I've had a bunch of articles published on searchvmware.com recently, be sure and check them out:
The first is a 2 part series on the anatomy of a VM, Part 1 covers virtual hardware and Part 2 covers detailed information on all the files that make up a VM. The next one covers making sure to protect the vCenter Server's database and AD integration to prevent un-authorized access to vCenter Server. Another one on options for cloning virtual machines without vCenter Server. The last one is on 8 critical tasks to complete after virtualization

I've also had a bunch of top 10 lists published on Virtual Strategy magazine's website that I haven't had a chance to publish here yet. so be sure and head on over there and check them out. I just submitted a fresh batch to them so there are more coming.

After resisting social networking for a long time I finally succumbed to Twitter, my Twitter name is EricSiebert if you want to follow me.

This website will be overhauled in the next month, it's been a royal pain in the @ss maintaining it with Dreamweaver, I think I'll switch over to one of the Wordpress style websites like Jason Boche is using.

I've updated my Launchpad with all the latest bloggers and websites. Since I forgot to include him on my last update I'd like to highlight Tom Howarth's website Planet VM as one of the new additions. I've also added a drop-down selection so you can follow some of the many virtualization professionals that use Twitter to talk about all sorts of things including virtualization. The Launchpad is your one stop shop for all the best VMware resources, websites and blogs. If you have any suggestions to add to it please let me know.

Bloggers come and go and new bloggers are popping up all the time so I thought I would re-visit my top 10 list that I did in July. Here's a summary of the changes to the list, you can read the full list here and also quickly access any of the blogs from my Launchpad.

New position - Blog Name - Blogger Name - Previous position
(1) Yellow Bricks (Duncan Epping) - 9
(2) Blog.scottlowe.org (Scott Lowe) - 2
(3) Mike D's Virtualization Blog (Mike DePetrillo) - New
(4) NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof) - 6
(5) SearchServerVirtualization Blog (Various) - 3
(6) Virtualization Pro (Various) - 4
(7) VM /ETC (Rich Brambley) - 5
(8) RTFM Education (Mike Laverick) - 1
(9) Rational Survivability (Christofer Hoff) - 8
(10) Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac) - New

Honorable mention to Jason Boche who has been doing some great work on his new blog, if he keeps it up he's sure to make the list soon (I normally don't add new blogs to the list until they have been at it for at least 3 months.)

I'll be attending this year and in addition to being a speaker for the PO1861 - Vmtn Community Experts panel I have also been selected as one of the judges for Tech Target's Best of VMworld awards. I'm paired up with Scott Lowe to judge the Security and Virtualization category and also participating in the Data Protection and Best of Show categories.

Christofer Hoff has published his slides from his Blackhat presentation on his website. He provides some great information on virtual security in his presentation and I encourage you to check it out. The presentation has been converted to PDF form and the download is about 55MB.

VMware has published an informal document on clustering VirtualCenter 2.5 with Microsoft Clustering Services on their new VIOPS website. This website is new and still growing but already has some great documentation on proven practices in a variety of categories including: Stratgey, Applications, Security, Managerment and Availablility.

I recently wrote 2 articles for SearchVMware.com on installing and configuring ESXi and patching methods for ESXi. If you are new to using ESXi I would encourage you to give them a read and also check out my ESXi links of which I added a dozen new ones today.

If you are going to be at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas be sure and check out session PO1861 - Vmtn Community Experts Panel. A group of experts from the Vmtn community will be answering any and all questions from the audience. Here's your chance to meet some of the people that donate their time to assist others and help moderate the forums. The panel consists of some well-known senior forum members:

Thomas Bryant (Kix1979)
Ken Cline (Ken.Cline)
Steve Beaver (Sbeaver)
Edward Haletky (Texiwill)
Tom Howarth (Tom Howarth)
Eric Siebert (Esiebert7625)

Check out my growing collection of links on ESXi for everything you need to know about it.

I've added 2 new Top 10 lists: Top 10 blogs that VMware administrators must read and Top 10 news and information websites that VMware administrators must visit. I've also revised several of the existing lists so be sure and check them all out.

From the VMware Security blog:

We have recently released an update to the VI3 Security Hardening guide. The main changes are:

- new content for ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, including VirtualCenter plug-ins
- a section specific to hardening for ESXi
- new sections for VM configuration as well as client software
- a greater level of depth for the existing recommendations

To keep things simple, the new version uses the same URL as the previous version:
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/726

I've put together a new Top 10 list featuring the Top 10 free tools that should be in every VMware administrator's toolkit. Check it out!

Check out these recent kb articles that may apply to your environment:

mgmt-vmware restart script might not finish restarting the hostd
Slow performance of virtual machines that use vSMP when running on an ESX Server using certain hardware
After cold migration on ESX Server, virtual disk with snapshot has the wrong CID

I've been updating most of the Top 10 lists so they reflect some of the newer content that is now available. Be sure and check them out, I'm also in the process of adding a bunch of new ones.

Scouring the internet to collect links is hard, time-consuming work and it's difficult sometimes to always find the time. I've just added a batch of about 100 new links to the VMware Links page. I've started noting new links on the page and the date they were added. Enjoy!

I've signed up to be a regular blogger on Tech Target's SearchServerVirtualization.com website. Be sure and check out my blog posts over there. I've also been writing feature articles for SearchVmware.com, check out my latest articles on Snapshots: Part 1 and Part 2

The Launchpad has been re-organized and many new websites have been added to it, check it out. The Launchpad is your one stop shop for all the good VMware-related websites including news, blogs, reference and much more.