Toronto August 13th VMUG Event Recap: Ravello, CloudPhysics, Log Insight and awesomeness!

It was a Startup kind of day today at the Toronto VMUG with some really amazing content. Today was my first day as an official VMUG co-leader so it was extra special!

The docket was full today with Ravello Systems kicking things off, helped out by Kyle Bassett (@KyleBassett) of www.archestration.ca and Geert Jansen (@GeertJ_) from Ravello to discuss and demo their very exciting technology. Second up was Irfan Ahmad (@virtualirfan) from Cloud Physics who actually got to celebrate the GA release of their product which happened this morning during our session. Finally we had Mike Bujara of VMware to present the vCenter Log Insight Manager which is all kinds of awesome for root cause analysis among many other things, for your VMware environment.

Ravello Systems

ravello_systems_logo

Some really cool things are happening inside the Ravello Systems camp and you will definitely want to be watching this company and this technology as we continue down the road with next generation virtualization and cloud deployment.

In a world of multi-hypervisor challenges, this is an exciting product that has the chance to level the deployment playing field a bit by providing HVX, a nested hypervisor which allows you to use a single encapsulated machine that can be deployed to Amazon, Rackspace, HP Cloud and VMware with a single deployment recipe, which is referred to as a blueprint.

yodawg-ravello

The Ravello ecosystem gives us a way to package our single or multi-server applications with their easy-to-use drag and drop UI. With everything from VM selection to virtual networking, this tool covers all bases.

Even better than just providing a GUI to manage existing public/private networks, the Ravello HVX also provides an overlay network that allows you to use the same IP mappings in your virtual app environment regardless of the public facing IP or the underlying network layout. How cool is that?!

Image courtesy of http://www.ravellosystems.com/technology
Image courtesy of http://www.ravellosystems.com/technology

You can view the demo of the product on the Ravello Systems YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/ravellosystems where you will find the video as I’ve embedded here:

The product is in beta, but on the cusp of a full GA release in the next day or so, you can still contact Ravello Systems through their site and get connected for a trial of the software.

CloudPhysics

cloud-physics-logIt’s 11:00 PM, do you know the state of your VMware Virtual Infrastructure? CloudPhysics does! This product has been in beta for approximately a year, with the last months being a public beta. We were even more excited to find out that the product went to GA release this morning with rave reviews across the board.

Using an on-premise virtual appliance, the CloudPhysics engine uploads statistics (currently 20 Trillion data points in their collection!) and then through the web site, you add cards to your deck with the information that you want to see as it is updating live.

Custom cards can be created, and there is even a card challenge to create the top new cards for public use. This is just the kind of community driven heat that is behind this exciting company.

cloudphysics-contest

Not only is it a great product, but in the true community style, it is available as a FREE community edition! There are subscription models for additional features, but there is no reason for you not to run this product in my opinion because you will find some incredible value from the targeted analytics being provided through the CloudPhysics cards.

cloudphysics-pricing

So get on over to http://www.cloudphysics.com and download the OVF file to deploy your CloudPhysics observer and once you deploy, you will be up in minutes and the journey to deeper understanding of your virtualized environment begins!

vCenter Log Insight

Mike Bujara always brings his A-game, and it was a perfect way to round out the event with a great summary of the vCenter Log Insight Manager.

vcenter-log-insight

This tool is built with true end-to-end analysis of environmental logs in mind. When an issue comes up, we are often doing root cause analysis by peeling through logs in multiple locations and products to track what correlating issues could have been involved.

Enter vCenter Log Insight Manager which does all of the heavy lifting for you. We are now able to aggregate the log information from our VMware environment, and from numerous other systems. This is a great step towards faster problem resolution and a more full-featured way to render our root cause analysis for any issues that happened.

Thank you!

Thanks to all of the VMUG attendees, and to our great sponsors and speakers for making this another great Toronto VMUG event!

 

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