Happy new year everyone!

Virtualfuture.info starts this year with a new look for the site, I hope you like it. If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment!

yesterday I’ve installed the new release RES Wisdom 2009 on my test environment. As you can see in an earlier post my expections of the new release were very high! First thing that impressed me was even though it was a huge update (a lot of new features were added) the installation process was still as easy as when adding a patch. This how it should be with every type of software but my expeience is that most of the times when you want to upgrade to a new version it takes a whole lot more than adding an update package!

What I am most greatful about… The interface didn’t change a lot. This way I can still easily navigate through the console.

Cool Stuff summary:

- Create Run Books (combine projects and modules and schedule them)

- Create\Delete\Snapshot ESX Virtual Machines

- Powershell tasks (really cool when you know how to use it )

- Exchange tasks (create mailbox, and sent -mail)

- Added several (missing) conditions

As a summary I would like to add “It’s getting more mature”

In the rest of this post you’ll find my experience with the new features… 

Read the rest of this entry »

VMware will name the next release for their Virtual Infrastructure product VMware vSphere. At least that’s what Jason Boche says on his blog. VMware has not announced this publicly yet.

I knew that VMware was working on a new name for the next release of VI4 and that employees of VMware where able to vote for a name. So if you don’t like it, you have to blame them :-).

I’m kind of sad for all the bloggers, another name change. Citrix does this at least once a year (Metaframe to Presentation server to XenApp) and Microsoft also does this once in a while (Softgrid to App-V). Does this mean we as bloggers have to add tags to all other related posts or else google can’t find us? And for how long do we have to add the old name as a tag to new posts related to the old version? And why change the name at all? Scott Lowe has a good respond to that as a comment on his own article.

If you work for NASA and just returned from your trip to the moon (I don’t know how else you could have missed this news, Veeam marketing is doing a great job!), you definitely want to register for the free tool for VMware admins that Veeam is giving away on December 22nd. (If you actually work for NASA, you probably don’t need this tool). 

I just read on Jason Boche’s blog he was able to take a look under Rich Brambley’s Chrismas tree and unwrapped the present Veeam left behind a little more. If the tool is as good as the marketing team, this is really a must have! Go register now!

Yesterday VMware released the so called OSPs. OSP stands for Operating system Specific Package and is a packaging and distribution mechanism for VMware Tools. It delivers the packages in a native format for that OS/distribution (e.g. DEB, RPM etc.).

I consider myself lucky to work with Windows VM’s only at the moment, where VM Tools distribution is easy as hell, but for those who have Linux VM’s this might make things easier :).

These packages only work for ESX 3.5 U2 and U3. You can find more info here : http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html

Last Friday the VirtualFuture crew (Sven Huisman, Johan van Zanten and I, Matthijs Haverink) visited the Dutch VMUG event. The event was crowded and useful. Almost 600 attendees and a couple of very interesting speakers made this event to a great success, in my eyes.

Richard Garsthagen, Senior VMware Evangelist, Blogger and also organiser of the VMWorld Europe 2009 event in Cannes, opened the event with a very inspiring keynote session. Later on, not as Evangalist but as a blogger/developer he presented an interesting session where he showed a lot of interesting free tools to help managing a VI3 environment. Some tools where created by himself, but most of them created by the active community.

We decided to interview Richard and check with him how he experienced the event and off course tried to make him reveal some more details around the VMworld event in Cannes and I think with success.

One of the things Richard mentions is that there will be around 150 break-out sessions and you won’t have to presign-up. If sessions are popular they will be repeated. Check the video below for the entire interview.

You can sign up for the Microsoft® Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly known as Kidaro) beta program.

MED-V enhances deployment, management and user experience for Virtual PC images on a Windows® Desktop, independent of the local desktop configuration and operating system (OS). MED-V leverages Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to provide an enterprise solution for desktop virtualization streamlining OS upgrades, and increasing IT control and user flexibility in enterprise environments.

The beta will be released early 2009.

Eric Sloof from NTPro.nl gave a very good presentation at the Dutch VMUG 2008 event:
Managing VI3 with Powershell.

This presentation focuses on the tools that are currently available for PowerShell. It also gives you an insight on the VMware PowerShell extensions and presents a short introduction to PowerShell as a scripting language.

Eric already posted his presentation on his blog, but here is the video Johan recorded:

The Hardware Compatibility Guide from VMware, that PDF-file you have located somewhere between your other important VMwaredocuments but is always outdated so you have to download a new PDF, is now replaced by an online version that is searchable. This online Hardware Compatibility Guide replaces the former Hardware Compatibility Guides for systems, I/O devices, and SAN arrays for ESX 3.0 and greater versions, as well as VMware View Client.

Check it out and thanks John Troyer from VMware for the twit!

Unfortunately, this is still a HARDWARE compatibility guide. I would rather see a central compatibility guide for hard- AND software (Guest OS, agents, plugins).

Rich Brambley over at VMetc.com updated his very popular article about the difference between the free ESXi and the licensed ESXi. One major improvement since Update 3 is:

  RCLI is no longer read only. You can read and write changes thus making remote administration possible.

Thanks Rich for the update!