The much anticipated first update for VMware vSphere 4.0 is upon us. I've been awaiting this update with eager anticipation since we've uncovered some issues with 4.0 in our deployment. If you want to read the release notes for update 1, you can check them out here.If you have already...
For all of you TechNet or MSDN subscribers, the latest beta of Office 2010 is now available for download. Just sign in to your TechNet/MSDN account and download! Remember, Office 2010 now comes in native 64-bit support, as well as legacy 32-bit versions. I've been running the pre-beta since the...
A couple of days ago 3PAR made more announcements about their added features in the upcoming major release of their InServe operating system for their enterprise fibre channel and iSCSI storage arrays. If you missed their previous announcements, click on 3PAR on the right side of my blog for the...
Earlier this year I was honored to be asked by Microsoft to join a private alpha of their security accelerators for Windows 7, IE8, and Server 2008 R2. I provided a lot of feedback to the guides, and as a result several tweaks and changes were made. As a result...
Wow 3PAR is really on a role of new announcements for upcoming versions of the InServe OS. The official 3PAR announcement can be seen here.Highlights Include:- Federated multiple InServe arrays so they appear as one large storage cluster. The various arrays could be miles apart.- Persistent cache, where if your...
If you are a VMware workstation 6.x user, workstation 7 is a must have upgrade. You can read more about it here. In a blog earlier this month I listed many of the new features. Check it out! Aero Glass for Windows 7 VMs is really killer.
If you want to experiment with ESX(i) on your home computer and have VMware Workstation 6.5, it's pretty easy to do. Two key steps are needed in order to be successful.1. When creating a new VM inside Workstation for ESX(i), chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-bit.2. After you have...
I'll be the first to admit, my experience with SharePoint has been from the end user. But, if you are a SharePoint developer, check out the great blogs at PointBridge. This week in particular, their blogs have been smoking with wazoo (technical term) goodies for developers. 90% of it is...
If you are planning a major datacenter upgrade in 2010 or beyond, you won't be able to escape vendors pushing their converged fabric products. FCoE is being adopted by all major server and network manufactures at a rapid clip. I think vendors like Brocade will have a tough time in...
A couple of weeks ago Gartner released their October 2009 magic Quadrant for blade server report. If you have been tracking blade servers, you know the market has been rapidly adopting new technology due to the tidal wave of server virtualization. 10Gb Ethernet, 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10Gb FCoE, and 4x...
Today in my vSphere class a question came up about zoning a fibre channel SAN. Best practices from most storage vendors and security specialists recommends WWN single initiator/single target zoning. What the heck does that mean? First, it means a lot of zones--they multiply like bunnies! An initiator is your...
Under some circumstances you may feel the need to partition an ESX LUN, so you can create two or more datastores. Why? Let's say you have a small branch office with a single ESX host and it's only using internal storage from a RAID controller. And for some reason you...