Archive for January, 2010

Hey, fellow virtualization blogger. Perhaps your on Eric S list? Well, I have proposal for you. Once a week I want to Video Skype with you and have a good old chinwag. What is a chinwag? Well, it’s defined as ” light informal conversation for social occasions…” but I want our chinwags to be about virtualization. Your challenges, problems, solutions, opinons – hey, maybe you just want to shoot-the-breeze and get something of your chest. Well, you can do it with me via the RTFM ChinWag! I want to begin with bloggers first because I think you might be at more liberty to chat than others, but in time I would like to ChinWag with real folks (not that you or I are not real) doing virtualization for real. As a blogger you’re probably doing that already – but I what I mean is that I don’t want ChinWag to be just a bloggers thing – but you have to start somewhere.

I’m thinking somewhere in the 15-30 minute time frame. Non-scripted. But we would dream up some questions to keep our juices flowing. Perhaps you might want to fire a question back at me – and see which side of the fence I prevaricate on?

Interested? You know where I am.

In this article, we eschew the normal blue-sky 2010 technology predictions for something a bit more everyday that will affect your daily virtual life.

Scale up, up, up and away
Firstly, it’s no surprise that by mid-year there is likely to be a major rerelease of vSphere4 with a strong emphasis on increased scalability. Building on top of vSphere4′s current scalability I wouldn’t be surprised to see the number of vCPUs a single ESX host can support go beyond the 128 core range. I think it’s likely that by the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011 we will be looking at more than 8 vCPUs to a VM – with VMware pushing the amount of RAM per-VM into the 512 GB to 1 TB range and the ESX host supporting 1 TB or 2 TB of physical RAM.

Read on…

Here’s a video of my vNews. It’s quite long just over an hour. Opps. Still its hard to round up news and pass comment on it meaningfully in 10 minutes. These won’t be very frequent – about one a month I think. It depends on how my user group work pans out – as I tend to cobble these together in time for a UG.

Also I think I could have made the picture-in-picture video bigger – I will know better next time. I’m investing in a green-screen so I can do it more professionally and some lighting gear too. All I need now is an attractive anchorwoman. Perhaps Carmel will do the virtual weather too… The other thing I’m thinking is I want to drop the whole PPT approach altogether – it works fine when your presenting in UG. But its all a bit static as a video (Gee, I’m really selling you this aren’t I!) So more graphics – and pictures to make it more like an actual news programme!

You can watch here or use the download button to download and play your on iPOD/iPhone. [Just click and open in iTunes]

The full version at high quality is here (beware it is 370MB). This format is suitable for play back via a projector. [Right-click and Save-As)

If you want the power-points – which include the links to the stories – they are here. If you do use them for your user group that’s fine. The PDF file contains links to each of the stories that I mention.

If you want to watch in a browser, streamed to your desktop – just click the little Video Mov graphic below!

vNews - January 2010 [ 0:01 ] Download

I will be there in body & spirit but I wont’ be talking. I will be butting in at every moments notice with long-winded pontifications, about how wrong the world is…

A message from our illustrious membership secretary, MC Al Davies…

The Steering Committee are pleased to announce the next UK London VMware User Group meeting, kindly sponsored by Pano Logic, to be held on Thursday 25th February 2010. We hope to see you at the meeting, and afterwards for a drink or two, courtesy of VMware.

Our meeting will be held at the Thames Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444. The nearest tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here. Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm. Our agenda is not final at the moment, but looks something like this:

(more…)

Well, if you follow “Mike’s Music” for a time – you know my tastes lean towards popular music of the 20th Century onwards. But very occasionally I dip my toes in the waters of the classics. Much of that comes from my partner, Carmel Edwards who a singer also (Soprano, Early English Music, and the 20s/30′s). Anyway, she recently put this CD in the car which blew me away. The singer is Elin Manahan Thomas who is from Wales (UK). and her new(ish) CD is called the Eternal Source of Light Divine (which is piece by Handel by the way, who lived in the UK for major part of his life).

Anyway, I’ve got the CD ripped to my iTunes and its playing in the background whilst I do Sunday Afternoon “Admin”. I managed to find a sample video of the Handel piece on youtube.com. Quality is not great (the rip on Youtube.com) but it will give you an idea:

Well, put a bit more accurately. Over the last couple of weeks/months I’ve been in discussions with the guys at TechTarget. And I am pleased to announce that TechTarget Inc. will be acquiring the site – and me. Clearly, I can’t go into the specifics of the deal as that is commercially sensitive. But lets just say I’m very pleased – and along with McGraw-Hill sending me advanced copies of my vSphere4 book – this week has end with a very big smile on my face…

So what does this mean for you my loyal readership. Well, firstly RTFM will continue for the time being to be a separate website from TechTarget. I will be generating content for both RTFM and TechTarget for the foreseeable future. I’ll just be posting stuff over on TechTarget – where it feels “right” whereas stuff that seems more appropriate for RTFM stays on RTFM. Of course, anything I write for TechTarget – I will extract over here, and point you to the site.

What I get from the deal (apart from the obvious!) is much, much more free time. So starting this year, I will be reducing the amount of time I spend training – to have more time to write/blog/videos/attend conferences and so on. I will still be an instructor for the foreseeable – because, well I enjoy standing up and passing on what I know face-to-face. Plus there’s something special about the person-to-person stuff I do – like being asked questions on the spot. Scary I know that sounds. Additionally, I find the regular contact with people who doing it for real – keeps me in touch with coal face of modern IT – I want to avoid the danger of slipping completely into the world of the media.

The deal with TechTarget also allows me to me keep my print-media side of things going too. So I am still committed to an SRM 4.0 book, and yes believe it or not a SRM 4.1 is already gestation. There should be a 2nd Edition of the vSphere4 book in the pipeline too – just as soon as VMware start to release a major revision – like a vSphere4.5 edition if you like. I’m also planning a VDI book too – but I haven’t really decide if it should be VMware only or be a lot more vendor neutral. There’s of fragmentation around the virtual desktop space that make writing a book about a single vendors solution difficult. Whether that will be a McGraw-Hill book, a LULU book or ebook with TechTarget isn’t clear at the moment. It depends on its length and whether I want to go through the hell which is conventional print-media…

I would like to say a big hi-five to the folks at TechTarget. I’ve found the negotiations with them to be very easy – the folks over there seem easy to get along with to say the least. And it helped that my esteemed colleague – Brian Madden made a similar move while back. The very favorable comments he made about TechTarget made it easier decision to make.

Finally. As you know RTFM got started very early in the virtualization game. I became well-known really for those RTFM Guides that people download by the bucket load. Many of those folks now hold senior positions in VMware – which does my reputation no-end of good, and has opened up many doors. In recent years I experimented with paid-for-content in the shape of hard-copy books. My goal is to return to those early days where content could be delivered rapidly and efficiently. I almost did this with the vSphere4 book. I was a mouse-click away from giving all 600-pages of thing on the day of vSphere4 GA last year. Fortunately, my partner (Carmel) persuaded me out of this madness – and said look you must make some dough out of nearly 12 months of work. I does my reputation no harm what so ever be classed a “McGraw-Hill” author. I haven’t entirely turn my back on the books.

But for the new book I’m writing on VMware SRM 4.0 it will be FREE. Yes, totally Free. All 400-pages of the thing. It will be a free PDF downloadable from LULU, and if you want a hard-copy they will do a print-on-demand at cost. The reason I want to do this – is because firmly believe that what RTFM has given away for free in the last decade, has been repaid many times over in the respect accorded to me from community that I serve.

Gee, I must be a really nice guy.

Since the annoucement there’s been some really nice twitter responses from twitter-chums and fellow bloggers in the field. Thanks Guys…

This is a copy of the Scottish VMUG powerpoints where I presented my vNews to a live audience of some 80+ people. I will be following through on these powerpoints by video which you can run on-screen. But for the benefit of the audience yesteday here’s the raw PowerPoints:

vNew01-2010

VMware have made some changes to their certification – Firstly, the VCP3 test which was due to be ended at the end of 2009 has been rescued – and won’t now be discontinued until March 31st. The reason being that there is still a signficant number of folks doing the Vi3 courses and supporting that product.

Additionally, the deadline for VCP4 upgrade has been extended – until the 31st January. If you are ALREADY a VCP3 then there’s no need to take a training course. All you have to do is sit & pass the VCP4 test by the end of the month – and you will be upgraded from VCP3 to VCP4. This change was made because the folks who run the tests (Pearson VUE) didn’t have the capacity to process the people wanting to upgrade at the end of the year. So through no fault of their own, certain candidates were unable to schedule the VCP4 test.

If you don’t make the 31st Jan deadline – you have two choices either do the 2-day “What’s New” course or else take the 5-day “Fast Track”. I know its cost money & time but personally I would recommend the Fast Track course – it would MORE than prepare you for the VCP4 exam…

More details here: http://mylearn1.vmware.com/portals/certification/

Yes, that’s right everybody’s doing – why aren’t you? Of course, I’m not talking about sex – but about various companies all jumping into the metaphorical bed together. Yesterday, Microsoft and HP (MSHP) annouced a joint $250m dollar partnership and in on the 26th Jan – Cisco, NetApp and VMware (CNW) will probably announce a similar joint venture. These announcement caught my eye – because they are similar (that means NOT the same as by the way) as the VCE (VMware, Cisco, EMC) launch last year.

Also in the news is: Cloud march has begun: Panasonic dumps on-premise Microsoft Exchange for IBM’s LotusLive mail – mmm, that would be the same IBM who made such a wonderful job of New Zealand Airlines booking system? Hey, perhaps why so many people think VMware might buy Yahoo Zimbra… you need an email offering inside your cloud to tempt people away from Microsoft Exchange…

[Slight cock-up on my part. It has actually been confirmed that VMware will acquire Zimbra]

Anyway, I digress. I just thought these two announcements (CNW and MSHP) were interesting not because they take on VCE head-on. But mainly because it seems clear that this cloud thang is pressing people to consolidate and partner in away that is material different than in the past – because it involves spending hard cash $$$ to make it happen. And this is in a time of economic contraction or stagnation (at best). Clearly, these companies are thinking that the cloud thang might be something they have to take a punt on – if they want to have a reassurance that they have long-term viability…

Just in case you have missed this – I recently had a series of articles published on searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com. The articles are all about VMware View. Originally, this was meant to be a chapter in my new book on vSphere4 (due at the end of Feb). But in the end the book just got too long – so I offered up the whole chapter to the folks at TechTarget.com. I guess its little bit out of date because soon after VMware View4 was released. But it is still mainly current – after all the biggest change in View4 is PCoIP – many of the concepts stay the same… I’ve promised techtarget to update the articles to View4 once I have time…