Add transparency in Visio 2010, finally
Posted: April 16, 2013 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: fill, fill transparent, format shape, line transparent, transparency, transparent, visio, visio 2010 Leave a comment »If your normal Right-click > Format > Fill… doesn’t work to add transparency to a Visio object in 2010, try setting
the same percentage for both Fill and Line. In my quick testing, it didn’t work with some objects. I’ve been looking for this functionality for a bit and finally found a reference to the workaround here.
Registration now open: Dallas–Fort Worth VMUG Meeting
Posted: February 27, 2013 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: dfw, dfw vmug, local meeting, user group, users group, vmug, vmug meetings, vmware user group, vmware users group Leave a comment »
The DFW VMUG has opened registration for its upcoming local meeting.
Sign up here: http://www.vmug.com/e/in/eid=801&source=5
I’d like to thank our meeting sponsors, Nutanix and Zerto, for helping keep the VMUG alive and kicking.
Yours truly will be giving a short presentation at 12:15 about why I worked *not* to have OTV implemented when the bank I worked for stood up its first DR site. I’ll also speak about VXLAN and why it’s not a L2 Data Center Interconnect. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that…
View the complete agenda for the most up-to-date information. We’ll also hold a vBeers following the meeting, so come and say hi.
My favorite virtualization blogs – oh, and go vote yourself!
Posted: February 24, 2013 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: best blogs, favorite blogs, top blogs, virtualization blogs, vmware blogs Leave a comment »
So I just finished voting for my favorite blogs on 
Eric Siebert’s vSphere-land.com. This was my second time voting and I’d like to thank Eric for hosting and TrainSignal for their support of Eric’s work. The VMware army of bloggers is definitely strong, having added dozens of new bloggers this past year as well as the best bloggers posting great new content. What I’d like to do here is run down the list of how I voted just to say thanks to those who’ve contributed so much to my personal success these past 12 months.
2012 in review
Posted: December 30, 2012 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: 2012, year in review Leave a comment »The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 36,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals
Click here to see the complete report.
Having problems with DVD Store 2.1? Perhaps this will help.
Posted: December 10, 2012 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware, Windows | Tags: dave jaffe, ds2, ds21_sqlserver, dvd store, dvd store 2.1, dvdstore, dvdstore 2.1, todd muirhead 1 Comment »Oh…my…goodness. This caused me such a big headache. I’m using DVD Store as a placeholder for a production database in the lab. We’re in the middle of a proof-of-concept of SRM and we’re getting close to the due date. My boss comes to me and says, “We’re close to the due date. Do you want to document the vSphere 5.1 upgrade or work on DVD Store?” Well, having played with DVD Store a bit in the last few weeks and knowing it wasn’t “plug-n-play” for a custom database size, I couldn’t hand the DVD Store project over to a workmate in good conscience. I didn’t find the learning curve for a simple fellow like myself short and to throw someone else knee deep into the project when I’ve already played with it wouldn’t be right. “I’ll work on DVD Store.” I said, dejectedly. You see, I rarely get excited about scripts I don’t write myself. And to be perfectly honest, once I started reading about DVD Store and the amount of work that would have to go into getting a custom-sized database, I put it off as long as possible. Now I knew I was going to be elbow deep in scripts the next day and I wasn’t very happy about it. Here’s what I found out.
Share your VDI opinions to enter contest and win VMware View Train Signal DVDs
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: contest, train signal, vdi, vdi contest, view 5, virtual desktop, virtual desktop infrastructure, vmware view, vmware view 5 Leave a comment »
Manlio Frizzi over at VirtualAleph.blogspot.com has asked me to help spread the word about a contest he’s holding on his blog. It’s actually a great way to start good conversations about Virtual Desktop Infrastructures, how they’re used today, and how they could be made better. To be eligible, Manlio is asking contestants to offer three opinions regarding the state of VDI technology today. With the support of Train Signal, he’s giving away their VMware View 5 Essentials 2 DVD training package to two, yes two, winners. Another cool thing about his contest is that he’s going to donate all the proceeds from his next Google Adsense payment to a cat asylum. Be sure to thank him for this when you enter! You can check out his contest here: VDI CONTEST
A Small Virtual Machine for a Test Lab
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: damn small linux, damn small linux ova, damn small linux ovf, damn small linux virtual machine, dsl, dsl ova, dsl ovf, dsl virtual machine, dsl vm, linux dsl, mobile test, ova, ovf, small virtual machine, small vm, test lab, testlab 13 Comments »Get my 57MB Damn Small Linux OVA here (rename file extension from .doc to .ova): DOWNLOAD
While I’m traveling, I use my laptop as a mobile test lab. To do anything of significance, I like to run two VMware ESXi 5 hosts, vCenter Server 5, a domain controller (both on x64 Windows Server 2008 R2) and for my recent study focus, a NetApp DataONTAP 8.1 simulator, all on VMware Workstation 8. All these things are great, but with “only” 8 GB RAM to pull from, my resources are limited and I’m pushing RAM utilization to the max before I even start running VMs, as you can see below. The only thing saving me is an Intel 320 Series SSD.
2011 in review
Posted: January 2, 2012 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: mike brown, virtual mike brown, virtually mike brown, VirtuallyMikeB, VirtuallyMikeBrown Leave a comment »The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 20 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
I passed the VCP 5 exam!
Posted: December 22, 2011 Filed under: Tid-bits, VMware | Tags: I passed VCP, VCP, VCP 5 Leave a comment »A happy day for me, indeed! I passed my VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5 exam today in Rolla, MIssouri. I’ve been studying vSphere 5 now for about 5 months.
Because my current project is implementing vSphere 4.1 data centers, I was planning on attending the Install, Configure, and Manage course for vSphere 4.1 – I even bought the 4.1 course. Then vSphere 5 came out and my course provider, Global Knowledge, changed my 4.1 course to version 5. That was ok by me. I just changed gears and started studying for vSphere 5. I’ve been able to set up version 5 test labs at different customer sites parallel to our 4.1 implementations. The test labs have all consisted of nested ESXi boxes.
The Quick and Dirty (and Free!) IP Scanner
Posted: November 10, 2011 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: free ip scanner, ip, ip address, ip address scanner, ip scanner Leave a comment »If, on occasion, you need to scan a range of IP addresses for live devices but don’t have access to the many tools for such a task, free or otherwise, memorize this little trick and move on to more important things!
Open a command prompt and type
for /L %i in (1,1,254) do ping -n 1 xxx.xxx.xxx.%i | find “Reply” >> c:\ping.txt
Be sure to replace the x’s in the above command with the correct portion of the IP address range you want to scan.
The output below is what the command looks like when it’s running.
