Archive for the ‘SRM’ Category

I don’t know why it took me so long to get round to doing this – but I’ve got a copy of the old SRM 4.0 Book (which is free – donations to Unicef are requested)… on to the iPAD… I’ve recently been looking at using my iPAD as ebook reader.

To read my book on your iPAD you will need the iBooks App from the Apple AppStore…

And you will have to add the .EPUB file to your iToons library to get sunk to the AyePad..

I used Calibre to do the covert from PDF to .EPUB format. It’s not perfect (which says more about how I formatted the original manuscript!) but its readable.

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/downloads/SRM4.0-Guide-v1.4-English-eBook – Mike Laverick.epub

Today I got news from my publisher (VMware Press aka Pearson Press), that a “rough cut” of my book on SRM 5.0 is now available on Safari for subscribers. The rough cut was one of the 1st drafts of the book based on the Beta2 of the product – that was back when VMware were using the product name “host-based replication” for what is now called “vSphere Replication”.

The link is here: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780132842280?portal=informit

In case you don’t know – previous SRM books were sold directly by me for profit or in the case of SRM 4.0 for charity. This is the first time I’ve written about SRM through an official publisher. It’s one of the first books to be printed through the newly founded VMware Press, which really pleases me. We should have digital copies of the book available at VMworld, and one purchasing a digital copy of the rough cut will qualify for a free digital copy once the final book is released.

Quite when that will be is unclear to even me, but I’m thinking that end of Oct/Nov is likely, depends on how the review process goes and how many substantial changes I see between the release candidate I have, and the final cut. At the moment I’m still is the first big round of reviews – or which they will be three rounds in total. As you might expect the 1st round of reviews is a biggy, because that’s the first time anyone has seen the manuscript. The 2/3rd round of review work is more a polishing up phase.

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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Well, I guess the word is out on twitter (not that I was given forewarning of the announcement!) but in case you haven’t heard yet – VMware have in partnership with Pearson established their own VMware Press. I’m really pleased they have taken this step – it was something I suggested to VMware back in 2005/6 but at the time there seemed little enthusiasm. I guess that’s kind of understandable – after all VMware is an ISV, not publisher. But time and tide have moved on, and I think VMware realise that there is a major benefit to be had in engaging with the small band of merry authors – of which I am part.

So the next VMware Site Recovery Manager book will be the first to be release for the first time through a formal publisher. Previous editions were self-published by myself, and distributed by LULU and Amazon – and later still in a PDF format. It’s great privilege to be selected this way, and I believe is recognition of my long-term commitment to writing books/content/guides on VMware technologies for which I’ve become international renowned (time to blow my own trumpet, and know that isn’t euphemism) .

So along side including even more storage vendors – by adding Dell Equallogic to the book – there will be detailed coverage of all the new major features which I’m sure will rock your world. Make no bones about it the next release of VMware SRM is going to be significant uplift compared to the 1.0/4.0/4.1 releases. With many of the major roadblocks to adoption being elevated, or even removed altogether.

The other big change is that I will be working with VMware much more closely than ever before – and believe me I close before hand. But this time around VMware themselves have direct stake in validating and checking the content. So I’m hoping that my contacts with VMware will allow this time around a more “under the covers” approach to be taken than was previously possible…

So where do I go after this book. Well, I have big plans for some kind of “cloud stack” book that encompasses understanding how the layers of stack – OEM, ESX, vSphere, vCloud Director and other VMware virtualization management products (vCHBS, AppSpeed, ConfigControl and so on) interact and work with each other. The way I’m looking at it is a bit like this. In the mid-90′s I forage a career based on knowing Windows NT4, and essentially teaching all the “core” operating systems functionality. As time wore on that wasn’t enough – and my students and peer group demand more – until the OS almost disappeared – so focused were we on Exchange 5.5/IIS/Citrix or what ever platform was running. That’s the direction I need to go in, and think the vCommunity needs to go in. Never fear I remain equally committed to understanding that core platform of ESX/vCenter – vSphere if you like. But its time to move up the stack and into new and virgin territory.

Earlier this year I spent a couple of days in Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon. I’ve was the guest of Mountain States Networking who have sites both in SLC & Portland, as well as a presence in Boise and Las Vegas.

Mountain States Networking very kindly paid for me to travel across – so I did a presentation in SLC and in Portland, and in between had back-to-back, customer 1-2-1s. My presentation was all about the “Future of VMware Site Recovery Manager”. It’s a presentation I will be hawking around the US and elsewhere over the next 12 months. I was very kindly given a dispensation from VMware to talk about the roadmap of SRM – the kind of thing you would normally have to keep quiet, or sign a NDA to hear…

Anyway, the guys from mstates.com have come back with some linkedin feedback which is really gratifying! It’s always great to get linkedin recommendations – as is a brilliant way of getting feedback about how you’ve done. Here’s what they said. If you recently worked with someone and it when well, why not find their linkedin and give them a big old pat on the back for a job well done?

We asked Mike to come to our site and do a couple presentations to large groups of customers as well as multiple one-on-one meetings with our key accounts. While these were two very different tasks, Mike performed both with great skill. In large presentation settings Mike engages the audience while relaying meaningful content. Mikes presentation style is personal and makes you feel like the content is directed solely at you rather than the 200 other attendees. All of our customers commented that this was the most worthwhile presentation they had heard in a long time.  In small groups Mike is particularly skilled at discovering the customers issues and problems and then building content on the fly to address their needs. Mike very quickly builds a repore with anyone he is working with, and makes you feel like a long time friend.  Our intent on hiring Mike was to bring in the “world wide expert” on Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. After having him onsite and working with our customers, I know we got exactly what we were looking for. I would not hesitate to recommend his work in any capacity.”

These shots were taken by Alan Renouf with my iPhone – the pool is the famous “Turtle Pool” sadly they turtles were in the water and not consolidating themselves as usual.

[Note: For those initiated in the details of US History/Myth. The phrase "The British Are Coming" was allegedly uttered by Paul Revere - as warning that the British Military was on the way to crush those pesky revolting Yanks. Apparently, Revere never said such a thing, but like all good national myths - the story is perhaps more interesting than the historical fact. Anyway, it was also uttered by an actor in the movie "Chariots of Fire" as announcement of the "invasion" of British Film talent in the 80s. The British Movie industry suffered a similar fate as the British Military in the US... Since then I've used it ironically when ever a bunch of Brits are found together collectively in the United States...]

After finishing up at the Charlotte, NC VMUG Summit I popped across to San Francisco. I had the chance to spend the weekend with some friends of mine – both in the City (where I had a burrito the size of a baby’s arm) and out at Half Moon Bay on the coast. On Saturday I had chance to have an informal lunch with John Troyer and his significant other. That was the second time we hooked up because my British pals live in the same area as John. I also got a chance to drive up the coast in my friends new Porsche (yes, its a total mid-life crisis, but that’s what mid-life crisises were invented for weren’t they?) and see the Great Elephant Seals by the coast there.

My main reason for being is San Francisco was to visit the offices of VMware. It was by chance that fellow Brit, Alan Renouf was there too. No, Alan is not French (if he was it would be Alain I imagine!) – and he’s just moved from EMC to VMware to work on all things PowerCLI related.

I was in Palo Alto to attend my first ever “On-Site Beta Workshop” – I found the 3-day event very useful indeed. Not just for getting close access to the product development team, but also to listen to customers concerns and priorities.

It’s the end of my financial year, and I’ve in the last couple of months started writing a new version of the SRM book. So its with great pleasure that I can now announce that the PDF version of the SRM 4.0 book will free to download from this date. You can still order a hard-copy of the book from LULU if you so wish at cost price. Of course you welcome to make your own donation to UNICEF should you wish.

I will start totting up how much money I raised in total for UNICEF, and will make a donation within the next couple of days.

Enjoy! Click the cover!

PDF Version

Well, this blog post takes its title from one of my favourite novels and songs – Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and WIllie Nelsons 1980 hit “On the Road Again“… This week I’ve be on the other side of the pond in the USA. I’ve spent a couple of days in Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon. I’ve been the guest of Mountain States Networking who have sites both in SLC & Portland, as well as a presence in Boise and Las Vegas.

Mountain States Networking very kindly paid for me to travel across – so I did a presentation in SLC and in Portland, and in between had back-to-back, customer 1-2-1s. My presentation was all about the “Future of VMware Site Recovery Manager”. It’s a presentation I will be hawking around the US and elsewhere over the next 12 months. I was very kindly given a dispensation from VMware to talk about the roadmap of SRM – the kind of thing you would normally have to keep quiet, or sign a NDA to hear…

The customer 1-2-1 have been incredibly useful – both the customer and for me. During the last 4 days I think I’ve meet around 12 customers from all manner of sectors, densities of virtualization, diverse storage replication and network bandwidth. It’s been a real insight into the the many various challenges customers have in deploying a DR strategy, and specifically VMware SRM.

It hasn’t all been down to me – I’ve been supported well by Jeff Drury of mstates.com – who happened help review the last SRM 4.0 book. It’s early days but me and Jeff are already discussing the idea of extending our tag-team to make a session at next years VMworld all about case-studies of genuine customer deployments of SRM and their experiences. It’s bit late to do that for this years VMworld, and a bit late because we want to see how this weeks R&R shakes out.

In the meantime, I think I’m now able to say where & when I will be for the rest of the year.

• Apr 20th – San Diego
• May 5th – Charlotte
• May 10nd-12th – Palo Alto
• Jun 7th – Western PA
• Jun 21st – Brisbane (TBC)
• Jun 23rd – Melbourne (TBC)
• Jul 28th – Indianapolis
• Aug 28th-Sept 4th – Las Vegas/VMworld US
• Oct 17th-20th – Copenhagen/VMworld EU
• Nov – Atlanta (TBC)
• Dev – Toronto (TBC)

This little missive concerns other functionality of SRM which we may see in the future… It’s much more general than the 1st part which focused on VMware’s HBR (Host Based Replication) technology. You can see some tantalizing hints at the future direction of SRM such as being a tool facilatate site migrations, perhaps even been used as engine to move VMs into the cloud. I also take a peek at some of improvements in re-IPing virtual machines, and VM Groups.

Read on McDuff

This article concerns the future of SRM. It’s a bit of an exclusive, as I got special clearance from VMware to put it together. Of course, I’m very close to the SRM folks, and VMware generally – so it wasn’t that hard. It’s worth saying that none of this stuff is commitment from VMware, and there are no time frames in the article. But it will give you an idea of where things are heading.

Read on McDuff…