twenty times faster through the post screen. I’m not sure if it’s a bug or because the 6950’s don't normally have that amount of RAM in them but disabling the Server Memory Test feature seems to have given back our missing 16GB of RAM

Hope this saves someone the time and effort it took for us to work it out

Gregg

Technorati Tags: PowerEdge 6950,RAM showing 112GB,Server Memory Test,Dell,128GB RAM

PSOD while trying to install vSphere ESXi5 on a Dell PowerEdge 1950 and OMSA 6.5 installation

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:35:35 GMT

This blog has been sitting in my drafts for a while and I have edited it a number of times while I tried to work out my problems and then my trying of multiple different paths to fix the problems I kept encountering.

First was my attempt to install ESXi5 onto my test lab Dell Poweredge1950 server which had ESXi5 beta installed on it already. The server booted fine off on the disc but once it reached “loading /tools.t00” it would give me a PSOD as shown in the two screen shots below.

After making sure it wasn’t my disc I went to the place I really should have looked at first (VCP4 101 Gregg…) and looked to make sure my server was actually supported on ESXi5 by going to the VMware HCL . As shown below the server is supported but requires the latest BIOS revision, which is a real pain as this server as i mentioned, had the ESXi5 latest beta on it so obviously this requirement has only been implemented in the GA release.

The fun part of all of this is my servers are remote to me as they are sitting in one of EMC’s corporate Datacentre's. Now here is the part where the steps I followed to get my BIOS updated has been changed a number of times as I tried booting off the system Build DVD and updating the BIOS that way but this requires a formatted USB stick/key with the BIOS software on it which is fine for my one server but not for the future upgrades I need to do. So I followed the Open Manage route. After speaking to Kong Yang at Dell via twitter, he pointed to me to the currently unsupported but the latest available OMSA package for ESXi5 and steps of how to do it. The difficulty for me originally was that OMSA 6.4 didn’t work for me on ESXi5 beta and the unsupported version isn’t on the dell website or FTP site due to it not being supported yet. The steps of how to install OMSA on ESXi 5 via ESXCLI are here:

http://attachments.wetpaintserv.us/32hS7wyYeMyal_il29fegw528983

Also as mentioned, the VIB for OMSA 6.5 isn’t available via FTP.DELL.COM so you need to download it from this link:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-groups/dtcmedia/m/mediagallery/19928975/download.aspx

The page Kong pointed me to with the above two links is here:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/tech-center/archive/2011/08/26/dell-openmanage-server-assistant-omsa-support-for-vmware-esxi-5-0.aspx

Next is another snag I hit as now the old process of managing your dell server via openmanage on port 1311 isn’t supported for ESXi and Dell recommends you use the Dell Management Console, which requires a distributed web server, installed on a Windows server. Also you have to licence the Dell management Console.Due to my desperate need for my test server to be upgraded to the Ga version on ESXi5 I did the BIOS upgrade for my test server by quickly installing Windows 2008 and just running the BIOS upgrade application so as to make sure ESXi5 did install once the BIOS was at the correct version and it does install perfectly.

But for my future servers I expressed my amazement at this requirement to pay for a licence for the DMC to allow me to do something I used to be able to do for free on twitter and Jonathan Medd replied to me with a blog posting he has done with a work around (What a Legend). This route does work if your servers are ESX/i 4.x and then you can use OpenManage to update your BIOS.

For me installing the latest OMSA on my ESXi5 beta and now GA test server hasn't brought up the UserVars.CIMoemProviderEnabled parameter unfortunately and so I’m still looking for a way to connect to OpenManage by using OMSA6.5 and ESXi5 to allow me to manage all my future ESXi5 servers. I have created a VMware Communities posting hoping that once more people know about the OMSA 6.5 for ESXi5 they will use it and possibly work out why the parameter isn’t showing up or hopefully I work it out and edit this posting with the solution but to help people to update the BIOS on their vSphere 4 servers and then install ESXi5 I thought it would be a good idea to post all the fixes I’ve found

Gregg

Technorati Tags: vSphere 5,OMSA,OpenManage,OMSA 6.5,ESXI 5 PSOD,DMC,Dell Management Console,Esxcli VIB,VIB,PowerEdge 1950,BIOS,HCL,Virtualisation,virtualization,VMware

All Things VMworld US 2011 Day 3

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:36:02 GMT

Well that’s VMworld coming to an end. It seems to have gone by so quickly but it also means that now we can start talking about VMworld in Copenhagen and I don't have to keep hearing about the killers playing the VMworld closing party (I’m not jealous at all ) . Day 3 is normally the day where everyone hits the solutions exchange, the sessions and the hands on labs. For me day 3 is great for all the videos that are put out as now they can show us all the new products and announcements mentioned in the keynote by Steve Herrod on VMworldTV and even an interviews with Steve himself detailing all the announcements he made.

First is the preview of Horizon mobile by Samsung and LG who are the two mobile phone providers working with VMware to bring out Horizon Mobile

Horizon Mobile

The next video is done by @the_anykey and is the interview with VMware CTO Steve Herrod. This is a must watch as it gives you a brilliant idea of the announcements he made and what they will mean for peoples daily lives (Horizon mobile for one)

Steve Herrod

Next is the VMworldTV video all about Project Octopus. As I said in my Day 2 posting I think this is the best announcement so far and will be changing a lot of peoples way of working in the near future.

Project Octopus

Next is an interview with Scott Davis, VMware's CTO of end user computing and is all about AppBlast with a really awesome demo of it too! I’m really looking forward to this technology being released.

AppBlast

The next has to be my favourite, probably because of the highly amusing appearance of “PowerCLI man” and my knowing of Alan due to him being a fellow London VMUG attendee and former EMC vSpecialist. Alan gives a great overview of all the new features in PowerCLI 5 and even mentions one of my firm favourites the vCheck script. Also as said there’s even an appearance by PowerCLI man

PowerCLI

Another twitter and Fellow vExpert friend of mine Kendrick Coleman was also interviewed by VMworldTV all about the free tools available out there for people to use. Kendrick and David M Davis of Trainsignal fame are doing their Top 10 free tools sessions again and from this Kendrick mentions a few of them in the video and even mentions a few that have been developed by people all by themselves like Ricky Al Qasem’s vSphere Plugin Wizard which is mentioned by Kendrick. It’s very sad to hear that the session Kendrick and David have done in VMworld Us has been cut from VMworld Europe. Hopefully they get one of the slots for most popular session again

Kendrick Coleman Free Tools

Last but not least is the Day summaries of the Past three days at VMworld. As mentioned in my Day 2 posting these are a great way to find out what’s been announced and is happening if you don’t have a lot of time to read up on what's come out.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Well that’s everything for Day 3 of VMworld US 2011.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VMware,VMworld 2011,Kendrick,Project AppBlast,Project Horizon,Horizon Mobile,PowerCLI,Project Octopus,LonVMUG

All Things VMworld US 2011 Day 2

Gregg Robertson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:09:22 GMT

Wow day 2 of VMworld really stepped it up and the keynote announcements did not disappoint at all. Some amazing announcements during the keynote by VMware CTO Steve Herrod and even a really classic line by Vittorio (Product Manager for EUC at VMware) stating a yellow Ferrari he supposedly hit as part of one of the demo’s isn’t a real Ferrari due to it being yellow. So here are all the things that caught my eye from the news of VMworld day 2:

The main news of the whole day in my opinion has to be from the keynote by VMware CTO Steve Herrod. Due to it being in the morning unlike Paul Maritz’s the day before I was able to watch the keynote streaming and personally (possibly because new technology keeps my attention a million times more) a lot more interesting. If you haven’t watched the keynote, you can still see it and Paul’s by registering here. I’m not going to give a minute by minute detail of the keynote but in my opinion the big announcements of the keynote were:
- The announcement of VMware View 5. Steve did a demonstration of View 5 in his keynote where he provisioned a pool of virtual desktops using a “technology called linked clones” as he said. It did look quite good but wasn’t very much of an in-depth demo in my opinion and gave more of a look of it rather than what it can do. Vladan Seget has done a great blog posting all about the announcement of VMware View 5 and has given some great details all about it if you are interested here. Some of the new features do look amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing more about it in the coming weeks. The VMware View team also did a very light hearted video of a Rock Parody here
- Next was the demo of Project ThinApp Factory (love how they refuse to call it an app store ). This demo was much more interesting and is very exciting, as it will be using ThinApp and Horizon to extract your applications from your windows systems and move them into an application portal where you can provision the applications to your users. This also enables you to access these applications via your mobile device with the Horizon Application Manager and Horizon mobile. LG and Samsung are already working with VMware to enable horizon mobile on their devices and supposedly a load more are due in the future.
- Steve then mentioned what i think was the announcement of the keynote and it was Project Octopus. Where you can offer a corporate DropBox style repository to your users and your clients. It will supposedly be available via the public and private cloud and will have a load of security enhancements and features to keep your companies security team happy in the knowledge that only the correct people will be able to access the applications. You can sign up now for news and the beta of project Octopus here.
- Vittorio (Product Manager for EUC at VMware) then took to the stage and gave a great users perspective of all these new announcements as well as Project AppBlast which converts your traditional desktop applications into HTML5 to allow you run them on any HTML compliant device. I would highly recommend watching the keynote for this part as it’s great to see how it all works and looks and also the breakdown of it all by Steve afterwards gives you a really good idea of how it’s all done. VMware’s description of the technology is:
  - “Project AppBlast will provide the universal delivery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any device supporting HTML5, enabling instant remote access to applications without the heavy footprint of the underlying operating system. Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra™ and Mozy™to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Additionally, Project Octopus will offer easy integration with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service. These two projects promise to dramatically simplify the access and sharing of information across people and mobile devices, contributing to the Connected Enterprise.”
- Next Steve showed off the new vSphere iPad Client and how you can now vMotion virtual machines from the client. Personally no matter what people may try to say to convince me otherwise i do think that doing these kinds of tasks via your iPad is more of a gimmick than a very useful day-to-day tool. However, I guess if the masses want to try using their iPad to do their daily work then this is obviously going to be a very popular announcement for some. As a number of people on twitter were saying it does lend itself to “oops sorry boss my kid just migrated the oracle DB server by mistake via my iPad’s vSphere client”
- VMware Go was then shown and covered. The offering will allow SMB’s to use a web based tool to scan their environment and allow them to work out what machines can be virtualised and give them a “for dummies” admin portal to do this all in. Also as part of this drive to help the SMB market Steve mentions the VSA that was released with vSphere5 and how it will allow users to utilise three hosts local storage to create a virtual storage array for their usage. You can read up more about the VSA here
- There is more talk about new features that were released with vSphere5 from auto deploy to the “monster VM” capabilities that vSphere5 has now enabled. I’m not going to really cover these as there’s loads of resources out there about the new features due to it being released last week before VMworld.
- One part of the new features that was very interesting though was the announcement of the VXLAN which will allow encapsulation of L2packets into L3 packets and will supposedly remedy the identifier=location problems. I have to be honest I’m not very much of a networking guru and so this is something I’m going to need to read up more on before i can fully understand it’s capabilities. VMware have however submitted the specification to the IETF here for those who are more networking based and might understand it a lot better than what I do.
- Steve then announces SRM 5 and its new capability of automated Failback and uses the recent hurricane Irene in the US as a great example of the benefits of having a technology like this. You can read more about SRM 5 here. I’m not going to attempt to cover it, as there’s a fair amount of features that come with it and it’s easier to go through the datasheet of it than my repeating what is already covered in there.
- Lastly, Steve goes into vShield 5 and the changes and enhancements that are now available with the new release. The biggest part for my out of this is the news that vShield App will now incorporate DLP technologies (via RSA) to enable additional protection.

Well that’s all the big news out of VMworld that caught my interest.

Gregg

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