Today VMware View 5.1 is available for download.  While additional details are available in the release notes, here are highlights of the changes in 5.1:

• Storage performance optimization & integration options leveraging vSphere
• View Storage Accelerator:
• View Composer API Integration(Tech Preview):
• Customizable View Composer disposable disk driver letter
• Support up to 32 ( increased from 8 ) host in a cluster when Network Attached Storage is in use
• USB redirection enhancement
• RADIUS based two-factor authentication support
• Admin UI usability and performance enhancements
• Support pre-created Active Directory machine accounts
• Customer Experience Improvement Program
• Persona Management for physical devices
• Persona Management as a XP to Win7 migration tool
• Support Installation of View Composer server in a standalone server separate from vCenter server
• A set of new View Clients
• Continue PCoIP protocol performance enhancements

A new release of the View Clients is also available on the View Client Download Center.  New features and enhancements in the View Clients include:

•  What’s New in ALL View Clients
• Optimized for VMware View 5.1
• Up to 3X better video playback performance
• Improved mouse responsiveness in virtual machine
• RADIUS two factor authentication with VMware View 5.1
• What’s New in ALL Mobile View Clients 1.5
• Save password option if administrator enables new VMware View 5.1 policy
• French, German, Spanish keyboard support with VMware View 5.1
• Direct Korean language input support with VMware View 5.1
• Touch in text fields brings up keyboard with VMware View 5.1
• Windows – What’s New in View Client 5.1
• Local mode supports hardware version 8 virtual machines with VMware View 5.1
• Linux – What’s New in View Client 1.5
• New ARM based Linux client for Thin Client partner integration
• Mac – What’s New in View Client 1.5
• Initial support for Mac OS X Mountain Lion
• Greatly improved audio/video synchronization
• Resolve mouse tracking problems when switching to and from View client
• iPad -  What’s New in View Client 1.5
• Support for the new iPad
• Updated look and feel
• Extended software keyboard keys no longer cover Start menu and task bar with external keyboards
• Android – What’s New in View Client 1.5
• Support for Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS)
• Mouse support with hover, right click and scroll wheel on ICS
• Updated look and feel and improvements for smaller screens
• New Settings dialog includes security mode settings

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

– Note (20120420) –

Please keep in mind that when my clients or I work with the portal, we’re usually dealing with literally hundreds of different licenses, order, contracts, and historic support requests that are spread across multiple divisions and business units of Fortune 100 enterprises.  As a result, many of these gotcha’s may not apply to all users.

The My VMware team is working daily to improve the system and polish off any rough edges.  I’m also working closely with the My VMware team and will update this list as items are resolved or work arounds created.

Here are some of the gotchas that I came across while working with the My VMware beta. Hopefully these will save you some time as you get used to the new portal.

Missing Entitlements? Are you Looking at the Right Account?

Users can be granted access to multiple accounts.  When you log into the portal you may not see the licenses/contracts/orders that you are looking for.  Check the “View Account” drop down in the upper right hand corner to ensure you are viewing the correct account.  Only one account can be viewed/managed at a time.

My VMware Account Selection Drop-Down

Working with License Keys

After you complete a task within the License Key area, make sure you check the “I want to” dropdown box.  Once you complete a task, it appears to always default you back to “View License Keys”, not the task area you just completed.  It can be a bit confusing if you’re trying to do a bunch of license key management (like a Super User organizing your license keys on the first day) because you keep getting pulled away from the area you were working in after each task completes.

Creating Folders

Make sure you select “Home” folder or a Sub-Folder in order to activate the “Create Folder” option.

Moving Folders (20120420)

The portal is able to move only one folder at a time. While you can select multiple folder, there currently is no way to move multiple folders at one time.

If you have a large number of folders in your Account as a result of the My VMware migration, it may be difficult to find new folders you created as part of implementing your organization system.  One quick solution (that can easily be backed out in the future) is to name all your new folders starting with a – (dash).  This will force those folders to be sorted at the top of your folder list. And, luckily, they will appear right below the folders that get automatically created when new orders are placed.  After you clean up all the other folders, you can simply rename your organization folders to remove the preceding dash.

Organizing License Keys with Folders & Granting Access

If you’re going to organize a number of split license keys and grant access to these keys to a number of members of your team I suggest you follow this process to save you time and mouse clicks:

1. Determine your folders structure and naming conventions
2. Create as many of your folders as possible at one time
3. One by one, grant a users access to all appropriate folders at one time. (There is no way to search for existing users like in the old License Portal, so you have to enter their name and email each time you grant them access to a folder.  Thus give them access to all folders at once and then move on to the next user).
4. Review and set the specific access permissions for each folder created. (You can’t change default permissions while granting a user access to a folder.)

Super User Bulk Changing of Permissions 

My VMware doesn’t allow bulk changing of permissions across folders.  The best way to accomplish this is to “Copy User Permissions” across folders.  See Next Gotcha…

Copying User Permissions Across Folders

Personally, I was confused by this the first time I did it.  First select the user who has permission you want to copy, then choose “copy user permissions” option.  In the pop-up window, select target users who will get those permissions.

Note: This will copy all those users’ permissions for all the folders they have access to.  There doesn’t seem to be a way to copy just permissions for one or two folders, so if you have a complex set of folders and users use this feature cautiously.

Selecting Folders to Set Permissions – [Confirm]

When you click a SuperSet permission (it won’t deselect while the sub options are selected, you need to first deselect sub options and then you can deselect superset options.

License Summary View for Selected Folders

When you select a folder from the folder list, the license summary section updates to show you a total number of licenses for all the products contained in all selected folders. It will not automatically include licenses from subfolders.  You have to specifically selected those subfolders to get them included in the summary.  This is because both the parent folder and the sub folder could contain license keys.

Searching License Keys

As of publishing, you can’t search license keys based on the “Notes” field.  I now many clients use this field to help them organize their license keys in the old license portal by placing a business unit or group tag within the field.  Since you can’t search the license keys based upon this field, organizing your keys may take a bit more time as you will have to expand each license key while organizing.

Adding Notes to Split License Keys

If you use the notes field as part of your license key tracking or management, then you’ll have to edit the notes for newly generated licenses keys as a second step after you split the original key.  The current system doesn’t allow you to add a note to a newly generated license key during the key splitting process.

Organizing License Keys from Different Products

You can only move license keys from one product at a time within the portal. While you can select multiple license keys for the same product to be moved at once (i.e, vSphere 5),  if you switch your view to another product (i.e., vCenter Server 5) you lose all your original selections.  You’ll have to organize your vSphere keys and vCenter Server keys in two separate steps.

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

For Super Users and the Procurement Contacts, please consider these two users interchangeably unless otherwise noted, the key items of note about My VMware is how to manage licnese keys and Orders/Contracts.  The new portal has a number of features that provide more control to Super Users and Procurement Contacts regarding distributing license keys across their organization as well as keeping all those keys organized.

I urge all Super Users to take some time to become familiar with My VMware and the new level of visibility they have to Accounts and Entitlements for their organizations. They should also keep in mind that changes they make to License Key organizations can have impact to other My VMware users within their organizations.

Orders/Contracts

As part of the My VMware launch, there was also a consolidation of account records within the VMware Orders/Contracts system.  Over the years a single company may have had multiple people (say from different Business Units) buy licenses from VMware.  Each order could have created a separate record in the VMware systems.  My VMware worked to consolidate all these record under the Super User (with some exceptions for larger customers).  As a result, the Super User will be able to see all orders, support contracts, license keys, and Support Requests within their organization.

My VMware Order History Screen

It is still possible that any user within My VMware would have access to multiple Accounts.  Any user can switch between accounts by using the dropdown in the upper right hand corner of My VMware.  The portal only allows you to work within one Account at a time.  So if you don’t see something that you are expecting to be within your portal, check to make sure you are working within the correct Account.

My VMware Account Selection Drop-Down

Software License Keys

First, a quick note about ELAs: the ELA license keys are typically assigned to the Super User.  One of the biggest advantages of My VMware is the increased control over ELA key distribution provided to the Super User.  Prior ELA customer usually ended up with multiple people inside their organization with access to the full ELA key; under My VMware the Super user can divide ELA keys and give access to a subset of the ELA to those who need it, and just the number of licenses they need.

The big change in My VMware is the ability to organize license keys into folders.  Everyone has a default “Home” Folder and if you were a PLA or SLA in the old system, a folder with their full name in which all your license keys were deposited. Super Users will see in their named folder the keys for which they were PLA; they might also see folders with the names of other individuals in your company that were PLA for other orders.You will now have the ability to organize these keys in a way that makes sense for your organization.  I can foresee this being broken down by Business Unit or Group Name and then possible further by physical location the licenses are deployed (see below screen shot with mocked up example).

Some thought should be put into the organization of the License Keys by the Super User.  The process of moving and granting permissions to license keys contains a number of steps…you won’t want to be redoing this once you start.  See the My VMware Gotchas before starting.

Super Users will want to communicate and coordinate across all the VMware users within their organization before doing major organization of keys within folders and granting access to these folders.  If a Super User moves license keys around from folders with another User’s name or renames those folders those changes will instantly appear within those User’s accounts.  This could be confusing with adequate communication as users will have see their folder names and permissions change between two logins.

Full Details in the Knowledge Base:

• Accounts and Account Numbers in My VMware
• Viewing Account Activities and Order History in My VMware
• Viewing Contract and Support Information by Product in My VMware
• Moving License Keys in My VMware
• Viewing License Keys in My VMware
• Folder Management in My VMware

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

I anticipate most users of My VMware will be focused on a few key tasks like:

• Working with License Keys
• Managing Support Cases
• Downloading software

Working with License Keys

I image most people outside of the Procurement Contact will need to work with License Keys in some form or fashion.  In general, license keys haven’t changed from the old licensing portal.  You’ll see a collection of license keys for each VMware product that you own. Any notes that were entered in the license keys will still be there in My VMware.

The big change in My VMware is the ability to organize license keys into folders.  Everyone has a default “Home” Folder and, if you were a PLA or SLA, a folder with their full name in which all your license keys were deposited. You will now have the ability to organize these keys in a way that makes sense for your organization.  I can forsee this being broken down by Business Unit or Group Name and then possible further by physical location the licenses are deployed (see below screen shot with mocked up example).

My VMware Move License Keys Screen

In the end, it’s up to each user or team to come up with a logical organization system that works for them.  Create folders, name them, re-name them, nest them…it’s up to you.

A few Licenses Key items to note:

• When another user grants you access to a license key, they create a folder and placing that license key into that folder. You are granted access at the folder level.  So once that happens, you’ll see this new folder appear within your Home folder.  Most of the time users receiving licenses may not have the ability to move or rename this folder (it depends on the permissions the granting user gives you).
• A larger organization may eventually have the Super User define a folder organization structure for them to optimally manage the license keys for the enterprise.  This may cause other user’s folders to change.

Managing Support Cases

If you need to open a new Support Case or check on the status of an existing Support Case, you can do it all under the “Support” menu of My VMware.

Users will have the ability to see all support cases they have ever opened with VMware Support and search thru the history.  Once nice feature is the ability to search your Support History for specific or all Accounts you have access to (Super Users have additional visibility and can see all Support Cases for all Accounts they are Super User for)

My VMware Support Case History Screen

Downloading software

My VMware also provides links to allow you to download software quickly from within the Portal.  Evaluations, betas, trials, appliances, product downloads, they are all just one click away under the “Product and Downloads” menu of the portal.  Most of these will link you to the download locations that you are already familiar with.

My VMware Products & Downloads Home Screen

Full Details in the Knowledge Base:

• My VMware Product Licensing or Account Support Resources
• Viewing and updating Support Requests in My VMware
• My Download History in My VMware
• My Evaluations in My VMware

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

My VMware has only two officially Roles for users (and one default role, user).  Everyone is a user.  Then there is one Procurement User and one Super User.  All the roles associated with the old VMware license portal are gone (i.e., PLA, SLA, SA, RU).

• Super User: A Super User can manage license keys and users on behalf of an account, manage account user permissions, and add or remove users. There can be only one Super User for each account, but the same person may serve as Super User for multiple accounts.
• Procurement Contact: A Procurement Contact is the primary contact for the account, on behalf of the customer organization, for ordering, renewing, and quoting transactions. Although their primary responsibilities can be procurement tasks, the Procurement Contact can also manage license keys and support on behalf of a specific account, and manage account user permissions. There can be only one Procurement Contact for each account, but the same person may serve as Procurement Contact for multiple accounts.

For most companies, the Super User and Procurement Contact may be the same person.  The Super User can change who the Super User and Procurement Contact is at any time from the “Account Summary” screen.

My VMware Account Summary Screen

Here is a quick overview of how the old roles from the VMware License portal will migrate to roles within My VMware:

• PLAs become the Super User and Procurement Contact.  If more than one PLA is associated with the account, the last PLA who submitted an order becomes the Super User and Procurement Contact. For large enterprises this could be over ruled as part of the account consolidation (see below), in which case the old PLA will have full access to the folder containing the keys for your Orders.
• SLAs becomes a user with full access to the folders containing the orders you were made SLA for.
• SAs will be granted the ability to open Support Requests on the folders containing the orders you were made SA for.

As part of the My VMware launch, there was also a consolidation of account records within the VMware Orders/Contracts system.  Over the years a single company may have had multiple people (say from different Business Units) buy licenses from VMware.  Each order could have created a separate record in the VMware systems.  My VMware worked to consolidate all these record under the Super User (with some exceptions for larger customers).  As a result, the Super User will be able to see all orders, support contracts, license keys, and Support Requests within their organization. If you were the person who purchased a VMware Product for your team in the past, you will still have the same access to that order and license keys as before.  But the Super User for your company (assuming it’s not you) will also see it.

Full Details in the Knowledge Base:

• Roles in My VMware
• Users and Permissions in My VMware
• Super Users and Procurement Contacts in My VMware
• My VMware Super User Service

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

This past weekend VMware launched an exciting new customer portal called My VMware.  If you have ever gone to the VMware website to:

• Manage license keys
• Open a Support Request
• Download an eval or beta
• Manage a Support Contract or Order

Then the information below will apply to you as you’ll be working with the My VMware portal moving forward.

What is My VMware?

VMware listened to customers’ requests for easier navigation and a consolidated view of your license keys and support. As a result, we integrated many of the functions that used to be spread across multiple portals to provide a centralized view of the information you need within My VMware.  Your primary online activities will be faster, easier and more accessible, saving you time and effort.

My VMware Home Screen

Is the Web the Only Way to use My VMware?

Absolutely Not!  My VMware is not only a web portal.  The team also created the My VMware App for IOS available for both the iPhone and iPad and the My VMware App for Android. See My VMware Mobile App FAQ  and My VMware Mobile App Help Articles for more details.

I’m a Manager, Why Should I Care about My VMware?

My VMware provides unified access to all information about VMware product orders and support contracts that you have ever purchased. As a manager who may be in charge of multiple projects and teams, My VMware gives you the ability to better organize all your VMware Entitlements with customized folders and provides you fine grain control over what access members of your team have to these entitlements.

My VMware User Permissions Screen

I’m a VMware Architect/Admin, Why Should I Care about My VMware?

My VMware gives you one stop access to manage your license keys as well as a centralized location where you can open and review any of your VMware Support Requests.  From the portal you are also just one click away from software downloads, the Suport Knowledge Base, and many other commonly used resources from VMware. As you expand your environment or stand up new environments your newly purchased software license keys will also be deposited into your account.

My VMware Support Home Screen

I’m a Contracts/Procurement Person, Why Should I Care about My VMware?

My VMware enables you to see all VMware Orders and Support Contracts across your organization in one place.  If your responsibilities include high level management of the distribution of software licenses keys (like under an ELA), My VMware will allow you to provide license keys to business unit or group managers as well as organize these keys in a way that can mirror your organization.

My VMware Order History Screen

What’s the Biggest Gotcha with My VMware?

While the portal was designed to be easy to use, the one thing that I can foresee creating a little confusion is the potential for a user to have access to multiple Entitlement Accounts.  In general an account should correlate to your company and most users should only have one account.  However, it is possible for one company to end up with multiple accounts with various orders spread across these accounts.  My VMware is designed to allow you to work with the orders and entitlements from one account at a time.  If you’re looking for something that you know you own but don’t see it, check that you don’t have access to another Entitlement Account with your login.  It is possible for the Super User to contact VMware Support to request that two accounts are combined into one.

My VMware Account Selection Drop-Down

What’s the Future of My VMware?

You tell Us!

My VMware was built based on customer feedback.  Make sure you let the VMware team know what you think by using the “Feedback” link at the bottom of any screen within My VMware.  You can aslo let your VMware account team and the VMware support team know what else you need from My VMware.

…or maybe it should be “Say Hello to Your VMware (Portal)”.  The new portal for you to interact with (just about) all things VMware.

My VMware Home Screen

This past weekend VMware decommissioned a number of customer facing portals and consolidated all that functionality into one portal…My VMware. One place where you can manage your software licenses, open Support Request, manage your Orders/Contracts, and be one click away from a lot of other VMware goodness…

The Launch of My VMware was the culmination of a 2 year long project that involved hundreds of VMware staff.  Huge congratulations and thank you’s go out to everyone involved!  Double kudo’s go out to the team members who worked so diligently over this weekend to perform the go live migration and testing!!

The My VMware team created a number of information and help sites related to the launch that you should reference for answers to your questions:

1. To understand My VMware use the Guided Tour within the portal itself.  It should appear the first time you login to My VMware.  You can always go back to the Guided Tour by clicking “Learn more about My VMware” link in the upper right hand corner of the portal.
2. Check the My VMware FAQ to see if your question is answered there.
3. Visit the VMware Knowledge Base and click the “My VMware” option on the left hand side.

My VMware is not only a web portal.  The team also created the My VMware App for IOS available for both the iPhone and iPad and the My VMware App for Android.

I’ve been working with my clients and the My VMware team for a few months now preparing for this launch. During that time I’ve learned a bit about the most common tasks users will perform on this new portal and discovers a few gotchas as well. I’ve written up my experiences in the following set of blog posts that I hope you find valuable.

Please keep in mind that when my clients or I work with the portal, we’re usually dealing with literally hundreds of different licenses, order, contracts, and historic support requests that are spread across multiple divisions and business units of Fortune 100 enterprises.  So I may have a different view of the portal than most.

latoga’s Guide to My VMware

1. Say Hello to My VMware (Portal)
2. My VMware Quick Overview
3. My VMware Users and Roles
4. My VMware for Most of Us
5. My VMware for the Super Us(er)
6. Some My VMware Gotchas To Be Aware Of

I’ve said it before that the Universe speaks to you in three’s.  I got asked for info about VMware and Databases twice today, so I’m posting the list of resources I collected expecting the third request in the next few days…

VMware Resources Portals for Virtualizing Databases

• VMware Virtualizing Oracle blog
• The Virtualizing Oracle Community Forum
• DBonVMware twitter account posts links to the latest info
• Virtualizing Enterprise Applications – Oracle Technical Resource Center
• VMware and Oracle Global Alliance portal has info on Oracle support statements and industry commentary
• Getting Started with Oracle in VMware is a collection of community posts as a starting point
• Virtualizing Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere portal

Virtualizing Databases Specific Info

• DBA Guide to Databases on VMware
• Virtualizing Oracle 11gr2 RAC Databases on vSphere 5 blog post and workload characterization study
• Virtualizing Business-Critical Applications on VMware vSphere whitepaper talks about virtualizing DB
• EMC/VMW webinar recording “Performance and Provisioning for Virtualized Oracle“
• SQL Server License Issues for running virtualized

vFabric Database Solutions

There are other areas where VMware is working on database related solutions which most people still don’t realize:

• vFabric in-memory data solutions: GemFire is a in-memory massively scalable object based data fabric and SQLFire is an in-memory distributed SQL database.
• vFabric Data Directory is a Database as a Service (DBaaS) deployment and management solution.

So actually this is the Your Cloud Newsletter that I create for my private clients, but my english minor half had to play with the wording in the title.  So much good stuff in this month’s edition that I decided to redact the private stuff and share the rest with you!

VMworld 2012

Have you budgeted for VMworld 2012 yet? Seems like no matter how early we tell everyone about VMworld, people tend to get the green light and register just weeks before the event…and then can’t get into the sessions they want.  So make sure you start your planning now!

• VMworld San Francisco: August 27-30, 2012
• VMworld Barcelona: October 9-11, 2012

And here’s a ROI message incase your need to convince your boss.

vExpert Nominations Open

Is one of your co-workers a VMware Guru? Are they so dedicated to their Guru status that they blog about it after work? Then help make their Guru status official by nominating them to be a 2012 vExpert.

Latest Happenings from VMware

vSphere 5.0 Update 1 (ESXi and vCenter) Now Available!

• Permanent Device Loss (PDL) enhancement for streatched clusters

Other Recent Releases (with links to Release Notes)

• View 5.0.1
• vShield 5.0.1
• vCloud Director 1.5.1
• vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.4 Update 1
• vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0.1
• vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM) 5.5
• vCenter Chargeback Manager (CBM) 2.0.1
• vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS) 5.0
• vCloud Client for iPad (from iTunes)
• New View Clients: Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, and Android!

vCOPS has been getting lots of attention lately for the vSphere specfic dashboards available in 5.0. Here are some interesting tid-bits related to this dashboard:

• VCOPS Dashboard Overview video (via Eric Sloof)
• VCOPS Heatmaps and Event Management video (via Eric Sloof)
• VCOPS Dashboard with Lots of VMs screenshot (via Iwan Rahabok)

Microsoft Licensing is an ongoing discussion within the VMware Community.  Emma (aka LadyLicensing) has a great blog where she posts on this topic for the wider IT community.  There have also been some great discussions recently regarding MS Licensing for Desktop as a Service (DaaS).

New Flings available from the VMware Labs…

• Cloud Cleaner Cleans up your vCloud Environment
• Auto Deploy GUI is a vSphere plugin for the Auto Deploy component
• InventorySnapshot allows you to “snapshot” a given vCenter inventory configuration and reproduce it
• Onyx serves as a proxy between vSphere Client and vCenter Server to translate communication into PowerShell
• vBenchmark allows you to measure key datacenter operational and efficiency metrics

VMware Forum 2012 is a free full day event where you will hear VMware, Industry Experts, and IT Professionals discuss virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions as well as get a chance to network with your peers.  Below are some of the sessions:

• Online Forum on April 12
• Dallas, TX on May 2
• Boston, MA on May 15
• Washington, DC on June 19
• Raleigh, NC on July 19

Check the VMware Forum 2012 website for full schedule and to register for one of these events.

VMware Customer Support Days

Have you attended a Customer Support Day yet?  If not, you’re missing a golden opportunity to learn from our Global Support Services (GSS) experts!

Upcoming Support Days:

• April 4, 2012: New York, Manhattan
• May 22 – May 23, 2012: Palo Alto (Customer and joint Support Day with Cisco, NetApp and VMware)
• May 31, 2012 (Tentative): Virtual Support Day
• July 29, 2012: Dallas
• October 3, 2012: Boston

More dates, both in US and Internationally, are being planned. Please check the website regularly for updates and to register for an event.

So the big Apple divident announcement hit this morning. And all the news media (including a few financial sites I’ve looked at) seem to be focusing on the wrong numbers.

As the first sentence in their announcement states: spending $45 Billion (of domestic cash…2 key words there) over 3 Years; averaging out to $3.75B per quarter. $10B of that will be to repurchase shares to negate employee stock grants (aka, dilution of public stock); averaging $.8B ($833M specifically) per quarter. If you take the repurchase program out of the equation (it’s just negating new stocking coming into the open market that’s pay for all the Apple employee’s new cars, home remodels, and kid’s college savings programs) you have just under $3 Billion of Apple’s quarterly cash hoard being returned to investors.

Now the part not being focused on in most media circles: In their 1st Quarter of FY2012 Apple Generated $16B in cash. That number is expected to grow each quarter with a FY2012 total expected to be $75B. So the dividend pay out will only slow the rate of Apple’s cash growth (in FY12Q1 they would have generated $13B instead of $16B; the FY2012 total slips from expected $75B to an estimated $63B).  Most of Apple’s competitors still wish they could generate that much revenue, not just free cash.

The other small caveat being missed. The payouts come from domestic cash. Of Apple’s near $100B cash balance, about $64B of that is overseas. Not taxed by the US Government.

So the Dividend payout is great for investors as our growth stock now is also an income stock as well. It’s great for Apple because it attracts a new class of institutional investment money (income seeking) but it also allows Apple to continue to shift cash into overseas accounts. I’m not a corporate tax expert but it would be nice if a news agency would focus on the impact of this small tid bit.

(Disclaimer: I’m an Apple stockholder)

Over the past few months I’ve been changing over the most frequently used lights in my house with new energy efficient LED light bulbs.  Many of the new bulbs have highly accurate color temperatures (important for consistent lighting over time…especially when illuminating photographs!) and have dramatically come down in price over the past few months.

Before I started this conversion process, I ran some lighting OpEx calculations to see how long it would take me to recover the higher cost of the LED lights.  To my surprise, and thanks to my higher California cost of electricity, these new bulbs don’t take very long to pay for themselves. I recently shared the Excel spreadsheet I create to calculate the OpEx savings with a photographer who is opening up a gallery and invested in LED lights.  I figured if he found it valuable others might as well, so I’m sharing it publicly here.

To use the calculator:

1. Download the Lighting Opex Calc document
2. Change the Average cost per Kilowatt Hour (yellow field) to your cost for electricity (industry calculations typically use $.11/KWH, I suspect most people’s are slightly higher like mine)
3. Update the rows for each similar wattage light on each room’s switch (add more rows and fill down the OpEx Costs fields as needed)
4. See how many Months/Years it will take to break even on the cost of the new light bulbs.

If you find this calculator valuable, drop me a line and let me know.

Some leasons learned to date:

• Try LED bulbs purchased locally from stores with good return policies; when paying $30-$60 per bulb, you want to make sure it is exactly what you need now and for the next 10+ years, if it’s not perfect, take it back. These bulbs cost too much for them not to be exactly what you want. LED bulb manufacturers should also learn to package their bulbs in resealable packages for this specific reason…
• I’ve had good luck with bulbs from Home Depot and Lowes…
• If you have dimmer switches, your LED bulbs will be brighter than you expect at the lowest setting, something you have to get used to. And I’ve heard rumors of dimmer switches with more than 4-5 bulbs sometimes having problems where the bulbs flicker.
• If you have digital dimmers designed for halogen lights (to not produce a hum), they won’t work with LED bulbs.

VMworld 2011 Overview

Even with Hurricane Irene trying to dampen our spirits, VMworld attracted a record number of 19,000+ customers, partners, press and analysts, and 250 sponsors and exhibitors signifying major interest from the IT industry in cloud computing and the next generation of IT. There are now over 86,000 VMware Certified Professionals in 146 countries and over 800,000 vSphere administrators worldwide.

The VMworld Hands on Labs again set records.  This year the labs were run on a geographically distributed Public Cloud hosted in Switch (US-West), Terremark (US-East) and in COLT (Europe-East), all powered by vSphere 5.0 and vCloud Director 1.5.  Some quick lab stats:

• 480 lab seats were avaialble for a total of 50 hours (24,000 lab seat hours)
• VMworld First: labs included partner labs from Cisco, EMC and NetApp
• Total of 13,415 labs were taken
• Total of 148,138 virtual machines were deployed (that’s 1.215 VMs/second!)
• 3 attendees finished all 27 Hands on Labs!
• Best of all…VMworld Hands On Labs will be going public in 2012…

Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra and Mozy to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Additionally, Project Octopus will offer easy integration with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service. These two projects promise to dramatically simplify the access and sharing of information across people and mobile devices, contributing to the Connected Enterprise.

Project AppBlast will provide the universal delivery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any device supporting HTML5, enabling instant remote access to applications without the heavy footprint of the underlying operating system.

Horizon Mobile (formally MVP) to deliver virtual desktops to mobile devices and enable a new class of dual persona mobile devices. Mobile Virtualization for the Enterprise.

Want to see what you missed?

• The General Sessions recordings are available at VMworld.com.
• VMworld TV has overview videos from each day and a bunch of interviews up on YouTube
• SiliconANGLE has a collection of interview videos they conducted at VMworld that is well worth reviewing

Below are key announcements in each of the VMware Focus Areas with links to the full press release for each announcement.

End User Computing 

Application Platform

Cloud Infrastructure

(The following is taken from a newsletter I produce for my clients that I’m pre-posting here on the blog.)

Back on July 12th, VMware unveiled the Cloud Infrastructure Suite which included vSphere 5.

vSphere 5 New Features

• vCloud Director 1.5 - Now with fast provisioning via Linked Clones and more.
  
• vShield 5 - new flow monitoring, L2 firewall, REST APIs, enhanced groupings
• vShield App with Data Security - Adds policy based management to protect sensitive data is not being shared inappropriately.
• Site Recovery Manager 5.0 - works with vCenter 5.0, vSphere (host) based replication, Automated Failback, and more.
• vCenter Heartbeat 6.4 -  works with vCenter 5.0
•  vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) 1.0 - New Product - allowing you to take local storage from up to 3 servers and turn that into a Virtual NAS. VSA is designed for the SMB users but can be useful for point deployments with the enterprise.

Following on the vSphere 5 License adjustment, VMware recently released the vSphere 5 License Advisor.  This is a tool that you can use to run against your vSphere 4.1, vSphere 4.0, or Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 deployments to understand how the vSphere 5 vRAM licensing entitlement will affect your installation.

Note: I’ve heard some comments that the tool may have some reporting issues in the GUI with deployments in excess of 1000 VMs, but that the exported report is correct.  I would appreciate anyone who can validate these reports…

So VMware announced a change in licensing with vSphere 5…the customers reacted…and VMware listened and adjusted the licensing in about 3 weeks.  Quite a rarity in the enterprise software industry…

When I talked to my clients about the licensing changes that were coming with vSphere 5, the reaction wasn’t really one of shock to a change (they had realized that VMware would eventually need to change licensing somehow as the server industry moved to larger sized servers) but  rather a raising of concerns over Enterprise Plus only having a 48GB vRAM entitlement and concern that the new vRAM entitlement in general would limit the desire to virtualize more Tier 1 applications. Non-production groups also had concerns over the transient nature of their dev/test environments which could have short spikes in vRAM usage when lots of VMs get deployed.  Apparently, my clients were not unique in their concerns…

Today VMware announced a change to the new vSphere 5 licensing:

• Raising the vRAM entitlements per vSphere editions
• Essentials / Essentials Plus / Standard are now 32GB  of vRAM per license
• Enterprise is now 64 GB of vRAM per license
• Enterprise Plus is now 96 GB of vRAM per license
• vRAM consumption per running VM is now capped at 96GB
• a VM configured with 96GB up to 1 TB of vRAM will only reduce the vRAM entitlement pool by 96GB.
• vCenter will calculate & report on a 12 month trailing average of vRAM usage rather than a high watermark
• This will reduce the risk of transient VM environments requiring additional vRAM licenses.
• Note: This change will not be reflecterd in the vSphere 5 reporting capabilities at GA time; it will appear in an vSphere 5 future update release but be trackable via a free utility from VMware until then.

VMware vSphere 5 by Editions

VMware also announced a new vSphere Desktop license package for those environments that use vSphere to host Virtual Desktops.  This new license only counts the total number of powered on virtual desktops and is available in packs of 100 desktop licenses.  Most View users usually purchase a View bundle which includes the vSphere licenses.  For those users who run non-View manage desktops on vSphere, they would purchase those licenses via this new vSphere 5.0 Desktop license pack.

Three weeks ago VMware announced and launched Cloud Foundry (right before I went on vacation, one of the reasons for the delay in this post). An open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) designed to support multiple programming models and multiple clouds for eventual deployment to. In the past three short week Cloud Foundary has seen thousands upon thousands of developers signup and receive free beta accounts…with an apparent growing queue as I’m still waiting on mine…I guess that’s what I get for taking a vacation and signing up late.

Between Rod Johnson’s post and Steve Herrord’s post introducing Cloud Foundry, you get a good sense of the initial offering (summarized by the above image). There are also a number of more detailed posts available at the Cloud Foundry Blog and of course the real gritty stuff of the open source code available at CloudFoundry.org.

But what does all this mean in the bigger picture to the Enterprise Programmer?

I have been dealing with a number of client product development teams recently.  The conversations have classically revolved around vSphere and vCoud Director and how they could use this to help automate their internal dev/test environments…yes, build a dev/test private cloud.  Lately, the meetings have not just included the IT support group from the team, but also developers.  More questions have been coming up around how the developers would interact with this private cloud.  If the developers have used AWS before, they start to compare and contrast it to AWS.  Which tends to be an apples to oranges comparison to vSphere + vCloud Director as they only provide the IaaS, not a PaaS.  With the addition of vFabric and the Cloud Foundry capabilities, a dev/test PaaS Cloud becomes a reality.

Even better, the enterprise developer can use many of the dev tools they are already familiar within within Cloud Foundry. Moving forward, they don’t have to think in the boxed confines of their single programming environment to solve all their problems.  Since Cloud Foundry can support multiple frameworks, and is open sourced to allow additional framework integrations, developers can now think about the best framework to solve the individual problems of their application.  Spin up and down environments based on those frameworks quickly in the cloud and even hook automated test harnesses into their cloud for automated testing.  Not that this is new in the general sense, but now the dev and test environments can expand and contract across the entire compute infrastructure, running as dev/test private cloud, based on demand and business need.

Self-admittedly, It’s been years since I last wrote any code and I may be simplifying things here…but that’s a large part of my job. A few years back I worked on boot strapping my own SaaS Application, so part of my simplification is based on personal experience.  At that time, we were limited to a few VPS service providers (we used Joyent and Linode) and spent way to much time building out IT infrastructure on our VPS’ to support our application development needs (code repositories, bug tracking systems, agile development tools) not to mention the development framework components that needed to integration test within our environment (message queues, GUI frameworks, logging infrastructure). We tried building out local (on our laptop) VM based development environments, but we couldn’t integrate them easily into our cloud based VPS’…even more time wasted.  At the time I was cursing the fact that we could just get this preconfigured in the cloud. We weren’t doing anything new.  I hated re-inventing the wheel.  In the end, time ran short and our personal window of opportunity closed on us before we could launch beta.

I expect to soon be seeing dev/test private clouds that will not only help to speed up and reduce the costs of current development projects, but allow entrepreneurial developers to turn their ideas into a beta reality quicker than ever before.  Within the enterprise this means more flexibility using the existing computing resources. Some of the Private Clouds of today will quickly become PaaS Clouds with the help of Cloud Foundry and vFabric.

Do you agree?  Or am I off my simplified rocker?

Here is an interesting video from Andy where he took the time to show the history of upgrading through each version of MS Windows by actually doing that inside a VMware VM!

Sure this video is interesting from the “wow, I remember that  OS…how far we’ve come” aspect. But I find it more interesting from the “a current version of VMware could still run that old OS” aspect. I have a colleague who’s client “upgraded” their control system for their assembly line not by paying the $100,000′s upgrade price to install new hardware and move to the latest OS and controller software version, but by paying a few $10,000′s to P2V the existing controller systems to VMs and then run them all on two modern mid-range servers. These systems didn’t demand a lot of performance, they just needed to work. The old version of the OS and controller software weren’t broken, just the model in which it all operated (physical servers versus VMs).

One of my clients even has a “convalescence ESX cluster” where they move old apps to so they can die a slow hardware oversubscription death.  These are apps that either can’t be tracked back to the owner but see an occasional blip of activity or are apps that the owners are steadfastly refusing to EOL. So rather than keep them running on old servers taking up rack space and excess power in the data center, they built a special ESX cluster just to run them all on. They are available and work when needed and it was the path of least resistance for the IT staff.

So, what Legacy workloads do you have running in a VMware VM in your datacenter?  Leave a comment and let’s see what is the most obscure OS / Software Version we can find.  Don’t worry…you can leave it anonymously to protect the guilty…

(Thanks goes out to @herrod for the pointer to the video.)

This past weekend, I was feeding Matthew when he fell asleep in my arms. As I’ve gotten into the habbit of doing during these moments, I catch up on my blog reading thanks to the iPad and Matthew both fitting in my lap at the same time (for now).  In the course of my blog wanderings, I came across this blog post of some Denver area Creatives who were reflecting on what they learned this year, this one quote struck me most at that moment:

You have about 25,000 potential days to work, but less than 1,000 weekends before your children will leave home.

That night I came across the following Ted Talks video while while fighting my sleeplessness:

These two put together became something worth sharing.

Note: in the past I’ve posted stuff when the Universe was talking to me. Multiple things (usually in threes….) would come to me over the course of a day or two and be linked by a common theme. Needing to be shared. I’ve now started calling these Universe Dots. Connect them when you’re aware, ignore them if you’re not.  Find mine moving forward under this topic.

I hope that your holiday’s are already in full swing! If you have a VMware Administrator on your holiday shopping list (or you are one and haven’t bought yourself a present yet) I recently came across a few books that may help.

vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive

A new book from Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman.  If you have every wanted more details on the ins and outs of vSphere HA and how Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) works, this is the book for you.  If you’re read either of their blogs, you know these guys are the perfect duo with the hands on experience to have written this book.

VMware ESXi: Planning, Implementation, and Security

A recent book from Dave Mishchenko.  With the the future releases of vSphere being offered as ESXi only, if you haven’t started thinking about how to upgrade your environment to ESXi, this is a great resource or that process.

(note: Amazon is an affiliate sponsor of this blog)

Regular readers will have realized a couple of things:

1. Posts have been a little slow lately…still adapting to family life and focusing on building out some new family infrastructure. I plan on getting back to a more regular posting habit within a few months.
2. The Virtualization Round Up posts have stopped…they actually just move to a more suitable location, Twitter.  They are my tweets hash-tagged with #VRU.

Thanks to the wonderful search feature of twitter, you can now see the latest Virtualization Round Up Tweets on the sidebar (though the search results seem a bit unpredictable…).  You can also follow me to get the Round Ups in real time…