View the VMworld 2010 San Francisco Content Catalog, or the Copenhagen Content Catalog to learn more about the sessions, labs and speakers that make VMworld the “must-attend” event of the year.

With the broadest variety of breakout sessions ever offered, you can dive deep into the heart of virtualization and cloud computing with topics like:

Future Direction of Networking Virtualization

Troubleshooting Using esxtop for Advanced Users

New Storage Technologies
And discover new technologies around the IT-as-a-service concept with sessions like:

Cloud 101: What’s Real, What’s Relevant for Enterprise IT, and What Role Does VMware Play
Technical Deep Dive: vCenter Chargeback

Anyone who has been to VMworld knows that they give you a great backpack to carry all your stuff around and to put all of the freebies in (and there are a lot).

Last years backpack was green and had loads of pockets, my only dissapointment with it was that the tassles for the zips were leather, and broke easily. Most of us ended swapping them out for key chain rings and then the backpack was perfect. Mine has been across the globe with me over the last year and prooved invaluable!

John Troyer and Luke Kilpatrick check it out in this video! It’s grey too!

PHD Virtual’s VBA™ Architecture uses virtual appliances to manage the backup process, requiring no additional infrastructure, eliminating the use of proxy servers and removing the risk of an incomplete or failed backup.
Quality performance and future scalability is an important component when considering a backup solution.

Join us July 14 at 2PM EDT as we provide a live demo of our backup solutions highlighting key PHD features:

• TrueDeDup™ Technology: PHD’s source-side data de-duplication capability, results in much lower disk utilization, faster backups, and less network I/O traffic
• Concurrent data streams: PHD provides the capability to backup data using up to 16 concurrent streams, resulting in faster backups to meet your shrinking backup window.
• Service Console not used for backups and restores: Unlike service console based solutions which can only access a fraction of host resources PHD Virtual has access to the full host resources enabling faster backups and restores.

This video first came to my attention via David Davis’ VMwareVideos blog. On June 11 at the Charlotte Regional VMware user group (VMUG) meeting, one of the sessions David recorded was presented by Mike DiPetrillo of VMware (his blog is at mikedipetrillo.com). Mike has been with VMware 8+ years and is a Principle SE there where he is a vCloud evangelist.

One of the most controversial parts of Mike’s presentation is when he says that vCloud is really sold to the CIO and the message to the IT group is that you will have to change in order to keep your job. In other words, “the cloud” will assimilate the infrastructure as we know it and IT people will have to adapt to that, improving their skill set, in order to move to different roles in the IT organization where they can accomplish the more important IT projects with real ROI (not just maintaining the SAN LUNs, or whatever they do).

Watch the video to hear the vCloud message for yourself!

See more of David’s videos at VMwareVideos.com!

This week the team at PHD Virtual are inviting community members to attend a FREE webinar looking at PHD Virtual’s Backup for VMware ESX in more detail.

PHD Virtual’s VBA™ Architecture results in an environment without a single point of failure. By eliminating the use of proxy servers, eliminating the risk of an incomplete or failed backup, and the inability to restore data when it is critically needed, while waiting for the proxy server to become operational.

Everyone knows that ensuring you have a good backup is important, and even more important is a successful restore. PHD’s SureRestore™ Technology provides you with the confidence and assurance in the event you have to restore – that your data will be there when you need it.

SureRestore™ Technology not only ensures that the backup is created without errors, but also increases your confidence in a successful restore.

How does SureRestore™ Technology work?

• By providing continuous data verification: data integrity is verified during both the backup and restore operations.
• Running background verification of data while it is resident on the backup storage device. If data inconsistencies are discovered, in many cases they can be fixed without user intervention.
• Proper implementation of the Changed Block Tracking API

Join PHD Virtual on Wednesday, June 16 at 2pm EST for the first installment of a 3 part webinar series tackling your concerns on the key areas of Reliability, Performance, and Security.

Today’s focus was around virtual datacenters, with announcements for XenServer including PHD Backup for Xenserver!

Citrix also announced the availability of XenServer 5.6, which introduces a number of new features, including memory overcommitment that Citrix calls “Dynamic Memory Management”, host power management, role-based administration, snapshots support and self-service provisioning through a web-based portal.

In this video Manu Chauhan demonstrates the XenClient at Citrix Synergy 2010.

Citrix Synergy takes place this year in San Francisco. Although it started this Monday, the first two days are the Partner Conference dedicated to the Citrix Technology Professionals, the Citrix partners and other groups.

Today and tomorrow the conference will be open to the general public with keynotes from Mark Templeton (Citrix’s President and CEO), Michael Dell (Dell’s Chairman and CEO), Brad Anderson (Microsoft’s Corporate Vice president of the Management and Services Division) and Frank Gens (IDC’s Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst).

Citrix is expected to announce the beta availability of XenClient as confirmed by early feedbacks already published yesterday evening by partners and attendees.

PHD Virtual are also at Citrix Synergy at booth #600!

Drop in an visit us and you can check out PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer, and also be in with a chance to win an iPad!

Last Thursday myself and Alex Mittell from PHD Virtual Technoligies attended the London VMUG (VMware User Group), which was held at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and sponsored by RES Software.

There were many usual suspects from the vistualization community there, and we got to chat to loads of them including: Simon Seagrave, Steve Chambers, Daniel Eason, Jane Rimmer, Simon Long, Doug Hazelman, Ricky El-Qasem, and Mike Laverick.

One thing Alex focused on in our discussions is the major issue he recently discovered with VMware’s CBT, which corrupts backups done with software packages that have not implemented a specific workaround.

You can find out more about this CBT issue on Tom Howarth’s blog post!

You can also see the pics I took on the VMSpotlight Facebook page!

Register for VMworld 2010 before the 23rd of July to take advantage of the $250/€200 early bird discount!

VMworld is brought to you by VMware, and provides unparalleled access to educational opportunities that will show you how to reduce IT complexity, and enable IT as a service through virtualization and cloud computing.

Join the event to:

Engage
Meet one on one with Knowledge Experts or join group discussions to learn and share with peers and industry experts alike.

Learn
Select from more than 150 Breakout Sessions and Hands on Labs that cover topics such as leveraging the public cloud, virtualizing enterprise applications and managing desktops as a service.

Network
Visit industry-leading, technology partners showcasing complementary solutions that can help you dramatically reduce your IT complexity. Don’t miss out on your savings – or the education and training opportunities found at VMworld 2010.