Archive for August, 2011

Kenny was one of the very first chinwaggers, and as a testiment to the power chinwag – he now works for VCE. We chat about vBlocks and how the industry is heading toward pre-assembled and pre-packages mix of storage, network and servers.

I was very fortunate to be asked to do my “Chinwag” on VMworld-TV. I picked Charles Gautreux as my guest. He’s a VP of the Global VMUG, but also pretty hands-on with vSphere implementations. So we take some time out to talk about his stretched HA cluster – and how his organization might go about getting from vSphere4 to vSphere5…

Not sure if this link will work

This is the general link to VMworld TV live steam: http://www.livestream.com/vmwarecommunitytv

Eric is famous for his “scoops” – and this year he’s doing a session of myth busting. We talk about his inspiration for the session – and we chat about the use of distributed vswitches.

This miniwag is Steve Beaver. He’s a bit of legend in the VMware Community and one of old hands on the VMware Forums… We talk about the company he’s work with current which does network analyse who are getting into virtualization – and we talk about how much VMworld has changed since the early days.

This year I’m hanging out at the bloggers lounge doing mini-chinwags with folks who stop by and say hi. This one is with Tom Howarth, we talk about whether ESXi is “ready” for secure environments, vCenter on Linux…

If you have ever attended VMworld before – you’ll know that one of the top experiences are the VMware Labs. You know there’s an awful lot of talk and powerpoint at these kind of the events, and the VMware Labs offer an excellent chance to escape hot-air, and actually get your hands dirty with the technology. I think I will be doing a number myself as part of my research for the “Hotel California” book. It’s going to have a lot of technologies I’ve never ever touched before, and I see the VMware Labs as a good opportunity to dip my toe in the water – so to speak.

All labs are self-paced and walk-up. So there aren’t massive lines with labs only starting at set times. That’s a thing of the past. The labs are delivered though a dedicate “lab cloud”, and the lab guys who build this stuff are real pioneers within VMware. For example they were one of the first groups to use “nested ESX” – ESX inside a VM, to ease the spinning up of various environments. So if you like VMware Labs is a real example of VMware “eating its own dog food”…

Here’s a graphic that shows how the Labs are being delivered to Las Vegas…

You can see VMworld Labs by solution here: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conference/us/learn/sessions-labs

Here’s some exclusive behind the scenes views of the VMware Labs being built out… Great job, guys!

After doing my key labs I’m hoping to catch-up with subject matter experts at the Genius Bar. Despite my rather good contacts with VMware my links tend to be restricted to certain product silos – such as vSphere, View, SRM, vCD and vCHBS. But I know there are vast swathes of the company that I have little or no contact with. So I’m seeing this as chance to pick up a few business cards – to act as the first contact with those different product groups.

I’m pleased to announce that my a limited pre-publication or “rough cut” of my SRM 5.0 book will be available to purchase at VMworld in a hard copy format. You will need to be quick on your feet as there are only 200 copies of the book available. I understand a 30% discount will apply… and that anyone buying the book will qualify for a free digital download of the final work when it eventually GA’s.

I’m so pleased about this – as I think this a bit of scoup for me. Readers will know that RTFM generally has the most detailed coverage of new technologies from VMware on the “day-of-the-download”. Generally those works are free or at a very reasonable cost. I think this is the first time I’ve had something out before the actual GA of the product itself (that’s because I would normally have to respect beta NDAs). This time around the tie up with the VMware Press has allowed something I previously wouldn’t been able to do.

The other thing to mention is that there is a number of gatherings to mark the event. So you catch me at the vMeetUp at the Bloggers Lounge at VMworld between 10-11 on Monday. There will lots of luminaries from the VMware Community there as well.

I will be doing a book signing event on Wednesday, 1.00-1.30pm. So grab a copy of the book when you can, and get me to sign it at the book signing. Remember every book signed by me doubles its value on Ebay :-p

You can see preview chapters of the books in the VMware Press here:

Also there is a sweepstake that VMware Press is running to win a 3-book library of the three inaugural books that have been written for the VMware Press launch.

Things have really shaped up in the last couple of days. So below is what I’m doing and where I am at for VMworld Vegas. I’ve not listed the private appointments I’ve got – because well, there are private.

But these are places I will definitely be at.

Monday:
10am-11am
vMeetup – Community Lounge

3:00-3.20
Live on VMworld-TV: Chinwag with Mike… with Special Guest Star Charles Gautreux (VP of the Global VMUG

7:30-9:30pm
Official “Unofficial” Community Tweetup – Invites not publicly open yet.

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Acronis Party
Tuesday:
All Day -
Judging for TechTarget on the Solutions Exchange

5:45 PM to 7:15PM
VMworld 2011 Partner Tweetup

7:00PM to 8:30PM
VMware Press Publishing Team Party

8–11 PM
Veeam Party

Wednesday
2.30-3.30:
SMB DR & Data Protection Panel (SPO3975)

5:30-8:30 p.m.
TechTarget VMworld Party

Thursday

Private Meetings throughout the day
Mooching about, Attending Sessions…

I’m pleased to announce MIAAS (that’s announcement not of its availability as it befits everyone else to do it that way!)

MIAAS stands for “Mike’s Infrastructure As A Service” and is correctly pronounced as “MY ASS”

..and no this is not a joke…

What is MIAAS?

With todays release of vSphere5 I’m pleased to announce a brand new service. MIAAS is a remote lab environment that folks can connect to remotely, and use for practically any VMware related work they like. It comprises of four physical servers and NFS/iSCSI system at the back end. Previously I was constrained by the beta programme.

It been in the pipeline for some months, and has been tested by a couple of vExperts in order to polish it up – and get a feel for what people actually want. I would like to take this opportunity to formally and publicly thank Gabrie Van Zanten, Barry Combs, Miash Saidal-Keesing, Luc Dekens, Arnim Van Liesshout and Richard Gardener.

So there is no ESX or vCenter setup to do. Nor is there any networking to do – vSwitches and storage are already setup. Of course if folks want a more bear bones setup that’s actually easier to do, but I have it all automated so I can reset the entire lab in a matter of an hour so. The idea being is to make you as productive as possible as quickly as possible. So you can get on a do interesting stuff like creating cluster and such like…

How much will cost? Answer: Buttons. I won’t be looking to make a profit with MIAAS. Just cover my power bills, cost of the kit (quite a few thousand), and plough any intitial money made into improving the kit such as more dongles for ILO cards, better quality switch (currently an unmanaged switch with no VLAN support) and perhaps a better storage system.

How did MIAAS come about?

This is a bit of shaggy dog story. Hold tight. In late 2009 I quit being an freelance instructor, to being a freelance writer/author/blogger/podcaster. At the same time I was looking to reduce my costs, so when the SRM 4.0 book was finished I decide to clear out of my costly co-location, and return to base all the free kit I’m “loaned” back to the relevant parties. I spent quite a few £1K on a home lab, figuring that the cost of the outlay would be paid back in saved co-location charges. I was right… In that time I managed to write my View guide using the HomeLab.

Then one of those vendors offered to help assist with those co-location charges, and at the same time send me some new kit. And then in late 2010 the SRM 5.0 project took off, and I added Dell Equallogic to my rack – along side NetApp and EMC. I began to realise that I now had two labs… I christen one the “HomeLab” and the other “ProLab”. Over time I started to think of the best way of using this spare equipment I had home and the MIAAS concept was born?

I’m still not sure if I’m barking up the wrong tree. So if this idea doesn’t work out. I will probably re-purpose the hardware. Perhaps running a 2-node CitrixXen and a 2-node Microsoft HyperV clusters. I’m loathed to flog it on ebay because I will loose money on the initial purchase. Plus I don’t know how long I will remain in the co-location. Depends what happens when my sponsorship runs dry in October.

How do I gain access?

Are you a vExpert? Hello!

Not a vExpert – erm, speak to me in about 1-3 months time.

For the moment I’m only opening up MIAAS to VMware vExperts. Mainly because I’m worried I will be assailed by a squillion emails asking for access next week. You do a have other work to do such a writing articles, podcasts, books, speaking and so on.

If I get no interest from vExperts (most of them have labs of their own I imagine) then I will consider opening it out to the wider community. What I want to avoid is 100 emails day requesting access – I couldn’t cope with that…

FUD. FUD. FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.

Stock goes down 5%

FUD. FUD. FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.FUD. FUD.

Phew. That was the easiest blogpost ever!