Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Book

Looking for PowerCLI skills?

· ·

No need to struggle anymore, just learn PowerCLI from the masters… Luc Dekens and Alan Renouf wrote a book which is available for pre-ordering right now. Most of you probably already know Luc and Alan, but for those who don’t I think I am not exaggerating when I say that these guys are the top PowerCLI experts in the virtualization industry. Both Luc and Alan have a wealth of expertise and know how to explain things in a way that even I can understand it… believe that is an achievement cause I have no affinity with PowerCLI whatsoever. Now, Alan and Luc didn’t do this by themselves they had Arnim van Lieshout, Glen Sizemore and Jonathan Medd helping them out writing the book. Lets not forget their infamous tech editor Stuart “vinternals” Radnidge

VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a must-have tool for any administrator managing VMware vSphere in a Windows environment. Having to repeat vSphere administrative tasks can be time consuming and error-prone, but PowerCLI—created specifically for Windows environments—allows VMware administrators to automate tasks. Written to the latest PowerCLI, this handy guide shows you step by step how to use the PowerCLI cmdlets for daily administration procedures and frequently performed tasks for VMware vSphere X. The reference is organized by vSphere tasks, providing a practical approach to accessing the information you need while you are on the job. Supported by real world examples and no-nonsense instruction, coverage includes installation, configuration, and management of a vSphere environment, management of the virtual machine life-cycle, security, and monitoring and reporting.

While I was scavenging the internet for a screenshot of the cover, which I did not manage to find by the way, I noticed something else. It seems that these 5 guys are literally planning to take over the PowerCLI Community:

It seems that PowerCLIbook.com will primarily be used as a mechanism to offer readers updated versions of scripts, to enable them to ask the authors questions around the book itself and even to download a full Powerpack. Judging by the fact that is hasn’t been formally announced yet I expect the guys are still working on the forum/site.

Anyway, go out and pre-order the book… it is worth it,

European distributor for the HA and DRS Technical Deepdive

· ·

Frank published the following yesterday, but as many people have asked me about this I thought I would post it as well. For those who were looking for a European distributor of our book:

As of today, our book “vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive” can be ordered via ComputerCollectief. Computercollectief is a dutch computer book and software reseller and ships to most European countries. Using Computercollectief, we hope to evade the long shipping times and accompanying costs.

Go check it out. http://www.comcol.nl/detail/73133.htm

Comcol expects to be able to deliver at the end of this month.

vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive, the book!

· ·

In August we announced that we were working a secret project and let you guys in on it. The idea was to get it published through an official Publisher but due to several circumstances and a very tight deadline we decided to go the self-publishing route to make it available as soon as possible. So here it is, the moment both Frank Denneman and I have been waiting for…. it is finally available, the HA and DRS technical deepdive.

As of today “vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive” is available on paper via CreateSpace and Amazon. We are also working on getting a digital copy up for sale but that will more than likely be early 2011.

There is something I want to make very clear here as I have heard multiple people referring to this book as “Duncan’s Book”. This book was very much a joint effort. Frank has invested at least as much time in this project as I have, and probably even more. I want to thank Frank for his hard work and hope everyone realizes that it is our book and not my book!

We want to take the opportunity to thank our Technical Reviewers for their very valuable feedback and for keeping us honest; fellow VCDX Panel Member Craig Risinger (VMware PSO), Marc Sevigny (VMware HA Engineering), Anne Holler (VMware DRS Engineering) and Bouke Groenescheij (Jume.nl). A very special thanks to Scott Herold for writing the foreword!

For those who can’t wait, order it via CreateSpace or Amazon now. (Please be so kind to leave a review

This is the description of the book that is up on CreateSpace/Amazon:

About the authors:
Duncan Epping (VCDX 007) is a Consulting Architect working for VMware as part of the Cloud Practice. Duncan works primarily with Service Providers and large Enterprise customers. He is focussed on designing Public Cloud Infrastructures and specializes in bc-dr, vCloud Director and VMware HA. Duncan is the owner of Yellow-Bricks.com, the leading VMware blog.
Frank Denneman (VCDX 029) is a Consulting Architect working for VMware as part of the Professional Services Organization. Frank works primarily with large Enterprise customers and Service Providers. He specializes in Resource Management, DRS and storage. Frank is the owner of frankdenneman.nl which has recently been voted number 6 worldwide on vsphere-land.com

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive zooms in on two key components of every VMware based infrastructure and is by no means a “how to” guide. It covers the basic steps needed to create a VMware HA and DRS cluster, but even more important explains the concepts and mechanisms behind HA and DRS which will enable you to make well educated decisions. This book will take you in to the trenches of HA and DRS and will give you the tools to understand and implement e.g. HA admission control policies, DRS resource pools and resource allocation settings. On top of that each section contains basic design principles that can be used for designing, implementing or improving VMware infrastructures.
Coverage includes:

  • HA node types
  • HA isolation detection and response
  • HA admission control
  • VM Monitoring
  • HA and DRS integration
  • DRS imbalance algorithm
  • Resource Pools
  • Impact of reservations and limits
  • CPU Resource Scheduling
  • Memory Scheduler
  • DPM

We hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we did writing it. Thanks,

Soon in a book store near you! HA and DRS Deepdive

· ·

Over the last couple of months Frank Denneman and I have been working really hard on a secret project. Although we have spoken about it a couple of times on twitter the topic was never revealed.

Months ago I was thinking about what a good topic would be for my next book. As I already wrote a lot of articles on HA it made sense to combine these and do a full deepdive on HA. However a VMware Cluster is not just HA. When you configure a cluster there is something else that usually is enabled and that is DRS. As Frank is the Subject Matter Expert on Resource Management / DRS it made sense to ask Frank if he was up for it or not… Needless to say that Frank was excited about this opportunity and that was when our new project was born: VMware vSphere 4.1 – HA and DRS deepdive.

As both Frank and I are VMware employees we contacted our management to see what the options were for releasing this information to market. We are very excited that we have been given the opportunity to be the first official publication as part of a brand new VMware initiative, codenamed Rome. The idea behind Rome along with pertinent details will be announced later this year.

Our book is currently going through the final review/editing stages. For those wondering what to expect, a sample chapter can be found here. The primary audience for the book is anyone interested in high availability and clustering. There is no prerequisite knowledge needed to read the book however, the book will consist of roughly 220 pages with all the detail you want on HA and DRS. It will not be a “how to” guide, instead it will explain the concepts and mechanisms behind HA and DRS like Primary Nodes, Admission Control Policies, Host Affinity Rules and Resource Pools. On top of that, we will include basic design principles to support the decisions that will need to be made when configuring HA and DRS or when designing a vSphere infrastructure.

I guess it is unnecessary to say that both Frank and I are very excited about the book. We hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we did writing it. Stay tuned for more info, the official book title and url to order the book. We hope to be able to give you an update soon.

Frank and Duncan

vSphere Resource Kit

· ·

Almost a year ago one of my colleagues told me about a project he was working on called the “vSphere Resource Kit“. I guess it reminds many of you of the Resource Kits that were released for the Microsoft products. I guess the idea is quite similar.

On twitter several people asked who the authors were and many said they were “unknown” within the virtualization community. I beg to differ as I know at least two of the authors and without knowing it most of you are familiar with them as well!

Chris McCain and Rawlinson Rivera. I can hear all of you think, who the hell are these guys… Well think for a second about the book Scott Lowe wrote. Many don’t appear to know this but Scott’s book was originally written by Chris McCain and Rawlinson Rivera! Chris(lead-author) and Rawlinson wrote the VI3 version of the book which Scott converted into a vSphere book. (Hey there is a reason the cover art is exactly the same.) Don’t get me wrong here, I just want to make it clear that these guys are no newcomers! Besides that, Rawlinson is a VMware employee and a well respected one I must say.

The question of course is what can we expect? Chris McCain, Rawlinson Rivera, Rodney McIntosh, Brian Cleary and “John” are currently writing 8(!) Books and recording over 150 videos.  I have listed the titles of the book below and I can’t even imagine the amount of work that will go into this:

  1. Installing and configuring VMware vSphere 4
  2. Configuring and managing VMware vSphere 4 Storage and Network resources
  3. Creating and managing VMware vSphere 4 Virtual Machines
  4. Managing, Monitoring and optimizing VMware vSphere 4 resources
  5. Planning and implementing VMware vSphere 4 Availability
  6. Scripting with VMware vSphere 4
  7. Planning and implementing VMware vSphere 4 Site Recovery Manager 4
  8. Planning and implementing desktop virtualization with VMware VIEW 4

To be honest, I can’t wait to get my hands on a draft copy of the resource kit to review it and asked Rawlinson if he could provide a status update as according to their website the original release date was set somewhere Q2 – 2010. This has been postponed with two months to a more “marketable” date: end of August. VMworld!