Year: 2013

VMware  launched a new website which shows the configuration steps of various VMware solutions. In an attractive user interface showing screendumps the user get an idea of how to perform configuration steps. By clicking right arrow the user is guided.
Also some basic understanding is given of various products.

VMware Walkthroughs is very usefull to understand what a product does without having to read lots of documentation and marketing brochures.
It is also very usefull for presentations and documentation as it has a lot of screendumps.

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VMware has released a Frequently Asked Questions paper on vSphere Flash Read Cache. The FAQ which contains 5 Pages provides answers to 67 questions on the Flash Read Cache functionality.

vSphere Flash Read Cache, which is a new feature of vSphere 5.5 enables the pooling of multiple Flash-based devices into a single consumable vSphere construct called a Virtual Flash Resource. The Virtual Flash Resource is consumed and managed in the same way CPU and memory are done today in vSphere. For more information about Flash Read Cache, please see: What’s New in VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache

VMware released a maintenance update on VMware workstation version 10.

The following issues are resolved in VMware Workstation 10.0.1.

• Easy Install supports RTM versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
  Easy Install now supports RTM versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
• Workstation or Player on Windows freezes if another application is frozen.
  Other stuck Windows applications could cause Workstation or Player to freeze while waiting for the application to respond.
• Virtual machine hangs when powering off
  Rarely, virtual machines will cease functioning (hang) while powering off, particularly if the guest OS was in the middle of a BSOD or kernel panic.
• Improved compatibility with some AMD CPUs
  Updated masking to match capabilities of certain AMD PileDriver CPUs.
• Virtual machines displayed incorrectly on a multi-monitor Windows host when the displays have differing pixel density (DPI.)
• Boot from CD/DVD when Legacy Floppy is disabled

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VMware strongly depends on its channel partners for selling solutions and services. In Europe 95% of the business comes from partners.

At VMworld US and Europe VMware announced a new partner programme which goal is to stimulate  partners to invest in knowledge and selling of VMware solutions . The more partners invest the higher the rewards from VMware.

The programme  named ‘Value Channel’   expected to launch before VMware Partner Exchange event in February 2014 will have 4 tiers: Enrolled, Professional, Enterprise and Premier for all types of partners – including resellers, integrators, outsourcers, service providers, and distributors. VMware has around 50,000 partners worldwide.

There will be an Elite level which proofs partner knowledge in a certain subject area. This area can be one of three VMware pillars being Software Defined Datacenter, Hybrid Cloud and End-user Computing.

Details of the new programme are expected to be released at VMware Partner Exchange 2014.

VMworld TV covers VMworld in a great way. The crew does a lot of video interviews during VMworld with many experts. The YouTube channel also has the keynotes and some of the most popular breakout sessions available online.

One of their interviews during VMworld Europe 2013 was with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0mSMNmZvFk#t=94[/youtube]

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VMware recently released a new whitepaper on memory management in VMware ESX and transparent page sharing (TPS) in particular.

ESX uses several techniques to utilize the physical memory such that a maximum number of virtual machines can run on a host without a significant decrease of performance. By attemping to get the best consolidation rate, the better the economics of the server and datacenter are.

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Privately held and headquartered in Cupertino, CA Bromium, a company that develops enterprise security software announced to have raised $40M in Series C funding from lead new investor Meritech Capital Partners, together withAndreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and Intel Capital, which already partecipated in the Series B funding over a year ago.

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Yesterday October 23, Citrix announced its financial results for third quarter of fiscal year 2013, ended September 31, 2013.

Citrix announced a total revenue of $713 million, for an increase of 11% compared to Q3 2012

Net income registered a slight decrease with $77 million compared to 2012 where it was $78 million, but the diluted share is the same at $0.41, while Non-GAAP results raised from $128 million for Q3 2012 to $132 million for Q3 2013.
Citrix also informed that its Board of Directos repurchased up to an additional $500 million of its common stock.

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Shortly after the release of VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware released its free converter tool vCenter Converter Standalone version 5.5.

vCenter Converter Standalone is a feature rich, mature tool for conversions of many types of workloads  to VMware virtual machines. It allows Image to Virtual (I2V) , Virtual to Virtual (V2V)  and Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversions. For obvious reasons this tool cannot be used for conversions where Hyper-V is a target server.

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 includes the following new functionality:

• Support for virtual machine hardware version 10 (62TB disks, virtual SATA controllers, etc.)
• Support for RedHat KVM virtual machines as a source
• A new option for selecting the network adapter for the target virtual machine
• Support for additional guest operating systems
• Parallel disk conversions
• Virtual SAN support

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5nine Software has released the 2.0 version of its free V2V conversion tool ‘Easy converter’. It is able to convert VMware virtual machines to Hyper-V. Other conversion types are not supported.

New is this 2.0 release is added support for Hyper-V 2012 R2 as a target. It also supports simultaneous conversions of multiple VMs.

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