Didn’t attend last year’s VMworld? Don’t worry: You can download many of the sessions for free from the VMworld website.

VMware has been gradually releasing the sessions on the website. After last year’s conference, VMware chose not to release all of the sessions to non-attendees since many of the sessions would be reused at VMworld Europe 2008. Currently 133 out of the 261 total sessions are available to watch online with 20 more sessions being offered each month up until VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas. VMware-enthusiasts can purchase a “virtual conference pass” for this year’s VMworld, which will provide full online access to sessions and labs.

The sessions reflect VMworld’s focus on enterprise virtualization, but several sessions are available on products like Workstation, Server, VDI and ACE. While some of the sessions are of technical benefit to system administrators, other sessions address topics such as business continuity, planning, business metrics and software lifecycle automation.

Of the free sessions available I’ve noted those I would recommend to system administrators who want to expand their technical knowledge. The sessions below are very good resources on understanding, troubleshooting, securing and tuning ESX and VirtualCenter.

• BC23   Bulletproof VirtualCenter
• IO19   ESX Server CPU Scheduling
• IO43   Top Support Issues and How to Solve Them - Batch 1
• IO44   Top Support Issues and How to Solve Them - Batch 2
• IO45   Tips for Troubleshooting ESX Server 3.x Faults
• TA21   Understanding “Host” and “Guest” Memory Usage
• TA37   VI3 Networking - Advanced Configurations and Troubleshooting
• TA56   Security in a Virtualized Environment
• TA57   Security Architecture Design and Hardening VI3
• TA63   Understanding Performance in a Virtualized Environment
• LAB05 Security Hardening and Monitoring of VMware Infrastructure 3
• LAB08 Troubleshooting VMware Infrastructure 3

To access the sessions, simply go to the VMworld website and create a free account. Once you have registered, click on the sessions and labs link to access the free sessions. You can even access sessions from previous years. Although they are dated, these sessions still have some good, applicable information. Once you click on a session, you can download the audio as an .mp3 file, the slides as a .pdf file or you can watch them together as a flash video.

VMsafe, the new security technology created by VMware Inc., gives virtualization users the ability to monitor and secure virtual machine resources in ways never before possible.

After I wrote a short article on VMsafe last week, I received feedback from Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf, who was at the VMworld conference in Cannes, France. His comments weren’t included in the story, but they put things in perspective, so here they are:

“VMsafe is a very important technology in my opinion, as it changes how virtual environments are secured. Today, security appliance virtual machines (VMs) typically monitor other VMs by connecting to them over a virtual switch. The result is virtual network monitoring that resembles physical network monitoring,” Wolf said. “The current model is fine until VMs begin to dynamically move across a virtual infrastructure. Dependent security appliances always have to follow their associated VMs as a VM is relocated. This can complicate the live migration and restart processes.”

“With VMsafe, you would typically configure a security appliance per physical host, such as an [intrusion prevention system] virtual appliance. The security appliance vendor would leverage policies to determine what to monitor (such as by VM, virtual switch, subnet, etc). With VMsafe, the appliance can connect to any virtual switch by accessing it through the hypervisor; you no longer have to configure a special promiscuous port group for network monitoring,” Wolf said. “With security configured at the host level with no direct attachment to virtual networks, VMs can move freely about the virtual and physical infrastructure and still have their related security policies enforced.”

Wolf continued, “VMsafe also provides the framework for offloading many security activities to special-purpose security VMs, including roles such as antivirus monitoring. As we move to an automated or dynamic data center, having special-purpose security appliances that are capable of enforcing security policies at the hypervisor level can ease security management in an environment that will be constantly changing. Sure, it’s possible to enforce security policies with special purpose network-based appliances, but such configurations would be substantially more complex to deploy and manage than comparable solutions based on VMsafe technology.”

Developments at VMworld 2007 show that virtualization 2.0 has arrived, says Burton Group analyst Andrew Kutz. But can virtualization stay sexy when it is mainstream?

VMware CEO Diane Greene says VMworld 2007 wowed her with innovation and enormous vendor and user participation.

Analyst Barb Goldworm explains why VMworld 2007 ushered in a new era in virtualization. 

Good-bye to pesky print drivers, hello to virtual printing. ThinPrint’s VDI-focused printing approach won recognition in the SearchServerVirtualization.com VMworld Awards’ Utilities category.

InovaWave CEO Chris Ostertag describes virtualization’s I/O problems and how InovaWave VirtualOctane for ESX Server could solve them. The soon-to-be release product won a SearchServerVirtualization.com VMworld Award for Best New Technology.

Akorri founder and CTO Richard Corley describes the virtualization management problems solved by Akorri BalancePoint 1.7, which won SearchServerVirtualization.com’s VMworld Award in the performance monitoring and optimization category.

Onaro’s Bryan Semple describes a new product that brings storage and server teams together to deploy ESX.

The sheer bulk of giveaways at VMworld 2007 overwhelm SearchServerVirtualization.com’s intrepid and swag-seeking editors, Bridget Botelho and Jan Stafford.