Archive for January, 2009

I notice that Alessandro over at virtualization.info is relaunching the concept of an industry neutral virtualization conferrence. It’s in Vegas on May 5th-7th. The previous attempt for the congress was in London of last year – which I might have attended – but unfortunately it was cancelled due to a lack of subscribers. Personally, I’m not sure I will make it. It comes shortly after the VMworld Europe event, and not long before VMworld 2009 in SanFran. Between those two big events, I have the North Carolina User Summit event at the end of May. One too many events, too close to each other – in these credit crunch times is perhaps a bit much for me. Anyway, I sincerely hope that the Congress gets of the ground this time – because we are desperate need of an event that is vendor neutral, and virtualization agnostic it is tone….

http://www.virtualizationcongress.com/

I see that Eric Siebert’s Open Letter to VMware has recieved some recognition to the Blogshere. I pretty go along with Eric’s letter – in fact I said similiar things back in April, 2007. I did a presentation to the North Carolina UG entitled “What VMware should do next”. The topic flagged up some issues I had with VMware Q&A – and the use of such concepts as “experimental support”. 

My original presentation to the North Carolina User Summit was split over 2 parts:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/downloads/what1.wmv

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/downloads/what2.wmv

Anyway, after doing this presentation – I recieved a follow-up call from VMware Product Managers. If you hang out the forums you might remember I raised two forum posts (one in ESX and one in VirtualCenter) asking real users for the opinons. The Product Management team hangs out the forums – and were very interested in what folks had to say. So in the end I more or less delivered 2hr presentation to the Product Team about what I felt VMware could be doing better at. Unfortunately, given the nature of the discussion I wasn’t able to record and share it with the readers of RTFM. That said I more or less delivered the same presentation to VMware Product Mangers, as I did to the NC User Summit. The only differences was different product managers had the opportunity to interupt me and ask for clarification!

A couple of weeks after that WebEX session I did another where the product development team for VMotion, SVMotion and EVC, gave me an inside track on what would later become the U1, U2 and U3 offerings. Again, I wasn’t able to share that conversation. BUT, what did demonstrate is that VMware does take such comments as mine, and letters like Eric’s seriously. Even more so, product managers at VMware, do hangout on the forums reading the issues that users have.

Anyway, having been on the Vi4 beta programme for some months now, I’m sure some of the concerns that Eric has are and have been addressed. I would like to say though that sometimes there inherent contradictions on peoples demands – and I would include myself in that. I want new features but I want great stability and reliability. More new features tend introduce more new bugs at the same time. In the same token I’m often disappointed when a new release comes out and nothing has changed and there are no new features. That’s software for it’s it? 

Finally, I will be back in NC this year (May). My topic will something to do with Site Recovery Manager – but I haven’t decided what yet…

Mike has news that ESX and VMware continue to be recognised by  Microsoft’s SVVP (Server Virtulization Validation Program). The new configuration recognise that since ESX 3.5 VMware have supported upto 64GB of RAM, and this has finally been recognised by Microsoft. Add to this a long list of MS applications that are offically supported (finally) by Microsoft

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006/

VMware will have a open webcast to announce its results on Monday – from its Investor Relations website.

http://ir.vmware.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=193221&p=irol-IRHome

VMware shares are currently trading at the $25 up from the absolute low of $18 after the last round of credit crunching. Still along way off the height at the IPO of $120…

Now, you are not going to believe this. MS research has developed some software that will make “musak” when you sing into a PC microphone. This is total hoot, if you enjoy cring-worthy videos!

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/index.html

Here’s the location and contact details if you would like to attend the VUGIE…

Contact: enquiries@wars.ie 

Logistics:

Date: Friday January 23rd     
Location: 4000 Atlantic Avenue, Westpark, Shannon
Start Time: 10.00 – 10.30 Registration & Coffee

It’s my pleasure to announce that there will be a meeting of the VUGIE. The VUGIE is Ireland’s first Virtualization User Group. We intend to be neutral about virtualization in the sense that we are open to ALL virtualization platforms (VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, KVM, VirtualIron and so on). I hope to speaking at the event on the topic of VMware Site Recovery Manager. The venue is WARS at Westpark, Shannon, Co. Clare on the 23rd of January. That’s it for now I will have more details about registering for the event and the contact details required.

VMware have launched a new blog called “Uptime”. It’s all about DR and Business Continiuity issues. I’ve subscribed it to my news feeder because some of the early blog posts concern the SRM product which I’ve writen a book about – and some of the guys I know in the SRM team have already started posting. One contributor in question is Lee Dilworth who works here in the UK, and he’s outlined some of the frequently asked questions about SRM.

http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2008/12/hi-uptime-readers-in-this-post-we-will–focus-on-the-activity-that-has-surrounded-vmware-site-recovery-manager-srm–s.html

There’s been a number of attempts to put together an SRM-demo-in-a-box using various free and eval based virtual appliances. Here’s another for you consumptions. It’s on the VI:OPS webpage:

http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1235

I see a number of blogs are indulging in that annual game of predicting the future for the next year. I thought I join that band wagon too, in a slight tongue in cheek way. You know the kind of predicting the future where your told – that its the same **** as last year!

• Some shares will go up and some shares will go down. Depending on which ones you buy would make/lose loads of money. Stocks will go up when Obama is sworn in, and then go down again.
• More of my money will be give to people who lend badly, in order to convince them to start lending all over again. I will wonder if I will ever see that money again, and wait for when my taxes go up.
• I will meet some people who have never heard of virutalization before – and then wonder what planet they have been living on for the last couple of years
• I will buy some some VMware stock with my royalities from the SRM book, in the hope that they have reached their bottom. At their lowest they were $18, and they have since risen to £24 and stayed there
• There will be a never version of ESX/vCenter sometime in the middle of the year. It might be called vSphere, vBox, vImportant or something like that
• There will be lots of blog posts about “clouds” – and the word “cloud” means. Perhaps the vCloud will run on top of the vSphere in a vDataCenter somewhere
• The will be new book about this new vSphere/vCloud/vi4 and it will be released as an authors edition hopefully on the day of the General Availability. It will be written by me!