With vSphere comes the ability for third parties to add hardware to the HCL without having to wait for an update to ESX for their drivers to be included. An excellent move on VMware’s part as this opened up the door hugely for 3rd parties to supply certified & updated drivers as well as provide
-> Continue reading Installing 3rd Party Drivers in ESX
In the spirit of all things Brownbag, we’re branching out beyond certification to include several “Deep Dive” technical podcasts with industry leading experts. Mind, we’ll still keep to our certification roots, but the Brownbag format lends itself well to doing technical deep dives as well. As such, our first topic will be Virtualization security, and
-> Continue reading Brownbag #10 – Security Deep Dive
Tuesdays Brownbag had a good turn out and also featured the excellent debut of our newest co-host: Guillermo Rodriguez. Guillermo (Gee yair mo) like many of the folks on the call is a budding VCP, having taken his class, studying for his exam and interested in helping others reach the same goal. Video: We had
-> Continue reading VCP Brownbag #9: Fragmented Bendy Busses (Storage) Follow-up
The following is a guide on how to get Oracle 10g R2 RAC installed on ESX 3.5 using CentOS Virtual Machines. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? This was written up by Justin Mungal. In the guide Justin covers every thing needed to get Oracle RAC installed on ESX 3.5 and then some. It should be
-> Continue reading Holy Cluster Batman! – Oracle 10g RAC on ESX 3.5
This post is actually in preparation for another that will list my favorite Podcasts. First I thought it would be helpful to show you how I get through the many many hours of Podcasts generated a week. Other than listening to them while driving & during downtime, I time-shift them to 1.5x their recorded speed.
-> Continue reading Time Shifting Podcasts (Off Topic)
There are still some big things on the horizon for the Brown Bag series. One of the first things is the introduction of a new co-host for the VCP Series. Rather than try to introduce him here… We’ll leave it as a mystery during the call. This go around we’ll be talking about storage, otherwise
-> Continue reading VCP Brown Bag #9 – Storage (Objective 3)
@vRobM and I were discussing an unrelated topic when DRS and the mysterious stars came up. (**)? Our first instinct was this was the “special sauce” between the two all beef patties. However after some creative KB searching we came across a formula that describes it quite well: DRS Recommendations To understand the stars, you
-> Continue reading The Math Behind the DRS Stars
With the long weekend here in the US I about forgot to put this post out. Tomorrows VCDX Brown Bag, due to a complete lack of show prep on my side will be Canceled. Those of you who registered should have received a notice. Sorry for doing this at the 11th hour, but please stay
-> Continue reading VCDX Brown Bag #7 – Open Topic
As discussed during the show, this is the follow-up post for our conversation with Jon Hall about the new VCAP Certifications. The Video Brown Bag #8 – Jon Hall Returns from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. Please note: You can download the original WMV from the Vimeo site. The Links There were not as many this time
-> Continue reading VCP Brown Bag #8 – Follow-Up
I mean it. Really. One of my pet peeves is the fellow who installs VMware server on his workstation to run his work provided Windows XP image (or some variant of Linux). The logic behind this usually goes something like: “I needed to be able to create virtual machines and VMware Server is the only
-> Continue reading Stop Using VMware Server! (For Your Workstation Workloads)
I was trying to avoid this post, but alas, a little shameless self promotion can’t hurt. VMware this year has decided to put a multitude of the sessions submitted during the CFP up for a vote, and I must say, there are plenty of good sessions up there. So even if I’m not your favorite,
-> Continue reading Get Out and Vote – VMworld 2010
Due to a change in Jon Hall’s schedule, the VCP Brown Bag for May 18th has been canceled and moved to the 25th. This also means that I had to push the VCDX Brown Bag on the 25th out to June 1st. Those of you registered should have received notifications, those of you not registered
-> Continue reading VCP/VCDX Brown Bag Scheduling Changes
After the excellent conversation we had last time, we’ve scheduled Jon Hall to come talk VMware Certification again this week. If you were there for the last one, you know you won’t want to miss this. If this is your first time… you will want to make every effort to be there, trust us. Critical
-> Continue reading VCP Brown Bag #8 – Jon Hall Returns!
We had a good time this call. You’ll be able to tell from the recording though that we are still very much armatures playing in this space. Outside a minor emergency and Tom having some audio difficulty, we had a great discussion around rapid provisioning ESX servers. Video: VCDX Brown Bag #8 – Rapid Provisioning
-> Continue reading VCDX Brown Bag #6 Follow-up
The show notes for this are more or less lost at this point. Whoops. That said, the video is online. This one felt more like teaching a class than a discussion around certification, but as awkward as that was for us to handle, I think we did “ok”. You tell me. VCP Brown Bag #7
-> Continue reading VCP Brown Bag #7 Follow-up
This week we’ll be talking ESX Rapid provisioning, specifically objective 8 from the Enterprise Admin Blueprint. We’ll then take the discussion and build kickstart script, finishing with a scripted ESX install. Sound like fun? You know it will be. Here are the critical details: Date/Time: May 11, 2010 @ 2P CST Registration*: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/602230081 * Note:
-> Continue reading VCDX Brown Bag #6 – Rapid Provisioning
This came up on #VMware on Freenode this weekend. Basically the concern was “How do I Backup my ESXi USB Key?” Other than ripping the USB key out of a production machine… how was the user to do this? Well, vMA and the vCLI provide a method for this: Backing up your ESXi Configuration: To
-> Continue reading How To Backup ESXi Configuration – The Missing Piece
Nick Weaver, posted an update to the EMC Celerra VSA, or Virtual Storage Appliance. The build has rightfully been dubbed the -Uber edition. Here are a summary of his changes: 1. Completely automated install: On first boot a configuration wizard will ask a few questions and automatically reboot. On second boot everything is configured and
-> Continue reading Small, Sleek, and Sexxy – New EMC Celerra VSA
Firstly, the video! In the spirit of the changes this webinar announced, we’ll also try some changes with the video. First embedded: ProfessionalVMware VCDX Brown Bag #5 from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. And then, a link where you can download the high quality .mov file. Yes, yes… I can re-encode again to m4v if there is
-> Continue reading VCDX Brown Bag #5 – Follow-up
I believe we’ve covered networking before, but alas, that was before we started recording these. So… for the sake of completeness we will cover it this time around. First the critical call details: Date: May 4, 2010 @2PM CST Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/875600073 Note: VMware has a Free VCP Voucher offer, check here for details.