Things to get excited about this winter!
Posted on 20.Sep 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMware
I’m actually really looking forward to the winter this year, and it seems that 5 is the lucky number. The new iPhone 5 will be released, rumours suggest this will be on or around 15th October, and then there is the iPad 3 (ok, it’s not 5 but worth mentioning!) which should have a far superior retina display which will be great for reading PDF’s and studying with! I’m still using the iPhone 3GS and iPad 1 so my Xmas list is easy this year, whether I get what I want depends on how good I am! 
In the virtual world, at least inside the cloud, VMware have released vSphere 5 and View 5, in addition to many other new products. With the up and coming release of Microsoft Windows 8 with it’s incredible boot time thanks to the way it shuts down in a hybrid shutdown / sleep state, I can only imagine the benefits this will bring to desktop virtualisation and end-user computing as a whole. 
VMware View 4.6 released!
Posted on 25.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, VDI, Virtualisation, VMware, VMware View
Good news everyone!
VMware View 4.6 has just been released which includes over 160 bug fixes and support for PCoIP with Secure Gateway servers. See the release notes here: http://www.vmware.com/support/view46/doc/view-46-release-notes.html
VMware releases new vCloud technology training courses
Posted on 22.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMwareI have just received an email from VMware Education Services highlighting the new VMware vCloud training courses that are now available. If you are new to VMware then they offer a 1-day vCloud Overview course (see below), for seasoned VCP’s they offer a more advanced 3-day course Architecting the VMware vCloud, in addition to other courses and e-learning available.
Bye Bye Old Friend, end of the line for VMware vCenter Lab Manager
Posted on 16.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMwareThis week VMware officially announced that VMware vCenter Lab Manager will not see further major releases and support will continue until 1st May 2013. Over the past few years I have spent a considerable amount of time supporting a large development team with Lab Manager since version 2.5 so I’m kind of sad to see it go, but this is an exciting time in a new era of VMware vCloud Director…
VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1 released today
Posted on 10.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, ESX, ESXi, Virtualisation, VMware
VMware have released vSphere 4.1 Update 1 which adds support for additional operating systems (RHEL 6, RHEL 5.6, SLES 11 SP1 for VMware, Ubuntu 10.10, and Solaris 10 Update 9). ESX/ESXi 4.1 Update 1 now supports 160 logical processors. Looking at the number of patches for ESX and ESXi below, it makes me wonder whether this will be the last release of ESX, in favour of ESXi?
Datacore announces SANsymphony-V
Posted on 03.Feb 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, SAN Storage, VirtualisationSANsymphony-V- http://bit.ly/gcaYVa
“DataCore Announces New Generation of Storage Virtualization Software that Solves the “Big Problem” Stalling Today’s Server and Desktop Virtualization Projects”.
Virgin Media 50Mb Broadband with 5Mb uploads
Posted on 25.Jan 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT
I have just received an email from Virgin Media to say that my upload speed on 50Mb broadband is now 5Mb! I’ve just done a speedtest and it’s pretty damn close, although it’s peak time at the moment so I’ll do another test when it’s a bit quieter and see if I can get any better!
Building a Remote Desktop Gateway (RDG) / RD Gateway Server
Posted on 05.Jan 2011 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Microsoft, Tech Tips, Windows Server 2008 R2Creating a Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) is straight forward and can be used to securely access your Windows servers over port 443 using the Remote Desktop Connection Client. I use this to access my home lab when I’m on the road or at work, and it saves exposing your machines to the internet directly over RDP (TCP 3389). The RD Gateway isn’t new, in fact it was available on Windows Server 2008 as TS Gateway, and the installation is the same. For this article, I will be using Windows Server 2008 R2.
VMware vSphere ‘Whitebox’ Server Lab Setup – Part 1
Posted on 07.Dec 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Home Lab, Tech Tips, Virtualisation, VMwareIntroduction
Way back when VMware VI3 was released in 2006 (doesn’t time fly!), I built a home-brew lab server for ESX 3.0 and used it partly to study for my VCP exam. That particular machine is now my home theatre PC (HTPC) as it wouldn’t stand a chance of running VMware vSphere, so here is my mission to build a whitebox VMware vSphere lab server. I must also give credit to Simon Seagrave and Simon Gallagher their vSphere lab server articles which have inspired me to do something about it and build a vSphere lab at home. Simon has lots of great articles on building a vSphere lab, and I urge you to visit his site.
VIDEO: VMworld Europe 2010 Show Wrap & Summary
Posted on 20.Oct 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMwareITIL: My take and the impact of virtualisation.
Posted on 15.Sep 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, ITIL
I’m not an ITIL expert by any means, but I am ITIL v3 Foundation certified and have been working with ITIL projects and service delivery since ITIL v3 was released in 2007. From a technical perspective let’s not forget what service the IT infrastructure is providing. It is all too easy for IT staff to get so wrapped up in the technology; they forget what they are actually delivering as a service to the organisation. ITIL has inspired me to strive for perfection, and take a new approach to delivering technical solutions.
Very dirty computers…
Posted on 27.Jul 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT
Readers of The Register have sent their photos of their extreme dirty PC’s, and I had to share this on my site. X-Rated? Yes I think so!
Here are some of the offending home PC’s, and you can read the full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/ventblockers/
Data Center & IT Infrastructure
Posted on 03.Jun 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT
This is bit of a random post, but I wanted to share some of the reasons I joined IT in the first place. Lets face it, IT infrastructure hardware has evolved very well in the past 10 years. Pictured to the left is the HP c7000 blade chassis, and this was actually taken in March 2010 when I was rolling out VMware vSphere on HP BL460 G6 blades. What I like about the BL460 G6 is that it can run 6 x NIC’s (two on board and a four port card) in addition to an HBA mezzanine card. Top that off with excellent BladeSystem management, ILO and Insight Manager, you can’t get much better. These blades here have 48GB RAM per host and two quad-core Intel x5550 processors. At half-height, you can pack 16 of these in a single chassis. Excellent for consolidation, both in physical terms and virtual!
Finally received my VMware vSphere VCP certificate in the post today!
Posted on 20.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & IT, Virtualisation, VMware
I passed my VCP4 back in December, and after many months of waiting I finally received my VCP certificate on vSphere 4 today!
I’m also working on some study material for those of you that are aiming for a VMware VCP certificate. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, you won’t miss out when it’s published!
Open Source vs COTS? Government strategy for 2010
Posted on 11.Feb 2010 by Ray Heffer in Business & ITGovernment ICT strategy for 2010:
“Traditionally, the public sector has relied on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software or bespoke developments from global providers. This restricts the ability of the public sector to reuse solutions, reduces flexibility to manage assets efficiently and prevents government organisations from switching suppliers. The Open Source, Open Standards, Reuse Strategy provides government’s approach to open source alternatives that meet public sector requirements. Government already commits to using only open standards for documentation. The ICT Strategy will build capability within the public sector to increase the amount of open source code and software in use and to make it available for reuse elsewhere.”
