It’s Alastair here, today I am very pleased to release the vSphere 5 AutoLab, a free tool for the VMware community.

What is the AutoLab?

The AutoLab is a quick easy way to build a vSphere environment for testing and learning using a single desktop or laptop PC and VMware Workstation, Fusion or ESXi. The whole lab runs in VMs on that one PC, even ESXi runs in a VM and can then run it’s own VMs.

What’s in the AutoLab?

The Autolab download contains a set of shell VMs and a lot of automation.  Once built the lab contains two ESXi servers, a Windows Domain controller, a Windows Virtual Centre, a FreeNAS storage appliance and a FreeSCO Router to link it to the outside world.

The download has been kept very small for easy download and distribution, it contains only free, open source, software. You will also need the installers for vSphere and Windows, you should use evaluation licenses for both vSphere (built in) and Windows.

What can I do with the AutoLab?

• Run VMs on the lab ESXi servers, using iSCSI shared storage
• Build an HA and DRS cluster
• Work with vSphere Networking
• Practice the upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.0
• Use PowerShell and the VCLI to manage the lab
• Rebuild the whole lab quickly and with minimal effort
• Choose how much automation you want in the lab build
• Take the lab with you on your laptop

Will my laptop/PC be able to run the AutoLab?

If your laptop has 8GB of RAM and a recent CPU you should be able to run the lab. Here is my three year old laptop that is upgraded to 8GB of RAM running the whole lab including VMs running on the ESXi servers inside the lab.

Where can I get the AutoLab?

http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

The AutoLab lives on LabGuides.com since it is an offshoot from the effort that Nick Marshall and I working on. Can you guess what that project is?

The Installation Instructions are in a pdf and you should take a look at those to get a better idea of what is involved.  Then there are two different downloads, both contain the same VMs but with slightly different configuration and different packaging. The download for VMware Workstation should also work with Player and Fusion.  The other contains a vApp for deployment onto ESXi 5.0. Download one  and get started by following the guide.

I hope that the AutoLab will save you a lot of time and frustration in building vSphere labs.  I will be posting on ProfessionalVMware the details of the automation that is in the AutoLab so you can reuse or modify the work.

You can contact me through my other blog http://www.demitasse.co.nz/wordpress2/about/

This week being a bi-week for the BrownBags to give y’all a chance to cram for the fast approaching 29th deadline, I’ve taken the time to put the VCP5 BrownBags into order around the blueprint objectives. Special Thanks again to Damian Karlson for making these happen.

VCP-510 Playlist

• Objective 1
  https://vimeo.com/34952699
• Objective 2
  https://vimeo.com/35771934
• Objective 3
  https://vimeo.com/35297839
• Objective 4
  https://vimeo.com/36079697
• Objective 5
  https://vimeo.com/36467852
• Objective 6
  https://vimeo.com/36897013
• Objective 7
  https://vimeo.com/37306523

Video

Slides

Links

• http://www.vhersey.com/2011/08/access-the-esxi-direct-console-user-interface-dcui-over-ssh/
• http://www.lucd.info/category/vsphere/event/
• http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/08/10/vcenter-appliance/
• http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/new-vsphere-5-cli-utilitiestricks.html
• http://www.vbeers.org/2012/02/21/vbeers-seattle-wa-wednesday-march-7th-2012/
• http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/
• http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-monitoring-performance-guide.pdf
• http://www.amazon.com/Storage-Design-Implementation-vSphere-VMware/dp/0321799933/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1329962282&sr=8-11
• http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/vima

   

It’s that time of week again! This time we’re finishing out the VCP5 Blueprint with @btobia.

Brian Tobia is a technology consultant at RSA, The Security Division of EMC, with a specific focus on cloud and virtualization security. Previously, Brian has held various systems and network administration roles within VMware environments since the ESX 2.x days. He currently holds his VCP4 and VCP5 and is active in the VMware communities and can be found on Twitter via @btobia.

BrownBag Details

Date/Time: Wednesday, Febuaray 22 @ 7PM CST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/918511944

Thanks again to Damian Karlson for going beyond what is normal to make these happen in my absence. When the time comes (Before February 29th), I think I’ll my VCP5 to his (and the supporting community) efforts.

The Video

The Slides

This week we continue down the road of VCP5 prep with Josh Atwell (Blog / Twitter) who will be covering Objective 6 on the VCP5 blueprint. For more info on Josh, I’d encourage you to follow his blog, or ping him on Twitter. He’s a really smart guy!

BrownBag VCP5 Objective 6 Details

Date/Time: 2/15/2012 @ 7PM CST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/918511944

More VCP5 BrownBag Goodness

We’ve been covering the VCP5 material for several weeks now, and all prior episodes can be found here, on the BrownBag page.

Video

Not much in the way of show notes otherwise this weekend.

Tonight we’ll be having the man, myth, and legend that is David Davis on to cover Objective 5 of the VCP5 blueprint.

About David:

David Davis is the author of the best-selling VMware vSphere video training library from TrainSignal. He has written hundreds of virtualization articles on the Web, is a vExpert, VCP, VCAP-DCA, and CCIE #9369 with more than 18 years of enterprise IT experience. His personal Website is VMwareVideos.com.

Register:

Date/Time: 2/8/2012 @ 7P CST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/918511944

The Video:

Some Notes (From #BrownBag on twitter)

• @DuncanYB: New Article: Creating an IP-Pool for VC Ops – http://bit.ly/yKSLdM
• If you’re up in 6 hours, join @DemitasseNZ for an APAC version http://t.co/ZSCLaX9O
• Another great VCP5 resource can be found on @mwpreston’s blog: http://bit.ly/wAh5aU
• Synch MSCS/AD with common NTP server, and disable host based time synchronization http://bit.ly/rIl4X
• You can use VMware’s OSPs ( http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html )
• Res Mgmt Guide http://bit.ly/zNqhVq
• Jason Langer @jaslanger has a GREAT VCP5 study resource at http://bit.ly/x2rKYJ

More BrownBags

You can find all our past recordings for both the VCP5 series as well as every other topic we’ve covered (50+ hours) here: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

Long at last, the follow-up post. Sorry it took so long this time, I was traveling and on a crummy connection, and then well, family first. That said, to the folks in the BrownBag family, here is the VCP5 Objective 2, Networking BrownBag video featuring Scott Lowe (blog) along side our own Damian Karlson.

Video

Show Notes

Port mirroring with vDS
http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2011/08/vsphere-5-new-networking-features-port-mirroring.html
http://jasonnash.com/2011/08/11/vsphere-5-how-to-series-vds-port-mirroring/

VMware whitepaper covering the migration from vds to vss
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere-vnetwork-ds-migration-configuration-wp.pdf

http://www.valcolabs.com/2011/09/18/objective-2-3-%E2%80%93-configure-vss-and-vds-policies/

Note: There were no slides this time… Scott is just that hardcore, and worked directly from the Blueprint.

About the BrownBags

You can find all our past recordings for both the VCP5 series as well as every other topic we’ve covered (50+ hours) here: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/