Video – vCloud Networking (Kendrick Coleman)

ProfessionalVMware Technical BrownBag – vCloud Networking from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

Slides – vCloud Networking (Kendrick Coleman)

In our last BrownBag Damian Karlson hosted Harley Stagner (Blog) and talked about vSphere Design:

Video

ProfessionalVMware Technical BrownBag – Harley Stagner from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

Slides

This week our illustrious host Damian was joined by Sean Crookston, Chris Wahl, and Bill Hill who Deep-Dived into designing vSphere environments as well as the vSphere Storage Appliance.

BrownBag Follow-Up

Slides

Video

ProfessionalVMware Technical BrownBag – VSA and SMB vSphere Design from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

The Video

ProfessionalVMware Technical BrownBags – Scott Lowe from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

Scott’s Take Away:

• Know the products you are working with.
• Then, know them some more.
• …Really, know them frontwards and backwards
• Also, know how they interact with other technologies

Links:

• Scott’s Blog – http://blog.scottlowe.org/
• Jason’s Blog – http://boche.net/
• Buy the “vShpere Design” book – http://amzn.to/hPyyPz

Summary

A HUGE thanks to Scott for coming along and chatting with us. Another for Jason for his ongoing support. If you have thoughts, ideas, comments, or would like to present at a BrownBag, drop a line in the comments.

Instead of our usual faire of flash cards and demos, I’m going to mix it up this week by bringing in a special guest: Jon Hall of VMware Education. We’ve had Jon on a few times in the past, to talk about the certification process, the VCAP program, and the VCDX program.

As we’re at the end of the year, this time we’ll take some time to review the past year of VMware Education/Certifications (a Lot went on), as well as try to get Jon to make some predictions about the future. So come along and bring your questions!

Details:

Date: 12/08/2010
Time: 8PM EST
Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/594210065

About Jon Hall

Jon Hall is a Technical Certification Developer with VMware Education. While you may not know Jon directly, you’ve likely encountered some of his work in the Exam Blueprints and in the Certification communities.

About the BrownBag Series

The BrownBag series are an ongoing set of webcasts geared towards those seeking VMware Certification, or to gain a deeper practical knowledge about specific areas of VMware technology. You can find past topics and shows here.

Thanks all who stuck around even after our late start. We still managed to have a productive call, both with the flash cards during the call, as well as the long fireside chat with Jason Boche afterwards. Thanks again Jason! Also thanks to everyone else who hung out on the call. Now onto the meat and potatoes of this post:

Video:

ProfessionalVMware VCAP DCA BrownBags – Section 3 “Oh the Drama” from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

Flash Cards:

You can get the flash cards here. You should also contribute to these by getting an account here. These seem to have been successful. At worst they give us a starting point for discussion or demonstration. The more you contribute, the better they’ll be for everyone!

vFail “Question of the day”

Original question here.

You have received a new storage device that supports the iSCSI protocol.  This device will be used to run several production virtual machines in your environment, which consists of a single cluster of 3 hosts with HA and DRS enabled.  Setup your environment to support the use of this device. Ensure redundant paths for the storage are configured to minimize single points of failure.

Links:

There are plenty to go around this week, a bunch of which were generated as part of the fireside chat:

• Jason Boche!
  • Find him on the web here
  • Find him on Twitter here
  • VCAP Test experiences here and here
  • DCD Demo here
• VCDX Design Prep resources here (virtuallifestyle.nl)
• BrownBag recordings here
• SAS “SANs”
  • HP Here
  • San w/o an “AN” here
  • More from HP here
• Jon Hall VCAP-DCA Demo here
  • Watch the video… look for the Manual folder on the desktop.

Want to contribute to the BrownBags? Drop a line in the comments or on Twitter here.

With the long weekend here in the US I about forgot to put this post out. Tomorrows VCDX Brown Bag, due to a complete lack of show prep on my side will be Canceled. Those of you who registered should have received a notice. Sorry for doing this at the 11th hour, but please stay tuned for some of our future changes.

Note:

This is the last VCDX Brown Bag in this series. What does that mean? Well a few things:

• We’ll be on hold until the VCAP materials are released
• You will need to re-register for the new series
• The downtime will give us some time to re-tool

Details:

Date/Time: Canceled
Registration: Canceled.

Final words:

These have been the most exciting of the two series of Brown bags. However, there is always room for improvement. If there are some things you would like to see, or would like to see changed, drop us a line in the comments.

Due to a change in Jon Hall’s schedule, the VCP Brown Bag for May 18th has been canceled and moved to the 25th. This also means that I had to push the VCDX Brown Bag on the 25th out to June 1st. Those of you registered should have received notifications, those of you not registered for May 25th, you will want to. Big things from Jon Hall & VMware coming.

Here is a break down of the changes:

VCDX Brown Bag

Date/Time: June 1, 2010 @ 2PM CST
Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/602230081

VCP Brown Bag – Jon Hall Edition

Date/Time: May 25, 2010 @ 2PM CST
Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/486185192

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

We had a good time this call. You’ll be able to tell from the recording though that we are still very much armatures playing in this space. Outside a minor emergency and Tom having some audio difficulty, we had a great discussion around rapid provisioning ESX servers.

Video:

VCDX Brown Bag #8 – Rapid Provisioning from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

You can also get the full size wmv from here.

Notes:

• B3rg’s Rapid Deployment VCDX Notes
• UDA 2.0 – Virtual Lifestyle
• UDA 2.0 Beta – uda.com
• ESX Server 3 Install Guide
• Enterprise Admin Blueprint

This week we’ll be talking ESX Rapid provisioning, specifically objective 8 from the Enterprise Admin Blueprint. We’ll then take the discussion and build kickstart script, finishing with a scripted ESX install. Sound like fun? You know it will be.

Here are the critical details:

Date/Time: May 11, 2010 @ 2P CST
Registration*: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/602230081

* Note: If you registered for #5 you don’t need to re-register this time.

Background reading:

There are some things you will want to have read before joining up on the call, here are some of those things:

• Enterprise Admin Blueprint
• B3RG’s Breakdown of Objective 8 – Rapid Provisioning

Thanks again to the awesome folks at Train Signal for making this possible.