- Date - May 31st, 2009
- Category - News
Along with VMware’s new ESX 4 and vSphere 4, VMware Education has announced that there is a new version of the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) that covers vSphere. The new VCP cert is, rightly, “VCP4″ and will be replacing the current version of the VCP.
This new VCP4 exam will be publicly available on August 1, 2009. Just like the current version of the VCP, you must first take a VMware Education class to achieve VCP status.
If you are currently a VCP3, like me, you will have until December 31, 2009 to take the new VCP4 exam and pass it, to acieve your VCP4 certification (wow, that isn’t very long!)
In conjuction with this, VMware is also offering new Education classes covering VMware vSphere 4.
You can read about the new VCP4 and VMware’s new Ed classes at the VMware Education website.
The Cisco Nexus 1000V (N1KV) is Cisco’s IOS-like switch for VMware’s vSphere. The N1KV replaces the new VMware distributed virtual switch (dvswitch) in ESX 4 / vSphere 4.
The cool thing is that you can try this out for yourself. Here are the steps you need to take:
For evaluation support, please visit our community for questions and answers
Here are some useful Nexus 1000V Links:
One of the most popular videos on my blog is Running VMware ESX inside VMware Workstation. It isn’t something you will use every day but it is a great way to video the installation of ESX or run “VI in a box” as the XtraVirt whitepaper details.
Still, I was interested and surprised at the recent blog post from vcritical.com - VMware ESX 4 can even virtualize itself - where Eric demonstrates how you can run ESX 4 as a VM inside ESX 4.
I think that this is cool but perhaps even has less use than running ESX inside workstation. Still, I recommend filing it under “interesting” and I complement vCritical.com for their unique tip!
I just received my copy of Halr9000’s new book - Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell - and it looks great! I can’t wait to write some PowerShell scripts and see what I can mess up in my VMware Infrastructure (joke).
Seriously, Hal Rottenberg is really a legend in the PowerShell community so I am glad that he took time to apply his tremendous PS knowledge to VMware and then share it with hungry admins (like you and I).
You can order Hal’s new book at -
Sapien Press - Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell
Scott Lowe is one of the most well-known and respected VMware bloggers on the Internet. Now, Scott is going to share almost 700 pages of his VMware knowledge with us when he covers VMware’s vSphere. His new book is Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and, as he has posted on Twitter, he is covering ESX 4 and the vSphere suite inside and out.
Personally, this book is at the top of my “must read” list so I have already pre-ordered my copy. You can pre-order your copy here-
Amazon.com - Mastering VMware vSphere 4 by Scott Lowe
I received as pre-release of a press release that I wanted to share with everyone… Tomorrow, Veeam will release the newest edition of their monitoring tool, Veeam Monitor. The most immediate feature is that it supports VMware’s new vSphere but there are a number of other welcome features (below). Here is the pre-press release from Veeam:
NEW VEEAM MONITOR 4.0 SUPPORTS VMWARE VSPHERE 4
Newest Version Also Adds New Storage and Hardware Monitoring
Capabilities, Other Enhancements
Columbus, Ohio, May 28, 2009 – Veeam Software, award-winning provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today made available version 4.0 of its popular Veeam Monitor and Veeam Monitor Free Edition solutions for VMware performance monitoring, capacity planning and troubleshooting. The new versions include support for VMware vSphere 4, newly available from VMware. New features in Veeam Monitor 4.0 include full storage monitoring capabilities, hardware sensor monitoring, and troubleshooting drill-down to both Windows and Linux guest operating systems.
“Veeam Monitor gives busy administrators the information they need to see the true performance of their VMware infrastructure,” said Jonathan Franconi, Network Integrator, Guard Insurance Group. “My experience with Veeam Monitor has been amazing. The ability to monitor our infrastructure’s performance from one single window, quickly and easily, makes managing our infrastructure less of a chore. With the built-in VM alerting for performance values and utilization, I can feel comfortable knowing my infrastructure is running as efficiently and reliably as possible.”
New features in Veeam Monitor 4.0 include:
- Storage monitoring – Cumulative datastore load can now be easily monitored, and alerts can be triggered when specified I/O thresholds are met or exceeded. Full storage monitoring capabilities also include disk space and disk issues.
- Hardware monitoring – Veeam Monitor 4.0 can now monitor hardware sensor information through the VMware CIM/SMASH API. Physical hardware status (including ventilation, enclosure, power and other subsystem status) can now be monitored by virtual infrastructure administrators, and alarms can send automated notification or perform custom actions.
- Process monitoring and management for Windows and Linux – To help in troubleshooting, Veeam Monitor allows administrators to drill down into an individual virtual machine and manage running processes without having to open the VM console. With version 4.0, this capability is extended to Linux guest operating systems, as well as Windows.
- Scheduled reporting – Periodic trend and capacity analysis reports can now be automatically created and published to a file share, SharePoint library, or other system via custom script options.
Pricing and Availability
Veeam Monitor Free Edition 4.0 is available immediately, and it’s free for any VMware ESX and ESXi environment.
Veeam Monitor 4.0 is also available immediately, with North American pricing unchanged at $250 USD per socket. More information, including free trial downloads, is available at http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-monitoring.html.
Veeam Monitor is also available as part of the Veeam Management Suite. Veeam’s 2,500+ worldwide reseller partners can be found at http://www.veeam.com/buy-end-user.html.
About Veeam Software
Veeam Software, a premier-level VMware Technology Alliance Partner and member of the VMware Ready Management program, provides innovative software for managing VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere. Veeam offers an award-winning suite of tools to assist the VMware administrator, including #1 for VMware backup: Veeam Backup & Replication; Veeam Reporter Enterprise, for VMware performance, storage, capacity reporting and chargeback; Veeam Configurator, offering Host Profiles today; and Veeam Monitor, for VMware performance monitoring and alerting across multiple vCenters. With its acquisition of nworks, Veeam’s products include the nworks Smart Plug-in and the nworks Management Pack that incorporate VMware data into enterprise management consoles from HP and Microsoft. Learn more about Veeam Software by visiting www.veeam.com.
Last week, along with the announcement of VMware’s vSphere, Vizioncore made two announcements:
1) their most popular product, vRanger Pro, has ben upgraded and is now called vRanger Pro 4.0 Data Protection Platform (DDP). The new versions offers major advancements in scaleability and functionality. To find out the full scoop and get a link to download the new latest version, read the vRanger 4.0 DPP Press Release.
2) that they are already able to support VMware’s vSphere platform with most of their products and for products that aren’t yet supporting it, they will within 45 days. To learn more about this, read the Vizioncore products support for vSphere press release.
As part of VMware’s vSphere / ESX 4 beta, I have been testing VMware Data Recovery (VDR). This new application is VMware’s backup and recovery tool for VMware vSphere / ESX. It is great for the SMB as it is limited to 100 VMs or less.
Stay tuned to VirtualizationAdmin.com for my two new upcoming articles and video covering VMware VDR!
In the mean time, checkout these VDR resources already on the web-
On May 20, 2009 VMware released vSphere as general availability (GA). vSphere is the most powerful virtualization platform the world has every seen. It includes the new ESX version 4, tons of new features, and a heap of add-on applications. According to VMware, the new vSphere 4 platform provides benefits grouped into 3 categories:
- Efficiency - to run large scale applications at enterprise businesses, allowing them to achieve 100% virtualization
- Control - over application security and performance levels
- Choice - over hardware, OS, application architecture, and on or off premise application hosting
To me, those “big three benefits” seem a little like marketing fluff but I can tell you, from first hand beta-testing, that vSphere is NOT fluff. There are HUGE benefits that vSphere will bring businesses large and small. To me, the benefits of vSphere that really stand out are:
- Fault Tolerance (FT) - a new and improved VMHA where, if the ESX host goes down, the VM guests don’t have to reboot
- SVMotion interface - finally, a GUI interface for SVMotion that is supported and offered by VMware (its about time)
- dvSwitch & option to use the Cisco Nexus 1000V (N1KV) - the new distributed virtual networking switch allows you to have a single virtual switch that connects all ESX hosts with centralized management. The Cisco Nexus 1000V replacement for the dvswitch offers all the power of the Cisco IOS.
- Data Recovery - VMware’s new backup and recovery application for virtual machines is VMware’s first real backup application with a GUI interface.
- Option to use Cloud Computing - the vCloud services allow you to partner with certain service providers who will allow you to bring up infrastructure resources, on their infrastructure, as needed
- Virtualization Security with VMsafe and vShield Zones - VMsafe is an API to allow 3rd party vendors to create virtualization security products and vShield Zones allows you to enforce application security inside your virtual infrastructure.
- and a ton of increased performance and scaleability
I encourage you to Download a 60-day trial of VMware vSphere 4 and give it a try for yourself!
