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When and Why to use Snapshots.

By no means is a snapshot supposed to be used as a backup. A snapshot is great for mitigating risk before doing an update to a VM (Virtual Machine). A snapshot can cause issues if left unattended. For example, if you allow a snapshot or delta file unattended it can continue to grow, it will do so until there is no space left, what this will do is effectively bring every VM on that datastore to a halt. The only way to recover would be to commit that snapshot, and doing so on a full datastore can be very difficult.

When would you create a Snapshot.

You would create a snapshot in these scenarios.

- Before applying security updates and or patches to an OS
- Before installing a major application
- Before attempting the repair of a VM (OS based troubleshooting)
- Before removal of software, in case corruption occurs and you have to use a different method of removal

Removal of snapshots should be scheduled. For example, you create a snapshot, the description should have a short description and a date of when it was created. Once the snapshot is created, create yourself a calendar appointment to remove it a week later, that is probably the longest time you would want to leave a snapshot, any longer, you create the risk or major work being done to the VM and causing the snapshot/delta file to grow out of control.

You would not create snapshots in these scenarios

- You need a backup of an OS
- You are installing a piece of software that you need for a small project and it is intended you roll back to a pristine OS a couple months after.
- Before large DB work, exchange defrags, maintenance, large file transfers, etc.

When and Why to use Templating

Templates allow you to create a pristine copy of a VM without causing any downtime; this VM can then be restored at a later date if needed also the VM can be thin-provisioned to save on space. Creating a template doesn’t just duplicate the VM’s virtual disks, additionally, the VM’s .vmx configuration file is duplicated and renamed with the .vmtx extension, and this means that all the settings behind your VM are being duplicated as well. This saves time by reducing the number of wizards and dialog boxes you need to complete. Note that if a VM is currently in snapshot mode you will not be able to clone it.

When you would create VMware Templates

- When you need a backup of a VM because you are going to be working on it for a long period of time.
- An in place non-disruptive backup of a critical VM
- If you know that you will need to deploy multiple copies of a VM
- When you need a pristine copy of an environment for development testing, ie Install OS, Install SQL, install software package, template, then clone from template, repeat.

When you would not create VMware Templates

- Before applying security updates and or patches to an OS
- Before installing a major application
- Before attempting the repair of a VM (OS based troubleshooting)
- Before removal of software

Click herefor the vSphere 4.1 Reference Document. Once there, just click on “here is the vReference card updated for vSphere 4.1.”

Click herefor the vSphere 4.1 Firewall Diagram

Click herefor an ESXTop Reference Credit card.

Enjoy!

“We are proud of the deep VMware expertise we’ve built into Veeam Backup & Replication v5,” explained Doug Hazelman, Senior Director of Product Strategy for Veeam. “It is the most compelling reason yet to virtualize 100 percent of enterprise applications, and we want the entire VMware community to experience Veeam vPower.”

Check it out here.

To give organizations affordable, easy-to-deploy infrastructure virtualization, HP and VMware have combined VMware vSphere™ Essentials Plus with the HP P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA). The HP P4000 is the only software SAN certified as VMware Ready™. The new integrated product complements “always-on” IT from VMware for small and medium businesses (SMBs) with highly available storage from HP. It provides backup and recovery with shared storage capabilities to help SMBs start on the path to cloud-based IT services.

Check out the overview and features of the HP Storagework P4000. Also check out this link that goes over their Desktop and Connectivity features.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.

Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.

Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).

Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

I haven’t deployed it myself yet, ESX 4 Update 1 is pretty damn rock solid as it is… im in no hurry, but i will start testing it in my sandbox environment. Go here to download it, if you have a valid support contract with VMWare, or just download the trial copy.

With StarWind, VMware certified professionals will get a scalable storage platform for VMware vSphere environments with advanced features at absolutely no cost. By creating networked storage with StarWind SAN software, VMware administrators get a scalable, highly cost-effective and easy-to-use iSCSI SAN that fully protects their VMware virtual machines in the event of failure. StarWind’s true active-active high availability storage architecture provides continuous and non-disruptive access to storage in the event of failure by synchronously mirroring data between two active storage appliances, or nodes, in real time with automatic failover and failback. If a disk, power or even an entire storage node fails, the redundant storage node will take over and will continue actively operating without any disruption, ensuring that storage is available and accessible on the network.

Go here to download the application, submit an email to the above email address and you will be good to go!

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Here are the top 5 certifications based on average salary.

1. $99,928 – CISSP (Cert. Info. Sys. Security Professional)
2. $93,953 – CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate)
3. $91,271 – VMware Certified Professional
4. $89,864 – CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional)
5. $86,454 – MCSE (MS Certified Systems Engineer)

If you would like to see the full list of 20 certifications based on salary, check out the PDF over at ZDNET, if you do not have an account, sign up, the you can view the PDF. Here is a quick insert from the parent website.

Overview: In conjunction with Global Knowledge, TechRepublic presents this year’s IT skills and salary report. Find out about IT employment trends, areas of growth and decline, skills that are in demand, highest-paying job roles, highest-paying certifications, and salary ranges broken down by region, job title, and industry.

Enjoy and start studying!

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-NS VCP

Due to overwhelming demand, existing VCP3 professionals will be able to obtain the VCP4 certification with no additional course requirement through January 31st, 2010

So we all have 22 days to get that certification. Make sure you download the VMware Exam Blueprint for VCP4 here.

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