Earlier this week VMware’s ‘Call For Papers’ for VMworld 2010 was announced.

To submit a paper for consideration just log onto the VMworld portal to enter the required details.

Competition for acceptance each year is always tough so give yourself the good chance of success by choosing a topical subject, and have your submission tripple checked!

This document was released a few weeks ago and it’s just been pointed out that we havn’t got it up here on our blog!

esXpress 3.5 by PHD Virtual uses multiple virtual backup appliances (VBA’s) to provide highly scalable, high throughput, simultaneous de‐duplicated backups of virtual machines. The use of de‐duplication technology in all backups, which are performed source side at the block level mean that backups are fast and storage efficient. One highly unique feature of the esXpress product is the ability to restore virtual machine backups without requiring the esXpress software installed. The restore mechanism is built into the backup itself making it highly portable as well as providing the simplest and most versatile restore process in the market.

For more information on esXpress 3.5 product visit: http://www.phdvirtual.com/products/esxpress-virtual‐backup

To download a free trial of esXpress 3.5 please visit: http://phdvirtual.com/register

The document available for download from the link below compares esXpress 3.5 against VMware Data Recovery 1.0, Vizioncore vRanger Pro 3.2.8.1, and Veeam Backup & Replication 3.1.

Download the document HERE.

This Tuesday virtualization knowledge buffs Xtravirt published their review of esXpress 3.5!

The review was written by technical author Peter Grant and is suitable for people at the level of “Technical – Novice”.

The main sections in the review include:

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Features and Capabilities
4. Gotchas / Troubleshooting
5. Licensing
6. Summary
7. Useful References

You can view the review here:  http://xtravirt.com/node/182

Virtualization analysts/consultants Xtravirt have now joined the Twitter community. They specialize in creation of original, premier quality content for the virtualization industry that is unbiased.

You can follow them here: @Xtravirt

We already posted on Saturday about virtualization knowledge buffs Xtravirt releasing their new site last week. To got with it they also released their “Presentation Pack 2.0” for FREE.

These 4 individual packs contain extensively detailed icons and imagery to illustrate any virtualization solution.

Each pack contains:

• A PDF with all of the icons indexed for quick reference
• A Microsoft Powerpoint document with all the icons in a format to create stunning presentations in Powerpoint, Word and more.
• A Microsoft Visio Stencil with true vector based versions of the icons, and can be scaled to any degree without image degredation

Packs are categorised into Presentation and Engineering versions.  The presentation images consist of high quality contemporary gloss icons, whereas the Engineering versions have been modified to remove the higher presentation detail, so where plain technical documentation is a must, these fit perfectly.

In total, there are over 350 icons to choose from.

This pack really is a great resource… and it’s FREE!

It’s been coming for a while now and rumors of Xtravirt’s new site launching first surfaced at the end of last month. It now seems that the virtualization knowledge gurus have flipped the switch and turned on their new site!

The new site definitely has a more “user friendly” feel to it. The ‘what’s new’, and ‘popular’ tab definatly help highlight the more functional areas of the site.

We’ll be talking more over the coming weeks about a few new goodies from Xtravirt that will certainly get people talking.

Keep your eyes peeled!

We’re back on the subject of white-papers this afternoon. James Rosikiewicz, Director of Product Management at PHD Virtual wrote this paper back in April covering “Storage Efficiency in a Virtual Environment“.

The paper covers wasted space in tiered storage hierarchies, thin provisioning, data de-duplication, and shriking/growing virtual disks.

It’s a real eye opener, which we suggest you take a look at: here

I thought as esXpress 3.5 was released this week, I’d post an article on the advantages it provides.

The PHD Virtual site has a number of papers listed under the “White-paper” section. The paper I’m focusing on today is called “esXpress Solution Advantage” and was written by Al Muller of am3tech.com.

The article covers how esXpress has helped fill the primary need within virtual environments: “the ability to quickly, securely and dependably backup and restore virtual machines and the critical data contained within them”. It also covers Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs), hot technology concepts, and deployment possibilities.

The paper can be found here: esxpress_whitepaper_al_muller.pdf

PHD Virtual have just released a few White Papers that are very informative.

The latest one I checked out was written by the Director of Engineering – Alex Mittell, and is called “Growing Pains with Virtual Machine Backups”.

It chronicles the history of VM backups, and covers VM Snapshots, custom VMware backup scripts, and the quest for a block level backup solution.

It really is a great insight into the world of VM backups. You can download the paper here: Growing Pains with VM Backups