The release of vSphere 4.0 introduced something really revolutionary to the virtual world, VMsafe. The article published here dates all the way back to 2008. In addition, VMwold 2010 did some name changing and introduced vShield Edge. We're mid-way through 2011, so it's taken a bit over 3 years for a vendor to actually bring a completely baked product to market.

VMsafe isn't an actual product within vSphere itself but is a set of APIs that allows a 3rd party security vendor to do anti-virus scanning without the need to use agents on the VMs. This is HUGE! Have you ever stepped back to wonder how many CPU (and human) cycles are wasted on anti-virus scanning, deployment, and updates? Every server gets the updates, every server has to do scheduled scans, and there is an administrator out there that has to manage all of that.  This is the one piece of software that needs to be re-engineered for a virtualized environment. This key piece of security software has been done the same way for physical environments, and everyone knows that virtualization changed everything.

If you are unaware, David Davis from TrainSignal has released the latest VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring DVD that has a TON of great material. I just received my own copy and will be reviewing it very soon. In addition, I'm very fortunate that TrainSignal is one of my great blog sponsors and allows me to give back to my readers. That being said....

I'm having a grand vNerd Memorial Day Weekend Giveaway! Up for grabs is a vNerd T-Shirt from American Apparel (Size L), VMware vSphere Pro Series Vol. 2 DVD set, and the brand new VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring DVD set. Retail value over $600!!

How to Enter?:

Simple. Leave a comment on this article. It can be anything such as "TrainSignal Rocks", "Hey Kenny", or "+1". Make sure that when you leave a comment you use your correct email address so I can get in contact with you. If Disqus gives you any problems, simply send an email to kendrickcoleman [@] gmail d0t com and I'll add your entry. Only one entry per person please.

How is the winner chosen?:

The contest runs from 5/27/2011 - until midnight 6/3/2011 EST. Once all the submissions are received, I will follow Jason Boche's method, print and cut out each person's name and have my wife draw a name out of a bowl.

Rules?:

Open to anyone in the world. You read that right, I'll ship this stuff to Mumbai. Don't hesitate, just enter! Again, only one entry per person

I was reading through PHD Virtual's Press Release today PHD Virtual Technologies Raises the Bar for Performance and Scalability of Virtualization Backup and saw some really cool features that I though stood out.

PHD Virtual has extended it's backup capability to not only VMware, but Citrix XenServer as well. PHD has aligned itself with a very niche market with the people that do run Xen as their hypervisor of choice.

I guess PHD did some coding changes because backup processes now run faster. I'm not sure if this is in corporation of VMware CBT ability now available in PDH Virtual which does increase backup times dramatically. PHD proclaims that using VMware CBT, you can now get 5x faster backup performance, but I would venture to say you can get much more than that.

There's a fun game some of us in twitterland play called "Where in the world is Doug Hazelman" (sung to the tune of Carmen Sandiego of course!). Doug is the world-wide senior director of product strategy for all things Veeam. This week, Doug is at Microsoft TechEd where they are announcing Veeam's Next Big Thing. I'm sure you've already read all the reports that the next big thing for Veeam is the ability to do Hyper-V based backups. Gartner has reports that Hyper-V will have about 20% market share by the end of 2012. I personally don't think that will happen because Hyper-V's focus on cloud computing and strategy hasn't made its way to market and the only way they gain customers is not by innovation, but by price point. Microsoft is continually playing catch up to VMware and that has been proven time and time again. This time, Veeam is now giving Hyper-V a new feature to compete against VMware.

I've been rebuilding my VMware lab and decided to do it all right this time by having a centralized database server, and I choose SQL Server 2008 R2. I have configured vCenter, VUM, and View Composer to all use SQL 2008 R2 with windows authentication, then it came time to get the View Events database up and running. Jason Langone has a great article on setting up the events DB using SQL Express, but there isn't a good walkthru for regular SQL server setup. So here we go.

Before we begin, make sure that SQL Server ports are allowed through the firewall. do some googleing and there are plenty of batch files out there that will open them up for you.

VMware View Events Database cannot use Windows Authentication for the SQL backend, so we have to use local authentication. Open up SQL Server Management Studio and go to the properties of the database server

EMC isn't the only company with some news to unveil at EMC World 2011. VCE has some announcements as well all revolving around the BRAND NEW VBLOCKS!

The first announcement that effects VCE is the unveiling of Unified Infrastructure Manager 2.1. UIM is standard with a Vblock and is the major hardware orchestration piece with many new road-map additions to tie it in with other VMware products. Check out Chad Sakac's post because he has already covered this really in depth EMC UIM v2.1 Provisioning and Operations.

The second announcement from VCE is the availability of the new VNX Based Vblocks. The original Vblock names are still there, and I've created a chart that help depict the new differences.

Last year's VMworld was an exciting time and its shaping up to be bigger and better than ever in 2011. I have scrolled through the entire list of VMworld sessions and was pleasantly surprised to see all my submitted sessions are open for voting. Even if you know you won't be able to attend VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, you can still vote. I encourage everyone to log in to their VMworld account or create a new account (it's free) and VOTE! I feel like the 8th grader running for class president and trying to get all my friends to vote for me, but sometimes shameless self-plugs are part of the process. I had an exciting time speaking at VMworld 2010 and I really do appreciate your votes to make it all happen again in 2011. Even if my sessions aren't your cup of tea, then vote for ones that do strike your interest. The voters dictate the outcome of the conference so take a few minutes to make it happen!

Session 1940: 10 Best Free Tools for vSphere Management in 2011

Last year, Team Free Tools (David Davis and I), did our session on the Top 10 Free Tools for vSphere Management. It was the 3rd highest rated session at VMworld 2010 and had stellar feedback. This year, David and I are back at it again with a brand new session with more free tools, an updated list, demos, and even more videos for your eye candy. You won't be disappointed by what we have lined up!

Sadly, I won't be able to attend EMC World 2011 in Vegas this year. But I have been in the loop on emails floating around about all the cool stuff that will be a part of this great event. Over 10,000 attendees will be at EMC World this year and the vSpecialist have quite a massive vLab they have been building to allow people to test out products. I would encourage anyone that is attending EMC World to venture into the Lab to see all the great work some of the brightest minds in the industry have put together, it's quite impressive.

For 2011 the vSpecialist team has decided to kick it up a notch and leverage our private cloud support a 200 seat hands on lab pavilion during EMCWorld! The lab topics are:


•    VMware Storage Optimization Solutions - EMC VMAX, VNX, VNXe, Isilon, Atmos
•    VMware Storage Management Optimization - Virtual Storage Integrator plug-in for vCenter (VSI)
•    VMware Storage Performance Optimization - vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)
•    VMware Data Protection - EMC RecoverPoint, VPLEX
•    VMware Backup & Recovery - Avamar
•    VMware Datawarehouse Solutions - Greenplum
•    Vblock automated Provisioning - Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM)
•    VMWare Security - RSA Archer, RSA enVision