Tag ESX

If you knew how many various different titles I thought through before deciding on that one, you might say ‘You have too much time on your hands!’ though seriously, I went through thousands of options in the minute I thought about this.   The point of this is – Did you know that a company which owns a considerable amount of VMware actually eats its own dog food when it comes to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure?  Yea if you’re like me, your thoughts around VDI are “Show me who’s doing what, what they’re doing right, wrong, and what are some practices we can discuss around this”  Some people say “Check out my reference architecture!” Yea, That’s all fine and dandy – But show me the names, show me the real people.  I want to see the scars that people went through so I can make sure YOU don’t have to encounter those same scars when it comes to VDI.

What’s cool about this (video) and this particular site is that these are real people, talking about their real journey and challenges encountered along the way – So you have something real and concrete to take away from it.

What is really cool about this, is this site – discussing EMC’s IT’s Journey through Virtualization is it covers the whole stack – Server, Virtual Desktop, Consolidation, Management and Automation, and especially Private Cloud.   This isn’t a pipe dream – This is a transparent view into what is really physically going on within a large company, so you can relate it to your own business.  We’re all going through the same challenges economically, managementwise, and management and power consumption aren’t going to go down on their own!

So, check out the site/blog, and you may gain a better understanding that you are not alone in the challenges you face, and you may just learn something! :)

Wow that’s a lot of V’s! But seriously! Chargebacks?! Are you serious?! But I wanted to create complicated scripts which really didn’t work and force me to do so much more work than I should! How daaaaaaare you make my life and job easier!

But yes, seriously, allow me to introduce “Business View” from Veeam!

While there is so much you can possibly do! and I’ll show screen shots, you can go click on the links to find out more than just the chargebacks which is all I’ll talk about.. :)

Define your chargeback model

Together with Veeam Monitor and Veeam Reporter Enterprise that provide comprehensive resource utilization and allocation information, Business View gives you the flexibility to define a chargeback model the way you want. In addition, you can easily export the VM groups’ information to a Microsoft Excel document for reporting or integration with other chargeback, inventory, or billing systems.

So I encourage you to check out Business View by Veeam, especially if managing your VMware investment is part of your job, and further trying to make it understandable to upper management :)

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Veeam, infact I think I’m a competitor? :)

So, the finalists are in for the contest I mentioned recently OMG! @Veeam backup supports restoring you to @VMWorld2009 to determine who will be voted on their way to attend VMWorld in San Francisco!

I know I said I’d record a video, and yes I did actually record a video but because I wanted Gabe to win, I opted to not compete (Let’s just say.. I’m a pain in the ass competitor and had a strong chance of taking it from him and everyone else ;)) I may post my video later not for credit to win… but that’s not what we’re here to discuss!

The contestants are in! And you have the opportunity to vote for the best! (Gabe) and comment to win a Flip Camera! (Hey, are you telling me, register, vote, comment = win?!)

Then yes, that is exactly what I’m telling you!  Oh, and check out some really cool software which will help resolve a number of challenges in your infrastructure and virtual environment, that too.  Being that a Flip Camera is not the only free possibility, since they have the Free Veeam Monitor Free Veeam FastSCP and more!

So be sure to go out there, vote for the best of the best! (That’d be Gabrie Van Zanten ;)), comment, and win a Flip Camera! (Check out the goods, make your life and job easier, win!)

It’s all so very straight forward! And be sure to check out Gabe’s blog, it’ll be an investment you’re glad you made!

So, just click the “I love Veeam” above, Vote, Comment and you could win a Flip!

Disclaimer: I am not a shill, I have no affiliation with Gabe other than the best of respect for his contributions back into the community   Were I to compete with Gabe or anyone else on the team, I likely would have obliterated them as I tend to take things considerably too far, and have at my beck and call a series of video editors and production people. ;)  Just so you don’t think this is biased, he deserves to win :)

Wait, what? I’m not even sure what that means?!   Are you seriously telling me that Veeam will send me to VMWorld 2009 in San Franciso? Where do I sign up?!

Veeam Video Contest. Win a FREE trip to VMworld 2009 !

In this economy, who wouldn’t like to win a free trip to VMworld 2009 in San Francisco?

Tell us why you love Veeam and get a chance to win a free full pass to VMworld 2009 or Flip video camera!

How to participate

Between now and June 15,

• Create a video about any Veeam product you love. See Contest Rules for details
• Send us a link to your video at video@veeam.com
• Deadline to submit videos is June 15, 2009

And make sure to post your Video to the Veeam Forum!

And… Then you’re done!  If I don’t see any traction from you folks out there, I’ll have to post a video myself (oh my! will @CXI win a trip to San Francisco!?) Don’t challenge me, I might!  So, post post post! Check it out and get yourself a free trip in this economy, oh and VMWorld2009 should be cool too! ;)   If you need some ideas of what/how to post, hit me up on Twitter and I can help you out also… My idea of a video (for me) likely will be drastically different than you can imagine anyway.. :)

For those of you in the ESX space who are religious about your installation and deployment of Host Utility Kits (I hope you are!) 5.1 has just been announced! Hooray!

ESX Host Utilities 5.1 contain the following new features:

• Support for ESX 4.0 hosts.
• Support for role-based access control (RBAC) user names so that root access to storage controllers is not required.
• The mbralign program that fixes misaligned VMDK partitions.
• New timeout values added to config_hba to support software iSCSI initiators on 10 Gb Ethernet. Check the Interoperability Matrix for supported 10 Gb configurations.
• Updated SNIA API libraries for Emulex and QLogic adapters.
• An -expert option for the Host Utilities install command that installs the Host Utilities components but does not set timeouts or paths

And lots of other cool stuff, but these are the major high-lights, so get out there and download today! Hooray!