vPivot

Scott Drummonds on Virtualization

EMC Hands-on Labs at Sydney vForum 2011

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Every VMworld attendee knows how important the hands-on labs are to the show’s success. Many attendees cite the HOLs as the most important part of the show. EMC picked up on this and in recent years has offered its own interactive demonstrations at the EMC booth on the showroom floor.  We have taken these labs on the road and I am happy to announce they will be featured at Sydney vForum 2011.

The Sydney vForum runs from 19-20 October at the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre.  This will be my third year attending this show, which is one of the largest VMware events in the Asia Pacific region.  VMware will offer the same hands-on labs to the Sydney vForum attendees that they offered to VMworld attendees.  So EMC decided to add a small set of our own labs at the EMC booth.

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Custom Alarms for VMware SIOC

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Over a year and a half ago I previewed VMware’s unreleased feature, Storage IO Control (SIOC).  SIOC creates new intelligent latency metrics to evaluate the health of VMFS volumes.  The same latency measurements are used in storage DRS, which VMware released in vSphere 5.  While automated performance correction is great, vCenter should warn VMware admins when latency crosses defined thresholds.  Custom vCenter alarms can do this.

With hardest work of making vSphere 5 generally available behind him, one of VMware’s engineers, Balaji Parimi, recently sent me scripts he wrote to create SIOC alarms.  These alarms can be used to tell administrators that SIOC is throttling some virtual machines to save high priority applications from ailing datastores.

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vSpecialists Needed In Singapore

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We at EMC are increasing the number of technical vSpecialists in our Southeast Asian vSpecialist team. This role will be based in Singapore and will support EMC’s customers and field in the surrounding countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and others. Our regional manager will consider exceptional talent from anywhere in the world.

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9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes

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In 2008, the year before I left VMware, I was invited to help measure the amount of information being enterprise computers processed in the entire year.  My invitation came from Dr. James Short of the University of California, San Diego, who was on the team leading this project.  The team called their project “How Much Information?” (HMI).  And Dr. Short, or Jim, wanted me to provide comment on a small portion of the systems that process information: enterprise hardware.

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vFabric Data Director: Database on Demand

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Just one day into VMworld 2011 VMware has already subtly announced one of the revolutionary products in years. Quietly, humbly, and with little fanfare, VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz mentioned VMware’s foray into the database market with VMware’s vFabric Data Director (vDD).

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EMC Labs at VMworld

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Tomorrow I take the last flight in a series that started in Singapore three days ago.  I arrive in Las Vegas a little before noon for VMworld 2011.  This is my first year in five with no responsibilities as a presenter or lab owner.  And I am unreasonably excited that I can participate as an attendee.

In addition to a wealth of partner and customer meetings, I will be attending a large number of sessions, taking the hands-on labs, meeting old friends and colleagues, and of course enjoying the nighttime fun.  One great point of pride I have is the wide range of labs that EMC will be offering at the EMC booth on the showroom floor.  I thought I would share some highlights of hands-on demos you can take if you stop by the EMC booth at VMworld this year.

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Running Apple OSX Lion on vSphere 5

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In my last blog article I counted the ability to virtualize Apple’s new OSX Lion as one of the top 10 reasons for upgrading to VMware vSphere 5.  Aaron Hossain pointed out that an article I linked as support for this claim really suggested that virtualization on vSphere would not be supported by Apple.  Aaron’s question was interesting enough, and the answer complicated enough, that I want to include my reply in its own article.  Here is the scoop on OSX Lion on vSphere with new commentary not in my previous comment.

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Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to vSphere 5

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I was recently re-watching the classic cultural assessment of our friends down under, Bart vs. Australia. Among the other completely accurate portrayals of our Aussie friends, you will see MPs slopping pigs, the Prime Minister drinking beer from an inner-tube on a lake, and of course The Boot. All of this got me thinking of the Melbourne stop in EMC’s five-city Pre-sales Conference Roadshow that finished a week ago. VMware partially sponsored this event and its fantastic SE and one of my good friends, Pete Marfatia, gave an electrifying presentation on the top 10 reasons to upgrade to vSphere 5.

In this entry I want to share with you VMware’s top 10 list that Pete presented with Tim Hartman. I have provided a PDF version of their presentation on my blog in case you want more detail. Feel free to contact me, your local VMware SE, or a vSpecialist if you want more information. Now, on to the top 10!

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vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)

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I am currently in Beijing halfway through a five city roadshow to present and listen to EMC’s technical pre-sales team. One of my roles in this traveling show is to talk about vSphere 5, and all of the great things EMC is doing to make it even better for customers. A big part of my talk is centered around the new vStorage API for Storage Awareness, or VASA. I think this new API is going to provide value far beyond what most people realize.

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Wireless vMotion Using Laptops

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In June of 2011 I visited China as EMC’s vSpecialists kicked off a program of technical workshops for VMware enthusiasts. We invited pre-sales teams from VMware, Cisco, and EMC to gather for presentations, discussions, and labs all focused on EMC and VMware products and how they work together. We call this group the vAmbassadors. And we are building communities like this throughout the Asia Pacific region.

To kick off the Chinese vAmbassador program, we wanted to show everyone EMC and VMware configurations on very simple hardware. I suggested that we try and demonstrate vMotion using our laptops and wireless Ethernet with the Celerra VSA as the embedded host storage. While I was sure it was technically possible, I had never seen this before. As it turns out, it was pretty straight forward. And was also damn fun to watch. :)

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