VMworld kicked off this morning and to capture the feel of the event I have decided to create a photo stream which I updated regularly throughout the week with updates on the various sights at the event and around the conference area in general.

REGULAR LIVE STREAM PHOTOS

• Photosets

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Hey all you TechHeads!  Eric Siebert, Simon Gallagher and myself have our session at VMworld San Francisco today(Monday, Midday (noon) Moscone West, Room 2007) called, “Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business”.  In our session we will be covering the many subject areas around building a successful vSphere SMB or home/work lab solution, including server hardware, storage, network, and licensing, and of course no self respecting session would be complete without a demonstration on how to bring it all together.

So if you’re attending VMworld hope you come along, ask questions and don’t forget to say “Hi!”.  More details below. 

Title:
Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business

Abstract:
This session will cover how to build a vSphere home lab or an environment for use in a small business. It will cover the following areas:
1) How to choose the hardware, including white box hardware, brand name hardware, network components and storage
2) What the hardware compatibility guide means and the consequences of using unsupported hardware
3) Making sure the hardware you choose will work with vSphere
4) Using VMware Workstation to run
nested hypervisors and virtual machines
5) Using ESX or ESXi to run nested hypervisors or virtual machines
6) Installing ESXi on to a USB flash drive
7) How to choose and use affordable shared storage devices
Using free ESXi and free administration tools to manage it
9) Using the affordable Essentials editions to gain big features at a reduced cost
10) Putting it all together to make a virtual environment

US Speaker:
Eric Siebert Senior Systems Administrator
Boston Market
Simon Gallagher Infrastructure Architect
vinf.net
Simon Seagrave Senior Technical Consultant/vSpecialist
EMC Corporation

Technical Level:
Technical

Track:
Virtualization 101

Subtopic:
Business Benefits of Virtualization

Area of Interest:
SMB, Education

Length:
60 minutes

Schedule Information

Time:
Monday 12:00 PM

Room:
Moscone West Room 2007

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In Episode 5 of our new vChat series, Eric Siebert, David Davis and I discuss VMworld San Francisco 2010 and the things to see and do including a few tips for VMworld first-timers.  There are a significant number of big announcements this week so it should prove to add to the buzz and excitement around the event.  We are intending to record a vChat this Thursday morning whilst we are actually all together in a single location – should be fun.

The full list of links discussed in this video can be found below…

vChat is a regular virtualization video chat covering VMware vSphere, Cloud Computing, Virtualization News, and maybe some geeky humor. Regular contributors are 3 vExperts – Simon Seagrave (TechHead.co.uk), Eric Siebert (vSphere-Land.com), and David Davis (VMwareVideos.com).

Sponsored by VMware vSphere Video Training from Train Signal.com

You can now SUBSCRIBE TO VCHAT on iTunes!

Here are links that we discussed in this episode:

For a huge list of  VMworld 2010 conference coverage and travel tips visit vSphere-Land.com

Sunday night

    * VMworld Run along the bay
    * WUPaaS – Theron Conry & Sean Clark (invite only)

Monday

    * 130PM – MA8339 – David Davis – Top 10 free vSphere Tools
    * 7-10pm Solutions exchange opens / reception Get your Train Signal vSphere 4.1 video giveaway!
    * Tweetup 9-11pm – John Troyer sponsored by Train Signal and Xangati

Tuesday

    * 530 – In N Out burger meetup
    * EMC Party at the Temple (invite ONLY)
    * Veeam Party at Thirsty Bear (invite ONLY)
    * NetApp Community Party
    * Press / Analyst Cocktail Reception at the Four Seasons

Wednesday

    * 1pm Meet the guys from Virtumania at the Veeam Booth
    * 130PM – MA8339 – David Davis – Top 10 free vSphere Tools
    * 530pm vExpert Meeting with Dr Steven Herrod (invite ONLY)
    * VMworld party with INXS

Thursday

    * Recording vChat LIVE!
    * VMworld vd0dgeball deathmatch

Sessions not to miss:

    * TA7962 – Nick Weaver – my man from TX – modern networking in virtual environment
    * V18328 – Eric Siebert, Simon Gallager, Simon Seagrave covering affordable vSphere home labs
    * TA8623 – Storage super-heavyweight challenge – Vaughn stewart and Chad Sakac
    * BC7773 – Mike Laverick on Site Recovery Manager
    * TA8188 – Chris Wolf – what server hosted virtual desktop vendors aren;t telling you Wednesday morning
    * V18268 – Eric Siebert – deep dive on virtualization – how stuff works
    * BC7803 – Duncan Epping – Planning and DSesigning an HA Cluster that maximizes uptime
    * MA8092 – Chris Wolf – Cloud Futures – the infrastructure authority
    * TA8101 – Scott Lowe – virtual storage and vmware vsphere – best practices
    * SS8222 – Charu – Transitioning to ESXi

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It’s been a busy morning so far with couriers dropping off my own copy of Eric Siebert’s new VMware vSphere book this morning called ‘Maximum vSphere’ which I fortunate enough to write a couple of chapters for (ie: Performance and Building vSphere Labs chapters – see my earlier post here for more details. Also, the first of the book reviews have started rolling in – Check out vCritical’s review here ) and also my TechHead polo shirts arrived all ready for VMworld San Francisco!

During the day at VMworld I will of course be wearing my fetching (I’ll let you decide) EMC vSpecialist bowling/NAScar style shirt, though I thought why not put together some TechHead shirts for a those “more casual” evening and weekend events where wearing my vSpecialist outfit wouldn’t be entirely appropriate.  Besides, I only have one vSpecialist shirt at the moment and I need to make that last as long as possible – though apparently (I hope) we do have more on the way, which will be good for everyone involved. 

For those of you attending VMworld San Francisco this year why not come and say “Hi”, it’d be great to meet you! 

Things I know I’ll definitely be involved in at this stage whilst at VMworld are:

Saturday 28th August @ 7:00pm	vBeers – Relaxed, social gathering of virtualization enthusiasts.  Everyone welcome and no registration required – just rock on up!  Good opportunity to meet with your peers and discuss anything from the weather through to virtualization.  See my post here for details of the venue and other information around this vBeers event.
Monday 30th August @ Midday	V18328 Building an Affordable vSphere Environment for a Lab or Small Business Session – Presenting with Eric Siebert & Simon Gallagher.  Thinking of running your own vSphere environment in a lab or SMB area then don’t miss this VMworld session (or course I’m going to say that).
Monday – Thursday @ Various Times	EMC vSpecialist Booth and Lab duties – I’m looking forward to this as it is always fun working on a stand talking about IT tech that I am interested in and excited about.  Swing past and come and say “Hi”.
Thursday Morning @ 8:30AM	vChat – A special breakfast vChat VMworld wrap-up episode with David, Eric and myself. Place for recording TBC – though watch this space for details if you’d like to come along a be part of a vChat.

The last before heading away whether it be on holiday or to a conference event is always something of a manic affair, trying to tie up loose and ends and ensuring that appropriate handover of information and clients has taken place. On that note, I had better get back to things…

Hope to see you at VMworld San Francisco or Copenhagen!

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A slightly delayed vChat this week due to video problems therefore having to try and do some clever editing (sort of) and my being flat out at work to finish this Episode of vChat in time, hope you find it was worth the wait.  So here it is Episode 4 “Here Comes Something” with special guest, the one and only Rich Brambley blogger and owner of VMETC.com, Virtumania podcast host and semi-newbie Veeam employee.

In this episode of VChat we discuss the recent Infosmack podcast with VMware CEO, Paul Maritz to which Rich was part of, also about his new role at Veeam and the impact (if any) of a blogger beginning to work for a vendor.  There is also information on David’s TrainSignal giveaway at the Veeam booth during the fast approaching VMworld in San Francisco. 

Of course, as always, we end up discussing useful iPad apps and whether it is a business enablement or entertainment device (or both).

Hope you enjoy it and feed back always welcome.

vChat – Episode 4 Show Notes

• Rich’s Blog
  www.VMetc.com
• Virtumania
  http://vmetc.com/podcast/
• Virtumania Shirts and Swag
  http://www.cafepress.com/virtumania
• WuPaaS – VMworld 2010 Warm Up Party as a Service (WuPaaS) registration
  http://www.vmunderground.com/
• Veeam Fast SCP (free)
  http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esxi-fastscp.html
• David’s VMworld Free Tools Session- MA8339 – Mon & Wed @ 1:30
  www.VMworld.com
• InfoSmack Podcast with VMware CEO Paul Maritz
  http://www.storagemonkeys.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=304:infosmack-episode-63-vmwares-paul-maritz&catid=69:infosmack&Itemid=143

Sponsored by VMware vSphere Video Training from Train Signal.com

You can now SUBSCRIBE TO VCHAT on iTunes!

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Here’s one for all you Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS) administrators out there. Imagine being able to perform basic management functions on your Cisco UCS from your iPhone when out of the office or away from your desk! Well look no further as Tige Phillips from Cisco has produced the Simple iPhone Management of UCS (SiMU) application for the the iPhone which can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store here. The interface has been designed with the iPhone in mind though you could also run it from an iPad just as easily. It is important to point out that this ‘lab’ version of SiMU does not use an encrypted connection, with all traffic travelling between the UCSM and SiMU application being in clear text, though encrypting this data stream using SSL s something that the author,Tige, is working for an upcoming version.

From SiMU Lab (Simple iPhone Management of UCS) you can perform simple management functions on a Cisco UCS such as login, reboot servers, check errors and assign service profiles to blades along with other basic administrative functions. The following is a brief description of the application from the SiMU application’s site:

“SiMU uses the open XML API built into the UCSM software. All of the security and access permissions are granted by UCSM and therefore are carried through to this application. SiMU Lab does NOT use secure communications. All traffic is passed between the UCSM and SiMU in clear text. For this reason SiMU should only be used in test environments and labs. A future version of SiMU will include SSL communications. Your password is stored in clear text in the memory of the iOS device, but is never saved to nonvolatile storage.

This application has been tested with version 1.2 and 1.3 of UCSM. If you do not have a Cisco UCS but want to learn more you can get a UCS simulator from the Cisco developers portal.”

So if you are a Cisco UCS Administrator this useful looking application could definitely be worth a look. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a UCS to try it out though if any of you do try it out I’d be interested in getting your feedback on it.

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