The process of opening a command or shell prompt is a required step in many of our KB articles. We realize this is very basic stuff for many of you, but many others have asked for this, and we're happy to oblige.

For additional details relating to this process check out VMware Knowledge Base article Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).

For additional tutorial videos be sure to subscribe our KBTV YouTube channel and our KBTV Blog.

I would like to follow up on an article we posted last month, which introduced Federal Partner Exchange. The third annual VMware Federal Partner Exchange took place on April 5^th. This all-day event was dedicated to our Federal Channel Partner community and is designed for sales, business development, technical and professional services personnel. The partners who attended this successful event were provided with valuable and action-packed tips, best practices, tools and contacts to help increase the velocity of their Federal sales. 

We heard great feedback from our partners about this event: Jason Chung, VP of Software Alliances, at MicroTech said, “Fantastic event to help us win in the Federal marketing with VMware” and Brittany Bigelow, Account Executive at August Schell said, “Great learning how to advance our partnership with VMware Federal on Cloud sales opportunities.” 

Missed out on attending the event? You can view photos from the event here or view the presentations here. The username is vmware and password is vmwarefedpex2011.

Reminder: US Federal Prospecting Day is confirmed for Tuesday, May 24! Save the date and expect more details in the next week.

If you have any questions about this event or other Federal segment marketing-related topics, please contact Giovanni Estrada at gestrada@vmware.com.

Alex Hart - Sr. Director, Public Sector Channel Sales

In this tutorial you will specifically see examples of a ping command being executed from within a Windows-based virtual machine, a Linux-based virtual machine and also from a SSH session to an ESX host using the Putty SSH Client.

All of the virtual machines used in this demonstration were running on VMware Workstation 8, but the same process can be applied to any of your operating systems running within your virtual environments and even on your physical machines too!

This video is based on VMware Knowledge Base article Testing network connectivity with the ping command (1003486).

Today we have a special treat for you. Here we have a video which discusses and demonstrates how to enable the Storage Accelerator (Host Caching) feature that is available in VMware View 5.1.

This video features our great friend Cormac Hogan who is a Senior Technical Marketing Architect for Storage at VMware. Cormac has worked with us on several different occasions over the past few years in various How To and Tutorial type videos which have always went down well and I am sure this one will be no exception. You can read more from Cormac concerning this topic here.

Follow and interact with Cormac Hogan on Twitter and keep updated with all things related to VMware Storage initiatives by subscribing to the VMware Storage Blog.

Today we have a special treat for you. Here we have a video which discusses and demonstrates how to enable the Storage Accelerator (Host Caching) feature that is available in VMware View 5.1.

This video features our great friend Cormac Hogan who is a Senior Technical Marketing Architect for Storage at VMware. Cormac has worked with us on several different occasions over the past few years in various How To and Tutorial type videos which have always went down well and I am sure this one will be no exception. You can read more from Cormac concerning this topic here.

Follow and interact with Cormac Hogan on Twitter and keep updated with all things related to VMware Storage initiatives by subscribing to the VMware Storage Blog.

VMware is hosting our first SMB Partner Quarterly Townhall on May 17th and all of our SMB partners are invited to participate in this online event!  I’ll be kicking off the Townhall with a “State-of-the-SMB-Business” address, including an overview of VMware’s SMB strategy, our commitment to Partner incentives and investments, a look at the competitive landscape and the launch of our SMB Enablement Program. We’ll also have Russ Stockdale, VP & GM, Small and Mid-Size Business Products, deliver a presentation on VMware’s SMB Solution Stack.

We are especially excited about our guest speakers at the SMB Townhall: Dr. Tom Sant, Author of Persuasive Business Proposals; Founder and Principal, Hyde Park Partners; and Peter Cohen, Founder and Principal, The Second Derivative. Peter and Tom are two of the industry’s leading experts on sales & business development and we’ve invited them to share their expertise and discuss sales best practices for winning new business and increasing your profitability!

VMware’s success in the SMB space is dependent upon the success of our SMB Partners – so be sure to take advantage of this unique opportunity to get the latest SMB news and updates from VMware, as well as gain insights on sales strategies to help you close more business and increase deal size! There is enormous market opportunity in the sub-1000 employee segment as, together, we help our customers and prospects on their Journey to the Cloud.  We also have some great Customer, Partner and Partner Rep incentives to help close business in Q2 so please join on the 17th to learn more. Details can be found at www.vmware.com/go/partner/virtualexperience/smb.

Good Selling and see you on the 17th!

Brandon Sweeney - VP, Channel Sales Americas

Earlier this week you heard the announcement of how VMware Advances VMware View™ and End-User Computing Solutions for the Post-PC Era. The VMware end-user computing portfolio seeks to free employees and IT organizations from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing, and delivers a more user-centric experience for the connected enterprise.

We know that many of you have customers who are anxiously awaiting the new capabilities and availability of View 5.1  and  VMware Horizion Application Manager 1.5. With this release, partners, you can help your customers:   

• Significantly improve what they have now by virtualizing Windows applications and desktops with  View 5.1 and ThinApp.
• Securely embrace the cloud at the pace of their business with the new VMware Horizon Application Manager 1.5 for policy management of public and private cloud assets
• Escape to their cloud with new ways to manage data, deliver legacy applications and adopt new social applications, such as: 
  • Project Octopus - IT managed, secure data share and sync. Public Beta will be available in May.
  • Zimbra – Extensible email and collaboration platform
  • Socialcast - Enterprise social networking

 New on-demand video training sessions are now available – visit the Partner University EUC Home Page to find a list of on-demand video training sessions for Sales, Technical Pre-Sales and Technical Post-Sales.

The VMware End User Computing Learning Paths enable partners of all types to reiterate the EUC vision and articulate a unified VMware strategy as the leader in End User Computing and demonstrate our progress towards this goal. We wish you success and encourage you to get trained today!

Vivek Chhabria, Director, Global Partner Readiness

Today we have another new video for you which focuses on our VMware Fusion product. This video discusses and demonstrates how you can install a Windows operating system inside of a VMware Fusion 4 virtual machine using the Easy Install feature.

VMware Fusion has a feature called Easy Install, which makes it faster to install Windows based operating systems inside virtual machines.

For additional information see VMware Knowledge Base article - Installing Windows in a virtual machine using VMware Fusion Easy Install (1011677).

On April 23, 2012, our security team became aware of the public posting of a single file from the VMware ESX source code dating back to 2004, and the possibility that more files may be posted in the near future. Ensuring customer security is our top priority. As a matter of best practices with respect to security, VMware strongly encourages all customers to apply the latest product updates and security patches made available for their specific environment. As part of its regular program of providing patches for security and other issues, VMware has accelerated the delivery of a set of software patches for specific product releases that may be exposed to increased risk. We encourage all customers to view the following links to determine if appropriate patches are available for products in their environment: kb.vmware.com/kb/2019941 and www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2012-0009.html.

By applying the combination of the most current product updates and the relevant security patches, we believe our customer environments will be best protected. As is our practice, VMware will continue to assess any further security risks, and will continue to provide updates and patches as appropriate. 

As always, we welcome any security-related concerns to be shared with VMware via the following channels: 

• Support requests - www.vmware.com/support 

• Community forums - communities.vmware.com 

• Twitter - @VMwarecares 

• Calling Customer Service at 1-877-486-9273 (option 4) or www.vmware.com/support/us_support.html for global numbers 

This video supplements VMware Knowledge Base article Creating a My VMware profile (2007005).

My VMware will transform your product license and support management experience by providing a new integrated, self-service, account-based interface focused on simplifying and streamlining your online activities with VMware. All VMware customers and partners are entitled to use this new site.