In this vendorwag I chat to Jay Judkowitz, Product Manager for Nimbula. Before Nimbula, Jay was at VMware for over eight years where he drove products like Site Recovery Manager and Storage VMotion.  Before that, he was at Scale 8, an early innovator in what would now be called cloud storage.  Jay started his career as a hands on IT practitioner at Intel for four years where he gained first hand experience with the real challenges of managing a dynamic large scale IT deployment.

As every I had a range of questions for Jay including:

Q.  Given your team is built on ex-VMware and ex-Amazon folks – how does that inform the vision of the company – who do you feel your competing against – Amazon?

Q. I notice your solution currently only supports KVM. Whilst I know that the cloud isn’t just about virtualization. Can you explain how that support decision came about – and will you be supporting Xen, ESX, HyperV in the future?

Q. I’ve been recently concerned about fault-tolerance and redundancy is being delivered to the “cloud layer”. How does Nimbula achieve that…

Q. Nimbula has its own method of how to segment the network without excessive use of VLANs – could you give us a quick demo of how to setup VMs within Nimbula, and get them communicating on the network

Q. Can you explain how “Collaborative Permissions” work – I think I need to another example – for the penny to drop

Q. Let’s talk about Federating different cloud vendors together – how do you see authentication working?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

This week we have two flavours of the vendorwag. The first is the full version which includes an “elevator pitch” from Jay together with my Q&A with him. The second is Jay’s elevator pitch on its own. So depending on how much time you have it’s up to you which one you watch…

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Today I got an email from Microsoft announcing the all-new TechNet Subscriber Portal Experience – initially I thought it was going to be reminder to renew my subscription. The new features include:

• Browse Product A–Z: all products listed alphabetically
• Browse Product categories: the familiar category view
• Top Products: quick access to the most common products
• New Downloads: RSS feed of the latest releases
• New Products: products that have new downloads available
• Search: fastest way to find a download when you know what you’re looking for
• Faster search results via autocomplete & acronym recognition
• Easier access and management of account information
• Simpler purchase and upgrade experience

That first one made me smile. If products weren’t listed alphabetically in the past, how were they listed? Randomly?

Joking apart it’s nice to see Microsoft make continued investment into their TechNet subscription system, even if it does mean knowing that the letter A comes before the letter B in the alphabet!

Today, one of my editors at TechTarget asked what was happening on the VMTN Subscription Movement. The original post I made on the community forums now boasts 8,995 views, and 237 replies. Last year there was a group concall of VMware vExperts where folks dialed into express their views, and I had one-to-one chat with a VMware representative who is gathering information about the concept to write a report & present to senior management. Interestingly, its movement has triggered a much broad reassessment of how VMware manages access to its software generally – something that surprised and delighted me. I’ve yet to hear back on this – but I did offer to look over the report and add my own thoughts and views.

At the time I did suggest that VMware look at other vendor programmes like TechNet to avoid any “wheel reinventing”. I pleased to hear that VMware with typical gusto would prefer to do something better than Microsoft. So at the moment there’s no firm news or announcement. All I do know is that VMware are listening (which is the main thing) and seriously considering their options…

If you were at either of the VMworld events last year, you might have been lucky enough to pick up an early “rough cut” edition of my book. At the same time you should have received a voucher that would allow you to access to digital copy of the completed book. Here’s how you redeem your voucher.

1.    Go to http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/vmwoffer

2.    Complete web form, including the unique code displayed there (sticker w/ code was affixed to the coupon)
3.    Submit the form

Pearson will be processing the form submission over the coming weeks – so you will receive an email in the next week or so with instructions on how to download the ebook…

I’m pleased to say that my new book on SRM 5.0 has been released on the VMware Press. It’s one of the first books on the press which VMware has founded with the logistical help of Pearson Publishing. I started working with the very early betas of the product towards the end of last 2010, so for me this work has been really years worth of work. I originally started out with self-publishing the SRM books, and its great to finally have big company like VMware and Pearson behind the work.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the very many people who helped me along the way. No author is an island, as anyone who has written anything of length will tell you. I’d like to thank Carmel (my long suffering girlfriend) who puts up with my ramblings about virtualization – and had a huge influence in the previous books on SRM. I’d like to thank Joan Murry of Pearson for making the process so smooth, especially in the early stages. I’d like to thank the many people at VMware who helped as well (you know who you are!), a special mention goes to Lee Dilworth here in the UK who has been my primary link every since the alpha edition of SRM 1.0 shipped many years ago. I’d like to thank Jacob Jensen who manages the BC/DR group at VMware – it was his backing in 2010 who helped kick start the process.  I’d like to thank the vendors too – especially Luke Reed of NetApp, Alex Tanner of EMC and Will Urban of Dell. A special thank you goes to Dell Equallogic – who was a new vendor to the book, and helped immensely in the process of getting their kit up and running, and getting me up to speed.

Finally, I’d like to thank my readers. Honestly, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it would be read. It means so much to me when folks email or stop me at events to say thanks. As an author you can spend many lonely hours at your desk, never really sure if you stuff is actually hitting the mark or helping. So it means so much when those emails or thanks yous come through.

You can buy the book either digitally or as hard-copy from many sources. The book actually started “shipping” from the printers to the retailers on schedule on the 28th Dec. It does however take time for the retailers to update their various websites to change the status from “In stock from…” or “Pre-order…”. With digital editions such as the version for the Kindle, it is available to purchase and download immediately.

Pearson.com

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Waterstones (UK)

WH Smiths (UK)

Blackwells (UK)

As for me – well I’m working on the completion of another book co-authored with Barry Coombs (UK vExpert), about View 5.0/ThinApp4.7. That will be a “community” based project that will be self-published, with all monies raised going to UNICEF. We’re currently in the early “reviewing” stage at the moment, but we hope to have it available by the end of March (if not sooner). After that? Well, I think I will be dividing my time equally between creating videos and writing book based on my “Hotel California” idea. That’s a biggy. I don’t expect it to be finished until the end of this year, beginning of next.

Well, its the New Year, and time for this old dog to learn a few new tricks. I’m speaking of getting ready for my VCP 5 test. The clock is already ticking because my current VCP expires at the end of Feb. How to prepare?

As former VMware Certified Instructor I really value the importance of training. But it might  come as surprise to hear that a man of immense my talents (and even great humility) needs training. But this time around I really think I will benefit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, for the last year or so I’ve been a “user” of vSphere5, but mainly from the position of it being a requirement to run SRM5 and View5. I’ve had my nose firmly in a book – not reading, but writing firstly my recently release SRM 5.0 book, but at the end of last year, I started work on a View5.0/ThinApp4.7 book with fellow vExpert, Barry Coombs. So for me at least vSphere5 has just sat there in the background – first as a beta, then a release candidate and then as GA.

That’s in marked contrast to nearly every other year that I’ve been involved with VMware Technologies. Previously, I would have been working with vSphere5 as part of the prep for actually teaching the new courses, or in the processes of writing (yet) another book on ESX5 and vCenter5. This time around I find my circumstances are very different. I haven’t spent days & days in front of the product that would normally have built-up my knowledge of ALL the changes, and ALL the new features to such a degree that I could just book the eggzam, and pass it on first go with virtually no prep before hand.

With that in mind I started to scope around for a place to do the course – that was both within commutable distance. I’m good twitter-friends with Scott Vessey who works for GlobalKnowledge.

He’s positioned himself very nicely as the go-to-guy for anything VMware Education or Certification related. For while I talked about doing the full “Install & Configure” course, but Scott rightly persuaded me that man of my experience would feel a bit bored by the content – and that I was better off attending the “What’s New” course. I’ve taught that course for Vi3/vSphere4 so I know what I will be getting. My plan is to use the course to get quickly up to speed on the new features. When I get back to my desk I will play around with these features in my lab(s). They’ll be a double-bonus there – firstly, if something goes pear-shapped on the eggzam front I will already have the course qualification I need for resit. Hopefully, it won’t come to that and I will pass first time. At least in this case I won’t need to pass the “instructor” score, now I’m mere student!

Anyway, I plan to blog about what I’ve learned on the course – and with luck it also might inspire me to write an article for TechTarget about those new features and what my take is on them. I will also keep you updated on the eggzam front itself – because I’m sure there are plenty of people like me who have left it to the last minute.

Last night VMware released a tech preview. Something that many of us have been waiting for sometime. It’s a PCoIP View Client for the MAC!

Features include:

-       Support for Intel-based Macs

-       PCoIP protocol optimized for VMware View 5

-       Full screen support for Mac OS X Lion users

-       Copy and Paste plain text between View 4.x virtual machines and Mac

-       Copy and Paste text, formatted text, and graphics between View 5.x virtual machines and Mac

-       Support optional RSA authentication

-       Enhanced certificate checking

-       Add up to 4 VMware View server shortcuts in VMware View Client

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/view/client_for_macosx

Remember this a tech preview so regard it like beta code, and not for production use… I found it a little slow to update & present the desktop on first use, but after that it was very quick. I think that probably says more about how little I used the lab environment where I currently have this sort of access. My HomeLab is PCoIP ready, but my ProLab isn’t yet – and I’ve been spending more time in the prolab recently

Last week I was in sunny Australia in the cities of Brisbane and Melbourne (pronounced Bris-bun and Mel-bun incidentally…) Fun was had by all – I was there with none other than virtualization luminary Scott Lowe. I managed to bump into Scott whilst at London Heathrow so we got a chance over the week to shoot the breeze about this ‘n’ that.

A couple of things came to me whilst I was away. Scott was presenting on the pros/cons of VMware HA “Stretched Clusters” and VMware Site Recovery Manager. I’ve seen him deliver on this topic throughout the year, and its been interesting to see how this presentation has developed and subtly changed throughout the year. It probably shows as much how Scott’s thinking has evolved of the year – about the advantages and disadvantages of both technologies – but also how if you do find yourself doing a similar presentation from one month to another you need to mix it up just for yourself – to keep it interesting. It was nice to see someone other than me, pimping VMware SRM for change!

As for me I’ve been hawking an SRM5 “Futures” deck for most of this year. That became a “What’s New” in SRM 5.0 on the day of the GA. The back end of the PowerPoint still has some futures stuff in the preso – about stuff coming down the pipe in 2012/2013.  Some of that became more “concrete” to me in a recent roadmap/NDA session I did with guys at VMware at Frimley, UK. Anyway, informally I suggested to Scott that we do a VMworld 2012 session together on Stretched Clusters Vs SRM. With me taking the pro-stance on Stretched Clusters, and him taking the pro-stance on SRM (again mixing it up to keep it interesting – because everyone would expect me to be the pro-SRM guy!) He seems interested, so lets hope that happens. Can’t see why the content team would turn down two “legends” on one stage…

As for the Oz VMUGs the personal highlight for me was the breakout session on ThinApp Factory at the Melbourne VMUG. There was surprisingly little information about the product (which is currently just in Alpha) at VMworld. So I had high expectations for the session, and I wasn’t disappointed. Plenty of information and screen grabs, and it was a proper VMware deck, so it looks like the collateral is already in place to position & explain the technology. It hit a note for me because for the last couple of months I’ve been working on a new View5.0/ThinApp4.7 book with Barry Combs of virtualisedreality.com fame. The back of the book has a “futures” section that covers stuff like VMware Horizon, ThinApp Factory, Octupus, SocialCast, AppBlast and SlideRocket. Of course, much of the information is a bit thin on the ground. Horizon isn’t available outside of US boards because of export restrictions – and things like ThinApp Factory or AppBlast aren’t even in beta yet. So it was really nice to see a presentation that put more meat & potatoes around the subject rather than emphasizing the all important business advantages/challenges or overly focusing on the end-consummer experience (pretty picture screen grabs).

The main idea I got from this session wasn’t so much technical. It was concept or analogy. I’ve got a couple of buddies who work in RF Comms area who have both been on the R&D side, and go-to-market process. One thing they have always stressed to me in their work is that no amount of technological innovation at the bench, is worth a cent unless it can be mass-produced with factory style economies of scale. So that started me thinking about if ThinApp has a “factory” what processes (both business and technical) must have take place FIRST, before you can undergo a “mass production” of ThinApps. There’s a couple of analogies around there too – where application packaging process becomes a “sausage machine” or “meat factory” or a “cookie-cutter” process. So what were trying to achieve with ThinApp Factory is move a way from a bespoke, craftsman like approach to producing each ThinApp. Where each ThinApp is lovingly carved and created by hand. But to a process where an install .EXE goes in one side, and ThinApps come out the other side.

Of course, that’s quite idealistic. Any “production” process will have a % of error – and people who develop the product and manage factories have to make sure that the product that’s been manufactured is so well designed that it lends itself to such a mass processes. That’s hardly the case with a generic .MSI file. SO going forward I’m beginning to see how ThinApp Factory will be used to create ThinApp for the vast bulk of applications that respond favourably to sausage machine approach, the trick will be quickly identifying applications that need to be pulled off the conveyer belt and handled in the Old Skool way. That’s where service providers and packaging teams will continue to add-value…

Click to Register…

Da When:
Thursday, 26 January 2012 Time: 10:00 – 17:15

Da Where:
London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP
Directions

Da Beers!
Time: 17:15
Pavilion End,
23 Watling Street, EC4M 9BR
Directions

It’s BACK. The first vNews in a very long time. To tell you the truth doing the vNews became a mega chore with it taking a day to collate all the information and put together the PowerPoints. As my workload went up with books and such like, it had to go. Anyway, one fine day at the London User Group I was cornered by Stu McHugh (who has been on my chinwag) – and was telling me how much he missed the vNews, and if I would bring back.

There’s nothing like the encouragement of others – and the input of others. So the vNews has a new co-presenter – none other than Stu McHugh who runs the blog stumchugh.wordpress.com/ and he’s also on Twitter on @stu_mchugh. The ideas is that two people will make it more interesting as we discuss the news…

The vNews is split between bloggers & vendors – I’ve chosen to watch the blogs, and Stu’s doing the vendors. So by splitting it 50:50 its helped make it more doable for me.

As ever you welcome to download the vNews PPT file for use at your VMUG. Just give credit where credit is due – and name check the source & me & Stu. All the links mentioned in the vNews are in the PPT as well. I could cut them out and put them here to click – that would save you downloading a couple of MB for a link. But to be honest that would be too much work. I’m typing this on the free WiFi at Hong Kong airport after 12hr flight, waiting for connection to Brisbane – so extracting links doesn’t feel like a big priority right now…

This months vNews includes contributions from Nick Weaver, Eric Sloof, Chad Sakac, Simon Long, Forbes Gutherie, Duncan Epping, Scott Lowe, and Mike Dipetrillo. On the vendors side we have MS Office 365, HyperV 3.0, Citrix winning awards, Citrix & Cisco telephony partnerships, VMware Fling: ESX System Analyser, and VMware & Telifonica Partnership

Oh, If you don’t get the reference in the title of the post – you need to use google…

You can watch the video in number of formats. Youtube very kindly upgraded my account recently so I can now do longer videos on youtube.com. The quality gets pretty degraded on the Youtube version, so if you would prefer something a bit more native (but a perhaps a bit longer to buffer) you can use the video directly underneath here.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the vNews  it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the chinwag/vendorwag podcast will be download when ever I do them – along with your monthly vNews. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags/Vendorwags/vNwws there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

Finally, If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

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[For those people out of the UK - he's a definition of what a "Mackem" is]

This weeks chinwag is with David Owen – aka vMackem.  He’s a Virtualisation Soultions Consultant working for a large UK organisation. He’s worked in the IT Industry since 2003,and worked for several companies including JP Morgan,Barclays Bank PLC and BAE Systems. He has worked across a wide variety of fields including finance and UK defence and has a full set of clearances. He’s  currently working my way towards his VCDX amongst other qualifications. he started this blog to aid himself and hopefully others with experiences that he faces in his day to day career and any useful information he thinks will be worth passing on. Like everyone nowadays you can find him on LinkedIn. He’s also available on twitter as @vMackem and his is vMackem.co.uk. David was award the vExpert Award from VMware for services to the vCommunity in 2011.

In our chinwag we discuss vBlock and Flexpod – and then we move on to discuss this months hot topic – the VMTN Subscription Movement.

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