vCalendar 2.0
Welcome back! I can’t believe a year has elapsed since vCalendar was first launched.  vCalendar 1.0 was a lot of fun to say the least. It certainly fulfilled the purpose I had originally intended for myself – to provide a virtualization tip a day on my desktop both at the office and at home.

Truth be told, I began working on the next version of vCalendar right after the first version was released back in August 2009.  Like vSphere 4.0 and 4.1, vCalendar 2.0 boasts 150 new features. That’s right – 150 brand new virtualization facts, tips, best practices, configuration maximums, and historical events.  What’s in the new version?  It’s safe to say you’ll probably find some vSphere 4.1 tips, additional advanced concepts, some more key dates in virtualization history, among other new, improved, and valuable items.  I highly suggest you order the new vCalendar 2.0 to find out!

But wait… if there’s 150 new entries, what happened to last year’s entries?  I have to say, it was extremely difficult, but with just 365 days in the year, I had to find 150 of last year’s entries to remove in order to make way for the 150 new entries.  What’s unfortunate is that most of the archived entries are still relevant and therefore valuable. I struggled with the thought of letting the archived entries disappear forever. So here’s what I’ve done about that.  I’m releasing vCalendar 1.0 as a free download in a searchable Adobe PDF format.  You can download vCalendar 1.0 by clicking on this link. I thank you for your support and I hope you get some additional mileage out of it.  The remaining entries from last year which were carried forward were combined into the pool of new entries and all were randomized to provide a fresh new vCalendar.

The vCalendar Story
For those unfamiliar with the vCalendar background, here it is: I’ve had “Far Side” and “Dilbert” Page-A-Day calendars on my desktop at work for the past 15 years and towards the end of 2008 I thought a virtualization calendar would be nice to have, however, I could find none in existence. So I decided to make my own – and make it available to the virtualization community. vCalendar is a collection of VMware virtualization facts, tips, best practices, configuration maximums, and historical events delivered to your desktop daily.

“This year’s must-have item at VMworld”

-John Troyer, VMware

“Anyone who is in to virtualization HAS to get one of these calendars! They are limited, so they are the ‘must have’ item from VMworld this year! I’ll be going to the Veeam booth to get one for sure!”

-Susan Gudenkauf, VMware, VCP#1

Availability
The vCalendar is being made available a few ways:

1. vCalendar is available for purchase online at The Printed Owl. Select your starting month and year – vCalendars are custom printed to your specification and shipped to your doorstep. Sorry, international shipping is not yet available but I’m working on options and I’m open to creative ideas to make vCalendar available outside of the continental U.S.
2. A vCalendar widget is voluntarily carried on various virtualization web sites with rotating daily tips. If you are a blogger or if you have a virtualization related web site and you’d like to carry the widget on your blog, contact me.
3. PowerCLI God, Alan Renouf, has mastered a way to bring vCalendar tips into vCenter as a MOTD.  This is really cool! Check out vTip – A VMware Expert updating your VI.
4. Follow @vCalendar on Twitter and receive a virtualization tweet per day.
5. As stated above, last year’s vCalendar is available as a free download in a searchable Adobe PDF format.