Probably the biggest surprise of VMWorld 2008 is that they did not announce ESX 4, although the guy running my PowerShell scripting seminar said that certain features in the beta of the VI Toolkit (their platform for using PowerShell) take advantage of ESX 4, like the ability to hot-add RAM to a VM.

One of the most significant products announced here VDC-OS, is summed up in this article.  http://virtualizationreview.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=10197 , also discussed on VMware’s site here: http://vmware.com/technology/virtual-datacenter-os/ .  In a nutshell, it allows management of ALL VirtualCenter Servers from one screen, it introduces a new version of the VIC an allows for things like searching for all VMs that have been running for a month.  In the results pane of the search, you can make changes to all in that group.  In other words, if the search returned 4 VMs, you could then install/upgrade the VMware Tools on all 4 VMs right there.

Another that they talked about is renaming VirtualCenter Server to vCenter.  The product will have a linked mode, so that when you use VDC-OS, and you make a change to say, a role named Night Manager on one VC, it will go into the centralized backend and then automatically populate to all VCs!  I asked if it was granular, it is not.  It’s an all or nothing feature, you can’t say, send to all VCs, except VC28.

With this technology, licenses will also be centralized and will have the ability to have security put on them.

Another product they mentioned was vCenter Administrator Portal (VCAP), which is a web-based Appliance that connects to and works across  multiple VC’s.  It allows for some functions across VCs, hosts and VMs, like the VDC-OS, but there is no linked mode because it will work with VC 2.0 and 2.5.  It should be out in 30 days.  It provides a search based interface.  As a demo, he asked it to display all powered on VMs.  It allows you to launch a VIC to manage hosts as well.

Also, they said, “Customers need tools to maintain and configure ESX hosts consistently across the datacenter.”  Their answer is called Host Profiles. These profiles are the following:

o   Host Profile = Collection of root sets (Like a Role = collection of Privileges)

o   You make the configuration you want for ESX Hosts on a single “golden” ESX host (used to create a host profile - export)

o   Attach it to host or cluster & apply profile to host or cluster

o   Any new ESX hosts added, get profile automatically.

o   Can check hosts for compliance

o   Can bring hosts into compliance

Finally, they announced that ALL events in VC will be “alarm-able”.  I think that feature is a subtle but significant step forward for better monitoring and security.

More to come later.  By the end of September, all the sessions, slides, and lab files will be available on the VMWorld site for attendees to download.  I will do a more comprehensive review on those once I get them.  JSW

Chicago, IL

Almost a year ago my phone rang, and on the other end of the receiver was a familiar voice. An old friend of sorts. I was a busy COO working on all the pressing issues of our marketing, sales, consulting and web businesses at the time, and the idea of taking on another project seemed impractical. So you can imagine my surprise when I was given the directive to stop the presses and make a 90 degree turn in direction and start working on coming up with a training solution in the virtualization market. I was like, “Virtualization?” “ VM What?” “What is that?”

For almost 2000 years the primary mode of transportation in the world was the horse and buggy. Then came along a guy named Henry Ford and the model T automobile, and since then, in the last 100 years we have gone from that to putting a man on the moon!

When you stop to think about it, it is pretty incredible. Globally, more has been accomplished in the last century than the prior 2000 years put together. Now, with the advent of computers and the information age, the life of a job, let alone an industry has decreased drastically. What used to take 40 years for change now takes less than three. And from all appearances it is only going to move faster as virtualization is revolutionizing the world we live in.

Virtualization is emancipating the IT infrastructure world from the constraints of needing physical servers to run data centers. Soon, IT professionals will reminisce of the days when large data centers were housed in buildings instead of closets, draining financial resources to heat and cool rooms to maintain a constant temperature. Where a phone call in the middle of the night meant disaster and recovery, and lost sleep. Oh the good ole days. Soon young IT professionals will be like my children today, asking their parents what it was like back then when there were no TV’s? How did you live without cell phones and the internet? Like the dinosaurs in today’s history museums, they will have to imagine what life was like back when virtualization didn’t exist.

There is no denying it. Virtualization is changing the way we do things and is probably one of the hottest technological break-throughs that have happened in the IT field since the proliferation of high speed Internet connectivity to the masses. And as people like me, and company’s begin to look seriously at virtualization the benefits are simply amazing. I keep pinching myself to make sure I am not dreaming. Beyond the obvious benefits virtualization presents in the form of cost savings and an environmentally friendly solution, perhaps the most subtle benefit to the infrastructure professional is now they are no longer the anchor in a company’s ability to grow, but rather the force multiplier that can help an enterprise, big or small, gain a competitive advantage through dynamic scaling of IT resources. What used to take days or weeks, now can be accomplished in minutes.

While the possibilities virtualization presents in its many applications are exciting, there is still a lot to know, and very few places to go and receive training and certification on the subject. Research shows that a virtualization certification commands one of the highest wages today in the IT market place. However, having a certification does not necessarily mean you know what you are doing as many training solutions are incomplete, or hybrids that pull from various sources. As we found as we began our homework, we soon learned not all training is the same, and there was allot of room for improvement when it came to training in virtualization, hence the phone I received a year ago.

So the decision was made to become the premier provider of training on the topic of virtualization, and to become an advocate for those companies who are driving the virtualization revolution. Be it VMware, Microsoft’s Hyper-V, or any of the other 98 or so virtualization related technologies out there, our goal is to help the IT Professional transform themselves into a subject matter expert on the topic of virtualization through high quality, affordable training solutions. Because we are not a manufacturer of virtualization, we maintain our independence and objectivity as we are not peddling any particular product, and have no preset agenda. Our sole mission is to advance the cause, and support you the student on the journey. We hope you join our community, take advantage of our training offerings, become certified and earn higher wages. One thing is for sure, If you are in IT, you don’t want to miss the Virtualization Training window of opportunity.

See you on the other side!