VMworld Europe 2014 - Day 1

VMworld Europe 2014 - Day 1

Admittedly, I’d already been in Barcelona for a while after the TAM day (partner day for most people) on Monday, so we’d already had confusion amongst the bloggers as to what day it was., perhaps we should stick with ‘Tuesday’ and have done with it? Apologies for any tense changes here, this post was mostly written at VMworld, but not published then. Keynote This was my first opportunity to attend a European keynote, so I was hoping to be able to get ensconsed in the hangspace or the bloggers area and tweet or blog from there, whilst hoping it would be different from the US keynote.
VMworld Europe 2014 - Prelude and TAM Day

VMworld Europe 2014 - Prelude and TAM Day

I have to admit to being pretty excited to attend my first VMworld in 6 Years, this time with the additional perk of having the Monday lined up as well, as part of the TAM experience. Technical Account Manager, that is. Same day as Partner Day, but for those of us who warrant or buy this level of service, I guess. I work for a large American Company so this was something I get that I was not going to get so often, as my TAM is in the US, whereas I am not!
VMware VCP550D 'delta' exam for VCP5-DCV holders

VMware VCP550D 'delta' exam for VCP5-DCV holders

A couple of days ago, VMware announced that they would offer existing VCP5-DCV certified folks a shortcut to extending their certification, by introducing a new delta exam. The new test is a Pearson Vue delivered test as you would expect and has the code VCP550D. The exam is the same duration (75 minutes) and length (65 questions) as the normal VCP5 exam, but it is taken remotely like the introductory level VCA exams and is also considerably cheaper than the full exam, at £80.
VMware enters the Hyper-Converged space with VMware EVO.

VMware enters the Hyper-Converged space with VMware EVO.

In a move that justifies (if that’s the right word) the developments made by Nutanix, Simplivity et al, VMware announced two releases of their Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance (HCIA) products, which are called VMware EVO. This is the Project Marvin initiative which has been whispered about for a while since an internal VMware poster was seen up on a wall by someone who shouldn’t have seen it! The EVO part means Evolution and the product names RAIL and RACK are down to the amount of space they take up in the datacentre.
VMworld 2014 Day 1

VMworld 2014 Day 1

A personal snapshot of some of the big news from the show; The keynote from day 1 mentioned IT bravely delivering brave products by making brave decisions, bravely. There were also some new product numbers announced, which is what people really want to hear, I guess. I’m sure Pat Gelsinger broke the vSphere 6.0 Beta NDA by mentioning that it contained VVols, but who’s gonna tell him? There was also an update to the cloud stack, with vCloud Suite 5.
VMware announces public Beta of vSphere 6

VMware announces public Beta of vSphere 6

I’ve been talking to my VMware Technical Account Manager about access to the vSphere Beta for a while now but in a surprising move (for me at least) VMware have just announced the public beta of vSphere 6. Of course, the usual beta rules apply, meaning no public disclosure about the contents of the beta, but since it’s a public beta, anyone and everyone can sign up for it. That means I don’t need to tell you anything as you can go and look for yourself.
Install and Boot ESXi from a USB stick

Install and Boot ESXi from a USB stick

An increasing number of motherboards these days have USB sockets built in, which makes it very easy (and cheap) to run an ESX host, without having to obtain any local DAS storage. Good for the home labber, also good for the corporate guy who’s boot-from-SAN usually. There’s no point re-inventing the wheel here, since there are already blogs out there that talk you through the entire process - like this one from Brian Graf at vtagion;
LonVMUG, vBeers and a vCurry!

LonVMUG, vBeers and a vCurry!

Wow! I nearly didn’t make it. A particularly “late one at the office” the night before saw me get to bed just short of 4am, with the prospect of a couple of hours train journey for a 9 something LonVMUG start. So, forget all about starting the day at 6am then. The late start to the day turned out to be particularly gutting as the Twitter chat around the event pretty much ceased whilst Frank Dennerman was doing his presentation, so I was pretty miffed that I didn’t catch it live as it was obviously getting everyone’s attention.
mbralign for NetApp filestores

mbralign for NetApp filestores

Intro Migrating VMs to a NetApp filer is all well and good, but there’s a disk alignment issue to get past once those migrations are done, otherwise your expected performance will be seriously impacted. You should use the version of the mbralign tool included with the latest NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VSC) to check VMDK partition alignment. There is a version of mbralign for ESX hosts and one for ESXi hosts and you’re given the option to select the correct one at download.
VMware vCloud Hybrid Service

VMware vCloud Hybrid Service

Just as I was thinking about starting this blog site, along came the public release of VMware’s entry in to the cloud space, vCloud Hybrid Service. I think that VMware first started telling me that I was on a “Journey to the Cloud” at VMworld way back in 2008. I guess I have been meandering a bit since then as I am not sure that I have gone too far on that journey.