KB2005740

This is an hot add issue after a snapshot which can cause the VMX file to get corrupt on ESX 5.0.  Luckily enough there is simply a patch to install which fixed the problem.

KB2005741

The is an issue with vmotion failing when enabling 3D graphics and hardware version 8 (vSphere 5.0)  To fix this a manual edit of the VMX file is required which is list in the link.

KB2006132

vCenter server does not support the older version of converter and there is no upgrade to it.  A work around is to simply install the stand a lone converter product.

KB2006034

If you manually uninstall the HA agent and then try to install it manually again it will fail.  The simple fix is to use the GUI.

KB2006942

This is only HP related but ESX 5.0 can fail to see drives bigger than 2TB on HP P400 RAID controllers

KB2007231

The VirtualCentrer Server service fails to start with alarm errors after upgrading to vCenter Server 5.0.

KB2007108

After installing ESXi 5.0 and using software iSCSI errors the boot time can be excessively long.  This is because it will try to poll all targets and if it fails it will try again 9 more times.  The work around for this is to reduce the retry number.

KB2007269

Upgrading from ESXi 4.0 U2.  Note this is version specific.  You may get a purple screen of death when upgrading ESX and the vCenter.  The quick fix is not to upgrade from 4.0 U2.  Simply patch ESX up to the currently highest for U4 before upgrading to ESXi 5.0.

KB2006335

If you import the wrong bundle into VUM then VUM may report that it is unable to scan, stage or remediate ESXi5.0 hosts.  Simply make sure you are using the correct bundle for VUM.  Not Zips that end with “depot”.

KB2006028

There is some confusion about where the VMware HCL and product interoperability matrixes.  It used to be in a PDF but now you will find it at. http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php?

KB2004501

This KB is some useful info for upgrading with mainly video content.

You can defiantly tell that you have landed in the right place as there are VMware (and others such as EMC, Symantec, etc) adverts pasted on every available flat surface.  Also helpful people holding signs and to directly you to the free courtesy bus sponsored by Symantec which takes you to the Bella exhibition centre.

Once I arrived I rushed to the labs as the queues where low.  VMware has an excellent list of many different labs.  Everything to do with the technology; from networking, troubleshooting even up to build your own cloud with vCloud Director.  Also there were some sponsored labs of which the EMC lab stood out for me which I know Simon Seagrave (Kiwi_Si) had put lots of effort into.

On Monday night the Dutch VMUG organised a party for anyone to attend.  It was a great effort and very grateful for the welcome we had!  Drinks and fun all round!

On Tuesdays the sessions started!  Lots and lots of things to learn from basic concepts to real deep dive technical subjects with experts such as Duncan Epping and Franks Denaman.  I had a packed schedule with lots of sessions to attend and making sure I fitted in some labs and visiting the Solutions exchange where I can learn all the technologies accompanying VMware.

In the evening I was luckily enough to be invited to the exclusive Veeam party.  (Special thanks to Ricky El-Qasem @rickyelqasem )

Wednesday was another day of sessions and visiting many of the booths to learn how partners can add value to a VMware infrastructure.

Simon Seagrave putting another sterling effort in a the EMC booth!

During the day a live vSoup was recording with the usual excellent hosts of Chris Dearden, Ed Szerwin, and Christian Mohn with a special guest of Ed Grigson from vexperienced.co.uk

Johnathan Medd managed to catch one of my Tweets on the big screen! Cheers!

I managed to capture a picture of Alan Renouf of the big screen!

An the end of the Tuesday was the first keynote which was fantastic!  There was absolute ton of blogging about this!  It was fantastic!  I’ll leave you to google that but here are a few screen shots!

On the Wednesday I had to squeeze in a few for labs!  Lars of VMKtree fame just got in before me but I suppose I can let that one go as he has such useful software!

Ed Szerwin forgot his euro adpater for his macbook…..  nice hack!

In the eveing it was the brilliant VMware party.  Buses we available from the nearest train station.  The bus even has a beer tap on board but once we got there, there wasn’t a shortage of beer and very little queue!

Once of my favorite things to come out of the solutions exchange was the new Cisco Zero client that was also a phone!  Cool!  (Thanks for the jelly beans too!)

It’s been a long week but fantastic!  Hopefully see you all again next year!

Last night the Danish VMUG help a party which was great and an ideal place to put twitter name to faces!

The labs are looking fantastic and it’s certainly somewhere I’m going to visit!  Right….  I’m going in… wish me luck!

Now the good news!!  VMware have revised the strategy and made the amount of RAM to be licensed larger!  This is good news for us, the customer!

• VMware vSphere 5 Essentials – was 8GB and now 32GB vRAM
• VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus was 24 GB and now 32GB vRAM

• VMware vSphere 5 Standard  was 24 GB and now 32 GB vRAM
• VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise was 32GB and now 64GB vRAM
• VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus was 48 GB and now 96GB vRAM

There are some small differences between the two main offerings (essentials and the regular packages).   The essentials package will have a limit of 32GB as stated above but will be enforced. i.e. you will not be able to use more.  If you run standard, enterprise or enterprise plus you will still have a limited amount of vRam but it will not be enforced.  Sounds good but best stay in line with what you’re aloud otherwise the first time you place a call with VMware they may frown because of the over allocation.

see the links for the full VMware documentation:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf
One last thing….. VMware View.  This also has a licence model change.  see more info at

http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2011/08/desktop-virtualization-with-vsphere-5-licensing-overview.html

Being cost affective

New people; the “‘New Facebook Generation”

New generations of applications which are device independent

Three stages:

1 IT Production

2.Business productions

3. Transformation (IT as a server)

We are just reaching 50% of all workloads are virtulised.  It’s an exciting time to get the other 50% virtualised also!

Cloud infrastructure Suite

• vSphere 5.0 – for automation
• SRM for business continuity
• vCenter Operations for monitoring and management
• vshield security for virtulaised security
• vCloud director for policies, reporting and self-service (for the iPad also)

vSphere 5.0 Features

• vCloud director linked clones
• Pool-driven storage with Storage DRS
• vSphere storage appliance 1.0 (for the SMB)
• Autodeploy

Lots of things launching all at once!  To name some:

New training – http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1807-vSphere-5-New-Training-Courses-Whats-New-V5.0.html

and books – http://www.amazon.co.uk/vSphere-Clustering-Technical-Deepdive-ebook/dp/B005C1SARM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1310475444&sr=8-1

I was lucky enough to attend last years VMwork 2010 in Copenhaggan.  It was a fantastic conference which I highly recomend going to!

I told my managers that it was the best training experience I’ve been to in a long time.  It’s not a training event at all but there is just so much to digest and learn there.  The labs which are available are an obvious place to learn products right of the bat.  There a conference sessions but they are graded.  My most favorite type is the ‘Deep dive’ technical sessions.  Also the learning experience was good as you could learn about there theories of products and systems.  By knowing this it enables you to work out and understand the technical side and I feel as it completes your knowledge to some degres.
The link to registering is below and I really recommend attending.  If you do I will hopefully see you there!

http://www.vmworld.com

Stuart

Security server now supports PCoIP.  This is great as having to have two pools of desktops (one for external and one for internal) is not great.  When specifying to use PCoIP from an external source the desktop does not fail back to RDP thus needing a RDP pool and a PCoIP pool.  However now the security server supports PCoIP there’s no need for the old RDP pool!

Enhanced USB device compatibility.  I’m hoping this is going to support uni-directional devices but with the many many different types of USB devices out there so I’m just going have to give things a test.  I have dictation devices to test at the top of my list.

Other enhancements are:

• Keyboard mapping improvements
• New timeout setting for SSO users
• 160 Bug fixes
• Experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 RC operating systems

The release notes can be found here:

http://www.vmware.com/support/view46/doc/view-46-release-notes.html

The download for VMware View 4.6 can be found here:

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_downloads/vmware_view/4_6

It seams as though 2 Microsoft patches have killed View.

If you are just after the quick fix then uninstall Microsoft patches:

KB 2482017
KB 2467023

otherwise….

There is a big discusion about it on:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/302164

UPDATE…..

There is now a new version of the View client which VMware have released.  This new version of the client works with the Microsoft patches installed.  Link below…

Windows 7 View Client issue with Microsoft patch

http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2011/02/windows-7-view-client-issue-with-microsoft-patch.html

Cisco now have a new acronym to learn now!  A play of the already popular VDI, Cisco had created VXI which stands for Virtualisation eXperience Infrastructure.  Also to add some new hardware to the pot they have created what every other company in the far east have made at CES this year.  That’s right, a tablet.  It’s called the Cisco Cius.  This does look like a very interesting and useful business tool.  It is essentially a tablet running Android and has 3g connectivity so I can imagine you can make voice phones calls with it.  The cleaver part is that you can dock it to do many other things.  Once docked in your office phone docking station it will be you office VOIP land line number with video conferencing ability as it has a forward facing camera.  Also you can plug a screen keyboard and mouse into the dock and will serve you a VDI desktop.  This is the most business focused tablet I’ve seen so far!

The newest kids on the block are:

vSoup

http://vsoup.net/

This is a podcast staring (is that the correct word?)  Chris Dearden, Ed Czerfwin and Christian Mohn.   It’s still early days yet but enjoyed the first two podcasts and look forward to these three making more!

Chinwag with Mike Laverick

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/category/chinwag/

This is an excellent podcast that alternated between interviewing sysadmin and, new to the dictionary,  a Venderwag, where a vendor will pitch their product in the podcast.  Both formats are really good listening.  Interviewing sysadmin’s is very interesting (particularly the one with Stu McHugh), as you can get and insight into how other people run their virtual infrastructure.  Also equally interesting is the Vendorwag as it opens your eyes to products and tools that could make your life a lot easier!

Get Scripting

http://get-scripting.blogspot.com/

This is an excellent podcast about PowerShell hosted by two genius techies.  The first is Jonathan Medd who is well know character in the Powershell community and certainly given me a few tips in the past.  He knows all things powershell and just to prove it he has a Microsoft MVP.  The second host is Alan Renouf who is a French man living in the UK.  He also is an expert ‘Powersheller’ and often runs PowerCli workshops before the London Vmware User Group meeting.

vChat

http://www.vmwarevideos.com/vchat

Again, another excellent podcast staring to true experts in the field!  Simon Seagrave, Eric Siebert and David Davies.  I enjoy listening to this as these three know what they’re talking about.  Various subject have been covered such as certifications, virtualisation tools, VMworld coverage and moving from ESX to ESXi.

Virtumania

http://virtumania.podbean.com/

Virtumania is a US based podcast exploring all things virtual. From Microsoft, Vmware, Citrix, Powershell, and hardware vendors.  This is usually hosted by Rich Brambley, Rick Vanover and Marc Farley.

VMware Communities Roundtable

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/19367

This is a weekly podcast that you can all get involved in!  It’s hosted on talkshoe so you can create an account, log in and get chatting directly to the experts!  It’s recorded on Wednesday at 8pm UK time or noon CA time by the fantastic John Troyer.

Have I missed any??  Can you advise me of other great virtual/cloud podcast to make our journeys to the great smoke more entertaining?

Let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

PS.  Also a special thank you to all these people who put in the time and effort to create these useful, informative and educational podcasts.