Category Archives: Training

London VMUG – Thu 15 July – Lets get interactive !

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I have been given my normal resident slot at the London VMUG this Thursday, 15th July.

At the last VMUG I showed how vEcoShell could be used to add the graphical interface back onto our PowerCLI scripts and also gave an overview of the “VMware Community PowerPack”, when performing the demo I showed how easy it was to drill down into an object using the debugger in the script editor.

Someone asked me if next time I would give more tips and tricks like this, the kind of tips you pick up without realising it and are really helpful to people starting to learn PowerCLI.

So this time there will be a change in the way my session is presented…. We are going to get interactive !

If you are attending my PowerCLI session at the VMUG this Thursday 11-12, please bring along the following equipment:

I will bring these on a USB stick also but it will help if you are already setup and raring to go !

My plan is to host a ESX host and a vCenter VM and a few other VMs which we can all hook into and mess with, we can all do the same things and learn at the same time, I will have some mini instructions to follow which will help you along the path – think of this as a free PowerCLI course !

We will start off slow and then I will ask you to do a few things on your own, just to keep you awake.

Hopefully it will go down without a hitch, if you are unable to bring your laptop don’t worry I will try and put you in a group with other people so we can all observe and work together.

See you on Thursday and please remember your laptop !

Hyper-V Resources

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As Hyper-V is now available Microsoft have some on-line presentations taken from the virtualisation launch last month.

These are available on their website at :
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/getvirtualnow.mspx.
A good overview of Hyper-V is at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/assets/media/hdbp/local/msm.htm, which is one of the breakout sessions entitled “Hyper-V Deployment and Best Practises”.

Thanks to AP

PowerScripting Podcast

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Ok, I have blogged about this before but am going to again, one of the most valuable resources I have found for learning powershell is podcasts, there are two PowerShell podcasts out there at the moment that I listen to, Get-Scripting by Jonathan Medd and The PowerScripting podcast by Jonathan Walz & Hal Rottenberg.

I started off listening to the latest episodes when I began with Powershell and then it was mentioned to me that the earlier episodes were great for newbies.

I have now been listening to the back catalogue of episodes (Currently they are up to number 42) and have found them a great resource for both learning PowerShell and keeping up to date with all the third party products, news and tips.

Recently they have also started recording the show whilst using ustream which makes the whole experience far more interactive for us the users of powershell.

With recent guests such as ‘The Iron man’ aka Jeff Hicks and ‘Green Arrow’ aka Greg Shields I was left wondering who the presenters could be in there nightly fighting of crime ?!?

The only possible answer I could come up with was Batman and Robin, and I’m sorry Hal you have to be Robin as anyone who has listened to the earlier shows knows that Jonathan started fighting crime far earlier than you !

For anyone who has not yet listened to the shows, please go ahead and download them at the PowerScripting site and learn from the Powershell Guru’s today.

Get-Busy Scripting !

Update: Hal has now become a MVP for his work in Powershell, Nice one Hal ! Also in the recent podcast they confirmed that if they were to be super heroes it would be someone from Heroes, personally I think they better suite Batman and Robin fighting the evil Javascript and Perl bad guys 🙂

(P.S. Any thought’s on both Javascript and Perl are that of my own and not any reference to anything from the podcast)

UK Powershell User Group

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I had my first experience of the UK Powershell Users Group last night, based out of the Microsoft Campus in Reading.

First to speak was James O’Neil who took us through the powershell cmd-lets he had written for managing Hyper-V through powershell which can be downloaded here for free, he went into some very detailed WMI tasks he had written to perform this and some tips and tricks using WMI and mapping the connections using Netmap

At times a little over my head but very useful and clearly a man who now knows WMI inside out !

After the masses of Pizza that was available due to people not turning up we then continued with Jonathan Medd (Creator of Get-Scripting blog and great Podcast) took us through his PowerGUI management tools for Exchange 2003.

Very Impressive, thanks to Jonathan’s neat tool you can now integrate Powershell into managing Exchange 2003 and quickly gain stats and perform admin tasks on Exchange, something which Microsoft have only released for Exchange 2007. Jonathan gave a detailed presentation showing off the features of both PowerGui and his tool he had written.

Until know I have always skipped the PowerGui side of things just to use the script editor to edit my scripts, I may even create my own PowerGui power pack including some of the scripts I use on a daily basis.

All in all it was a great meeting and I suggest more people attend, as well as the great presentations there was also the attendance of Richard Siddaway (MVP) and some other Powershell GURU’s who made for great conversation. We also received some freebies and a random draw gave one of the guys a free Powershell book.

The next one is being scheduled for November and I would highly recommend attending if you can.

Free Powershell Book

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Learn Microsoft Windows PowerShell one step at a time with practical,
hands-on instruction from Microsoft’s leading scripting trainer, Ed
Wilson.

Work at your own pace and build practical system administration
skills as you learn how to use Windows PowerShell to administer
Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange, and other Microsoft technologies.

You will learn how to write your first Windows PowerShell commands and
scripts to automate setup, deployment, and administration.

Download here

Free VMbook – Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

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This Free VMware VMbook focuses on business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) and is intended to guide the reader through the step-by-step process to set-up a multisite VMware Infrastructure that is capable of supporting BCDR services for designated virtual machines at time of test or during an actual event that necessitated the declaration of a disaster, resulting in the activation of services in a designated BCDR site.

Downloadable here

Virtualise in Minutes with VMware ESXi

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Now its free why not give it a go with help from this new podcast from VMware…

VMware ESXi is the leanest, meanest hypervisor on the market today.

Discover the benefits of VMware virtualisation by learning how to get started in four easy installation steps.

Speakers:
John Gilmartin, Group Product Manager, Product Marketing, VMware Amir Sharif, Sr. Product Manager, Product Marketing, VMware

Listen: Listen or Download MP3 * (7 MB 10:15 mins)

VI Toolkit Webinar by Carter Shanklin

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For those who haven’t had much exposure to the Powershell Toolkit and what it can do, there is a recording of a webinar presented by the Carter Shanklin at this link. It is pretty basic and intended for those with little or no exposure to the toolkit.

If you’ve ever wondered what it is or why you might want to use it (like disconnecting the CD from 45 or 50 VMs so you can VMotion them without having to deal with the right-click – pick-from-the-pop-up-menu process manually 45-50 times) then you might want to check this out.

More recorded webcasts are available on : http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/recorded/

Original Source and great site: here

ESXi Single Server Environment training just £27.50

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Gain the knowledge and skills to operate VMware ESXi in a single-server environment.

This self-paced course contains brief concept modules, guided demos, and interactive simulations. Topics covered include: Virtualization Concepts, Server Configuration, Virtual Machine Management, Networking, Performance Monitoring, and more.

This online course includes approximately 120 minutes of content with unlimited access by the subscribing individual for 90 days:

After completing this course you will be able to:

  • Configure ESXi
  • Install the Virtual Infrastructure client
  • Understand and configure ESXi networking
  • Understand and configure ESXi storage
  • Monitor and configure resource use
  • Build and configure virtual machines and install guest operating systems
  • Clone virtual machines
  • Monitor and manage virtual machine performance

Click here to visit the VMware training site