Archive for November, 2009

Well, the legendary beta programme (that’s practically no-one I knew could get on!) is over and the product has has not GA’d. What I thought was a GA is actually an announcement… and you can register to do eval… probably in 60-days time (I’m joking actually there..)

http://www.vmware.com/products/view/features.html

Notable additions is the PCoIP (PC over IP) which will deliver a new generation of graphically rich experiences.

Address the broadest range of use cases and deployment options with VMware View’s PCoIP desktop display protocol, and deliver a high-performance desktop experience, even over high latency and low bandwidth connections. PCoIP’s adaptive technology is optimized for the delivery of virtual desktops to users on the LAN or over the WAN. VMware View gives users access to their virtual desktops over a wide variety of virtual desktop devices, without any performance degradation, anytime. They can also play rich media content, choose from any number of monitor configurations and seamlessly access locally attached peripheral devices such as scanners and mass storage.

I don’t want to be the disseminator of FUD, but it was my understanding that the bandwidth required to deliver this would be quite significant. So I think myself and many others will be out testing ASAP to do some assessment of what user experience might be like, and critically how much bandwidth will be needed at the CENTER to deliver it… It’s also my understanding (FUD?) that PCoIP is incompatible with View’s “Security Server” which means if you do want to run it across the WAN, a secondary VPN connection might be required…

Worthy of note is that Windows 7 and Offline Desktop is still marked as EXPERIMENTAL support. Sigh. I wish VMware would drop this concept of experimental. I don’t think it really has much benefit. After all other software vendors release software and then release patches – if they later discover bugs/errors/issues/features – why don’t they just take a leaf out very other ISV’s book…

VMware View Premier Bundle of the product with 3 years support includes VI Enterprise, View Manager, View Composer, ThinApp (Packager, Client, WS) and vCenter Foundation licensed for 10 desktop VMs and is priced at $4,093.75. That works out at $409 per desktop connection – so I think you’d be wanting to ramp those connections pretty quickly…

This week I was asked in an email the following question:

[By the way I hate WordPress - even when I put paragraph returns in this post it ****ing well removes them!]

Hope you been doing well. I have been busy, busy, busy.

Got a question for you. Preparing to start a new vSphere farm and trying to decide do I use stand switches or start with the DVS. Especially when I see this: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1283-vSphere-DvSwitch-caveats-and-best-practices!.html So the main question is do we think this is mature enough to go forward with yet? Can I use Host profiles with DVS safely?

Just appreciate your thoughts.

Apologises for my tardiness in getting back to you. Snowed under. You get the picture. So I’ve written you this lovely long email to make up for that. Gee, this could be blog post! [How ironic - it did become a blogpost!]

A couple of things come to mind. Firstly, Eric’s blog post – I do respect Eric’s blog (and others). Things have gotten so big in VMware – that it would impossible to know of all the known/unknown issues – after all no man is an island, and no-one ever see’s all the possible configurations and screw-ups….

BUT. (you could tell that was coming). Untimely, ripping an ESX host out of vCenter (right-click disconnect/right-click remove). Isn’t the recognised procedure. Yes, I know tardy/slapdash admins might have done this in vCenter1/2 but isn’t something that’s recommended or recognised as the right way. It should always be regarded as the LAST resort.

So if people first removed ESX from the DVS, before removing the ESX host this problem would NOT happen. Basically, what Eric is saying is if you don’t step A followed by Step B followed by Step C then problems can occur. But problems will always occur if you not aware of relationships.

So Eric post would not put me off using DVS for Service Console/Management Network traffic or vmkernel traffic for that matter. I think there’s tendency when people read blog post about new technology that we focus on the bad news, rather than the good. Also people forget (rather conveniently) about what was awful about the previous technology (in this case Standard vSwitches) which they moaned and complained about before the advent of the new. So there’s tendency to re-write the past as some golden period before all this new stuff came about….

I’ve used host profiles with DvS without a problem. For me the bigger question is not whether they can be “depended on” or “safely” used in production- but the reality of what they are like to use on daily basis…. Do they make your admin/configuration any easier. Whilst I love DvSwitches, I’m not at all armoured of Host Profiles. Neither are helped by being shackled to the most expensive SKU of vSphere you can buy!

I like DvS… I especially like them for virtual machine networking. But I see them as being less useful for Management and Vmkernel Ports (not bad, just less useful) because you still have to configure the IP configuration of the ESX host.

Of course, VMware’s answer to that would be to use host profiles. For me – I look at the different ways I might get that IP configuration on to the ESX host. I know the more I manually have to do stuff, the more errors I’m likely to make thru fat-finger-syndrome. Also, If I have to hand the build process to someone less experienced I want to automate as much possible to prevent accidental errors…. This is also tempered by what type of ESX the customer is using. If they using ESXi it rules out kickstart %post scripting and using my UDA appliance…

So lets say I’m doing bulk admin. Building 100′s of ESX hosts, do I really want to sit there apply the host profile to each and every host. As I applied the host profile to N host, it would stall as it asked for my management, VMotion, iSCSI, FT logging, HA Address IP addresses. If you think about the number of IP’s you need for an ESX box (if you follow to the recommendations to letter you end up with quite a lot). Five IP addresses (and their associated subnet masks!)

So when I think of bulk admin & host profiles –  I don’t think they add up. Have I ever created an IP conflict by applying the host profile to many ESX hosts? Yes, an I only have 4 bloody ESX hosts!

I have PowerCLI scripts which automates EVERYTHING I would want to do (and more) than Host Profiles are current capable off. It did take some time to learn PowerCLI and test my scripts. But time is something I have plenty of when I’m not teaching. I wouldn’t say I was the most gifted of scripters – but I don’t care as long as it works, and works reliably.

My PowerCLI script will add a host into vCenter and completely configure it – include things that host profiles cannot do… such as iSCSI and DPM settings. The other thing I don’t like about host profiles – is the fact the host has to be maintenance mode to apply them.   So they can’t really be used as a reconfiguration tool – because who wants to move 20-30 VMs just to add a port group – when something like PowerCLI could do that infinitely quicker with just a couple of lines of script. That more or less relegates the host profiles to being a “consistency” check too – like ConfigControl without the licensing (another product that should be included in the core vSphere4 product!!!).

What’s irritating about host profiles – is that I think if you did have 100′s of ESX hosts you would want something that was more automated than host profiles. The smaller/medium shops won’t buy enterprise+ so they won’t benefit. When I teach VMware, it’s at this moment that I mime to my students – taking a gun from the wall – loading it up – and then firing it at my own foot. It always makes my students laugh.

Can you see what I’m doing here? I’m not arguing against DvS/Host Profiles per se. I’m looking at the technologies and what I might trying to achieve with them – and seeing if they help or hinder. Like anything it depends on the environment and the skills of the person involved. So here’s what I’m recommending in the book:

• New to Product/Admin with no time/aptitude for Scripting
  ESXi+vCenter4+DvS+Host Profiles. Essentially, drag-and-drop management strategy….
• Admin with plenty of time/aptitude for scripting/100′s of Servers
  ESXi or ESX “Classic”+vCenter+DvS+PowerCLI. I know this guy would not be disappointed with PowerCLI. They are adding another 60 cmdlet in time for vSphere4.1….
• ESX 2/3 Admin who has an existing kickstart scripted environment” –
  Don’t re-invent the wheel. Use ESX Classic+KickStart (UDA)- with a view to moving over to PowerCLI, ready for the demise of the COS in vSphere5 (circa 1012?).

  R.I.P. COS

I don’t know what category you fall into. You see host profiles could benefit everyone – the more ESX hosts – the more benefits they are. But then you have to buy this damn + product to get them. It’s just madness.

As for DvS. You could take a hybrid attitude on that. This appears to be the consensus view at the moment. That you use Standard vSwitches for management & vmkernel – and leave DvS just for VMs. This seems to be because Standard vSwitches are more of a “known quantity” than DvSwitches. I had hoped that host profiles would see of end of scripting and scripted installation, but nothing seems offer the same flexibility of things like the EDA/UDA and PowerCLI…. If you really mad about scripting then PowerCLI is the way to go. Hence my recent move away from “Classic” to ESX4i, and using PowerCLI.

And Finally…. I’ve been using DvSwitches for everything since the beta. I’m firm believer in using new technology in lab environments like my own – the more exposure you get to technology the more comfortable/confident you become with it. Plus it gives you the edge on folks who might be more production/conservatively minded. I’ve had no problems until I make an admin error. Like the day I removed vmnic0 from DvSwitch0. But hey, I could have done that with Standard vSwitches as well.

I now know how to fix both it they get broken, and that does impress my students.

Occasionally, (more often than I would really like) I get people emailing asking me to help them on specific problems. Unless these are former customers/students I generally hit delete key!!! Sorry, I’m not being unhelpful but I’m not a one-man help desk guys!

Then occasionally, when I’m bored/intrigued I do respond. It helps if email comes from an interesting domain name. Look there I said it. So if the email comes from my-business-is-to-cheap-to-pay-for-training-or-consultancy.com I’m like to hit the delete key. But if it come from i-work-a-mega-corp.com then I don’t.

That probably makes me sound like a total arse/git. But the reality is there is only so many hours in the day, and I have work that pays to do as well. Still I wouldn’t like to see the end of these emails – because occasionally they spark my interest.

Anyway, what follows is cut and paste from an email I wrote this morning – which I thought some people might benefit from. Here’s the question:

I have picked up a lot of great information from your website and it has helped me over the past couple of years a great deal. I have a quesiton and was wondering if you plan on doing anything with a kickstart installation and vSphere 4 there have been some changes to the way the script is structured and using vm manual is quite daunting at times. My main problem seems to be configuring the hard disks.

Here is another question you might be able to answer for us we have been trying to understand v4. The question is this when I am at the console and I do a alt f1 and log on as root am I on the physical server or am I in the esxconsole and if we are in the console how am I able to see the vmdk file which controls the esxconsole. The follow up to this is if I am not in the esxconsole when I log on then what is the esxconsole and what is it use for..

You do not have to spend a lot of time explaining this you can be brief like hay dummys here is what you need to know oh and we have read the manual.

Thank you sir your time is greatly appreciated.

And this is my response:

You won’t be surprised to hear that during the beta programme information from VMware on scripted installations was decidedly thin on the ground. I worked with very closely with the creators of the EDA and UDA install appliances to get both PXE booting, and scripted installations working. I was lucky to have contacts in VMware Education at the time of the ESX4 beta, who were using kickstart to build their own lab environments to squeeze a little bit of information out them that help. But much was achieved by research – in other words repeatedly retrying scripted installations – until they worked. It’s not the way I like to learn technology myself, but if a vendor is unforthcoming then I won’t let that stop me. You quite right to indicate that whilst the documentation has improved, it still isn’t comprehensive. Quite how VMware imagine folks are going to deploy 100’s of ESX hosts without being more forthcoming is anyone’s guess. It has always amazed me what little effort VMware puts into assisting people in deploying ESX – perhaps they leave that for their PSO work. Nice.

Anyway, just to clarify. The service console now uses a virtual disk. Logically this means that a VMFS volume must be selected or created during the installation, prior to the creation of the partition tables for the ESX host. That VMFS volume must be big enough to hold the esxconsole.vmdk file, and itself must be large enough to hold the partitions within it. Not everything about ESX is held in the .VMDK.

There are some system partitions which can only be custom created by kickstart – in other words they don’t appear in the standard GUI installation. So if a GUI installation is done you just get these standard partitions. These partitions reside OUTSIDE of the virtual disk

/boot
vmkcore
/extended partition

If you do standard installation, the partitions that reside inside the virtual disk are:

swap
/var/log
/

Historically, its this partition table that we have “customized”. I was somewhat unsure whether folks would want to do that – in the end I decided that most would want to create a custom partition scheme in the .vmdk file. So I also invested sometime working out how to do it with kickstart scripts. This new disk structure does introduce some interesting experiences at the Service Console CLI. Say if you run the ‘mount’ command on HP Proliant.

/dev/sdh8 on / type ext3 (rw)

None on /proc type proc (rw)
None on /sys type sysfs (rw)
None on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sdh5 on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sdh7 on /opt type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sdh6 on /tmp type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sdh1 on /var/log type ext3 (rw,errors=panic)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

Normally, in ESX3 /dev/sdh5 would have been /dev/cciss/c0d0pN. But as its now a virtual disk you see the more common /dev/sdN syntax… I guess what must be happening is this. That the vmkernel loads, then loads the VMFS Driver – which then allows for the vmkernel to mount the VMDK file, and then access the remainder of the system. The boot loader is grub as you know, and the boot strap environment appears to be the same “busybox” environment used to load ESXi. Again, there is really NO architecture information on how this done. Their might have been a VMWorld session on this – but I wouldn’t know and to be honest I really don’t care too much how it is done so long as it works!

Anyway, I’m hoping that clarifies what’s going on here…. Now to the real meat – scripted installations…

I’ve taken the liberty of attaching my sample KS script to this email. It’s very similar to the one on RTFM associated with the UDA… Here’s the part that does my custom partition scheme. I’ve put comments in to explain what I am doing – hopefully this will clarify things for you. The UDA uses “variables” to hold common parameters like hostname, IP and so on. I’ve removed these [VARIABLES] with the plain text to make it look more like a bog standard kickstart file.

# Clear Partitions
clearpart –drives=/dev/cciss/c0d0 –overwritevmfs

The clearpart as you might know – destroys partitions. Quite a dangerous command. But if I was doing a re-install and want the install to completely wipe my installation – it would fail without the use of new parameter introduced in ESX4.x called –overwritevmfs. This destroys the partition scheme on /dev/cciss/c0d0… including the VMFS volume that holds the esxconsole.vmdk….

# BootLoader ( The user has to use grub by default )

bootloader –location=mbr –driveorder=/dev/cciss/c0d0

Driver order sets where the MBR record goes to – without this script installations can stall.

# Manual Paritioning
part /boot –fstype=ext3 –size=250 –ondisk=/dev/cciss/c0d0
part None –fstype=vmkcore –size=100 –ondisk=/dev/cciss/c0d0
part esx1_local –fstype=vmfs3 –size=20000 –ondisk=/dev/cciss/c0d0 –grow

So here I’m creating the 3 partitions that make up the physical partition scheme. All quite straight foreward in fact my settings here are more less exactly the SAME as what you would get with a manual installation – but I need them in script and is good know they can be change. The odd one is the last one – where I same make the vmfs volume 20000MB, followed by –grow. It appear to be the case that a positive integer must be supplied, and that this number is check against the total partition space defined below – EVEN though the grow means use the remainder of the disk. As word of caution logically only ONE partition can be designated to grow – for obvious reasons!

virtualdisk vd1 –size=15000 –onvmfs=esx1_local
part swap –fstype=swap –size=1600 –onvirtualdisk=vd1
part /opt –fstype=ext3 –size=2048 –onvirtualdisk=vd1
part /tmp –fstype=ext3 –size=2048 –onvirtualdisk=vd1
part /home –fstype=ext3 –size=2048 –onvirtualdisk=vd1
part / –fstype=ext3 –size=5120 –onvirtualdisk=vd1 –grow

VD1 says to create the 1^st virtual disk. It is theoretically possible to give create multiple virtual disks – I just don’t see the point in doing so. I create a virtual disks which is 15GB in size. I then using the part command create the partitions scheme. This does mean there is free space available in the VMFS for local virtual machines if I’m so inclined. The partitions actually add up to about 12.6GB. As for the scheme itself I’m more or less creating the same partition scheme in the virtual disk, as I would have done on the physical disk in ESX 3/2. Although the partition scheme is 12.6GB in totally, I actually let the / volume grow – so once swap, opt, tmp, and home have been created / then uses the remainder of the disk.

Finally, there will be many people who have different ideas about how the ESX console should be partitioned, as there stars in the firmament.  What interests me is the technology that allows that to happens – and how it is done. I will leave it to you to make those decision…

I want to draw ALL my readers attention to Stu Radridge’s blog and in particular to a particular problem in Windows 2008. Although I hate the phrase this is real heads up…

Basically, Stu has discovered that VM created on ESX4 with “Virtual Hardware 7 presents virtual disks as SAN devices – not as local disks. This resulted in the default SAN policy of W2K8 offlining everything bar the boot volume during installation…”

Stu’s article points to a recent KB article that explains this issue, and the MS KB article that explains how to modify the behaviour should you need too

http://vinternals.com/2009/11/virtual-hardware-7-undocumented-feature-revealed/

I want to take sometime out from book writing, to share my observations about VCE. The book I’m (re)writing is the SRM 1.0 book, it’s been updated to the new version SRM 4.0 which is compatible with vSphere4. So you know this time I’m doing more work to make the book more “storage neutral” friendly – by including the configuation and use of EMC Clariion “MirrorView” & Celerra “ReplicationV2″, NetApp’s “SnapMirror” as well as HP Lefthand Networks “Scheduled Remote Copy”. On top of that I’ve got third parties agreeing to write stuff on Dell Equillogics and HP EVA/XP.

After writing this blog-post I realised I’d been doing a lot of summarising and reporting. If like me you keep an eye on this stuff already, you might find the stuff below a bit tedious. If that’s the case skip to heading called “My Take on it all”… It’s there where I compare VMware to Justin Timberlake. But in nutshell. I think VCE is GOOD thing for the three companies and GOOD thing for customers too…

A couple of days ago there was a formal annoucement about the VCE Coalition. VCE stands for Virtual Compute Environment, and also by good grace to also include the letters of each member of the coalition – VMware, Cisco, EMC. Did you see what they did there? Clever that isn’t it?

It was interesting use of words “coalition”. It made me think of President Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” which he used to describe the loose association of various countries who signed up for the war on terror! Anyway, despite those negative connotations there I do feel the word “coalition” is an interesting one. VCE is not a new company but collection of partners who are entering into an alliance for the great good… The question your probably ask is, yes – who is the great good?

Their customers?
Their shareholders?

Anyway, the announcement has stimulated some debate – some of it negative – and I would like to take this opportunity to the Angels Advocate in favour of VCE. If you interested in reading what other bloggers have said, there’s thing called google and RSS Feeds – but for the severely lazy here’s a round up of links:

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/11/03/a-few-quick-thoughts-on-the-vce-coalition-announcement/

http://www.thevirtualblackhole.com/virtual-tech/my-thoughts-on-the-vce-announcement

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Cisco-NASDAQ-CSCO-1069957.html

[On this last link there are videos with John Cambers and Co telling you all about the idea of VCE…)

Of course by far the most complete round-up of the announcement comes for Chad Sakac of virtualgeek who is VP for EMC. He has 5 (yes 5!) blog posts – covering each of the major themes from the announcement:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/11/virtual-compute-environment-technology-innovations.html

In case all of this VCE stuff has you in a spin – here’s what they are saying in a nutshell (which I am shamelessly dumbing-down from the Chadmasters blog – in fact some of this is straight cut & paste job – like the best painters or musicians, the best bloggers just steal other people content!)

• Technology Innovations – Vblock Infrastructure Packages.  Tightly integrated standardized “building blocks”. These are pre-configure rack of UCS blades, Cisco Switches and EMC Storage – together with the VMware Software ready to go. Essentially, the package is another one of these “datacenter in a shipping container” concepts. There is three types (0,1,2) of vBlocks each progressive allowing for a great densities of VMs. The Type0 vBlock is for “small” customers to scale up to 800 VMs.

• Integrated Pre-Sales, Services and Support – Vblock Unified Customer Engagement.   Engage like we’re one company, get services like we’re one company, support that is exactly like we are one company.
• Solutions Venture and Investment – Acadia. A Cisco-EMC (and Intel) joint venture to build, operate, and transfer Vblock infrastructure to organizations. The alliance insists this isn’t a venture into becoming Cloud provider in the vCloud Express model. VCE appears to be pitched as a private cloud infrastructure. As Manjula Talreja, Cisco vice president of business development said,  Acadia’s mission, instead, is to “accelerate customers’ journey to the private cloud,”. In fact most of VMware’s vCloud Express partners, are already VCE customers. It sound like Acadia might run the vBlocks for customers – but also facilitate their transfer from being a managed service back to the customer – and possibly back to Acadia. Acadia’s remit can be summarised as BUILD; OPERATE; TRANSFER…..

  Acadia is new. Doesn’t many employees (130 initially according to Uncle Joe) and looking for someone to head up. So contact Chad if you looking for a new job.

• Partner Ecosystem Leverage – Vblock Partner Ecosystem. This will allow partners to re-sell vBlock solutions. Acadia won’t compete with partners (allegedly) but instead Acadia will offer services directly as well as through VCE partners. Some people might say, that’s already a conflict of interest – but if Acadia remains tight & small, then it won’t have the capacity to do much delivery on its own, and will have to enrol the capacity offered in the VCE channel…

So that’s VCE in nutshell. Now to where I really want to be – which is discussing the offering and quick assessment of its impact. Other peoples reaction tend to fall into the mix of the following:

• This IS revolution
• This is NOT a revolution – they have always been closely integrated
• Integration like this is only news if you NOT HP or IBM – who already are integrated…
• Could VMware be damaged by being “too closely” aligned to EMC/Cisco in this way?
• Is this away that all three companies can increase prices?
• It’s ok for greenfield locations that are new, but no good for existing customers…
• It it will great if the internal cloud really takes off…
• It’s back to an IBM view the world, one organization where you buy everything – like being a HP “House” or IBM “House” or a VCE “House”
• It’s all about vendor lock in?

My Take on it All

One thing I have noticed is my peers on the blogsphere appear to able to state some of the above even though logically its mutually exclusive. Wonky-logic is the staple diet of hastily written blog delivered minutes or hours after a web-ex session or webcast vendor annoucement. So you can’t in one breath question the negative impact of the announcement, and then next dismiss the announcement as “nothing new”.  Generally, reaction has been largely negative, raising more questions and anxieties than anything else. Of course, nothing sells news like a bit of negativity – and often the glass-half-empty view as regarded as an antidote to the glass-half-full world that vendors and their marketing wonks drown us in on daily basis. Occasionally, I would like to see some sensible non-polemic stuff that’s couched in the real world, rather than ill-thought venting?

So here’s my attempt. It seems the case that whether you like or not – we are creeping steadily away from a best-of-breeds approach to building out datacenters. Everyone yaks endless about the commoditization of IT – and it’s happening right before our eyes. Each of the major OEMs – HP, IBM, Dell have been for sometime junking their valued partner relationships in effort to seal their customers into a one-stop solution. Of course, IBM are probably the company that’s most famous/notorious for this approach. In recent years, HP have been steadily improving their HP ProCurve stuff to the degree that they no longer feel the need to promote/resell Cisco switching gear. To me the VCE announcement amounts to 4th OEM provider coming along to this party. So in short while you will be able to CHOOSE which OEM to shackle yourself too. This choice will be limited to the “Gang of Four”. Of course, if you want to cobble your own solution together you will still be able to by storage from NetApp, a switch from Cisco and a server from HP. Many people complain about this existing model because of vendor run-around. The whole point of the one-stop-shop approach is get round this situation.

Whether you like this isn’t really important – you don’t have a choice. As my friend Stu Radridge might say from vInternal’s “Tough Shit”. If you accept the rationale that our industry exist to make profits for their shareholders, and not as charity dedicated to customer service. So the only real consumer choice is that selecting one of these OEMs does allow you to potential move your VMs from an external to internal datacenter/cloud – and if you layer on top of this hardware, a virtualization layer like VMware’s – you should be able to move from one “block” provider to another.

It’s for this reason I don’t really buy the “vendor lock in” argument – there’s always been some kind of lock in. But I see it as GOOD thing that we have another OEM partnership that together with a virtualization layer – can help mitigate against that lock in worry. What would you prefer just three “block” providers or four?

Additionally, I also think that together CE (Cisco & EMC) have increasingly seen that the other OEMs are less inclined to deliver their technologies when the other OEMs have an equivalent system they could be touting instead. So if HP sold Catalyst AND ProCure – or if DELL sell both Clariion AND Equallogics – could you depend on HP or Dell to recommend the right solution, or the one that gets the sales rep the better commission…?  I imagine when Cisco and EMC saw this happen they thought it was now time to have new coalition or partnership – not with another OEM – but with each other. It seems to me that when companies such as Cisco and EMC enter into coalition with each other, it must be because they see more value in that relationship – than in previous coalition’s that have served their purpose.

Of course there will be some that will say that if the best-of-breed model hasn’t been buried once and for all. All that’s happened is the best of breeds (Cisco, EMC and VMware) have buddied up together. Recognising their SUM is greater than their collective parts….

Finally, VMware’s much vaunted independence – is it under threat? I don’t think so. I remember when EMC bought the majority of VMW stock in 2005. Many people said at the time that VMware would become a “creature” of Joe Tucci. There was much sackcloth wearing and ashes… But it didn’t seem to work out that way. For sometime VMware’s relationship with NetApp has been an equally good one, especially in the realm of VDI.

At the end of the day VMware’s job is to sell software licenses – and like good little ISV it will do ANYTHING to sell more licenses. Personally, I think VMware’s job is to be the Justin Timberlake of the IT industry. The new kid on the block (or should that be N’ Sync!?!?) who everyone wants to be seen with it latest video. So for some years VMware has been building partner relationship with everyone who counts (Intel, AMD, HP, IBM and so on) both on a technology front and channel-partner front. Those partners know how the game works – they want to be equally close to VMware because they know 9/10 that’s what the customer will be installing to their tin. It’s in the economic interest to show they “integrate” with VMware too!

Well, I don’t really go in for this stuff normally. You know when friends FWD some really hysterical joke to everyone in their address book. You know, that kind of thing. But this one did make me laugh or was that snort with recognition.

A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted,

“Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don ‘t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in IT,” said the balloonist.

“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management? “

“I am , ” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f**ing fault.”

Back by popular demand is my step-sons “iPage” cartoons which occasionally touch on IT related topics. Nathan recently graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a degree in IT and some other stuff. He’s currently temping and working in a call-centre. Life really chokes in the job market front if your graduate at the moment – it reminds me of what it was like in 1992/3 when I left Uni. He’s hoping to start a MA next year in Computer Art and Games Design in Nottingham.

Anyway, hope you enjoy ‘em the cartoons and they make you smile – I can’t imagine where he gets his cynicism/humour from – he hasn’t even worked in IT yet!