The bulk of the material for vSphere 5 is similar to that of vSphere 4 so make sure not to forget to study or refresh yourself with vSphere 4.  I think this is a good starting point before tackling the new features of vSphere 5.  Most of you who will be taking the test already work in or have a vSphere 4 environment.  Take some time to refresh yourself with the environment, the settings and options available to you and how to configure different aspects of the environment.

Now for the new features of vSphere 5.  The first thing I would look at is look at the VCP 5 Exam Blueprint.  It basically tells you exactly what is covered in the VCP 5 exam and includes hyperlinks to the VMware documentation related to that area.  Take the time to download each of the documents and read it thoroughly.  Obviously you don’t have to read it word for word but make sure you pick up on all the details of the new features.

The next item I used was Forbes Guthrie vSphere 5 Documentation Notes.  Forbes does a nice job of summarizing all of the vSphere 5 documentation in a 50-page document.  I went through the document and highlighted the items that I felt were important so that I could go back quickly and browse the document without having to read the whole thing.

The two I just mentioned were the most useful in my opinion.  Yes, that’s a lot of content but you definitely need to cover every bit of it.  Some other resources that I found helpful include the following:

VMware Official VCP 5 Mock Exam - Make sure you miss at least 1 question on purpose as you cannot retake the test if you score a perfect 100%.  None of the questions on the mock exam show up on the real exam, but it gives you an idea of how the questions are formatted and what to expect.

Simon Long VCP 5 Practice Exam - Simon Long has also posted a VCP 5 Mock exam.

VMware Training Blog - A great resource with its own VCP 5 Prep Guide.

The exam has more real world questions than I expected, so you won’t be able to just read the documentation along with taking the practice tests and expect the pass the exam with ease.  I’m not saying it can’t be done, but VMware has done a good job of architecting the exam so that you can’t memorize the material and pass the exam.  This gives the certification more credibility in my opinion and makes me proud to be one of the first VMware Certified Professionals on vSphere 5.

I found this article which helped me through the process.

The instructions worked great.  The only issue I ran into had to do with the kernel bundles.  They weren’t installed and the VMware Tools installer kept looking for the installation path of bundles.  I simply bypassed this option and finished the VMware Tools installation.

Now, given my experience with RedHat, the other issue I had involved the network interface adapters attached to the VM.  After performing the VMware Tools installation the first time, the network interface settings basically blew up on me to the point where RedHat would not start.  I had to rebuild the VM from scratch.  I believe part or most of the problem had to do with the kernel bundles not being installed the first time and not being sure how to proceed with the installation.  However, after installing VMware Tools a second time (still without the kernel bundles), my RedHat VM is working great.

Link to article - http://builddocs.com/server_os_builds/installing-vmware-tools-on-redhat-5-4/

Uninstalling VMware Tools is straight forward so I won’t go into detail on how to uninstall VMware Tools.  As for the configuration change, shutdown the outer vm.  In my case, this is the Windows XP vm I created in vCenter.  I opened the settings for the vm, switched to the Options > General > Configuration Parameters.  You need to add a row with the following parameters:

Name = monitor_control.restrict.backdoor

Value = TRUE

The only caveat is that you’ve uninstalled VMware Tools from the outer vm so you have to use RDP to connect to the vm.  The vm console is unusable due to missing VMware Tools.

http://www.youtube.com/vmworldtv#p/c/1/QBxm5CBPeG8

The General Sessions are always a must see and VMware knocked one out of the park with the announcement of Project Appblast.  Not to be forgotten are Project Octopus (corporate “DropBox”), VXLAN (encapsulate L2 packets in L3 packets) and View 5 (http://www.vmware.com/products/view/overview.html).  Below are summaries for each general session.

You can view a replay of each general session here.

VMguru (Project Octopus)

Day 1 General Session (Paul Maritz)

slowe

VMGuy

Day 2 General Session (Steve Herrod)

Yellow-Bricks

slowe

VMGuy

aarondelp

Here are a few articles concerning the release of View 5

VMware Blog

VMguru

And let’s not forget Project Horizon

VMware Blog

VMware

Next is a summary of Scott Lowe’s session “Getting Started with VMware vSphere Design” by Andrew Miller.  Scott did an excellent job of stressing the business needs and requirements as much as the technology in this session and Andrew did an excellent job of summarizing this in his post.

VMworld 2012 will be in San Francisco once again and I caught a tweet that said VMworld will be in San Francisco the next 7 years.  From a logistical standpoint, this makes sense considering VMware headquarters are in Palo Alto.  I’ve never been to San Francisco so as long as I can make 1 of the next 7 VMworlds, I can cross San Francisco off my list of places to go.

This post will be updated over the next few weeks as more bloggers catch their breath and have time to take all the information they absorbed in 4 short days and turn them into articles for the virtualization community.  Stay tuned for updates.

vDestination – VMworld 2011 Wrap-Up

Now onto the exciting part of the process, the setup of SRM and creation of a recovery plan.  There are 4 items that you must configure in protection setup;  connection, array managers, inventory mappings and protection groups.  We’ll start with connection.  The first item it asks for is the name of your remote site vCenter server name.  Next it will ask you for a way to authenticate to the remote vCenter server.  Once you authenticate to the remote vCenter server that completes the connection portion of the setup.

Next is the configuration of the storage array.  Basically you’re going to add your storage array that contains your vmfs datastore(s) that you want to protect.  It asks for a display name, IP address, username and password.  Once you’ve added your storage array you should see the replicated storage array in the bottom window.  Just a quick note in case you’re new to SRM, storage array replication is a requirement for SRM.  In our case, we’re utilizing NetApp SnapMirror for replication.  The next windows asks you to add the recovery site storage array.  Again, once you add the recovery site storage array the replicated storage array will show up in the bottom window.  That completes the configuration of the Storage Arrays.

Next up is the configuration of inventory mappings.  What this does is map your protected site networks, compute resources and virtual machine folders to that of your recovery site.  For example, in our protected site we have 2 networks, production LAN and iSCSI initiator.  The inventory mappings configuration is asking you to map these 2 Networks to the networks it will use in the Recovery Site.  We have done a good job of keep all names alike and makes the configuration simple and straightforward.  We have created 2 networks at our recovery site and as you can guess, they are named production LAN and iSCSI initiator.  We map our Production LAN network at our protected site to the production LAN network at our recovery site.  You do the same for compute resources which is basically a fancy name that VMware is using for DRS cluster.  And finally you map your virtual machine folders.  Please note that the configuration of your inventory mappings may require you to create networks, clusters and/or virtual machine folders at your recovery site as they are not automatically created by SRM.

The final step in protection setup is to create a protection group.  Basically a protection group are the virtual machines that you want protected by SRM.  This step took me the longest to setup for one reason, a protection group is based upon datastore membership.  In my instance, I had virtual machines that I wanted to protect in SRM located in two different datastores.  Therefore, I had to perform multiple storage vMotion’s to move all the machines I wanted to protect in SRM into one datastore while also balancing my datastores.  Also, I created a small volume and LUN (10GB) on our SAN at the recovery site to hold the configuration files for each virtual machine.  This way all hosts in my cluster at the recovery site will see the virtual machine configuration files and be able to power on the virtual machine(s) during a disaster.  You’ll notice that once you finish choosing a protection group, all the virtual machines in the protection group will populate at your recovery site.

Now that you have configured your protection setup, you can move on to creating your recovery plan.  The recovery plan is exactly as it’s named, a plan to recover your virtual machines at your recovery site.  The recovery plan has a few options you must setup before proceeding to creating the actual plan.  First, the response time page asks you to specify a repsonse time for the changing of the network settings and wait time for OS heartbeat.  The change network settings option is the time allotted for the virtual machine to acquire the expected IP address.  If the virtual machine does not acquire the expected IP address in the time allotted, a error is reported and the recovery plan proceeds to the next step.  The wait for OS heartbeat option is the time allotted for the virtual machine to report an OS heartbeat after being powered on.  If the virtual machine does not produce a OS heartbeat in the time allotted, a error is reported and the Recovery Plan proceeds to the next step.

The next step of the recovery plan setup is to configure a test network.  The test network is a network would be used during a recovery plan test.  All your protected site networks will be shown in the window.  By default, all networks are specified as Auto which means SRM will create a bubble network to use during a recovery plan test.  You can always change the option from Auto to choose an existing network at your recovery site.  Be very careful when choosing an option other than Auto.  If you network is similar to ours in the case that our production network exists in our recovery site, you can cause major problems by accidentally powering on a second virtual machine with the same name and IP address as the original on the same network.  Just make sure the network you choose for testing your recovery plan is isolated from your production network.  The last item you must setup is the suspending of any virtual machines at the recovery site.  If you have virtual machines running at your recovery like we do, this option gives you the ability to suspend those virtual machines to regain the resources being used by those virtual machines.  In our case, we have a domain controller, a database server and our recovery site vCenter server running on our ESX hosts at our recovery site.  All 3 of those virtual machines will need to remain running during a disaster therefore we chose to not suspend any of the local virtual machines at the recovery site.

That completes the setup and configuration of SRM.  Over the next few days I will be editing the recovery plan to specify the startup order of the virtual machines along with changing the IP address of each virtual machine.  I’m hoping to figure out how to automate certain tasks such as bringing SQL databases online and updating DNS records.  At this point, I’m more than impressed with the capabilities of SRM and I’m hearing there are better things on the horizon for the future of SRM.

There are three requirements for the database schema (taken from the VMware Site Recovery Administrator Guide v4.1):

• It must be owned by the SRM database user (the database user name you supply when configuring the SRM database connection).
• It must have the same name as the SRM database user.
• It must be the default schema for the SRM database user.

Along with the above, the following are requirements for the SRM database user and the SRM SQL Server

• The SRM database user must have database administrator privileges.
• The SRM database user must be granted the following permissions:  bulk insert, connect, create table, create view
• If you are using Windows authentication, the SRM server and database server must be run on the same host.
• If the SRM server and database server run on different hosts, you must use mixed mode authentication.
• If SQL Server is installed locally, you might need to disable the Shared Memory network setting on the database server.

Now I’m somewhat familiar with SQL and can usually figure out a way to get what I need out of SQL.  However, VMware’s documentation was a clear as mud to me.  I found a great article by Rob Nourse, a Senior Consultant for VMware Consulting Services at the time of the article that outlined exactly what you need to do to create the SRM database.

In our case, we installed a second instance of SQL Server to install the SRM database on.  The only caveat that I found was that the SQL Browser Server needed to be started in order for SRM Server to see the new named instance of SQL Server when trying to create the System DSN in ODBC Data Source Administrator.  Again, I’m not all too familiar with SQL and in a few articles I read concerning the SQL Browser Service, I realize this is a bit of a security risk so I’m exploring other ways to create the System DSN without having to start the SQL Browser Service.

Next you must create a schema that matches the user name that you plan to use.  For this example, we’ll assume you’re using the user name srm.  In a new query window, type the following:

CREATE SCHEMA srm ;

Click execute or hit F5

Now create the database.  You can use the code [CREATE DATABASE srm ;] or you can right-click on databases and select new database.  You can use the wizard type window to create your srm database choosing the name, owner and file locations along with other advanced options.

Once you have created the database, open a new query window and choose the srm database in the drop-down box or type USE SRM in the query window.  Again, either click execute or hit F5.  Once you are sure you’re using the srm database in your query window, you will create the SQL login and use account for SRM and associate the srm schema we created earlier to that user and login.

CREATE LOGIN srm WITH PASSWORD = ‘xxxxxxxx’ ;

CREATE USER srm FOR LOGIN srm WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA = srm ;

Next you need to change the ownership and permissions for the srm database.  In SQL Management Studio, browse to Server Name > Databases > srm > Security > users > srm.  Right-click on srm and select properties.  Select db_owner in the database role membership window and then click OK.  Now set the srm user’s default database.  Again, browse to the srm user this time under Server Name > Security > Logins > srm and right-click and select properties.  On the General tab change the default database to srm.  Do not click OK yet.  In the same windows now choose the Server Roles tab on the left and select bulk admin.  Now click OK.

Now, logout of SQL Management Studio and log back in as the srm user.  Execute the following script:

CREATE SCHEMA srm AUTHORIZATION srm ;

The last thing to do is to test that you’ve setup the correct permissions to allow for a successful SRM installation.  Log out of SQL Management Studio one last time and log back in as the srm user.  Try executing the following script:

USE srm GO

CREATE TABLE test( data varchar(10)) GO

If it fails, you will see the following:

Msg 262, Level 14, State 1, Line 1

CREATE TABLE permission denied in database ‘srm’ WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA = srm ; GO

If the script executed successfully, you should see the test table you just created in your srm database when you expand the tables option under your srm database in SQL Management Studio.  Feel free to delete this table after you have created it successfully using the above script.

That’s all for Part 1.  I just finished installing and configuring Site Recovery Manager 4.1 today in our environment so I hope to have Part 2 of this article posted sometime later this week.  After performing the installation and configuration, I feel the database setup outlined in this article is the most difficult part mainly due to the fact that the schema, SQL user and SQL database all must be the same name.

Update: VMware KB1033012 outlines the process of setting up a 32-bit ODBC connection to the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager database on a 64-bit operating system

First, a little background on ThinApp.  ThinApp is an application virtualization solution.  ThinApp will allow you to run an application on a device without having to actually install the application.  You can run the application from a network share, from a USB drive or from the local device.  ThinApp is agent-less from the standpoint that an agent is not needed on the device where you are running the virtualized application.  ThinApp does not install device drivers and uses a virtual registry to protect the underlying operating system.  The goal of ThinApp is to create conflict free applications by separating the application from the operating system.

So now let’s get into what’s new in ThinApp 4.6.  One of the best features is full support for IE6.  You can virtualize IE6 on Windows XP and deploy it to Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.  VMware went a step further and helped us with this by giving us an “install capture” feature along with ThinDirect.  The “install capture” feature that I’m talking about has to do with the creation of the IE6 package from within Windows XP.  Typical package creation involves taking a snapshot of a clean operating system, starting ThinApp, installing the application then taking another snapshot that captures all changes made by the application in the operating system.  ThinApp can then wrap that package up into a MSI or EXE so that it can be executed or installed.  The difficulty with trying to capture an IE6 installation is the fact that IE is installed by default in Windows XP.  ThinApp 4.6 helps with this by giving us the ability to harvest IE6 from Windows XP SP3.  Also, you can run IE6 side-by-side with the native IE installed on the operating system.  Furthermore, ThinDirect gives you the ability to direct different URLs to different browsers.  Basically, if you know a particular website needs to run in IE6, you can specify that in the settings of ThinDirect and each time you launch that website, it will run within IE6 and the native browser will pick back up once you’re done working within that website.

Another new feature of ThinApp 4.6 is support for startup services.  Basically, you can start services that run inside an application during bootup as opposed to waiting for the user to start the virtualized application to start the service.  What this does is provide better application experience for the user as the application is better integrated with the operating system.

ThinApp converter is another great feature.  This feature is very similar to the P2V converter in vCenter.  ThinApp Converter will take native applications that have already been installed and convert them into ThinApp packages using existing vSphere APIs.

VMware didn’t abandon the previous version of ThinApp.  AppLink Enhancement enables linking of applications between ThinApp 4.6 packages and packages built-in previous versions of ThinApp.  Therefore, you’re not required to rebuild all your current ThinApp packages in order for any new packages built-in ThinApp 4.6 to work together.  You can run your ThinApp 4.6 IE6 package with your ThinApp 4.5 Adobe Flash Player package without any problems.

ThinApp is a great product and if you’ve toyed with the idea of desktop virtualization, ThinApp is a great place to start.  If you can virtualize your applications successfully, desktop virtualization becomes much simpler.  Another great benefit of ThinApp is instead of upgrading an application on every workstation in your environment, upgrade it on ThinApp then redeploy the package to all of your users.  Imagine an environment where you only had to upgrade an application in one place.  As we all know it’s never as easy as it seems, however, having seen ThinApp in action and worked with a demo, ThinApp has huge potential to simplify your environment in ways you’ve never imagined.  I highly recommend you download the trial version and give it a run in your own environment.

3PAR was first to present.  Tom Sudeski, a 3PAR System Engineer, was the presenter.  Tom presented to us some virtualization issues and how 3PAR resolves those issues with their storage array.  One virtualization issue is the configuration of the array.  Tom makes note that 3PAR does not use RAID groups.  He states that RAID groups are a limiting performance factor because each RAID group provides a specific I/O level.  Tom also points out that large volumes are another virtualization issue.  Now we’ve all heard of thin provisioning and the benefits from a space saving perspective of thin provisioning a volume.  Tom makes a good point that thin provisioning at both the vSphere level and the array level can be an administration nightmare.  Tom made a good point that when you thin provision inside of vSphere, you’re technically thin provisioning on the array so why do both since the provisioning occurs at the array level anyways.

Tom then went on to talk about storage tiering and the moving of data between different storage tiers.  3PAR performs volume based storage tiering along with subvolume tiering which I found to be very interesting.  Basically, within a volume, 3PAR will move the data that is accessed the most onto faster SSD drives and less accessed data to SAS/SATA drives.  Basically, 3PAR’s Adaptive Optimization software will automatically move granular chunks of data between all 3 tiers of storage.  The best part about this is that there is no additional configuration inside of vCenter.

Another feature that I like is the host and volumes groups feature.  Basically host and volume groups creates a nice 1 to 1 relationship for mapping your vSphere hosts to the correct volume.  Best of all, it’s GUI based.  The 3PAR vCenter plugin is also a nice feature and gives you the ability to look at the LUN and determine whether if it’s thin or fat provisioned.  Tom also announced that coming February, 3PAR will be able to create application aware snapshots.  3PAR also does not use a Snapshot reservation and supports online re-thinning of a volume such as reclaiming the space made by the deletion of a table in a database.

3PAR also supports vSphere 4.1 and the VAAI initiative.  Some of the key features of the VAAI initiative include hardware assisted locking which eliminates SCSI reservations by locking at the block level as opposed to the LUN level and Full Copy Offload which provides improved performance of cloning and storage vMotion by offloading the clone/copy procedure from the ESX host to the array.

Overall, I was very impressed with the technologies that 3PAR has integrated into their storage array.  I realize now why 3PAR was such a hot commodity when both HP and Dell were bidding for ownership of the company.

Next up was Veeam and I must say that I was equally as impressed with Veeam as I was 3PAR.  Unfortunately the ESX host that Veeam was using to run the presentation on top of VMware Workstation crashed so the presentation was cut short.  However, I feel Veeam highlighted a few things that are definitely worth writing about.

At VMworld 2010, Veeam took home 4 awards including Best of Show for their Backup & Replication v5 product, Gold Award in New Technology for vPower, Finalist for Virtualization Management for Veeam ONE and Finalist in Business Continuity and Data Protection for Veeam Backup & Replication 4.1.

The presentation focused on Veeam’s v5 of their Backup & Replication product.  Some of the key features of the product include the deduplication of backups, application aware processing along with continuous backups.  Also, Backup & Replication v5 allows you to restore a vm then work with that vm in an environment that is completely separate from your production environment.  This is a nice feature in that the product does all the work for you in creating a vSwitch and resource pool and restoring the vm with the correct settings on the host.  This saves you the time from having to configure these settings yourself on the host.

A few more features that caught my eye include the ability to restore at the application level.  This includes restoring a deleted user out of Active Directory, a table or row from SQL or an email, contact, appointment from Exchange.  Again, this could be a huge time saver from a restore perspective in having the ability to restore what you need as opposed to having to restore an entire vm to restore a single file or files from within the guest OS or database.  Also, Veeam Backup & Replication v5 supports backup and replication at the vm level, from host to host with continuous data protection.  In the event of a disaster, you simply need to power on the vm at the DR site.

It was about this time in the presentation that the ESX host crashed and Veeam was unable to show us any more of the features available in v5 of Veeam Backup & Replication.  However, in the short amount of time that Veeam presented, I was very impressed with the backup and restore capabilities in the product.

For more information about 3PAR and Veeam, follow the links below.  I was very impressed with both presenters and it’s amazing to see the realm of technologies and solutions that vendors such as 3PAR and Veeam are creating on a daily basis.  Innovation is beautiful.

• 3PAR Utility Storage Benefits
• 3PAR InSpire Architecture
• 3PAR Autonomic Storage Tiering
• 3PAR Autonomic Management
• 3PAR Thin Technologies
• 3PAR Plug-In for VMware VAAI (pdf)
• Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware
• Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware Features
• What’s New in Veeam Backup & Replication v5 (pdf)
• Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware Resources
• VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) FAQ

• Signed copy of Mike’s Implementing vSphere4 book
• A Copenhagen/Danish VMUG – MUG covered with PowerCLI and Remote Console Commands
• TrainSignal Veeam Management Suite Training
• TrainSignal vSphere Pro Series Vol 2 DVD
• T-Shirts including Official VMware Polo Shirt in Black with “VMware” embossed on top corner, vInternals Black “Not just another ****ing blogger t-shirt” as worn by Mike Laverick on the vinternals Chimwag, Navy blue “VMware User Group” T-Shirt from the North Carolina User Summit, Black “VMUG MGR” logo t-shirt with Danish flag and VMware VMworld “Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds” logo
• Dell “Notebook” – A hard-backed notepad with looks like a laptop
• VMware branded digital clock
• F5 Networks branded Stop-Watch
• Intel branded travel alarm clock
• Intel branded keyring/torch
• DoubleTake Mini-Football
• Verizon Pack of 10-Pens Set
• A cluster of T-shirts including a black “SolarWind” T with “Geek” logo, a light blue EMC “Private Cloud” T, a Bright orange RES Software T, a black Cisco logo’d T and a black Veeam “Get vPower” T
• Collection of funny SolarWinds Stickers and Badges
• CA Technologies Toy Monkey
• BMC YoYo and Mints
• TrendMicro Mints and USB Pen
• VMware USB Pen
• Teradici Stress Ball
• Acronis Stress Yellow Man/Ball
• Mints from Quest Software, Brocade and Terremark
• Intel Cloud Computing Key ring
• Something from EMC which Mike cannot identify
• Verizon Mini Etch-a-Sketch
• Veeam Bouncy Ball that flashes
• Virtual Instruments Bouncy Ball that flashes
• F5 Stress Ball
• Wyse Balsawood Glider

To submit a entry, follow this link that will take you to the raffle on Mike’s blog.  Click on the Donate button below the picture of the VMworld 2010 backpack and donate $1.99 via Paypal.  Mike will draw the names out of a virtual hat sometime shortly after December 17th and the bag will hopefully be delivered on or around Christmas Day.  All proceeds from the raffle will benefit UNICEF.

Thanks Mike for giving away such an awesome prize.  And for those few who weren’t able to make it to VMworld this year, such as myself, this gives us a great chance to get our hands some of the swag handed out at this years event.

Update (11/01/10): NetApp has added some additional swag to the VMworld 2010 SwagBag.

• NetApp bicycle repair kit
• NetApp branded x-mini II travel speaker
• NetApp logo polo shirt (XL in grey)
• NetApp logo baseball cap

Before I start telling you about my call with Kaviza today, I think it’s best to give you a little background on the environment that I plan on installing Kaviza in.  I will be installing the Kaviza kMGR virtual appliance on ESX 4.0 U1 using the local storage on the ESX host for now.  As for virtual desktops, I will be using a Windows 7 template that we are currently working on deploying to our user environment.

Finally, after a week of waiting, I get to install the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution in my environment.  The first thing you need to do is download the kMGR virtual appliance from the Kaviza website.  You can register with Kaviza which will give you access to both documentation and software which you can download and try in your own environment.  Once you have the correct files downloaded for your particular hypervisor (ESX, XenServer), you can import the OVF file into vCenter by using the Deploy OVF Template option located under the File menu.  I accepted most of the default options and in a matter of a few seconds I had the Kaviza kMGR virtual appliance deployed in my ESX environment.  The kMGR appliance consumes 70GB of space in your datastore.  Make sure you take this into account when choosing a location for the kMGR appliance and future desktop templates/images.

I powered on the kMGR and the only task that I needed to perform from inside the vi editor (it appears to run on a Ubuntu platform) was to set a static IP address.  Once done, I restarted the virtual appliance and was able to connect to the Kaviza console web interface.  Once there, you have a setup process that you must go through that include connecting to your hypervisor and specifying the datastore and network, choosing a user database (e.g. Active Directory), setting up a new Kaviza grid or connecting to an existing one and vCenter integration.  All of this is documented very well in the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box Installation Guide.pdf located in the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box version 3.1 deployment docs.zip download.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as I got today.  My next step is to import (P2V) a Windows 7 image into ESX so that I can then import it into Kaviza as a desktop template.  I’ve had trouble with performing a P2V of our current Windows 7 image (Ghost) in the past so I’m hoping for better results this time.  In Part 2, I hope to cover the importing of the Windows 7 image and how to create a template inside of Kaviza.