One of the challenges in getting a vmware view POC put together for me has been getting the client ready at the endpoint to ensure no impact, or residue, is left after the POC is complete. If you are lucky, you’ve got a pile of unused thin clients ready to go. In my experience, the more likely scenario is you’ve got a your existing PC infrastructure that you’re going to use.

With existing hardware, an easy solution is to use a software package like Thin Desktop from Thin Lauch, to automatically launch your client software. This works great for certain projects, but if you’re looking for a more temporary solution, or don’t want to install applications locally, you can use a live linux cd as an alternative. This allows for testing without impacting any installed applications on the local drive.

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Introduction

While waiting for my google wave invite like the rest of the planet today, I thought I’d walk through a Google Wave Federation Prototype Server (WFPS) build installed as a small ubuntu virtual machine. Why? Because waiting for a google wave invite isn’t nearly geeky enough.

The WFPS server is implemented as a jabber component, and should work with any xmpp/jabber-server that supports this functionality. Make sure to read through the documentation available on the project homepage. The instructions there walk through setting up WFPS against OpenFire. As I’m more familiar with ejabberd, I’ll walk through that install instead.
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First, let me say thank you to some of the great sponsors that pitched in this year to help. This was a crazy event, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all of your support. A loud and and resounding thanks also goes out to the Thirsty Bear and in particular to Mari Ramirez. She helped make sure all the pieces fell into place getting this off the ground.

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Some additional useful information:

Getting to the venue and your hotel.

Couple of things to consider if this is your first travel to SanFran. Depending on where you’re staying, and if you can manage your luggage, there’s no reason to get a rental car. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), provides train service throughout the San Francisco metropolitan area. There is a station in the San Francisco airport, and you can ride BART into San Francisco, and exiting at the Powell St. Station, you’ll be within blocks of most of the conference hotels. If you’ve got an iPhone, there’s a free BART app through the appstore as well.

View Larger Map

VMware Interactive Map: Shuttle Routes and Sponsored Hotels.

The Official VMware 2009 Hotel and Travel Page can be found here. Please check there for updated shuttle legend and schedule.

View VMworld 2009 in a larger map

The purpose of this little exercise is to quickly get NexentaStor 2.0 up and running quickly in your lab and attached to your vSphere 4 environment. Then you can migrate your VMs from a legacy platform to your shiny new NexentaStor testbed. I’ll give my first impressions, and hopefully you’ll download, test, and draw your own conclusions.

If you’re playing along at home boys and girls now is the time to go grab an NexentaStor 2.0 Trial iso. This will let you install the enterprise NexentaStor with all the bells and whistles, for a brisk 30 day trial.

Get it here.
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