For those already familiar with VMware's virtual desktop solution, vmView is leaps and bounds beyond what you already know. For those new to virtual desktops, VMware has put together a solution that can leverage the high availability of the computing resources in your data center, and provide secure and robust virtual desktop environments to an organization, through thin clients, thick clients or over the web.

The installation for vmView is 90% identical to the previous version, VDM 2.x which I covered in this thread.

As alluded to in previous posts , I am in the process of actively reviewing some of the major and minor cloud service providers (CSP - a term I'll be using for this sector) and decided to start with one of the oldest CSPs to date - Amazon's Elastic Cloud 2.

Here's a little visual on how Amazon envision's this service for a photo processing solution:

Microsoft has taken the covers off its new cloud initiative and unveiled the underlying platform for its cloud services, Windows Azure.

Azure is based on a collection of Microsoft staples including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V and ASP.Net.

I've enrolled in a program to test out this new service and will report back here as details develop.

Over the last few months I've received more and more requests and questions regarding virtual desktops, or more specifically, VMware's VDI solution.

I just went through a fresh installation in the lab to ensure all of the steps were as recent as they are going to be, so let's get started.

To test out the solution I recommend leveraging an existing VMware VI3 infrastructure, thus requiring no additional hardware.

**Requirements:**

For those that have tried to "deploy from template" a Win2K8 server and been denied, the trick is to change the "OS Type" to Vista (as opposed to Windows Server 2008), as outlined here.

Two weeks ago at VMWorld 2008, 14,000 attendees were inundated with booth glitterati, press releases, parties, games of chance and hype.

Alessandro from Virtualization.Info has put together a fantastic recap (Part 1 of 2). I've chimed in with my thoughts and encourage others to take a look and what people have to say regarding the changing landscape of VMware virtualiation (and virtualization in general).

My first foray into writing a Virtual Center plugin has progressed right along. I initially wanted to have Vizioncore's vFoglight available via an additional tab in Virtual Center.

Once I figured out the proper syntax I just needed to register the plugin.

I've got my version 1.0 generator online to make the proper plugin for your own webpage. In the next release I will include the tool to register the plugin as well as additional options in creating the plugin. I had to start somewhere...

Feedback more than welcome.

My first foray into writing a Virtual Center plugin has progressed right along. I initially wanted to have Vizioncore's vFoglight available via an additional tab in Virtual Center.

Once I figured out the proper syntax I just needed to register the plugin.

I've got my version 1.0 generator online to make the proper plugin for your own webpage. In the next release I will include the tool to register the plugin as well as additional options in creating the plugin. I had to start somewhere...

Feedback more than welcome.

Another year, another great VMWorld. VMWorld 2008 was certainly a move forward from last year. The added space of Vegas meant that everything was a bit less crowded. Unfortunately, the air was full of the smoky coolness of cigarettes, but it is Vegas after all.

Some of the major VMware announcements included:

• Virtual Datacenter OS


More later...

• Storage VMotion Interface

Finally, an interface from VMware.

• Fault Tolerance

Today kicked off the conference in earnest, with a keynote from Paul Maritz, the new CEO of VMware. I managed to complete a lap of the Solutions Exchange, and in my opinion, these are the standouts:

• VMware AppSpeed (formerly known as B-hive)

After being diverted to Denver because we didn't have enough fuel to get to Vegas, I'm finally on the ground.

There's some big news and I've met some old friends and some new ones.

I'll post up a recap later this evening. Right now I'm off to the VMware User Group (VMUG) dinner.

Cheers!

So after a restless night over the last weeked I decided to put my new found hours to some good use.

I've been wanting to write a plugin to incorporate web-based management consoles (e.g. vCharterPro) for quite some time. One small hurdle I have at clients is that they don't want to keep multiple windows open to manage and monitor their virtual infrastructure.

I'll start by saying that Solaris x86 is not a common OS that I use. Nevertheless, I came across a project recently where I needed to install VMware tools inside a Solaris x86.

Right click - install vmware tools
mkdir /mnt2
mount –rF hsfs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s2 /mnt2
cp /mnt2/vmware-solaris-tools.tar.gz /tmp
cd /tmp
gzip -dc vmware-solaris-tools.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

umount /mnt2
mv /etc/hostname.pcn0 /etc/hostname.vmxnet0
exit

Many thanks to a resident Solaris genius for help with the steps.

The VMTN Community Happy Hour (graciously hosted by VMware) was held at the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company in downtown San Francisco. The wheat beer was good, the pool was fun and the company was fantastic. I met up with old friends from the company formerly known as Tyco and made new friends including forum illuminati JTroyer, KevinG and BrianG and the good people at a Charlotte, NC-based bank. Many thanks for the VMTN Community leaders at VMWare for making this happen.

- Jason Langone