Daily Hypervisor

My VCAP-DCA Exam Experience

Dave Convery — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:35:15 +0000

In case you have been living under a rock and haven’t heard, VMware is getting ready to release a new set of advanced certification exams that will take you along the path to become a VMware Certified Design Expert on vSphere 4 (VCDX4). Just like VCDX3, it starts with the requirement of being a VMware [...]

VMworld Sessions up for Public Voting

Dave Convery — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:35:19 +0000

Voting has opened for the VMworld Sessions. You can access it here. I am “soloing” for these two sessions: Session ID: BC7720, Session Title: VCB is Gone: What Now? , Track: Private Cloud – Business Continuity Session ID: MA7721, Session Title: Stick With the Methodology: The Proper Path to the Private Cloud , Track: Private Cloud – Management I [...]

vShield Zones – Some Serious Gotchas

Dave Convery — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:49:38 +0000

OK..I’ll admit it: I am spoiled by the capabilities of vSphere. What other platform lets you schedule system updates that will occur unattended and without outages of the applications being used? I don’t mean the winders patches, they require a monthly reboot. I am talking about the hypervisor updates. VMware Update Manager coordinates all of [...]

ESX vs ESXi which is better(Revisited vSphere 4.0)

Sid Smith — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:14:18 +0000

Back in April I wrote a blog aimed and the differences between ESX and ESXi. The original post was written for ESX 3.5 and with the introduction of vSphere I think it’s about time i have revisited this topic and looked at the pros and cons of ESX4 and ESX4i. Now before we [...]

VMware SDK and Visual Studio 2008

Sid Smith — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:40:04 +0000

I went to install the VMware SDK for vSphere 4.0 on to my desktop running Windows 7 64-bit, Visual Studio 2008, and .Net 3.5 SP1 and discovered the SDK setup is not friendly with these versions. According to VMware you need Visual Studio 2005 and .Net 2.0 if you want to run the SDK. So like [...]

A huge win for the Community Lab

Sid Smith — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:41:49 +0000

This morning I was informed that DynamicOps is going to donate the use of it’s flagship product VRM for use in the free lab. For those of you not familiar with DynmaicOps VRM (Virtual Resource Manager) it is a workflow automation product that boasts amazing flexibility for managing your virutal infrastructure. It will become the [...]

Community Lab Gen1 Specifications

Sid Smith — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:51:07 +0000

I have decided to utilize XenServer5 as the Hypervisor for the First Generation of the Community Lab. I have chosen Xen because to the level of support it has for templates in the free version. Without template support the flexibility of the lab would be compromised and it would hold much value. I would have [...]

The Community Lab Design Has Begun

Sid Smith — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:47:50 +0000

As I progress through the design of the first generation of the community lab I need to make decisions on an implementation strategy. Not from a hardware and a virtual environment perspective, but form an automation perspective. Currently I’m looking at a number of community scripts and some of my own to provide [...]

Citrix Xen Desktop (DDC) / Provisioning Server (PVS) & vSphere SDK

Sid Smith — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:11:08 +0000

I’m sure many of you have run into an issue with setting up Citrix Xen Desktop (DDC). As i was setting up a new “Desktop Group” I ran into a problem when trying to configure the vCenter SDK address. The configuration wizard show you an example that looks say ‘For example, https://VirtualCetner.example.com/sdk” [...]

Community Lab – WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Sid Smith — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:13:38 +0000

We all have come to love many free services that we have integrated into our daily lives. Things like free email, free voice mail, free open source applications, free video streaming, social networking sites, operating systems, and many other services that make our lives better. At dailyhypervisor.com we are working on a new type of [...]

DynamicOps Delivers Automated, Space-Efficient Virtual Desktop Solution

Sid Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:19:37 +0000

“The desktop deployment productivity tools that NetApp and DynamicOps offer significantly increase the value of virtual infrastructures by improving performance, providing essential data management resources, and reducing costs,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances, NetApp. “Enterprises and service providers can now offer multiple, cost-effective service level options for virtual desktop deployments by [...]

VMware SRM is it the right choice?

Sid Smith — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:38:01 +0000

VMware SRM is gaining a lot of traction and many companies are quickly making it the defacto choice for DR in their environments, but is SRM the right choice? For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to get familiar with SRM (Site Recovery manager), it is a Disaster Recovery automation product from VMware [...]

Creating an Automated ESXi Installer

Dave Convery — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:02:10 +0000

Back in the summer, I saw Stu’s Post about automating the installation of ESXi. I was reminded again by Duncan’s Post. Then, I found myself in a situation when a customer bought 160 blades for VMware ESXi. With this many systems, it would be almost impossible to do this without mistakes. I took the ideas [...]

We’ll Miss You VI:OPS of Yore

Dave Convery — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:46:59 +0000

VI:OPS is was a VMware Forum that dedicates dedicated itself to providing information related to operations surrounding a VMware Infrastructure. The “Proven Practice” documents are were submitted and reviewed by moderators before they are published. The published documents allow for peers to comment on the documents. I made it point to meet Stevie Chambers because he [...]

Setting Up VCB for any Backup Software – Revisited

Dave Convery — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:31:17 +0000

Since VI:OPS seems to have died and the content was gobbled up and reindexed my the main VMware communities site (They miss you Stevie!), I am posting my VCB proven practice here. It is dated, since its last version covered ESX 3.5, but most of it still applies in ESX4. If you have comments or [...]

Is Your Blade Ready for Virtualization? Part 2 – Real Numbers

Dave Convery — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:28:06 +0000

OK, so my last post brought on a blizzard of remarks questioning some of the validity of the data presented. I used what I was told during a presentation was a “Gartner recommended” configuration for a VM. My error was that I could not find this recommendation anywhere, but the sizing seems fairly valid, so [...]

Is Your Blade Ready for Virtualization? A Math Lesson.

Dave Convery — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:03:44 +0000

I attended the second day of the HP Converged Infrastructure Roadshow in NYC last week. Most of the day was spent watching PowerPoints and demos for the HP Matrix stuff and Virtual Connect. Then came lunch. I finished my appetizer and realized that the buffet being set up was for someone else. My appetizer was [...]

vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide Released

Dave Convery — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:00:26 +0000

The vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide: Shortcuts down the path of Virtualization has finally arrived! Please upgrade your browser I received a pre-release edition of the book at VMworld 2009. This guide has a great selection of shortcuts, tips and best practices for setting up and maintaining vSphere 4. I would be an excellent addition [...]

PAVMUG and GreenIT – Be There!

Dave Convery — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:05:50 +0000

I will be presenting a session at the GreenIT event hosted by the Philadephia Area VMware User Group this Thursday, November 19th. I am going to be speaking about how VMware affects GreenIT. I will also be describing some of the steps to follow ot make the savings a reality. So, if you are in [...]

VMware Workstation 7, VMware Player and Microsoft Virtual PC

Dave Convery — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:08:24 +0000

A little over a week ago, I was pleasantly surprised by an email from VMware announcing the release of VMware Workstation 7. Since I actively participated in the beta, they gave me a free license key for the new version. That’s reason enough to love it in itself! But, to be honest, I have been [...]

A Different Take on CEE and FCoE

Dave Convery — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:32:52 +0000

Last Month, I attended a Brocade Net.Ed Session that covered Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and the idea of Server I/O Consolidation. If you missed the Net.Ed sessions, you can learn about it at Brocade’s Training Portal. Once you register / login, click on Self-Pased Training and search or browse [...]

ESX vs. ESXi Which is Better? Revisited.

Dave Convery — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:45:15 +0000

For over a year now, I have started off telling customers in Plan and Design engagements that they would be using ESXi unless we uncovered a compelling reason to NOT use it. The “which do I use” argument is still going strong. Our blog post “ESX vs. ESXi which is better?“ was posted in April [...]

Virtualization’s Myths

Sid Smith, Dave Convery, & Mike Burke — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:45:35 +0000

Published on Forbes.com The fastest growing trend in IT is virtualization, a software technology that allows you to run multiple servers on a single piece of hardware. Virtualization also lets you start up new servers quickly and move servers to new hardware without interrupting service in case of failure. In addition to saving enormous sums of [...]

VMware Workstation Release Candidate Available Now

Dave Convery — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:47:07 +0000

VMware Workstation 7 RC is available now. A while back, I posted about how to disable debug mode and quickly made it private because I was under NDA. Well, as of October 2nd, it is in RC and available to the public. Since I changed jobs, I am back to a Winders laptop as my primary [...]

What is Cloud Computing? I Don’t Care!! Part Two

Dave Convery — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:32:42 +0000

As an update to yesterday’s “I don’t care” post, Mike DiPetrillo has claimed ownership of the original “I don’t care” quote. And just so everyone understands completely, the “I don’t care” is for the users. The administrators should absolutely care. Users should not need to care. The design of the cloud should be such that the [...]