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One year of blog

24 July 2012
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Just one year ago this blog has started its life (see the first official post: Blog goes live).

Was a really intense year and a big challenge (more than 300 posts, with different length, but in most cases both in English and Italian), with several satisfactions. For example, I’ve tried to participate at the top virtualization blogs contents and the results where really interesting: I’ve received some votes and vInfrastructure site is 54 in the entire rank and 3rd in the Favorite New Blog list (and some mentions, included one from the Number 1)!

Also the first sponsors has arrived: I’ve choose to accept (to cover some expensive), but I still tried to keep more independence and objectivity as possible.

For the stats side, here some interesting data:

Period Access Number of visits Monthly visitors Download PDF VCP5 IT Download PDF VCP5 EN
2011 (dal 24 lug) 1.353.314 47.262 circa 6000 271 2212
2012 (fino al 24 lug) 3.459.369 163.655 > 10.000 815 5462

I have to be really grateful with all the people that follow my blog and hope to make better for the next year.

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Veeam ONE Free edition

23 July 2012
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Veeam One FreeVeeam ONE is an integrated monitoring and reporting tool for virtual enviroment based on VMware vSphere and/or Microsoft Hyper-V. Also a free edition is available.

In this video, Doug Hazelman, Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam Software, talks about the new Veeam ONE v6:

For more information:

Veeam

VMware vCenter vs. Microsoft SCVMM

19 July 2012
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With the new version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012, the features gap is slowly reduced from the vSphere vCenter Server.

But the positioning and the comparison remain not so simple due to different license (and different cost), different set of features, and different integration with other products.

Note also that some features in Microsoft environment are not depending from VMM but are features of the Hyper-V or the FailOver Cluster part (so are basically included in the free Hyper-V Server), for this reason some features will change when VMM 2012 will be used with the new Hyper-V3 (for more info see Hyper-V 3.0 vs vSphere 5.0).

Another aspect is that VMM partially cover also the vCloud Director features, for example in the Self Provisioning feature or in the Cloud concept (that is similar to the virtual datacenter concept of vCloud).

continue reading…

Microsoft, VMware , ,

Manage a VSA with System Center VMM 2012

18 July 2012
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One of the new features of System Center VMM 2012 is the ability of manage a supported storage. In a previous post, I’ve described, for example, how manage a Dell storage.

One interesting aspect that I’ve found in a recent event, is that also a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) could be managed in the same way. Of course it must export the required interfaces to System Center, and also be supported on Hyper-V (if it runs on this kind of hypervisor).

One the first products that has introduced this functionality was StarWind (that realized basically an iSCSI software target, as introduced in the previous post: Windows Target iSCSI for free). This intent was announced at the beginning of this year.

For more information: StarWind SMI-S and integrations with SCVMM 2012.

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Microsoft certifications: MCSA & MCSE are back

16 July 2012
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I’ve already written a post about the reintroduction of the MCSA and MCSE certifications. Now that some of them are live (MCSA on Windows Server 2008 was the first, now also the MCSE on Private Cloud is available) the new certification schema has become more clear.

Seems that there on new products only this model will be adopted (so probably no new version of MCTS or MCITP certification) and those MCSE certifications are already be announced:

  • MCSE Private Cloud: already available… Is the new version of the MCITP on virtualization and management.
  • MCSE Server Infrastructure: will be the equivalent of MCITP SA or EA on Windows Server 2012. Exams are actually in beta.
  • MCSE Desktop Infrastructure: little more than the previous MCITP Enterprise Desktop Administrator, now ported on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Exams are actually in beta.
  • MCSE SQL Server 2012: a new certification specific on SQL Server 2012.

Also those MCSA certifications has been announced:

Microsoft, vCertification

Opvizor – Configuration

13 July 2012
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In previous post we have described the installation of opvizor agent. After this step a configuration is needed in order to start the data collection.

Configuration could be started after the installation phase or simple by open the browser on the local server web (and by choosing the Configure opvizor Agent Settings):

Basically you need to specify the opvizor data (platform server is opvizor.com) included your user account credential. Also you can configure the email and proxy settings:

Then you have to specify the vCenter Server configuration and credentials:

Finally you can review the data and start the first data collection:

Data collection could be started manually or with Analyze & Upload Now (or Test Run) or by manually transfer the data (with Manual Upload button). If all is fine you must see something like this:

Now you can schedule the frequency of the data upload:

At this point you can start using the tool by simple click on the desktop icon, or by working with the local web server or by simple open and logon in the opvizor.com web site (in all cases you will use this pages).

Note that the opvizor agent will send an email on each manual upload. But also it will generate period report (each week) with a summary of your enviroment and your cases. This is just the first part of the email:

Issues per Upload

Upload Date New Opened Reopened Closed
2012.07.02 12:37:38 123 101 3 1
2012.07.02 11:48:03 0 99 1 3
2012.07.02 10:54:03 12 90 0 1
2012.07.02 10:51:27 8 86 0 2
2012.07.02 10:20:15 0 217 0 0
2012.07.02 10:18:40 217 0 0 0
vProducts ,

Opvizor – Installation

12 July 2012
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In the previous post I’ve introduced what is Opvizor, the architecture and the possible benefit of it. Now let’s see the install procedure.

First you have to register to the main site, then you can download the latest version of the agent (that is just the data collector). Actually is a Windows service… I’ve asked why not a virtual appliance, but this is just a simple service and the VA options was too big (and not so required) compared to the single .EXE file.

Installation is quite simple: just run the Windows Installer and step through it’s wizard. I’ve tried on a Windows Server 2008 R2, but probably can work also on a “client” version of Windows.

If you use a x64 edition, you must install the 32 version of the Java Virtual Machine. And note that must be version 6, with the latest version 7 does not work:

To download the “old” version of the Java run-time use this link. At this point you have to accept the product license and choose the destination folder:

Then specify the local port for the local web server (that is used for the configuration task and also as a “proxy” for the external web site):

The installation could not begin:

The final step will be the configuration of the “collector”.

vProducts
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