Reviews

TrainSignal Online – 1 Month On…

March 22, 2013 by Michael Leave a Comment

It’s been just over a month since TrainSignal switched to providing their courses only via an online model and binned the idea of shipping DVDs around the world.

Although they kept their plans under wraps fairly well (at least they did as far as I know), it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to anyone that they changed their model. You only have to look back another month or so to one of the UK’s big high street names going to the wall to see further evidence that physical media is just not as popular anymore.

I had been planning to purchase one of TrainSignal’s courses just prior to them making the switch. Good job I waited eh? But after giving it a week or so to bed in, I subscribed and I now have access to the whole training catalog.

Logging in, the dashboard (below) gives you the ability to browse and take courses, take practice exams, see what’s new etc.

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You can see my progress having a look at David Davis and Jake Robinson’s “VMware vCloud Director Essentials” course. There’s also a link that will let you download the Silverlight based offline player.

The offline player, as it says on the tin, allows you to download courses to view when you don’t have an internet connection handy. It requires you to authenticate using your TrainSignal account and you’ll need to connect the player to the internet every few days or so for it to re-authenticate. Once in, you can browse the course catalog and select courses for download.

offlineplayer

The player’s fairly responsive and I’ve had no issues with it… save one. As stated on their website, TrainSignal do not yet offer an offline player for mobile devices (e.g. iPads etc). For me, that’s a bit of a detractor.

Overall, I like what TrainSignal have done. I can pick and choose whichever courses I want and hopefully the catalog will grow nicely. I do want an iPad app for it though!

Note: I didn’t clarify when I first wrote this that TrainSignal have offered their courses online for some time but not as a subscription model. Thanks to Ricky El-Qasem.

Filed Under: Certification, Opinion, Reviews Tagged With: Training, trainsignal

First Impressions: PHD Virtual Backup 6.2 (with Cloud Hook)

March 13, 2013 by Michael 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my recent Cloud Backups post, I’m trying out a few virtualisation backup products to help me out with a prototype infrastructure that I’ve been working on. I want to store a backup of the various VMs that I’ve setup outside the infrastructure that I’ve setup – effectively offsite.

By happy circumstance, PHD Virtual had a beta running for version 6.2 of their backup product that includes “CloudHook”. It’s a module that enables integration with cloud storage providers for the purposes of backup, archiving and disaster recovery. The 6.2 release covers the backup aspect, and future releases will add in archiving and DR functionality. Thanks to Patrick Redknap, I managed to hop onto the beta and try it out. (Note that the screenshots below come from a beta release and may have changed for GA.)

PHD’s Virtual Backup product is delivered as a Virtual Backup Appliance. I was initially wary of production services running on dedicated virtual appliances a few years ago but I’ve changed my view over time and I now really like using them. (That’s probably a subject for a different post though.) I won’t go through the mechanics of the installation in nauseating detail, but basically it breaks down to the following high-level steps:

Download and unzip the virtual appliance
Use the vSphere Client to import and deploy the appliance (requires 8Gb disk space, 1 vCPU, 1Gb Memory and connection to 1 Port Group in it’s default configuration)
Open the VM’s console and enter some network information
Reboot the appliance
Install the PHD Virtual Backup Client

Configuring the appliance for use is pretty straightforward although if, like I was, you have to make multiple hops to get to your data center (RDP over RDP over VPN for complicated reasons that I can’t go into), you might find that the PHD Virtual client doesn’t play too nicely with a lack of screen space. I could only just get to the “Save” button. (Granted, it’s an unlikely situation to be in though.) The minimum required is to connect the appliance to vCenter (see the General tab of the Configuration section):

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Normally at this point you’d expect to have to configure some disk space local to the backup appliance (or network storage space). Well, you still do really but you actually have a choice to make; where do you want to backup to? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Backup, Cloud, Reviews, Virtualization

TrainSignal Moves to Online Subscription Model

February 19, 2013 by Michael 1 Comment

The first ever TrainSignal course that I “took” was David Davis’ VMware vSphere 4 training. I had heard lots about it from a few people on Twitter and several others in person and I wanted to use it to fill in a few gaps in readiness for my VCP4 exam. I’ve since been through a few other courses and they’ve all been great.

What’s changed between then and now is TrainSignal’s transition from supplying only DVDs, through adding online access to purchased course, to finally switching to a subscription only model.

It’s a move that makes a great deal of sense and it’d be worth a subscription to get access to course related to technologies that I don’t use as often. There is even an offline player but it’s currently limited to desktop computers (Windows / OSX).

One thing that I would like to see though is a way to view courses offline on mobile devices. I recently used Handbrake to transfer my copy of Scott Lowe’s Designing VMware Infrastructure to my iPad so I could work through it anywhere. At about 800Mb though, I would only want to download that ahead of time and not via 3G when on a train.

Still, good move TrainSignal. I like it.

Filed Under: Certification, News, Reviews Tagged With: iPad, Training, trainsignal

Diagnosing and Troubleshooting PowerShell Remoting

January 17, 2013 by Michael Leave a Comment

hicks_cover150 I was having a little difficulty with PowerShell remoting the other day and a colleague of mine dug up a link to a forthcoming book entitled “PowerShell Deep Dives” by Jeffery Hicks, Richard Siddaway, Oisin Grehan, and Aleksandar Nikolic.

Chapter 1 of the book, “Diagnosing and troubleshooting PowerShell remoting“, is available via the publisher’s website as a preview chapter and was very useful in solving my issue. The rest of the book looks like it will be interesting too if the chapter headings are anything to go by. Apparently it should be released this Spring.

Filed Under: Reviews, Scripting Tagged With: book, PowerShell, preview, remoting, troubleshooting

New vOPS Server Explorer 6.3

January 15, 2013 by Michael Leave a Comment

dell-vkernel A new version of vOPS Server Explorer is being launched today by vKernel (who were acquired by Quest and subsequently Dell).

The company have a history of releasing free tools to assist vSphere administrators and the new version of vOPS Server Explorer builds on this reputation by bringing in an additional subset of functionality from their commercial product (vOPS Server Standard).

Of course, as a free tool, one of its aims is to prove its value and help generate sales of the full, commercial product. I don’t think that should stop anyone trying it out though – you can’t knock a free tool. I used one of vKernel’s early tools to highlight a growing issue for a customer.

So, what’s new in this version?

Environment Explorer

This is actually a pre-existing component in vOPS Server Explorer but some additional functionality has been added in this release:

Potential zombie VMs are highlighted.
The savings possible from resizing VMs are now shown (although the costs are pre-configured in this free version).
The dashboard has a new tile that highlights the major changes to the infrastructure made over the last week.

Storage Explorer

This component exists in the commercial vOPS Server Standard already but now some of the functionality is being brought into vOPS Server Explorer. It exists to show consolidated statistics and issues related to storage.

One of the things that I like about this component is that so many different pieces of data are visible and accessible in one place. For example, for each datastore you can easily see both the VMFS version and the path selection policy. Also, hover the mouse over a datastore and you can see useful tootips (for example you might see that 16% of a datastore’s throughput comes from a single VM).

You can also see VM capacity information (as long as your VMs have VMtools installed) and any warnings about actual or potential performance issues. Naturally the warning thresholds are not configurable in vOPS Server Explorer but only in the full vOPS Server Standard product. The free version is also limited to the top 10 datastores.

Change Explorer

This component is intended to show a history / overview of changes made within a virtual infrastructure. Again, it’s built on functionality available in the full product but provides some useful insights into changes that have occurred.

It contains filtering functionality that allows you to search for actions taken by specific users or for actions taken on particular VI objects. Each change comes with an associated impact risk (that is configurable in the commercial version) to allow you to view the highest impact changes only for instance.