VMware Certified Instructor

We have one on board!

The VMware Certified Instructor (VCI) certification is the mark of VMware’s commitment to training excellence. In combination with VMware Certified Training Centers (VATC), customers know they are getting world class training. The VCI program is designed to ensure that all instructors meet a defined level of technical knowledge and presentation skills.

Shutting down ESX hosts by APC PowerChute

Question that we've heard about 2374582367 times already - how to integrate ESX with APC UPS device so that it shuts down gracefully when running out of batteries in event of power-cut.
Here is a nice "how to" on this (in Russian).

Data Deduplication and Data Compression in Data Ontap

... similar to ‘dedupe’, ‘compression’ will be supported with any NetApp controller, data set, and any storage communications protocol including SMB (CIFS), NFS, FTP, HTTP, FC, FCoE, iSCSI, et al. Beyond this flexibility compression can be combined with data deduplication for both SAN and NAS data sets.

SnapDrive 6.3: Support for VMFS and NFS

... the upcoming release of SnapDrive version 6.3 will introduce support for VMKDs residing on VMFS or NFS Datastores. This is significant enhancement from previous releases which only supported RDMs.

Another significant enhancement is that 6.3 also introduces support for Block Reclamation from within a VMDK in an NFS implementation. Given that the default VMDK provisioning format for NFS is a "thin" VMDK, the space reclamation process will keep that VMDK thinly provisioned overtime as applications commit new writes, overwrites and more importantly block deletes.

Bringing Avatar to Life

Adam Shand, former lead of Weta Digital’s infrastructure team

Creating the blockbuster movie Avatar was a feat that required significant IT innovation.

Visual effects company Weta Digital relied on NetApp to provide storage, including an innovative adaptive caching approach using FlexCache® that played a critical role during the final months of the project. Find out about the infrastructure that made the movie possible.

Raksts

Flash Cache: Right Investment at the Right Time

Seems like we just talked about saving an exabyte of storage with dedupe and non-dupe technologies. NetApp passed another milestone this week: we just shipped a petabyte of Flash Cache (aka. Performance Acceleration Modules (PAM cards)). Check out the press release here. Performance is baked into the description but Flash Cache has had a huge role in making storage affordable and, in retrospect, it seemed like a well-timed investment.

Link

Reminder: End of Support for Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Professional on July 13, 2010

Support (including new security updates) ends July 13, 2010 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows 2000 Server and Professional. Migration to the latest OS or installation of the current service pack is recommended.

vSphere 4 Update 2

VMware have released Update 2 versions for several datacenter products.

New features include:

ESX Server and ESXi Installable 4.0 U2 (release notes: ESX, ESXi Installable)

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series, Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors
• Added support for Ubuntu 10.04 guest OS

vCenter Server 4.0 U2 (release notes)

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements - added customization support for several SLES, RHEL and Debian versions

vCenter Update Manager 4.0 U2 (release notes)

• Improved reliability of operations on hosts in low bandwidth, high latency, or lossy networks

VMware Data Recovery 1.2 (release notes)

• File Level Restore (FLR) is now available for use with Linux
• Additional information in UI about the current status of destination disks including the disk's health and the degree of space savings provided by the deduplication store's optimizations
• Information in UI about the datastore from which virtual disks are backed up

vSphere Client/.NET Patch Compatibility Issue

Recent MS .NET patches (KB980773) cause any vSphere Client prior to Update 1 to stop working. For a solution, read the KB article linked below.

KB 1022611

The IBM Internet Security Systems Knowledgebase is moving to the IBM Support Portal

As part of our continued efforts to integrate with IBM’s standard systems and processes, the IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) Knowledgebase content will be moved to the IBM Support Portal, effective June 14, 2010. The knowledgebase content on the iss.net website will be available through June 30, 2010 and can be accessed viahttp://iss.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/iss.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php.

IBM X-Force covers latest Adobe 0day attacks 879 days Ahead of the Threat!

Are you worried about the latest 0-Day Adobe vulnerability? IBM X-Force has it covered with VirtualPatch.

On Friday, June 4, 2010, Adobe announced that targeted attacks were launched against a 0-day vulnerability in their products. There is no patch for Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader to prevent users from getting owned.

But VirtualPatch that comes with IBM Security Network IPS, IBM Security Server IPS and IBM Security Multifunction Security blocks these attacks.

IBM X-Force has been protecting this vulnerability from exploitation in PDFs since Jan. 8, 2008. That’s 879 days Ahead of the Threat! Protection for this vulnerability in Flash has been available since Nov. 11, 2008 – 571 days Ahead of the Threat!

Here’s a link to the alert we sent to clients to notify them of the vulnerability and how they are protected. http://www.iss.net/threats/369.html