Eric Siebert

Holiday gift ideas for VMware administrators

It's the holiday season again and last year I wrote about stocking stuffer ideas for VMware administrators, so I thought I would do the same this year. Do you need some ideas on what to get a dedicated hardworking VMware...

What is Changed Block Tracking in vSphere?

I've recently written several articles on new backup and storage features in vSphere and spent a lot of time trying to learn more about the vStorage APIs and the new Changed Block Tracking (CBT)...

Giving vThanks this holiday season

With the holiday spirit of thanks and giving, I thought I would make a list of the virtualization-related things that I give thanks for, so here it is:

• I give thanks for High Availability; how many times have you saved the day by bringing my VMs back up on other hosts...

First update to vSphere released

VMware has finally released the first update to vSphere almost 6 months after the initial release of vSphere in May 2009. Version 4.0 Update 1 delivers many fixes to bugs and issues as well as support for new features, products and operating systems. Perhaps the biggest updates in this release are...

Why use vShield Zones?

VMware introduced vShield Zones as part of the vSphere release along with VMware Data Recovery as a value-added product that is available in certain editions. I'm always interested in virtualization security products so I spent a lot of time checking out the product which resulted in me writing a...

Quota limits in vSphere?

A reader was recently reading the VMware white paper  What Is New in VMware vSphere 4: Storage and he came across this paragraph:

Improved Storage Resources Control As the scope of storage...

Does virtualization really reduce administrator headcount and workloads?

One benefit of virtualization that is often stated is that by virtualizing you will reduce the number of administrators needed to manage your server environment. I heard this first hand years ago when we were looking to do a server virtualization project and I was skeptical as to how that would be...

PC-over-IP remote display technology: The inner workings of VMware View 4

VMware recently announced that the release of VMware View 4 is slated for later this month which will include a new display protocol called PC-over-IP (PCoIP), which should greatly enhance the user experience. What is PCoIP? PCoIP is a relatively new technology developed by a...

Several ways to explain virtualization to a non-techie person

So what do a school bus, four teenage daughters, an apartment complex, a six-foot sub and a hotel have in common? They can all be used for virtualization analogies! In a previous post I covered the basics on what virtualization is and used an analogy to describe it. I also...

Restoring individual files from image-level backups of virtual machines

Virtual environments can change the way you back up your servers by providing an additional backup method where you back up the single large virtual disk file instead of the individual files inside the VM operating system. There is sometimes confusion, however, when using this method as if...