Typically a user group may have a vendor sponsor (which helps to pay for the cost of running the event) with some of their own content, however the main focus is on what real people have been doing in real situations in their daily jobs. This is the best content because you tend to find out, warts and all, what are the good and bad parts of a particular product, product area, design decisions, deployment type etc..  . The point being you are not listening to a vendor saying that Product X is better than Product Y and will solve all your problems, but stories you can trust.

At the last London VMUG some prizes were given out for the best community presentations at the four London VMUG events during 2011, Simon Gallagher who helps to run the VMUG posted up the results yesterday . I was fortunate enough to get second place which should be a great encouragement to any of you out there thinking that you couldn’t do this yourself. I’m by no-means a natural presenter (which if any of you saw my early efforts at user groups will certainly agree with), but have worked very hard at improving and also spending a lot of time watching other people’s presentations at these events and picking up good points about their own style that I might use (Julian Wood’s scheduled tweet linking to a scheduled blog post with his presentation, to coincide with the end of his session is probably the coolest one yet!). Seriously, I’m your typical system administrator, not naturally better at presenting than anyone else in a similar job role, but it is possible with some effort to make yourself reasonably good at it.

User groups are always looking for new presenters and are better for the wider variety of speakers they can get. In Simon’s post there is a request for new speakers at the VMUG in 2012 so if you have a decent work story to tell or are particularly passionate about a certain product I encourage you to offer to present. I guarantee that:

• You will inevitably get to know the topic better (you need to, to be able have the confidence to stand up in front of a group of people and expect they may ask you questions about it)
• Improve your presenting / communication skills. It’s amazing how this will translate to other areas too. For example, if you can present a topic in front of 40 or 50 people, it’s not surprising that showing up for a job interview with 1 or 2 people how you naturally appear pretty confident and it may seem a whole lot easier than it used to.
• Increase your own self-confidence. It still can be a bit nerve wracking presenting in front of a group of peers, but audiences at VMUGs are typically pretty friendly and once it’s over you realise it was nowhere near as daunting as you thought it might be. People will also give you a nice round of applause at the end, even if you think you didn’t do that great, because inside they may well be thinking “I’m glad it’s not me doing that!”
• On purpose or accidently you may be seen as something of an expert on a topic which can lead to all kinds of opportunities!

So I hope to see some new people volunteering for this either at the London VMUG or your own local user group of choice. Personally I’m keen to check out some new user group type events such as the London Cloud Camp, which describes itself as an unconference and typically has very short talks (5 mins). I’ve heard really good things about this so intend to try and make it next time.

One word of warning, if Alaric Davies ever calls you the week before the London VMUG then only answer the phone if you are prepared to be presenting at it…….

1) TrainSignal VMware vSphere 5 Training

I’ve previously used the TrainSignal VMware vSphere 4 VCAP Training Package to begin preparations for the VCAP-DCA exam so was well accustomed with the style of the TrainSignal videos. Since I was in the position of needing to upgrade my VCP from 4 to 5 before February 29th 2012 to avoid needing to fulfill a class requirement again, I found this to be a great resource to quickly get up to speed on some of the new features in vSphere 5 and also provide a refresher for some of the topics that have been in the exam since the VCP 3 days. The topics covered are listed below; the great thing about the modular style nature of these videos is that you can easily focus in on particular topics of interest and skip over others if you want to. I was tempted to skip a few of the chapters I thought I knew everything about, however I stuck with them and not only had a good refresher of those topics, but also picked up a few things I didn’t know.

Lesson 1 – Getting Started with VMware vSphere 5 Training Course
Lesson 2 – Lab Setup
Lesson 3 – Course Scenario
Lesson 4 – Overview of VMware vSphere 5
Lesson 5 – Installing VMware ESXi 5
Lesson 6 – Installing vCenter 5
Lesson 7 – Installing vCenter 5 as a Linux Appliance (vCSA)
Lesson 8 – Using the vSphere 5 Web Client
Lesson 9 – What’s New in vSphere 5
Lesson 10 – Navigating vSphere Using the vSphere Client
Lesson 11 – vCenter 5 – Configuring Your New Virtual Infrastructure
Lesson 12 – Creating and Modifying Virtual Guest Machines
Lesson 13 – Installing and Configuring VMware Tools
Lesson 14 – Understanding and Using Tasks, Events, and Alarms
Lesson 15 – Virtual Storage 101 and Storage Terminology
Lesson 16 – vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)
Lesson 17 – Creating a Free iSCSI SAN with OpenFiler
Lesson 18 – Administering VMware ESXi Server Security
Lesson 19 – vSphere Virtual Networking
Lesson 20 – Using the vSphere Distributed Virtual Switch (dvswitch)
Lesson 21 – Moving Virtual Machines with vMotion
Lesson 22 – Moving Virtual Storage with svMotion
Lesson 23 – Performance Optimization with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Lesson 24 – Implementing High Availability with VMware HA (VMHA)
Lesson 25 – Super High Availability with VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)
Lesson 26 – Upgrading from VMware vSphere 4 to vSphere 5
Lesson 27 – vSphere Command Line Interface (CLI) Options
Lesson 28 – vSphere Auto Deploy
Lesson 29 – Storage DRS
Lesson 30 – Policy-driven Storage
Lesson 31 – Understanding the New vSphere 5 vRAM Pooled Pricing
Lesson 32 – Network I/O Control (NIOC)
Lesson 33 – Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
Lesson 34 – ESXi Firewall
Lesson 35 – VMware Data Recovery (VDR) 2
Lesson 36 – Administering vSphere Using an iPad

Both David Davis and Elias Khnaser have excellent presenting styles, in their clear explanations and enthusiasm for the topic – which I am particularly grateful for having watched most of them on the early commute into work. While not directly aimed at the VCP exam, the videos provide a good breadth of coverage of most of the exam topics. As with the other series they are available online streamed from the website as soon as you make the purchase, but also shipped to you on a DVD in formats suitable for PC, iPhone iPad etc.

2) VCP5 Exam Blueprint

Reading the VCP5 Exam Blueprint document is essential to ensure that you have covered all of the bases. I worked through the document and ticked off each objective as I went. Most of my work is with the larger Enterprise deployments of vSphere, so this is a good way to ensure that you have not missed anything that might be more commonly used in say SMB deployments.

3) VCP5 Exam Blueprint Study Guide PDF

While working through the official blueprint document I discovered this Study Guide PDF which Jason Langer and Josh Coen have put together. They have put a lot of work into this document which typically contains a paragraph or two on each objective with highlight points and links to pages in vSphere documentation pdfs for further research. Given the limited time I had to prepare for the exam, this was great for quickly covering all of the objectives and I really appreciated the effort they had made in putting it together.

4) VCP 5 Brownbags

The Professional Vmware site is well known for running 1 hour brownbag sessions for VMware topics, including the VCAP exams. Recently they have started them for VCP5 too and although currently there are only a few, they are well worth checking out.

5)  vSphere 5.o Clustering DeepDive

I bought this book by Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping when it came out last year because I wanted know about new vSphere 5 features, however it is also worth reading as preparation for this exam. While the book goes into far more technical depth than required for the VCP, it was still useful for an early appreciation of these topics.

6) Practice Questions

It’s good to at least get a feel of the kind of questions you will be asked in the exam. Both the VMware VCP site with a mock exam and Simon Long’s blog are a great resource for this.

7) Hands-on experience with real world vSphere experience

Most important of all was hands-on experience of vSphere. There were many questions I knew the answer to that were not through the result of self-study, but either I had configured them at work or experienced the issue and had resolved it. You can emulate a fair amount of this if you have access to say a home-lab, but you can’t beat experience and unfortunately there is only one way to get that.

I was pleased to see that the exam was heading more in this direction. When I took the VCP 3.5 in 2008 the Minimum and Maximums document was a core part of my study process, in fact I took the exam while my family were away for a few days, so my house resembled something out of Prison Break with different pages of the Min / Max guide on the walls! I didn’t do that this time and while a good knowledge of the fundamental minimum and maximums is still required on the blueprint, the days of having to memorise every single one in the guide just to pass the exam appear to be over which is a good thing.

sdfsd

A couple of things to note:

1.The section below on datastore freespace filters out the local datastore which contains the name of the host.

$VMHost = $Cluster | Get-VMHost | Select-Object -Last 1
$HostName = ($VMHost.name -split ".", 0, "simplematch")[0]
$ClusterFreeDiskspaceGB = ($VMHost | Get-Datastore | Where-Object {$_.Name -notmatch $HostName} | Measure-Object -Property FreeSpaceGB -Sum).Sum

2. I’ve recently changed the way I create custom objects to output reports with. For a long time I have used the cheat way of Select-Object , partly because of performance and partly because you can’t control the order of properties in New-Object. These are being addressed in PowerShell v3 (see here and here) so I thought it was about time to make the switch. This means for the time being that when working with the output you need to pipe it to Select-Object to control the order of the output, e.g.

Get-Cluster | Get-ClusterCapacityCheck | Select-Object Cluster,ClusterCPUCores,ClusterAllocatedvCPUs,ClustervCPUpCPURatio,ClusterEffectiveMemoryGB,

ClusterAllocatedMemoryGB,ClusterActiveMemoryPercentage,ClusterFreeDiskspaceGB

function Get-ClusterCapacityCheck {
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves basic capacity info for VMware clusters

.DESCRIPTION
Retrieves basic capacity info for VMware clusters

.PARAMETER  ClusterName
Name of the computer to test the services for

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-ClusterCapacityCheck -ClusterName Cluster01

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Cluster | Get-ClusterCapacityCheck

.NOTES
Author: Jonathan Medd
Date: 18/01/2012
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="Name of the cluster to test",
ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[System.String]
$ClusterName
)

begin {
$Finish = (Get-Date -Hour 0 -Minute 0 -Second 0)
$Start = $Finish.AddDays(-1).AddSeconds(1)

New-VIProperty -Name FreeSpaceGB -ObjectType Datastore -Value {
param($ds)
[Math]::Round($ds.FreeSpaceMb/1KB,0)
} -Force

}

process {

$Cluster = Get-Cluster $ClusterName

$ClusterCPUCores = $Cluster.ExtensionData.Summary.NumCpuCores
$ClusterEffectiveMemoryGB = [math]::round(($Cluster.ExtensionData.Summary.EffectiveMemory / 1KB),0)

$ClusterVMs = $Cluster | Get-VM

$ClusterAllocatedvCPUs = ($ClusterVMs | Measure-Object -Property NumCPu -Sum).Sum
$ClusterAllocatedMemoryGB = [math]::round(($ClusterVMs | Measure-Object -Property MemoryMB -Sum).Sum / 1KB)

$ClustervCPUpCPURatio = [math]::round($ClusterAllocatedvCPUs / $ClusterCPUCores,2)
$ClusterActiveMemoryPercentage = [math]::round(($Cluster | Get-Stat -Stat mem.usage.average -Start $Start -Finish $Finish | Measure-Object -Property Value -Average).Average,0)

$VMHost = $Cluster | Get-VMHost | Select-Object -Last 1
$ClusterFreeDiskspaceGB = ($VMHost | Get-Datastore | Where-Object {$_.Extensiondata.Summary.MultipleHostAccess -eq $True} | Measure-Object -Property FreeSpaceGB -Sum).Sum

New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
Cluster = $Cluster.Name
ClusterCPUCores = $ClusterCPUCores
ClusterAllocatedvCPUs = $ClusterAllocatedvCPUs
ClustervCPUpCPURatio = $ClustervCPUpCPURatio
ClusterEffectiveMemoryGB = $ClusterEffectiveMemoryGB
ClusterAllocatedMemoryGB = $ClusterAllocatedMemoryGB
ClusterActiveMemoryPercentage = $ClusterActiveMemoryPercentage
ClusterFreeDiskspaceGB = $ClusterFreeDiskspaceGB
}
}
}

This should be pretty straightforward since we have a Get-Service cmdlet. Unfortunately however, this cmdlet does not return a StartMode parameter, i.e. it’s not possible to tell whether the Startup Type has been set to Automatic, Manual or Disabled. This is quite a large gap in my opinon – if you agree with me you can vote to get it included in a future release here. Of course with PowerShell there’s usually another way to achieve the same objective and using Get-WMIObject it is possible to find out the Startup Type of the service.

Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -ComputerName $ComputerName -Filter "StartMode='Auto' AND State='Stopped' AND Name!='SysmonLog'"

Notice that we filter out the Perfmon service (SysmonLog) since it is rarely in a started state.

One other thing to watch out for in this script is that the section

catch [System.Exception]

which is there to catch any WMI queries that fail, e.g. the server hasn’t rebooted properly or the correct permissions do not exist to make the WMI query, will not pick up any of these failures. This is because try / catch will only catch terminating errors and the WMI failures are non terminating. We can work around this by setting:

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

and then back to normal afterwards:

$ErrorActionPreference = "Continue"

The script accepts pipeline input, so for example you could run it like:

Get-Content servers.txt | ./Get-AutomaticServiceState.ps1

Here it is:

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves any Windows services set to Automatic and are not running

.DESCRIPTION
Retrieves any Windows services set to Automatic and are not running

.PARAMETER  ComputerName
Name of the computer to test the services for

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-AutomaticServiceState -ComputerName Server01

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Content servers.txt | Get-AutomaticServiceState

.NOTES
Author: Jonathan Medd
Date: 11/01/2012
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="Name of the computer to test",
ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Alias('CN','__SERVER','IPAddress','Server')]
[System.String]
$ComputerName
)

process {

try {

# Set ErrorActionPreference to Stop in order to catch non-terminating WMI errors
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

# Query the server via WMI and exclude the Performance Logs and Alerts Service
$WMI = Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -ComputerName $ComputerName -Filter "StartMode='Auto' AND State='Stopped' AND Name!='SysmonLog'"

}

catch [System.Exception]

{
$WMI = “” | Select-Object SystemName,Displayname,StartMode,State
$WMI.SystemName = $ComputerName
$WMI.Displayname = "Unable to connect to server"
$WMI.StartMode = ""
$WMI.State = ""
}

finally {

$ErrorActionPreference = "Continue"

}

if ($WMI){

foreach ($WMIResult in $WMI){

$MYObject = “” | Select-Object ComputerName,ServiceName,StartupMode,State
$MYObject.ComputerName = $WMIResult.SystemName
$MYObject.ServiceName = $WMIResult.Displayname
$MYObject.StartupMode = $WMIResult.StartMode
$MYObject.State = $WMIResult.State
$MYObject
}
}
}

The PatternFileDate value stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection\AV needs a little figuring out, this posting helps figure it out.

You can get the Info from this Registry Location

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection\AV

On this Key you can find two Values  
PatternFileDate  : Current Definition date
PatternFileRevision : Revision

These are Hexadecimal values

Example:
PatternFileDate  : 27090e – 2009 Oct 14 
27090e – YYMMDD Format
27 – 2009
27 Hex is 39 Decimal, this value is since 1970. So 1970+39 = 2009

09 is October (00- Jan, 0B – Dec)
0e Hex - 14 in decimal

PatternFileRevision : 16Hex – 22

16 HEX is 22 in Decimal

function Get-SEPVersion {
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieve Symantec Endpoint Version, Definition Date and Sylink Group

.DESCRIPTION
Retrieve Symantec Endpoint Version, Definition Date and Sylink Group

.PARAMETER  ComputerName
Name of the computer to query SEP info for

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-SEPVersion -ComputerName Server01

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> $servers | Get-SEPVersion

.NOTES
Author: Jonathan Medd
Date: 23/12/2011
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="Name of the computer to query SEP for",
ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
[Alias('CN','__SERVER','IPAddress','Server')]
[System.String]
$ComputerName
)

begin {
# Create object to enable access to the months of the year
$DateTimeFormat = New-Object System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo

# Set Registry keys to query
$SMCKey = "SOFTWARE\\Symantec\\Symantec Endpoint Protection\\SMC"
$AVKey = "SOFTWARE\\Symantec\\Symantec Endpoint Protection\\AV"
$SylinkKey = "SOFTWARE\\Symantec\\Symantec Endpoint Protection\\SMC\\SYLINK\\SyLink"
}

process {

try {

# Connect to Registry
$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey("LocalMachine",$ComputerName)

# Obtain Product Version value
$SMCRegKey = $reg.opensubkey($SMCKey)
$SEPVersion = $SMCRegKey.GetValue('ProductVersion')

# Obtain Pattern File Date Value
$AVRegKey = $reg.opensubkey($AVKey)
$AVPatternFileDate = $AVRegKey.GetValue('PatternFileDate')

# Convert PatternFileDate to readable date
$AVYearFileDate = [string]($AVPatternFileDate[0] + 1970)
$AVMonthFileDate = $DateTimeFormat.MonthNames[$AVPatternFileDate[1]]
$AVDayFileDate = [string]$AVPatternFileDate[2]
$AVFileVersionDate = $AVDayFileDate + " " + $AVMonthFileDate + " " + $AVYearFileDate

# Obtain Sylink Group value
$SylinkRegKey = $reg.opensubkey($SylinkKey)
$SylinkGroup = $SylinkRegKey.GetValue('CurrentGroup')

}

catch [System.Management.Automation.MethodInvocationException]

{
$SEPVersion = "Unable to connect to computer"
$AVFileVersionDate = ""
$SylinkGroup = ""
}

$MYObject = “” | Select-Object ComputerName,SEPProductVersion,SEPDefinitionDate,SylinkGroup
$MYObject.ComputerName = $ComputerName
$MYObject.SEPProductVersion = $SEPVersion
$MYObject.SEPDefinitionDate = $AVFileVersionDate
$MYObject.SylinkGroup = $SylinkGroup
$MYObject

}
}

They can be implemented via PowerCLI and the below script demonstrates how these different types of settings can be configured. The most interesting one for me was setting the default Path Selection Policy to VMW_PSP_RR. The guide recommends you use the following command from the ESXi console:

esxcli nmp satp setdefaultpsp -satp VMW_SATP_ALUA -psp VMW_PSP_RR

With the introduction of the Get-ESXCLI cmdlet we can now carry out the equivalent from PowerCLI. Get-EsxCLI requires a direct connection to the ESXi host rather than from vCenter, so all the settings in this script are configured via a direct connection to the ESXi host

Warning: Before carrying out any of these types of changes make sure you talk to your Storage Adminstrator to confirm what is appropriate for your own environment. Other array vendors offer different recommendations so be sure to check their documentation for similar settings.

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Implement HP Recommended Settings for EVA SAN

.DESCRIPTION
Implement HP Recommended Settings for EVA SAN

.PARAMETER  HostName
Name of the ESXi host to configure the settings on

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> ./Set-HPEVAESXiConfig.ps1 -Hostname ESX01

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Content ESXServers.txt | ./Set-HPEVAESXiConfig.ps1

.NOTES
Author: Jonathan Medd
Date: 21/12/2011
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="Name of the ESXi host to configure the settings on",
ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
[Alias('IPAddress','Server','ComputerName')]
[System.String]
$HostName
)

begin {

Write-Host "Please enter credentials to connect to the ESXi hosts" -ForegroundColor:Yellow
$Credential = Get-Credential
$UserName = $Credential.GetNetworkCredential().UserName
$Password = $Credential.GetNetworkCredential().Password
}

process {

Connect-VIServer $Hostname -User $Username -Password $Password | Out-Null

Write-Host "Setting Disk.DiskMaxIOSize Advanced Option"
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $Hostname -Name Disk.DiskMaxIOSize -Value 128 | Out-Null

Write-Host "Changing any LUNs with MultipathPolicy set to MostRecentlyUsed to be RoundRobin instead"
Get-ScsiLun -VmHost $Hostname -LunType "disk" | Where-Object {$_.MultipathPolicy –eq "MostRecentlyUsed"} | Set-ScsiLun -MultipathPolicy "RoundRobin" | Out-Null

Write-Host "Setting the default PSP to be VMW_PSP_RR"
$esxCli = Get-EsxCli –Server $Hostname
$esxCli.nmp.satp.setdefaultpsp("VMW_PSP_RR", "VMW_SATP_ALUA")

Write-Host "Disconnecting from Host"
$DefaultVIServer | Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false
}

So taking inspiration from that post I put together the following script (I convert it to a function for my own use, but it’s easier for my colleagues to use as a script) which will test by default RDP response from servers and report the results. A few examples of how to use it:

Test a single server

.\Test-PortResponse.ps1 -ComputerName Server01 | Format-Table -AutoSize

Testing multiple servers

Get-Content servers.txt | .\Test-PortResponse.ps1 | Format-Table -AutoSize

Testing multiple servers on port 22 and exporting the results to csv

Get-Content servers.txt | .\Test-PortResponse.ps1 -Port 22 | Export-Csv Ports.csv -NoTypeInformation

Here’s the code you can use.

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Test the response of a computer to a specific TCP port

.DESCRIPTION
Test the response of a computer to a specific TCP port

.PARAMETER  ComputerName
Name of the computer to test the response for

.PARAMETER  Port
TCP Port number to test

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> ./Test-PortResponse.ps1 -ComputerName Server01

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Content Servers.txt | ./Test-PortResponse.ps1 -Port 22

.NOTES
Author: Jonathan Medd
Date: 20/12/2011
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="Name of the computer to test",
ValueFromPipeline=$True,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Alias('CN','__SERVER','IPAddress','Server')]
[System.String]
$ComputerName,

[Parameter(Position=1)]
[ValidateRange(1,65535)]
[Int]
$Port = 3389
)

process {

$Connection = New-Object Net.Sockets.TcpClient

try {

$Connection.Connect($ComputerName,$Port)

if ($Connection.Connected) {
$Response = “Open”
$Connection.Close()
}

}

catch [System.Management.Automation.MethodInvocationException]

{
$Response = “Closed / Filtered”
}

$Connection = $null

$MYObject = “” | Select-Object ComputerName,Port,Response
$MYObject.ComputerName = $ComputerName
$MYObject.Port = $Port
$MYObject.Response = $Response
$MYObject

}

I travelled up the night before and just about made it in time for a pre-show vCurry being held at the Museum. This gave a good chance to catch up with various tweeps, since I figured (and I think it panned out) that people wouldn’t hang around too long after the main event the next day, like they normally do at the London VUMG, with longer journeys home.

There were also more sponsors than the London events and with involvement from the Official VMUG organisation there was even a posh looking programme to accompany the day’s events. How things have come one since I attended my first London VMUG about 3 years ago!

The event centered around the main area below with the keynotes from the stage at the front and vendors around the outside. This was accompanied by breakout sessions in rooms off to the sides. The only downside of the day was the lack of WIFI or 3G access since we were a couple of floors down, but thanks to the distribution of some BT OpenZone cards it was possible to stay reasonably well connected.

I had volunteered to assist Alan Renouf with a PowerCLI lab he had put together, which took place at the back of the main room.

We turned this into a drop by area for questions about PowerCLI and PowerShell as well. While the lab proved pretty popular, the best part was taking people’s questions and showing them how PowerCLI and PowerShell might help them out in their jobs. It was quite surprising to find that there were many questions such as ‘What are they?’, ‘What can I do with them?’ and ‘How much do they cost?’ – and a lot assuming I was a VMware employee! A lot of these conversations spurned off into Alan sitting them down, demonstrating some coding and often writing a script for them to take away.

I managed to get away to a couple of the sessions and in particular enjoyed Julian Wood’s session on upgrading to vSphere 5, which was really well attended. One of the other most intriguing parts of the day was a mock VCDX panel organised by Simon Gallager. This was an opportunity for people to practise defending a vSphere design (with a lot of onlookers for extra pressure!). You’ll notice that Duncan Epping was helping with this so the volunteers were grilled, but also received excellent feedback. The PowerCLI drop by area was positioned right next to this while it was going on and I know a number of people found the experience really useful when I talked to them as they walked away from it.

I really enjoyed the day as a Community Booth Babe and now know how draining it is being on a stand all day (you can probably tell from my dishevelled look below!). The best thing for me was answering people’s PowerCLI and PowerShell questions, really kept me on my toes. The highlight being one guy who was driving into work every Saturday, carrying out a few tasks inside a VM, powering it off, taking a clone, powering it back on and then driving home – I showed  him how he could schedule this with a script and get his Saturday back

Hopefully the team will arrange another UK centered VMUG next year after the success of this one. In the meantime, details have just been published of the next London VMUG on January 26th. I highly recommend you attend this.

To round things off I made my way home in very ecological style with a lift from an ex-colleague and and his awesome company vehicle

When: Thursday, Dec 15, 2011 7:30 PM (GMT)

Where: Virtual

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Discover how to use the WSMAN cmdlets to retreive WMI information and see a demo of the new WMI API’s CIM cmdlets in PowerShell v3 CTP 2

Notes

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