Welcome to Microsoft TechEd 2013 live blogging! I started off the conference by attending the all-day Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 session. Since this was a pre-con, it ran all day so a TON of content was presented. You can find tweets about this session at #TEPRC05. The...
It's that time of year again when VMware vExpert 2013 awards are handed out. Last year I was very surprised and honored that my blogging efforts got such recognition and that I made the 2012 list. Since then I've tried to do even more community work, and spent countless hours doing the vSphere 5.1 install...
Tonight VMware released vCenter 5.1.0 U1a, which is a bugfix re-release of U1. A day or two after vSphere 5.1 U1 was out there was a warning regarding multi-domain authentication when a user was in a lot of groups. You can check out important information about the 5.1 U1a release here....
For a recent project I've been configuring a Citrix NetScaler (which are wickedly cool) for load balancing of a web service over SSL. The web service is hosted on a Windows server using IIS, so I wanted to re-use the SSL certificate on the NetScaler. The steps to import IIS SSL certificate...
I'm a huge fan of using vCenter customization specifications to automate the sysprep process for deploying new Microsoft VMs. The sysprep process ensures a unique Windows SID, sets the VM's hostname, and can even join a VM to the domain, among other things. However, the customization specifications can only be...
This San Diego VMUG session was put on by Gabriel Chapman of SimpliVity. If you've never heard of SimpliVity, you aren't alone. They are a start-up and emerged from stealth mode last year, and have been shipping product for about a month. Their OmniCube is an all-in-one 2U platform consisting...
This was the best session of the day at the San Diego VMUG! Dave Elliott and Dave Troutt from Symantec presented the detailed methodology Symantec used to define requirements essential to successfully virtualizing tier-1 apps like SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint. Bottom line is you can virtualize nearly any app that...
This session covered some high level Clould Director best practices, by Spencer Cuffe (VMware). It was short session without a lot of detail, but for what it's worth here are a few notes: Pre-Reqs - One cell per vCenter, NTP across all devices, one vCNS per vCenter, one provider vDC...
At the San Diego VMUG this session was presented by Rick Vanover from Veeam. He covered some tips and tricks for doing VMware backups. Of course the session was Veeam focused, and highlighted features of their backup software. Tips for efficient VM Backups Take a modern approach We have a...
This was a good session presented by Proximal Data, focusing on using flash-based cache in your VMware environment. They have a product called AutoCache that boosts storage performance for VMware environments. Sounds like an interesting product. Session went by very fast, but here are some of the notes I took:...
Today at the San Diego VMUG Michael Ibarra, Office of the CTO (VMware), gave us a very quick brief on what is the Software Defined Datacenter. Here are a few highlights of his quick session: Software is taking over the world The shifting landscape: Delivery methods (cloud), devices (tablets), applications,...
Due to human error on my part, per-post redirection from my old BlogSpot blog was just sending people to the homepage of my new site, not the correct post. I fixed the problem, so now permalinks to any old posts will send you to the same post on my new...