To certify for VMware Certified Professional 5 (VCP5)  when you are currently VCP4 certified you can register for the VCP5 exam without attending the two day course ’VMware vSphere: What’s New 5′. If you do not pass before March 1 2011 you will have to attend the two-day course before attending the exam.

VMware is currently running a promotion. You will get a free VCP5 exam voucher (worth Euro 208) when you register and attend the What’s New course.  Mind : Applicable ONLY for EMEA & Americas VMware-delivered Classes

Below are the details of the promotion that need to be met in order to qualify for the free VCP5 exam voucher:

1. Attend VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 delivered by VMware Education
   Between January 16 and February 24, 2012, register for and attend a VMware-delivered, VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 class in the Americas or EMEA.
   • VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 Direct-delivery Full Schedule in the Americas
   • VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 Direct-delivery Schedule in EMEA

Remember! Only VMware-delivered classes registered for and attended between January 16 and February 24, 2012 qualify for this promotion. No exceptions.

2. Upon completion of your class, you will receive an email from VMware Certification with your exam voucher code
3. Register to take the VCP5 Exam on or before February 29, 2012, using your FREE VCP5 exam voucher.

Please be aware that VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.0] meets the course pre-requisite if you are already hold a VCP3 and only until March 1, 2012, when the pre-requisite changes. If you hold a VCP4, there is no pre-requisite until March 1. And, if you currently do not hold a VCP certification or hold only a VCP2, the VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.0] course does not meet the course requirement. Visit VMware Certification for more information on VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5.

*Terms and Conditions This VCP5 free exam voucher offer applies only to VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 delivered directly by VMware in EMEA and the Americas. This offer cannot be applied to partner-delivered courses, only applies to new registrations and cannot be combined with other offers. Enrollment is subject to availability and registration is on a “first come, first served” basis. VMware reserves the right to cancel a class. These terms and conditions are subject to change without notice.

Qualifying registrations for VMware vSphere: What’s New 5 must be received and fulfilled by VMware between January 16 and February 24, 2012. The VCP5 exam must be taken by the expiration date of March 1, 2012. Vouchers cannot be extended, replaced or used in combination with other offers. This promotion is not available on the Academic pricelist

The Register reports on the results of VMware in Q4 of 2011. An interesting statement of Paul Maritz:

Maritz said that the competitive environment with Microsoft, Red Hat, and Citrix had not changed appreciably in 2011, but he said that VMware expected for Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V 3 to come out later this year and take a run at VMware.”We’re expecting them to come back at us again, and we’re prepared for that,” Maritz said of his former employer

Server virtualization juggernaut VMware has busted through its first billion dollar quarter, beating Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter of 2011 in both sales and profits.

Anyone – this means you, Red Hat, Citrix Systems, and Microsoft – that thinks they can knock out VMware in server virtualization should consider this: VMware’s virtual server business now rivals the revenue stream that IBM gets from its Power Systems and System z mainframe physical server businesses (individually), is roughly the same size as the systems business at Oracle, and is larger than the Itanium-based server business at HP.

Continue at source.

Hyper-V 3.0 part of Windows Server 8 promises lots of new features. One of the many new features will be  Live VHD merge.  This new feature will prevent having to reboot a virtual machine after deletion of the snapshot as is currently needed for virtual machines running on Hyper-V 2.0.

The ability to create a point in time state of a virtual machine (also known as a snapshot or checkpoint ) is one of the advantages of virtual machines. After creation of a snapshot, the original virtual disk is made read only and all addional writes are written to a snapshot file (or delta file).
Snapshots are NOT a way to make backups for virtual machine. Snapshots are usefull to temporary save the state of the virtual machine before applying a patch or other software change. After the update has bee applied do not wait too long before deletion of the snapshot.

Hyper-V 2.0 part of Windows Server 2008 has a nasty issue/design flaw. When a snapshot file was deleted by the administrator, it was actually not immediately merged  with the original virtual disk and then deleted from disk.
It was merged and deleted only after a reboot was performed. Not everyone was aware of the ‘by design’ behaviour. It could easily lead to a volume running out of free disk space and a paused state of virtual machines. Read more about this at vcritical.com .
Virtual machine snapshots of Hyper-V 2.0 virtual machines are supported in production environments, but not recommended according to this posting on msdn.com.

Microsoft fixed this issue in Hyper-V 3.0. The feature called Live VHD Merge will make sure the snapshot file is merged and deleted from disk without the need for a reboot!

Mid January 2012 Microsoft announced the System Center 2012 suite. This suite has lots of software tooling for management of an infrastructure. The licensing has been simplified compared to older editions of System Center. There is a standard and enterprise edition which both have the same set of tools (SCOM, DPM, SCVMM etc). The difference is the standard edition can only be used on two virtual machines, the enterprise edition can be used for management of an unlimited number of virtual machines. Both editions are licensed per physical CPU of the virtualization host.
A good overview of System Center 2012 can be found in the posting of Rod Trent titled
New System Center 2012 Suite versioning and licensing model simplifies and excites

While Microsoft Windows Datacenter Edition and System Center suite is licensed per phyical CPU on the host, VMware tooling which enables to run a private cloud has a more complex licensing schema based on number of physical CPU’s and assigned virtual RAM (vSphere) and number of virtual machines to be managed.

Microsoft released a whitepaper titled ” Microsoft Private Cloud A comparative look at Functionality, Benefits, and Economics ” in January 2012 explaining the tooling of System Center 2012 and their licensing compared to the VMware tooling.

<advert>

StarWind Software Inc. is launching a new contest: write a scenario for StarWind iSCSI SAN use in your production environment.

If you have had some great results in a range of complex IT challenges including: Virtualization, Windows Server Clustering, Shared Storage for Server Applications, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery from using StarWind storage solutions then you are eligible for a fantastic prize from us.

Thus, StarWind is doing something exclusive that will make it worth your while.

If your Scenario is selected, you win a prize. Send your Scenario before midnight on Friday, March 30, 2012, and you’ll go in the draw to win iPad 2. Given the short time frame of this contest your odds of winning are in fact incredibly high.

All you need is:

• Submit an application letter
• Get preapproval from the StarWind Marketing Team
• Design and layout the Scenario
• See already published examples here

Requirements and rules:

• All scenario applications should be submitted to StarWind Marketing Team by March 30, 2012.
• Entries should be submitted, electronically, in Microsoft Word format or PDF format.
• Scenarios must clearly state the end-customer’s problem and how StarWind solution(s) helped to overcome it. They should reflect:
     - The company’s profile, specialization, scale and seriousness of problems it came up with
     - The way StarWind solutions have helped a customer to address the problem
• Participants allow all information provided for public use.
• All scenarios should be sent in English.
• Submissions will be also judged on the following criteria:
     - Innovation
     - Value to the IT community
     - Ease of understanding
     - Practicality

Click here to send us your scenario.

<Advert>

New StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 and Hyper-V Backup Plug-in are a New Level of Data Protection

Burlington, MA – January 13, 2012 – StarWind Software Inc., an innovative provider of SAN software for iSCSI storage and VM Backup technology, today announced the release of new StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 and Hyper-V Backup Plug-in. The iSCSI SAN software is enhanced by the powerful VM Backup technology that is included as a plug-in.

Backup plug-in is built specifically for Hyper-V-based environments to provide fast backup and restore for Hyper-V virtual machines. The backup solution delivered by StarWind performs all operations on the Hyper-V host level thus it requires no backup agents to be installed on virtual machines (Agentless Architecture).

Hyper-V Backup Plug-in makes fast backups and allows quick, reliable restore of both virtual machines and individual files. It utilizes advanced technologies for maximum disk space saving (Global Deduplication). This backup tool is integrated with StarWind Centralized Management Console that enables managing backup and storage from a single window.

Additionally, a new version of HA plug-in is presented in StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 that allows use of raw basic images to create HA targets. A new replication engine based on own technology instead of MS iSCSI transport creates higher performance and reliability. This new engine permits use of multiple network interfaces for synchronization and heartbeat.

To simplify the replacement of equipment and recovery from fatal failures, StarWind Software has implemented the ability to change the partner node to any other StarWind server on the fly, without any downtime. Synchronization engine is improved, and this version allows both nodes to sync automatically even in the case of a full blackout of both servers.

“With the release of StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 our company is happy to provide our customers with highly available storage and fast backup software developed by the same vendor,” said Artem Berman, Chief Executive Officer of StarWind Software. “Now small and medium-sized companies have an opportunity to achieve higher performance and absolute data protection.”

About StarWind Software Inc.
StarWind Software is a global leader in storage management and SAN software for small and midsize companies. StarWind’s flagship product is SAN software that turns any industry-standard Windows Server into a fault-tolerant, fail-safe iSCSI SAN. StarWind iSCSI SAN is qualified for use with VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer and Linux and Unix environments. StarWind Software focuses on providing small and midsize companies with affordable, highly availability storage technology which previously was only available in high-end storage hardware. Advanced enterprise-class features in StarWind include Automated HA Storage Node Failover and Failback (High Availability), Replication across a WAN, CDP and Snapshots, Thin Provisioning and Virtual Tape management.

Since 2003, StarWind has pioneered the iSCSI SAN software industry and is the solution of choice for over 30,000 customers worldwide in more than 100 countries and from small and midsize companies to governments and Fortune 1000 companies.

For more information on StarWind Software Inc., visit: www.starwindsoftware.com

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 130,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.