May 13 2009   6:42PM GMT

The cycles of VMware communities forums: Search is your friend

Posted by: Texiwill
Communities, Edward L. Haletky, Google, VMTN, VMware

Being a long-time user of the VMware Communities forums, I can definitely see that the questions posted in the forums tend to cycle and repeat themselves by newer users. This week the topics focus on Active Directory and clustering. Other weeks it is performance, VCB or configuration issues.

Though this is just within the specific forums I monitor, I am sure there are other cycles within the other forums. This is interesting to me, as long term users like myself see quite a few of the same questions, so we blog about them to try to help people get the answer if they’re searching in Google. In the blog posts, we’ll reference the question, answer the question and provide references that generally consist of other blog posts.

Since it came up this week, let’s discuss Active Directory integration.

This is one of the most commonly asked questions, and there are quite a few ways to achieve this. Some are simple, some are more complex. There are several good references on how to integrate Active Directory, but my favorite is my own site that covers Remote Authentication using AD, LDAP w/AD and NIS.

The other question that has come up so far this week involves Red Hat clustering, specifically stating that a Google search lead to one post in the VMware Communities forum. I find this odd because my search using Google lead to a VMware Communities post on using Red Hat Clustering within ESX w/GFS. I used the search terms “GFS VMware Fence” and viola, I got several VMware Communities threads in the results.

For VMware Communities forum beginners and experienced users, Google or the VMware Communities search is your best friend. The important part is to use good keywords. VMware has taken great pains to ensure that you can quickly search the VMware Communities through Google. The ability to ask, answer, and find answers to VMware-related questions is one of the most important items for any VMware administrator’s Virtualization Toolbox.

Since the answers to VMware Communities questions are cyclic, a quick search should lead you to the answer. If not, post your question and we will be happy to point you to any number of blogs or wikis or even provide you the answers ourselves. You’ll even find a growing number of posts about vSphere.