For those thinking of starting a blog, here’s what vmguy.com has grown to in one year’s time:

6,500 unique visitors per month

250,000 hits per month

1,152 newsfeed subscribers

153 posts

179 comments

That’s only a post every other day, I’ll need to work on that.

Thanks again for all your support,

-Dave “the vmguy” Lawrence

This KB article (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008027) reads:

For VMware FT to be supported, the servers that host the virtual machines must each use a supported processor from the same category as documented below:

Intel Xeon based on 45nm Core 2 Microarchitecture Category:
3100 Series
3300 Series
5200 Series (DP)
5400 Series
7400 Series

Intel Xeon based on Core i7 Microarchitecture Category:
3500 Series
5500 Series

AMD 3rd Generation Opteron Category:
1300 and 1400 Series
2300 and 2400 Series (DP)
8300 and 8400 Series (MP)

Please note the requirement “same category.”  As an example, if you have a server with a 54xx series Intel Processor and a Intel 55xx series processor (both have the technology for FT), you can vMotion and DRS between them (via EVC) but you cannot run a Fault Tolerant pair across them.  The Lockstep technology from Intel changed in the 35xx and 55xx CPUs and is not compatible with the previous generations of lockstep.

The 4.0.4 release is a maintenance bug fix release. See Resolved Issues.

This release adds the following enhancements:

• Journaling support for the virtual registry.This support prevents data corruption when an application fails during a write operation, a power failure, or an incomplete disk flush on a removable disk.
• German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User’s Guide.

This release does not support the Windows 7 operating system. If you try ThinApp with Windows 7, VMware invites you to share your feedback in the community forum.

Some nice updates included in the release notes:

vCenter Chargeback 1.0.1 provides the following new features:

• Support for Windows Authentication
  This release of vCenter Chargeback supports Windows Authentication for SQL Server databases. If you are using SQL Server for the vCenter Chargeback database or for the vCenter Server database, then you can configure the application to use Windows Authentication instead of SQL Authentication.
• New computing resource and billing policies added
  This release of vCenter Chargeback introduces a new computing resource, vCPU, and two new billing policies,vCPU Count and Memory Size and Fixed Cost and vCPU Count and Memory Size. These policies enable you to calculate cost based on the number of virtual CPUs and the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machines.
• Resource Summary section lists rolled-up usage data for all entities
  The Resource Summary section of the chargeback reports show the rolled-up usage data for all the entities.
• Global fixed cost history is retained
  This release of vCenter Chargeback lets you to set different cost values for different time periods on the same global fixed cost. The old values are retained and not overwritten.
• Ability to undo to the most recent operation on the chargeback hierarchy
  The most recent operation on the chargeback hierarchy can be undone. This undo feature is available for entities that are added or moved in the hierarchy. The undo option is not available for rename and delete operations.
• Ability to use the vCenter Chargeback APIs
  vCenter Chargeback APIs provide an interface to programmatically use the various features of vCenter Chargeback. As an application developer, you can use these APIs to build chargeback applications or integrate vCenter Chargeback with your internal billing systems and compliance policies. Please do note that the APIs released with this version of vCenter Chargeback are only for a technical preview.

Here’s the giant What’s New setion from the release notes:

Optimized for Snow Leopard

• New 64-bit native core engine leverages power of Snow Leopard.
• Support for both 32-bit and 64-bit Snow Leopard kernels.

3D Graphics Improvements

• Support for Windows Aero with WDDM driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
• DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3 support for Windows virtual machines.
• OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows XP virtual machines.
• Improved 2D drawing performance in Unity, Single Window, and Full Screen views.

Easy Migration from Windows PCs

• Integrated Migration Assistant guides you through migrating your PC to a virtual machine.
• Automatically discover your Windows PC on the same network.
• Save directly to your Mac the virtual machine that the Migration Assistant creates.

Full Support for Windows 7 Guests

• Support for Windows Easy Install.
• Support for Windows Aero, including Flip 3D.
• Support for DirectX 9.0EX with OpenGL 1.4 with new WDDM graphics driver.
• Support for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 on Boot Camp partitions.

Performance Improvements

• New 64-bit native core engine maximizes overall performance.
• Full support for 4-way SMP.
• Now automatically expose virtual multi-core CPUs to your virtual machines. This allows some versions of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 to use additional cores.
• Greatly reduced memory usage when booting up Windows virtual machines.
• Greatly reduced memory usage when using Windows Vista and later virtual machines.
• Greatly reduced memory usage when using new Windows XP virtual machines created with Windows Easy Install in Fusion 3.0.

Unity Improvements

• Always-on Applications Menu on the Mac menu bar. Start guest applications directly from the Applications menu.
• Windows applications work like Mac applications and work with application-specific Exposé.
• Run 3D games and 1080p video in Unity view.
• Access to Windows taskbar tray items in Unity view in the Mac menu bar.
• Preview window allows you to monitor your virtual machine desktop and resize the window, even in Unity view.
• Improved responsiveness in Unity view

VHD Import

• Download and import free Windows trials from Microsoft.
• Import VHD virtual disks as VMware virtual machines.

Automatic Updates

• Built-in software updater that checks, downloads, and installs VMware Fusion updates.

Virtual Machine Library

• Easy access to common tasks with the Home view. Install guest operating systems, migrate physical PCs, set up a Boot Camp virtual machine, or download virtual appliances.
• Discover and import virtual machines that Parallels Desktop or Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac create.

Full Screen View Improvements

• New Full Screen view menu bar gives you full control of your virtual machine, including choosing when the menu bar appears in Full Screen view.
• Move the full screen view menu bar to any side of the screen to avoid blocking guest user interface elements such as taskbars in Windows, the desktop menu in Linux, or the menu bar in Mac OS X Server guests.
• Smooth animated transition when entering and exiting Full Screen view.

Multiple Display Improvements

• Multiple-display Full Screen view with better performance for monitor layouts larger than 4096 pixels wide or 4096 pixels high on most Macs.
• Multiple-display Full Screen view and multiple-display Unity view that work with WDDM in Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests.

Other UI Improvements

• Cancelable Resume.
• Live, smooth resize when resizing a virtual machine window.
• Access the Virtual Machine Library from the VMware Fusion Dock icon.

Shared Folders and Mirrored Folders Improvements

• Automatically hide common hidden Windows files in a shared folder, for example, Thumbs.db, $RECYCLE.BIN, and so on.
• Open Microsoft Outlook attachments with Mac applications.
• Improved compatibility with third-party applications including WLW, Office 2007, and so on.

Copy and Paste, Drag and Drop Improvements

• Copy and paste images between a Windows or Linux virtual machine and the Mac.
• Copy and paste formatted text (RTF) between a Linux virtual machine and the Mac.
• Drag images between Windows applications and Mac applications.
• Drag Microsoft Outlook attachments from a Windows virtual machine to the Mac.
• Drag files in a virtual machine directly onto Mac applications

Full Support for Mac OS X Leopard Server and Snow Leopard Server as Guests

• Support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard host.
• Support for Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard virtual machines running the 64-bit kernel (K64).
• Now boots from virtual EFI for maximum compatibility with Mac OS X.

Keyboard Improvements

• Faster performance with Remapped Keys.
• Automatically recognizes European keyboards. Sending keys like @, {, }, and others to Windows works just like it does on the Mac.

Virtual Hard Disk Improvements

• Mount a suspended virtual machine’s virtual disks as read-only Mac volumes.

Networking Improvements

• Select a specific network adapter for bridged networking.
• Support for IPv6 in bridged networking.
• Override the Ethernet MAC address of the virtual adapter.

Shared Smart Card

• Access supported CAC or PIV smart cards from the Mac and a Windows virtual machine at the same time.

You can find the download in the download section here.

Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support:

• New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
• New Features in VMware Workstation
• Developer Tools

New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems

This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System	Host and Guest Support
Windows 7 Home Basic Windows 7 Premium Windows 7 Business Windows 7 Enterprise Windows 7 Ultimate	Host and guest
Windows 2008 SP2, R2	Guest
Windows Vista SP2	Guest
Debian 5	Guest
Ubuntu 9.04	Host and guest
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3	Host and guest
CentOS 5.3	Guest
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3	Guest
OpenSUSE 11.x	Host and guest
Mandriva 2009	Host and guest
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.x	Host and guest

New Features in VMware Workstation

• Windows 7 — Create and run Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines using VMware Workstation. VMware Workstation has been enhanced for performance and to take advantage of the new Windows 7 features including Live Thumbnails and Aero Peek.
• Aero Glass — A new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) graphics driver has been developed for Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines. The WDDM driver can display the Windows Aero user interface, OpenGL 1.4, and Shader Model 3.0. For more information on the VMware recommended graphics hardware, see the VMware Workstation User’s Manual.
• Windows XP Mode Compatible — Import a Windows XP Mode virtual machine using VMware Workstation 7.0 and run the virtual machine without being prompted to enter a Windows XP license key. VMware Workstation enables the Windows XP Mode virtual machine to take advantage of more than one processor, render high-end graphics, integrate seamlessly with Unity, and transfer files easily with drag and drop, and shared folders. VMware Workstation also has the ability to run concurrently with Windows XP Mode.
• 3D Graphics Improvements for Windows XP guests — OpenGL 2.1 and Shader Model 3.0 support is now available for Windows XP virtual machines. The XPDM (SVGAII) graphics driver works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. However, only Windows XP virtual machines install the XPDM graphics driver by default. To switch graphics drivers in the guest operating system, see How to Switch Between SVGAII and WDDM Drivers.
• vSphere 4.0 and ESX Support — Install and run ESX 4.0 as a guest operating system. VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) and technical professionals can install the latest server virtualization software and experiment with server setup, conduct training, show demos, and test production configurations. Running ESX as a guest eliminates the need to have spare hardware available to run ESX natively and enables ESX to run on systems that are not listed on the ESX hardware compatibility list (HCL). For more information on the supported processors and host operating systems, see Considerations for Running an ESX Guest.
  This feature is intended for educational and demonstration purposes only and should not be used in production environments. To use this feature, you must download vSphere 4.0 from the VMware Web site and follow the installation documentation provided with vSphere to install ESX.
• Virtual Printing — Print from virtual machines without mapping network printers or installing printer drivers in the virtual machine. With virtual printing enabled in the virtual machine setting, all of the printers installed on the host operating system are available in the guest operating system. This functionality is enabled through a partnership with ThinPrint, Inc.
• Four-Way SMP — Create and run virtual machines with a total of four processor cores, which can consist of four single-core processors, two dual-core processors, or one quad-core processor like the new Intel i7.
• 32GB Guest Memory — Run virtual machines with up to 32GB of memory using VMware Workstation.
• 256-bit Encryption — Secure your virtual machines with AES256-bit encryption to prevent unauthorized users from accessing or running the configuration files.
• AutoProtect —Schedule snapshots of your virtual machine to be created at a regular interval to ensure that you always have a snapshot available to revert to when needed.
• Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) — ALSA significantly improves the sound of virtual machines running on a Linux host and streams the audio from each virtual machine on a separate channel so that multiple virtual machines can be heard simultaneously.
• Cross-Platform License Keys — Use the VMware Workstation 7.0 license key on both the Windows and Linux versions. Make sure you read the EULA for the terms and conditions that must be met when switching platforms.
• Pause a Virtual Machine — Free your CPU resources instantaneously without powering off or suspending the virtual machine.
• Expand Virtual Disks — Increase the size of the virtual disk from within VMware Workstation. For Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests, the disk partitions can be adjusted without the use of additional software.
• Compact Virtual Disks — Reclaim unused space from a virtual disk so that the host or another virtual machine can use it.
• Shared Folder Compatibility — Increased compatibility with many Windows applications that previously were unable to read or write files to shared folders.
• On-Demand VMware Tools Download — On-demand download capability provides the latest VMware Tools for the guest operating system. This feature reduces the overall download size of VMware products by downloading only the required set of VMware Tools and and enables VMware to release new versions frequently.
• Drag and Drop Enhancements — Drag and drop enhancements include support for new file types including images and formatted text and extend the existing ability to drag and drop files to a broader set of guest and host operating systems.
• Virtual Network Editor — User interface enhancements have simplified creating and configuring virtual networks.
• Fuse Mount for Linux — Use Fuse to mount .vmdk disks on to the file system of Linux hosts.
• Simplified Collection of Support Information — Gather detailed information about multiple virtual machines and the host machine at the same time. The information is packaged in a compressed file so that you can email it to VMware support or post it on the VMware Workstation forums.
• IPv6 Support — Create a bridged connection to an IPv6 network on VMware Workstation virtual machines.

Developer Tools

• Replay Debugging — Enhancements in replay debugging make the feature faster and easier to use. Developers can attach to a particular process instance, attach to a process in the middle of a recording, and ensure that the executables and symbols on the host machine match the guest. Developers can remotely view the exact state of the machine when the system failed and replay the recording to see the circumstances that led the system to fail. For more information about replay debugging, see the new Integrated Virtual Debugger for Visual Studio Developer’s Guide and technical note for Replay Debugging on Linux .
• SpringSource Tools Suite Integration — Use the latest version of the SpringSource Tools Suite to run and debug Java applications in a VMware Workstation virtual machine without leaving the development environment. You can download the latest SpringSource Tools Suite from the Spring Source Web site.
• Remotely Debug C and C++ Applications for Eclipse — Set a remote debugging session inside a controlled C and C++ environment where the guest operating system is different from the host. For more information about remotely debugging C and C++ for Eclipse, see the Integrated Virtual Debugger for Eclipse Developer’s Guide .
• VMware Tools Configuration Utility – Use the new VMware Tools command-line interface (CLI) to automate configuration of VMware Tools in guest operating systems. With CLI you can modify VMware Tools settings, shrink virtual disks, connect and disconnect virtual devices, and more. For information on the VMware Tools configuration utility, see the new VMware Tools Configuration Utility User’s Guide.

How do you enable EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) in a cluster that is running vCenter?  On vCenter4, as long as the CPU baseline does not change from what the CPUs are running at currently, you should be able to do this while vCenter is running.  But what if your on 3.5 (which requires all VMs to be down to enable EVC) or if you need to change the baseline from the current when you enable EVC (which also requires the VMs to be down)?

Yes it can be done (if you have enough hosts). All the details can be found in KB article 1013111.  It becomes a “shell game” of moving hosts and VMs.  You basically start a new cluster with no hosts.  Turn on EVC on the new cluster.  Put one of your hosts into maintenance mode and remove it from it’s current cluster.  You can then add that host to the new cluster.  Then you can shut down vCenter and remove it from the inventory (note the storage location) and re-add it into the new cluster and power it on.  You can then balance moving VMs to the new cluster.  This may be able to be done live, unless the baselines are off which will require the VMs to be cold-migrated.  As hosts are emptied of VMs, you can then migrate them to the new cluster.

I don’t believe this should be a major impact on whether to run vCenter in a VM, just one thing to remember if you do.

Capacity Awareness

• View and analyze past, present, and future capacity states at-a-glance with dashboard graphs and tables.
• Eliminate costly routine monitoring and management tasks through automation using customized capacity thresholds and alerts.

Capacity Optimization

• Reclaim excess capacity from idle, oversized, or powered-off virtual machines.
• Size and allocate capacity for each virtual machine based on historical and future needs.
• Place virtual machines in the most optimal clusters to eliminate further waste.

Capacity Prediction

• Simulate one-time business events to quantify potential business impact.
• Identify the timing of potential capacity shortfalls based on trends and forecasts.
• Purchase and provision capacity as and when needed.

There is one important thing to note from the release notes: “CapacityIQ supports VirtualCenter 2.5, Update 4 and Update 5, managing hosts running ESX Server 3.0.2 through 3.5. CapacityIQ 1.0 does not support VMware vSphere 4.0 or vCenter 4.0.”

You can find the download in the download section here.

ok, now I’ll have to write more to keep my status!  New post coming tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks Eric.

This release of Site Recovery Manager introduces several new features:

• Full compatibility with vCenter 4.
• Full support for NFS-based arrays.
• Support for shared recovery sites.
  Enables many-to-one pairings of protected sites with a recovery site. For more information, see the technical note Installing, Configuring, and Using Shared Recovery Site Support, which is available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.
• Resilience in the face of vCenter unavailability during a test recovery.
  Placeholder virtual machines can be quickly repaired after the protected site vCenter becomes available again.
• New repair-mode installation features.
  You can run the SRM installer in repair mode if you need to change configuration parameters such as vCenter credentials, database connection information or credentials, and certificate details.
• Graphical interface to advanced settings.
  Eliminates most requirements to edit the XML configuration file
• Support for DB2 as an SRM database server.
• New licensing options.
• Improved scalability.
  A single protection group can now include up to 1000 virtual machines.
• Full Compatibility With DPM (Distributed Power Management)
  SRM recovery plans can now power-on or power-off a host that is in standby mode.
• New Option to dr-ip-customizer Utility
  The dr-ip-customizer utility now logs less verbose diagnostic output by default. To force dr-ip-customizer to log the same level of diagnostic output that it produced in earlier releases, use the -verbose option.
• Change in Certificate Validation
  When you select certificate authentication, the SRM installation validates the certificate you supply before continuing. Certificates signed with an MD5 key are no longer allowed.
• Support for Protecting Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines.
  SRM can now protect virtual machines that have been configured for fault-tolerant operation. When recovered, these virtual machines lose their fault tolerance, and must be manually reconfigured after recovery to restore fault tolerance.
• Improved context-sensitive Help.
• PDF documents available on release media
  Current versions of the PDF documents for this release are available in the docs folder at the root of the SRM 4.0 CD. Updated versions of these documents may be available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.

I am very happy to report that this is not true. VMware notified the channel partners yesterday that Enterprise Edition of vSphere will continue beyond the end of 2009.  This is great news for customers wanting additional choices in their licensing options.

Having said that, please be aware that there is a current promotion for upgrading vSphere editions.  Please note that these heavily discounted prices for upgrading licenses ends December 15th, 2009.  If you are considering upgrading, don’t wait till the end of December or you’ll miss out on the promo pricing.

Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

VMware Fusion 2.0.6 is a maintenance release of VMware Fusion 2. It is a free upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1 and VMware Fusion 2 customers, and provides the following enhancements:

• Fixes multiple issues when running VMware Fusion 2.0.x on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (32-bit kernel mode)
• Provides improved 3D performance on Macs with NVIDIA graphics cards running Mac OS X 10.6
• Contains fixes for more than 20 bugs

You can download the updated version here.

For events outside my coverage area (KY, IN, OH, PA), here’s a couple places to check:

VMware’s Partner seminars

VMware’s Alliance Partner Seminars

Upcoming Industry Events

Upcoming Webcasts

Also be sure to check your favorite partner’s website or just ask them if there are any events planned in your area.

The first is wondering how an admin can do more advanced things with the View Manager Server.  For instance: assign a default desktop out of a pool to a specific user or  listing orphaned desktops (users that no longer exist or have changed permissions and no longer have access to a desktop in a pool but still have one assigned to them) or cleaning up after removing a secondary View Manager server.  All of these items can be performed by a little-known command line utility included in View called vdmadmin.exe. vdmadmin.exe can do all of the things mentioned.  The tool is installed by default with view in the  C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\bin directory.  You can read all of the details about the tool and all of the command options here .  "Why is this a command-line tool?" you ask.  When features are requested for the GUI, a programmer has to create and test the GUI options which takes a lot of time.  The product manager has to decide what features will make in into the released product and still keep it on time for release.  Sometime features or controls don’t make it but are still important.  A developer can write a command line executable and they are much easier to test as the command line either works or it does not.  The Quality Assurance process is much easier for command line utilities.

Another tool that’s good to know is sviconfig.exe.  It’s located on the vCenter server where you install composer in the C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View Composer directory.  This tool allows you to unlock protected entities in vCenter.  For instance, if a user checks out a VM offline, it gets protected in vCenter so that an admin cannot accidentally delete it or power it on and make changes.  If the admin needs to make changes to it for some reason they can use the sviconfig tool to unlock that VM.

There’s also a few other topics that come up frequently.  Here are a few:

Can you protect View Desktops with Site Recovery Manager? Unfortunately, SRM is not "View aware" as yet.  The work is underway however.  Tommy Walker from VMware (one of the best @ VMware) has written a blueprint with EMC on how to accomplish this task (although experimental at this point).  It’s pretty interesting reading and I’m very hopeful that we’ll see native integration coming.  You can read the very detailed blueprint here (registration required).

What features do I get with thin client "x"? With the different number of options available for View Thin Clients there’s also a number of different thin client OS options.  Here is a great matrix of what features you get with each View client that is available.  Good information to know when picking out thin clients

How can I make location-aware desktops? This is a common question.  How can I make a specific thin client map a specific printer, etc based on the thin client location?  The answer: Client Information Variables.  Here’s a nice writeup on some basic scripting that can determine the variables and make appropriate decisions based on their values.

Can I use group policy to control the client or desktop agent? You bet.  You can find the administrative templates for group policy in the C:\Program Files\VMware\View Manager\Server\Extras\GroupPolicyFiles directory.  If you’re not too sure about using adm files, here’s a kb article from Microsoft on how to use and manage them.  There are 4 included with View: vdm-agent.adm to control the agent in the guest OS, vdm_client.adm to control the properties of the View client, vdm_server.adm to control the connection broker and vdm_common.adm for common View components across all of View.  A very detailed list of the options of each can be found in the View admin guide starting on page 176.

• Various Integrity Check IssuesUnder certain circumstances, integrity checks reported damaged restore points and cannot load session errors. For example, such problems might be reported if:
  • A combination of simultaneous overlapping backups and integrity checks are started.
  • A backup is stopped before completion because the backup window closes. In such a case, the deduplication store records transactions, but the closing of the backup window prevents recording the transaction to the catalog.

  When integrity checks failed in such cases, Data Recovery would mark restore points as damaged or report that the backup session could not be found. Data Recovery integrity check now handles these conditions properly, so these problems no longer occur.

• Connections Using Alternate Ports not SupportedBy default, connections to vCenter Server use port 443. If vCenter Server is configured to use an alternate port, Data Recovery continued to attempt to connect using the default port. This caused the Data Recovery plug-in to report authentication failures when attempting to connect to the Data Recovery appliance. Alternate vCenter Server port configurations are now supported.
• Multiple VMDKs with the Same Name not Handled ProperlyA virtual machine can have multiple VMDK files with the same name that are stored on different LUNs. In such a case, Data Recovery would only restore one of the disks. Data Recovery now restores all disks.

You can find LCM in the download section here.

VMware View Manager 3.1.2 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues in the previous releases. Refer the Resolved Issues section for more details.

This release also includes one new feature.

Virtual Printing Multi Session Support

In this release, the virtual printing (ThinPrint) feature is updated to provide support to the users connected to multiple virtual desktops. With this update, the ThinPrint client enables users to map the printers on each virtual desktop that you are connected to.

You can find the download in the download section here.

Here’s the what new from the release notes:

The following features were added between VMware Studio 1.0 and 2.0:

• Ability to create multiple-VM appliances, or vApps, to run on VMware vSphere.
• More provisioning engines including ESX/ESXi 3.5 and 4, VMware Workstation 6.5.1, and VMware Server 2.0.
• Build support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) virtual appliances.
• Build support for 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES).
• Build support new Linux distributions RHEL 5.3, CentOS 5.3, and Ubuntu 8.04.1.
• Extensible management services allow you to customize an interface into a new tab.
• An Eclipse™ plug-in helps you package applications and create management services.
• Automatic dependency resolution for application packages installed on Linux-based virtual appliances.
• Existing VM build (input-as-VM) for Linux virtual appliances.
• DMTF standard OVF 1.0 and open virtual appliance (OVA) packaging. VMware Studio 1.0 supported OVF 0.9.

You can read about release 1.0 in the VMware Studio 1.0 Release Notes and other VMware Studio documentation.

The following features were added since VMware Studio 2.0 Beta:

• Eclipse usability improvements.
• Appliance updates from CDROM.
• Web console footer customization in the appliance VM.
• EULA first-boot display control in the appliance VM.
• Host name editing in the Web console of the appliance VM.
• Security fix for VMware Studio when uploading management services. See CVE-2009-2968.

VMware Studio 2.0 Beta build profiles are not fully compatible with the 2.0 GA software. VMware recommends that you use the Web console to re-create the beta build profiles from scratch based on the VMware Studio 2.0 GA template profiles.

• Over 12,500 attendees (still awaiting the final tally)
• Over 300 attendees at VMware’s first Technology Exchange – Developer Day
• Over 200 sponsors and exhibitor companies
• 300 break out sessions across 6 tracks
• 12 Instructor led labs and 9 Self Paced lab courses
• 920 new VMUG members recruited on site
• VMworld 2009 generated a strong volume of coverage with a total of 315 articles. 90 original US articles, 11 ANZ articles, 51 APAC articles, and 163 EMEA articles.
• Strong social media activity with:
  • 4,305 tweets on the event, 1205 contributors and 2,350 followers
  • New VMworld YouTube views: 5,714
• VMware produced 14 VMworld videos on site and released these on VMware TV with 13,509 total views
• 4,459 Self Paced labs taken with 41,043 VMs deployed. This has broken all previous self paced lab records.
• 6,149 Instructor led labs taken across 12 labs on offer during VMworld 2009.

And just for fun (yes these are real and not made up):

• Quantity of sodas purchased     54,742
• Quantity of bananas      14,813
• Quantity of apples         14,813
• Gallons of coffee          1,895
• Quantity of cookies       5,647
• Quantity of brownies     9,188
• # of beers consumed at the welcome reception monday night: 10,200

We’ll have to work on that beer number next year!!!

The set list looked like this:

Double Vision

Head Games

Cold as Ice

Dirty White Boy

Feels like the first time

Urgent

Jukebox Hero (with Whole lotta love in the middle)

for the encore:

I want to know what love is

Hot Blooded

Here’s what it looked like during Cold as Ice:

and during Double Vision:

The concert was held in the general session area where the keynotes were held.  This is an absolute huge room that had 30 foot screens setup (6 of them) for everyone to see.  To give you an idea how big this was, here’s two shots, both left and right.  In the first pic you can see lead singer, Kelly Hansen, in the lower right.

A very fun time had by all.  Well done boys.

*pictures are copyright vmguy.com.  Any reproduction without express written consent is prohibited.

Steve begins on the topic of desktops.  He says the industry wants to go from device-centric to people-centric(I totally agree – it’s a better model).  He talks about the goals the VMware has in it’s desktop strategy and he labels the user experience as the most important.  He describes why vSphere is the right platform for desktop virtualization.  Steve talks about how VMware decomposes the desktop to share images and simplify patching.  Steve announces a OEM agreement with RTO Virtual Profiles (just heard about this, check the link, cool stuff).  Steve goes on to describe PCoIP.  He describes hosted virtualization and how users can check-out a desktop.  He describes a use-case of how users can bring their own device to work and check out a VM.  This seems like a great use case for hosted virtualization where the user is running a base OS on their device and they check out their desktop to run as a VM on top of their own personal OS on the hardware.   He then talks about the scenario of bare metal virtualization for corporate owned IT. This is where you would load a hypervisor onto bare metal laptop hardware and then check-out a desktop VM to it.  He then introduces Mike to show CVP.

Mike shows Windows 7 running on CVP.  He shows the Aero interface and some videos running in CVP.  He then shows the Wyse cloud app and demos accessing the same desktop from his iPhone.  Really cool stuff, I love the iPhone app. Now back to Steve.  Steve talks about mobile access to vCenter and describles how the engineers are working on have mobile access to manage view desktops as well as vCenter mobile management. Steve describes the mobile virtualization platform (MVP) which is a mobile virtualization platform that runs on mobile phones.  For this section he introduces Peter Chiura, from Visa.

Peter demonstrates what Visa is doing.  He shows an Visa application on a phone which can show live transactions from the owner’s Visa card in near real time.  It can then show special offers from vendors you have made purchases thru.  He then backs out and shows the audience that the application is really running on Android in a VM on a windows mobile phone.  Pretty cool demo really. Back to Steve.  Steve talks about the platform.  He describes vSphere as “the software mainframe”.  He describes vMotion and it’s maturity.  He gives the history of VMworld 2003 with 1600 attendees and how they did a early preview of vMotion on stage for the first time at that conference (I was there when I was a customer!).  He describes vmotion migrations and how many have occured, how many dollars it’s saved and how many marriages have been saved due to the reduced time spent working by the administrators (get’s a really good laugh from the crowd).

He talks about the breath of vmotion and how it’s grown to storage vmotion.  He talks about using vmotion to balance workloads with DRS.  He talks about how you’ll soon be able to extend DRS to network and storage, for instance, moving a virtual machine to another host when the network adapter has been saturated.  He goes on to talk about Distributed Power Management and how it powers off servers when they are not in use and how this can be very useful for desktop scenarios.  Talks about AppSpeed and describes how it works and how it can provide the answer on who’s to be called when a multi-tier app is not running optimally.  He then shows vApp and the descriptors that they can have.  He leads into the new VMsafe APIs.  He describes how the vApp descriptors can now have security descriptors.  He then introduces Rob to show a preview of Config Control.

Rob shows how we can see exactly what’s changed in a virtualized enviornment.  He shows a demo with a port group being changed and how it was tracked and what else was impacted by that change.  Actually it was a very technical but cool demo on how to see what changes can impact your environment.

Back to Steve and onto choice.  Lab Manager and providing users a self service portal. Gives some stats on the datacenter for VMworld:  If it were physical, they would need: 37,248 machines, 25 Megawatts, and  3 football fields worth of physical servies.  Running everything virtual and they cut it down to 1 end zone, 776 physical servers, 540 Kilowatts. He leads onto the Cloud.  He gives an overview of the cloud and how vSphere is the foundation for the cloud.  He talks about the connecting of the internal and external cloud.  He talks how SRM is handling connectivity between two internal clouds.  He then talks about how long distance vMotion can be handled.  He descirbes the challenges: memory and disk sync and network identity.  It’s very challenging to keep 2 VMs in sync with their memory changes and disk changes.  Steve explains how Long Distance vMotion can be used to follow the sun/moon, or for DR. He talks about how different vendors are doing this different ways.  He describes Cisco and F5 and their different strategies for doing it. He goes on to the vCloud API and how a console can show your VMs in your datacenter and your VM’s that are running in a hosting provider.  He describes PaaS and how VMware wants to provide the platform and now can provide the framework to run applications. Introduces Adrian Colyer, CTO, SpringSource.

Adrian shows an application written in SprinSource Cloud Foundry. He describes how the application itself and method of delivering it via scale are seperated.  The app can be coded and then delivered and scaled very easily.  I notice a few people exiting as we reach towards the end.  Probably not the most interesting section for non-programmers but I was getting what he was trying to say.

Steve returns to summarize everything that was discussed:  How we are in a pendulm shift in the industry and VMware is posied to assist customers with all of their needs.

*Photos are copyright vmguy.com.  Any reproduction without express written consent is prohibited.

Tod thanked the sponsors for their support and gave us the number: 12,488 attendees at  VMworld 2009.  Quite an amazing achievement given this economy.  Tod also described the goal of VMware: To Energize and Save, wither that would be Financial Savings, Human Savings, or Earth’s Savings.  He then showed a video of customer testimonials from Siemens and Kroger.  Next up Tod introduced Paul Maritz, Chief Executive Officer from VMware.

Paul gave a definition of the cloud to the audience.  He went on to talk about how VMware will bridge the gap between the datacenter and the cloud of the future.  He described the VMware journey, where VMware has come from and where he believes VMware is headed.  He reiterated a comment that I’ve heard him say once before: that vSphere had more than 1,500 engineers working on it which was more than any Windows operating system durning his tenure at Microsoft.  This is another reason that vSphere is reconized as a true platform.  He went on to give a review of the vSphere features and how vSphere integrates into the ecosystem of available software.  He talked about customer upgrade plans and how customers polled are planning on upgrading to vSphere in the next few months.  He then introduced Tom Brey, Sr. Technical Staff Engineer, IBM.

Tom showed a great demo of power consumption of a IBM 3850 inside the vSphere client.  In the standard performance tab, he had real time counters of power consumption in watts on a per VM basis.  Very cool to see how much power your VM’s are using.  One thing I did note from his preso, he was running it on ESX 4.1 build 000000 (where can I get a copy of that?)

Paul returns after the demo to give us a explanation of all of the things coming to enhance vCenter and the management of the infrastructure.  With that lead in, Paul introduces us to an engineer named Bruce who goes thru a demonstration of Lab Manager 4 and chargeback.

Bruce shows us a demo of checking out a configuration in Lab Manager and then Paul leads that into a new portal called vCloud Express.  This portal lets customers check out VM’s or groups of them to use for development or for production.  It’s an interface that fulfills the much needed aspect for the cloud: a self-service portal.

Paul next leads into Desktops as a service and what is happening on that front.  For this Paul introduces Steve Dupree, Director of Platform Virtualization, Hewlett Packard.

Steve talks about the direction that HP is headed with virtualization.  Steve does a great demo of Hp Insight integration into the vSphere client.  An extra tab is show for the physical hosts where admins can find all of the Insight information about the health of the physical hardware.

Next up, Paul introduces Chris Renter, Telus Communications.

Chris demo’s a bit on the upcoming functionality and experience customers can expect from VMware View with PCoIP integration.  The PCoIP protocol will be a new enhancement for View coming later this year according to Paul.

The last (whew!) of the guests is Rod Johnson, CEO, SpringSource.

Rod gives us a description of how SpringSource will complement VMware to deliver PaaS (Platform as a Service).  He demo’s how easily code can be migrated to the cloud using the SpringSource framework.  It’s pretty impressive to see how this migration can happen from a developer’s perspective.

At this point Paul finally closes the opening keynote.  On to the press event and more pictures to follow.

*all photos are copyright vmguy.com.  Any reuse of these photographs without express written consent is prohibited.

The lines were not too long yet and moving quickly at the registration counter….

The longest lines I would find were in the VMware Store in Moscone South.  Make sure to head over there soon if you want the “big guy” shirts like me…..

Thin-Client-On-the-Go

• For iPhone and iPod touch

Wyse Proprietary RDP 6.0 Engine

• Fast: Optimized for the iPhone
• Enterprise grade security: 128-bit encryption and FIPS support
• Microsoft Terminal Services support

3G and Wi-Fi Optimized

• Work smoothly with 3G connections and Wi-Fi

VMware View 3.1 Certified

• Support for:
  • Direct connections and advanced tunneling
  • SSL encryption
  • Experimental support for RSA Two-Factor Authentication

Optimized iPhone GUI

• Fast, interactive, and enjoyable user experience
• Advanced high-accuracy mouse cursor
• Removable toolbars for maximum screen real estate

Free Windows Companion Application

• Thin-Browser™
  • Server-side Web browsing with iPhone GUI
  • Support for rich and interactive content such as Flash, Silverlight, and Java
  • ActiveX and add-ons support

Automatic keyboard detection:

• Whenever a keyboard is needed, PocketCloud windows companion notifies the PocketCloud on the iPhone to invoke the virtual keyboard

It’s not super cheap at $29.95 (hope for a sale).  You can check it out in the itunes store here.