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...
What can we learn about DR from survival situations?

From the time I was little I was always taught to be prepared. I took outdoor survival classes and first aid courses in the evenings long before I was old enough to drive. My vehicles have extra tools in them. When mountain biking in Moab I carried enough equipment to rebuild a small nuclear...
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...
Freakonomics: How H1N1 boosts desktop virtualization adoption
Desktop virtualization vendors are spinning their wheels trying to get enterprises to adopt the technology, but it turns out, all they really needed was a good pandemic.
I met with some of VMware Inc.'s desktop virtualization reps yesterday to discuss the next version of