Time To Vote For Your Favorite Virtualization Blog
It’s officially time to vote for your favorite virtualization blog. Eric Siebert of vSphere-Land.com has opened voting again on his annual Top 50 VMware & virtualization blogs. This time last year was the first time my blog appeared on the list and I didn’t do too bad coming in at #59. I’m excited to see the results of this years voting, I’ve been working hard to put out good, useful content. Here are the specifics on the voting:
*You can pick 10 of your favorite blogs and also rank them in your order of preference after you pick your 10. The results will be weighted with #1 ranking getting 10 points and #10 rankings getting 1 point. Point totals will be tabulated and from them the top 50 will be determined.
*Blogs are listed on the ballot in alphabetical order with the current top 25 blogs highlighted in bold & underlined text, so please go through the whole list when making your choices (Duncan ended up on the bottom).
*New this year we also having voting in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The choices of which blogs to include in the categories was the result of this survey and my best guessing. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.
*Voting will run until 2/7, afterwards the results will be determined and announced on a special podcast with myself, Simon Seagrave, David Davis and John Troyer live at VMware Partner Exchange.
If you have enjoyed reading my blog this past year and find my content useful, please take a few minutes to vote for vDestination.com, I would appreciate it. I blog because I want to give back to the virtualization community and to share any news or experiences I have working with VMware products. I also have enjoyed doing book reviews and product reviews hoping to help my readers to make an informed decision when they are looking to buy. Thanks for reading and remember to vote!
The Virtual Board Room: Zerto CTO Oded Kedem
This is another great edition of The Virtual Boardroom, and today’s post will feature Oded Kedem, CTO and Co-founder of Zerto. Zerto provides enterprise-class disaster recovery and business continuity solutions for virtualized data centers and cloud environments. Zerto provides large enterprises with data replication solutions designed specifically for virtualized infrastructure and the cloud. Zerto Virtual Replication is the industry’s first hypervisor-based replication solution for tier-one applications, replacing traditional array-based BC/DR solutions that were not built to deal with the virtual paradigm. A big thanks to Oded for taking the time to join me in The Virtual Boardroom, he joined me from Tel Aviv and it was a 9 hour difference. I was impressed with his sharpness given it was 12:00 AM local time for Oded. The company’s hypervisor-based virtual replication solution, received both the Best of Show and Gold Award for Business Continuity and Data Protection at the 2011 VMworld Conference. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more good things about Zerto this year. Here is the interview in its entirety:
Greg Stuart: Welcome to this edition of The Virtual Boardroom, joining me today is Oded Kedem, CTO and co-founder of Zerto. Why don’t we start off with you introducing yourself and tell us what you do for Zerto.
Oded Kedem: Ok, thanks Greg. I’m Oded Kedem, CTO and co-founder of Zerto. Zerto has been around sine late 2009. Before Zerto I worked for a company called Kashya which provided disaster recovery solutions for SANs, so I’ve been doing business continuity for a while now. When Kashya was acquired by EMC in 2006 I then served as director of software development for EMC, where I managed the entire RecoverPoint (formerly Kashya) research and development organization.
GS: Great, thanks. Tell me about Zerto. What should my readers know about your company? What does Zerto bring to the virtualization industry and why should we take notice?
OK: Zerto provides a new approach for disaster recovery and business continuity for virtualized environments and cloud environments. Zerto provides a new concept called hypervisor based replication, that means that it’s able to provide tier 1 enterprise class business continuity.
GS: At this point in time, who are you supporting, and who do you look to support in the future?
OK: Right now, Zerto supports VMware environments. Our product went GA this past August and it supports VMware virtualized environments. We plan on releasing our cloud offering sometime Q1 of this year. This product will enable cloud providers to provide disaster recovery as a service to their customer, and will allow them to protect their own internal infrastructure using Zerto.
GS: Ok, so what differentiates you from other disaster recovery companies out there today?
OK: This point in time the only company that provides enterprise replication are the storage array vendors, but the storage array vendors solutions are provided from outside the virtualization infrastructure. This means they are lacking the flexibility of using a virtualized environment. In addition they are also tied to physical infrastructure. With Zerto customers are able to protect and replicate virtualized entities or virtual machines and virtual applications which consists of several virtual machines. They can reside on any hardware, on different servers, different storage arrays and then can move around storage arrays. Zerto can replicate them at the highest level of protection with full flexibility of virtualization and actually allow customers to maximize their virtualization benefits and still get the tier 1 protection. Obviously it will also allow customers to manager their entire environment, business continuity, disaster recovery all from the same location, from vCenter.
GS: Very good. So this is a many-to-many set up?
OK: This is a many-to-many set up as well as an any-to-any set up. You can have any number of storage arrays in any type of host or any type of storage array. It completely detaches business continuity and disaster recovery services from physical constraints. You are able to replicate virtual machines and virtual applications rather than physical disks or physical servers.
GS: Let’s talk a little bit about the future of Zerto. What does the future hold for Zerto?
OK: This point in time virtualization of the datacenter is already in tact but we’re seeing everything moving toward the cloud. We’re seeing cloud providers building their infrastructures providing services for their customers moving more and more enterprise applications into the cloud. With Zerto, Cloud providers will be able to provide disaster recovery as a service just like any other service they provide. They’ll be able to protect their own environment. Also expect to see more variants in larger variety of products out there, more storage array vendors, more server environments. Also additional virtualization solutions and additional cloud management solutions picking up. In these extremely heterogeneous environment a solution like Zerto is actually a must. It is the only way to protect without using a large number of separate solutions. You are able to manager your entire disaster recovery from the same place although your environment becomes much more complex.
GS: You bring up some very valid points. I think we will see more virtualization solutions as well as more competition from the vendors on the scene already. I have to agree with you, at this point it seems the future is all cloud. We will see a lot of cloud service providers cropping up throughout this year and beyond. Thanks Oded, for joining me today, again I know its past midnight for you and I appreciate you staying up to do this interview. Zerto seems to be on the right path and we’ll look forward to seeing more from Zerto in the near future.
OK: Thanks Greg, for having me on for the interview. It was my pleasure.
3 Steps To Secure Your Data In the Cloud
A new year always brings new promises, fresh starts and an opportunity to right what was wrong from the past year. With 2011 in the rear view mirror we can make changes that will put us in a better place in 2012. The resolution I’m talking about is finally securing your data in the Cloud. It might sound like a daunting task, but believe me, it’s easier than you think. In 2011 there was an outcropping of attacks by hackers and phishers looking to either corrupt our data, steal it or destroy it. Let’s look back at a few of the startling statistics from 2011:
*Playstation Network was hacked and 77 million user accounts were compromised
*Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) website was hacked taking control of site’s accessibility
*PBS.org website was hacked taking control of internal hosts and databases
These attacks and others have cost companies loss of revenue and has hurt the consumer’s wallets as well. So, what is the ironclad approach to securing our personal data? Unfortunately, there is no ironclad approach. There are however, some simple ways that we can protect our data that will keep up from losing all that we have. The majority of us are not CEOs or Executive Vice Presidents, but our data is still important to us and we should treat it as such. With the growth and popularity of Cloud computing, we have the opportunity to create a multi-layered approach to securing our data. Here are 3 small steps you can take this year to secure and back up your data in the Cloud.
Read the full article at Petri.co.il.
Top 5 Blog Posts Of The Week 1/20/12
Another week in the books and a ton of great blog posts. This week it was very difficult to pick only 5, I could have done a Top 20 list, but I did get it narrowed down to the top 5 I think are the best blog posts of the week. Some of the top 25 virtualization bloggers made it on this week’s list and their articles are a great read. My favorite of the week is the Top 25 Free Tools for VMware vSphere by David Davis and Kendrick Coleman. If I missed some you feel should be on the list, please leave a comment and let me know, I’d love to read them. Thanks to everyone who put out great posts this week, keep them coming.
Top 5 Blog Posts of the Week
These posts are from the week ending 01/20/2012
Jason Boche – How to properly remove vSphere datastores
Right click on the datastore object and choose Delete, right? Wrong.Following are two good VMware articles outlining the correct procedure for removing datastores in a vSphere environment…
Jonathan Medd – Basic VMware Cluster Capacity Check with PowerCLI
I recently needed to provide a high level capacity overview per VMware cluster looking at some metrics of interest that were being used as a guide to the capacity state of a cluster. Note: these are by no means definitive or the ones you should be using in your environment, but for these purposes they met the requirements…
Brian Madden – Will desktops ever move to the cloud? Newsflash: Mine is *already* is a cloud desktop. And so is yours.
When thinking of the term “cloud desktop,” most people immediately think of either (1) a Desktop-as-a-Service remote protocol-based VDI-like solution (Desktone, dinCloud etc.), or (2) one of the pure browser-based desktop environments like the Google Chromebook or one of the web “desktops” that Gabe wrote about a few years ago…
Simon Seagrave – vChat – Episode 22 : The Late One
In vChat Episode 22 (aka “the late one”) David Davis, Eric Siebert and myself talk about a range of different tech and VMware related topics. It’s been a while since our last vChat and things weren’t helped by my taking ages to edit this episode – so apologies for the delay. Lesson Learnt: Never commit to editing videos when moving house and most of your things are in storage. Smile Anyway, here are the topics we cover in this vGeek filled episode…
David Davis – Top 25 Free Tools for VMware vSphere presented by @davidmdavis @kendrickcoleman
In this live (recorded) webinar, vExperts David Davis and Kendrick Coleman share their list of 25 best free tools for VMware vSphere management, reporting, performance, scripting and more. Whether you’re an experienced virtualization pro or someone just getting started with VMware administration, you’ll benefit from learning about these 25 completely free tools…
Bonus Post
Eiad Al-Aqqad – Cavemen want efficiency too! Move beyond traditional IT management solutions with VMware.
The Virtual Board Room: Veeam CEO Ratmir Timashev
Recently I was able to sit down with Veeam CEO and co-founder Ratmir Timashev. I was impressed with the ease of which he answered the questions I asked him and he seemed to really be at the helm of this company which is something I don’t think you always get with CEOs. He’s not the corporate suit type, he came across as knowing his customer base and understanding where Veeam is going and where he wants Veeam to be. I think you’ll enjoy the look at Veeam from their CEO’s perspective.
Greg Stuart: This is Greg Stuart with vDestination and today we are in the Virtual Boardroom with Veeam Software CEO and President Ratmir Timashev. Ratmir, first let me thank you for taking the time to sit down and chat with me today. I’m sure you are very busy, so thanks for sparing some time for me. It’s nice to finally put a face with a name, a pleasure to finally meet you.
Ratmir Timashev: Absolutely Greg, it’s my pleasure, thanks for having me.
GS: Tell me a little about yourself, how did you become the President and CEO of Veeam?
RT: I’m one of the founders, my partner and I started Veeam in 2006. We saw this big need and big trend in virtualization and realized that its a great opportunity to build a software company around virtualization, management and back up of virtualization infrastructure, so in 2006 we started Veeam. Before that we had a very successful company also in the systems management area called Aelita software and which we started 1997 with the goal to build management tools around the new Windows NT platform. If you remember Windows NT was released around ’95-’96, and we saw some interesting opportunity around building tools for Windows NT administrators and then it became Windows 2000 and Active Directory and Exchange Server and so on and so forth. In that company we built a lot of tools around Windows management. We sold Aelita in 2004 to Quest Software and right now for Quest its a big part of their business. I worked for quest as a general manager for the Windows business unit for one year and then left quest in 2005 and as I mentioned we started Veeam in 2006 and that is the history of Veeam. My point is that we did have a successful systems management company before and a lot of our current management comes from Aelita so we’ve worked together for many years with my senior management team. This team now is the foundation for Veeam. I am the CEO, my partner is more on the technology side and I am more on the sales/marketing side. We have a management team made up of staff from Aelita, so it’s a good team and we’ve known each other for 10 years.
GS: That’s great, it sounds like you have a really strong management team which is always a plus when trying to establish a solid foundation within your company. Tell me about what’s new at Veeam. I know you had a great VMworld and a great presence at VMworld Europe as well. Tell me what is going on at Veeam that we should know about?
RT: The most exciting thing is that we’ve released the newest version of our backup product Veeam Backup and Replication version 6, to which we have added the support for Hyper-V. We believe Hyper-V is becoming a viable virtualization platform and the market share will be as big as VMware’s within the next few years. We are very excited to add the backup functionality to the Hyper-V platform. We believe that we may become the reason to go with Hyper-V because right now we don’t see any good back up tools for Hyper-V and we know our product will be the best product on the marketplace for backup, much in the same way it is the best product for VMware.
GS: Yeah, so it’s interesting what you brought up about Hyper-V, it does seem to be a fairly untapped market as far as third-party tools go. You really see Hyper-V being a viable option for virtualization projects in the near future?
RT: Absolutely, especially with Hyper-V version 3 which will be included in Windows Server 8 which Microsoft is planning to release in the next 12 months. We believe Microsoft is doing a great job with Hyper-V 3 in adding a lot of features and functionality that will bring the platform up to the same level as VMware. With the next version it will become a really great platform. The one thing that is missing is a good backup tool, it doesn’t exist on the market today and we feel we’ll capture a significant market share for backup tools with Hyper-V.
GS: It will be interesting to see what other companies bring to the market with third-party tools for Hyper-V.
RT: We have a great relationship with Microsoft because of our management pack, the connector that we have between Microsoft System Center and VMware. It’s the leading management pack that allows you to integrate the two seamlessly.
GS: Very good. What is on the horizon for Veeam, we talked a little bit about what was new at Veeam and exciting, but what is coming next? Are there any trends you see coming that might light up the virtualization market?
RT: In general we believe that there are still a lot of innovative things that can be done in virtualization backup and believe that this market will grow exponentially in the next few years. We still have a lot of features to add, we have some brilliant ideas that we are working on that we will be adding in the coming years.
GS: Great, we’ll be looking forward to what Veeam will bring us in the near future. Last question, what sets Veeam apart from all of the other backup and replication companies out there battling for market share? How does Veeam stand out?
RT: The key thing is that we build our product from ground up with virtualization in mind. The other vendors such as Symantec and Commvault, they have a legacy approach and have a large install base so they have carry this baggage and think about the physical installation. They really can’t change their legacy approaches to backup very quickly. We built our product from ground up specifically for virtualization. It’s a simple product and it works. We have features that our competitors don’t have most of them around vPower technology such as instant VM recovery, assured backup verification, automated recovery testing as well as application level recovery. We do have a lot of features that separate us from our competitors but the key feature is that it’s simple, it works and it was built from the ground up for virtualization.
GS: That’s great. I think it’s always important to ensure that your product is user-friendly and not too complicated. There are a lot of SMBs out there or start-ups that just don’t have the knowledge to figure out a highly technical and difficult piece of software.
RT: Yes, we have a lot of SMB customers. 70% of our revenue comes from SMB customers and probably 95% of our customers are SMBs, so for them simple to use and works out of the box, installed in 5 to 10 minutes you are up and running and doing your backups. This is the key differentiator, it’s simple and it works.
GS: That’s a very attractive plus for Veeam. Users love plug and play out of the box ready software and it sounds like that’s what you have. Thank you so much for your time, I’m sure my readers will appreciate an inside look at what Veeam has on the horizon and your approach to backup virtualization.
RT: Thanks for having me Greg.
Become a Code Ninja in as little as 12 months!
Ok, this is a little bit outside of my normal posts on virtualization, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to put this out there. I was reading an article on my phone about how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided that he is going to learn how to code in Java script in 2012. Is this a resolution that is going to still be standing by March, my bet is no. Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for at least attempting it anyways. I read further through the article to find out just how he was going to tackle this feat, it’s not just something you wake up and decide you are going to do. It’s not just cutting out a few calories here and there, or laying off the soda, it’s Java script. Come to find out there is a new campaign to help people learn to code in Java script. Code Academy was created by Ryan Bubinski and Zach Sims, here’s why they created it:
Codecademy was created out of the frustrations Zach and Ryan felt with learning how to program. Tired with less effective text and video resources, Ryan and Zach teamed up to create Codecademy, a better, more interactive way to learn programming by actually coding. This is just the beginning. Join us as we make it easy for everyone to love and learn how to code.
If you want to learn how to code, or maybe you haven’t learned Java yet, here’s your chance. I’ve taken the plunge and I’ve already completed 51 exercises. It’s really addicting and actually fun to learn in the way they’ve presented the lessons. I encourage you to go and sign up today if you haven’t already. There are so many benefits to learning code which will open windows of opportunity to you that you never imagined you would have. Here’s a great quote from Paul Graham founder of Y Combinator:
If you want to invest two years in something that will help you, you would do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA
I couldn’t have agreed more. Let’s get even smarter in 2012, start learning code today!
Share your experiences with the rest of us, let’s get even smarter in 2012. Read more about Code Academy.
Top 5 Blog Posts Of The Week
Welcome back readers, here’s the lastest entry in my Top 5 Blog Posts Of The Week series. I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus for the past month and a half, forgive me for the lack of content. This week was chock full of great blog posts from some of the best bloggers around. I’ve compiled what I think are the best, please comment and point us to posts you think were great that didn’t make my list. To those that have an entry here in my list, great job, keep up the good work. Of course at the bottom you will find the “Bonus Post” it usually has nothing to do with virtualization, I either thought it was interesting or weird, either way it’s worth reading.
Top 5 Blog Posts of the Week
These posts are from the week ending 01/13/2012
Edward Haletky – Cloud: More Secure than you Think?
At the end of last year and the beginning of this year the Virtualization Security Podcast featured two very different guest panelists to discuss cloud security, policy, and compliance: Phil Cox, Director of Security and Compliance at RightScale, joined us for the last podcast in 2011 and the George Gerchow of VMware’s Policy and Compliance…
Rick Vanover – How To Configure Hyper-V Failover Cluster Quorum
One of the main sticking points with learning Hyper-V is getting your head around the Clustered Shared Volumes technique to provide .VHD files on a SAN to multiple Hyper-V hosts. The CSV technique is an extension of Microsoft Failover Clustering…
Eric Sloof – VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 Performance and Best Practices
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0 provides business continuity and disaster recovery protection for VMware virtual environments. Protection can range from virtual machines (VMs) residing on a single, replicated datastore to all the VMs in a…
David Davis – Top 5 vSphere security features in VMware vSphere 5
The release of VMware vSphere 5 brought a number of vSphere security enhancements. Here are the top five vSphere security features you need to know about in the new version…
Martijn Baecke – Architecting High Available vSphere Auto Deploy
One of the cool new features of vSphere 5 is Auto Deploy. This tool enables the stateless booting of ESXi hosts. No longer an installation to disks is required to boot the ESXi hypervisor. Instead the hypervisor is booted via PXE boot into the memory. The ESXi image is booted onto a bare-metal server, so in case the server powered off the “installation” and configuration is…
Bonus Post
Eric Zeman – 5 Mobile Trends From CES 2012
More so than any previous year, the mobile industry played a major role in shaping the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. With carrier, handset, and tablet news a-plenty, mobile tech had the tech world talking all week. Here are five trends that appeared in between the lines this week in Las Vegas…
Do you VMUG? You should!
Have you attended a VMUG meeting yet? Do you know what a VMUG is? Well, my guess is that the majority of you reading this blog know what a VMUG is and you are probably a member in your area, or multiple areas. VMUG stands for VMware User Group. Here is the official definition and a little VMUG history lesson directly from their site:
Mission
The VMware User Group (VMUG) is an independent, global, customer-led organization, created maximize members’ use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events.History
The independent global VMUG organization was officially launched in August of 2010. Prior to that point, VMUG chapters had operated locally with the support of VMware. These local groups grew rapidly – membership increased 234% in 2008-2009 alone. Because of this unparalleled growth, a decision was made to bring all of these chapters together under one global VMUG umbrella operating independently of VMware. The organization benefits the membership and VMware by:*Ensuring a consistent and high quality experience for all VMUG members
*Providing a more effective interface between VMware and our customer base
*Creating a cohesive network of VMware customers and partners with a collective voice capable of impacting VMware products and services
*Establishing a support system and business model that allows the local VMUG leaders and VMware to move beyond tactical support into more strategic initiativesIn early 2010, a steering committee of VMUG chapter leaders was formed to chart the course for the launch and development of the global VMUG organization. From that steering committee, an inaugural volunteer Board of Directors was formed and the new global VMUG was launched to the membership at VMworld 2010. VMUG now has more than 65,000 individual members, an active online community, over 180 local chapters and 30+ regional events around the globe.
These meetings usually take place 1 a month or in some areas once a quarter it just depends on your area’s leader and the constituency. When I lived in Maryland, I was a member of the Maryland VMUG as well as the DC VMUG, both were great groups and we always had really great content and presenters. I’m now living in Arizona and am a member of the Phoenix VMUG, which is also very impressive. So if you are new to VMware and want to be involved, let’s go over some of the VMUG basics for you such as, how to become a member, what is VMUG Advantage and what you will learn should you attend.
How Do I Become a VMUG Member?
Becoming a VMUG Member is pretty straightforward, and doesn’t require any crazy fees or secret handshakes (that I know of). All you have to do is go the the VMUG website and sign up, that’s it. They will ask you for your first and last name, your title, company address and that’s about it. Once you fill out the form, you are an official VMUG member. There are great benefits to being a VMUG member, aside from the cool lanyard and pin you’ll pick up at your next VMUG meeting. Joining VMUG opens the door for access to many benefits including, but not limited to, the following:
An Online Community offering a network of more than 56,000 VMUG members
150 Local Chapters located across 32 countries
Access to 22+ Regional Conferences located throughout the world
VMUG VOICE, our bi-monthly electronic newsletter
Education all year ‘round through live and on-demand webcastsEach year more and more VMware customers come to VMUG to connect and network with the more than 56,000 members of the VMware Community. As a VMUG member you can expect to:
Learn best practices and optimal use of VMware products
Get answers, advice, tips and suggestions from experts
Discover new ideas and gain insight about Virtual Infrastructure
Receive timely information about new VMware products
Network with other technical professionals across the globeEnjoy access to events, networking and educational opportunities with this free membership.
There you have it, make sure you go out today and sign up to become a VMUG Member. Once you have filled out the form and you have gained membership, you will next need to go and find what your local VMUG group is, when and where they meet. To do this you simply head over to the VMware Communities VMUG page and click on the “Join a Group” tab and it will prompt you to log in with your shiny new VMUG log on credentials. Once you are in you simply find the VMUG group in your area, it is separated by region and then within each region you will find cities and smaller areas that will fit your locale.
What Is VMUG Advantage?
VMUG Advantage is a paid VMUG membership that offers a few more perks that your complimentary VMUG membership. Is it necessary to have an Advantage membership? Well, that depends on the person. I do not have an Advantage membership becuase I do not see the value in it, not to discount it, there is value if you are looking to take certifications exams, training and if you are looking to buy VMware Workstation or Fusion. Here is a breakdown of the VMUG Advantage benefits I gathered from the website:
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1-Year Free Subscription: All Access eLearning Courses
Access a year of over 20 VMware eLearning Courses, including vCenter Configuration Manager, VMware Site Recovery Manager, vSphere What’s New (V4), and vSphere Manage Availability. These courses allow you to learn from your desk or even on your home PC. This is your opportunity to receive VMware education 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A $750 value.
VMware Training: Direct-Delivered Instructor-Led Courses by VMware
Gain the knowledge and skills required to utilize your VMware tools to their fullest functionality. By leveraging VMware Education delivered by expert instructors, you will gain deeper product insight and real-world best practices on how to track performance and event data, create complex alerts, run diagnostics, and issue control actions from a single remote console. VMware Education Services provides several options that allow you to cost- effectively support your most critical business needs. A 20% discount.
VMware Certification Exams
VMware offers world-class certifications to validate and distinguish the technical competencies and expertise needed to install, manage, deploy and support VMware software. Recognized by the industry, VMware certifications are available for three different skill levels on the current version of our software. Whether you are advancing your current position or looking for new opportunities, to be competitive in today’s IT job market, you will want to develop and demonstrate your technical expertise in virtual infrastructure. A 20% discoutnt
Discount on an Admission to VMworld 2012
August 27-August 30, San Francisco
October 16-18, Barcelona
More than 300 in-depth sessions and labs, a packed agenda of meetings and events, and hundreds of exhibits will showcase the latest advances in virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology. Thousands of IT innovators, practitioners, executives and technology providers will come away with the insight and tools they need to drive unprecedented business results. A $100 discount.
VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation Software Licenses
VMware Workstation 8—recognized for its broad operating system support, rich user experience, comprehensive feature set, and high performance. VMware Fusion 3—now 35% faster and including all of the software tools you need to switch to Mac. A 30% discount
If those discounts are attractive to you, then I would say go for it and upgrade your account to a VMUG Advantage account. If not, the complimentary account is more than enough and you don’t miss out on any of the sessions or events put on by VMUG.
What To Expect at a VMUG Event
VMUG events offer an incredible opportunity to learn from some of the hottest tech companies today as they present their offering and partnership with VMware. Most if not all of the companies that attend as a vendor or presenter have an incredible 3rd party product offering that makes your virtualization experience that much better and most of the time easier too. At one of the VMUGs that I attended there was an entire room dedicated to vendors, it was akin to a mini Solutions Exchange floor. There were probably 30 companies all with booths touting their product and giving demos. This was a really great opportunity to network with companies and individuals as well as learning about the newest products on the market. There is a very tight agenda at each VMUG, it usually kicks off with a keynote address from the main sponsor of the event. There is always food involved! Most of the time it is a light continental breakfast followed by snacks and then a full hot lunch, the food has always been good. At times there are live labs on site where you can test drive new technology. At my last VMUG, EMC was a major sponsor so they had their lab set up to where you could test drive their storage solutions, it was very informative.
Take this opportunity, if you haven’t already, to go and register for a VMUG account (complimentary or Advantage) and get involved with your local VMUG, and if you are visiting another area, participate with their VMUG as well. There are always volunteer opportunities, whether it’s a speaking opportunity or lab set up, it just depends on what the VMUG group has going. If you want to learn as much as you can about VMware virtualization or be an active part of the virtualization community, joining a VMUG is a can’t miss opportunity.
vDestination 2011 in Review
Well, 2012 has finally arrived. The month of December was super busy and I didn’t get much blogging done, I hope everyone had a great holiday season. vDestination is back for 2012 and I’ve planned for it to be an incredible year on the blog. Within the next few weeks, I will be moving my blog off of WordPress and onto another hosting company where I’ll have more flexibility and an all around better theme. Thank you to all of my blog sponsors for 2011, Veeam, Train Signal, Xsigo Systems, StarWind Software, Symantec and PHD Virtual. The highlight of 2011 for me was to give someone the opportunity to win a trip to VMworld, all expenses paid. Couldn’t have done it without my sponsors, it was very successful and most of the sponsors have expressed their desire to do it again for VMworld 2012. I’ve highlighted my top 5 most viewed posts from 2011 and created a poll to see which post was your favorite from 2011 (participate, it let’s me know what you want to read more of). Thanks for an incredible 2011, I appreciate you taking time to read my blog and commenting, thanks! Here’s to 2012!
Top 5 Posts from 2011
1. Pack your bags, you’re going to VMworld 2011!
2. Citrix vs. VMware, who comes out on top?
4. Win a Free Pass to VMworld 2011 from vDestination.com
5. Symantec NetBackup 7 for VMware vSphere 4
StarWind will be holding a webinar for their new release StarWind V5.8 Storage & Hyper-V VM Backup from one vendor. So what does this mean and should I attend the webinar? Let me share some information with you that will answer both of your questions. StarWind iSCSI SAN V5.8 introduces a new powerful backup technology designed specifically for Hyper-V-based environments to provide fast backup and restore for virtual machines. This webinar will give you the opportunity to gain insight into the details surrounding their newest release. My assumption is that they will have one of their top engineers on the line, maybe even one of the actual architects of the software. With this kind of access, you can ask all of your perplexing questions and decide for yourself if this product will suit your needs. There seems to be third-party software cropping up left and right in support of Hyper-V, don’t miss the opportunity to see if this one stands up. The key to protection of your virtualization investments is one solution with a rich feature set developed to help you achieve your IT goals easily. It is ONE ultimate answer to all your storage and data managing needs.
What does StarWind iSCSI SAN 5.8 provide?
Hyper-V Backup Plug-in
· Agentless Architecture
· Backups stored in VHD format
· Global Deduplication
· Single-click Backup
iSCSI Storage
· 100% stability and uptime
· High Availability / Automatic Failover
· Network Centralized Management
· Synchronous Replication
Join the Webinar
The webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 10 at 4:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST (that’s 9:00 AM Arizona time!). Don’t pass on the opportunity to see a this new product in action and get your questions answered. Make sure to register now, and pass on the link to your friends.
