Varrow Blogs

After finishing my VCDX defense in San Francisco a little over two weeks ago I wrote this post.  It’s an understatement to say I caught a lot of grief for that post…  Most said I was being way too hard on myself.  Some said it was bad form to admit defeat like that.  The point [...]

Early in the week I wrote a post about the beginning of VMworld this year but then the days started to run together and roll from one to the next.  Events, parties, meetings, dinners, and sessions seemed to just merge together.  Now I’m flying back home to Charlotte and looking back on a very busy [...]

What a long day. I’m beat. I’ve been in San Francisco for a week now. I had to fly in last Monday for my VCDX defense in Palo Alto…. I’m already starting to feel drained from being on the other side of the country from home. Today was the first day of VMworld, you know, [...]

If you haven’t heard yet, VMware will be changing its licensing model (yeah, again) for some of its vCenter based products like Site Recovery Manager.  At least the per processor licensing model for vSphere will stay the same.  When I first heard about this change my first thought was, WT* is VMware smokin’ over there!  [...]

Shouting it from the Rooftops while standing on my SoapBOX! Extra! Extra! – SoapBOX  Citrix XenApp Access Management Console & vSphere Client breaks after applying Microsoft .NET 2.0 updates.  Citrix I was working on installing a Citrix Server at a client site placing the server into its intended farm today using a fresh installation of [...]

BalancePoint: A fresh new tool for your IT arsenal! This product is a lifesaver for those trying to actively manage their ever growing cloud infrastructure.   Over the past few days our Varrow engineers have been involved with training surrounding a product that the company is extremely excited about! Our engineers have been through introductions [...]

This is the first edition of ToolBOX featuring a fresh new tool for your IT arsenal that you may not know about.   Before arriving at Varrow, I had spent a lot of time at my former employer setting up a monitoring tool that had the ability to replace several tools that we were using [...]

I performed my first Nexus 1000v upgrade last week, upgrading from SV1(2) to SV1(3). It was relatively painless, but definitely worth reading about what is involved. Read on… Prerequisites: download Nexus 1000v 4.0(4)SV1(3) software save the config (copy run start) back up the config clone primary VSM virtual machine Upgrade the VSMs Do this on [...]

LazyZero vs. EagerZero thick disks – vBOX We all should know the differences between Thin vs Thick disk when it comes to VMware, but what about the different types of thick disk. There is LazyZero vs. EagerZero when it comes to thick disks. I have had the pleasure of trying to create Windows 2008 R2 [...]

Yeah..last year I blogged every day like a good little blogger but this week has been busier than last year.  That’s my excuse.  I figured I needed to talk a bit about what’s going on before Joe (rightfully so) reminds me.  I got here Sunday afternoon and spent most of that day just trying to [...]

Right now I’m on a flight to Las Vegas for Cisco Live 2010. Since I have time I’m looking at my session schedule for the week and continuing to juggle things to find that right balance. Too many sessions, not enough days. What jumps out at me though, are the number of sessions and amount [...]

I just wanted to write a quick note recapping the regional VMUG we had last week in Charlotte.  This isn’t really a recap since I didn’t get to go to many of the sessions.  For a decent writeup check out Simon’s here.  But, I work for a partner and we were really busy on Friday [...]

A closer look at virtualization – vBOX To successfully virtualize servers within the DMZ “Ensure required TCP/UDP ports are opened between the source server and VirtualCenter (VC) and VMware ESX. Even if you select VirtualCenter as your destination, the ports still need to be opened to the ESX server you choose. The source server first [...]

Just wanted to remind everyone (or tell you if you didn’t know) about the regional VMware Users Group in Charlotte, NC this Friday the 11th.  Schedule and information can be found here.  It’s free so if you’re in the area and available I highly recommend you attend.  We (Varrow) will be sponsoring and running two labs.  One [...]

Yesterday I got an email from John Troyer at VMware that I honestly wasn’t expecting.  In fact I couldn’t even had told you when they were announcing this year’s vExperts as I didn’t think I’d make the list….but I guess I was wrong. Just wanted to say that it’s an honor to be designated a [...]