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SafeCopy: My answer to the Mozy changes?

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I got a comment on my recent Mozy post which offered SafeCopy as an alternative to Mozy.  When my current subscription to Mozy ends, I’m certainly in the market for a more favorable solution to meet my needs.  Mozy’s new plans, in my opinion,  do not offer enough space for the price they charge and they limit the number of computers that can connect to an account .   I’d never heard of SafeCopy and so I headed to their website to check them out.

First, SafeCopy looks a lot like Mozy on the surface.  I immediately see that they are cross platform with both Windows and Mac compatibility, but they also list iPhone.  Digging a bit deeper, I have found that SafeCopy also has a search engine feature for finding and retrieving your data online and thus all your files are from the iPhone or other mobile phone.  I have to say, the Google-style search for my backup is cool.  The online demo shows that you can see versioning of the individual files, also.   Like Mozy, the backups are encrypted.  SafeCopy uses 448-bit Blowfish encryption according to their website.  

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DatacenterNewsStorage

A Secure budget VMware LAB Environment – Step one – Design

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

I recently was challenged with designing a VMware Environment for a team within a existing network.

I had some requirements.

I needed to keep the cost low, meaning I could propose some license costs, but I had to use existing backed storage and server’s with a little ram.

I had ten users that needed to use Visual Studio with dual monitor’s within Windows 7 , but had older computer resources. Staff needed a Environment to that was separated from Production. Staff had a SQL requirement to use in conjunction with Visual Studio in a separated Environment.

I had the following hardware.

A FC San in main Environment.
A VMware View cluster in main Environment

A Hardware Pool with the following.

A Dell MD100 with 14 300GB 10k disk, & PCIe Hardware Raid card.
Two Dell 2950’s.
A Dell 2850.
A Dell 2650.

I decided to take the 2850 and make it a openfiler box, connected to the Dell MD1000.

I perposed,the following new hardware for the Lab.

Additional Ram for the three hosts, and the open filer box. I would recommend NFS for ease of use.
A SMB Switch, with enough ports, that has Jumbo Frame and LACP support. The switch had to support the proper VLAN’s for the Lab. NFS, iSCSI, etc.
VMware vSphere, vCenter and Windows Licensing.

No redundant requirements ( IE switch, or storage at this time ) , backup’s were decided to be done outside of this scope.

My Thought process was to take the above hardware and create the needed environment, the challenge was to deliver the VMware View performance and VMware vSphere cluster performance with the above hardware. Additionally, I needed to provide a segmented secure network, with controlled access in and out.





In this first configuration, I recommended a configuration using a firewall both internal to the segmented network, but going into the main Network.

To me this is a secure solution, but in this case the view desktop’s would be on the main domain, and need to be VLAN’D separately off. This would require VLAN access security, as well as a firewall configuration. 
    To get the VMware View desktop’s access into the segmented network, routes would need to be fined.

In this configuration I setup two Trunked ports from the Segmented Network, into the VMware View Hosts. This allows the VMware View Desktop’s to be on the Segmented domain.
This would require configuration of Etherchannel on the switches, and a separated vSwitch/vDS that the interfaces would be plugged into on each host. Additionally, a recommendation of using a 1000v Cisco vSwitch with VLAN security, or vShield zones.

Thoughts on each? Other recommendations? Any recommendations to improve each of the above? I’d love to see some comments. Which would you pick, and why?

DM me, or e-mail me.

If you want to see my Prof of Openfiler concept, See my Post:

Lab Powered by vSphere OpenFiler And NFS – A view from Veeam Monitor

Next:  backup planning.

UPDATE: To clarify some below questions.

The VMware view host server’s on the right diagram are FC connected to a Enterprise San. the desktop’s will not saturate the San in term’s of I/O.
I also made the recommendation to max the memory on one of the two server’s.

The openfiler box is using raid 10, with 1 hot spare.

A VMware essentials bundle was recommend for in the lab. A cluster will be defined, as two hosts are vmotion compatible.

Roger L

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DatacenterPersonalProjectsStorage

Preserving and protecting old (and new) photos

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Quite a while ago, I began trying to scan old family photos and preserve them.  Some were in pretty rough shape and took a while to restore and fill in blemishes to the prints.  Most were in very good shape, though, so I was able to go through some of my family’s oldest photos and get those back into shape rather quickly.

That was last year.  My photo preservation project has been pretty idle for the past year, but it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it from time to time.  I’m thankful to have those photos, to be able to show them with my daughter and future generations and to have digital files to make prints from.

After tackling some of our family’s historical photos, I looked at my file of snapshots from my younger years and even early in my marriage – a time before we had digital cameras.  Two things are evident – we take lots more photos with the digital cameras than back in the film days and, secondly, prints are easy to get very disorganized.

What I am also struggling with is the best way to store and share these scans.  As of today, the most sharing that has happened with the scans is loading them to Facebook or Geni.com.  Unfortunately, neither site stores the photos in high-resolution (as far as I can tell) for sharing with others, so they aren’t print quality.   I don’t have my solution yet for this, but I suspect I’ll use something similar to Gallery, which I have used before for personal photo galleries prior to moving everything to PicasaWeb.

My project so far has left me with a few lessons learned and a few tips to share for you if you’re looking to preserve your family’s historical photos as well as your current snapshots.

Tip One – Organize your photos
The first tip is to start with organized files of photos.  This will greatly aid you once the photos are digitized and I’ll leave it at that.  If you have photos grouped before scanning, you’ll have a much easier time with the digital files once they are scanned.  One thing I’ve also been trying to do is get dates of events with groups of photos (if possible).  This additional information (metadata) will help a lot once you move from scanning to cataloging your photos (in Picasa or iPhoto or whatever photo management software you prefer).

Tip Two – Choose the best scanner for the job…
Before you say “no duh”, there are a few interesting tid-bits.  Scanners come in lots of shapes and sizes.  I picked up a $100 CanoScan a few years ago which is a great portable scanner.  For documents, I use the document feeder and scanner on my HP Officejet.

What I have been missing is a great portable scanner which you can use without a computer and I found a very good deal on one in December.  Radio Shack has previous generation Pandigital Photolink 4″x6″ photo scanners on clearance for only $15 at its company stores (company stores and not franchise stores — I found out in my own experience that franchisees do not honor the clearance price).  The Pandigital scanners are great because they scan directly to an SD card and do not require a computer and they only take a few second per print to scan them, as opposed to putting photos on a flat bed, previewing them, scanning in the images individually and naming them on a computer.  These Pandigital scanners are ultra-portable and come in a variety of sizes from 4″x6″ up to 8.5″x11″ (larger scanners are capable of scanning smaller prints, by the way).

My coworker, Jamie, purchased one of the larger 8.5″x11″ earlier in the year and raved about how good it worked for his snapshots.  On his advice, I began looking at these.  The 8.5″x11″ model is available from Amazon for $99.   I have found Kodak also makes a simliar scanner.

Tip Three – Catalog the scans
When I say catalog the scans, I don’t just mean to import them into iPhoto or Picasa and forget about them.  Cataloging, as any librarian will tell you, is a lot more than just collecting things.  It involves a process of categorizing, organizing and sorting through your items and assembling them in a way that you can search an easily find a particular subject.

Lifehacker recommends that you also spend the time to delete and purge any unwanted digital photos.  As I mentioned earlier, this is a big issue because most of us snap far more photos now with our digital cameras than taking the time to get good photos from back in the film days.  We don’t need ten out of focus photos of weird rock formations.

Tip Four – Archive your photos
Once you have assembled a good catalog of your photos, archiving becomes a big deal.  You have a lot invested in your library now and so you want to protect both the images and their metadata.  There are a lot of ways to go here, so what works for me may not work best for you.

Online backup is my first recommendation here.  If its not your first time on my site, you’ve probably heard me talk about Mozy and other online backup solutions.  These are my preferred backup method for anything you want to survive a fire.  #1 – Online backup moves your data offsite, which is a hallmark of backup strategy.  #2 – Online backup generally provides online download or offline download as part of its service.  #3 – Most services are generally cheap – Mozy, for instance, is $59 per year per computer.  I keep my library on one computer, so it costs me less than $5 per month — less than one Starbucks drink.

External hard drives would be my second recommendation.  These provide quick and easy recovery from a hard drive crash or accidental deletion.  Most external hard drives come with some sort of backup software — and if not — Windows has Windows Backup and the Mac has Time Machine.  I would recommend making it something automatically schedule and not something you must remember to do — because we are all human and forget.

Archival disks would be my third recommendation.  I don’t think that any one backup method is sufficient.  For instance, I use Mozy and Time Machine to backup my Macs at home.  The two protect differently and from different threats.  Mozy is for the most important — cannot part with this if my house burns down — data.  Time Machine is for the oh crap, my hard drive crashed situations (the external hard drive method).  In the same way, I think investing in Archival CD or DVD media is smart.  Once you create collections in your library, move these files onto archival media and then store them with your other valuables — offsite — in a safety deposit box or other form of offsite storage.  Ritz Camera has a nice description of Archival disks and why they are better than regular CD or DVD media.  (They also have a good set of tips for preserving photo prints). I recommend this because these have a greater chance of surviving for future generations.  And of course, keeping your archival media current is crucial.  Whatever replaces DVD’s as a format — you should move your data to that format in the future.  Same with file formats (but that’s a bigger discussion).  And most importantly – label these archival disks!

More Tips:

By no means am I an expert.  These sites have some great advice on the subject and so I want to share these links and articles with you:

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DatacenterHome TechStorage

Mozy to the rescue – a review of online backup

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

I’ve written a few times about online backup services and options.  I have setup Peer to Peer backup for a friend of mine using Crashplan, but primarily for my own use, I use Mozy.  I also setup a Mozy account for my good friend Tammy  to keep her photos and other files backed up on an aging eMachine desktop.  Shortly before Thanksgiving, the eMachine died an unceremonious death.   Initally alarmed, her daughter asked “Oh no! What about all the photos?”  Tammy, unworried about it says, “Don’t worry, Philip set something up for that – its all protected.”  Mozy to the rescue.

Literally, what better advertisement for Mozy could there be?  Or really for any online backup service?  That is the beauty of them – you set them and forget them and when the time comes, the only important thing you need to remember is your username and password to recover everything.

After talking it over, Tammy and her husband decided to pick up new computers on Black Friday and I setup those up the following week.  The first thing I installed upon booting up the system was Mozy and after installing, restore was as simple as choosing which files to restore (all of them) and then clicking the button.  A few short hours later, all the files were restored and Tammy was back in business.

There were a few things that cropped up.  First, the original eMachine computer was Windows XP and the replacement was Windows 7, so the default user directories had changed.  Upon restore, the files were place in a long folder hive of the original folder names.  That was easy to cleanup by moving the files.

The second thing was that little of Tammy’s data was resident on the computer.  They use email through HTC (my employer) and so all of their email is stored in Google’s cloud – so that didn’t need to be restored.  As a matter of fact, the GMail interface for sccoast.net made it very simple to switch to.  They no longer use a desktop email client.  One of them mentioned that they get lots of spam in this account, so I took a few minutes to create some filter rules to move a lot of the bulk offers they were receiving into subfolders in the webmail.  This cleaned up the Inbox to a useable form and moved all their coupons and offers into a separate folder.  With 7GB+ of data storage, nothing had to be deleted – just moved out of the way.

Required Disclosure:
The opinions expressed here are strictly personal opinions authored by Philip Sellers, an employee of HTC (Horry Telephone Cooperative, Inc.) and/or its subsidiaries.  Any reference to, discussion of, or content regarding HTC and/or its subsidiaries has not been reviewed, approved, or authorized by HTC and/or its subsidiaries before such content is posted and does not represent HTC and/or its subsidiaries or its views and opinions in any way.

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DatacenterNewsStorage

View Brainstorm – Looking for Current VMware View Customer’s , first eighteen questions

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

Earlier I had posted about view 4.5 design considerations, I had a couple of replies, so I thought I would widen the quarry.

I want to hear from people running VMware View. I have a ton of questions, but here is the first eighteen I could think of.

Below is my brainstorm off the top.

  1. How did you meet your I/O requirements on the storage side?
  2. Are you using a Cache card on your storage?
  3. Did you go 10GB at the same time?
  4. What did you use to get a View I/O estimate?
  5. How did you build / Configure your cluster? IE, scale up or out?
  6. Did you use blade vs Rack?
  7. What version of vSphere are you on?
  8. What build of vSphere are you on?
  9. What type of consolidation ratio do you have?
  10. How could you improve that?
  11. What challenges did you face on the AV side?
  12. What broker as you using, and why?
  13. What desktop / terminal configuration are you using?
  14. Anyone using Multi Monitor?
  15. Are you using single sign-on?
  16. Anyone using view in healthcare?
  17. Anyone using IPad’s?
  18. If so, what challenges are you, did you face?

I am looking for a lot of input, so please reply!

Also, if I am missing questions, please let me know!

Thanks!

Roger L.

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DatacenterNewsStorage

Thinking Virtual , moving from 2010 to 2011.

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

It is 2010, almost 2011. This year at VMworld the message was as much or more cloud that it was in 09. But I often find my self, am I thinking virtual?

Let’s back up, what is it to think virtual, by looking at the term as it is defined.

“
The term virtual is a concept applied in many fields with somewhat differing connotations, and also, differing denotations.
The term has been defined in philosophy as “that which is not real” but may display the salient qualities of the real. Colloquially, ‘virtual’ is used to mean almost, particularly when used in the adverbial form e.g. “That’s virtually [almost] impossible””

Well, that is no help at all, what I mean in this case, is when looking at a project, or a  problem, do I think phyiscal in the sense, of application, desktop, server, or am I thinking about current methods? ( virtual )

Today, I am running Physical desktop’s, when my anti virus needs a subscription update, do I think about the fact that if I deploy view, in the future, I might need to reevaluate my anti virus? When I talk to a vendor about firewall’s, do I ask if they have a plans to make a VMware appliance? When I talk to a Security vendor about IPS / IDS , do I ask how it works if my servers are virtualized, or even desktop’s?

Are the software devloper’s thinking virtual? Are the people making insurance software thinking virtual, banking software? What about Healthcare, are the EMR, EHR developer’s thinking virtual?

Without them on board, what kind of challenges does something like vCD in the future?

Maybe, no one else stuggles to shake the troditional Physical world, who knows?

My thoughts are, that to move forward in 2010, and move into 2011, we need to align our thinking, as we align disks in the storage world.

I would like people’s commends and views please.

Roger L.

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DatacenterStorageVMworld

VMworld 2010 – Product Spotlight – Xangati

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

 

I had a chance for a  private meeting with Xangati on Thursday of last week. With the push for Cloud, and Virtual Desktop’s in today’s market, it can be challenging to trouble shot issues without something that allows viability into area’s that Virtual Center cannot report / Chart on. On a basic note, Xangati allows use of advanced metric’s and gives you visibility to the protocol level, allowing you to find your bottleneck, or problems, if present.

 

Why Xangati ?

Well Kendrick Coleman has recently released a blog post: titled Xangati Releases a Top 10 Free Tool and it qualified Xangati  for his Top 10 Free Tools list

Plus, Xangati made a finalist for the Best of VMworld 2010 Awards

 

Therefore, I decided to do a Personal Interview, see below.

 

 

A Overview from the Xangati Website.

“

Xangati for ESX is a line of virtual appliances providing real-time, continuous visibility into the otherwise invisible activity of a VMware ESX/ESXi host, its virtual machines (VMs) and the infrastructure resources they use. Xangati for ESX products uniquely display the relationships between your VMs and other resources on your infrastructure in a continuous manner to answer questions including:

  • What is a VM doing?
  • What application is it running and how much CPU and memory is it using?
  • What storage is being accessed and what is the latency?
  • Which end users are accessing the VM?

Xangati for ESX comes in two versions, both providing real-time, continuous visibility into the complex interactions between a VM and everything it interacts with:

Xangati for ESX: Free tool designed for smaller scale environments with only a few ESX/ESXi hosts providing:

  • Auto discovery and naming of ESX/ESXi’s VMs and applications
  • Continuous, real-time visibility into over 100 metrics on an ESX/ESXi host and its VMs activity including communications, CPU, memory, disk and storage latency
  • DVR recording and replaying of activity with scroll-bar
  • Visibility into vSwitch communications
  • 12 weeks of historical reporting on named identities

Watch a Quick 2-minute Video of Xangati for ESX UI Overview

Xangati for ESX Pro: Extends the visibility offered by Xangati for ESX with integration to VMware vCenter so alarms/alerts will automatically trigger DVR recordings. Xangati for ESX Pro also supports more named identities and offers integration to Xangati Management Dashboards for visibility across ESX/ESXi hosts and physical infrastructure. Additional features licensable for $299 an ESX/ESXi processor include:

  • DVR recordings triggered by vCenter alerts
  • Additional named identities for reporting
  • Integration with Xangati Management Dashboards for enterprise-wide visibility across multiple ESX/ESXi hosts and physical infrastructure”

Sure sure, but Admin’s like my self, want something you can use in a useful manner. So I found a video of the dashboard.

 

Xangati Management Dashboard Introduction

 

Dashboard Navigation

 

I hope that gives you a view into the Xangati world, and also help’s you manager & trouble shoot your VMware environment.

See It Now

Xangati for ESX: The best free VMware visibility and troubleshooting tool!

 

Roger L.

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DatacenterStorageVMworld

Win my way to VMWorld 2010, the hard way via the Gestalt IT “Get Away to VMworld” Contest Entry.

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

 

This is in response to the Gestalt IT "Get Away to VMworld" Contest Entry. I have quoted and indented the contest post below, with my response below it.

“Storage virtualization has become a central component of the modern data center, and the annual VMworld gathering in San Francisco has become the central event for virtualization-related companies. Although focused on VMware, the conference draws many companies. And the labs and sessions are really awesome! But not everyone can attend this must-go event. It’s fairly expensive ($1745 to register!) and reasonable airfare to SFO is offset by crazy hotel prices.

We at Gestalt IT want to help deserving folks get to this conference. We already paid for airfare for the winner of the Boche.net pass giveaway, but we can do more. So we contacted some of our favorite technology companies about sponsoring a contest to send another deserving person to the show!

The Contest: Get Away to VMworld

clip_image001

Here’s the deal: Thanks to our generous sponsors (Xsigo and Symantec), we’ll pay airfare, hotel, and registration for one lucky and deserving person out there to attend VMworld San Francisco 2010! That’s right – you get to go to VMworld for free!

Our travel agent will arrange airfare and hotel and we’ll get you set up with a full conference pass, giving you access to everything the show has to offer. Sound good?

The Catch: Pay It Forward

There’s always a catch, right? Inspired by winner Greg Stuart‘s desire to contribute to the community, we’re not just going to pick a winner at random. We’re going to pick the person who presents the best case for themselves.

Entrants must explain how they plan to “pay it forward” if they get to go to VMworld. Will you start a blog? Write some tutorials? Contribute to a forum or online community? Present to your local VMUG? Get creative and spread the wealth of knowledge you get from the event!

Our panel of judges is made up of none other than the most-excellent roster of past Tech Field Day delegates! They’ve proven themselves to be independent-minded and knowledgeable, and we’re sure that they will pick the best entry!

Thank You, Symantec and Xsigo!

clip_image003clip_image004

We want to take a moment to recognize Symantec and Xsigo and thank them for sponsoring this contest. It would not be possible without their support. We encourage you to stop by at the show, check out what they have at their booths, and thank them for their help making this happen. Both have some cool stuff up their sleeves, and are well-worth checking out!

One More Thing

clip_image005

If you look around at technology-oriented shows, one thing is very clear: The field of techies isn’t all that diverse. We need to work harder to attract a wider group of young people to study science, technology, engineering, and math. That’s why we’ve also made a donation through Donors Choose to a cool classroom project in Arizona that teaches engineering to girls through robotics. We encourage you to support this and other “STEM” projects in your local schools!

We’ve also suggested that you Donate Your Swag to School Kids In Need, as suggested by Kevin Houston. When you get home from VMworld, consider filling up the bags you get with school supplies and bringing them to your local school building. I’m sure they can find someone who needs the help!

How To Enter

Ok, so how can you enter this contest? Here are the simple steps:

1. Consider how attending VMworld would help you and the broader community

2. Fill out the contest entry form

3. Plan on stopping by the Symantec and Xsigo booths at the show and thanking them for their support

4. Consider publicizing the contest by sharing this article with friends and associates

5. Consider subscribing to Gestalt IT with RSS, by email, on Twitter, or in iTunes

6. Consider supporting DonorsChoose.org and donating your swag to school kids in need

We look forward to hearing from you!

Update: You have through Tuesday, August 10 to enter. The winner will be announced on the VMware Community Roundtable Podcast, Wednesday August 11 at noon Pacific time!

The Fine Print

There’s always some fine print, right? Here’s ours:

Contests like this aren’t allowed everywhere. This one is void in locations where it would be illegal or overly restricted.

We’re paying for one roundtrip air ticket from one of the major airports near you to SFO or another airport in the San Francisco area. We’re also paying for three nights at a hotel within 1 mile of the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The event runs August 30 through September 2, so we expect that’s when you’ll be there. Finally, we’ll pay for one conference pass. You can bring along a guest if you like, but you’ll have to pay their own way.

Sorry, but we can’t afford first class flights and the Ritz. Our travel agent will do their best to accommodate your travel needs, but we’re on a budget here. We stayed at the Mosser last year, and it may be small but it’s really convenient!

International winners must stay over Saturday night to make the airfare work. They might need to pay for a fourth hotel night themselves. And we might need to disqualify entries if the travel costs would break our budget. Sorry again!”

Source http://gestaltit.com/featured/top/stephen/announcing-gestalt-vmworld-contest/

Below is my entry;

Hello,

My name is Roger Lund. As you may or may not know, I blog on the following site, http://itblog.rogerlund.net

I have also formed an unofficial VMware user group here in St. Cloud Minnesota. We have been doing this since before vSphere came out. I found a couple of guy’s to help forum the group. And it is working well , http://centralmnit.ning.com/ We are working on having our next group meeting after VMworld, ( was thinking Sep 2 if i can’t make it )

As you know from my blog http://itblog.rogerlund.net I blog a good deal, as time permits, and even though I was unable to make VMworld 2009, San Francisco last time I blogged the following

See below.

http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2009/09/vmworld-2009-day-1-part-2-last-nights.html

http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2009/09/vmworld-2009-san-francisco-day-3-early.html

http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2009/09/vmworld-2009-san-francisco-day-3-late.html

http://itblog.rogerlund.net/2009/09/vmworld-2009-san-francisco-day-4-early.html

If I was able to attend, I would spend a great deal of time doing video and pod cast’s, getting some great photos of the event etc, and blogging the whole event.

What else would I learn or befit from for going?

Social networking: Building contacts, for my blogging, and for user group events.

Gathering Material’s for the user group: getting books, shirts and things to give away for the user groups.

Education: at some point I want to get my VCP, I need to do this myself, through self-provided education, since I have no work founds, or personal founds to do so.

Plus it would be fun to meet some of the great minds in the field.

Why don’t I go and pay my own way?

I have zero founding, zero as in none from work, I do not consult, and do not have the personal founds to do this.

A bit about me and why I want to be active in the community and blog sphere.

I feel that communication is the one of the largest things the IT world struggles with, and that by doing everything I can to educate others, and myself, I am helping IT overall. By blogging, I am both educating myself, and documenting facts for others to find. By putting together local groups, I am helping the community, helping others discuss what works and what does not work, and strengthening the community at the same time. Being located in St. Cloud MN, a town of over 60k people, it is still over an hour one way drive for the only Official VMware user group in the state. and the twin cities is really the only place offering training for VMware. Since we are located in St. Cloud MN, are in the center of the state, we are ideally located for user groups.

I do have not and do not plan on every charging for these user groups or my blog; I feel it is a service I can offer the community.

Heck, if I had the founding and or time (two little kids at home) I would write a book and make it free online, and I have been asked when I will have a book out before. 🙂

Please, consider me, as if for no other reason, than to help me help the community, both by the benefiting the user group, and my blogging.

Roger L.

EDIT : please RT this for me via twitter.

 

RT : @rogerlund the Gestalt IT Get Away to VMworld Contest Entry @GestaltIT http://bit.ly/bXqkxZ

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DatacenterNewsStorage

VMWare vSphere ESXi 4.1, USB Pass-Through Video Configuration Example.

by Roger Lund
written by Roger Lund

 

I was asked a question on USB pass-through and ESXi 4.1.

Have I used it and how do you configure it?

Since the answer was no, I wanted to do it my self, so here is a video showing that extract thing.

usb-passthrough

Here are some related KB’s.

USB support for ESX/ESXi 4.1

KB Article: 1022290

Supported USB device models for passthrough from an ESX or ESXi host to a virtual machine

KB Article: 1021345

 

And if you haven’t had a chance to read up on it, here are some related Blog Posts

 

USB passthrough in vSphere 4.1

Source http://vstorage.wordpress.com

 

VMware vSphere 4.1 – USB Pass-through

Source http://pricklytech.wordpress.com

 

vSphere 4.1 USB passthrough

Source http://vbl0g.blogspot.com

 

using usb pass-through in vsphere 4.1

Source http://vninja.net

 

Roger L.

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AppleHome TechPersonal

Apple releases new Mac Mini with HDMI

by Philip Sellers
written by Philip Sellers

Apple quietly released a revision to the Mac Mini this morning while updating the online store.  The new version features a new unibody Aluminum enclosure for the Mac Mini, a slimmed profile, and best of all HDMI — making it the first Mac with a native HDMI port.

I had been contemplating getting a Mac Mini to replace my aging Apple TV at home and to offer us the capability of watching NetFlix or Hulu directly on our TV.   I had found dongle cables to offer video and audio to HDMI on the last revision of Mac Mini and was just waiting primarily on our house build to get going to see how our money looked as we were finishing the project.  I have been trying to be very good about my technology purchases – since I felt like we had higher priorities.

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