Archive for the ‘Other’ Category

OK. Its perhaps a bit early for the presidential elections – but it’s never too early to vote in Eric Siebert’s every popular popularity contest. If you vote for me, I promise to cry and thank my mom & dad…

Eric  has once again started a poll to ask people to vote for their favorite VMware & Virtualization blogs. On his vSphere-Land page you can see the results of the previous voting. This year Eric has added some extra categories for which you can vote.

This year the voting is sponsored by TrainSignal and you have chance to win copies of their vSphere5 and View training videos.

You can vote here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/786135/Top-VMware-virtualization-blogs-2012

Eric suggest you use this criteria in your voting:
Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.
Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.
Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.
Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.

I have two DLAN devices on my home network. They are branded as Orange HomePlug, but learned today they are actually rebrands Devolo dLAN units. A couple of weeks ago they gave up the ghost and stopped communicating.

I have one plugged into my WiFi router at the ground floor of my house, and one on the top floor my house where my home lab resides – because of the logistics these ethernet over power units seemed a better solution than dangling a very long ethernet down the length of the house – and I can’t relocate the wifi unti.

Anyway, after googling (http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1161996-homeplug-issue.html), led me to download the Apple Mac utility for handling the devices – and also the driver update. The Apple Mac utility basically allowed me to re-pair the two plugs together by setting a secure password for them communicate. This is something the would normally do out of the box with no manual intervention. So basically this utility was used as a frig to get them talking again.

The first adapter it found on the network…

and the second had to be added in by its unique ID printed on the plug itself…

Once they had been found and new password had been set they began to chat with each other. Intermittently. I noticed on the Devolo site there was firmware update, so I decided to apply that. That was a little bit tricker. Firstly, the update only works in Windows. So I had fire up my Windows VM in VMware Fusion, and then plug the plug directly into the Ethernet connector on the MBP. Then using Fusions network controls, I turned off autodetect option to make sure the only thing the Windows VM could see was the on-board MBP nic, rather than the WiFi. Applying the update was nothing more than running the installer…

Since then these unit have begun working again without any glitches for about 2hrs. It’s all very odd given there was no problems for about 3-months, and then they stopped working altogether. I’m wondering if some sort of power problem caused them to pack up. We did have dodgy kettle trip the main fuse to the house – and perhaps that power outage had upset them somehow…

Last week it was my pleasure to take part in my first ever vSoup podcast hosted by none other than Chris Dearden, Ed Czerwin and Christian Mohn. We discussed the following topics:

• VMware User Groups
• VMware SRM
• VMworld 2011 Band: The Killers
• vBeers
• vSphere Storage Appliance

Recorded before VMware’s recent up dates to their vRAM licensing policy, we took the opportunity to speculate prior to the announcement on what those changes would be, and analyze the situation.

To listen or subscribe pop along to the vSoup website – http://vsoup.net/2011/08/vsoup-a-man-after-midnight-13/

For the first time in my life, I got turn left when board a plane. I actually turned right in attempt to locate my seat not realising I’d been upgrade to First Class on an internal flight. OK. It’s hardly business or 1^st on a transatlantic. But I took a photo to record the strange and wonderful experience – I hope to get more of this treatment from United Airlines in the future. One day I will get my 1K stripes!

Dell arrange for a limo drive to pick me up from Boston, MA to take me to Nashua, NH. I was way too scared to pick up a hire car and try and navigate myself out of the airport. Those crazy Americans drive on the wrong side of the road don’t you know.  My driver – Bob, turned out to be a really interesting guy. In a previous life he was skydiver, and did over 4,000 jumps and became an instructor. He even met the British parachute guys “The Red Devils” who he said were the craziest guys he’d met – who invented new tricks to teach the instructors. Bob said the devils were of that age where you think your immortal. Anyway, I tried not behave like a rockstar – there was no wrap-around specs, class-A drugs or groupies in my limo…

This week I spent my first two days in the US with Dell over at their facility in Nashua, New Hampshire. Over the last six months I’ve got quite close to the Dell Equallogic team that’s based out there. They reached out to me late last year as I started to ramp up to write the 3^rd edition of the VMware SRM book for the VMware Press. Anyway, the first day was mostly stuff I could write about, whereas the second day was pretty much futures stuff that will be under embargo for the next couple of weeks or months depending on the release schedule.

Me and the Dell Equallogic Team near the briefing center at Nashua.  I made a joke that the sign above our heads made it sound like we were modern day equivlant of the 7 dwaves. Will’s “Easy to Use”, Dylan’s “Flexible” and David’s “Data Proven” and I’m the dwarf called “Scalable”. To the left is William Urban, Dylan Locsin and to my right David Glynn. You can follow them on twitter @VirtWillU and @d_glynn

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OK, I think you might have worked it out – things have gone VERY quiet on RTFM of recent weeks. There’s been no output from me on vSphere5 or the vRAM issue… My last chinwag was with Scott Lowe in June!

The truth is I’ve got my nose in a book – a new book on SRM 5.0 with a deadline to deliver an “authors edition” for VMware Press ready for VMworld. That means excruciatingly tight deadlines plus I have my writing to do for TechTarget which how I keep the wolf from the proverbial door.

So I guess I’m taking an enforced hiatus for next few weeks. Never fear you can follow my output on TechTargets sites – and I promise to return to RTFM at the earliest opportunity…

Never fear I’ve got plenty of plans…

• I’ve got vendorwags with vKernel, Nimble and VirtualSharp in the diary
• Plans to complete series of vSphere5 videos – I wanna give that young upstart, David Davis a run for his money :-p
• ..and a really wacky idea. I mean really wacky. So wacky, I even asked my partner (Carmel) is this just too wacky – to which she said no, its one of the best ideas you’ve had… My idea is soooo wacky neither VMware Press, McGraw-Hill or Pearson Education would REMOTELY consider it. They’d go – Mike, that’s just too wacky for us.
• Finally. I’m all booked for the two VMworlds. Watch out for me at the VMworld Party in Las Vegas. I should (ahem) be relatively easy to spot. Make sure you have your camera ready. Because there will not be a repeat performance, and it will be for one-night only….

It’s with great pleasure to say that for the 3rd year running I’ve been granted the award of vExpert from VMware. It’s indeed gratifying to have my hard work recognised by the great and good in the community. I hope to keep on serving you all with new content and ideas. As you know I’m working on a new SRM book – but I have plans with fellow vExpert of mine to product a VMware View book for the next release. In the meantime you might see the rate of my chinwags and vendorwags slow a little as focus on getting an edition of the SRM book ready for VMworld 2011. It’s going to be very tight, and I might not make it – but I’m working every weekend from now to the event to try to get to folks at the event…

By the end of the year I hope to update the videos on my website to reflect the raft of new releases from VMware. And then I hav a bigger project to consider. I want to write a “cloudy” book that looks up and down the stack from hardware, vSphere, and cloud automation – and takes in the gamut of the vast majority of the higher-level management products in the VMware stable. Next year I want to carry on doing my monthly trip to the US to speak the big user summits in the US and elsewhere. Here’s another great year in 2012…!!!

David Davis of www.vmwarevideos.com has released his video of the “Ask The Experts Panel” on the topic of cloud.

On the panel were myself and

• Scott Lowe, VCDX (@Scott_Lowe) of blog.ScottLowe.org
• Jason Nash, VCDX (@nash_j) of  jasonnash.wordpress.com
• Mike DiPetrillo, VCDX (@mikedipetrillo) of www.mikedipetrillo.com
• Moderator: Rich Brambley, vPower (@rbrambley) of www.VMetc.com

Anyway, you can see the video over on David’s Site – click on the big graphic below!

Well, the dust has settled – or rather I’ve been so max’d out that I haven’t had time to write up my experiences. And I really should before it gets all fuzzy, like afternoon beer…

This TFD was in Boston, and virtualization focused. I was joined by a group other Merry Pranksters.

• Ed Czerwin, vSoup and vNinja, @ECzerwin
• Chris Dearden, J.F.V.I. and vSoup, @ChrisDearden
• Edward Haletky, The Virtualization Practice, @Texiwill
• Tom Howarth, PlanetVM, @Tom_Howarth
• Christian Mohn, vNinja.net and vSoup, @h0bbel
• Todd Scalzott, Don’t Call Me Scott, @TScalzott
• Shannon Snowden, Virtualization Information, @ShannonSnowden
• Gabrie van Zanten, Gabe’s Virtual World, @GabVirtualWorld
• Chris Wells, vSamurai, @wygtya

I found the event immensely fun, and tiring – and I wasn’t partying down at the bar with the other guys at the end of each day – and I was grateful to Clare & Stephen for arranging the events and making sure got enough R&R at the end of each day – be ready for the next…

The quality and range of presentation was many and varied – and think some vendors were a little intimidated by the group. TFD has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, but I think occasionally our bark is worse than our bite. The presenters who came off worst were the ones who hadn’t really found about out the delegates – they came across badly when faced with Edward Haletky who’s a bit of security whizz – another vendor started to talk about VMware SRM not realising that I was in audience. Anyway, I don’t take these things personally (in a ‘don’t you know who am I way’) but no-one likes it when a presenter assumes you know nothing about subject – because they didn’t bother to find out the audience profile. TFD delegates aren’t pro-analysts or journalist (even though I find myself being some sort journo right in my current gig) – so delegates don’t especially warm to the kind of “briefing” content that’s some companies rely upon…

The general theme that came out from the event – is that group wanted more focus on integration with VMware vCenter – from all the vendors. Not a session went by when some didn’t mention whether the software in question had plug-ins into vCenter. That was especially true of the performance vendors – where folks were concerned about bringing in tools where VMware Admins just might not crank up the software – so overwhelmed they are by additional monitoring systems…

Personally, I would have liked have seen more small start-up vendors who were doing real bleeding edge development work. Perhaps that could be the a theme the TFD could pick up on next – Start-up TFD…

Anyway, here’s my decidedly partial view of each of the vendors who presented to us…

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Congratulations to Kirk Shaffer – he wins the $15 iToons Gift card.

Kevin is a 27 year old Network Analyst for a large Health Care provider in Pennsylvania. Where he supports the VMware infrastructure composed of ESXi, SRM, CapIQ, and View running on HP blades. They are currently 60% Virtualized with 80 Hosts and 1300 VM’s.  He’s been working with vmware for about 2 and a half years starting with ESX 3.5…

I was recently a recipient of $15 Apple iToons gift card in the US. Sadly, I can’t redeem it because Apple says I live in the UK, and I’m not allowed gifts from American friends. Thanks Steve. So I decided to give it away as a prize on RTFM…

Now what do you have to do stand a chance of winning? Well, subscribe to my blog – and I will enter you into the prize draw. Remember when you subscribe to my blog you agree to be contacted by representatives in Nigeria, and young, attractive lady in Russia who has ailing grandmother in need of “the medicines”

The draw will close on Monday, 27th at 5pm GMT. I will contact you by email with the voucher number to redeem your $15.

AND OF COURSE, YOU MUST LIVE IN THE US and HAVE A VALID ITOONS STORE ACCOUNT FOR IT WORK!