VMware Virtualization

In my new video, I demonstrate, step by step, how you can run VMware ESX Server 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 inside VMware Workstation 6.5. This is also shown in my Train Signal VMware ESX Server video training course.

While you wouldn’t run ESX in Workstation for a production server, running ESX in Workstation is an excellent way to test and demonstrate ESX Server (and the entire VMware Virtual Infrastructure suite) on a single PC. Think about it - what if you had a single PC with 2 ESX Servers, an iSCSI virtual SAN, and a Windows Server running Virtual Center. With that, you would have “VMware Infrastructure in a box” and be able to run powerful features like VMotion, SVMotion, VMHA, and Update Manager, all on a single PC.

Special thank you to Xtravirt.com for their “VI in a box” whitepaper that shows how to run ESX Server in VMware Workstation.

#1 Decreases power, cooling, floor space and infrastructure.
#2 Simplifies disaster recovery and business continuity requirements.
#3 Increases server utilization from the typical averages of 5-15% to 60-80%.
#4 Faster deployment of information technology resources reduces time to market.
#5 Lower operational costs associated with reduced resource management and administration.
#6 Improves application performance by dynamically adapting storage and server resources to meet peek usage cycles.
#7 Aligns application data with the storage infrastructure to match application quality of service requirements and lower cost per gigabyte.
#8 Improves protection and recovery of critical business data.
#9 Easier to secure and comply with regulatory requirements such as SOX, HIPPA and eDiscovery.
#10 Nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies are implementing virtualization in their data centers, and another 30 percent are developing plans to do so.

To learn about virtualization, I suggest our VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, or VMware ESX Server video training. Just released is my new VMware ESX Server video. It covers VMware ESX Server, Virtual Center, and all the components that make up Virtual Infrastructure.

I am excited to say that my VMware ESX Server video training course is officially available! After creating the popular Microsoft Virtualization and VMware Server & Workstation video series, I have just finished VMware ESX Server. ESX Server is VMware’s Enterprise grade, high-end virtualization product and it is in use by so many companies today.

To create this video training, I spent 3 months researching VMware ESX Server and the Virtual Infrastructure Suite. I made every effort cover the VMware ESX Server applications from all aspects including designing, installing, creating virtual machines, virtual networks, SAN storage, VCB backups, and performance tuning.

• 15+ Hours of instructor led Video training covering VMware ESX Server that you can watch over and over again.
• Master VMware ESX Server and save yourself time and your company money!
• Coverage includes VMware ESX Server configuration, VMware Virtual Infrastructure, VMware Virtual Center, and so much more

Visit the Train Signal website using the link below to see the demo!

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THIS VIDEO!

VMware recently released their new VMware ESX Server 3i Beta at the VMworld conference. This is a very cool, high performance, virtualization operating system that runs directly on the hardware. Now, you can learn how to virtualize it for testing and demo purposes by running VMware ESX Server 3i Beta on your existing PC OS, inside VMware Workstation! Take a look!

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I am excited to say that my VMware Server & Workstation video training course is officially available!

After creating the popular Microsoft Virtualization video series, I moved on to VMware virtualization. Because VMware has the lion share of the virtualization market, I believe that this new video will be even more popular than the Microsoft video!

To create this video training, I spent 3 months researching VMware Workstation & Server. I made every effort cover the VMware products from all aspects including designing, installing, creating virtual machines, virtual networks, storage, backups, and performance tuning. Once we covered Server & Workstation, we moved on to our VMware ESX Server overview and our bonus video, VMware ACE.

To view the free 7 minute training video demo covering VMware Player, just click here to go to Train Signal’s website.

Recently, I
attended the VMware Symposia in
Dallas, Texas, USA. This event was free and was put on by VMware to promote
their virtualization offerings.

I must say
that I was highly impressed by all that they must have spent and prepared for
this event. There were 100s of people there and it was at one of the finest
hotels in town, the Gaylord Texas Resort.

I have
authored

training videos on both

Microsoft Virtual Server and

VMware Server & recently obtained my VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
certification so I felt very confident in the current state of my virtualization
knowledge. Because of this, I wasnt sure that I would learn a lot from the
event. I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to learn so much about the
future of VMwares virtualization line-up. I took copius notes. When I got back
to the office, I rearranged and cleaned up these notes.

I post these
notes here so that all the HappyRouter.com members can benefit from the latest
virtualization what I learned at the VMware Symposia.

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Are you preparing for the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) exam? (VCP-310)

If so, you will need some help because the exam is challenging!

HappyRouter.com member, Rob Schmidt has prepared some great study questions!

Believe it or not, there are over 310 questions in flashcard format!

And yes, Rob has been generous enough to offer all these questions to us for FREE.

If you have questions on VMware and Virtualization, please see our HappyRouter VMware Virtualization Forum.

Click Here to Download these questions

If you like these questions please email Rob to thank him.

Today I attended the Windows IT Pro Longhorn Roadshow in Dallas, Texas. It was a good training conference on the upcoming replacement for the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Out of the three learning tracks offered, I chose to learn about the virtualization features in Longhorn.

I was pleased to see that the speaker for the Virtualization sessions was Alessandro Perilli, who runs the www.virtualization.info tell us about the Virtualization features in Windows Longhorn server.

He talked about the different types of Virtualization and defined them as:

• Server Virtualization – like we do with VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server
• Presentation or Session Virtualization – like we do with terminal services
• Application Virtualization – something new that I will talk about in a minute

Server virtualization has become more and more common in production environments today with the use of Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware Server, VMware ESX, and Xen.

Presentation or Session virtualization is really just “terminal services” or “Citrix Server” renamed and
thought of differently.

What is a new concept is “application virtualization”. With application virtualization, the applications
can be abstracted from the OS. By doing this, you can have a “standalone application”, regardless of the operating system, registry, or other underlying applications that are normally required. What that means is that there is no installation for an application and you can “stream the application”. As soon as your computer is able to access part of the application, you can start using the application.

Compare this to listening to streaming music or streaming video over the Internet. This is based on ideas already in use with Softricity’s SoftGrid, a company & product bought by Microsoft.

Alessandro went on to talk about how there are four core applications for virtualization:

• Production server consolidation – used to control server sprawl
• Business continuity management and security – disaster recovery and firewall security
• Test & development
• In the future, the “Dynamic Data Center”

What is new in this list is the concept of the dynamic data center. The dynamic data center is a term
for a server/network infrastructure system where by:

• You obtain maximum hardware utilization – no hardware resources are wasted
• The infrastructure is flexible and efficient enough to completely support your company’s business
• processes
• The complexities today of provisioning and scaling servers, hardware, and applications are removed or reduced
• Server & network infrastructure automatically adapts to the needs of the applications &
• workload

Does that sound too good to be true? This sounds like something IBM has been preaching since 2001 called “Autonomic Computingg”.

This also sounds like what VMware is trying to create with their Virtual Infrastructure system (VI).
That system includes VMware ESX, VMotion, VM High Availability, and VMware’s DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler). With VI, you are getting close to the concept of the “dynamic data center”.

While VMware has a great thing going with their Virtual Infrastructure (and it is clearly the market
leader), Microsoft is going to be challenging them for the top spot in the virtualization market. With the release of Windows Longhorn Server, Microsoft will also release a major new virtualization solution. This will be called Windows Virtualization Server, codenamed Veridian.