At this point, I am not going to go in to detail about the installation of SRM 5.x, as there are already lots of good blog posts / series out there about this. SRM 6.x though, fair game! However, I wanted to lay out some of the changes that should be made after an installation of your SRM environment before you start your testing, to give you the best chance of success as possible.

A few oddities I have discovered recently when working on one of my lab environments, so I thought that I would note them here for my own ends if nothing else. It is possible that a Windows Server based vCenter 5.5 (in my case) will not start after a reboot with the error message in vpxd.log reporting “Unable to create SSO facade: Invalid response code: 404 Not Found”. The quick way to fix this is to restart the VMware Secure Token Service, as per VMware KB2061412.

The worst kept secret in Hypervisor history was finally revealed last week, when VMware went public with the launch of vSphere 6.0 (alongside a swathe of other products) in what they are calling their biggest ever release. So big in fact that it’s taking 28 days to get through it if you read up at onecloud.vmware.com, a microsite introduced under the title “One Cloud, Any Application”. 28 days is handy in that it gives people time to digest a range of features and also write additional contributions (more on that later).

In a move that I have to say that I did not see coming (but then I think no-one did) VMUG recently announced that subscribers to their VMUG Advantage initiative would also receive EVALExperience licenses for a number of vSphere related products meaning that these products are now available for use with a 365 day license which you can renew as long as you maintain your VMUG Advantage subscription .

Well, well, well. I’m pleased to say that I have been awarded the title of VMware vExpert for 2015, my first time! You can see the full list here on the VMTN site. Congratulations to all the new and returning vExperts named this year. It’s rather humbling to gain this recognition and it really is great to see so many of the #LonVMUG folks who’ve helped me along the way be named as well.

An extra post about my favourite part of VMworld from the organised conference perspective… I thought that the TAM sessions were by far the best sessions I attended. None of them were presented by the most well known vRockstars (they were out in the normal breakout sessions, doing their thing - and from the ones I saw, doing it very well) the TAM sessions were all by the engineers and product managers who you don’t know as well, which was great.

The final day, an early start to the sessions with no keynote to overrun into the first session, so I went straight into a 9am breakout session. Session: INF2311 - vCenter Server Architecture & Deployment Deep Dive Some good tips here for the folks running (or planning to run) vCenter 5.5 specifically around the placement of vCenter components. Do not, do not, do NOT run your Inventory service on a different server to your vCenter server service!

I’m on a bit of a roll now! The ‘second’ day of VMworld Europe started with another keynote, just the same as San Fran (same general format, same general content). Fortunately for those of us wanting to blog/tweet during this, the doors that were closed yesterday were open by the time I got to the hangspace, so I was in and settled with a coffee and pain au chocolat before 9am.

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.

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!