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The London VMUG, my overview and experience

Mourad — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:34:37 +0000

Here we go; I’ve finally made it to this January London VMUG. To be honest, it was worth it, worth it because I’ve finally ended up meeting some people, geeks and enthusiastic that I knew only over on Twitter or via their own blogs and worth it as well to get my #LonVMUG memorabilia attend some few presentations ( coming there shortly). The Sponsors for the Events were Symantec, NimbleStorage, Xangati and Embolics

Arrived at the London Chamber of Commerce at around 12:30 and missed the morning sessions, Auto Deploy by Alan Renouf and Max Daneri and also the new ApplicationHA and Backup Exec Auto Recovery Demo by Symantec. (See presentations below)

I’ve had a chance to meet the Xangati representative and talk about the features that their product can give you and how is different between their own and the new vCenter Operation Manager (Big fight but two robust products)

After Lunch, I’ve attended the Nimble Storage presentation and though that all the presentation was very good and impressed but the product but will have some hard time to pierce into the market that is dominated mainly by the big fishes like EMC, NetApp, EqualLogics and so on.

A short break, a quick coffee and fresh air, I’ve attended the second session “Private vCloud Architecture Deep Dive” presented by the two VMware gurus Dave Hill and Aidan Dalgleish. I have a limited knowledge of the Cloud Director but I was again impressed about what features and how a cloud can be built with in multiple setups, network pool methods and all the separations between the external and the internal pools and what each can give you.

The final session was also an interesting one, VCP5 Session by Gregg Robertson from theSaffaGeek.co.uk, Gregg went through all the necessary requirements that you need to get yourself prepared and ready for your VCP5 Exam. Gregg started his presentation a bit nervously but managed to get it wrapped up properly, some few simple questions were put to the audience and that was fun.

My conclusion:

I think this is a great event to attend and also an opportunity to learn, discover and also meet new people around the VMware community, VMUG has done a great job to setup these events and most credit is going to the people with the Blue polo (@alaricdavies, @Rimmergram, @Virtual_stu, @vinf_net), these people are helping the community us a lot to get together and for those who are interested in getting a subscription (Optional) which cost around £130, you will get a great adventage like a 100$ discount on the VMworld meeting, 1 Year Free Subscription on all eLearning cources and also about a 30% discount on Software (Fusion and Workstation).

The next Presentation will be held at the same place and on the 17^th of May and I’m sure I will again attend this session.

All the link and presentation can be downloaded from box.com.

Your Vote is needed, Top VMware/virtualization blogs 2012

Mourad — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:34:19 +0000

As a normal day, got to work at 9 this morning and got cracking on my emails and tasks. Midday arrived and I went for lunch with a colleague who is a VMware enthusiast too. Lunch finished and back to my desk, to go through my personal emails, news and also twitter. Interestingly I got attracted to a tweet from Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert) about the top 25 Blogs around the net.

I remember a week ago replying and entering this by just replying to a survey and I wasn’t that sure that I would be selected and have an entry for a Vote but guess what? I’m there! I’m selected in the top new blogs under 1 year old.

The vote is split into 10 Section:

Best Storage Blog (Must have more than 50% of posts storage related)
Best Cloud Blog (Must have more than 50% posts cloud related)
Best VDI/End-user Computing Blog (Must have more than 50% posts VDI/EUC related)
Best News & Information Website (No blogs)
Best Scripting Blogger (Must have more than 50% posts Scripting related)
Best podcast (Audio or video podcasts)
Best official VMware Blog (Blogs part of VMware’s website)
Best Videos used in a Blog (Must have produced a good percentage of videos)
Best New Blog (Blog must be less than a year old)
Best Independent Blogger (Can’t work for VMware or a hardware/software vendor).

And the rules are for you to elect 10 of your favourite blog from the list and then rank these in your order of preferences and the result would be: the 1^st Blog will get 10 Points and the last will get 1 Point.

The vote will be open until the 2^nd of February and the result will be determined and announced live at the VMware Partner Exchange.

Note that suspicious votes will be discarded as this time they have implemented a solution for cheats, there will be Geo-location tracking, IP Addresses and cookies to track and protect against any fraudulent votes.

And to finish, Voters will be entered to win a Train Signal copy of vSphere5 and VMware View 5 video training courses.

Now I’m not expecting to be elected as one of the best as I’ve just started blogging but to be faire I’m far than happy to be entering this contest but hay hoo a vote from you will make a difference.

Get now guys and cast your votes and why not mine!!

VMware vCloud Express?

Mourad — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:25:12 +0000

The cloud express explained by David Davis, the Traing Signal Author of the vMware vSphere Video Training,

” vCloud Express is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering delivered by leading VMware service provider partners. It provides reliable, on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure that ensures compatibility with internal VMware environments and with VMware Virtualized™ services…………..”

Follow this link and you will have some more information about the Cloud Express, really worth watching.

Links for Hardware Compatibility List

Mourad — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:42:33 +0000

I have been looking for some compatibility informations about some NIC cards that I’ve bought from ebay and got a chance to save these on my bookmarks and why not share it as well!!

Main Search Page
Systems Search Page
Storage/SAN Search Page
I/O Devices Search Page
Full Compatibility Guide

The Hardway to Study VMware

Mourad — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:35:56 +0000

Hard way Study Tips:

1) Installed a lab environment at home. So that i could evaluate, test and get “hands-on” experience on vSphere. (2x ESX hosts + openfiler for shared storage) This is by far the absolute best way to learn about vSphere and get experience and knowledge about this great product.

2) Read and memorized the “vSphere documentation notes” (http://www.vreference.com/downloads/…4-notes1.0.pdf) and the “vSphere reference card” (http://www.vreference.com/downloads/…re4card1.0.pdf) from vreference.com. Many thanks to Forbes Guthrie for his excellent work on these pdfs.

3) Read the “VCP on vSphere4 Exam Blueprint” from VMware () to define what i had to learn to pass the exam. All questions, reflections and obscurity’s that i had on the content of the blueprint i looked up and read about in the main documentation set for vSphere. You can download this in pdf format or you can (as i did) search it in the online version found here WebWorks Help 5.0 . This is the definitive resource and answers all your questions.

good luck!!

Verifying that VT-x is Enabled and Locked at Boot

Mourad — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:39:39 +0000

Verifying that VT-x is Enabled and Locked at Boot

Filed under: Installation — Tags: ESX4, Intel, vmware, VT-x, Xeon — Mourad @ 8:50 am

Having had issues during the last few months regarding installing an ESX4 inside an ESX4, I cam across a solution which might have resolved my problem happily as ever, I have been fighting to get my ESX4 box to run on an other Hypervisor and this wasn’t that easy.

“Intel first introduced VT-x on late-model P4 processors (codenamed Paxville). Many Core, Core 2, Core i7 and Core i5 processors are VT-capable (as are their Xeon-branded counterparts). However, some skus of these models are not VT-capable. (For example, the Q8200 Intel Core 2 Quad Processor is not VT-capable). You can check to see if your processor is VT-capable here. If your processor is VT-capable, “Intel Virtualization Technology” will be listed as one of the supported features.

On Intel CPUs, it is expected that the BIOS (or other firmware) will either enable or disable VT-x at boot, and will then lock the setting so that it cannot be subsequently changed without powering down the CPU. Note that VT-x must be both enabled and locked before software can make use of the VMX extensions. This operation must be performed for each core of a multi-core system, and for each thread of a multi-threaded system.

Because the VT-x setting is typically locked at power on, it is necessary to fully power down the system after changing any VT-x options in the BIOS. A simple reboot is not sufficient! After saving your BIOS changes, I recommend that you actually pull the power cord(s) out of the wall and wait ten seconds. For laptop systems, you may have to remove the battery as well.

Some BIOSes do not have VT-x enable/disable options. Some BIOSes with such an option fail to enable/disable VT-x on each core of a multi-core system or on each thread of a multi-threaded system. To verify that VT-x is enabled and locked on each core/thread of your system, download the attached ISO, burn it to a CD, and boot your host from the CD.

If the ISO reports that your CPU is not VT-capable, and your CPU should be VT-capable, you may have encountered an Intel chip erratum (possibly AW67 or AV69, depending on the CPU). The effect of this erratum is that some CPU features are reported incorrectly after a particular machine specific register has been updated by the BIOS. The solution to this problem is to obtain an updated BIOS from your system vendor.

If the ISO reports that VT-x is unlocked on one or more threads/cores, a workaround is available for current VMware hosted products. Simply add the following option to your system-wide configuration file:

hv.enableIfUnlocked = TRUE

On Linux systems, the system-wide configuration file is /etc/vmware/config. On Windows systems, the system-wide configuration file varies according to VMware product and Windows version. For VMware Workstation on XP hosts, the system-wide configuration file is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini. For VMware Workstation on Vista hosts, the system-wide configuration file is C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini. For other VMware products, adjust the path appropriately.

Note that this workaround can also be helpful if your BIOS fails to enable and lock VT-x when waking from hibernation. However, the ISO is not helpful in diagnosing this failure. If VT-x works after a power-cycle but fails after resuming from hibernation, then you should try the above workaround.

If your BIOS specifically disables VT-x and locks it in that state, then it is impossible to subsequently enable VT-x through software.

Note that VT-x is unavailable to normal software if you have enabled “trusted execution,” which restricts VT-x to “trusted” code. You should disable trusted execution in the BIOS and power-cycle the system.”

VT.ISO

VMware Workstation 7.0 is out now

Mourad — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:37:48 +0000

VMware Workstation 7.0 is out now,

Finally VMware version 7 is out now, tested this when was on RC and with its great new features I must say that this is a great tool for any IT pro. One of the great things I’ve seen is the ability to run ESX4.0 on this version and also the support for new Linux and Unix Oss, what a great tool.

You can still have a chance to play with the RC 7.0.0 build-203739 by clicking here, trial is for 30 days.

Also VMware Player 3.0 and VMware Fusion 3.0 are out so why don’t you give it a chance?

ESX4.0 on VMware 7

Enjoy!!

The Virtual Syndrom

Mourad — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:18:53 +0000

Good day people!!

You might ask yourself about this title why Syndrome after Virtualization? Well I’ve just been told by my wife that I’m infected with this new virus if VMware and sometimes I happens to speak when I’m a sleep about stuff surely related to ESX and vSphere. I don’t blame her, Yes in did I’ve found myself addicted to VMware during the last few days since spending 4 nights doing my VCP course online (God that wasn’t easy at all).

I wonder if anyone around the globe feeling the same love to a new technology that come off to the market but honestly I really LOVE VMware technology, the way they put all the necessary resolutions to the IT admins and the ease to manage a virtual network from within a consol is so fascinating with the product. I’ve started using VMware product for a while now and also preparing for my exam that I hope to pass in the next couple of weeks.

People, this is my first post and during the next couple of days, I will try and make my blog look more efficient with all the links that relates to VMware, news and also some crazy stuff I happen to live.