UKVMUG | Virtu-Al

London VMUG – Thu 15 July – Lets get interactive !

Jul 12th

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:

Laptop, Windows is preferable but if you have to use one of them Mac things please make sure you have a Windows VM.
Pre-install Windows PowerShell V2
Pre-Install PowerCLI 4.0 U1
Pre-Install vEcoShell and vEcoShell Script editor.

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 !

powershell, UKVMUG, VESI, VI Toolkit, vmware

London VMUG – My Presentation

Feb 26th

Posted by Virtu-Al in ESX

5 comments

Yesterday was a fantastic VMware user group, definitely my favourite one so far, lots of great content from some fantastic people and some real rockstars (I think that is the 2010 word for Guru’s) like Mike Laverick, Carter Shanklin (Carter USM), Stuart Radnidge and many many more.

I was privileged to open the show with a PowerCLI session, this is a pre-show session so wasn’t really part of the main VMUG, as such I was not expecting such a large crowd, if you came to the session then thanks very much, i thing there must have been around 40-45 people in there and I had a great time presenting this one.

We had a great mix of beginners to Pro’s and some great conversations about PowerCLI and what we could do to take the ESX install to the next level, one such example is in my script where we add an A host record to the DNS server as part of our deployment.

If you weren’t there or you would just like to re-live the presentation then please see below: More >

powershell, UKVMUG, VI Toolkit, vmware

London VMware User Group – 25th Feb

Feb 16th

Posted by Virtu-Al in UKVMUG

1 comment

I have been asked to do a session at the London VMUG on 25th February 2010, after my previous session where I took the attendees through a beginners introduction to PowerCLI, I think I will throw them straight in this time and show them how we can configure ESXi using PowerCLI.

ESXi is obviously a hot topic at the moment and the configuration of ESXi without the service console access is proving to be difficult for many users. This session will take you through the configuration of a host from start to end showing you how easy it is and highlighting some of the scripts and cmdlets explained in my previous post.

As a bonus I will also be giving away a set of “VMware vSphere Pro Series Training Vol. 1: View, ThinApp, Nexus 1000V, and PowerCLI” videos during my session, with thanks to the great guys at TrainSignal, be sure to bring your questions along for a chance to win this great prize !

There will obviously be all the other great sessions which normally take place and there is even a rumour that an all powerful PowerCLI expert from the states will be descending from upon high to give us the latest and greatest automation information from VMware !

I am personally looking forward to a “Real life” session which my colleagues Jonathan Medd and Vic Milne will be delivering, this will be an interesting presentation on how they moved both datacenters and storage devices with (nearly) no downtime !

Also on my agenda will be the Enterprise Cloud presentation from vStu that is sure to be full of both useful information in a friendly and native Australian dialog and humour.

As always the details for the VMUG can be found on the forum here.

If you are looking to deploy ESXi and are having trouble performing or have had trouble performing a certain task then please do let me know via the comments of this post so I can be sure to include this. – It would also give you bonus points when in the running for the TrainSignal video

UKVMUG, vmware

UK London VMware User Group

Nov 9th

Posted by Virtu-Al in UKVMUG

No comments

The next UK London VMUG has been announced, if you have not been before I highly recommend it and this time there is an added treat, Jonathan Medd will be presenting a pre-event on PowerCLI, at this point in time I don’t think I will be able to attend as I am unable to get time off at work (I’m gutted) but if that changes I will also be catching Jonathans excellent session.

Firstly, the VMUG will be held on Tuesday 24th November, and is going to focus fairly heavily on vSphere. If any of you would like to present on a vSphere-related topic with which you have good, recent experience, please get in touch with Alaric as soon as possible. This could be any of installation, upgrade (hosts, VC, VMs), networking, storage, design changes, operations changes, backup, DR, third party tools, and so on. There are some fantastic giveaways that are available to anyone who presents a session, so please do get in touch with him via the forum here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/241557?tstart=0

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UKVMUG, vmware

UKVMUG: PowerCLI Presentation/Class

May 17th

Posted by Virtu-Al in UKVMUG

No comments

Last week at the UK London VMware User Group they tried something different, in the UKVMUG forums there had been a few threads from people interested in learning more about the VI toolkit or as it is now known PowerCLI.

I was contacted by one of the UKVMUG leaders and asked if I would be interested in giving a presentation/class for an hour before the normal UKVMUG for those who were interested in learning… I jumped at the chance as love to pass on my experiences and show people the easy way to learn both PowerShell and PowerCLI as there are a few shortcuts and things I have learnt over the past 6 months.

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powershell, UKVMUG, VI Toolkit, vmware