Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmworld

it’s a bloggers lab (vm)world

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The labs are filling up, roughly 150 active labs at the moment and more people coming in to get their hands dirty.

I actually managed to spot a whole bunch of bloggers and took a picture to have evidence that these guys are not just here to look cute, but actually get their hands dirty as well. As stated before there are 30 different lab topics available, always something you haven’t looked into and can explore.

Here you go, meet the bloggers…

Gabe van Zanten (gabesvirtualworld.com)

Heino Skov (virtualtroll.com)

Joep Piscaer on the left(virtuallifestyle.nl and Gerben Kloosterman on the right (virtualarchitect.nl)

Maish Saidel-Keesing(Technodrone)

Arnim van Lieshout (van-lieshout.com)

VMworld Labs Europe – Open on Monday!!

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Yes, we will be open on Monday from 13:00 till 18:00! Not only that, but the for the remaining days the labs will open up at 08:00. Some might wonder why the schedule changed, the reason for it is simple the amount of VMworld registrations was so overwhelming VMware wanted to offer everyone the opportunity to get the most out of VMworld. So if you are coming down to the Bella Center on Monday to register stick around and do some labs! There are enough topics to spent your whole Monday afternoon in the Bella Center. My personal favorites definitely are:

  • VMware View 4.5 Install and Configure
  • VMware vShield
  • VMware vCloud Director Install and Configure
  • VMware vCloud Director Networking
  • VMware vSphere Performance & Tuning

But besides these 5 there are about 25 other labs, so enough to get your hands dirty.

VMUG Party next week, VMworld Copenhagen, be there!

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The Danish VMUG is organizing a party Monday next week in Copenhagen during VMworld. It will start around 21:00 and will end around 01:00. In co-operation with VMUnderground they found multiple sponsors (EMC, IBM, Magirus, Veeam, TrendMicro, Quest, Netex, Nexenta) and as such entrance, beer and soda are free. Make sure you are on-time as there is only room for 300 people and judging by how popular WuPaas was at VMworld SF I will bet that the VMUG Party will also be sold out in no time.

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!

And the free VMworld ticket goes to…

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After reading all comments each of us independently made a top-3 and after combining each of them it was quite obvious who won…. Jason C! Read his justification below, but first let me Congratulate Jason! Well done and enjoy the ride!

In simple terms the list below is why I need to go to VMworld.

BC6703 How To Be Successful with SRM Implementations
BC7773 VMware Site Recovery Manager: Misconceptions and Misconfigurations
BC7803 Planning and Designing an HA Cluster that Maximizes Virtual Machine Uptime
DV8044 Server-Hosted Virtual Desktops: What the Vendors Aren’t Telling You
DV8324 VDI Performance Benchmarking and Best Practices
EA7726 Virtual Machines Outperforming Physical Machines–Crossing the Performance Barrier
EA7849 Design, Deploy and Optimize Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on vSphere
EA8660 Virtualizing Tier 1 Applications: Leveragethe vSphere Private Cloud as a Better Platformfor Apps
MA7528 VMware vCenter Server: Operational Best Practices in the Datacenter
SP8373 Getting Over ‘the Hump’–How to Expand Your Stalled Virtualization Deployment
SP9820 Getting the Most Out of Your Storage Infrastructure with Client and Server Virtualization
TA6720 Troubleshooting using ESXTOP for Advanced Users
TA7171 Performance Best Practices for vSphere
TA8129 A Beginner’s Guide to Performance Troubleshooting with vSphere
TA8133 Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware
TA8245 ESXi Internals: Better Understanding for Better Management and Troubleshooting
LAB11 VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager—Basic Install & Config
LAB12 VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager— Extended Config & Troubleshooting
LAB23 VMware ESXi Remote Management Utilities
LAB24 VMware vSphere™ Performance & Tuning
LAB25 VMware vSphere™ Troubleshooting*

I know it looks a bit random but a bit about me I work for a UK local council, Who have no money now and after the spending review may have even less. We have 20 ESXi boxes in 2 sites. In the spirit of trying to do more with less trying to virtualise as much as possible. Though everything is configured and appears to be working well. Will be hoping to be able to improve performance and tune the setup allowing more business critical apps to be virtualised especially Exchange 2010. As more will be expected of the virtual infrastructure I expect to have to troubleshoot more than i do now (which is not alot) and provide proven availability.

Along with this we have just started to implement SRM, using the one good book on the subject and some online sources for configuration. I’d be looking to use the lab time to build confidence in SRM. VDI sneaks in as we are looking to procure a solution in March the reason I have not put more View items in is that in the POC it was the easiest thing I have ever set up.

I do not have a blog but would be more than happy to write about my experience at VMworld and knowledge gained as guest articles if I can find a blogger to publish them. There will be two people in my team eager to learn as much from me on my return.

I hope by applying the knowledge I gain from VMworld in the workplace and beyond. I can show that for next year a ticket is a worthwhile expenditure for someone.

(The above list only covers 21 hours of things i need to see out of the 3 days there seems to be so much more to see and do maybe VMworld europe Needs another day)

Thanks for your consideration.
Jason

Thanks everyone for making this a succes, and Jason I expect one hell of a blog post from you of course.

Win a free VMworld 2010 Copenhagen ticket!

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** NOTE: 2010! No longer valid for 2011 🙂 **

The VMworld Europe team gave me the opportunity to give away 1 free ticket for VMworld Europe 2010. (Please note, VMworld 2010 Europe Conference Ticket only!) I have been thinking about what kind of contest to set up and I even considered giving away the ticket to a random person. However, that doesn’t really cut it in my opinion. I would like this ticket to go to someone who really needs to be at VMworld. Someone who will really get the most out of it, someone who will use what he has learned to educate others, someone who has a project coming up and needs to apply his knowledge to bring a project / implementation to a success.

So what do you need to do in order to make a chance?

  • Leave a comment with your Name and a valid email address
  • Explain to us why you need to go to VMworld, we are looking for someone who will go the extra mile!

Who, when, where and what?

  • Two VMware Employees(Thanks Frank and Andy!) and I will go through a selection procedure and will select a winner
  • The winner will be announced on Tuesday 28th of September, closing date for the submission is Saturday 25th of September
  • Please note, only a VMworld Conference Pass no travel/lodging
  • VMware employees are not eligible

Good luck,