VMware vSphere 4.1: “HA and DRS Technical Deepdive” book released

Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman released their new book this week, “VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive.” In my opinion these are two of the sharpest guys when it comes to server virtualization and “cloud” computing. If you don’t already follow their blogs I would highly recommend doing that as well. Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman

VMware View 4.5 Events Database

VMware View 4.5 introduced an all new way of logging events and essentially troubleshooting. The Events Database is an optional component of View 4.5 but you would be hurting yourself by not setting it up. This article talks about setting up the events database with SQL Express, which is oddly more complicated than using a full SQL server. This is not ideal for most production environments but works fine.

XenServer Design Kit

Last week I linked to the XenDesktop Design kit, and here is the XenServer Design kit. These are dynamically updated resources you can subscribe to. There is even a Java app you can install, then the kits you subscribe to will be updated with new content whenever it is released

Introducing Project Alcatraz

Citrix’s Project Alcatraz further displays their commitment to mobile delivery of applications and desktops. Project Alcatraz is just one piece of the puzzle for Project San Francisco. In a nut shell it allows companies to lock remote sessions on mobile devices and require a passcode to unlock. This allows administrators to set idle session policies and manually lock if devices are lost or stolen.

XenDesktop Technical Newsletter

This newsletter will not have any marketing fluff! It is geared toward XenDesktop administrators and consultants. Expect great content including posts from Daniel Feller and his army, the top KB articles, tools, training, events, and so on…

vCenter Orchestrator team blog

The VMware Orchestrator team went off the tracks and started an “unofficial” vCenter Orchestrator team blog. These guys are really doing things right and not getting the credit they deserve. Orchestrator has a lot of potential and now with vCloud director and the third party Orchestrator plug-ins, these guys are going to become rock stars. This site has a lot of videos to help you learn Orchestrator so check them out

XenServer 5.6 Self Paced Training Released

Citrix has released their official training for XenServer 5.6, which falls in line with their XenServer certification. The last official training and certification for XenServer is for 5.0. Citrix skipped offering a XenServer 5.5 training and certification so this is much needed. Note that the XenServer 5.6 exam just closed open beta and is in a review process before being released to the public

Integrin’s “Alive” Overview Video

This is a great product, and I hope it continues to catch on. Integrien was on the VMware Communities Roundtablepodcast last Wednesday and impressed everyone. Their product “Alive” aggregates data from other monitoring tools like SCOM, Open View, etc. You can then use Alive’s very intuitive reporting engine to really understand what all that data really means. Check out this short video

XenApp 5 versus XenApp 6

This is a quick and dirty article discussing the changes from XenApp 5 to XenApp 6

Citrix Knowledge Center Top 10 – November 2010

Roundup of this months top ten technical articles, whitepapers, presentations, hotfixes and tools

XenApp 6 Fundamentals Videos

These videos are a good overview for anyone curious about XenApp 6, or who has limited XenApp experience