So if you are like me and you couldn't make it to VMware's TSX-EMEA show in Nice, all is not lost.  Mike Laverick, from RTFM Education, is doing a great job at keeping us informed and in the loop.  Check these links out:

SX-EMEA on Monday

My TSX began with a trainer event on the Monday before TSX official opened. It was an opportunity to meet up with my fellow instructors and to be given the inside track on VMware Educations plans for the future. So here’s some news. Firstly, the new “Deploy, Secure and Analyse” (DSA)course can be taken, and will count towards your VCP status. So for people who feel the “Install and Configure” (I&C) course is inappropriate they can do the DSA course instead and still be certified. However, the exam questions will still be closely related to the I&C content. In the US VMware plan to have a “test” make sure that the right people are allowed to the attend the DSA course - but there no plans for the European arm of VMware Education - the VATC programme to be forced to take a “pre-requisite” test.

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TSX-EMEA: General Session

TSX opened to day at the Acropolis. The venue is fine, if somewhat circa 1970’s, and I think delegates will miss the roller-coasters of Paris, Disney. This said, this year we are more upmarket bunch strolling our way along the strip of Nice. In the morning we had the customary key notes sessions. Nothing spectacular to report about these events – virtualisation rocks, virtual appliances rock, the hardware in future will rock, and VMware will be there to take advantage of it. Oh, and open-source community initiatives counts such as virtual disk formats and so on. On the community side of things Robert Dell’Immagine gave us a run down on how the VMTN will improve in months to come. With a Wiki project, better profiles and kind of LinkedIn but for the forums. I hope to contribute to the Wiki project by “seeding” it with content from my free online guides – and then letting the community edit and improve that content as systems change. 

TSX-EMEA: ESX Storage virtualisation insights

This session was all about tweaking storage settings – especially in the area of analysing VM driver queues, vmkernel disk queues and fibre-channel queues. It was my first session of the day and it was a bit of struggle to keep up. I got the impression it was the speakers first session of the day and some of the finer detail went over my head. Perhaps that says more about my good my storage knowledge is. Anyway, I got some tips and tricks such as: 

• Some older distros of Linux work better with the BusLogic driver. In general LSIlogic is preferred for Windows
• There as some useful KB articles which discuss the possible benefits of adjusting queue lengths of Qlogic (KB 1269) and Emulex cards (KB 8535211)
• The vmkfstools command options of –I are still preferred for moving large files around as it still reduces the SCSI reservations required for disk transactions. Unlike commands like CP which handle file creation less efficientally. 
• Physical Compatibility RDMs can cause problems in RDMs. This is because the VM places a SCSI reservation on the device (such as a tape device) using the WWN of the original host. When the VM is moved via VMotion, these reservations remain tied to the original hosts WWN value. RDMs with virtual compatibility remain unaffected. 

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TSX-EMEA: Top Support Issues Part II

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Firstly, he covered recovering lost VMFS partitions caused people having a “Homer Simpson” moment. Generally, if some removes a VMFS volumes, and then repartitions that LUN for another purposes your chances of recovery are slim. If however, someone removes a VMFS, and then has left the LUN untouched there is a good chance of recovering the VMFS. Very simply its possible to put the partition table information back in place using fdisk. You do need to use esxcfg-vmhbadevs to find out the Linux /dev/sdN value. But after that it is a case of putting the primary partition back on the disks. Expert mode is used to make sure the disk is offset for the disk alignment automatically implemented by the Vi Client. Anyway, I was very much taken by the process – so I plan to be Homer Simpson soon and give Darren’s steps a roadtest.

TSX-EMEA: Afternoon Session

In the afternoon I attended the session from Equalogic. In case you don’t know they are iSCSI SAN provider who bundle a lot of “virtual storage” functionality in their product. The finer detail of the offering went over my head. I wouldn’t regard myself as a storage specialist – and in part that’s why I chose to attend. I’ve heard very interesting things about this company. Very fast, very efficient, very cost-effective.

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Thanks Mike Laverick for keeping us posted on the show.