I ran across this LinkedIn discussion in the VMware Certified Professionals group the past week and thought this was something worthy to get out to anyone else who hasn't read the thread.

The title of the thread is "Recruiters that offer a low rate for VMware/VCP engineers.... What to do?". I'm sure all of us have seen short-term and long-term contracts that are considered well below the pay grade that the certification deserves. The only way a VCP can get what he/she deserves is by figuring out your own self worth..

There hasn't been much talk (and sometimes that can be a good thing) about the quiet release of Update 2 to different products of the vSphere suite. There have been some pitfalls already, but it seems as if most of them have been addressed relatively quickly.

vSphere products with new updates:

• ESX(i) Update 2
• vCenter Update 2 (includes Update Manager Update 2)
• VMware vCenter Update Manager 4 Update 2
• VMware Data Recovery 1.2
• VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Update 2

As many of my followers know on twitter, the past two weeks have been filled spending massive amounts of time on a new adventure in my life. I got married on June 5th, 2010 to my lovely wife Lauren (http://kennyandlaurenswedding.com, http://laurenmolter.com, @VideoEditorGirl). Last Friday night I was finishing up the rehearsal dinner at an awesome local Italian restaurant and I took a few minutes to check my blackberry while a group of friends and I were heading out for a few more drinks. I saw an email from John Troyer that said "VMware vExpe...", I checked it immediately and saw that I've been awarded the title of VMware vExpert 2010. I capped off the rest of the night, got married the next day, and I've been on my honeymoon in Maroma Beach Mexico for the past week (hence the muchas gracias). Still can't stop saying little bits of spanish because I've been doing it for the past week.

This morning, The Saffa Geek (@GreggRobertson5) sent out a tweet asking "Anyone know if one of my hosts in my ha cluster goes down will ha power on already powered off vm's from my down host?"

I decided to do some testing with HA and the different options for virtual machines with their end result.

Here is my vCenter environment. I have 2 hosts, 1 ESX and the other ESXi. You can see from this screenshot, the VMs that are powered off and powered on the ESXi host that will fail in my lab.

This is a new release today from VirtualFilters, a donater to VMware KB articles. Some of the tweaks listed are good ones.

Read vFilters: Maximum Performance Tweaks

Here are my thoughts on things I would feel safe about doing. These changes wouldn't start pegging more resources (as some will if you look at the Document), but actually free up resources in your environment.

Network

• Virtual Hardware 7 - This is a must for everyone putting VMs on vSphere
• Virtual MMU - The actual default is set to "Automatic", not disabled for virtual machines. Only enable hardware MMU if you have newer processors like Nehalems that can utilize the performance boost. TPS will suck, but once memory starts becoming over-committed, regular TPS will start taking place.

**UPDATE** 9/8/2011 - This list has been updated to Top 10 Free VMware vSphere Tools and Utilities for 2011

**Update** 7/22/2010 If you want to dive into performance, take a look at VM Advanced ISO. Free Tools for Advanced Tasks

Over the past month I have installed and tested almost every single tool on my previous blog post of A List of FREE VMware vSphere Tools. I will be doing a demo of these Top 10 tools and utilities at the next Kentuckiana Virtualization Users Group meeting on May 21st. (note: I did not put any free tools from VMware in the top 10. Why? Alot of products from VMware are awesome, I just wanted to give other vendors and contributers of the VMware community a chance to shine.)

How the scoring went down:

1. Can It be used on ESX, ESXi, and vCenter?
   • 1 point for standalone ESX, 2 points for standalone ESXi, and 2 points for vCenter
2. Ease of installation
   • 1 to 5 points on ease of installation
3. Feature Rich
   • 1 to 5 points based how many different features are included
4. How well does it perform
   • 1 to 5 points based on how well it's main feature performs
5. Can this be used as an everyday tool?
   • 1 to 5 points based on if it's a one time use or if it can be used everyday. More points for an everyday tool

Without further ado, here are your Top 10 Free products to use with VMware vSphere

Someone on the VMTN forums was able to use the Free ESXi license with ESX. Not sure if this is a bug or not, but as @mattliebowitz has pointed out, it is against the EULA.

Here is how it's done.

• Go get your Free ESXi4 License Key.
• Go download the ESX4 DVD as part of your vSphere Trial.
• Start Installing ESX4

There was an article on the VMTN forums the other day. Someone was sitting in the same position I was almost a year ago. They were confronted with a task of being the sole person responsible for buying the shared storage for their vSphere implementation. Having a team tackle this is the best approach so everyone can be happy with the decision, but when you're on your own, it's a very daunting task. Your strapped spending 5 or more hours a day just reading websites, watching WebEx's, or on the phone listening to a vendor. Here's a few tips from what I learned in my experience to those out there that need a little help in making their decision.

1. How much storage do you need? It's a good baseline for talking to any storage vendor. 3TB vs 3PB makes a difference. Especially when some storage companies have different products geared towards your level of business.
2. How much storage will you need in the future? You might not think about it now, but you have to anticipate storage growth. Just how fast are you going to grow? Some vendors have 1 model of their product and they can add on to it. Some vendors will hit a TB or drive capacity on their models. Some might just try to sell you the next model up.