Matt McSpirit is a Partner technology Advisor, who works with Microsoft Partners in the UK, enabling them to build practices around Microsoft Virtualization and Management Technologies.  Matt’s role stretches across Server, Desktop and Application Virtualization, along with the associated System Center Management technologies.

Gabe: Matt, why has Microsoft reached out to some bloggers in the community lately?

Matt: “I personally believe that Microsoft is reaching out to the community to have interesting and engaging conversations with them, to be able to debate about the different aspects of Microsoft virtualization, learn from different views and opinions, and show just what Microsoft Virtualization can do today.  It is not about proving that one virtualization platform is better than the other, but more about educating and helping people understand the choices that are out there.”

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by Gabrie van Zanten.  View Comments

I bet many of you that are virtualizing Citrix XenApp, have read the Project VRC whitepapers and want to implement their best practices. Especially in small environments however, it can be a headache creating the design. My biggest headache was and is, is the way I can guarantee no CPU over commit for the pCPU’s XenApp is running on. (more…)

by Gabrie van Zanten.  View Comments

Because of the news of the release of update 2 for VMware ESX 4.0, you may have missed the news about the release of VMware Data Recovery 1.2 on June 10th. The vDR team announceses it with great expectations: “While it is only a dot one increase in terms of version number (don’t ask, long story), all the minor changes that we implemented really do add up to a major change.” (more…)

by Gabrie van Zanten.  View Comments

Friday night I was very pleased to find an e-mail from John Troyer in my mailbox, starting with “I am pleased to announce that you have been designated as a VMware vExpert 2010 and I invite you to participate in our program this year. This award is based on your advocacy of VMware solutions, your contributions to the community of VMware users, and your willingness to share your expertise with others.”

Thank you very much VMware. I’m very proud to again receive this award.

For those of you not familiar with the vExpert program, I can refer you to the “VMware vExpert Award Criteria and Guidelines” website to learn what this title is about.

Can’t say I was completely sure I would make it again this year since I’ve seen so many other people in the VMware community put in so much effort in their blogs and on the communities website. For example, I’m very pleased to see that Arnim van Lieshout has been awarded the vExpert title too. Keep up the good work Arnim.

Fellow vExpert Maish Saidel-Keesing has created a twitter list of all the 2010 vExperts. http://twitter.com/maishsk/vmware-vexpert-2010

by Gabrie van Zanten.  View Comments

Duncan Epping received an email from Hari Krishnan who is a Senior Product Manager at VMware. Hari has created a survey and is looking for feedback from our customers. Not only will you be helping VMware out, you will also help out a charity organisation which will receive $ 10 for every response for the first 1000 respondents. So please donate 15 minutes of your time!

Hello SRM users,

The VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) product team is looking for product feedback on SRM deployments. If you have purchased SRM, we would like to hear from you. Your participation will be very valuable to us and the information you provide will be used to improve the SRM product going forward.

You can provide your feedback by completing the survey. The survey should take no longer than 15 minutes and will expire on June 10, 2010. Please note that this survey is for SRM customers only. Upon completion of the survey, if you are among the 1st 1000 respondents, VMware will donate $10 per response to charity. You will also receive a link to download the electronic copy of Mike Laverick’s book “Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0″ upon completion of the survey.

We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your valuable feedback.

Thank you,

The VMware SRM Team

by Gabrie van Zanten.  View Comments