Brian Atkinson is a senior systems engineer with 15 years of experience in the IT field. For the past six years, he has been focused on virtualization and storage solutions. Brian has been awarded the VMware vExpert designation from VMware for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. He is a VMware Technology Network (VMTN) moderator and guru. He maintains his personal blog in the VMTN communities at communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmroyale/.

With 816 pages and weighing in at 2.6 pounds, this is a bigger book that will definitely make your backpack heavier and is not necessarily one you would carry around wherever you go. The book also comes with a custom test engine, over 300 flashcards and a glossary of terms in PDF format. You can also download practice exams and chapter review questions from the website along with electronic flashcards. I recommend getting this book in paperback as it reduces some of the bulk associated with this book and is easier to keep the book open when studying.

What’s Covered?
This book has 11 total chapters and each chapter covers different exam objectives. Of course you should really read this book cover to cover at least once, but several of the chapters really stand out. First and foremost you should read Chapter 1 which is titled “What’s New in vSphere 5.” This chapter covers the newer features of the vSphere 5 release and is a good place to start with your study plan, obviously placing this chapter as the first in the book. You’ll learn about the retirement of ESX server going forward with all newer versions only shipped with ESXi. Chapter one also covers the improvements to vSphere High Availability (HA) and virtual machine enhancements. With the release of vSphere 5 there’s also the new vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) and Storage DRS (sDRS) feature which is covered in the first chapter as well. Chapter two covers some really critical information as it goes over how to “Plan, Install, Configure, and Upgrade vCenter Server and VMware ESXi.” You will find information covering how to enable sizing and disabling memory compression cache as well as the ins and outs of licensing an ESXi host. You’ll learn how to handle important tasks such as updgrading from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5, upgrading VMware Tools, updgrading the virtual machine hardware and using vSphere Update Manager to upgrade an ESXi host. Like I said earlier, the book covers just about every aspect of vSphere 5 that you need to know for the exam and doubles as a guide for future installations and feature configurations.

Should I Buy It?
Yes and no. If you are studying for the VCP-510 exam trying to get your VCP5-DCV certification, then resoundingly yes. If you are new to VMware and looking for a good guide to installation and configuration of vSphere components, then yes. That being said there are better books on installation and configuration like Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 (that book is really hard to beat). If you are a seasoned vSphere veteran, already have your VCP5-DCV, then I wouldn’t buy this book. Chances are vSphere 6 or vSphere Next will be released within a year from now and you’ll be better off spending your money on the latest vSphere book at that time. Here’s a short excerpt from the book titled “Who Should Read This Book?” that will give you a good idea of the intended audience:

Any experienced vSphere administrator who is ready to pass the VCP5 exam should read this book. This book covers each objecetive of the VCP5 eaxam as listed in the exam blueprint. Using this book as you study guide for the VCP5 exam will streamline your studying process and increase your odds of passing the VCP5 exam.

Win This Book Today!
As a disclaimer I did receive a free copy of this book, but did not receive any monetary compensation for writing this post. That being said, I fall in the category of someone who alread has VCP5-DCV cert and I’m already working everyday with vSphere 5.1. This book doesn’t do much for me so I want to give it to you! If you would like a free copy of this book, leave a comment on this post with your full name and twitter handle if you have one, and I’ll pick a winner out of hat tonight, and the book is yours! All you have to say, is Greg, I want the book, and that qualifies as an entry into this contest. I’ll stop taking entries today, May 20th at 8pm Eastern time. The contest is open to anyone in the world, I’ll foot the shipping for you. Good luck and happy reading!

For more great VMware Books see my past posts: Mastering VMware vSphere 5, Top 5 VMware Books List, and Do You Own These VMware Books? You Should!

The problem is, there are so many tech conferences out there today, it’s hard to know which ones are worth attending. These conferences can be quite pricey, ranging anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 just to get in the door. Train Signal previously gave you a more comprehensive look at IT conferences, but now I want to share what I believe are the best ones out there and tell you what to expect from them… Read the full article here.

About two weeks ago I was speaking with Rick Vanover of Veeam about the features of vSphere 5.1 and what they bring to the table. In the middle of our chat we thought “why not make this a podcast?” So here we are, we wrapped the podcast and it’s now online for your listening pleasure. We talk about vSphere 5.1 features, what we’ve been up to and the vDestination.com VMworld Trip Giveaway. Hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for more news on the VMworld Trip Giveaway, it’s coming!! Click here to listen.

Joining a Windows Server or workstation to the domain is a relatively simple process; however, joining an ESXi host to a Windows domain requires a bit more complexity… Read the full article here.

Matt Portnoy has been an information technology professional for more than 30 years, working in organizations such as NCR, Sperry/Unisys, Stratus Computer, Oracle, and currently VMware. He has been in the center of many of the core technological trends during this period, including the birth of the PC, client-server computing, fault tolerance and availability., the rise of the Internet, and now virtualization, which is the foundation for cloud computing…. He has spoken at the industry’s largest virtualization conference, VMworld, and is a frequent speaker at user group meetings.

Coming in at 304 pages and 1.4 pounds, Virtualization Essentials is not an overwhelming book like most technical books are. This is a book you can easily slip in your backpack or a small tote bag along with your tablet. For a beginner, this book is essential to building your foundation for virtualization knowledge and giving you a good baseline to start from. It boasts and attractive blue cover and almost lays flat when opened from the middle of the book, a very flexible spine, good for keeping it open while working on your lab or practicing the exercises in the book.

What’s Covered?
This book does an excellent job of covering everything you need to know as a beginner to virtualization, VMware virtualization that is, seeing as it’s written by a VMware Sr. System Engineer. That’s ok though, if you’re looking to learn about Hyper-V or Citrix or Red Hat virtualization, this is not your book. The book starts off with the assumption that the reader has basic PC experience, an understanding of what an operating system is and does, conceptual knowledge of computing resources (CPU, memory, storage and network), and a high level understanding of how programs use resources. That being said, this book isn’t necessarily for newcomers to computers altogether, you must have had some working knowledge of those pieces of computing to fully understand the topics covered in this book. It does note in the book that “This text would not be of interest if you are already a virtualization professional and you are looking for a guidebook or reference.”

In chapter one you will start by “Understating Virtualization”, this chapter will basically introduce you the technology from a very high level view, it doesn’t get very deep, but gives you an idea of what you are getting ready to learn, a nice introduction. Further on in the book in chapter 4 it covers “Creating A Virtual Machine”, virtual machines or VMs are the reason why we love virtualization. This chapter will touch on server consolidation, converting a physical server to a virtual machine and gives you a brief overview of VMware’s free VMware Player which you can install on your PC to start creating virtual machines. It’s important that you go out and download VMware Player so you can follow along with the exercises in the book, its easy to install and best of all, its free. Chapters 5 and 6 respectively, will teach you how to install Windows and Linux on a VM. The step by step directions and screenshots really add value to this book as there are subtle differences in building VMs depending on the operating system you choose.

Chapter 9 and 10 are very important to understand as they deal with “Managing Storage for a Virtual Machine” and “Managing Networking for a Virtual Machine.” Storage is monumentally important to virtualization as it handles where your virtual machine disk files reside and what they are capable of ie. vMotion, HA, etc. Networking, obviously, is equally as important to VMs as storage is. The author does a great job of explaining how virtual networking works and even gives some practice exercises you can do to better understand it. In the back of the book there is a great glossary of terms you need to know to fully understand virtualization such as CNA-converged network adapter, and ballooning-a memory management process controlled by the hypervisor.

Should I Buy It?
Are you a seasoned virtualization veteran? Then the answer is a resounding no, not that it’s not a good read, it most definitely is but you would be better served to buy and read a book such as Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 or Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman’s VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive book. Are you new to VMware and virtualization as a whole? Then this is a no-brainer, buy it today! If you’ve been looking for a good book to start with, this is your book. It’s short, concise, gives exercises and helps you build your knowledge fundamentals in virtualization technology. Welcome to the world of virtualization and happy reading!

For more great VMware Books see my past posts: Mastering VMware vSphere 5, Top 5 VMware Books List, and Do You Own These VMware Books? You Should!

I love IT, and I have worked hard at building my career to get where I am today. It brings back all kinds of memories when I get to tell my IT story, so what’s yours? I took some time to ask a couple of my closest colleagues about their stories. The most interesting part of my research was how much everyone loved telling their story, and while they were all different, they had the same ending: We all work in IT, and we all love it! Here’s a sampling of some of the best stories I came across. I promised not to disclose the storytellers’ names due to the nature of their current clients, but they did want me to share their current titles and their stories. Read the full post here.

How Do I Play?
Joining is easy, just go to the CloudCred homepage and sign up. It’s fairly painless, you pick a log in name and password and then set some preferences and you’re off. The first thing you’ll have to do after signing up is join a team, this isn’t necessarily a mandatory task but some of the team related tasks are pretty cool, so join a team to get the full experience. Once you are signed up and have joined a team you can click on the tasks banner and start picking what tasks you want to complete. There are several task categories such as Blogger, Tech Cloud, Team, Service, Fun, Lab and many more. In each one of those categories you’ll find a task related to that category with a point value assigned to it. Most of the tasks will award you individual points and several team points as well. Here’s a screen shot of one of the tasks you’ll find under the Blogger category:

As you complete tasks your points begin to accumulate and as your points accumulate you will climb the CloudCred leaderboard. Again, don’t take this too seriously, its just a way to make giving back to the community more fun than it already is. This game is not meant to showcase you as a subject matter expert or genius by any means, just have fun with it. I’ve been at it for a week now and it’s been pretty fun finishing tasks and racking up points. You may be able to rack up a bunch of points because of all the things you’ve already done, you’d be surprised.

Yes, there are prizes.
So what do you get by racking up all these CloudCred points? Prizes of course. VMware is never stingy when it comes to swag and the CloudCred prizes are pretty cool. If you love t-shirts, then find a way to rack up 1,000 points and you’ll get the VMware CloudCred t-shirt. Rack up 10,000 points and you’ll get the CloudCred ball cap. Now, the grand prize of it all is for the top point getter overall, a free pass to VMworld Barcelona for you and a guest, 5 nights hotel, airfare for two and spending cash. Wow! That’s pretty incredible. The deadline for the grand prize is July 1, so start racking up your points now. Here’s a screen shot of the prizes you can expect to get if you get the required point values:

Get Your CloudCred On and Have Fun
Ok, so now you know how to sign up, how to play and what prizes you will win, so get to it. Leave a comment on this blog post and let me know if you signed up so I can follow your progress. Knowing VMware, I’m sure there will be some sort of integration with CloudCred and VMworld this year, so look for that, VMworld is 4 months away. If you want to follow my progress, my CloudCred user name is gregwstuart and my team name is vExperts, check out our team image below. Have fun and see you on CloudCred.

Each year, we bring together in the vExpert Program the people who have made some of the most important contributions to the VMware community. These are the bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, community leaders and general enthusiasts. They work as IT admins and architects for VMware customers, they act as trusted advisors and implementors for VMware partners or as independent consultants, and some work for VMware itself. All of them have the passion and enthusiasm for technology and applying technology to solve problems. They have contributed to the success of us all by sharing their knowledge and expertise over their days, nights, and weekends. They are, quite frankly, the most interesting and talented group of people I’ve ever been in a room with.

What do I get?
Let’s start with what you don’t get. This award doesn’t entitle you to badger John or anyone at VMware for free stuff. Don’t ask for free licenses, don’t ask for logo gear, don’t ask for discounts, chances are if there are available John has always come through for the vExpert community. Don’t be that guy/gal who gives John and the community team a headache, this has happened in the past. Now for what you can expect to get. If 2013 is anything like 2011 and 2012 (the two years I’ve been a vExpert) you are in for a treat! You will receive beta licenses for most of the coolest things that VMware is currently working on. You will receive a license for most of the current software for at least 365 days if not longer. Many 3rd party companies will give you licenses for their products as well. As a new vExpert you will get a certificate and a gift of some sort, here’s what I received for 2011. Each year at VMworld there is an awesome vExpert briefing with finger foods and drinks (I only drink Diet Coke, but there’s libations for everyone). John briefs us on what the year ahead should bring for the vExpert program and what to look for. Last year there were special awards given out to a select few vExperts who really went above and beyond.

How do I apply?
Applying to be a vExpert is a piece of cake thanks to the easy to use application form. Fill it out, put down anything you can think of that you did in 2012 that would qualify you; blog posts, organized events, VMUGs you spoke at, or anything you personally contributed to the VMware community. There are three paths to becoming a vExpert; the Evangelist path (blogger, speaker, author types), Customer path(end user, system integrator, administrator, influencer types) and Partner path (VMware partner, VAR, etc.). Maybe you fall into two or more of those categories, just pick the one you best fit into. There are different requirements for each path, here’s a quick explanation:

Evangelist Path
The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, VMTN contributors, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public or were in a language other than English.

Customer Path
The Customer Path is for leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have been internal champions in their organizations, or worked with VMware to build success stories, act as customer references, given public interviews, spoken at conferences, or were VMUG leaders. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public.

VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning through accreditation and certifications and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements. A VMware employee reference is required for VPN Path candidates.

The application is now available and open to anyone who wishes to fill it out. Not everyone who fills out an application will be selected, but I’m sure you already know if you deserve the award. Please don’t inundate John with emails about whether or not you got in, the results will be posted when they are done with the selection process. This is not a small process, VMware puts a lot of time, money and effort into the vExpert program so please respect the process and don’t be a bug. Submit your application and forget about it, it’s fun to be surprised when you get the email from VMware letting you know you’re a new vExpert (or repeat offender, Jason Boche). The application is now open and the deadline to apply is April 15, 2013 at midnight (isn’t something else due then?). There you have it, apply now and good luck to you.

CPU

A CPU is not a computer; let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. CPU actually stands for Central Processing Unit. The CPU is really the brains of the computer. That seems easy to understand, doesn’t it? The CPU is in charge of receiving input from the computer’s hardware and software and interpreting it in a way that it can be executed. Without the CPU, you wouldn’t be able to pull up Microsoft Word, send an email or doing anything really. You might have to make the choice between an AMD and Intel processor; you are choosing a CPU manufacturer. Some people only like Intel, some AMD; it just depends on what you plan on doing with your computer system… Read the full article.