Calling all coding hacks!

Back in December, VMware launched the VMware Script-O-Mania contest. The goal of the Script-O-Mania contest is to help our wider community adopt ESXi by providing useful, fun and powerful scripts to manage the ESXi platform. But this isn’t just fun and games – there’s real prizes!

• 1st Prize $2,500
• 2nd Prize $1,000
• 3rd Prize $500

So polish off those scripting skills and get coding. The contest ends on March 15, 2010. You can find full details and submit your entry here.

Today VSPP has over 700 service providers in the program. That’s a pretty large presence. What’s more is that nearly all of these service providers are in the middle of adding VMware-powered cloud service to their existing managed hosting environments. That is the power of the VMware vCloud initiative – choice of several hundred different providers to get you exactly what you need and compatibility between all of those various cloud providers.

For more information on the new milestone of VSPP read this press release. For more information on VSPP go here.

The new version of VMware Studio (2.0) is now in beta. One of my favorite features of VMware Studio 2.0 is the Eclipse plug-in. Now developers can develop their apps, test them out locally with VMware Workstation, and then build them into a vApp and inject that vApp directly to a VMware Virtual Infrastructure or vSphere environment or even a VMware powered cloud. The ability to go straight from the development environment through to the cloud from within your IDE is pretty powerful – especially with how popular the cloud is for a development platform. Just another way that VMware is showing its leadership in the cloud space.

Here are some more highlights of VMware Studio 2.0 beta:

• Build vApps and virtual appliances (with in-guest OS and application components) compatible with VMware Infrastructure, VMware vSphere 4.0 and vCloud.
• Use an Eclipse plug-in version in addition to the stand-alone form factor. A Web Console and Command Line Interface are also furnished.
• Ability to accept existing Studio-created VM builds as input
• Support for Windows 2003 and 2008 Server as guest operating systems in addition to major linux distros.

ISV partners:

• Author and build virtual appliances optimized for VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere 4.0: Support for OVF 1.0 and 0.9
• Publish patches to update deployed virtual appliances
• Extensible in-guest management framework
• Automatic Dependency resolution (static)
• Support for 32 bit and 64 bit versions of SLES 10.2, RHEL 5.2 and 5.3, CentOS 5.2 and 5.3, Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 as guest operating systems

Studio 2.0 also provides general purpose features enhancements in provisioning and user experience

• VMware ESX Server, VMware ESXi, VMware Server 2.0, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 enabled as provisioning engines
• Infrastructure enhancements in the GUI and builds

The public Beta is accessible now from http://www.vmware.com/appliances/learn/vmware_studio.html.

Step-by-Step Migration Videos

vSphere is a major launch for VMware and lays the foundation for the next generation of how companies do computing. It builds on top of everything customers already have and gives them even more power. It also provides the foundation to build internal and external clouds. There are three main take-aways from today’s launch event that you should know about:

• If you’re a current customer then go out and upgrade NOW. There are so many things that have been put into this product at the direct request of customers that you should start taking advantage of these things today. The upgrade is fairly painless and the features you get with this release will help you get back even more of your precious time.
• VMware vSphere is the best value for money for every customer segment.
• The competition debate is over. Pricing was the only argument for the competition. With the new packages, VMware delivers the best value and best ROI at every pricepoint, starting from free all the way to $3500/CPU, from small customers all the way to global enterprises.

1) Upgrade NOW!!! If you are a current enterprise customer, you get 30% better consolidation, 50% additional storage savings, 20% additional power savings just by upgrading to 4.0. And to top it all, you get amazing new capabilities – Fault Tolerance for mainframe-class availability, automatic security zoning for apps, blazing performance for Tier 1 apps, etc. No extra charge – it is all free. The business value could not be more compelling.

2) VMware is delivering the best value for the money for all customers.

• For SMB – The SMB value proposition is unique. VMware is delivering Enterprise-class, ‘Always-On’ IT without requiring enterprise-class, expensive IT staff at prices SMB can afford. In addition to savings on servers, memory and power, VMware is enabling 50% storage savings through built-in capabilities like thin provisioning that SMB could never previously afford. VMware is delivering virtualization manageability starting at as little as $165/CPU. VMware has also taken the Virtual Infrastructure Standard SKU which was oriented at the enterprise with its performance and high availability and are now offering the same capabilities for $1500. No one else offers the combination of savings, ‘always-on IT’, manageability, performance that VMware does.
• For mid-market and commercial customers, vSphere Advanced is the new SKU and it offers a groundbreaking combination of consolidation, high availability, security and management at mid-market prices. Advanced SKU provides Fault Tolerance, security zones, one-click data protection and of course VMotion, all integrated with best-in-class virtualization management. When you combine these capabilities with the 30% additional consolidation ratio and 50% storage savings, you get a solution that is not only unrivalled but a fantastic value.
• The bottom line is, folks – VMware has the best product at every pricepoint for every customer, whether you are enterprise or mid-market or small.

3) VMware is blowing away the competition and extending their lead in terms of unique vision for the future as well as unique capabilities for the present.

• VMware has the strategic message and vision for large customers, i.e. enabling them to transform their datacenters into highly efficient, agile private clouds. VMware also has a unique and compelling offer to SMB, i.e. enterprise-class, ‘always-on IT’ at SMB affordability.
• VMware offers the best economic value at every pricepoint. VMware is already the leader in cost per application virtualized. VMware is extending on their lead by delivering amazing new savings to customers – 30% more consolidation, 50% storage savings, 20% power savings.
• If the competition wants a feature comparison, bring it on!! VMware is delivering groundbreaking new capabilities for both large and small customers – VMotion is old news folks; it’s about Fault Tolerance, it’s about application security, it’s about integrated data protection, integrated power management, it’s about Storage VMotion, it’s about DRS and many new capabilities.
• If you’re out there wondering about if Microsoft or Citrix is catching up then you can end that conversation right now, once and for all, with the vSphere release. VMware has dramatically distanced themselves from the competition. The competition debate is over.

So don’t wait another minute. Go check out the new vSphere release today. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

1) EMC Storage Viewer – This little gem allows some really great views all the way down into the array that’s underneath you hosts. Here’s a short video.

And here’s where you can grab it. Don’t forget the great whitepaper that goes along with it.

2) EMC Celera SRM Failback Tool – This one is awesome. If you’ve failed your environment over using VMware SRM then this tool will help you configure the storage to fail back to the original site. You can grab it here.

3) EMC Celera VDI Deployment – This will let you create a single VM on a share and then it will automatically clone that share out a bunch of times and automatically register the VMs in vCenter. Really nice way to scale out a bunch of VMs for VDI. It’s also available here.

Enjoy all of the new tools brought to you by our parent company, EMC.

One of the all time gurus of VMware and PowerShell is Hal Rottenberg. Now Hal has a new book coming out and it’s time to click on over and pre-order your copy today. If you’re using VMware and have ever needed to script anything then you’ll want this book. Go get it now.

From Hal’s site on why to buy it.

Here’s what the book is about:

VMware is the king when it comes to virtualization. Windows PowerShell has gotten huge accolades as an extremely powerful tool for automation of IT tasks. These two technologies make a lot of sense together, and VMware is now making that happen with the release of their VI Toolkit for Windows.

In “Managing VMware Infrastructure with PowerShell”, you will learn how to perform everything from simple ad-hoc reporting at the command-line (”are any of my virtual machines powered off?”) to complex scripts to automate a massive deployment of hundreds of virtual machines. Simple, yet powerful; concise, yet robust; you will enjoy using this new language to solve your old problems using less code than you thought possible.

If you are a system administrator responsible for managing a VMware Virtual Infrastructure (version 2.0 or above), or a standalone ESX Server (version 3.0 or above), then you need this book. Aimed at scripters of every level, the book starts off with a PowerShell primer and continues well into the internals of virtualization on the VMware platform.

Table of Contents

- Introduction – Why You Need This Book
- Windows PowerShell Crash Course
- Getting Started
- Scripting with Virtual Infrastructure
- Inventory and Reporting
- Deployment and Configuration
- Maintenance and Operations
- Troubleshooting and Problem Resolution
- Managing VMWare with PowerGUI

As the VAM continues to be the industry’s leading destination for virtual appliances, we want to better serve our ISV partners and end users in their efforts around virtual appliance creation, identification, evaluation and deployment. As the VAM continues to be the industry’s leading destination for virtual appliances, VMware wants to better serve their ISV partners and end users in their efforts around virtual appliance creation, identification, evaluation and deployment. Here are some of the new features for both groups.

ISVs will now be able to perform the following functions:
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/whatsnew_vendors.html

• Create, edit, and update virtual appliance listings through the new self-service VAM Partner Portal

• Apply for the VMware Ready Virtual Appliance Program through the VAM Partner Portal
• Contact VMware with questions and comments through the VAM Partner Portal
• Upload VMware Ready virtual appliance images to be hosted by VAM
• Publish virtual appliances to a rich listing format. Upload related collateral and add linked to podcasts, blogs, videos
• Assign themselves to 2 new solution categories. There’s a total of 13 new solution categories!
• Respond to forum posts

End users will now be able to perform the following functions:
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/whatsnew.html

• Execute simple searches for virtual appliances. The new solution categories make browsing and searching easier

• Contribute to ratings, reviews, and forums
• Further educate themselves through related collateral, webinars, blogs, podcasts, reviews, forums
• Download VMware Ready virtual appliances directly from the VAM

Very exciting stuff indeed! Make sure to visit the new Virtual Appliance Marketplace to try everything out.

Just some highlights of what VMware is launching.

• Saves enough energy to power Denmark for 10 days
• Frees up enough storage to host 50 times the current volume of photos on Facebook
• Offers 4 times more memory per virtual machine
• Handles 8,900 transactions per second in a virtual machine
• Handles 3 times eBay’s daily traffic on a single server
• Supports 4 times more operating systems than the competition

Now that is truly revolutionary and shows why VMware is powering the cloud generation.

Virtual Appliances are pre-built virtual machines with an operating system and application stack ready to go. Appliances vary greatly in what they’re used for and how “pretty” they are. There’s everything from IBM software stacks to pre-built virtual storage nodes to something as simple as a web browser. All you have to do to use one is download it and open it. This is why I say this is where VMware and SaaS intersect.

SaaS is usually talked about in reference to someone like a Salesforce.com. In the Salesforce model you log into a website, fill out a form, and an instance of the software is created for you – no installs necessary. Appliances are very similar. You log into VAM, find your appliance and download it, and your instance is ready to run. That’s the play for VMware in the SaaS space and it’s a strong one. The great thing about appliance is they’re easy to build and they work with any application you have to make it SaaS enabled.

Do you want to get started converting your applications to a SaaS model? It’s easy. Just get your apps loaded into a VM. You can use something like the free VMware Converter to do that. Next, download and use the free VMware Studio to convert those VMs into virtual appliances. Presto! You have service enabled your application. Wasn’t that easy?

As you can see, VMware plays in more than just the IaaS stack. In the future I’ll shed some light on how VMware impacts the PaaS stack.