Stu McHugh's Tech Blog

Stu McHugh’s New Blog – Updated with new link! RT

stumchugh — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 10:07:46 +0000

I have finally got round to buying my own domain and moved my blog! My new blog is simply www.stumchugh.com

I’m determined to blog more continue podcasting and getting out into the virtualisation community.

Thanks for for reading my blog and feel free to contact me with any comments or suggestions!
Stu

vNews May 2012 is out now!

stumchugh — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:46:05 +0000

After lots of celebrations around the British monarchy it time to celebrate all things cloud and virtual! This months vNews with Mike Laverick (http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/) and me is now out and includes the following stories to bring you right up to date:

VMworld voting open
New books
Blogger with Sheexy website
Icons, case studies, exams and videos
VMware View 5.1
Open Compute Project
VMware Insight Magazine
VMware View Leads the Small and Mid-sized Business
VMware Acquires Wanova
SAP for Virtualization
Hyper-V secret weapons

The PowerPoint can be downloaded vNews May 2012

If you want to watch on You Tube right now click below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QzfrR3FqJLs

or the links for downloading are over on Mike’s Blog:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2012/06/06/vnews-may-2012/

Until next time,

Stuart

Twitter links:

vnews May 20012 http://wp.me/p7jNz-4Q
@podoherty @gabvirtualworld @esloof @andreleibovici
@VMwareEUC @vmwareview @VMwareSMB @Wanova
@Spiceworks @joe_elway @MSLearning

April vNews 2012 now available for download

stumchugh — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:31:30 +0000

This months vNews is available at Mike Laverick’s blog hosted by Mike and I. The storing we cover this week are:

Gabrie Van Zanten – Auto Deploy Adventures
Alan Renouf’s vCDAudit
New Books & Publications
Brian Madden’s VDI Delusion Book & the new CDL License from Microsoft
Chad Sakac and VSI
Andre Leibovici and Windows8/View5.x
Duncan Epping and vShield App “Excludes” and Stretched HA/SRM Designs
Scott Lowe and TrainSignal Videos
Microsoft Virtual Machine Migration Toolkit
Windows Embedded Device Manager
Citrix acquires Podio
VMware ESX code leak
What’s new in View 5.1

See the link below for download options:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2012/05/07/vnews-april-2012/

VMware View 5.1 announced

stumchugh — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:32:10 +0000

VMware View 5.1 announced

Some of the features which stood out for me are the following:

New features and improvements in View 5.1

View Storage Accelerator
Improved management for large scale
Better end-user experience with PCoIP improvements
Better USB support for more devices
More clients available
PcoIP improvements
Local mode enhancements

View Storage accelerator details:

Utilities local RAM (between 100mb – 2048mb) for common disk reads. This increases disk performance at peak times which has shown in test the following results:

80% reduction in peak OPS
45% reduction in average OPS
65% reduction in peak throughput
25% reduction in average throughput

Management

A faster admin console for large scale environments

The ability to report to a syslog server

Additional language support

Improvements to persona Management

New tools to enable the transition from physical to virtual desktop. It is designed to collect the user information in preparation to switching to a virtual desktop environment.

The ability to pre-populate Active Directory with View machines before creation (composer).

Improvements to 2-factor authentication.

User Experience

USB improvements in the View agent.

The ability to connect:

iPhone,
blackberry’s,
SanDisk cruizer,
SpeechMike

More improvements for PCoIP

New clients, Mac client, Linux, iOS and Android.

Custom client download page.

See the full report over at:

http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-euc-portfolio-05-02-12.html

Vmware View 5.1 Rumours

stumchugh — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:29:07 +0000

A interesting article has popped up on CRN (see link below) with information that VMware View 5.1 will be released on May 9th, along with Horizon Application Manager, Zimbra 7.2.

Not in this article but other rumours are that Vmware View 5.1 will include View Storage Accelerator ,View Composer Array Integration (VCAI), enhanced VMware’s View Persona Management features.

I will be very interested to see and test View’s Storage Accelerator. This could pave the way to more cost effective VDI solutions. Will this annoy storage vendors?

http://www.crn.in/Software-017Apr012-VMware-Memo-Outlines-View-5-1-Project-Octopus-Launch-Plans.aspx

vNews March 2012 – Virtualisation news

stumchugh — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:35:45 +0000

Mike and I have just released this months vNews which cover all things cloud and virtualisation. If you’re looking for a round up of virtualisation news the you’ve come to the right place.

We have changed the format slightly to be more snappy, too the point but still with some discussion!

This month we cover VMware, Teradici, TrainSignal, Cisco, Microsoft, Veeam, Windows 8, and Dell splashing some cash on Wyse.

All the links and download methods are over on Mike website:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2012/04/05/vnews-march/

Windows 8 on VMware vSphere ESXi 5 with vSphere 5.0 Update 1

stumchugh — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:05:23 +0000

There is already a patch to enable Windows 8 to be installed as a guest on ESXi 5.0 (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2006859) but now VMware have released a complete update for the vSphere family. It’s simply vSphere 5.0 Update 1.

The things that excite me the most are that ESXi officially support Windows 8 and MAC OS X “Lion” 10.7.3.

I look forward to cranking up the VMware View environment and bringing the guest operating systems right up to date.

Here’s is the official information:

This release provides the following improvements:

VMware ESXi

Support for new Intel and AMD processors
Adding support for Native Storage Drivers for Intel C600 series chipset and upgrades LSI MegaRAID SAS driver to version 5.34
Now supporting Mac OS X Server Lion 10.7.2 and 10.7.3 guest operating systems
Numerous bug and security fixes

VMware vCenter

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server adds support for customization of the following guest operating systems
- Windows 8
- Ubuntu 11.10
- Ubuntu 11.04
- Ubuntu 10.10
- Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
Numerous bug and security fixes

VMware vCenter Update Manager

Security Update: In Update Manager 5.0 Update 1, the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 database, the Oracle (Sun) JRE package and the certificate that is provided with Update Manager installation package are updated to address security related issues.
Improved Product Usability: Update Manager 5.0 Update 1 provides upgrade release version information, improved maintenance mode impact differentiation, and a warning message that states a snapshot of fault tolerant virtual machines cannot be created during remediation.
Improved Product Robustness: In Update Manager 5.0 Update 1, virtual appliance updates and the Update Manager server failure are handled in an improved manner.

vNews – Feb 2012 – The Hotel California Edition

stumchugh — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:22:21 +0000

Mike Laverick of http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk and @Mike_Laverick and I have produced this months vNews. (yay I hear you all cheer!)

We produce this podcast to inform you of all the latest virtualisation/cloud based news. If you have a hectic life style and don’t have time to read press releases and blogs, or even if you do and want a reminder then check out this podcast! see links below…

Subscription of videos for your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2012/03/05/vnews-feb-the-hotel-california-edition/

HP VMware ESXi 5.0 install media/ISO download location

stumchugh — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:59:58 +0000

This is just a quick blog post to notify me and others of where to download the HP version of ESXi 5.0 ISO with all the HP tools pre-installed.

The HP ESXi 5.0 Customized Image includes the following:
• HP Management Tools:
◦ HP CIM Providers
◦ HP NMI Driver
◦ HP iLO Driver
◦ HP CRU Driver
◦ HPONCONFG Utility
◦ HPBOOTCFG Utility
• VMware IOVP Certified Device Drivers added to HP ESXi 5.0 installation images for HP device
enablement.
• VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201109001

http://vibsdepot.hp.com/

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/software/vmware/esxi-image.html

How to set the LoadBalancingPolicy using PowerCLI

stumchugh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:37:46 +0000

As a virtualisation admin you maybe tasked with configuring VMware’s vSwitches in a particular load balancing configuration. I have had to do this for link aggregation between the teaming of my vmnic’s and physical Cisco switches. See the link for more info:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004048

Here’s how I did it using PowerCLI.

Connect-VIServer VirtualCenterServerFQDN
Get-VMHost -Name HostName | Get-VirtualSwitch -name vSwitchNumber |
Get-NicTeamingPolicy | Set-NicTeamingPolicy -LoadBalancingPolicy LoadBalanceIP

Just bear in mind you will need to set the, Virtual Center Server, Host Nane and vSwitch name.

I hope this helps!
Stuart