Now remember, we need your help. Think about HA and DRS… Did you always wanted to know what the impact is of Resource Pools? How the “host failures” admission control policy works? You name, we can discuss it. As most of the attendees will be Dutch, the following form is in Dutch as well…

Just for those wondering who will be speaking and what the topics are I made a short summary which is listed below. For the Dutch speaking you can find it as well on the VMUG website.

• VMware Keynote by Richard Garsthagen
• VMware vCloud Director by Willem van Engeland (VMware, Specialist SE Cloud) and Duncan Epping
• vSphere 4 Backup by Doug Hazelman (VEEAM)
• vSphere Disaster Recovery by Gabrie van Zanten (Openline / Gabesvirtualworld.com)
• vSphere Introduction by Viktor van den Berg (XTG / VMUG Leader)
• Advanced Troubleshooting by Eric Sloof (NTPro.nl)
• HA & DRS Q&A by Frank Denneman (VMware) and Duncan Epping
• Project VRC Phase III by Ruben Spruijt (PQR) and Jeroen v.d. Kamp (Login)
• PowerCLI is for Administrators by Alan Renouf (EMC) / Luc Dekens
• VDI & Storage = Deep Impact by Herco van Brug
• Workshop: Customizing vEcoshell for your Environment by Scott Herrold (Quest)

These are not all sessions, but these are the ones I personally wanted to highlight. Just look at those names…. it won’t get any better than that. If you don’t want to miss out on these sessions make sure you sign up now because I bet it will be sold out quickly.

By the way, as Frank and I will be doing a Q&A session on HA & DRS I will be publishing a blog post soon to start gathering questions… So if there is anything regarding HA or DRS you always wanted to have explained let us know. This is your chance.

Date:Monday, 11th of October
Time: 21:00 – 01:00
Location: Custom House, Havnegade 44, Nyhavn 1058

I have been told that the DK VMUG also ordered a new batch of their infamous vMUG, and they will be handing them our during the party!

If you are in London on the 8th October 2010 then you could be in for a treat, VMware are arranging a fantastic event, well worth the visit and best of all its free !

The event is called: Managing vSphere in large environments using APIs and PowerCLI

There are limited spaces available so act now or you will miss out, some of the most fantastic minds of VMware will be gracing London with their presence before heading out to VMworld Copenhagen.

Think of this as a taster of the kind of things you can expect from Technology Exchange, the contents are listed below, I would recommend this to any VMware admins who are managing large implementations of vCenter, there will be some great detail in these sessions.

If you would like to attend please send an email to PowerCLIEvent@virtu-al.net with your name and company, this will strictly be on a first come first serve basis as there are limited numbers.

Exploring VMware APIs

Speaker: Preetham Gopalaswamy

vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring

Speaker: Balaji Parimi, Ravi Soundararajan

Of course Alan really focussed on the API part of the event, but that is not all there is. If you thought my esxtop page was useful, make sure to attend this event as this is the best part of the day in my opinion:

Advanced performance troubleshooting using esxtop

Level: Advanced

Length: 60 minutes

This talk will teach you how to spot tricky performance issues using the various counters in esxtop.

Speaker: Krishna Raj Raja, Staff Engineer, Performance Team

If you are in the UK and can’t make it to VMworld, this is your chance to catch some of the top experts and get to know the API and esxtop inside out!

VMware’s CTO Steve Herrod welcomed the audience during the opening, you can watch bits and pieces of it on Eric Sloof’s blog, and mentioned that he personally follows Yellow-Bricks.com and NTPro.nl… How cool is that huh!?! After the opening it was Richard Garsthagen’s turn. Richard’s keynote was about evolution. The evolution of the VMware logo and the evolution of going from virtualization to cloud computing. Again a very good presentation, but I expected nothing less of Richard.

First session of the day for me was Eric Sloof, Managing VMware vSphere 4 m.b.v. de Virtualization EcoShell. In other words Eric’s favorite topic Powershell, but with the help of VESI. Eric knows how to address the audience and with a subject like this you know he is totally “heppie de peppie” or should I say enthusiastic so that those that weren’t there also understand what I am talking about. Eric gave some great examples of where any operational department could benefit from using Powershell/VESI. Great presenter, fantastic session. Unfortunately I had to leave before Scott Herold went on-stage.

Next up was Danny Claproth. Danny works for Vizioncore and showed us all the offerings Vizioncore has. Not only paid but also completely free solutions. One of the products that really stood out to me was most definitely vFoglight. Especially during the demo Danny managed to show the strength of vFoglight. I will need to install and check out some time.

After a short lunch it was time for Joep Piscaer to tell us all about Lab Manager. Joep showed the audience the use cases of Lab Manager and did a deep dive on Storage best practices and network fencing. I’ve only played around with Lab Manager once or twice and it’s definitely something I need to start looking into.

One of the most refreshing presentations was by Bouke Groenescheij on Performance Troubleshooting. Bouke did not use powerpoint but prezi.com to create a presentation. The combination of an excellent chosen topic and visual violence made this session a real treat! Bouke also has excellent presentation skills and knew how to entertain the audience. Best session of the day?

Up last was Gabe aka Gabes Virtual World. His session was titled “Design tips for a VMware Virtual Infrastructure”. Gabe kicked off by explaining why business requirements are essential for a solid design and I can’t agree more. Gabe’s presentation consisted of many best practices and recommendations. The presentation can be found here and is most definitely a must read.

Overall I must say that the Dutch VMUG Event was a well organized event. I enjoyed meeting everyone and had a great time at the post VMUG dinner. I also want to thank Viktor for all the great work he has been doing for the Dutch VMware Community.

For those who care, you can find pictures of the event here and here.

The final agenda has recently been published and judging on the names and topics it is going to be an awesome event again. Not only will key representatives of several well known vendors present you the latest info; at the Dutch VMUG gurus like Eric Sloof, Luc Dekens and Bouke Groenescheij will take you on a journey to the trenches of virtualization. I can promise you that it will be worth it!

You can also meet some of the Dutch prominent bloggers which will be walking around and helping out during the event. The list probably isn’t complete, but these are the guys who you can expect to walk into. Don’t be shy make sure to say hi.

• Arne Fokkema (ict-freak.nl)
• Aleks Nicolic (virtualistic.nl)
• Bouke Groenescheij (jume.nl)
• Eric Sloof (ntpro.nl)
• Gabrie van Zanten (gabesvirtualworld.com)
• Joep Piscaer (virtuallifestyle.nl)
• Johan van Zanten (virtualfuture.info)
• Mathijs Haverink (virtualfuture.info)
• Richard Garsthagen (run-virtual.com)
• Sven Huisman (virtualfuture.info)
• Luc Dekens (lucd.info)
• Duncan Epping (yellow-bricks.com)

I can recommend every single reader from the Benelux, and outside, to attend this awesome event. It will have a mix of overview sessions and technical deepdives. Vendors(EMC, VMware, Veeam, Vizioncore) will mostlikely be presenting but also expect presentations from VMUG members and experts like Eric Sloof, Bouke Groenescheij and Gabrie van Zanten. The agenda will be announced within a couple of weeks and registration will also be opened soon.

There’s more info to be found here.

Mr Alan Renouf is one of the initiators of the Online VMware User Group. At this point it’s still unofficial but Alan told me he will be discussing it with VMware to get the needed formal approval to make this official.

I would like to invite everyone to join Alan on the 1st of June 2009. I think this is a great initiative. Let’s make this a success and the world biggest VMUG.

Here are the details:

The Agenda at the moment is as follows:

• Introduction
• Presentation and Demonstration of The Virtualization EcoShell Initiative by Scott Herold
• Virtual Coffee break (bring your own coffee)
• Overview and Demonstration of vSphere new features by a VMware Employee
• Finish and details of next Unofficial Online VMUG

This meeting is being hosted over Microsoft Live meeting, if you have not installed the client it is recommended you do this 15 mins before the meeting.

Video:  Video will be delivered via the Microsoft Live Meeting client.
Audio:  For attendees, audio will be delivered via the Internet using your computer’s speakers. There will not be a call-in number for this meeting.

The meeting will also be recorded for people who are unable to attend.

Meeting Details:

Date: 1st June 2009

Time: 08:00 PM GMT / 03:00 PM EDT

Meeting URL:  https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/join?id=QP5K5Q&role=attend&pw=8%5E-%5CzqX

Meeting ID:  QP5K5Q

Attendee Entry Code:  8^-\zqX

Registration Link:
http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=138358

VMug is all about the Users and sharing knowledge so let’s talk about the sessions:

Viktor van den Berg kicked off welcoming everyone. Unfortunately I had to miss out on most of his presentation cause I needed to help out getting the VMware Demo Kit running. Richard Garsthagen was invited as the keynote speaker. Many of you know Richard of Run-Virtual.com but he is actually the guy with the coolest job title within VMware: Senior Evangelist. Richard talked about the future direction: Cloud Computing, vApp, VMsafe and more. He’s famous for his enthusiastic presentations and I think everyone will agree with me on this one.

Up next was John Spiers. John is one of the founders of Lefthand Networks. As you probably guessed he talked about the Virtual San Appliance but also about all the cool features that are included with Lefthand iSCSI SANs. Although it was a tough presentation to digest I do think Lefthand(HP) has got a great line-up of products and offers a lot of value. Advanced features like Storage Clustering, Network RAID, Thin Provisioning, Snapshots and Remote Copy are included in all of their solutions.

The famous Eric Sloof of ntpro.nl started his presentation on Powershell a bit to early so he did the “welcome” part twice. I can really understand why cause Eric is really really enthusiastic about Powershell. He’s so enthusiastic that it actually doesn’t matter what he’s talking about, he knows how to work the crowd. Don’t get me wrong, Eric created a great presentation which included several demo’s. Interaction, that’s what we Admins, Consultants and Engineers love to see! Great job Eric, but I didn’t expect anything less.

Lunch, well what can I say about the lunch besides the fact that it was sponsored by Vizioncore. Thanks guys.

Frederik Vos had the tough job to start his presentation when everyone was still digesting their lunch. Frederik talked about storage. NFS, iSCSI, Fibre and even FCoE. Why would you use iSCSI or NFS and when. Frederik is a really knowledgeable guy and I think that a lot of people enjoyed his session!

Next session that I had decided to join was Bouke’s session on the “vCenter Database”. Unfortunately Bouke was stuck in traffic so I decided to check the Site Recovery Manager session. Bob van der Werff(VMware) was scheduled but he called in sick and Jeremy van Doorn(VMware) took his spot. Site Recovery Manager is really simple to install, but there are still a lot of things that can go wrong during the implementation and that’s exactly what Jeremy addressed during this presentation. During the SRM presentation I noticed on twitter that Gabe(GabesVirtualWorld) was asked to do his presentation on Hyper-V vs ESX because there seemed to be some confusion on wheter Bouke would make it or not. I decided to switch rooms and watched the last 10 minutes of his presentation. Respect for doing this without a decent preparation, great job Gabe.

Last session I visited was about VIMSH. Viktor van den Berg, one of the main contributors of the Dutch VMug, was presenting. VIMSH is one of the most powerful tools in my opinion and Viktor displayed this during his presentation and demonstrations. Adding vSwitches, configuring iSCSI, configuring VMotion and even creating VMFS volumes… it’s possible with VIMSH / vmware-vim-cmd. Great job Viktor and Frederik. (Frederik answered a whole bunch of questions at the end cause Viktor had to close the event)

Like I said, Viktor had the honor to welcome us all but also the honor to thank everyone for showing up and making this Event and the VMug forum a great success. All there’s left to say is nice to meet all of you and thanks again for putting so much time and effort into this Event.