Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

Update: vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide

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Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on the current status. We had a little setback last week. We found out that we had to redo a complete chapter the very last minute. Because of this we missed our deadline for submitting it to VMware, as you can imagine as a VMware employee this needs to be officially approved. We don’t know what the release date will be. My guess is the third week of September. We are currently discussing our options, but it will either be lulu.com or booksurge.com. Both have its pros and cons, but for booksurge one of the biggest pros is definitely their presence on amazon.com.

I also have good news. Vizioncore will have a limited amount of preview copies of the book available during VMworld to give away! If you would like to have one visit their booth!

VMworld Europe update!

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As a VMware employee I was not allowed to talk about this but Eric Sloof just posted it so I guess it’s okay for me to do so as well:

VMworld 2010
August 30 – September 2
Moscone Center, San Francisc

VMworld Europe 2010
October 11 – 14
Bella Centre, Copenhagen

Via @vnagornyi #VMworld 2009 Conference Program Guide http://twurl.nl/2r6p8e

Last page: VMworld 2010 US 8/30-9/02 in SF, Europe 10/11-10/14 in Copenhagen

Yihaaaaaaa, a different location for VMworld Europe! It’s not that I did not like Cannes, but Copenhagen is definitely more appealing!

Upcoming two weeks…

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I will be really busy the upcoming two weeks so I don’t know if and when I will be blogging. Tomorrow I will be flying to San Francisco. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I will be in VMware HQ – Palo Alto. Some of you reading this probably know why, VCDX Defense Panels. So if you’re scheduled for this week maybe we will run into each other. Of course the week after I’ve got VMworld on my schedule, two “Ask the experts sessions”, booth duty and the VMworld Run the Golden Gate Bridge event.

For those who don’t know me, it’s probably time to reveal my “secret identity”. Although my avatar might have gotten you confused I really don’t look like  “yellow bricks”, or at least I hope I don’t. If you see me walking around don’t forget to say hi! Or come over to the Community / Bloggers booth as that will most likely be my home base during VMworld.

vSphere VM Snapshots and block size

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As some already noticed; when creating a snapshot on a VM with two disks the block size of the VMFS volume which hold the working directory is checked before the snapshot is taken. As reported by VMTN User Pizang this was not the case in ESX 3.x. You can imagine that this can cause issues when the second disk of a VM is larger than the maximum file size dictated by the block size of the VMFS file system which holds the working directory of the VM. What? Yeah I had to read that sentence at least 3 times before I understood what I said… This might make it easier:

virtualmachine001
Disk01 – 10GB stored on VMFS001 with a 1MB Block size
Disk02 – 350GB stored on VMFS002 with a 4MB Block size

VMFS001 contains the working directory of the vm “virtualmachine001”. Snapshots are stored in the working directory. In the case of Disk02 this could mean that the delta file grows beyond the maximum file limit of 256GB of VMFS001 where it will be stored.

Another example of where the block size could limit you is outlined in this KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012384.

The proof is in! (vSphere Quick Start Guide)

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As most of you hopefully know by now we are working on a vSphere Quick Start Guide. We’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks getting it finalized. As you can imagine with VMworld coming up we are working against a very tight deadline. Thomas Bryant has been doing most of the formatting for the book and ordered a proof copy which has just arrived:

Source: The proof is in!


The first copy of our new book, vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide, has arrived! I’m very excited about the work everyone has done. It’s been a pretty rough ride at times, but it’s worth it in the end to see your name in print. I’m looking forward to getting a few copies for VMworld 2009!

Great work Duncan, Dave, Stu, Alan & Bernie!