VMworld 2010 Round-Up

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:43:12 GMT

My first VMworld has come and gone and I feel like this was my greatest high yet. Everyone remembers D.A.R.E. in school right? When the officer said, people become drug addicts because they are always reaching for that same level of high as the first time. After VMworld, I'm going to go to different events and perhaps next years VMworld and won't reach this same level of high.

First and foremost, I can't say enough how twitter pretty much rocked this VMworld for me. Over the past two years I've been talking to loads of people on twitter and I easily met over 100 people last week. If it wasn't for these people, social gatherings would have had no meaning what-so-ever, but I probably would have been in bed at a reasonable time. Instead of trying to strike up conversations with someone you never met before, it was easy to get on topic and discuss. The best part was not talking about technology, but really getting to know someone that you interact with through twitter. I got to meet all kinds of industry experts and it was even better that they knew me as well.

Steve Herrod's Keynote at VMworld 2010

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:02:31 GMT

I finally put my flip video to work and recorded the VMworld 2010 Tuesday keynote for a good tech overview of everything that was announced. Enjoy

VMware vCloud Director and Enterprise Cloud

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:48:27 GMT

The first announcement from VMworld this week was the debut of what we all called "Project Redwood". It has now been revealed as VMware vCloud Director and vCloud Datacenter.

Do we call it the "Secure Private Cloud"? The cloud is a journey, so how do we get there?

What will vCloud try to achieve? Pooling is the heart of vCloud. Greater pooling drives greater utilization which drives lower cost. Automation. Self-service workloads. Control with application-aware infrastructure. Open & Interoperable so it enables the hybrid cloud. Leverage existing environment and people to move forward.

Hey Security Guys, VMworld Is Hitting Your Playground

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:44:25 GMT

vShield App, Edge, and Endpoint Security

The legacy way of doing things are going to slowly fade away. VMware wants to start hitting all those air gaps within the VI and are going to make security people re-think administration.

Currently, you have to secure yourself on all areas. A firewall on the perimeter isn’t enough. In addition to firewalls you can have VPN concentrators, IDS devices, and load balancers. Internal security can be done via subnet or VLANs and interior firewalls such as a windows firewall. End point security is done via Desktop anti-virus agents and other types of host based intrusion. You can’t realize the full benefit of security in virtualization without worrying about vlan or firewall rules sprawl to take care of security. There are always holes.

vFabric Wasn't Even Mentioned

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:09:18 GMT

I went to the Future of Virtualized Networks with Howie Xu this morning and I thought I was going to hear about some new amazing technology, from the vFabric buzz. Not so much. His first sentence was this isn't a product or even a roadmap. It's just a vision.

Virtualized networks are still in development and is going to continually be a journey. Its a big push to put networking guys into the virtual infrastructure and continue to converge the two.

VMware sees it's current networking journey to go from the managed vSwitch to the vNetwork Distributed Switch and on to the "Distributed
Virtual Network". More companies are going to start playing the Nexus 1000V game and integrating more with vSphere.

The journey has 4 key concepts:
Anything. Being able to put whatever you want out there
Anytime. Spinning up and done workload instantaneously with end to end Layer 2 to 7 networking
Anywhere. Deploying workloads where there is computing capacity without network constraint
Any Scale. Scaling workloads up and down, horizontally, vertically, easily and economically

VOTE for the Top Free vSphere Tools of 2010

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:03:44 GMT

I'm back on the free tools vibe again. I'll be presenting with David Davis at VMworld in his breakout session discussing the Top Free vSphere Tools.

David wants your input! Head on over to VMwareVideos.com and vote for your favorite free tool! David will calculate the results and announce those rankings in video form – before the end of 2010.

VMworld Schedule and Announcement

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:59:21 GMT

After much deliberation, I think I finally have my VMworld schedule made out. I'm very positive I'll be calling a few audibles and scratching something out to attend more sessions by other vExperts.

As for the announcement, David Davis of Train Signal and VMwareVideos.com has asked me to be a special guest speaker during his breakout session MA8339, 10 Best Free Tools for vSphere Management. I'm thrilled to not only be attending my first VMworld, but getting a chance to speak as well. Thanks David! The breakout sessions will be taking place on Monday and Wednesday from 1:30-2:30pm in Moscone South Room 301. I have seen David's presentation and we are currently tweaking it to be ready for San Francisco next week. Hope to see you there!

Xangati Releases a Top 10 Free Tool

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:59:04 GMT

Xangati has released a new free tool to the public. If you're familiar with my Top 10 Free Tools list, then you know I'm a sucker for free stuff, who isn't? I've had a chance to play around with Xangati's new free tool and it really caught my attention. Xangati Free is a great free tool because it's essentially the core of the whole Xangati management platform. I'll explain the differences below.

If you remember the grading scale I had for the Top 10 Free Tools list, here is how Xangati Free stands:

ESX	ESXi	vCenter	Ease of Install	Feature Rich	Performance	Everyday Use	Total Points
1	2	0	3	5	5	3	19

19 points puts it right there on the cusp of a Top 10 Free Tool. Seeing as how Embotics V-Scout has hit an EOL, we can put Xangati in the Top 10. Let's dive a bit deeper.

Using VMware AutoDeploy for ESXi

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:45:50 GMT

More ways to make the transition to ESXi are making it to market. Take a read at my previous articles:

This week, VMware Labs has created another free tool called VMware Auto Deploy. Here is a short description:

VMware Auto Deploy supports automatic PXE boot and customization of large numbers of ESXi systems. Auto Deploy allows rapid deployment and configuration of a large number of ESXi hosts. After a DHCP server has been set up, Auto Deploy PXE boots machines that are turned on with an ESXi image. Auto Deploy then customizes the ESXi systems using host profiles and other information stored on the managing vCenter Server system. You can set up the environment to use different images and different host profiles for different hosts.

As an update to The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations. Part II, I opened a VMware SR and it seems that the problem was on my end with host profiles not working with AD. I tested it out on a different machine and it worked, go figure.

Win The ULTIMATE vSphere Library from vDestination

kendrickcoleman@gmail.com (Kenny) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:07:07 GMT

Greg Stuart over at vDestination.com was one of the lucky people to snag a GestaltIT and Boche.net Free VMworld ticket. He is already paying it forward by holding a contest to Win the Ultimate vSphere Reference Library and more.

The lucky winner will receive the following prizes:

Mastering VMware vSphere 4

Scott Lowe

VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference

Maximum vSphere

Eric Siebert

VMware vSphere Pro Series Training vol. 2: Site Recovery Manager (SRM), Veeam Management Suite, VMware Data Recovery,
Power CLI and vSphere Advanced Features

David Davis