VMTN Blog

On the 1st of June, we were thrilled to welcome some new members to the VMTN community moderator team, and also some familiar faces.

Every six months, we hold elections to make sure we get some fresh blood in the team, and also to allow existing moderators an opportunity to take a break for a bit.

We at VMware pride ourselves on the high quality of discussions in VMTN forums and VMTN community moderators have the important task of helping to keep up that high standard. The current team spans the entire globe and has representatives in many time zones.

Without further ado, here are our new moderators:

Here is the full list of VMTN community moderators, a team 32 members strong!

This moderator service term goes from the 1st of June to the 31st of November 2011. We'll be holding elections again in the month of November in time for the next term. The next election will be announced here and on the @VMwareCommunity twitter feed.

Weekly virtualization news, as featured on the Community Roundtable podcast.

On Facebook, the vCloud team has shared a cool video showing how to configure firewall settings in vCloud Express, and also an interesting article in which our CEO Paul Maritz is hinting that an elite group of providers will soon offer VMware infrastructure for hybrid enterprise clouds. You can find it all at facebook.com/vmwarevcloud

Yesterday, a new public beta for the vCenter Converter 5.0 Standalone has gone live. Come check it out on VMTN community at communities.vmware.com – once there, click on “VMware Beta Programs†in the right-hand navigation. The new Converter beta is linked from there.

Early bird pricing for VMworld registration is ending on the 24^th of June, so the time is running out if you want to save some cash: for yourself or for your company.

There are a bunch of cool events coming up over the next week or so.

The VMware Forum is making a stop in Houston today, and continues to Frankfurt, Brussels, Chicago, Rome, Edinburgh, and Milan.

We have a ton of webinars coming up soon, on topics ranging from Transition to vSphere ESXi, to Desktop Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Virtualization in Hospitals, and Downtime Prevention. There are more webinars listed than I have time to mention here, so go have a look at webcasts.vmware.com

A full-day regional VMUG conference is coming up in Vancouver on the 21^st of June, so if you are in the area, put this on your calendars. A regional conference is more than your usual VMUG meeting. It’s frequently a full-day conference, with a full agenda and interesting speakers. John Troyer will be speaking there, so there’s your additional motivation to go.

Additionally, the following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Switzerland, Hungary, Barcelona, San Antonio, Israel, and Omaha. You can find more details and registration links for all the VMUG meetings at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.â€

Weekly virtualization news, as featured on the Community Roundtable podcast.

Just in time for the summer fun we have released an updated Fusion 3.1.3.

If you haven't heard, the Fusion team in Palo Alto is looking for an intern. Go check out the Fusion page on Facebook for details.

We have been judging vExpert candidates this week, and John should be announcing the newest crop of vExperts on the VMTN blog shortly.

Also today, we welcomed the newly-elected VMTN community moderators on board. The current moderator service term runs from the 1^st of June and till the end of November this year. If you want to throw your hat in for the next term, the elections will start on the 1^st of November.

Simon Long and Simon Seagrave have just launched vbeers.org to help virtualization enthusiasts find each other—and a refreshing beer—all around the world. Check out vbeers.org to find your nearest virtualization watering hole.

Early bird pricing for VMworld registration is ending on the 24^th of June, so the time is running out if you want to save some cash.

The world of virtualization will thrill us with some cool events over the next week or so.

The VMware Forum season is in full swing, and we have more events taking place this month in Atlanta, Chile, Johannesburg, Houston, Kiev, Dublin, Warsaw, and Chicago.

Two full-day regional VMUG conferences are coming up, one in Western Pennsylvania, on the 7^th of June, and the other in Vancouver on the 21^st.

Additionally, the following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Central Ohio SLED, Saskatoon, Northwest SC, Detroit, Rochester, Western PA, Wisconsin, Brisbane, and Raleigh. You can find more details and registration links for all the VMUG meetings at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.â€

Weekly virtualization news, as featured on the Community Roundtable podcast.

VMware Fusion team in Palo Alto is looking for an intern. If you want to apply, check out the Fusion page on Facebook.

As John has written on the VMTN blog, we have received an overwhelming response to the vExpert call for nominations, so we're a little backed up and our judges will need two more weeks to go through all the applications with the attention they deserve. John will be announcing the newest crop of vExperts on the blog, and on the Community forums.

On Thursday, I was at the VMware Forum in Anaheim, and recorded a bunch of video interviews with attendees and partners. I tweeted from the event, so those of you who follow me got the scoop and some pictures. I'm @VmwareCommunity on Twitter, if you don't follow me yet. 

We will be making a little YouTube video or two out of the footage we shot at this VMware Forum and the others. Keep an eye out for them in our YouTube channel.

The world of virtualization has a few exciting things in store for us over the next week or so.

The VMware Forum season is in full swing, and we have more events taking place in May and Early June in Budapest, Madrid, Atlanta, Chile, Johannesburg, Houston, Kiev, and Dublin.

The web page with details is linked straight from vmware.com – in the box that says “VMware Forum 2011†on the lower left.

We also have two webinars today about When Java EE Is Overkill: Lightweight Application Server Use Cases, and a Spanish-language one on Physical IT Infrastructure Control with vCenter Configuration Manager.

Tomorrow, we you can learn to Enhance Productivity with Collaborative Workspace from VMware and Cisco. Also a Portuguese-language version of the vCenter Configuration Manager webinar.

To find out more and register, head over to webcasts.vmware.com

Two full-day regional VMUG conferences are coming up next month, one in Western Pennsylvania, on the 7^th of June, and the other in Vancouver on the 21^st.

Additionally, the following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Tasmania, Atlanta, East Germany, Buffalo, and Wellington. You can find more details and registration links for all the VMUG meetings at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.â€

To offer users in different regions find expertise and help with country-specific questions, we have recently created the first in a series of international groups on VMware Community: VMTN United Kingdom (UK)

This group has been created to bring together a wide selection of resources for VMware community in United Kingdom: Forums, blogs, groups and discussion boards, as well as VMware EMEA recruiting Twitter feed.

This group is just the beginning, and there certainly will be changes and improvements to it in the future.

If you know of a regional resource and would like to see it featured on the group home page, you can start a discussion in the new group. VMware Community Manager Alex will then review the submision and update the group landing page.

 Last night, vCenter Operations has gone GA, and at the same time we have launched a new community for it.

Come check out VMware vCenter Operations community to learn about the product, watch a video tutorial given by Kit Colbert, or ask a question in the community forum.

VMware vCenter Operations helps you to proactively ensure service levels, optimum resource usage and configuration compliance in dynamic virtual and cloud environments. Through automated operations management and patented analytics, you benefit from an integrated approach to performance, capacity and configuration management.

If you are a registered VMTN user, you will have noticed a change in the email notifications you receive since the upgrade to the new platform. They look a little different, and there are new notifications.

For example, there's the "Updates" email that looks somewhat like this:

 
This email notification contains a summary of updates that could be of interest to you, such as how many replies and views your content has received.

There is also a section listing updates made by the people you are following on VMTN.

You decide how often or if at all you would like to receive this message, as well as any other email notification sent by our community mailer.

At the bottom of the update email, you will find a link to your email preferences page. You will need to log in with your usual community credentials to get there.

This is what my email preferences page looks like:

As you see, I have chosen to auto-subscribe to some of my content, such as documents and discussions, and not others, such as blog posts and bookmarks.

At the very bottom, I have selected the frequency of my community Updates. I like to receive mine twice a week. But you can also opt for daily or weekly delivery, or cancel that email altogether by selecting "never."

You should already be aware of Planet VMware and Planet V12n for all your virtualization blog needs -- technical tips, industry news, commentary.

But now there's a new way to scan the best virtualization blogs -- virtualization.alltop.com. The Planets present a "river of news" linear reverse chronological aggregation, which is a great way for getting a sense of the last week's zeitgeist or catching the day's breaking news, but if your favorite blogger hasn't updated in the last few days their latest post may get lost in the noise.

Alltop takes a different strategy -- their sites give you a grid of blogs and the latest 5 post titles from each. That makes it a good way to check out what's going on with a particular news source, and since it just includes titles, you can scan pretty quickly. Hover over a topic to get an excerpt.

They also had the good taste to steal liberally from the blogroll at Planet V12n, which shows they have taste. I do think they probably aren't virtualization experts, because they are definitely missing some feeds. (Like Alessandro at virtualization.info -- probably the best-known of all the virtualization blogs...)

Guy Kawasaki was one of the founders of the company, which they liken to a "magazine rack." I thought it was a stupid idea when I saw the first set of topics, but they're growing on me. The range of Alltop sites are quite wide, but since you're reading this you might also be interested in the sites covering enterprise and cloud computing.

Jason Boche is new to blogging, but has been working with ESX for years and has been a great resource and user moderator of the VMware Communities for years as well. (And he had a giant picture hanging by the bookstore at VMworld, but I don't think that counts towards your VCP.)

He's hitting the ground running with his new blog, boche.net - VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Duncan Epping has also been in a technical tip frenzy lately

Eric Gray also had a good snarky one today: Storage vendors unanimously applaud SCVMM innovation

As usual, you find more reading material on Planet V12n.