It’s almost 01:00 so I’m keeping it short. The news was already published on twitter by my friend @stevie_chambers anyway so half of you already know… During the VMware vSummit award dinner I was awarded the VCDX certification. I’m officially a VCDX and I’m number 007!
I will probably have a picture up here tomorrow…. I’m really excited about this as you can imagine!
I wrote about HyTrust a month ago. Today HyTrust announced a community version. In short, for up to three host you can use a fully featured version of the Hytrust Appliance for free…
HyTrust Appliance, Community Edition is now available for download now as a pre-built, VMware-compatible virtual appliance to members of HyTrust Community. To join the community free of charge, go to http://www.hytrust.com/community/register. Support for Community Edition is provided by the Community via online forum participation and direct community member interaction.
You can find the full press release here.
Now, back to the VMware vSummit again… and I hope to do some technical blogging again soon.
I posted an article on LUN IDs and VCB in November 2008. It still seems to be a misconception that ESX uses LUN IDs to uniquely identify a LUN. As of 3.5 this isn’t the case anymore. When an array has “NAA Identifier” capabilities these will be used for uniquely identifying LUNs. And yes most arrays, currently, have these capabilities.
The NAA ID is also what’s being used to identify SAN LUN snapshot/clones by the way. ESX 3.5 compares the LUN ID to the metadata of the VMFS header, if it’s a different ID ESX knows it can’t be the same LUN that’s being presented and ignores it. If you do want to use the LUN you would either have to resignature it or set “disallowsnapshotlun” to “0″ of course…
Keep in mind, it’s still a best practice to use consistent LUN IDs throughout your environment. ESX doesn’t care anymore, but your life is a Sys Admin will be a lot easier if you use unique and consistent LUN numbering.
Just noticed the highly valuable KB articles. I think the title says more than enough:
The first one will come in handywhen you added a secondary service console and the second one will come in handy when you need to identify LUNs…
Most people heard about this by now, Technet and MSDN are running on Hyper-V. As Microsoft states, an enterprise ready solution. Both Technet and MSDN crashed this week, or should we say Hyper-V just doesn’t cut it. Check this Youtube movie that clearly shows what happens when VMs are stressed:
A professional associate of mine shared screen captures of a variety of Hyper-V failures. My associate was evaluating the performance of a server running Hyper-V. The test was a workload derived from VMmark. When he repeatedly saw VMs blue-screening in Hyper-V during the test, he started capturing video of the events. Apparently the publicly available version of Hyper-V is unable to run VMs reliably. Is this why TechNet and MSDN went down on 4/30/09?
VMware is looking for a vCloud Solutions Architect for EMEA. This is probably one of the most challenging jobs within VMware at the moment… time for a change? Looking for a new challenge? Here you go:
Virtualization is the technology that is poised to change the way we think about computing. VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest-growing public software companies. VMware’s award-winning technology, market-leading position and culture of excellence provide the more than 6,600 passionate people we employ in 40 locations worldwide with a platform for professional growth and the excitement of being an early-stage innovator.
The vCloud Solutions Architect will be responsible for providing deep technical expertise with regards to vCloud opportunities involving VMware customers and partners. The individual will interface directly with the customer as well as being the technical liaison with VMware’s partners in designing and validating vCloud solutions and architectures. In addition to technical architecture support, the vCloud Solutions Architect will collaborate with Product Management and Engineering as the field representative on the support and development of current and future vCloud initiatives.
Responsibilities:
- Present VMware vCloud vision, strategy and product roadmaps to executives and technical management
- Provide expert technical architectural support and guidance for vCloud opportunities, including integration into existing management and monitoring systems
- Assist in technically managing initial vCloud implementations including proof-of-concepts and pilots
- Maintain deep technical and business knowledge of cloud hosting industry directions and trends
- Work collaboratively with Product Management and Engineering during the development, launch and continuing refinement of VMware vCloud products
- Document best practices & architectural references in developing and deploying VMware vCloud solutions
Requirements:
- Multiple years of infrastructure architecture experience with significant depth around designing, implementing, and managing critical cross-functional integration projects at hosting providers. Engagement experience should include IT strategy initiatives, middleware implementations, and leveraging overall technical architecture knowledge across multiple industries
- The individual should have extensive architectural skills dealing with infrastructure solutions such as systems management and business continuity. Expert level knowledge of x86 operating systems, advanced networking, storage architectures and programming experience is desirable
- Enthusiastic, self-starter with a charismatic personality
- Proven track record of selling services as part of a solution
- Ability to see and present “the big picture” and offer solutions to make it better
- Strong customer facing and relationship building skills
- Must be effective in working both independently and in a team setting
- Strong listening and question based selling skills
- Ability to uncover business challenges and develop a custom solution to solve those challenges
- Excellent communication skills, both written and oral are required
- A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, related field or equivalent experience
Drop me an email if you’re interested…
Normally I would give you guys a nice overview of the patches + KB articles but I’m on a holiday this week with limited access to wifi. Because I’m typing this on my blackberry this post will lack the details, feel a bit like Rev. Run 
, but you guys know the drill anyway.
In total 11 new patches (9 for ESX and two for ESXi) are up for download. Make sure to read the accompanied KB articles first and of course test the patches before implementing!
Have fun,
