The IOUG is gettng real on Virtualization. They are running a series of online Educattional events. Get Real with MySQL, Database, Virtualization, Security, and BI IOUG 2011 Online Education Series

Get Real with MySQL, Database, Virtualization, Security, and BI IOUG 2011 Online Education Series

IOUG's inaugral Online Education Series was such a success in 2010 that we're bringing it back in 2011!

Since we're committed to equipping community users with the tools and mindshare to increase proficiencies in their everyday job roles, we're presenting a year-round Online Education Series to provide members remote access to 'unfiltered' education from real customers.
 
The best part? All of this training comes straight to you. No travel. No time out of the office. Minimal conflicts with your schedule.

Save the date for the 2011 Webinars, each quarter being focused on a different topic:

 

July 27: 360 Degrees: Everything to know about Virtualization for Oracle DBAs
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. CT
Mike Ault
Tariq Farooq, BrainSurface

Register here!

The speakers will present, detail and elaborate Comprehensive Concepts Overview, Insight, Recommendations, Best Practices, Current Strategies, Pros & Cons, Relevance/Role in Cloud Computing, Prevalent/Dominant Paradigms & Technologies and, a whole lot more about Virtualization as, it relates to Oracle DBAs.

August 24: Virtualizing Oracle Database Servers on VMware
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. CT
Bert Scalzo, PhD
George Trujillo, VMware

Register here!

The default platform for Oracle database servers is rapidly moving towards virtual machines. This is why virtualizing Oracle Databases on VMware is one of the largest growth areas in the IT industry. This presentation will show attendees the various virtualization alternative technologies and how virtualization works under the covers. The quality of service of database management improves significantly by running Database Servers in a VM.  Features such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, DRS /HA clusters and SRM  will completely change how DBAs manage their database environments.  Best practices of virtualizing single instance and RAC instances will be covered.

September 21: Virtualized Oracle 11g/R2 RAC Database on Oracle VM: Methods/Tips
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. CT
Kai Yu, Oracle Solutions Engineering Lab, Dell Inc.

Register here!

Virtualization technology provides the solution to enable the server partition and consolidation for improving the resource utilization and archiving the great flexibility and high availability. By combining with RAC technology, it provides the grid ready architecture to consolidate the data center infrastructure. This presenter covers the configuration of such an infrastructure based on Oracle VM and Oracle 11g R2 RAC. You will learn the  basic Oracle VM architecture and the tips and tricks of network and shared storage configuration on the multiple layers of virtual infrastructure to support 11g R2 RAC database deployment. The presentation will also discuss the various methods to provision 11g R2 RAC database on Oracle VM.

Get Real with MySQL, Database, Virtualization, Security, and BI IOUG 2011 Online Education Series

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

Best Kept Secret At VMware -- N.E. VMWare Users Group Summer SLAM

It was a very hot July New England Day in Maine. In fact it was the second Hottest July 21st on record. Yet I was on a Mission to find Brunswick Maine and attend the event. All my friends in the know told me this was the greatest secret in VMware there is.

This event is very well attended, and anyone who is anyone at VMware tries to attend. I can tell you first hand I was not disappointed.

To learn more about the New England VMware Users Group click on the link.

Technical Sessions At New England VMware Users Group

The Technical sessions were awesome. My favorite was "What DBAs need to know about Virtualization" by George Trujillo, Jr., Senior Systems Engineer - Tier 1 DB Specialist, VMware. It was standing room only. At Ntirety 6 of our DBAs attended this presentation and everyone walked away learning something. When the session was over, you could tell no one was ready to leave.

George brought real world experience to his presentation. If you ever have a chance to see George present, I would highly recommend it. Other Sessions included..

• VMware Fundamentals; Back to the Basics
• Find, fix and prevent application performance problems with VFabric Hyperic
• Create your cloud
• vStorage: Best Practices
• Increasing Performance, Capacity, Reliability and Automation - An in-depth look at VMware's System Management Tools

This sample of presentations is just the tip of the iceberg. You were even able to use Dell computers on site to build your own VMware environment.

Vendors/Sponsors

There was an excellent Vendor Floor. A Sample of the Sponsors included....

Focus Technology Solutions, Actitio, Brocade, Trend Micro, CBE Technologies, Falconstor, Morse Technologies, AVERE, 10ZIG technology, CORAID, DELL, Echo Star, RSA, Nimblestorage, commvault, GreenPages Technology Solutions, MITEL, Pano logic, VKERNEL, Whip Tail Tech, Blue Socket, PRESIDO, VEEAM, NASUNI, Nexenta, TwinStratta, Stratus Technologies.

That is not a complete list. It does give youy a sense of just how many vendors were there.

 I have no idea what the official count of the event was. There had to be over a 1000 attendees.

Gritty's McDuff's - Old Fashion Lobster Bake

Just when I thought the event could get no better. There was an old fashion Lobster Bake held at Gritty McDuff's Brewpub of Freeport, Maine. Grittys is a favorite spot of mine to have lunch when I visit my daughter who goes to school at the University of Souther Maine. Little known trivia about Gritty McDuff's. Its holds the unusual distinction of being the first brewpub to open in the state of Maine since prohibition ended.

This was an awesome event. Not only did we work hard, but we played hard at the end.

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

VMware Fusion 3 Versus Parallels Desktop 6 for MAC

Let me set the proper stage. I have been using Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro for a very long time. I also used Parallels Desktop on my Previous MacBook Pro for a very long time. I also use Parallels Desktop on my IMac computer at work for a very long time. Over All I was quite happy with Parallels Desktop for a very long time.  About a year ago, I decided to install Windows 7 on Paralells Desktop Edition for Mac. It has never worked correctly.  Let me say that again, it has never worked correctly. I was never able to get Paralells Desktopn 6  to fully integrate when running Windows 7 Enterprise in a shared manner with my Mac. I found this very disappointing.

My Choices As I Saw It

1. Continue to use Parallels Desktop running windows 7 in a non-shared manner with the MAC operating system. This took away one the functionaloty I liked most which was the complete integration of the two operating systems. Otherwise I might as well just run boot camp and dual boot my machine.

2. Continue to use Parallels Desktop running Windows 7 in a shared manner but accepts that it gives me errors at start up. Know something is wrong and deal with the issues cuased by this when Murphy's Law strikes. Accept I am having limited integration with the native O/S. This to me was unacceptable. I have work to do, and the tool that is suppose to be an enabler, should not be making this harder.

3. Continue to use Windows XP. Which worked quite well and has worked well for a number of years.

I decided to continue using Parallels Desktop on the Mac running the Windows XP operating system. I was not happy about this but it worked. It got the Job done. Yes I was settling for less. So this must lead you to the conclusion, is my blog article done, or is there more to this story.

Lesson: Never Settle For Less

 We should never settle for less. It never leads to any good. Imagine Mankind if we never dreamed for more and just settled for less. So let me tell you what events happened to make me consider wanting to change from Paralells Desktop 6  a tool I have been using for a very long time to the competition. As they say made me switch over to the dark side.

Was My MacBook Pro Beefy Enough

Since I had tried to create a fully functional Windows 7 Enterrpise edition on Paralell's 6  I noticed my MacBook Pro getting slower and slower.

My Machine has a 2.66 GHZ Intel Core I7 with 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 of ram.  1 Processor and 2 cores.

The point is my machine could easily handle a second operating system running under Paralells Desktop 6. Yet each time I attempted to do just that, I was constantly waiting. It just did not make sense. I was getting the dreaded wait from my MacBook Pro. 

Even if I shut down Paralells Desktop completely down my MacBook Pro was still slow. No matter what I tried to do, the computer was telling me to wait. It could not handle all the requests. Given Paralells Desktop was completely shutdown it made me think the two events were un-related. I had had enough and I decided I had to figure out what was causing this issue.

After much investigation I find out there is a run away CPU issue caused by the latest release of Parallels Desktop. This really irked me the wrong way.

Paralell's Know's How Spam You Constantly, Its A Shame Customer Support Does Not Know How To Reach Out To You

Given how many emails I receive from Paralells, Inc trying to sell me an upgrade I had already purchased, I was sure they knew how to contact me when there was a serious bug. I had taken the time to register my products online. Given the severitiy of this bug, I would have expected them to reach out to their user community. This was effecting the overall quality of my computer.

The problem when away with a few minor changes to how Paralells Desktop was setup. This was as they say the straw that broke the camels back.

I had had enough. I am a huge fan of VMware. When it comes to deploying mission critcal appliactions in a virtualized environment, VMware is the clear winner. It's my Database of Choice for running Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

So I decided to bite the bullet and deploy VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro.

From the very start it was a very smooth installation process. It had no issues dealing with Windows 7 Enterprise. What a nice change from Paralells Desktop.

The only thing I wish they could have done better was dealing with McAfee VirusScan. As you can see from the image, McAfee is already installed on my machine but it keeps asking me. I wish it were smart enough to auto-detect this.  In there defense I have not chosen the Dont Show Again option.

This is a really minor item.

One of the things I really like about Paralells Desktop was running the product in Coherence mode. There is where the two O/S are highly integrated.

So I was worried when I switched over the VMware Fusion I would loose this capabilty. Here is what the Paralells Desktop ;ooks like when running in Coherence mode.

The example I am showing is using Windows XP. Remember I was never able to get Windows 7 Enterprise edition to work correctly in a seamless manner. It still on my Machine, and one of these days I will remove it.

VMware Fusion has Unity mode. Which gives you a really nice seamless integration between the two operating systems. Here is a an example of VMware Unity being used:

In this example, you also see the McAfee icon. It shows up on the Mac docking area. Even though its a Windows 7 program its fully integrated on the Desktop. Very Nice !

 VMware also makes better use of the desktop space. At first Pass it's a better integration. The combination of VMware being able to run WIndows 7 Enterprise correctly and also Unity mode, in my opinion blows Paralells Desktop latest and greatest away. I wish I had made the switch a while ago.

More to follow

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety