Ten Dam of www.tendam.info has written a guide of how to SRM working all within VMware Workstation, using NetApp running a virtual machine. No mean feat!
http://tendam.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/srm-in-a-box-final-release-the-complete-setup
My friend, David Marshall over at vmblog.com - has contacted me to offer readers of RTFM a chance to evaluate the new version Hyper9 whilst its still in beta. Here are the terms and conditions of the invite:
Program Specifications
Beta Participant Minimum Environment Requirements
VMware ESX 3.0+
(1) VMware VirtualCenter Instance
(2) VMware ESX Host Servers
(20) Virtual Machines
Additional Requirements
If selected, the participant must download and install the software within five (5) days of receiving the beta software. Users from competitor companies are not eligible for participation.
The user is required to notify Hyper9 when they’ve completed an installation at jmeadows@hyper9.com.
Invitation Process
Ten (10) slots will be available per blogger to promote as invitations in their blog. The invitation program is limited to 5 different bloggers per month for October and November, 2008 as selected by Hyper9.
Once a participant is deemed qualified, the blogger sends the interested participants business email address to jmeadows@hyper9.com.
Qualified beta participants will be notified via email of the login and beta download instructions on November 3rd, 2008. Beta participation additionally includes access into the Hyper9 community.
Time & Date: November 14th at 9am Pacific Standard Time
Join us for an interactive discussion between two technical experts in disaster recovery - Mike Laverick, author of “Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager,” and Mornay Van Der Walt, Director of Technical Marketing at VMware. Based on selected topics from his new book, Mike will chat with Mornay about his experiences with disaster recovery and VMware Site Recovery Manager. This promises to be an engaging webcast with the unique opportunity to listen to Mike live.
Registration link:
http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/174?src=WWW_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCAST_LAVERICK&ossrc=WWW_08Q4_VMW_OTHER_WEBCAST_LAVERICK
It gives me great pleasure to announce that my book on VMware Site Recovery Manager 1.0 is now available from lulu.com. You can buy the book by clicking the book cover at the top of the blog or by clicking this link here:
http://www.lulu.com/content/4343147
In case you missed it - I have two free chapters available from the rough “Authors Edition” that was sold in limited copies at this years VMworld 2008:
Install and Configure Lefthand Networks VSA ready for SRM
PowerShell and DR
Currently, I’m the only experienced VMware guy who as written substantially about SRM. In fact there no books available on SRM at all. So I’m really pleased to be the first guy to get there.
Remember by buying the book via LULU.com you will be directly supporting me and the RTFM Education website, which I hope you will agree has been a valuable and useful source of information on all matter regarding VMWare Virtualization.
I order my copy of the book about a week and half ago using “Express Delivery”. That’s from the US where it is printed to Europe. I’m not sure how quick internal US delivery will be. The book is priced in US dollars mainly because I know most of my readership (85% in fact) are from there. With the current exchange rate that works out about £29.99 or about €37. That works out about .10p a page which I think is pretty good value for money. Some might ask why didn’t distribute via PDF. Unfortunately, DRM for PDF is still very expensive, and I’m afraid to say that what’s downloaded as PDF is on BitTorrent tommorow.
As for the long-term future. I will refresh the book when new releases come out - and people who buy the book now will be able to download a “What’s New” style PDF within the 1.x.x release. Once SRM is on version 2.x.x I will release this book for free to download as PDF, or as a paid-for printed book. I want to do this keep up RTFM’s reputation for free resources. It’s taken me 7 months to write this book from starting with the Beta in April, to a finished copy in October. So I think its only fair that I make something out of this venture, don’t you? At least you can be safe in knowing purchase results in the author receiving the full value of his work (the essance of self-publishing) rather than the bookshop or Amazon.com taking their hefty cut.
This is almost shameless (correction IS a shameless) rip-off of stuff from Paul Thurrott, http://www.windowsitpro.com
Microsoft on Monday announced that it had finalized its System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 product, capping off a year of virtualization-related software releases. VMM 2008 will be made broadly available to customers starting November 1, the software giant noted.
“Our virtualization solutions span the desktop to the data center, including the management tools required to ensure that virtualization remains an asset and doesn’t become an unwieldy burden,” Microsoft Senior Director of Virtualization Strategy Zane Adam wrote in a blog post announcing the release. “Today’s announcement of the [release to manufacturing] of VMM 2008 extends the management benefits of System Center even further by enabling not only the management of Microsoft virtualized environments, but also VMware ESX as well.”
2008 has been a busy year for Microsoft virtualization products. The company shipped its Server 2008 OS in February with a beta version of the Hyper-V virtualization platform, but then shipped that platform in final form later in the year. Microsoft also shipped a standalone (and free) Hyper-V Server 2008 product in October, along with a new version of its Application Virtualization tool for enterprises. VMM 2008 completes the picture, in many ways, providing enterprises with centralized virtual machine (VM) management functionality.
Customers interested in evaluating VMM 2008 can download a 180-day trial version from the Microsoft website.
Some content is drifting out from this years VMworld which is specifically related to VMware’ Site Recovery Manager. I thought I would collate them into one handy post:
Introduction to VMware Site Recovery Manager
http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/117
VMware Site Recovery Manager: Technical Overview
http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/116
From VMworld 2007:
BC29 Disaster Recovery Solution Architecture for VMware
BC31 New Trends in Disaster Recovery for VMware
From VMworld 2008:
VMWare Site Recovery Manager & lessons learned from the field (Webcast)
VMWare Site Recovery Manager & lessons learned from the field (PDF)
I didn’t know this but apparently HyperV has an algorithm to generate new MAC address per host, but it doesn’t check to see if this MAC address is unique to two HyperVs on the same subnet!
Robert Larson on virtualizationadmin.com has an interesting article which describes how MAC address pools work in Hyper-V, how it is possible to accidentally deploy hosts with duplicate MAC address pools, how to modify the default pool, how to detect if you are experiencing a duplicate MAC address situation with virtual machines, and how using SCVMM 2008 to manage your Hyper-V hosts can prevent duplicate MAC addresses.
Of course one solution is use a product that doesn’t do this. Hee-hee… 
Now this is on vmware.com’s website in the VMware Communities > Beta Community section. It doesn’t appear like its beta programme you have to sign up to - I’m not even logged on to vmware.com and I’m seeing it.
So what is the VC Admin Portal? Its web-based console that provides a central view into the VMware Infrastructure environment across multiple vCenter Server (VirtualCenter) instances.
http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2008/10/vcenter-adminis.html
It will allow for:
Thanks to Yellow Bricks and VMTN for bringing this to my attention:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/10/17/vcenter-administrator-portal/
http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2008/10/vcenter-adminis.html
Hope I didn’t hurt his feelings on that blog post. Perhaps I should start by dropping the Dr Evil tag, unless it has already stuck already. Sorry Richard, I was only pulling your leg! Anyway, VMware’s Richard G has put up a video-blog post of his recent keynote at the European VForum show. In the video Richard explains explaining what VMware is about and what their future developments are:
My friend Miek DiPetrillo has been busy on his blog recently… Here’s a round up of his most interesting posts…
On Preventing Access to the “Download the Vi Client” webpage:
The blog post title speaks for itself!
http://www.mikedipetrillo.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/10/preventing-acce.html
The KVM vs. Xen Fight Continues:
Is it true that Xen is dead, and KVM is the way forward for people from the Linux/Open-Source Community?
http://www.mikedipetrillo.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/10/the-kvm-vs-xen.html
56,000 Seat Production Exchange 2007 Deployment:
An interesting case study on virtualizing Exchange. Some interesting experiences on performance. General picture is - you can do it but don’t under spec the VM, and make sure you have enough physical resources to do it. I think we are moving away from the “low-hanging fruit” conservatism of the last couple of years…
http://www.mikedipetrillo.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/10/56000-seat-prod.html