Year: 2004

VMware VMworld 2004 conference detailed agenda reveals interesting news

by

Few posts ago I wrote VMworld 2004 agenda details was suddenly disappeared. It’s now reapperead with every session description and speaker announcement.
A close look at it disclose some interesting informations:

-) Workstation 5.0 and ESX Server 2.5 will be ready for conference date (late October)
-) ESX Server 2.5 will be able to integrate with EMC Symmetrix (finally we start to see some benefits of VMware acquire from EMC)
-) A lot of VMware folks we already know by community posts, announcement emails, support emails, etc. will be there to speak. Here the whole list:

Sessions speakers:

Ashmeet Sidana, Director of Product Management
Dave Schroeder, Sr. System Engineer
Eric Horshman, Product Manager GSX Server
Frank Nydam, Sr. System Engineer
Ian Robinson, Director of Product Marketing
John Y. Arrasjid, Professional Services Consulting Architect
Karl E. Rumelhart, Sr. Product Manager
Karthik Rau, Group Product Manager
Matt Eccleston, Engineering Manager
Mostafa Khalil, Senior Support Engineer
Peter Giordano, Product Marketing Manager
Rene W. Schmidt, Sr. Technical Architect
Rich Hogan, Practice Development Manager
Scott Devine, Co-founder and Principal Engineer
Srinivas Krishnamurti, Sr. Product Manager
Stephen Alan Herrod, Senior Director of R&D
Tony Cannon, Senior MTS

Hands-On Labs speakers:

Pang Chen, Senior Consulting Architect
Pradeep Javangula, Strategic Marketing Manager
Scott Harvey, Manager System Engineering

I hope I didn’t forget anyone 🙂

PearPC 0.3 released

by

The unbeliavable PowerPC architecture emulator on Intel x86 has just reached its 0.3 release. Here the official announcement:

The most important change of this release are the accurate timing facilities which made PearPC faster and allowed us to implement idle-sleep. So PearPC no longer consumes CPU time when the client is idle. Other changes are an SDL port (faster graphics), full screen support for Win32 and SDL and of course a lot of optimizations.

Note that there are again some small config file changes, so please update your config file from the shipped ppccfg.example. I also updated the about page to reflect recent development.
Read the full changelog for all changes.

Technet Briefing: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Technical Overview

by

Microsoft TechNet Briefings are free events that explain how to use Microsoft products and technologies at a technical level. You’ll hear directly from Microsoft technology specialists who live with the real-world implementation of our products and technologies every day.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Technical Overview

In this session we will take a look at the Microsoft Virtual Server product. Virtual machine technology allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single machine, which can help boost administrator productivity and save money by enabling customers to migrate legacy applications and also help them consolidate applications on fewer servers. For those new to this environment we will discuss what a Virtual environment is and how the Server product compares to the desktop product, Microsoft Virtual PC, and when to use each solution. We will cover the installation and setup of the product from the actual server to the actual drives.

VMware ESX Server 2.5 expected for September

by

Yesterday an HP employee disclosed some informations on ESX Server newsgroup saying three important things:

1) VMware ESX Server 2.5 beta program will start soon
2) One important new feature is that ESX 2.5 will be able to boot from a SAN device
3) The official product release is expected for September

Thanks for this revelation!

VMware announces Production Seminar Series

by

Quoting from official announcement:

Production-Ready: A Guide to Scaled Virtualization Deployment

Preparing your company to deploy Virtual Infrastructure for competitive advantage

Whether you are experienced with VMware and virtualization concepts or just beginning to utilize the technology, it is never too early (or too late) to understand the implications of large-scale production rollout in your company.

This seminar is designed for IT staff, architects, system administrators, department heads, or anyone else involved in the practical technical and business aspects of widespread systems deployment.

Attend this seminar to:

Learn how scaled virtualization deployments provide competitive advantage via faster time-to-market, lower cost, and better reliability

Understand planning and sizing considerations that could dramatically lower your current purchasing, provisioning, management and maintenance costs

Discover the complementary services and products that can further simplify your environment

Hear real-life descriptions in customers? own words of their scaled VMware production environment success – and how they got there.

Registration is free, but seats are limited ? so sign up today!

Dates: September 21 to 23, 2004
Locations: Nationwide
Agenda: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. – Presentation, Demonstration, Customer speaker, Q&A
Continental breakfast will be served
Registration: http://www.vmware.com/seminars

Sign up today, space is limited!
Attendees will be entered into a drawing to win one of three copies of VMware Workstation.

VMware ready for its first EMEA VCP Technical Symposium

by

Quoting from an official VMware letter to its partners:

Dear VMware Partner,

Announcing the VMware EMEA VCP Technical Symposium, 7th-8th September, Amsterdam

VMware is proud to present the inaugural EMEA VCP Technical Symposium to take place in Amsterdam. This event is designed to bring all of our VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) up to date on our products and to outline the future of VMware technology.

The key areas we will cover include:

Product roadmap
Virtual Infrastructure
ESX Server 2.1 and GSX Server 3.1 technical presentations
Typical SAN configurations
Disaster Recovery and High Availability configurations
Technical objection handling
In-depth Virtual Networking (failover, VLAN etc)
VMware support tools
How to engage VMware in deals

Why should you attend?

By the end of the symposium, you will have:

A closer alignment to VMware as an organisation
Up-to-date knowledge of our products and processes
The ability to communicate VMware technical and business benefits to customers
More confidence in supporting customers during the sales process

Who should attend?

Attendance at this event is mandatory for all VMware Enterprise Resellers, with at least one VCP representing each organisation. We also welcome our Alliance Partners to attend.
Attendance is free of charge and includes lunch, dinner and refreshments during the course of the symposium. However, delegates will need to pay for their own travel to the venue, overnight accommodation and breakfast costs.

Please keep 7th and 8th September free in your diaries (delegates will need to arrive at the hotel on the evening of 6th September).

If you like to let everybody know you’ll be there write down a comment for this post.
Thanks to an anonymous for forwarding me this information.

VMware presents VMworld 2004 conference speakers

by

Here they are:

-) From VMware Executives:

Diane Greene
President
VMware

Edouard Bugnion
CTO
VMware

-) From VMware Customers:

Jon S. Stumpf
CTO, Corporate Infrastructure
AIG

Bob Mathers
Vice President of IT Operations
Guardian

-) From VMware Partners:

Susan M. Whitney
General Manager, IBM eServer xSeries
IBM Systems and Technology Group

Brad Anderson
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Industry Standard Servers, Technology Solutions Group
Hewlett-Packard Company

Paul Gottsegen
Vice President, Worldwide Enterprise Marketing
Dell Product Group

This list seems to me a bit incomplete since I really doubt Diane Greene in person will speak about new memory optimization routines in Workstation 5.0…
I hope to see in this list at least every VMware product manager and some researchers.
I also can see IBM, HP and Dell (take a note about this very interesting order) but cannot see an EMC Corporation representative. Very strange.

So I suggest to check back often the speaker page.

P.s.: The VMworld 2004 agenda suddenly disappeared. IMHO this can mean just one thing: something actually under NDA will be included.

A new book about VMware from Rob Bastiaansen: “Rob’s Guide to Using VMware”

by

As my readers already know Rob is a very active VMware expert, providing since ever tips about two hot arguments: Netware on VMware and guestOS clustering with VMware Workstation.
Now he wrote a book you can buy on his website: “Rob’s Guide to Using VMware”.

Rob’s Guide To Using VMware
Release Date: January 15, 2005
ISBN: 9080893412
Edition: 1
Pages: 268
Size: 9.4″ x 6.8″ x 0.79″

What this book covers

If you’re a newcomer to VMware products, this book tells you exactly what VMware is all about, and how to setup your first Virtual Machines. You will learn about networking, virtual disks and more.

This book continues where the VMware manual stops: real life. Users are doing things with VMware that were not planned by the developers. This book fills the gaps between what users want to do and what is described in the manuals. This book introduces new uses for VMware, for example how to configure a cluster with NetWare and Windows, and how to perform Physical to Virtual conversions with simple low cost tools. The configurations in this book are explained in detail for VMware Workstation, based on version 4.5.2. Most topics also apply to VMware GSX Server and VMware ESX Server.

Major topics in this book are:

  • Fast track to VMware Workstation for new users
  • Virtual Machine configuration and optimization tips
  • Network configurations for NAT and routing
  • Tips for Windows and NetWare in VMware
  • Physical to Virtual conversion with low cost tools
  • Clustering for NetWare and Windows with shared disks in VMware GSX Server
  • Clustering for NetWare and Windows based on iSCSI for VMware Workstation

Where’s Linux?
If you’ve read the title and the table of contents of this book, you’ll notice that there isn’t much on Linux. You’ll find information on Linux guest operating systems, but not on configuration of all the available topics on a Linux host. A second version of this book covering Linux configurations has been planned for release in late 2004 or early 2005.