If you are new to VMware’s products, there’s a good chance that VMware Workstation will be the first product you use of theirs/ours (disclosure: I work for VMware). It was the first product I used before I came to work there.

I see today that VMware is offering a free online course to learn the ins and outs of VMware Workstation 7. Quoting their website:

With the tremendous number of new Workstation 7 customers, I am very excited to announce the availability of a free introductory, self-paced online course.  The course is designed for people who are new VMware Workstation and it will quickly walk you through the steps for installing VMware Workstation, creating virtual machines, installing tools, configuring networks, and much more.  To access the course, you will be prompted to create a VMware myLearn account if you do not already have one.

Click this link to get started!

Here’s another new book just out about VMware VMware ESX and ESXi. According to Amazon.com, you’ll not only learn the basics — how to pool resources from hardware servers, computer clusters, networks, and storage, and then distribute them among virtual machines — but also the stumbling blocks you’ll encounter when you monitor systems, troubleshoot problems, and deal with security.

In addition to the recipes, VMware Cookbook includes background information to help you determine your virtualization needs. You’ll come to view VMware as part of the real environment, alongside operating systems, storage, and logical and physical network components.

• Follow best practices for installing VMware in your environment
• Discover how to secure and monitor your network
• Understand disk storage implementation and configuration
• Learn resource management using the distributed resource scheduler, shares, and resource pools
• Configure logical and physical networks
• Learn how to clone and migrate servers
• Gain valuable tips for configuration and fine-tuning

Many resources can teach you about virtualization and the basics of VMware. This book is for system administrators who are ready to go beyond an introduction.

Companies running VMware have already achieved enormous gains through virtualization. The next wave of benefits will come when they reduce the time and effort required to run and manage VMware platforms. The VMware Infrastructure Software Development Kit (VI SDK) includes application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers and administrators to do just that.

Until now, there has been little documentation for the APIs. In VMware VI and vSphere SDK, software architect and author  Steve Jin demystifies the entire VMware VI and new vSphere SDK and offers detailed, task-based coverage of using the APIs to manage VMware more efficiently and cost-effectively in a new book entitled VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere.

Author Steve Jin walks readers through using the VI SDK and cloud-computing vSphere SDK to manage ESX servers, ESX clusters, and VirtualCenter servers in any environment–no matter how complex. Drawing on his extensive expertise working with VMware strategic partners and enterprise customers, he places the VI SDK in practical context, presenting realistic samples and proven best practices for building robust, effective solutions. Jin demonstrates how to manage every facet of a VMware environment, including inventory, host systems, virtual machines (VMs), snapshots, VMotion, clusters, resource pools, networking, storage, data stores, events, alarms, users, security, licenses, and scheduled tasks.

If you happen to search Google for one of the following phrases you might expect Google to return a list of official VMware Knowledgebase articles on the topic.

• crash debug screen
• machine crash screen
• ESX Server PSOD
• Purple screen crash report
• Decode purple screen error

Guess what? VMware’s own document standards prevent us from using any of these phrases in the articles, and Google isn’t smart enough to know a PSOD really means a Decoding Machine Check Exception. So instead of finding the best information you really need at that moment, you get a ton of 3rd party information.

Our community forums don’t have as strict rules about terminology so I have just created this post:

ESX Server PSOD

in hopes it ranks well and directs customers to the information they need on ESX purple screens.

Out of the many product enhancements and releases being marketed at VMworld this week comes one that is really causing a stir and buzz in the user community and that is vCloud Express.

vCloud Express is a service whereby you pay a 3rd party to host your virtual servers on the Internet. Five providers are already ready to host your cloud at very cheap rates (I heard a dollar a day). You don’t get locked in either. If you choose to later host your own internal cloud you can do that.

Look out Amazon EC2

While this service can and will directly compete with Amazon, VMware is going to be hosting the clouds themselves. They provide the API, and providers provide the infrastructure.

As cloud computing gains ground on a commercial basis, VMware seems poised to once again to have the upper hand.