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!
Sammy Bogaert has posted a 12 part series called “Building The Ultimate vSphere Lab”, which knocks the socks of my previous vSphere 4.x series.
In reality this means that my planned series for vSphere 5.x is now cancelled, as there is no need to duplicate Sammy’s efforts. Be sure to check the series out!
Yes, this is YAEotYP, so if you’ve already read tons of them I apologize.
2011 - My personal view #
2011 has been a steamroller of a year.The vSoup Virtualization Podcast got aired the first time, and we’ve recorded and published 19 full episodes in the inaugural year. I was awarded the vExpert title for the first time, and even got invited to Tech Field Day #6 in Boston.
In addition to this, I wrote a white paper for Veeam, was included in the Server Virtualization Advisory Board, joined Rick Vanover for a Veeam Community Podcast, and appeared in two video interviews.
Auto Installation and Configuring of vSphere ESXi 5
automation ESXi fun Ops PowerCLI Powershell realworld Virtualization VMware
One of the last projects I’ve been involved with at Seatrans, is to automate the installation and configuration of vSphere ESXi 5 hosts for deployment on vessels. I’ve talked a bit about this before, both on vSoup and in Setting Up Automated ESXi Deployments where I outlined my PXE and PowerCLI based installation and configuration scheme. Not much has changed since then, except updating the PXE server to offer ESXi 5, instead of ESXi 4 and a lot of work has been put into the scripting, including a front-end GUI for the PowerCLI script itself. The end “product” is now in place for mass deployments for internal use.
While using ThinApp to create a standalone version of TweetDeck 0.38.2, since the newly announced 1.0 version looks, acts and feels like a 0.1 version, I posed the following question on Twitter:
["Hrm, what other apps should i #ThinApp while I'm at it?"](https://twitter.com/#!/h0bbel/status/145249562490179585).
Kevin Kelling immediately responded with “Doom”.
Naturally, I decided to give it a go. A quick download of ZDoom later, and a quick run through the ThinApp Setup Capture later, the following was born (view in full screen for better viewing):
As the title says, it’s been one of my more “public” weeks ever. Besides my “normal” vSoup engagement, this week I’ve also been involved with Mike Laverick’s VMTN Subscription Movement Miniwags to voice some of my views about the #VMTNSubscriptionMovement.
Fair warning: This is video, and please to remember that during recording Movember was nearing its final phase. VMTN Subscription Movement Miniwags – Christian Mohn
Secondly, I was a guest on the Veeam Community Podcast Episode 45 – vSphere 5 Storage Potpourri.
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vNinja.net is the online hub of Christian Mohn and Stine Elise Larsen.
The site primarily focuses on IT architecture and data center technologies, with a strong emphasis on virtualization and related topics.While the main content revolves around these areas, you'll also find a range of other subjects covered from time to time, reflecting the interests of authors.
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