New Video Contest by VMware, win $5000 if you are an US Citizen
Jun/090
VMware is launching a new Video contest again. Last year the contest resulted in a great video “VMware Virtualized Hardware Hotel”. This year the winner will get $5000 and there are 4 Second prizes of $1000. Not bad for making a fun video about your believe in VMware software.
One bad thing, only US citizens are allowed to enter the competition. Damm! I guess the rest of the world does not count for creating cool movies. All participants (again US only) will get a cool t-shirt.
First Native iPhone App to manage your VMware environment :-)
Jun/093
VManage website: http://www.ebapps.com/EB_Studios/VManage.html
Can Microsoft make themselves even more ridiculous?
Apr/090
I was browsing today the internet and came across this ‘dumb’ video. I guess Microsoft is trying to fight the competition, so they made this ‘10 myths about VMware” video. Silly of them to not use any accurate information or counter arguments.
Microsoft Mythbusters: Top 10 VMware Myths
I feel very tempted to shoot down all their 10 points, but should I bother? Point 1 and 2, claim that they have live migration and clustered file system, but Microsoft’s definition of “having” can I guess include future stuff. I am of course an alien, but in my english classes i learned there is a difference between “have” and “will have”.
Being a techie my self, one point I do want to address, which is memory commitment, why does Microsoft just want to refuse to see how it works. It does NOT work by not allocating unused memory! It scans memory pages to find duplicate pages, so if you run 10x basic windows OS, and yes that memory can be actively used, it will only store it once in memory. So memory commit feature ‘compresses’ the memory, and if you do not do it in extreme, you can do it without any serious punishment, while still saving memory.
OK, one final one, and this has nothing to do with technical stuff. Mister Microsoft claims that it is silly to compare based on cost per application / virtual machine, Microsoft and VMware prices are based per machine, so that is how you should compare????? Hello Microsoft, get real!!! It is like saying, when you buy a car, only look at the price of the car, do NOT look at the miles per gallon (KM per Litre). If Microsoft keeps up that strategy, they will end up like all american car manufactures, not selling a single car anymore, while the efficient Japanese car manufactures laugh their asses off.
Competition should be great, it keep manufactures sharp and on the edge, but for some reason Microsoft just plays silly. I hope they will actually make some good features at some point in time, so that the market moves forward instead of playing ignorant.
It is good to see that this nonsense does not get unnoticed, have a read of this blog post, it exposes how Microsoft IT looks at their own virtualization product.
Cisco unveils their new Unified Computing System
Mar/090
After many weeks of speculation, Cisco today announces their new Unified Computing System.
The system will come with VMware’s virtualization software as VMware also today confirms that they have made an OEM agreement with Cisco.
VMKUSAGE is back! in VC 2.5 U4
Mar/090
If you have been working with ESX for a while, you might remember VMKUSAGE on the MUI (the old ESX web interface), well it is finally back again. VMware released yesterday Update 4 for VC2.5 and ‘included’ a new plugin. It is not part of the normal install or in my case upgrade, and the install procedure might scare you away, but it is worth it!
If you want to use this, please check out this knowledge base article. If you are like me, upgrading your VC, make sure you stop your webaccess service before the upgrade, else you have to uninstall the service and start over again (see this kb article). One more tip, if you are using SQL Express, read this KB article
Well after you get it all working, you will see that on any host, resource pool or VM view you have a new tab (not on your datacenter for some silly reason).
Missed VMworld Europe? 26 Videos now Online!
Mar/090
Not able to make it to VMworld Europe this year? No worry we recorded over 9,000minutes!!!! of video for you 
Not everything has been placed online yet, but the first 26 videos made by our VMware TV reporters are now available for you to watch. Later this week we will also make some of the breakout session videos available for everyone. If you did attend the show or have a vmworld.com subscription you will get access soon to all recorded breakout sessions, so the full 9000minutes worth of content.
Here is the video link page: http://www.vmworldeurope.com/videos
TIP: one of the 26 videos is the ‘VMware Unplugged’ session (56minutes) where 4 of the senior staff from VMware are answering questions from the public.
Day -4 @ VMworld Europe
Feb/090
Hi Everyone,
Well today the first VMware people including myself arrived in Cannes and I have to say, the weather is amazing! People are actually laying on the beach in bathing suits, the sky is clear blue and it is about 16 degrees, I even have to start worrying about burning my head The boulevard is full of people enjoying the great weather and the forecast for next week looks good as well. I know we are here to go to sessions, but some nice weather is a lovely extra bonus
When we arrived at the building where the event will take place the first banners where already up.
We are here today with a small team starting to get our infrastructure up an running for all the labs and demos on the VMware booth. We shipped 10 Racks full of servers, networking and storage. Andy and Garrett have been working the last 2 weeks together with all the lab team to design some hopefully awesome hands-on Labs.
Well we are about to get our power, so we can start powering on all our kit. For the lucky ones coming to Cannes for VMworld, bring your sun lotion and see you soon
VMworld Preview - 1 more week to go
Feb/090
A few more nights sleeping and the 2nd VMworld in Europe will go live in Cannes, France again. The almost full session list has been published on www.vmworld.com/europe and now also includes the hands-on labs.
It will be a challenge to pick what sessions you want to go see as there will be around 140 sessions and 13 labs to choice from A good start might be “DC14 - Overview of 2009 VMware datacenter products” and “DC07 - Tech Preview: vCenter Server”. We have reserved the Thursday afternoon for all the top scored sessions from the previous 2 ½ days to give you a second chance to go see them, in case you missed them.
The hands-on labs this year will also have many new interesting topics. You will be able to get your hands-on the upcoming Cisco Nexus 1000v (LAB12), explore the next generation of datacenter software (LAB01) and have a first look at a VMsafe application from Altor Networks in the form of a virtual firewall (LAB13). All the labs will be self-paced and a large crew of VMware Lab Staff will be there to help you to guide yourself through these labs. As they are self-paced, you can come to the hands-on labs any time you like and spend as much or little time you have. If there is no available terminal for you, we can even allow a certain amount of ‘bring-your-own-machine’ to create even more capacity and in case you have a funky keyboard like the Belgiums do, you can work with what you are used to
This year we will also be making a lot of video content at the event. Interviews with key sponsors and VMware staff and all the sessions will be recorded and available to all who attended the show.
On Wednesday night the VMworld party “Cloud 9” will lift off. As “Cloud 9” means like being in the 7th heaven, I am sure this will be a great spectacle.
I look forward seeing you all in Cannes and for the people who cannot make it, we will do our best to keep you up-to-date online on www.vmworld.com during and after the event.
VMworld Europe - Sessions
Jan/090
4 more weeks and VMworld Europe is a GO Still lots of work to do and we are making progress on getting a good selection of breakout sessions. The session catalog is online now and every day new sessions are being added to it. Of course there will not only be VMware speakers. Many Industry specialists will be sharing interesting stories.
Fellow blogger Viktor van den Berg will be sharing his experiences with unattended deployments of VMware Infrastructure. Brian Madden will present a session on comparing VDI versus Terminal Services. Analyst Chris Wolf will present on Software Licensing in the Virtual Enterprise: Current Problems and Future Trends.
As 2009 will offer us many new solutions from VMware around management products, here a special promo video about those sessions:
VMworld Europe 2009 - Hands-on-Labs
Jan/090
Well 7 more weeks to go, before VMworld in Europe will open its doors Last week I had Garrett visiting the office (he is based out of ireland). Garrett is organizing all the labs for VMworld, so we thought we would make a small promo video about the labs.
I am really excited about this year’s labs as we will have some brand new topics that I am sure none of you have touched before
Hope to see you all in Cannes and remember as a VCP you get a permanent discount price of just 650 euros!