Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Storage VMotion GUI:

It appears someone has created the first VC 2.5 plugin for integrated GUI access to Storage Vmotion. Try this in your lab first of course.

"VMotion is a VI 2.5 client plugin (the FIRST released, third-party plugin in fact) that extends the client's functionality by providing an integrated, graphical tool that can be used to invoke storage VMotion (SVMotion) operations. This plugin is not supported by VMware. In fact, the plugin is not anywhere close to supported by VMware because it is the result of a two-week dive into the inner-workings of the VI client libraries with popular reflection tools (reverse-engineering). l o s t c r e a t i o n s is working on a white paper that describes how to build VI plugins."

Download and read more here.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

VMworld Lab Attendance Certificates:

For those that have attended VMworld 2007 LAB and I would imagine those that attend VMworld Events for 2008 (Europe and America), you should be getting a very nice "Certificate of Completion" for each lab you attended. This is a very nice touch and another aspect of VMware that makes it the leader in Virtualzation, It also is another reason VMware is the leader in Virtualization with the training opportunities and Vmworld learning events they provide! And it's nice for attendees to be able to show off their skills improvement to employers.


Good VMware VDI links:

The original article has much more details and you should check it out.

Official VMware VDM Guides

VDM 2.0 Release Notes
Introduction to VMware Virtual Desktop Manager
VDM Installation and Administration Guide

Additional Resources, White Papers and Best Practices:
Ziff Davis: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VDI Server Sizing and Scaling White Paper
VDM Load Balancing Guide
Windows XP Deployment Guide for VDI
Using the Wyse V10L and S10 Thin Clients with VDM

VMware VDI - FAQs

VMware VDM - VDI Design Guide

VDI Best Practices White Paper

VMware Reference Cards!

I learned about this from http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/
...
"When I deliver a VMware course, one of the first things I tell my students is that they have to visit http://www.vmreference.com and learn the VMreference card by heart. Last Friday I had a short e-mail conversation with Forbes Guthrie, he has been working on the GA release of the VMreference card for the past few weeks and I was interested in when he would put the latest version 1.0 online. Forbes is a VMware, Windows and Linux sysadmin/designer from Vancouver with more than 10 years of experience in the field. He’s also a huge fan of NTPRO.NL ;-) and has been working last Saturday and Sunday to complete the ESX3 VMreference card version 1.0. I just took a peek at the result and it looks great. Forbes really did a great job with putting all the essential VI3 information on one card. When you want to take a peek at the reference card you should visit his site at http://www.vmreference.com."
...
Virtual HBA's coming to VMware:

"A partnership between VMware Inc. and Xsigo Systems Inc. will result in Xsigo's I/O virtualization product being integrated with ESX Server and its management software folded into VMware's Virtual Center GUI."

Learn more here.

Building a great VDI ready Windows:


Learn how Nlite and Vlite tools can help you in building a better VDI base template.

"
Using nLite you can easily build XP installations that are much smaller than your default install, not only in RAM usage but also in disk usage. With nLite you walk through a wizzard that helps you to disable unnecessary services, remove unwanted programs or accessories and remove unneeded drivers. Many drivers included in XP are not needed if you’re working with VDI desktops."

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