Just like last year, I got up really early and caught a 06:40 am flight from Bergen to Oslo to attend the VMware Forum. A couple of things have changed since the last time, one of them being the venue.
This time around it was held at Ullevaal Business Class, and the venue itself worked great for a one day conference like this, divided into three sections, two for parallel sessions and one for the exhibitor area.
My little pet project VCDX Wannabe has now (finally) gone live. For now it´s mostly a collection of links and resources, but that will change over time.
So, if you want to see me (and possibly a few others) either go down in flames, kicking and screaming, or succeed obtaining the VCDX certification you now have the opportunity to do so.
Since the vCenter Client no longer is bundled with an ESXi host installation, I´ve compiled a quick list of direct download URLs for the most recent clients.
Update 17th September 2014: #
VMware has published the official list in knowledge base article KB2089791, use that as the official list going forward.
Remember, the client download URL is still available from the vCenter server, if you point your browser to it.
Another way of getting hold of the client is from the vCenter ISO file downloadable from vmware.com.
My VCP 5 exam experience
Like many others I was a VCP 4 and needed to upgrade to VCP 5 by Feb 29th to avoid a pricey class and possible ribbing from my peers. I was well aware of this deadline since mid December, however, I procrastinated on studying and was mostly flinging myself around the globe doing implementations and having an all around good time. When Feb 1st came I was sitting on a flight from Saigon to Frankfurt and that is when panic struck. I realized I had until the end of the month to finish the requirement. I instantly pulled out my iPad and began frantically combing thru the VCP 5 Blueprint and reading countless documents over the 12+ hour flight.
Now there is an ambitious post title if there ever was one, but it seems fitting as the next 12 months promises to be my most ambitious professional year to date.
Like Neil, I´ve started a journey that could either crash and burn, or end up with my very own personal moon landing.
Those of you that follow my antics on Twitter already know what I´m talking about, but I´ll spell it out once and for all:
I´ve mentioned this earlier, VMware hands-in labs going public in 2012, but finally it seems like something is happening in that regard!
Scott Sauer has announced the availability of “VMware Virtual Customer Labs” (vCL) where he walks us through the setup and delivery of the new vCL offering.
At the moment it´s only available to “selected customers”, supported by a VMware pre-sales engineer, and the number of labs are limited. It´s still a work in progress, and I´m sure great things will come out of this!
In a recent article, VCP 5 certification course deadline looms over VMware pros both vNinja.net contributors (Christian and Ed) are quoted in relation to the VCP 5 certification upgrade deadline of February 29th 2012.
While I can´t speak for Ed, I can clarify my own comments a bit. The following is a quote from VMware, taken from the article in question:
“That requirement is in place to maintain the integrity of the certification. If people could pass the VCP 5 without exposure to and hands-on experience with vSphere 5, it would devalue the certification,” a VMware spokesperson wrote in an email.
While I do see why VMware has that stance, and why they try to keep the exam “real”, my problem is that there is no way for anyone to do the VCP certification without classroom training. I don´t mind that VMware has a training requirement, and I don´t mind that you have to pay for it. What I do have a problem with is that I´m required to sit a 5 day training class. Why not offer an online VCP-prep course that you can complete in your own pace, complete with a pre-exam test that you can use to validate your skill set? That way VMware can still require a minimum of training pre-exam, get paid for it, and students can do their training in their own pace and when they have available time for it. Seems like a win-win (bingo!) situation to me?
Eric Siebert has opened up the voting for the top VMware & virtualization blogs. Head on over and cast your votes!
Votes for vNinja.net and vSoup.net would be greatly appreciated, but since we´re not affiliated with the Dutch vMaffia we promise that you will not have to wear concrete boots or wake up to a horses head in your bed if you don´t vote for us.
We think.
As Mr. Simon Seagrave has pointed out, there is a fix available to enable OSX Lion Time Machine support for Iomega IX2 and IX4 NAS storage devices.
I decided to take this a little step further, and try to upgrade my old (and discontinued) Iomega IX2-200 to the new IX2-200 Cloud Edition firmware.
Initially this was a big failure, as I seemingly managed to brick my device. It was only responding to pings (so the TCP/IP stack was loaded and working), but I could not bring up the web based management tool nor connect via telnet or SSH.
My new colleague Olav Tvedt asked me if I could test his method of enabling Bitlocker in a VM, on VMware vSphere. Of course, I was happy to oblige.
I followed the same steps as he did in his Running Bitlocker on a Virtual computer post, and it worked perfectly.
The only real difference between doing this in Hyper-V and on ESXi, is that the virtual floppy drive on ESXi by default doesn’t emulate an empty floppy. So, in order to mount a virtual floppy you need to create a new floppy image. Thankfully the vSphere Client can do this for you!
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