VMware

Back on April 29th we posted an alert: ALERT: Login issue after updating to vCenter 5.1 Update 1 which detailed a scenario whereby customers might be unable to log in using the vSphere Web Client or domain username/password credentials via the vSphere Client after updating to vCenter 5.1

Tonight at 7:30pm PST, vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 will be removed from the VMware download site and will be replaced by vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1a. The primary aim of the 5.1 U1a release is to address the regression that was identified in 5.1 U1.

Customers are urged to read the README included with the new update before they apply the update.

Details of what has and has not been fixed are provided in KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2037410

Post by Brandon Sweeney, Vice President U.S. Mid-Market Businesses

Many midmarket organizations face challenges in equipping their IT infrastructure to support privacy and regulatory protocols and ensure consistent uptime, but those in the health care field have a unique challenge. For a healthcare professional, the reliability needed in their IT environment can literally be the difference between life and death. Finding an IT solution that supports compliance and ensures utmost performance is essential.

Pivotal Turning Points

Laurens County Health Care System, a 90 bed health care organization in Clinton, South Carolina was looking to deploy the Meditech clinical information system to improve patient information and care, as well as enable computerized physician order entry (CPOE). With 30 physical servers in their data center, an offline server could cause multiple facets of their infrastructure to go down. Additionally they found their staff of 11 IT workers often fighting fires instead of proactively addressing business needs. Hospital employees were using so many different laptops and desktops that just maintaining current versions of basic software was difficult. Downtime was up to 40% in the physical data center.

Running Meditech in the current environment was not feasible. Laurens County Health Care System needed to deploy a cost-efficient plan and looked to VMware for a solution.

The Solutions Journey

By deploying VMware vSphere ®, the IT staff virtualized their domain controllers, then implemented Exchange Server internally and moved it to a virtualized infrastructure. By adding vSphere vMotion, they enabled high availability for their virtualized file and print servers, as well as various applications.

“It’s a nightmare maintaining 50 physical PCs on nursing carts. Today, I can roll out 30 virtual desktops in 15 minutes and manage them all from a central location,” said Joe Lovell, IT Infrastructure Manager at Laurens County Health Care System. “Obviously, there are other vendors out there, but given the technical strengths, ease of implementation, and the centralized management capabilities, VMware was the obvious choice.”

VMware View enabled the organization to employ a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy for physicians, while also solving compliance and security concerns and ensuring the mobility necessary for excellent patient care.

“Physicians are very excited that they can use their own devices from anywhere to access Meditech and review EMRs [electronic medical records] and patient data without physically having to come into the hospital,” says Gina Driggers, IT Director at Laurens County Health Care System.   “With View, no matter what device they’re using, all the computing happens here in the data center, which is a huge security and compliance safety net.”

Immediate Business Benefits and Looking Forward

Using VMware vSphere, Laurens County Health Care System successfully deployed Meditech in a virtualized environment and is on target to Stage 1 of Meaningful Use.

In addition, the virtualized data center servers now see uptime in the 99.999% range. On top of that, by switching from PCs to thin clients, the organization was able to decrease hardware costs by 65%.

Next up, Laurens County Health Care System is looking to tackle disaster recovery with vCenter Site Recovery Manager. “ And VMware is not just for large hospitals,” says Lovell. “It is definitely something that can help smaller hospitals that don’t have the financial resources and the IT resources of a larger organization.”

Read the full success story about Laurens County Health Care System here.

I look forward to continuing to share these stories and demonstrating how VMware can help you simplify your infrastructure and deliver real world results for your business.

Have you faced similar IT or compliance challenges in your organization? How have you solved them?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments.

Until next time,

Brandon

Follow VMware SMB on Facebook, Twitter, Spiceworks and Google+ for more blog posts, conversation with your peers, and additional insights on IT issues facing small to midmarket businesses.

by Geoffrey Murase, Solutions Marketing for End-User Computing

When I was in elementary school, each year, we were administered a standardized test called the “California Test of Basic Skills” or CTBS.  This test involved using “number 2” pencils and filling out a form with boxes from A to E.  I remember thinking that if I didn’t know the answer, I should guess “C” because it’s in the middle.  Today, I can’t remember the last time I actually used a pencil.  However, many schools still use this antiquated way of administering standardized tests to students.

This is all about to change in the next couple of years.  According to the San Jose Mercury News, California, as one of 45 of the 50 states in the U.S. participating, will move toward a broad state-led program called the “Common Core State Standards Initiative.”  This initiative requires the standardization of testing across states by the 2014-2015 school year to ensure consistent performance assessments.  Quoting the article:

“Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests alone simply cannot do the job anymore, and it’s time for California to move forward with assessments that measure the real-world skills our students need to be ready for a career and for college,” said California School Superintendent Tom Torlakson.

These next generation assessments will be computer-based and Pearson TestNav™ is a leading test delivery platform in K-12 schools that delivers over 4 million tests annually.  VMware is pleased to announce that our VMware® Horizon View™ desktop virtualization solution has received “TestNav Qualified” certification, ensuring that TestNav tests administered using Horizon View are delivered securely, error-free, and with a good user experience.  In fact, many schools have already deployed the TestNav platform with Horizon View and achieved great results:

“We’ve had tremendous success using VMware Horizon View for Pearson TestNav. Testing season brings a lot of stress to not only students but the staff as well. VMware Horizon View allows IT departments to facilitate these tests in a high availability environment, which is extremely comforting.”

- Brooks Moore, DCS Technology Help Desk Manager, Aledo Independent School District

“Using VMware Horizon View with the Pearson TestNav test delivery system ensures that our tests are administered in a secure environment that preserves the integrity of the results. Test environments are booted directly to our computer labs and if any attempt is made to escape out of the test, the test taker is locked out of the test. We initially rolled out VMware virtual desktops on a small scale in the Summer of 2012 but with the success that we’ve had, we now plan on rolling it out to all computer labs within our district.”

- Chad Branum, Executive Director of Technology, Coppell Independent School District

The good news is that these next generation assessments will hopefully give educators a clearer, more consistent understanding of how students are performing so that they can take corrective action where needed.  The bad news is that guessing “C” may no longer be an option for students in the coming years.

For more information about VMware and education, visit our website at: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/education/index.html

Continue the conversation with us on Twitter and Facebook!

Here in Technical Marketing at VMware, we are fortunate to be able to regularly speak to members of the virtualization community at various events. One of those events is the newly formed  VTUG. VTUG is short for Virtualization Technology Users Group. Run by Chris Harney, this organization has been putting on hugely successful virtualization focused user groups for years.

On May 9th, I did a keynote presentation entitled “Virtualization Security for the IT Guy” for the New England chapter. In this keynote, I talked about how in order to get great security in a virtualized datacenter, you need to collaborate. I’m trying to help the IT guy work through typical issues brought up by Security Guys when they attempt to virtualize workloads.

I’ll be touching on many of the points in the presentation over the coming months as separate and more in-depth posts.

VTUG Presentation by Mike Foley of VMware

I’d like to thank Chris Harney and the VTUG organization for inviting me to speak at their event and for providing the video of the keynote so I could include it here. I’d also like to thank TechTarget.com for their review of the keynote as well.

Ever wondered how to locate your VMware Workstation serial number after the software has been installed on your machine?

We present you with a new video today, geared towards users of our VMware Workstation product.

The serial number is listed in the order confirmation email you receive for your Workstation purchase. Workstation License Keys that have been registered will be listed in your My VMware account. See Knowledge Base article: Viewing license keys in My VMware (2006831) for additional details.

For additional information, see the associated VMware Knowledge Base article Locating the VMware Workstation serial number (1000069).

Note: For best viewing experience, ensure that the 720p quality setting is selected and view in full screen mode.

When I was in elementary school, each year, we were administered a standardized test called the “California Test of Basic Skills” or CTBS.  This test involved using “number 2” pencils and filling out a form with boxes from A to E.  I remember thinking that if I didn’t know the answer, I should guess “C” because it’s in the middle.  Today, I can’t remember the last time I actually used a pencil.  However, many schools still use this antiquated way of administering standardized tests to students.

This is all about to change in the next couple of years.  According to the San Jose Mercury News, California, as one of 45 of the 50 states in the U.S. participating, will move toward a broad state-led program called the “Common Core State Standards Initiative.”  This initiative has the goal of creating a common online test that is targeted to be implemented across states by the 2014-2015 school year to ensure consistent performance assessments.  Quoting the article:

“Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests alone simply cannot do the job anymore, and it’s time for California to move forward with assessments that measure the real-world skills our students need to be ready for a career and for college,” said California School Superintendent Tom Torlakson.

These next generation assessments will be computer-based and Pearson TestNav is a leading test delivery platform in K-12 schools that delivers over 9 million tests annually.  VMware is pleased to announce that our Horizon View desktop virtualization solution has received “TestNav Qualified” certification, ensuring that TestNav tests administered using Horizon View are delivered securely, error-free, and with a good user experience.  In fact, many schools have already deployed the TestNav platform with Horizon View and achieved great results:

“We’ve had tremendous success using VMware Horizon View for Pearson TestNav. Testing season brings a lot of stress to not only students but the staff as well. VMware Horizon View allows IT departments to facilitate these tests in a high availability environment, which is extremely comforting.”

- Brooks Moore, DCS Technology Help Desk Manager, Aledo Independent School District

“Using VMware Horizon View with the Pearson TestNav test delivery system ensures that our tests are administered in a secure environment that preserves the integrity of the results. Test environments are booted directly to our computer labs and if any attempt is made to escape out of the test, the test taker is locked out of the test. We initially rolled out VMware virtual desktops on a small scale in the Summer of 2012 but with the success that we’ve had, we now plan on rolling it out to all computer labs within our district.”

- Chad Branum, Executive Director of Technology, Coppell Independent School District

The good news is that these next generation assessments will hopefully give educators a clearer, more consistent understanding of how students are performing so that they can take corrective action where needed.  The bad news is that guessing “C” may no longer be an option for students in the coming years.

For more information about VMware in education, visit our website at: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/education/index.html

I mentioned last month that I would be presenting at the Italian VMUG event in Milan. Well, the VMUG guys recorded the session, so if you are interesting in seeing me talking about some of the cool storage projects we are working on internally here at VMware (such as Virtual SAN, Virtual Volumes & Virtual Flash), you can watch the video here:

The first few minutes are a little noisy, but that gets sorted out after a while. The one thing that is missing from the video is the disclaimer slide which I showed off at the beginning of the presentation. Its the usual stuff, in so far as we make no guarantee around the delivery of these projects. Hope you find it interesting, and much kudos to the folks at VMUG Italia for making this possible.

Get notification of these blogs postings and more VMware Storage information by following me on Twitter: @VMwareStorage

Today, we are excited to welcome Cloudera officially to the VMware family. VMware and Cloudera have entered into a partnership agreement that is meant to help users of Cloudera’s Hadoop distribution, CDH4, to run in the cloud. As part of this announcement, VMware has tested and certified Cloudera’s Enterprise Big Data software to run on vSphere 5.1 and that Cloudera is now part of the VMware Ready and Technical Alliances Partner (TAP) program.

This month at EMC World, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that over 500,000 Hadoop installations exist today on bare metal servers, with compute and data tied to the same physical server. By breaking compute and data apart, and putting it on fast-to-deploy vSphere virtual machines, big data becomes inherently more accessible, compute times can improve by up to 13%, and datacenters can optimize to provide more types of data services without adding more hardware.

It comes at a time where both the volume of data is exploding and, according to PwC’s 5th Annual Digital IQ Survey,  83% of their top performing companies believe that harnessing Big Data will give their firms a competitive advantage. As such, many CIOs are formally aligning their agenda to invest in big data this year.

Download vSphere

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Download CDH4

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In fact, a study released earlier this year by NewVantage Partners with found that investment is happening faster than we think already. 85% of their 50 respondents (most with more than 30,000 employees) said they were already investing in Big Data.  Many of these are still in Phase I, where they are experimenting with a pilot project. At this point in the adoption cycle, they are finding value and planning on how to expand investment and increase ROI of data mining.

This is the point that both VMware and Cloudera hope to begin to working with these data teams. As they gain experience and focus in servicing their own data needs, they will be looking for ways to do this more efficiently in the datacenter as well as expand Big Data’s reach within the organization—making it more accessible for employees. This is when they should consider moving their Hadoop data loads to the cloud for the following reasons:

• Setup new compute processes in minutes, not hours or days
• Better hardware utilization and consolidation by running mixed workloads
• Performance improvements through pooling of resources
• High Availability/Fault Tolerance through vSphere Enterprise & Enterprise+
• Make Big Data projects more accessible by offering Hadoop-as-a-Service

Cloudera’s CDH4 is available now to run on vSphere 5.1 and above. Additionally, both companies have agreed to collaboratively work together to support calls from customers running the two technologies together, although each company will only provide patches or technical support directly for their respective products.

For more information on running Cloudera CDH4 on vSphere, contact your VMware or Cloudera Sales Rep.

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Configuring the Microsoft SCOM Adapter
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to configure a Microsoft SCOM adapter instance in a vCenter Operations Manager vApp installation. For more vC Ops Tech Tips ... From: VMware TV Views: 0 1 ratings Time: 04:27 More in Science & Technology

This week’s “Question of the Week” comes from the VMware Certified Professional 5-Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV) Official Study Guide.

Which of the following can prevent a host from seeing LUNs that are on a storage processor to which it is connected?
a. Zoning
b. Shares
c. Permissions
d. Masking

See below for the answer

Not sure of the answer? You can learn more about this topic in our VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage course.

Answer: d. Masking

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Making Attribute Packages and Setting Key Performance Indicators
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to manage attribute packages and set KPI's using the vCenter Operations Manager custom UI. For more vC Ops Tech Tips visit h... From: VMware TV Views: 0 1 ratings Time: 05:15 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Downloading and Installing an Adapter
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to download and install an adapter for a vCenter Operations Manager vApp installation. For more vC Ops Tech Tips visit http:... From: VMware TV Views: 0 1 ratings Time: 03:09 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Creating and Assigning Resource Tags
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to create resource tags using the vCenter Operations Manager custom UI. For more vC Ops Tech Tips visit http://www.youtube.c... From: VMware TV Views: 1 1 ratings Time: 03:28 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Configuring an Adapter Instance
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to configure an adapter instance in a vCenter Operations Manager vApp installation. For more vC Ops Tech Tips visit http://w... From: VMware TV Views: 0 1 ratings Time: 05:25 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Building a Dashboard for a Virtual Infrastructure Administrator
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to create an dashboard for a Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Admin using the custom UI in vCenter Operations Manager. For more v... From: VMware TV Views: 1 2 ratings Time: 04:47 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Building a Dashboard for an Executive User
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VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Building a Dashboard for an Application Owner
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to create an dashboard for an application owner using the custom UI in vCenter Operations Manager. For more vC Ops Tech Tips... From: VMware TV Views: 1 1 ratings Time: 04:00 More in Science & Technology

VMware vC Ops Tech Tip: Creating Applications
vC Ops Tech Tip: Overview of how to create an application using the vCenter Operations Manager custom UI. For more vC Ops Tech Tips visit http://www.youtube.... From: VMware TV Views: 5 1 ratings Time: 03:46 More in Science & Technology

By: Bill Fathers, GM, Hybrid Cloud Services

A public cloud without compromise. Today it becomes reality. We are excited to unveil vCloud Hybrid Service, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud built and operated by VMware that will enable our customers to achieve the benefits of the public cloud with the applications, skills and management tools they already trust. Built on the foundation of VMware vSphere® and leveraging VMware’s software-defined data center technologies, vCloud Hybrid Service will  provide an easy, fast path for VMware customers to achieve the agility and efficiency of the public cloud.

As we talk to customers, we consistently hear that they want the benefits of a public cloud environment, but can’t afford the risk, cost and time of starting over. They want a credible option that is built on trusted, enterprise-grade technology that can be easily deployed. They also want a partner who can give them a platform that delivers the agility expected by the business and the security and reliability IT demands.

We know there are many cloud offerings to choose from, but only vCloud Hybrid Service is built on the same platform that VMware customers use in their own data centers. Those customers have expressed a desire for a cloud offering that is completely compatible with what they are deploying internally and is built on the trusted, reliable foundation they have come to expect from VMware. And vCloud Hybrid Service was designed to support all of their existing applications as well as the development of any new ones – without requiring any change.

There is tremendous opportunity ahead in public cloud services, and VMware is doubling down on its strategy to accelerate the adoption of public cloud. Since 2008, we’ve believed in a model for IT that spans multiple data centers, leveraging a multi-cloud – or hybrid – architecture. As a result, we believe VMware technology has enabled more private and public clouds than any other technology platform. Today there are more than 200 vCloud-certified clouds globally, and VMware will continue to work with our service provider community to make our multi-cloud vision a reality.

The vCloud Hybrid Service is a natural extension of this approach, making the benefits of the software-defined data center available to our customers – and our partners – as a service. We plan to make the vCloud Hybrid Service technology and IP available to our service provider partners, and we believe our experience operating a cloud service will allow us to more rapidly deliver innovations to them in the coming months and years.

The industry understands the benefits of cloud, and the opportunity ahead is for VMware and our partners to help our customers get these benefits as quickly as possible.  We believe that the vCloud Hybrid Service is the fastest way for VMware customers to get to the cloud.  We call this an “inside-out” approach, where the cloud becomes a seamless extension of the data center. This is the cloud without compromise.

For future updates, follow @vCloud and @VMwareSP on Twitter.

Moving to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Bill Fathers, VMware Senior Vice President and General Manager, Hybrid Cloud BU, discusses VMware's move to IaaS. From: VMware TV Views: 17 0 ratings Time: 02:53 More in Science & Technology