There is also a referral system in place where if you refer in a person who enters, you can earn an additional 5 entries for each person who enters.

For more details about other books and the drawing itself, see this post.

So, let’s see who can win this thing! (Side note: The widget might be a bit wonky if you use IE. Chrome or Firefox seems to work just fine.)

(Your emails, or other contact information used to register will be kept private and not sold or shared.)

Restrictions:

• You must live in the United States or if you live internationally, be willing to pay any shipping costs over $10USD since this is coming out of my own pocket.
• If you already own the book, don’t try to win a book you’ve already got!
• Actually read the book, and not let it collect dust on your shelf next to your MCSE NT 4 books.

More details about the book here: VMware vSphere: PowerCLI Reference

The vCloud Networking and Security Fundamentals course covers VMware’s vision of a Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC) and explains key features of vCloud Networking and Security Suite. This course also examines various methods for implementing vCloud Networking and Security.

Objectives:

• Communicate VMware’s vision of a SDDC
• Explain workload networking and security requirements
• Describe vCloud Networking and Security components
• Examine vCloud Networking and Security implementations

Outline:

The course consists of the following modules:

• vCloud Networking and Security Vision describes the challenges that vCloud Networking and Security addresses, its key concepts, and the customer benefits.
• vCloud Networking and Security Overview explains workload networking and security requirements, describes vCloud Networking and Security components, and explains vCloud Networking and Security purchasing options.
• vCloud Networking and Security Customer Use Cases examines how customers implemented vCloud Networking and Security into their environments.

This time I’ll be bringing my wife. We’ve decided to visit two locations this time. Amsterdam being the first one and Rome being the second destination. We’ll arrive in Amsterdam the afternoon of June 8th after an overnight flight. Then flying to Rome on June 11th and coming back to the States on the 16th. We’re excited for the trip. I know I have readers from The Netherlands and Italy, so if anybody has any tips, good restaurants or hidden gems in either city, feel free to pass them along! I would appreciate any of them!

Ryan

Use promo code VCP50.

More info: http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware/getcertified/

Description:

VMware vCloud Director® enables enterprise organizations to build secure private clouds that dramatically increase datacenter efficiency and business agility. Coupled with VMware vSphere®, vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling vSphere virtual resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services. It helps users build agile infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud environments that greatly accelerate the time to market for applications and the responsiveness of IT organizations.

Resiliency is a key aspect of any infrastructure—it is even more important in IaaS solutions. This technical paper was developed to provide additional insight and information regarding the use of VMware vSphere PowerCLI™ to automate the recovery of a vCloud Director–based infrastructure.

Read the case study at: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vCloud-Directore-Infrastructure-resiliency-whitepaper.pdf

There is also a referral system in place where if you refer in a person who enters, you can earn an additional 5 entries for each person who enters.

For more details about other books and the drawing itself, see this post.

So, let’s see who can win this thing! (Side note: The widget might be a bit wonky if you use IE. Chrome or Firefox seems to work just fine.)

(Your emails, or other contact information used to register will be kept private and not sold or shared.)

Restrictions:

• You must live in the United States or if you live internationally, be willing to pay any shipping costs over $10USD since this is coming out of my own pocket.
• If you already own the book, don’t try to win a book you’ve already got!
• Actually read the book, and not let it collect dust on your shelf next to your MCSE NT 4 books.

More details about the book here: Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator

Here’s a list I typically share out to my students. If you’ve got any to add, feel free to leave them in the comments section. It’s nice to get a list of these things. I also recommend the PowerCLI lab over at vNugglets to anybody getting started. Matt and Allen wrote the lab for last years Demo Days VMUG event.

Do VMs have snapshots?

foreach ($snap in (Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where-object {$_.Created -lt ((Get-Date).AddDays(0))})){ $snap | select VM, Name, Description, SizeMB, Created }

Rescan HBA Adapters.

foreach ($esx in Get-VMhost -Location ClusterName | sort Name) { $esx | Get-VMHostStorage -RescanAllHBA -rescanVMFS -refresh }

Add Port Group “VLAN 500” with VLAN tag 500 to vSwitch1 on all hosts in a Cluster

foreach ($esx in Get-VMHost -Location ClusterName | Sort-Object Name) { $esx | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name vSwitch1 | New-VirtualPortGroup -Name “VLAN500″ -VlanId 500 }

vMotion and Storage vMotion

Get VM Information, Cluster, Host, Datastore

Get-VM | Select Name, @{N=”Cluster”;E={Get-Cluster -VM $_}},@{N=”ESX Host”;E={Get-VMHost -VM $_}},@{N=”Datastore”;E={Get-Datastore -VM $_}}

Actually vMotion

Move-VM vm-name -Destination (Get-VMHost esxi-hostname)

Actually Storage vMotion

Get-VM “vm-name” | Move-VM -datastore (Get-datastore datastore-name)

Search for things in Inventory. (Look for VMs that have an ‘v’ in them.

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.name -match ‘v’}

List VMs with less than 1024MB of Memory

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.MemoryMB -lt ’1024′}

See if any of our datastores have less than a certain amount of free space. First we’ll do 100,000MB. Then we’ll search for 3,000MB

Get-Datastore | Where-Object {$_.freespaceMB -lt 100000}

Get-Datastore | Where-Object {$_.freespaceMB -lt 3000}

Output a list

get-vm | select name, numcpu, memoryMB, @{n=”diskKB”; e={($_ | get-harddisk).capacityKB}} | ConvertTo-Html | Out-File c:\vms.html

This free eLearning course facilitates the avoidance of the pitfalls commonly encountered when experienced VMware vSphere professionals cross the chasm of Tier-1 SQL Server virtualization.

Objectives:

• Describe how to design and implement SQL Server database on VMware.
• Describe how to design for uptime and performance.
• Discuss how to leverage VMware products and technologies.
• Discuss various SQL Server licensing scenarios.

Outline:

The course consists of five modules:

• Introduction to SQL Server Database Virtualization discusses virtualization trends. This module also covers vSphere performance transparency, customer perceptions, and common objections to virtualization of Microsoft SQL Server.
• Physical Stack Fundamentals discusses Microsoft SQL Server licensing concepts. This module also covers reference architecture of SQL Server database on vSphere. In addition, the module discusses several storage, vSphere host sizing, and networking considerations.
• Virtual Machine Layer Fundamentals discusses how to configure guest Windows OS. This module also discusses various storage presentation options and compares their pros and cons. Finally, this module discusses how to optimally install SQL Server instance.
• SQL Server Database on vSphere Prototype Project discusses project management and team dynamics of the prototype project. This module also details techniques for baselining performance and discusses considerations for selection of a viable workload candidate for virtualization prototye. Finally, this module covers the process by which an organization validates the prototype’s performance.
• Beyond the Prototype Implementation discusses two disaster recovery architectures – one with SQL database mirroring and one without SQL database mirroring. This module compares single-instance SQL Server on VMware with MFC-on-vSphere. This module also discusses the logical reference architecture for MFC. This module covers vSphere’s security advantages compared to native hardware. Finally, this module reviews some prominent opportunities to apply tooling to optimize every qualitative, operational, and financial aspect of the preproduction lifecycle.

Ok, so this blog over the years has almost entirely been about virtualization with little personal blog type posts. However, this is something worth sharing. I recently ported all of our cell phone service over to a company called Ting. You’ve probably never heard of them since I just found out about them 4 months ago and was waiting on a contract to expire. Hence the need for a blog post! They are a Sprint re-seller and a service of Tucows. You might have heard of Tucows before since they’ve been around the internet for awhile.

Essentially, if you have Sprint coverage in your area, you can use Ting. The port process took about 4 hours and we were up and running. If you’re not a heavy data user but like the benefits of a smartphone to use occasionally, Ting is what you want. Our old cell phone plan for two basic smartphones was about ~$135/month.

From looking at our estimated usage, and a switch to Ting we’ll basically pay around ~$60-70/month now for the same exact service. (Update 4/3/2013: Our first bill ended up only being $39.) It’s very important in my opinion to analyze your current plan before jumping. If you are heavy on data and have an “unlimited” plan, you might be better off staying put with your current provider. The people who win with Ting are low to moderate users of data, which believe it or not, is a lot of people. If your area has Sprint LTE, then Ting will work at LTE speeds if you have an LTE phone.

We do a bit of a hybrid phone setup these days. When we’re at home, we connect to our home WiFi to suck down the data and we combine Ting with Google Voice for even more savings but our estimated ~$60-70/month bill didn’t reflect us doing any of that. I used numbers that reflected us sitting on the cellular data network 100% of the time and using minutes and text messages on our old plan without the use of Google Voice. We’re just doing it now to drop that estimated $60-70/month bill even lower.

Ting also runs a great referral program. If you’re interested, you can use my referrer link and get $25 off a new phone or to your monthly service. It helps us both, as I will also get an account credit.

Positives:

• No contracts. You can move on whenever.
• A refund if you don’t use your existing “plan” data. If you use more, you just get bumped to the higher tier and don’t need to take out a second mortgage on the house. Then bumped back down to the lower tier next month. You pay for exactly what you use.
• Bring your own device. (Granted it’s on the supported list.) If not, you’ll need to purchase either a used phone or a new non-subsidized full price phone. I challenge you to do the math, even with a full price sticker shock phone, you will likely save considerable money.
• Great customer service and they are supporters, not banners of anybody who likes to use custom Android ROMs.

Negatives:

• They do not support the iPhone at this time. They say in the future it might be possible. To me, this wasn’t a deal breaker since we use Android based phones but to some it might be.
• If you’re not satisfied with Sprint service in your area or coverage does not exist, Ting is not for you.

Have a look at the YouTube playlist below. It shows the plans, dashboard and more perks.

My final verdict: Highly recommended if you have an Android based phone and are low to moderate smartphone data users.

There is also a referral system in place where if you refer in a person who enters, you can earn an additional 5 entries for each person who enters.

For more details about other books and the drawing itself, see this post.

So, let’s see who can win this thing!

(Your emails, or other contact information used to register will be kept private and not sold or shared.)

Restrictions:

• You must live in the United States or if you live internationally, be willing to pay any shipping costs over $10USD since this is coming out of my own pocket.
• If you already own the book, don’t try to win a book you’ve already got!
• Actually read the book, and not let it collect dust on your shelf next to your MCSE NT 4 books.

More details about the book here: Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager