Everything-Virtual

Category: VMware

  • VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1

    Recently at VMworld in San Francisco VMware announced the vCloud 5.1 Suite and yesterday brought about its general availability.

    The vCloud 5.1 Suite is a complete integrated cloud infrastructure solution and was definitely one of the primary discussion points at of VMworld among partners and end users.

    From the VMware Press Release some of the highlights of the vCloud 5.1 Suite are:

     

    • VMware vSphere® 5.1 – With more than 100 enhancements and new features, VMware’s virtualization platform is the proven foundation for the software-defined datacentre, delivering the highest service levels for all applications, including business-critical workloads and low-latency, I/O-sensitive applications.
    • VMware vCloud Director® 5.1 – With scalability improvements that support “elastic” virtual datacenters spanning multiple VMware vSphere clusters and up to 30,000 VMs, VMware vCloud Director 5.1 allows customers to provision complete virtual datacenter services in minutes.
    • VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.1 –Providing a full set of software-defined networking capabilities, the new VMware vCloud Networking and Security enables the dynamic creation of virtual networks and services that are completely decoupled and independent from the physical network hardware.
    • VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ 5.1– To enhance the availability and rapid recovery of applications running in the software-defined datacentre, vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 simplifies and automates disaster recovery planning, testing and execution.

    Check out the VMware press release for full details – VMware press release – VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1

  • vSphere Web Client – What does it mean for the third party management app suppliers? – Update

    Earlier this week I asked what it would mean for the mobile app publishers now that VMware had introduced a decent Web Client for vSphere 5, the reason for the post was because it looked like the web client would be all that was needed for the mobile user to manage their vSphere infrastructure, it turns out that I was a tad hasty in my view of the mobile app’s imminent demise.

    Why I hear you ask? Well, the new vSphere Web Client is Flash driven and as such won’t work on a number of mobile platforms (especially now that Adobe have also removed it from the Google Marketplace as well). Now don’t panic too much because for all intents and purposes it appears that VMware have implemented this well, yes it sucks that this is on Flash and not something like Java but as most Enterprise desktops already have a flavour of Flash installed so it does mean one less application being installed on the desktop (and let’s be fair, the vSphere client does have a large-ish footprint).

    I can’t comment personally on the usability of the new Web Client but come back soon for an updated view on it.

  • New VMware Certification Tracks

    VMware today announced a complete update to the VMware Certification Track.

    There are now four certification tracks for people to go for, they are :-

    • Cloud
    • Datacenter Virtualization
    • End User Computing
    • Cloud Application Platform

    The tracks stack up like this.

    Selection_001

    What this essentially means for the exam taker is this, the original VCP 5 now becomes the Datacenter Virtualisation track, the recently announced VCP-IaaS now falls into the Cloud track (along with what looks like a new VCP-Cloud exam), the VMware View based VCP now falls under the VCP EUC track and there is now a new Developer certification track.

  • Installing VMware Player 5.0.0 on Ubuntu 12.04

    Just to give everyone a heads up that installing and running VMware Player 5 on Ubuntu 12.04 works perfectly and doesn’t require any additional steps to install apart from making the bundle executable (unlike previous versions which required manual patching, so a big thanks to VMware for finally fixing the issue Smile)

    chmod +x VMware-Player-5.0.0-812388.x86_64.bundle

    and then installing VMware Player, type in

    sudo ./VMware-Player-5.0.0-812388.x86_64.bundle

    Then just launch the application as usual 🙂

    Oh and to make life easier for those people wanting to download VMware Player, VMware have now removed the requirement to have an account to download Player so another thumbs up to VMware for that Smile

  • VMware Workstation 9 Launched

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    Well I wasn’t too far out, in the last week I posted a question asking if we would see VMware Workstation launched at VMworld this coming weekend, I was out by a couple of days because VMware launched it today 🙂

    What’s New in Workstation 9?

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  • VMware Workstation 9 – Will we see it at VMworld 2012?

    I recently downloaded a trial of VMware Workstation 8 from the VMware website and discovered that VMware may well have jumped the gun a little.

    image

    So either it really is just a typo or we can expect Workstation 9 to be released in the not too distant future, knowing previous VMworld announcements it really wouldn’t surprise me to see this getting announced the week after next.

  • It’s #LonVMUG Time again Again

    The 2nd #LonVMUG is nearly upon us (Thursday 17th May 2012), the agenda has been decided and it looks to be a cracking one again.

    The #LonVMUG is being held at The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London, EC4R 1AP

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  • VMware Certification Offerings

    I was recently asked to list the current VMware certification offerings over on the Certforums website and decided that it can’t hurt to have them listed over here as well.

    VMware have a number of different exam \ certification paths open to individuals now, however initially they only offered a single certification and that was the VCP (VMware Certified Professional), over the years the certification offerings from VMware have grown to where we are currently.
    The following certifications are currently or will be shortly available from VMware, some of these courses have strict class requirements whereas some of them don’t.

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  • vExpert 2012 and beyond

    I recently discovered (accidentily I should add via Twitter) that VMware have awarded me the vExpert title for 2012, this award is based on my previous years contribution to the world of everthing-virtual 🙂 and  is awarded to people who have contributed to the VMware community either through forum posts, VMUG presenting or blogging. I look forward to receiving the email from VMware in the not too distant future 🙂

    I started my blog back in 2010 with the intention of expanding my experience and exposure to the virtualisation market and can honestly say that getting the vExpert was definitely something I was aiming for (admittedly I didn’t think I would get it this year but the blogging and various forums I post to helped my site rankings earlier this year so I had hoped that it would help my chances).

    Having recognition for my contributions to the community is part of the reward I get from blogging and posting on forums and the vExpert to me is the thing that tells me I am doing the right thing.

    I try and put a lot of effort into blogging and whilst I may not be the most prolific of bloggers I hope that what I do contribute help those who need it.

    To ensure that I am not a one hit wonder where the vExpert is concerned I know I need to keep up with what I have been doing so these are some of the things I have planned for the rest of the year.

    • Regular posts on www.Everything-Virtual.com
    • More content on www.My-TechVideos.com
    • Update my VCP and VCA-DT guides to cover more of the exam material
    • Carry on attending the #LONVMUG and #UKVMUG’s and networking with my peers
    • Continuing to post on forums such as www.certforums.com and www.tek-tips.com as well as the VMTN forums and Twitter

  • Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 in my Home Lab

    I recently decided to upgrade my vSphere 4 lab to vSphere 5, one of the things I did at the time was consolidate my SQL environments to a single platform (I have in the past had SQL 2005, 2008 and various SQL Express environments up for one reason or another), I decided at this time that I was going to install a dedicated SQL server (VM of course) that would be my single source for any db. requirements.

    I decided to install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 as this happens to be the latest supported product (Denali having only just come out I am not sure on the number of the products that support it), like most of my environment SQL 2008 R2 will be hosted on a Windows 2008 R2 server joined to my AD domain.

    Installing SQL 2008 R2 isn’t taxing, for the most part it’s a next next next but there are a couple of caveats that you need to be aware of, especially if you’re going to be using it as the host for any VMware products.

    Using my TechNet subscription I downloaded SQL 2008 R2 to run the installation.

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