I attended the New England summer VMUG in Brunswick, ME on Thursday and I figured I would tell you all about it. Let me start by admitting that this was the first VMUG and I was shocked at the size and coordination of this invite. From what I heard, there were over 1,800 pre-registrations with about 1,200 people actually showing up. The event was sponsored by 40 vendors (30 breakout sessions!) and they went all out.
The agenda for the event is available here. Below are the notes I took during the event.
9 – 10: The Current “View” of the Virtual Desktop Landscape by Tommy Walker, Principal Systems Engineer, Global View Architect, VMware
- VDI 4.5 is do out soon!
- Expect more updates immediately to follow 4.5 release
- More to come at VMworld
- Lots more in this session, but I am not up on my View, sorry!
10 – 11: How to Build a Cloud with VMware by Mike DiPetrillo, Principal Systems Engineer, Global Cloud Architect, VMware
- Mike did not offend me (he claimed that was his goal by the end of the presentation)
- Skills needed to build a cloud
- Networking – very complex in the cloud especially in multiple data centers
- Storage – very difficult in the cloud because of moving data back and forth
- Programming – the cloud needs to be highly automated for scale and multi-tenancy
- How to build a cloud
- Need servers (does not matter what kind)
- Virtualize everything (abstracting makes it easier to move things into and out of the cloud)
- Orchestration (I take this to mean automation)
- Cloud killers
- Comfort (i.e. I do not want to, it is not secure, etc)
- Compliance
- Licensing (Cloud ISPs have to charge you for a license in the cloud even if you already have one)
- Things to ask your Cloud ISP
- Do you have a flexible computing environment (i.e. ability to grow/shrink on-demand)?
- Are you application compatible (i.e. do you support all applications)?
- Is it easy to get into and out of the cloud?
- What policy controls do you have (i.e. audit, backups, DR, HA, SLAs)?
11 – 12: vSphere 4.1 Security Feature Set; Security, vShield Zones, VMsafe API by Rob Randell, VMware Security Specialist Systems Engineer, VMware
- Topics
- Virtualization security (platform)
- Audit + Compliance
- Security in the private cloud
- ESXi – log in is like a BIOS in that you must be root
- Tech Support mode
- Enabling in vCenter Server adds a warning to the host
- Once enabled only ESX Admin members can log into the host
- Sessions can be set to expire, but will not expire if the console continues to be used
- Once disabled again warning is removed, however logged in users will still have access
- Security best practices
- FT and vMotion should be non-routable
- For P2Ps open/close ports as needed
- Create security roles such as Super Admin, Network Admin, System Admin, and Storage Admin
12 – 1: Lunch
- Sat with several VMware presenters
- Met Nathan Small who presented Advanced Root Cause Analysis, a presentation I really wanted to see
1 – 2: Cisco – Delivering Unprecedented Innovation to Create Flexible Virtual Environments
- Introduction
- Client/Server model use to be north to south to north
- vMotion introduced east to west to the client/server model
- One problem with vMotion is trying to do it over layer 3
- Network
- 1G is still heavily used
- 10G is becoming more popular and everyone should have a transition plan
- 40G is expected by mid 2011
- 100G is expected by 2012
- UCS key features
- Embedded management
- Expanded memory
- VN-Link & vAdapters
- Stateless computing & service profiles
- UCS is currently #4 in the server market and is expected to become #3 and take over Dell in 12 months
- Cloud computing is going to expand significantly between June 2011 and June 2012 as government agencies are being forced into the cloud
2 – 3: CAS Severn – Ask The Design Expert
- ESXi differences
- ESXi has only one gateway while ESX has two
- VMkernel + storage should be on the same storage
- Service Console + storage should not be on the same VLAN as the VMkernel interface will not be used
3 – 4: VMware Go Tour
4 – 5: VMware Roundtable Q&A, Prizes, Closing
- How to Design a (v)Chicken
- I did not win an iPad 🙁
5:30 – midnight: Gritty’s, Freeport, Maine
- Open bar!
- All you can eat including lobster, steak, chicken, and ribs!
- Cigar bar!
- Great networking opportunity!
© 2010, Steve Flanders. All rights reserved.
