Book Review: VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary
Posted: October 31, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: packt, packt publishing, vmware workstation, Workstation Leave a commentHave you looked at VMware Workstation recently? The Workstation development team at VMware has been busy! Did you know you can let others access VMs in Workstation via a web interface? Do you need VNC access to VMs in Workstation? It’s there. You can also access VMs from across the Internet using TeamViewer. How about this for a cool POC: accessing VMs in Workstation via a tablet or mobile device. Need P2V or V2V? Workstation can play, too. All this can be done using VMware Workstation. But how do you do it? If you’re a developer or administrator and you need a better way to work, this book can help you get started with Workstation.
Although I received the free ebook of this title in order to do this review, I was eager to get the good word out on VMware Workstation anyways. I’ve used it for several years now. It, and VMware Player, were my introductions to virtualization back in 2010. They’ve helped me build a solid foundation in VMware virtualization as well allowing me to grow in my career. So if you’re a Systems, Server guy, or developer that hasn’t quite dived as deep as you would like into VMware and virtualization, get out your credit card and a hot cup of coffee, buy a license of VMware Workstation and this book, and settle in for some fun and learning.
Thoughts on the new VMware Certified Associate-Cloud certification
Posted: October 31, 2013 Filed under: Certifications | Tags: certified associate, cloud certifications, cloud certs, datacenter virtualization, vca, vca-cloud, vca-dcv, vca-wm, virtualization, vmware certified associate, vmware vca, workforce mobility 5 CommentsThroughout October 2013, VMware offered $60 off all of their new VCA exams as a campaign kickoff promotion. There are three exams available today covering Datacenter Virtualization (DCV), Cloud, and Workforce Mobility (WM), what I gather to be desktop virtualization et al. (can you tell I’m not a desktop dude?). A Network Virtualization exam covering NSX should be available soon. I was trolling the Twitter the other morning when I followed a link to Mike Preston’s (@mwpreston) blog. There, I found his post Is October the month of certification? – The price is right! in which he shared a promo code that takes off the final $60 from the original $120 price of the certification test. Last time I checked, $120 minus $120 was a heck of a good deal. So I decided to drop what I was doing and take some tests!
SRM error – failed to recover datastore. An error occurred during host configuration
Posted: October 30, 2013 Filed under: SRM, VMware | Tags: An error occurred during host configuration, failed to recover datastore, site recovery manager, srm Leave a commentI’d like to share an error I was receiving when running test recoveries with SRM 5.1.1 on a NetApp, ONTAP version 8.1.2. The datastores in question were NFS. The error received in the SRM report is consistently in Section 4. Create Writable Storage Snapshot, but strangely, on differing datastores, first datastore 6, then on datastore 5, then back to datastore 6. This is without making changes to the environment in between tests. Weird, huh? The exact error in the report is
“Error – Failed to recover datastore ‘<datastore6>. An error occurred during host configuration.”
Coming soon: book review of VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary
Posted: October 29, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews Leave a commentThanks again to Packt Publishing for the opportunity to review another of their many good titles around VMware technology. In appreciation for the reviews, they kindly keep my Kindle loaded with their tech tomes. The next review will be out in a few days over VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary by Sander van Vugt (@sandervanvugt).
I’ve used Workstation for years alongside my home test lab, but for me, the product shines most when I’m on the road and don’t have access to a full blown hardware lab. For technologists new to virtualization and veterans alike, Workstation is a useful tool to have. I look forward to reviewing Sander’s latest addition.
Integrating Cisco MDS 9124 switches with Nexus 5500s
Posted: October 28, 2013 Filed under: Cisco Nexus, Networking | Tags: 5500, 5548, 5596, 55xx, 9124, Cisco, cisco mds, fc, fibre channel, mds, Nexus Leave a commentI wanted to take a short minute and document the addition of a few Cisco MDS 9124s to our test lab at work. The purpose of the addition in the test lab is just to show the functioning and capabilities of the devices to work together. See my previous post on configuring native FC over a Nexus 5548 and 5596. The FC-specific portions of the MDS config are very similar to the Nexus line. Here’s what the middle state looks like. I haven’t taken the time to move the NetApp FC links to the MDS switches yet (or the UCS FC links instead), but the port provisioning process will be similar to those already documented in this post and the Nexus post. The Visio of what’s configured is below followed by my MDS configuration notes.
Book Review: vSphere High Performance Cookbook
Posted: October 27, 2013 Filed under: Book Reviews | Tags: book, book review, high performance, packet publishing, packt, packt publishing, performance, review, vmware, vmware performance, vsphere, vsphere performance Leave a commentI was graciously given the opportunity to read and review vSphere High Performance Cookbook, written by Prasenjit Sarkar (@stretchcloud) and published by Packt Publishing, whose subtitle states it has Over 60 recipes to help you improve vSphere performance and solve problems before they arise. Gulping down its chapters was easy after seeing that Prasenjit’s recipes included fixes for such common, and some not so common, misconfigurations or lack thereof.