ZOMG It’s that time of week again! The time where we announce the speaker and topic for this week’s BrownBag! Topic: VCAP-DCA Objective 2 – vNetwork Distributed Switches Speaker: Damian Karlson (@sixfootdad) who blogs here. Will be presenting this weeks BrownBag. Damian is VMware Certified Professional (VCP4), a VMware vExpert for 2011, and am currently
-> Continue reading BrownBag – VCAP-DCA vNetwork Distributed Switches
This is not so much a post of any real substance, more a: “Hey, I just noticed this cool thing here” or so in the vCO interface. Specifically, the last time a specific job/workflow ran: While selecting the workflow would seem a fairly obvious choice, it’s nice that it’s right there, and will tell you
-> Continue reading vCenter Orchestrator – Find The Last Time a Job Ran
So, TrainSignal FTW! That is all. About 3 weeks back now we had David Davis on the BrownBags, and while the Video has been up on Vimeo I’ve been lax in getting it posted. One of those things that if I don’t take care of it right away I seem to forget. Not that David
-> Continue reading BrownBag Follow-Up – David Davis Edition
On 8/3 we talked vSphere performance as it relates to the VCAP-DCA exam. Specifically objective 6.2 on the exam blueprint. We also had special guest Hersey Cartwright along for the ride. First the Video, then some of the links: The Video ProfessionalVMware BrownBag – VCAP-DCA Objective 6.2 from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. The Links Generating Load
-> Continue reading BrownBag Follow-Up: VCAP-DCA Objective 6.2
For this week’s BrownBag we’ve scored Hersey Cartwright to come talk to us about vSphere performance as it relates to the VCAP-DCA. Hersey has a little over 20 years experience in system and network administration. Currently he is the Network Operations Manager for a community Credit Union located in Southeastern, VA. he is responsible for
-> Continue reading BrownBag – VCAP-DCA Objective 6 Performance
As much as I’ve harped on installing and running stuff with vCO, the one thing I haven’t touched on much to date has been where to get the bloody download bits. Unfortunately as I’m writing this there is not a product specific download page for vCO. Rather you will need to download the entire vCenter
-> Continue reading vCenter Orchestrator – Downloading It
Since vSphere added the ability to have oddly numbered non power of two vCPU configurations, I’ve wondered what it’d be like to run a VM with an odd number. Will Windows react oddly? etc? I also had some curiosity around doing similar for non standard amounts of ram (non power’s of two or multiples of
-> Continue reading Prime Numbers, PI & VMs
Just wanted to make a quick note to John Troyer, the man, myth, and legend behind the awesomeness of the VMware communities on his birthday to say “Thanks” for everything. Really! Some of John’s efforts that I’ve had some real life benefit from: Blogger/Press pass @ VMworld. vExpert 3 years running (vExpert is the VMware
-> Continue reading Happy Birthday John Troyer!
We’ll skip the reason you need tools installed. We’ll also skip a bit on the other ways to do this in PowerCLI. Rather, we’ll bring you a way to do this in Orchestrator. Note: If you’re not using vCO, you should be. Why? I covered that here. Additionally, there are some excellent vCO resources here.
-> Continue reading Automation 101 – VMware Tools with Orchestrator
Hello and welcome to the ProfessionalVMware BrownBag! Yes, that’s right, join us on July 20 @ 7P CST to chat all things vSphere, vSphere Training, and more with David Davis. David Davis (CCIE #9369, vExpert, VCP, CISSP, MCSE) has been in the IT industry for 15+ years. He has authored over 300 articles, 6 video
-> Continue reading BrownBag – David Davis / TrainSignal Edition
I’ve not had a good chance to process the entirety of the flood that has been the vSphere 5 release. Let alone think on the implications of the licensing change. So a summary post will be forth coming at some stage (maybe). Until then, here are a bunch of links that I gathered in or
-> Continue reading vSphere 5 Link Dump
The Summary! No, it’s not that I was too lazy to fill out the template for the post, really. In fact, it was an excellent call with Julian Cates from NetApp. All in all a pretty good discussion. Video ProfessionalVMware BrownBags – NetApp & Virtualization Storage from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. Summary So there we go,
-> Continue reading BrownBag Follow-up – Storage, Virtualization, and NetApp
As mentioned here, I have been playing around with the “nuke from orbit” bits in vCO for both Virtual Machines & their AD objects. One of the snags I hit was the fact that one of these things was not like the other. That is, the VC:VirtualMachine bits that the vCenter plug-in uses could not
-> Continue reading Automation 101 – Orchestrator & AD, Revisited
This week’s BrownBag (the one on 7/6 that is) we will be talking all about storage and virtualization with NetApp’s Julian Cates. “Julian Cates is a 14 year IT pro who has spent the last half of his career at NetApp as a consultant, engineer, and architect. He is currently focused on NetApp storage solutions
-> Continue reading BrownBag – Storage, Virtualization & NetApp
Was catching up on feeds this weekend and noticed on Duncan’s site that vCenter Operations Enterprise had hit 1.0.1, and there is some good stuff in the release itself: User Interface A new VirtualCenter Relationship Widget that displays the performance status of objects in your virtual environment and their relationships. You can click objects to
-> Continue reading vCenter Ops Enterprise
This week has me finishing up Chapter 10 or so of the upcoming vCO Book (Amazon pre-order link here). Chapter 10 is the “How to cleanse a VM with fire” or so, and one of the varied bits of clean-up you have to do after deleting a VM is to pop that sucker out of
-> Continue reading vCenter Orchestrator – Active Directory Like A Boss
vCenter Orchestrator… It’s power is only exceeded by it’s mystery. Or so we thought… We’ve touched on vCO a number of times in the past. So much so that I’m actually writing a book on it (Yes that was a shameless plug…). What follows now was a special request from Maish Saidel-Keesing brought about by
-> Continue reading Automation 101: vCenter Orchestrator – Set Custom Attributes
If you are going to be using Orchestrator… and you should be, you are going to want to pull down and install the VIX plugin from here. Why? I hope you are strapped into your seat, and that seat is bolted to the floor because the awesome fixing to drop will hit with a force
-> Continue reading vCenter Orchestrator – VIX Plugin Installation
So, starting July 7, the BrownBag series will gain a European branch on PlanetVM.net run by Tom Howarth. You can find the announcement here. Those of you with long memories will remember that I used to be involved in Cody’s Brownbag series of online training sessions. That is until he moved the the sessions to
-> Continue reading BrownBags, In Earl Gray – PlanetVM & European BrownBags!
IOPS? No, it’s not where you go to get pancakes. Last night we were joined by two all-stars in VDI sizing and had an awesome audience conversation around VDI and it’s potential impact on storage. What follows is the video and some selected bits from the chat. The Video ProfessionalVMware BrownBags – VDI & Storage
-> Continue reading BrownBag Follow-Up: VDI & Storage Impacts