Clearspace Server Syndication Feed

Our Latest VIOPS Expert

stephens — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:24:22 GMT

Please join me in congratulating Desmond Chan as the new expert highlighted on the VIOPS front page.

Desmond was one of the original moderators of VIOPS and has been a strong supporter within the VMware technical community. He has been a leading contributor to VIOPS by authoring five top quality proven practices. Here are two examples of his latest work.

Great work, Desmond, keep it coming!

VMware vShield Zones 1.0 is generally available

charu@vmware.com — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:41:24 GMT

Warren Wu writes over on the VMware Security Blog:

With the general availability of VMware vSphere 4 a few weeks ago, I just wanted to highlight for the security community that VMware vShield Zones is also part of that release and now generally available!

vShield Zones is a new product for VMware and one of the newest members of the vSphere 4 product family, based on technology from our acquisition of Blue Lane Technologies. We had a lot of interest from customers around vShield Zones and had over 200 customers around the world registered for our recent private beta. It is part of the vSphere package starting with the Advanced Edition and above.

VMware vShield Zones 1.0 offers the following key features and benefits for vSphere 4 environments:

Central Management of Logical Zone Boundaries and Segmentation

Leverage existing virtual infrastructure containers – hosts, virtual switches, VLANs – as logical trust or organizational zones
Define policies to bridge, firewall, or isolate network traffic between zone boundaries
Manage and deploy policies across entire VMware vCenter Server deployment
Integrate with VMware vCenter Server and automatically deploy on existing virtual networks
Scan and discover existing applications running on virtual machines to identify application protocol

Network Enforcement and Flow Monitoring

Classify traffic by network or application protocol (e.g. HTTP, RDP, SNMP)
Performantly filter traffic with stateful packet inspection (SPI)
Track dynamic port connections for protocols such as FTP
Track network connections across VMware VMotion migration events.
Easily convert observed network flows into precise network enforcement rules.
Monitor both allowed and disallowed activity

Management and Reporting

Access the Web-based vShield Manager interface remotely from any Web browser
Configure administrators to be common with VMware vCenter Server or distinct for separation of duties and roles
View activity hierarchically at individual virtual machine or aggregate levels and generate graphical or tabular reports
Retain log data for archival and compliance purposes
Export events and data using syslog format

More information about vShield Zones can be found at the product page here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-zones/ <http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-zones/>

vShield Zones 1.0 is downloadable as part of the VMware vSphere evaluation at: https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?p=vsphere&lp=1 <https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?p=vsphere&lp=1>

Documentation and release notes about vShield Zones 1.0 can be found at: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsz_pubs.html <http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsz_pubs.html>

VMware @ WES (Blackberry User Conference)

schambers — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:56:56 GMT

VMware is exhibiting at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), RIM’s big user conference, for the first time this year. If you’re attending come by our booth, no. 603 – we’ll have demos and technical papers available with information about virtualizing enterprise messaging apps (specifically Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server). Also on hand will be two of the VMware IT team responsible for administering VMware’s own virtualized BES environment - so bring your questions about virtualizing BES and see if you can stump them.

We also have a demo session on Wednesday, May 6th at 3:00 p.m. in the Demo Theater. We’re planning two demos: Exchange on VMware, and the new VMware Fault Tolerance feature being used to ensure email availability for a BlackBerry that belongs to a Very Important Person.

WES is happening in Orlando FL from May 5-7. You can learn more about WES and register for it here: http://www.attendwes.com/

New Logging Community

schambers — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:49:43 GMT

Managing logs - VC, ESX, Guest - is a challenge that you have to address if you are be classed as a high performing center of excellence for VMware Infrastructure.

There are many methods and tools on the subject, but there are many folks who don't have a good grasp of the topic and some who don't think it's important: it is important! It's a core competency of running VMware Infrastructure.

I couldn't find a good, central resource on this topic and there are some folks out there in the vExpert community who are already thinking about this (Texiwill and Roger Lund for starters). So I have kicked off with a new community on VIOPS to focus these discussions around:

1. What are the requirements for log management?

2. What logs should be collected?

3. How should the logs be collected?

4. How should the logs be analysed?

5. Create a log management roadmap and benchmark

If you are interested in Log Management, perhaps you are a vendor with a solution, or a customer with a question - let's meet in the Logging zone!

Steve

New VMware ISV Center

schambers — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:19:07 GMT

The new VMware ISV Center helps application ISVs maximize their partnership with VMware to lower the TCO of their applications, greatly improve service levels, and revolutionize their customers’ experience. Use the ISV Center to :

Explore how to deliver better solutions to your customers by running your applications on the VMware platform. Read about all the features that your applications automatically inherit when they run on a VMware-managed virtual machine

Support your applications on the VMware platform to make sure they will run with the highest availability and performance. Submit an official support statement, read about best practices for testing your applications on our platform, and learn about training and support options we make available to our partners.

Deliver and deploy applications more efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively on the VMware platform. Learn about Virtual Appliances and ThinApp, two different approaches you may use to encapsulate your applications and deliver them ready to plug into your customer’s environment.

The ISV Center also provides timely and valuable information such as how to adjust licensing models for virtual environments, and customer success stories regarding deployments of business and enterprise applications on the VMware platform.

If you are an ISV Customer, see the Business Critical Applications section.

Visit the ISV Center today!

Beta of VMware vShield Zones

charu@vmware.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:09:20 GMT

Recently at VMworld Europe 2009 in February, VMware announced a new vSphere offering called VMware vShield Zones that provides network monitoring and firewalling for security and compliance of VM's. vShield Zones is based on our acquistion of Blue Lane Technologies last October. It is uses Blue Lane's mature application-aware network stack, but instead of offering virtual patching, it has all-new modules providing network flowing monitoring/auditing as well as network firewalling. These are packaged as a virtual appliance and provides visibility and enforcement specifically for logically partitioning the interior of the virtual datacenter.

We recent started a private beta open to vSphere beta customers that will be running for the next few weeks. If you are interested, please send me a private message. You can learn more about VMware vShield Zones at the product page here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-zones/

VIOPS Capacity Management Webinar - one day to go!

schambers — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:13:54 GMT

Hello folks, reminder that the VIOPS Capacity Management Webinar is now just one day away - if you haven't registered yet, please follow the link below.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 8:00 am PDT / 3:00pm GMT

(Pacific Daylight Time is GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

The webinar is the first of its kind to provide practical capacity management expertise from recognized industry experts, specifically for VMware Infrastructure - don't miss it!

Expert Highlight - Dave Convery, vExpert

schambers — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:02:16 GMT

Please join me in congratulating Dave Convery, VCDX, VMware vExpert as the new expert highlighted on the VIOPS front page.

Dave has been a leading contributor to VIOPS by answering community questions, providing peer reviews for documents, and also authoring two top quality proven practices:

He's now working on the VI3.Blueprint Project to create the VI3.Blueprint BCDR Workshop.

Dave is a recognized vExpert and is a fantastic example of a talented professional who has benefited from the community and is now giving back some of his expertise in return.

Great work, Dave, keep it coming!

Steve

VMworld Europe Harvesting

schambers — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:26:06 GMT

Evoking images of the September harvest, but this time in March and without the heat and dust... everyone wants to benefit as much as possible from the great content on show at VMworld Europe, so this time we thought we'd formalize it a bit and create some VIOPS content from the VMworld Europe sessions.

This is not copying the sessions into VIOPS; they have a great home over on vmworld.com where you'll be able to see and hear the session recordings. The plan instead is to keep developing the VIOPS tradition of adding value to existing content by syndicating the practical content from a session into a proven practice document, adding more guidance and references to it, and then connecting that document to the knowledge zones on VIOPS like "Security".

To track this work, we have created a new project in the Community Zone called VMworld Harvesting.

Ken Thacker has kicked things off by creating the VMworld Harvesting List

- the goal now is for the community to work through that list and identify which ones are in-scope and out-of-scope for harvesting.

The rules are simple: if the session has practical advice on how to do something, like a "best practice" session, then it is a candidate for harvesting.

Check out the list, make your recommendations, offer to own a task and write up the proven practice for a VMworld Europe session!

Welcome to the VI3.Blueprint Project

schambers — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:30:53 GMT

This project is tracking the tasks and communications of the community people who are investing their time and expertise in developing the first ever online VI3 blueprint.

The interest shown by VMware internal staff, partners and customers has been astounding - the challenge has been laid down: can the team do it?

The community is looking for subject matter experts to help with the tasks. Help can be provided by just providing feedback on documents, but you can choose to roll up your sleeves and join the team by sending Steve Chambers a private message.

The project output starts here: VI3 Deployment Blueprint