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As expected, Veeam has released FastSCP 3.0 today. Here's the press release:

Columbus, Ohio, March 5, 2009 — Veeam Software, award-winning provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today announced the immediate availability of a new version of its popular FastSCP free tool, version 3.0. The new release, like all products in the Veeam Management Suite for VMware, supports VMware ESX, ESXi and the ESXi free edition.

Veeam FastSCP is widely used among VMware administrators and has become the de facto standard for file management and VM copy in VMware environments. It is used to quickly copy virtual machines between ESX hosts; between Windows and ESX; and between Windows or ESX and ESXi, including the free version of ESXi.

Since its first release in October of 2006, Veeam FastSCP has become the #1 most popular free tool used by more than 60,000 VMware administrators worldwide. The product has always been available at no charge, and continues to be free. With Veeam FastSCP and Veeam Monitor Free Edition, Veeam shows its commitment to contributing to the VMware community by offering quality free tools to help administrators in their daily tasks.... read on...

I am delighted to announce the release date for Veeam FastSCP 3.0. I have just received word from my sources at Veeam that the official public release date for Veeam FastSCP 3.0 is tomorrow, 05 March 2009. The software will be available to the general public as a free download.

Veeam FastSCP has always been a brilliant tool. Now, with support for ESXi servers, FastSCP 3.0 is a must have for ESX/ESXi Administrators.  Copying files between Windows and ESX/ESXi servers has never been faster or easier. FastSCP 3.0 will certainly make my job as a virtualization specialist a lot easier.

Thank you to Veeam Software for this new release, and for the release date information.

Get ready to download FastSCP 3.0 at www.veeam.com

I have to say thank you to the guys over at Veeam Software for giving me a pre-release copy of Veeam’s new version of FastSCP, Veeam FastSCP 3.0. They have decided to make this pre-release copy available to a select few VMware virtualization professionals to play with before the final release is made available for download.

So what is FastSCP? Anyone who is familiar with SSH file copies, know that it can take some time to transfer files via SSH between Windows and Linux / ESX when using programs like WINSCP. The typical rate for a normal WINSCP file copy in my experience is about 4 -5 MB/s. Veeam FastSCP allows you to copy files using SSH at more like 30MB/s!

So, I’ve been using FastSCP 3.0 for a couple of days now and I have to say I like it. Not only does FastSCP now support ESX as well as ESXi servers, but it’s a lot more neatly presented. It seems to be a lot easier to use than previous versions. I remember about a year ago, I used one of the previous versions of FastSCP to copy a 105GB file from the SAN to a Windows Server. I clicked the file and dragged it to its new location, like you would do in Windows Explorer, but this time only to find that I’ve actually moved the whole file and not copied it. This is one of the silly little annoying things that have been sorted out in version 3.0.

Also, when adding a new server in Veeam FastSCP 3.0, the wizard asks you to provide web credentials to the ESX server. These credentials, I found, can be the root user as it accesses the server through port 443. This is new in version 3.0. Then only will it ask you for SSH access credentials. By default ESX 3 does not allow root access via SSH. As with previous versions of FastSCP, you may specify a non-root user and then elect to elevate to root privileges.

Veeam FastSCP 3.0 now also includes email notifications. You can elect to be notified on successful jobs, warnings and/or errors.

I am still waiting for my sources at Veeam to confirm the official public release date. I will post this info as soon as I get it.

For now, be on the lookout for Veeam FastSCP 3.0 release date. It’s free (as always) and it’s worth downloading.

CLICK HERE FOR SCREENSHOTS!

This morning I received an email from VMware informing me that I have been awarded a vExpert Award for 2009! I would like to send a big thank you to those who nominated me for the award. It's a pleasure to be contributing to the virtualization and especially VMware Communities.

The official vExpert Statement from VMware can be found at: http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2009/02/vmware-vexpert-awards.html

Here's the information from the email I've received:

Congratulations! On behalf of VMware, we would like to thank you for all the work you’ve done giving back to the virtualization community and sharing your expertise with others. We are pleased to present you with the VMware vExpert Award for 2009. VMware is giving this award to individuals who have contributed significantly to the community of VMware users over the past year.

VMware vExpert award winners will receive:
* An award certificate and gift
* Access to a private vExpert community
* vExpert logo to display on website or email signature
* Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com
* Access to exclusive online events and other opportunities to participate in activities
* Inclusion in public vExpert directory
The vExpert award duration is one year (through February, 2010).