Overview of all the ways to win a trip to VMworld 2010
Jun/102
win trip to vmworld
As VMworld is getting closer, multiple marketing departments are waking up to organize cool contests to win a trip to VMworld 2010. In case your boss does not want to pay for your trip but you really do want to go, here some help to get you to VMworld 
Overview of competitions:
- [VIB] Become a fan of VIB on facebook and win a trip for 2! to vmworld 2010 (closes 9 august 2010)
- Jason Boche has a extra free pass to give out, you just need to give a comment (Closed)
If you know of any more competitions, please let me know so I can update this list.
VMware wins best of virtualization price at Microsoft show :-)
Jun/100
Yesterday VMware received 2 wins in the “best of” prices at the Microsoft Teched show in New Orleans for vSphere 4. The first win was awarded for the “best of virtualization” and the second was awarded for the “best of Attendees Pick”.
Citrix won the “best of Breakthrough Product” with their XenDesktop 4 product.
The prices are clearly not awared by Microsoft itself but by the Windows IP Pro community.
Here is the full list of awards:
- Best Microsoft Product: Visual Studio 2010
- Backup and Recovery: Symantec–Backup Exec 2010
- Business Intelligence: Dundas Data Visualization–Dundas Dashboard 2.0
- Database Administration: Idera–Idera SQL Toolbox 1.0
- Database Development: Quest Software–Toad for SQL Server 4.6
- Developer Tools: AVIcode–Intercept Studio 5.6
- Hardware and Storage: Brocade–Brocade DCX-4S Backbone
- Messaging: Argent Software–Argent for Exchange 2.0
- Networking: A10 Networks–64-bit AX Series
- SharePoint: Quest Software–Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint 4.0
- Systems Management and Operations: ScriptLogic–Active Administrator 5.5
- Security: Symantec–Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 12
- Software Components & Middleware: Telerik–Telerik Ultimate Collection for .NET 2010
- Virtualization: VMware–VMware vSphere 4
- Breakthrough Product: Citrix XenDesktop 4
- Attendees Pick: VMware–VMware vSphere 4
Winners were announced on the Tech Ed exhibitor’s floor on June 10 at 1:00 p.m., and will be published online at http://www.windowsitpro.com/ and http://northamerica.msteched.com/.
Really funny!
May/101
VMworld 2010 – Public voting is open!
May/100
Yeah! for the first time ever, public voting is available for the VMworld event. You the public can vote on what sessions you want during the show. You can go into each of the 8 tracks and let us know what sessions deserve your thumbs up.
Voting will stay open until May 26th, so be quick and let your voice be heard!
Here is the link to the public voting site: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2010/cfpvote/
VMworld 2010 – Registration is open, what can you expect this year?
Apr/101
This week we opened the registration for VMworld 2010, so you might be wondering, should I go to this show? I am personally very excited about this year’s show because of so many new things that are going around this year in the technology industry. Sure the event will have a very healthy long list of technical educative sessions around the more ‘common’ VMware technologies like SRM, VMFS, FT, Vmotion, etc. So a lot to learn if you are today a VMware (vSphere) administrator. But as you might have noticed, VMware is doing so much more now-a-days then just virtualization. The big drive to enable IT-as-a-Service using the cloud model will certainly get its attentions with topics like the charge back product, the new VMware vCloud Service Director, the new systems services that can easily be added to virtual environments based on technologies like VMsafe. Not only will the focus be on just the infrastructure, but the new technologies on how to offer a Platform-as-a-Service with the recently announced vmforce.com and the spring framework will get its attention, as well as the Software-as-a-Service with the Zimbra offering. You will not walk away from vmworld as a virtualization specialist alone, but will have gained a deep(er) understanding how to practically enable IT-as-a-Service within your own company and maybe even consider using the public cloud as part of your own IT systems.
New ways to engage
Not only will the topics be excited this year, but also how you can engage yourself during the event. We did a lot of thinking of what we can add to VMworld to really justify the travel and time spend at a physical event. So this year we are ‘upgrading’ the networking opportunities. Yes, we will have a great selection of breakout sessions and an awesome solutions exchange where you can meet all the players in this interesting industry, but we are adding new ways for you to be educated, get your questions answered and minds tickled. We will host many small discussion groups, where you can debate in a small group under the guidance of topic experts using a fun voting system. This will enable you to not just get the opinion of vendors but also from your peers. If you are not up for a fun debate, you can also this year schedule one-on-one meetings with special topic experts, so you can have a personal conversation around your ideas and challenges.
Get your hands dirty
This year we are making a major effort to offer all you techies out there even more hand-on experience with all these new technologies. We will have a 100% self paced hands-on lab environment where you can come in and likely choose from more than 20 Topics that you want to get your hands dirty on. We are gathering a huge support team for these labs, so you will not be left on your own, but will get personal guidance with any of these topics.
Network, Education and Tickle your Mind
Sure VMworld will have a marketing/sales element to it, this allows us to gather all the industry players together and offer you to attend a show like this at a reasonable cost, but our focus will be on connecting you with your peers and knowledge experts, to educate you on all these new technologies and give you hands-on experience. And if you are open for it, we want to tickle your mind! J and show you how IT can operate in the next decade.
More info: www.vmworld.com
VMforce – How it will work
Apr/100
Well today is the day of the big news around VMware and SalesForce.com. If you are an enterprise developer and wanted to get your app in the Cloud, you already had a few options like googls apps, Microsoft Azure or Salesforce.com Apex platform, but soon there will be a nice option for all you Java Fans out there. VMware and SalesForce.com announced today the vmforce platform. This will enable Java developers to develop like normal their Java apps on the springsource platform and with a drap-and-drop feature will be able to run their application on the force.com infrastucture in the Cloud and gaining access to the salesforce.com databade and other services.
The actual service is not available yet, but a developer preview will be made available later this year, including the cost aspect.
More info: www.vmforce.com
UPDATED:
Rod Johnson, General Manager@springsource just posted a blog about the new vmforce.
http://blog.springsource.com/2010/04/27/vmforce-spring-cloud/
Steve Herrod, CTO@vmware also posted a blog on his take with some great background info.
http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2010/04/vmforce-and-vmwares-open-paas-strategy.html
Unofficial PowerShell SDK for VMware View (part 1)
Apr/104
Welcome to this first part of the ‘unofficial SDK for VMware View”. You might wonder, why “unofficial”? Well, simple, VMware View is one of the few products from VMware that does not have an SDK 
So if you want to script/program/automate anything against VMware View, you are out of luck. That is, officially you can not.
VMware View uses Microsoft ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode) to store its data. After a day of googling and puzzling, I was finally able to figure out how to do some of these ADAM calls myself using visual basic and powershell. In this part 1, I want to share 2 beginning powershell scripts with you.
Script 1 – Show Desktop Pool Properties
$poolname = "type_here_your_pool_Unique ID name"
$connectionbroker = "type_here_your_IP_of_your_connection_broker"
$userName = "type_your_username"
$userPassword = "type_your_password""
$ldaproot = "LDAP://$connectionbroker/CN=$poolname,OU=Applications,DC=vdi,DC=vmware,DC=int"
$directoryEntry = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry($ldapRoot)
$directoryEntry.psbase.Username=$userDn
$directoryEntry.psbase.Password=$userPassword
$directoryEntry.get_Properties()
Script2 – Disable/Enable a desktop pool
$poolname = "type_here_your_pool_Unique ID name"
$connectionbroker = "type_here_your_IP_of_your_connection_broker"
$userName = "type_your_username"
$userPassword = "type_your_password"
$ldaproot = "LDAP://$connectionbroker/CN=$poolname,OU=Applications,DC=vdi,DC=vmware,DC=int"
$directoryEntry = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry($ldapRoot)
$directoryEntry.psbase.Username=$userName
$directoryEntry.psbase.Password=$userPassword
# 0 = enabled 1 = disabled
$directoryEntry.InvokeSet("pae-Disabled",0)
$directoryEntry.CommitChanges()
Script 2 can be used to make any changes. If you for instance did not want to change the pool state, but it’s displayname, you can just replace the 2nd last line with:
$directoryEntry.InvokeSet("pae-displayname","type_your_new_display_name")
The next thing I want to find out is how to query which desktops are actively being used and the state of each desktop, but I have not been able to figure this our yet. If anyone would like to help out on this project, please contact me!
Are you a superduper virtualization expert? or do you know of any?
Apr/103
VMware’s vExpert 2010 adwards program has opened. The vExpert program is a way to identify virtualization experts that have made significant contributions to the virtualization community by sharing their technical expertise and evangelizing to others about virtualization.
If you feel that you are one of these experts, go nominate yourself (do not be shy!) or if you know of such an expert, you can nominate them. The only people excluded for these awards are VMware employees, so please do not all nominate Duncan
VMware and SalesForce.com making exciting announcement?!
Apr/101
On April 27th VMware and SalesForce.com will make a joint exciting announcement?
What will this news be?
Check out: www.vmforce.com
VMworld 2010 – Breakout sessions
Mar/101
I know it is still a few months out, but the planning for VMworld 2010 is in full progress. We opened our call-for-papers a few weeks ago and have already received a good bunch of submissions. If you have a great session topic you would like to share with the VMworld attendees, feel free to still submit your session via the call-for-paper website.
NEW: Public Voting
This year we are introducing a new way of how we select the content. Some of the sessions will still be selected by small content committees that exist of VMware employees, customers and partners. 
What does not get selected in this first round, we will put up for public voting! Meaning you will directly be able to participate in the selection process. This voting will happen in May and anyone who has a vmworld.com account (anyone can register for free) will be invited to vote.
I hope to see some really cool sessions submitted and sessions with a high education value, as like most of you, I always want to learn new things.