Whilst at VMworld 2012 this year, I stopped by our friends at vKernel / Quest to chat with fellow vExpert Mattias Sundling about the show and some of the announcements from VMworld sessions.
If you are viewing on a mobile device, please click here:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/25043314
Several other interviews have been posted from the show, check them out here:
I’ve recently spent the week in San Francisco at VMworld US 2012 (see separate summary and review post – coming soon). Whilst there, I spent a lot of time talking to users, admins and vendors in the SMB space, part of a new interest area for me.
Part of these discussions with users new to VMware revolved around the new VMware vCenter Protect product, and where it fitted in the grand scheme of things. Do I need vCenter Protect and Update Manager? Do I use one instead of the other? Do the functions of each overlap? These were all common questions. So, hopefully this quick mini-post will help dispel the confusion.
Up to and including vSphere 4, UDM was used to patch guests within VMs. But, to enhance the patch management of Windows estates, VMware purchased Shavlik and with the release of vSphere 5 both removed guest patching from UDM and released vCenter Protect to market.
Patching functionality with vCP is greatly enhanced over the functionality provided by UDM (especially as it now extends to the physical estate). For more information about the respective functionality of Update Manager and vCenter Protect, see VMware’s website information here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-protect/overview.html
http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/update-manager.html
Symantec, I am so sorry.
There, my apology is out there. Now I ought to explain it…
Back in March I responded to a thread on the vExpert forum about a briefing day that Symantec were planning to host at the headquarters in Mountain View. (I’m actually a former Symantec employee – via an acquisition – but that’s not exactly relevant.) Fortunately I was working in the Bay Area at the time and, as I was due to fly back the following day, my workload was light enough to allow me to attend. What follows is a description, or review, of the day. Obviously I should have posted this about 5 months ago (hence the apology) but things got a little busy around then and this has been sitting in my Drafts since then.
Now you know and it’s time for me to get back to my brief review of the day…
The day was organised by Jordan Pusey (@JordanPusey), an Alliance Marketing Manager for Symantec. He coordinated getting everyone there. The criteria that had been set was that the vExperts had to be US based and, except for me, they were. I was one of six vExperts and we were more than outnumbered by people from Symantec! 
Present were:
And on the Symantec side there were numerous people whose names I didn’t catch (another apology to Symantec) as well as:
| Time | Topic | Speaker |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Reception/Lunch | Dale Zabriskie, Symantec Evangelist |
| 12:30 – 1:15 | Virtualization Security | Todd Zambrovitz, Sr. Product Marketing Mgr, VirtualizationColin Gibbens, Principle Product Manager, Information and Security Group |
| 1:15 – 2:00 | Virtualization Security discussion | Dale Zabriskie, Moderator |
| 2:00 – 2:30 | Break | |
| 2:30 – 3:30 | V-Ray and Virtual Backup | George Winter, Staff Technical Product Manager, Backup |
| 3:30 – 4:30 | Virtual Backup Discussion | Dale Zabriskie, Moderator |
| 4:30 – 5:30 | ApplicationHA | Desmond Chan, Sr. Product Manager, Storage and Availability Group |
| 5:30 – 7:00 | Dinner with the vExperts |
On the face of it I was slightly worried that this might have been a bit of a sales-oriented day but I need not have been concerned. Right from the outset the purpose of the topics was set out. Basically Symantec wanted to talk about their products and solutions in the context of how such technologies were being used day-to-day. So, taking backup as an example, they wanted to understand what challenges we perceived there were in the virtual infrastructure backup space. Yes, we talked about the various pros and cons of their products but as people who use such technologies and implement them. Essentially you could say that we were helping them fine tune their products a bit through some very interesting discussions.
Besides backups, we talked for quite some time about virtualisation security, anti-virus and HA. There was quite a long discussion about the merits and demerits of agentless anti-virus that I made quite a few notes on.
So what did I get out of it? Well, I wasn’t paid to be there. I ought to get that out of the way straight off. Aside from meeting some very well switched on people at a major vendor, I met 5 other very knowledgable and opinionated vExperts and I got to talk about technology with them all. That for me is what I wanted.
I did take away several thoughts that I won’t share now but that might become the subjects of future posts (when I get the time to research them and write it all up). Oh, and I also walked away with a portable battery that helped power my iPad on the flight back
It was a great day, I enjoyed it a lot and I’m grateful to Symantec for inviting me along.
It’s been a while now since I’ve been able to give blogging (or anything) my full attention. For the last five months I’ve mostly been in the San Francisco Bay Area helping my employer establish a US presence. Ironically, I’ve been staying just a few miles from Palo Alto and certainly close enough to the Moscone Center to have attended VMworld had I still been out there. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I’m very jealous of my fellow LonVMUG members, the many other vExperts I’m fortunate to have spoken with and everyone else going as well. Make the most of it!
Keeping on top of things whilst your family is over 5000 miles away isn’t easy and so I haven’t had the opportunity to write as much as I would want to. But now I’m back and it’s time to pick up where I left off. I have a few half-written posts to try and pick up and a fair few ideas that I’ve had for other things too.
Before I get started, here are a few of the non-work highlights of my time in California:
Not long before the start of VMworld 2012 US, VMware has launched Workstation 9 and Fusion 5.
Workstation 9
The new version includes support for Windows 8 amongst over 600 other supported guest OSs, restricted VMs, Open GL support for Linux and a new virtual machine web interface that gives access to Workstation from the majority of web-enabled devices from smartphones to PCs – anything with a modern browser – no plug-ins required!
The new version also has some enterprise features that will benefit test and development tiers, including the ability to create virtual machines then set passwords to protect runtime or editing of VM settings. The VM can then be transferred as an encrypted block USB device to a Mac, Linux or other WIndows machines.
Want further enterprise support? How about drag and drop upload capability to vSphere? You got it! This simple transfer allows VMs to be migrated easily to the internal vSphere cloud.
For a full list of new features in VMware Workstation 9, check out the release notes here:
https://www.vmware.com/support/ws90/doc/workstation-90-release-notes.html
30-day trials are available from https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=vmware-workstation9 (my.vmware.com account required), upgrades are also available in the store.
Fusion 5
Mac users will be pleased with the release of Fusion 5, as major step-change from v4 as the jump was from v3 to v4. Major features of the new version include support for Mountain Lion, Windows 8 and compatibility with the latest Macs, as well as a re-engineered backend to give enhanced performance. Other enhancements are better battery life, faster 3D graphics, USB 3 / HDMI / thunderbold compatibility and support for Macs with >16GB RAM. Other nice features in the new version is graphical snapshots, where views of your snapshots can be viewed side-by-side. Snapshots can also be taken and reverted in the same way from the menu.
For the enterprise, there is a new edition called VMware Fusion for Business. This new version includes several additions to the standard version that help Fusion deployments in the workplace. These include deploying VMs centrally to Windows and Mac – and managing them centrally using existing tools, and the network editor (seen in the Workstation version for some time). Other notable additions to this version are OVF imports, nested 64-bit hypervisor support via virtualised VT-X/EPT sypport, and Perl scripting support with VIX API.
These are just some of the 70+ new features with the new version of Fusion 5. For the release version, see:
http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion5/doc/fusion-50-release-notes.html
Also, as before, there is a 30-day trial available from: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=vmware-fusion5.
(All images copyright from VMware).
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