I got a request internally for a simple step-by-step of how to deploy a vApp or VM from vCloud Director because the IT group has no experience with vCloud. I toiled on putting this blog article up because the simplicity is just, well, simple. Thanks to a few twitterati (@P2Vme, @angeloluciani, @jmichelmetz, and @mtellin) for making me do it anyway. here we go

Before you begin, you need to know where to go. vCloud has a few different portals but there is going to be one defined for your particular organization. For instance, my vCloud Director instance rests at https://vcloud.kendrickcoleman.c0m/cloud/. This webaddress is for administrator access. When you create a new Organization inside vCloud Director such as Developer, you can create a new logon portal that can be accessed at https://vcloud.kendrickcoleman.c0m/cloud/org/Developer.

I received an email today from the product manager at VKernel asking about additional features the community would like in their free product SearchMyVM. If you're not familiar with SearchMyVM it can be described as a "google-like" interface for your vCenter environment. You can run queries against your environment, and do searches. It's an appliance based VM so you don't pay any licensing cost, and the product is absolutely free. It's a great way for admins to let other people in IT see what resources are being consumed and are free within the virtual environment. SearchMyVM has also been on my Top 10 Best Free Tools list. If you haven't checked it out, I encourage you to.

The product management wants to know what YOU would like to see in their new version. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment or send me an email kendrickcoleman [@] gmail [dot] com and I'll relay it back to the team.

UPDATED***

Go to Interactive 3D Vblocks Now In The App Store

So this blog post is really just one of the cool things that have come out of VCE's marketing department. I saw a tweet from @treylayton that pointed to VCE's new KAON demo located here http://www.vce.com/vblock/300/model/. You may think that's cool, but it gets even better. That website will render an interactive Vblock of the basic completed Vblock.

This following tool takes that interactive demo 10x further. It's available to anyone within VCE, EMC, Cisco, or VMware. I will see what I can do for anyone that works for a VCE Partner. Speak up if you want it in the comments and I'll take it up the chain. You can use the demo I'm going to show below by following these simple instructions:

1. Download the Kaon v-Stream app for iPad from the iTunes appstore (it’s free)
2. Install the App on your iPad
3. Go to http://portals.v-central.com/vce
4. Enter your VCE, Cisco, EMC or VMware company email address and a password
5. Check your email for a message from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to confirm your address
6. Open the Kaon v-Stream App on your iPad
7. Once logged in, select the Vblock 300 Demo to begin streaming to your iPad (note: you must be online in order to stream the demo)

There are two spiking trends in the market that I see today. The first is Enterprises and Service Providers are looking to build some sort of cloud infrastructure. I know everyone has a different definition of "cloud infrastructure", but I'm referring to companies that are focused higher in the stack. Speeds and feeds are great, new hardware is great, but at the end of the day those are capital expenditures and make IT departments a cost center. The goal of a cloud infrastructure is to start your ROIC, Return on Investment Capitol, as soon as possible so the business can gain value. While you keep acquiring new equipment, it still takes weeks or months for it to even be implemented as part of your production cloud. I say that it takes this long because a true cloud solution is not only based off of virtualization, but you need to have an orchestration strategy that automates the provisioning of new resources. Picture this, Cluster A only has 10% of free RAM available, a warning is sent to the cloud admin to investigate the situation. The cloud admin finds out that workloads cannot be dispersed to another cluster so an order for 2 blade servers are placed. Once those new blade servers are shipped, the cloud admin inserts those blades into free chassis slots. From there, automation takes over. The chassis recognizes new blades, applies a pre-defined service profile, auto-deploys ESXi, and the ESXi configuration tasks take over to add the new blades to the cluster for HA and DRS resources, along with mounting datastores and configuring networks. The cluster is now at 30% free RAM.  That is called cloud automation and many companies see the light today using products such as Cisco IA, vCloud Director, and vCenter Orchestrator or even using custom code. This is the new wave of innovation that developers and admins need to be prepared for.

This is a pretty simple tutorial (or so i thought), but I didn't see anything out on the interwebs, so i figured I would write one down. Gabe has a great walkthrough

The VMware View Security Server should be one of the final pieces you ever install during your VMware View implementation. I have found Paul Slager's blog an invaluable how-to resource on all installation and best practice configurations for View. He has a 10 part series install guide that will walk you through all the steps with screenshots. Nice job Paul.

Paul also has a great tutorial on installing the VMware View Security Server for a production business environment. It talks about making sure the VMs are PCoIP ready, what firewall ports need to be open, etc.

The one thing missing is how can all this be done on a home lab environment? With the help of Dynamic DNS (DDNS) and router port-forwarding, it's actually very simple.

It goes without saying that many of my readers are very familiar with Duncan Epping (yellow-bricks.com) and Frank Denneman (frankdenneman.nl). I'm also sure everyone is fully aware they have released 2 deep dive books in the past 2 years that have consistently received 5 star reviews. 11/28 is Cyber Monday in the US which means many websites are having great deals on their products. Frank and Duncan have stepped up and are now selling their books for 50% off!! Heck, even at $10, the book was a steal, now at $5, you don't have a reason to not purchase a book.

I completed reading the vSphere Deep Dive on Clustering as it relates to vSphere 5 and my mind was overloaded. It's a great book that really gets very deep on particular subjects. I would encourage anyone that is studying for their VCDX or VCAP exams that it's a must read. It's also great for any VCP'er that wants to go deeper on the subjects you work with daily.

Over the past two days I've been experimenting with Windows Guests and vCloud Director. If you didn't know, I updated my VM Advanced ISO with the correct syntax for vCloud cells so you can begin the guest customization process inside of a RHEL VM even faster. Please refer to KB 1026313 for installation.

After your vCloud cell is done being configured for sysprep, you are given a very limited Guest Customization option within vCloud and doesn't take advantage of vCenters Customization Specification Manager by being able to keep completed wizards. It's like having to re-build the wheel over and over. One thing to note, after you add a Windows VM to a vApp from catalog, the Enable Guest Customization checkbox will proceed by default if you don't take care of this before hand.

For instance, if I start creating a vApp, I go through the usual routine and I'm never prompted for any Sysprep or guest os customization work.

PHD Virtual today announced the availability of PHD Virtual Backup and Replication version 5.3. This release further extends PHD’s footprint into Citrix XenServer virtual environments.

PHD Virtual Backup and Replication version 5.3 includes the following new features and capabilities: