VMware Communities Blog

Communities Maintenance Successful Completion

RDellimmagine — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:43:00 GMT

All functions should be working correctly. Please report any problems you see in VMware Communities Feedback. Thanks!

Planned Downtime for Maintenance Upgrade August 23

RDellimmagine — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:01:00 GMT

VMware Communities will undergo a maintenance upgrade on Saturday, August 23, 7am - 3pm Pacific.

Maintenance Window Timeline:
During approximately 1-2 hours of the maintenance window, VMware Communities will not be available. During the rest of the maintenance window, all VMware Communities functions will be available except for login. Visitors who need to post to the site during the maintenance window should make sure they have logged in before 7am Pacific. Visitors who post during the maintenance window should save their postings before submitting them, since the site may go down without warning during the maintenance window. For safety, visitors are recommended only to view content on VMware Communities during the maintenance window.

Site Changes:
The following changes will be made to VMware Communities as part of this maintenance upgrade:

The user interface will be streamlined to improve site usability by reducing clutter and fixing some user interface issues identified by users. Details of these changes are documented in VMware Communities Proposed Homepage Design.
Improved error message text for the login / authentication process.
Additional fixes to other VMware Web site and online store infrastructure that is not related to VMware Communities.

I will post again here when the maintenance upgrade is complete.

Email Replies: Did you know...?

RDellimmagine — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:15:00 GMT

You probably know that if you put a watch on a thread (i.e. click "receive email notifications"), you'll get an email notification anytime the thread is updated. Same goes for entire communities as well. But did you know that you can simply reply to any of those emails and your email reply will get posted as a thread reply on VMware Communities? It's pretty slick -- if you haven't used this feature, give it a try!

New VMworld 2008 Community

RDellimmagine — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:18:00 GMT

Find out who's going to VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas and start networking with them online before the show.

Announce your plans for the show at http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/general/vmworld2008.

And for more information on VMworld, check out:
~ the official VMworld Web site
~ the VMworld.com community site

Fix Implemented for Thread Not Found Error

RDellimmagine — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:36:00 GMT

On August 6, I reported the following:

Recently a number of people reported seeing thread not found errors, day-old threads shown on community listing pages, and other similar errors. I believe we've found the root cause of the problem, which is related to some performance optimizations we made that had unexpected side effects. We are updating the configuration this week to eliminate those side effects, and I'll post again when they are in place.

We made a configuration change that I believe will eliminate those issues. However, if you see any System Error: Thread not Found or day-old content on community home pages when logged in, please contact me, Robert Dell'Immagine, via private message.

I know these two issues created problems for many of you, and I thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve them.

Regards, Robert

Communities Issues Update

RDellimmagine — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:51:00 GMT

Recently a number of people reported seeing thread not found errors, day-old threads shown on community listing pages, and other similar errors. I believe we've found the root cause of the problem, which is related to some performance optimizations we made that had unexpected side effects. We are updating the configuration this week to eliminate those side effects, and I'll post again when they are in place. Thanks for your continued patience.

Planned Maintenance Friday, July 18

RDellimmagine — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:20:00 GMT

We are performing planned site maintenance on Friday, July 18.

* From 6:30pm to 12:30pm Pacific time (6 hours), VMware Store will be undergoing maintenance. During this time, site visitors will not be able to log into VMware Communities or register for new accounts.

* From 7pm to 8:30pm Pacific time (1.5 hours), the VMware Communities application will be brought down for infrastructure maintenance. During this time, the VMware Communities site will not be available.

Site Performance Tuning

RDellimmagine — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Today we are increasing the expiration interval for cached content from 1 hour to 2 hours, so that guest visitors to VMware Communities will see content that is up to 2 hours old. This change is expected to increase overall site performance because more visitors will see cached content, which is served faster than non-cached content and offloads traffic from the application. After the last Akamai change we made (caching site pages for guests), site visitors including both guests and logged-in visitors reported faster page load times on the site. Today's change is part of our on-going strategy to improve site performance on VMware Communities.

Please see Performance Upgrade Planned May 28 for a full explanation.

Warning: Intermittent System Errors

RDellimmagine — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:24:00 GMT

We've identified an issue where some testing for a critical update to VMware Store is "leaking" into VMware Communities and causing occasional system errors and thread not found errors. We are working to resolve this, but have not yet identified the leak. Because of this, you will need to expect some intermittent problems continuing possibly through June 19.

While I don't want to minimize the disruption this is causing, I am seeing that overall traffic on VMware Communities is still at normal levels, and users continue to post new content. Thank you for your patience, and please know that we continue to work to resolve this as quickly as possible.

Regards, Robert

VMware Communities Organization Changes

RDellimmagine — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:09:00 GMT

We re-organized some of the product areas on VMware Communities based on feedback from the community.

The new organization is as follows:

VMware Infrastructure
- Enterprise Strategy and Planning
- VI: ESXi
- VI: ESX 3.5
- VI: ESX 3.5 New Features
- VI: ESX 3.0
- VI: VirtualCenter 2.x
- VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS
- ESX 2.x and VirtualCenter 1.x
- VMmark

Management and Automation Products
- VMware Lab Manager
- VMware Converter
- VMware Stage Manager

VMware Server

Desktop Products
- VMware Workstation
- VMware Fusion
- VMware Player
- VMware ThinApp

Enterprise Desktop Products
- VMware ACE
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
- Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM)

These changes do the following:
* Separates desktop products from enterprise desktop products
* Separates VMware Server into its own category
* Makes the management and automation tools easier to find
* Makes the naming of VMware Infrastructure communities clearer

One other change coming this week:
* We will combine the VI: ESX 3.5 New Features community into the VI: ESX 3.5 community

Please comment below if you have feedback.

Regards, Robert

Infrastructure Upgrade Complete and Successful

RDellimmagine — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:03:00 GMT

We added additional CPU and memory to the VM for the database.

VMware Communities Planned Maintenance, June 5, 6pm to 7pm Pacific

RDellimmagine — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:41:00 GMT

VMware Communities will be unavailable on June 5 from 6pm to 7pm Pacific for planned maintenance while we upgrade some infrastructure components.

Performance Upgrade Is Live

RDellimmagine — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:13:00 GMT

The performance upgrade that increases caching of the communities application is now live. See details at Performance Upgrade Planned May 28.

Please reply to Performance Upgrade Is Live and let us know if you're seeing any improvements.

Recently-added Public Betas

Badsah — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

It's been a while since I updated all of you on the creation of new VMware Communities. Since we created the first two beta portals, Workstation 6.5 Beta and ACE 2.5 Beta, two more public beta program communities have emerged: VMware ThinApp (formerly Thinstall) and VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta . Obviously, the VMware desktop product teams have been quite active! But don't worry, the server product teams are quietly working behind the scenes, and you'll see the fruit of their labor in due time.

Meanwhile, the Workstation 6.5 Beta and ACE 2.5 Beta portals have been refreshed, but will now require you to register, in order to view the beta portal as well as to download the binaries. The initial step is annoying: having to go in and complete that dreaded registration form all over again, and accepting the End User License Agreement. However, the upside is that, in the future, you will never have to register again for beta programs for these two products. (Some users have been complaining about going through registration process and receiving an error message: "Unauthorized." I am writing a separate post just on that subject.)

Thanks.

Badsah

Good Example of Collaboration Using Community Documents

Badsah — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:05:00 GMT

Team Fusion has been making good use of the Documents feature in VMware Communities. Since the release of VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta, the product team has been collecting feedback from the beta community on the compatibility and performance of DirectX 3D gaming applications with VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta. They are leveraging open, online collaboration amongst beta participants on the Document: VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta: 3D Games Testing Matrix.

The most obvious benefit is that any beta participant can contribute to the matrix, thus helping to build up a useful repository of information valuable to the community of VMware Fusion users who wish to use 3D games within a virtual machine. But a by-product of this process is that this medium of online collaboration is bringing together individuals who share a very specific common interest - and that is, after all, the point of web communities, isn't it?

Do you have other good examples of Documents and online collaboration in VMware Communities? Would love to read about them in your comments on this blog post.

Badsah