On June 11, VMware announced their entry into the fast growing log management market. VMware vCenter Log Insight is an exciting new offering in analytics-based IT Operations. It delivers superior technology for automated log management through log analytics, aggregation, and search, and an easy to use user interface.

Key Features:

• Extends Analytics to Log Data
• Easy to Use and Accessible
• Optimized for your VMware Environment

vCenter Log Insight is now available as a full-featured beta download that you can access and try out for free here.

Check out VMware’s blog: VMware vCenter Log Insight: A new approach to analyzing unstructured machine data

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VMware vCenter Log Insight Announcement

If you are going to be converting a linux machine to a virtual machine any time soon, here are some quick tips.

To start, here are some VMware Converter configuration Tips.

Some Converter Basics:

Get acquainted with these: Best practices for using and troubleshooting VMware Converter (1004588)

Note: it is possible to separate the source partitions in different destination volumes during the conversion.

The Converter Standalone 5.0 Release Notes are worthwhile reading, as they tightly relate to known issues, supported OS types and features of the product.

Check out the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Users Guide 5.0

And the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Users Guide 5.1

Note: If conversion is failing in the first 1% then a check of ports used by Converter is necessary.

Review VMware Knowledge Base Article: Required VMware vCenter Converter 4.x / 5.x ports (1010056)

For any problems you encounter with Converter, consult the Troubleshooting checklist for VMware Converter (1016330)

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Some Quick Tips for converting Linux P2V

Just noticed the blog post up on the Support Insider titled: Introducing VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1

VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 is a free, downloadable plug-in for VMware vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop both for creating and managing support requests and generating and uploading logs.

You can also use VMware vCenter Support Assistant to file support requests for any product that you already have support entitlement for whether that entitlement is by subscription, or paid for incident packs. With just a few clicks, VMware vCenter Support Assistant can directly generate log support bundles

Someone has a blog post up walking you through the installation here: http://www.definit.co.uk/2013/01/installing-the-vmware-support-assistant/

Here is a quick introduction to this great new addition!

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Opening Tech Support Cases just got easier

This KBTV video provides an overview of snapshots in VMware products and details how to take a snapshot, revert a snapshot, go to a snapshot, delete a snapshot, and delete all snapshots.

The video also explains what each of these features means. The video uses vSphere, but the basic principles apply to all VMware products that use snapshots.

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A How-to for VMware Snapshots

VMware Workstation 8 introduced the ability to share your virtual machines with remote users. When you install VMware Workstation 8, virtual machine sharing and remote access are enabled by default. This feature is called VMware Workstation Server, and it starts when the host system starts.

A shared virtual machine can be accessed remotely by other instances of Workstation 8. Working remotely, you can create a new shared virtual machine, convert a standard virtual machine, or create a shared virtual machine clone of a standard virtual machine to the Server where the VMware Host Agent service manages them.

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Running VMware Workstation 8 as a Server

Michael Rickert over at ccnp-pro.com has created an updated step-by-step guide to installing VMWare ESXi 5 and vSphere Server, including VLAN configuration titled:  Installing VMWare ESXi and VSphere 5.0

The new guide walks you through everything from configuring your switches, to installing ESXi on bare metal, all the way through to configuring SQL server 2008 and installing vCenter vSphere server. All of which contains 100+ screenshots along the way to help you see each step. That’s right – over 100 screenshots.

Think of this as a very comprehensive security blanket for newcomers to get off the ground with this.

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How to Install VMWare ESXi and VSphere 5.0

Lots of folks are finding out the same way I did that their copy of VMware Fusion will no longer run on their Mac. That’s because they just installed the latest incarnation of OSX called Mountain Lion.

VMware has an FAQ out on the topic, and a new KB article: : VMware Fusion compatibility with OS X Mountain Lion (Mac OS X 10.8) (2032208).

It’s too bad the Mountain Lion installer doesn’t go through and verify or at least flag software that will no longer work, but it just might not be possible or feasible in all cases. Anyway, hope you read this BEFORE you find out the slightly ruder way.

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VMware Fusion on OSX Mountain Lion

Nicira was founded by Stanford University researchers Martin Casado and Nick MeKeown and University of California at Berkeley researcher Scott Shenker, and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates. Diane Greene, co-founder and former CEO of VMware, and Andy Rachleff, co-founder of Benchmark Capital, are individual investors in Nicira.

VMware will pay $1.05 billion in cash and $210 million of assumed unvested equity awards for Nicira, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that has lured high profile talent away from Juniper and Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO), including Alan Cohen, Cisco’s former vice president for enterprise and public sector, who is vice president of marketing at Nicira.

Networking giant Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO), who today announced layoffs, will be watching this development very closely, you can be sure.

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VMware buys Nicira

Breaking News!!

VMware today announced that Paul Maritz will be succeeded in the post as Chief Executive Officer of VMware, effective September 1, 2012, by Pat Gelsinger, currently president and chief operating officer, EMC Information Infrastructure Products.

Maritz will remain a board member of VMware and will take on a new technology strategist role at EMC. Gelsinger will also be named to VMware’s Board of Directors, effective September 1, 2012.

Download the full announcement in PDF form here.

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Paul Maritz to step down as CEO at VMware

In VMware documentation, we show you how a product works, and how you can use the product to accomplish your tasks. But what about when the product isn’t working for you—when it doesn’t behave as described in the manual, or when the manual doesn’t cover a problem you encounter, or a special task you want to perform? In our procedures we try to anticipate every use case, and in our troubleshooting sections we try to foresee everything that might go wrong, but with the large and growing base of VMware users, it’s impossible to cover every situation that might occur. Every user is unique, and the number of variations—in combinations of hardware, operating systems, and use cases—is practically limitless.

One of the best resources for troubleshooting problems is the VMware Knowledge Base. Maintained by VMware Global Support Services team, the Knowledge Base (KB) contains thousands of articles authored by GSS support techs, product development and QA engineers, and Technical Communications writers. KB articles specialize in corner cases, troubleshooting, workarounds, and more. Thorny, corner-case problems are usually solved only through considerable effort, collaboration, and head pounding by some very smart and knowledgeable people. KB articles document those solutions, so no one should have to struggle with solving the same problems again.

And note: when you search the Knowledge Base, you’re searching not only KB articles, but also the library of product documentation and discussion threads in VMware Communities. This makes the Knowledge Base a great place to begin looking for answers.

So how do you use the Knowledge Base? Just go to http://kb.vmware.com/ and you’ll find that it’s pretty self-explanatory. You can browse or search by keyword, and you can filter the search by product. And if you need more detailed instructions or help, the Knowledge Base itself is well documented (just as you would expect) in a KB article—just click the Knowledge Base Help button in the upper right of the KB home window.

I will add one tip for searching: when I enter search terms, I start by trying to identify as uniquely as I can the symptoms and setup of the problem I’ve encountered—I might include the essential words of an error message, the operating system version of the VM, what seemed to trigger the problem—whatever might help filter the search to the results most likely to match my problem exactly. I err on the side of inclusiveness, using as many relevant keywords as I can. Sometimes, I get lucky and find my problem on the first try. More likely, I get no results, or just a few. So I start deleting terms, one by one, from the search. With every deletion, the search broadens, and I get more results to scan through.

One more note: be sure to take a look at the navigation bar on the right-hand side of the KB home page, where there are links to some other really great tools and services provided by the KB team, including:

• answer wizards, which walk you through the troubleshooting of various common problems
• KBTV, an ongoing series of how-to videos
• the Weekly KB Digest, where you can check for the newest additions to the Knowledge Base
• the The Support Insider blog

You can also subscribe to KBTV, the Weekly Digest and the KB Blog via RSS, and you can follow the Knowledge Base on Twitter: @VMwareKB.

In short, whenever you need answers, try the Knowledge Base. It’s a terrific resource.

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The VMware Knowledge Base