VMware
INFOGRAPHIC: 10 Years of VMworld
August 26, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 8With VMware’s 10th annual VMworld conference starting August 25, we break down the attendee and sponsor numbers graphically. Get the bird’s eye view of VMworld here…Read More
David’s VMworld 2013 Day One Wrap-Up
August 26, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIEOn the first official day of VMworld, Monday morning, the biggest keynote of the show kicked off with acting chief marketing officer, Robin Matlock, taking the stage, welcoming everyone to this special VMworld. She talked about the history of the … Read More
Scott & David’s VMworld 2013 Hot Sheet
August 25, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIEWhether you’re attending VMworld in person, or not, the following “hot sheet” will keep you up to date on the latest VMworld news, technical content, resource guides, and social media. Much more will be posted to this guide – LIVE … Read More
Clearing the Confusion – vSphere Virtual Cores, Virtual Sockets, and Virtual CPU (vCPU)
August 20, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 11This is a topic that I have been confused on more than once. I would read the help documentation and the VMware KB article, thought I understood it and later say “wait, what?”
First, let’s look at a host…
Analyzing … Read More
vSmackdown! vSphere 5.1 vs. Hyper-V 2012
August 15, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 6Twenty years ago, the fight was Novell vs. Microsoft as Microsoft’s upstart Windows NT server operating system decimated Novell’s handsome share of the server market. Ten years ago, the war shifted to the desktop where debates raged over whether Apple … Read More
Virtualization Pro of the Month: Chris Wahl
August 12, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSE 1Editor’s Note: Welcome to the first interview in our monthly Virtualization Pro of the Month series! Our inaugural Pro of the Month is Chris Wahl.
Chris has acquired over a decade of IT experience in enterprise infrastructure design, implementation, and administration. … Read More
How to Increase the Maximum Number of NFS Mounts on a VMware ESXi Server
July 25, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIEDid you know that you can’t just keep adding NFS connections to a VMware ESXi server indefinitely? And if you did think about the max, it’s easy to assume that the maximum number of NFS mounts must be some crazy number … Read More
VMware vCenter Log Insight Beta
July 4, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 1There’s a new log analyzer offered by VMware called vCenter Log Insight. Only the beta is available right now, but they have even released the expected pricing model ($200 per Operating System) so the first release should be right around … Read More
VMware Fling: vCenter 5.1 Pre-Install Check Script
July 4, 2013 | Lauren Malhoit, VCP, MCSE: Security, and CCNAIf you’ve ever done an upgrade to vCenter 5.1, you know there can be a lot of caveats. The vCenter 5.1 install is a little more involved than previous upgrades. Luckily there is a VMware fling available to help us … Read More
vSphere Storage Appliance – vMotions Without a Storage Array
July 4, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSEThe beauty of using software like VMware vSphere is the ability to cluster the hosts and do vMotions in case you need to do maintenance on one of the hosts.
However, in order to do this historically you needed a … Read More
VMware Horizon View 5.2 – BYOD Heaven via HTML Access
July 4, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSERecently VMware rebranded their end user computing (EUC) products all under the Horizon umbrella. This includes Horizon Workspace, Horizon Data, Horizon Mobile, and of course Horizon View.
Although Horizon View 5.2 was not a major release there are some significant … Read More
Using PowerCLI to Configure vCenter Alarm Notifications in vSphere 5.1
June 8, 2013 | Lauren Malhoit, VCP, MCSE: Security, and CCNAI’ve been playing with PowerCLI a little bit recently. It really is a nice tool for automating things in your vCenter environment. If you don’t how to use VMware PowerCLI check out this page to get started. The following script … Read More
Installing an OpenStack Private Cloud using Ubuntu 12.04
June 8, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSE 1OpenStack is open source software that allows companies to create public or private clouds. It’s one of the most popular, if not the most popular, implementations of cloud today. To see more about the conceptual architecture, check out this page.
In … Read More
Installing vCenter SSO on a Remote Database Server
June 7, 2013 | Lauren Malhoit, VCP, MCSE: Security, and CCNAvCenter 5.1 now comes with a Single Sign On Service that enables you to have SSO capabilities for VMware products. SSO is required for vCenter installation in version 5.1 and will probably continue to be. It’s pretty easy to install … Read More
Five Ways To Maximize Your VMware vSphere VM Templates
June 7, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIEOne of the true measures of virtualization sophistication is the ability to have very specific configuration for your needs. When it comes to leveraging the virtual machine template technology, this is a great way to ensure every VM has a … Read More
Installing vCenter 5.1 Using the Simple Install
June 3, 2013 | Lauren Malhoit, VCP, MCSE: Security, and CCNAThere are a couple ways to install the new vCenter 5.1 update 1. You can do a simple install which installs the Single Sign On Service, Inventory Service, and vCenter itself in the simplest way. You would use this if … Read More
vSphere Metrics Watch: Four Key Storage Metrics
May 14, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSENow that we’ve covered which memory and processor metrics to keep any eye on, let’s take a closer look at storage. When programs aren’t running, they are stored on disk along with the data that is required by said programs. … Read More
vSphere Metrics Watch: Three Key Processor Metrics
May 14, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSEThe compute tier is responsible for executing operations and supports running the code that provides an environment for the virtual machines. The compute layer is made up of servers, each two one or more processors and with each of those processors … Read More
What Is a Type 1 Hypervisor?
May 12, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIESometimes called a “bare metal hypervisor” or “native” because it runs directly on a bare metal physical server, a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to the hardware. With a type 1 hypervisor, there is no operating system to load … Read More
The Top 5 Enterprise Type 1 Hypervisors You Must Know
May 12, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 9Before we list the top 5 enterprise type 1 hyerpvisors, you might be wondering, “what is a type 1 hypervisor”? If you don’t already know, read our post What Is a Type 1 Hypervisor? A hypervisor is software that runs virtual … Read More
vSphere with Operations Manager (vSOM) 101
April 24, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 3In the new VMware vSphere (starting with 5.1 and above), VMware includes the vCenter Operations Manager Foundation Edition with every version of vSphere, starting with vSphere Essentials Plus and above. While foundation edition may be a good start for the … Read More
vSphere Metrics Watch: Understanding Key Memory Metrics
April 23, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSEMemory is where programs run and is often one of the first resources to be exhausted in a virtual environment. In fact, in just about every environment that I see, I see RAM as the most used resource and always … Read More
VMware vCenter Operations Manager 101
April 9, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIEWhile VMware’s vCenter does provide basic performance graphs, it’s just not powerful enough to answer the performance and capacity questions that virtualization admins require. vCenter doesn’t do capacity planning or correlate change tracking with performance events. Finally, vCenter can’t tell … Read More
How to Run VMware vSphere ESXi in Fusion
March 21, 2013 | David Davis, vExpert, VCP/VCAP, CCIE 3Want to learn vSphere? Test vSphere? Prepare for your VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification? Running VMware vSphere inside a local desktop hypervisor such as VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation is the best way to do it. By running vSphere in … Read More
Understanding the Top 4 Performance Metrics in vSphere
March 14, 2013 | Scott D. Lowe, vExpert, MVP Virtual Machine, MCSEvSphere environments can be complex beasts that require a lot of attention and ongoing tuning to get “just right.” When it comes to ensuring the ongoing acceptable performance of that vSphere environment, there exist hundreds of different performance metrics. vSphere … Read More