Planet vSphere-land

One thing that I personally have found extremely helpful in making common tasks easier—a key aspect of the “reducing the friction” idea I’ve been discussing—is the use of keyboard shortcuts. In this post, I want to talk about how you might be able to maximize your use of keyboard shortcuts to help improve your personal efficiency. In my view, there are three aspects...

A little while ago Steve Beaver wrote a post titled “Is Automation Killing The Engineering?” In the post, Steve ponders whether the increased use of automation in today’s data centers is killing engineering knowledge. The argument, as I understand it, says that because tasks are becoming increasingly automated, data center professionals are increasingly less knowledgeable about...

One of the key things you can do to help improve your efficiency is “reduce the friction”—make common tasks easier, simpler, faster. (This isn’t my phrase or idea, by the way, but I’ve forgotten exactly where I first saw it.) In my last Reducing the Friction post, I talked about how I use AppleScript to help automate part of my blog publishing process. In this post,...

      If you are in the Minneapolis area make sure you attend the Minneapolis VMUG User Conference. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, Jun 11th 2013 at the Minneapolis Airport Marriott. I am honored to present the keynote of the day with a session entitled “End-User Computing Vision for the Post-PC Era and VMware EUC Product Update“. The event is also filled with sessions...

In some of the presentations that I give on productivity and efficiency, one of the things I mention is reducing the friction; that is, making processes more streamlined so they’re easier to perform. In this post, I’m going to describe one way I reduced the friction for producing and publishing blog posts using BBEdit, TextSoap, MarsEdit, and some AppleScript. It’s no secret th...

Heads up to any locals looking for server grade vSphere hardware infrastructure.  I’ve been doing some lab spring cleaning the past few weeks and after some consolidation efforts, I’ve got some hardware available that’s not being put to good use any longer.  All of these are 64-bit and will run vSphere.  All have Ethernet and/or Fibre Channel options. 2x HP DL385 (1x AMD ...

If you are wondering why my blog posting frequency has slowed down in the last couple weeks – worry not! Many consulting professionals and architects asked for a portable – offline – version of my  well-known VDI Calculator. I’m happy to say that the new tool finally coming and I’ve been busy trying to reach code complete. This new version is built on Java ...

I had the pleasure of attending the OpenStack Summit in Portland, OR last week. It was my first time at the OpenStack Summit, and it was great to meet lots of folks in the OpenStack community as well as be exposed to some more in-depth and detailed OpenStack information. While I was there I tried to liveblog as many sessions as I was able; here are links to the various session liveblogs that I m...

This is a session titled “More Reliable, More Resilient, More Redundant: OpenStack High Availability in Grizzly and Beyond.” The presenter is Florian Haas from Hastexo (@hastexo). Florian is one of the founders of Hastexo, which is a services firm that provides OpenStack services, among other things. There are four things that need to be addressed when discussing high availability: ...

This is a session titled “More Reliable, More Resilient, More Redundant: OpenStack High Availability in Grizzly and Beyond.” The presenter is Florian Haas from Hastexo (@hastexo). Florian is one of the founders of Hastexo, which is a services firm that provides OpenStack services, among other things. There are four things that need to be addressed when discussing high availability: ...

This is a session titled “OpenStack Back to the Enterprise: Keep Calm and Boldly Go.” The session is led by Florian Otel (@florianotel on Twitter), with HP Cloud Services in EMEA. The purpose of this talk is to share some of the “lessons learned” in how to position OpenStack to enterprise customers and overcome their objections. Florian starts out the presentation with a ...

This is a session titled “Networking in the cloud: An SDN primer.” It’s led by Ben Cherian, Chief Strategy Officer for Midokura. Ben indicates he’ll try to remain as impartial as possible while attempting to describe and define SDN. Ben asserts that the basic driver pushing folks toward SDN is that the current state of networking in the cloud is too complex and too manual...

This is a liveblog of a session titled “OpenStack Capacity Planning.” The presenter starts out with a shout-out to the OpenStack Operations Guide that was recently written. Here’s how to make capacity planning easy and simple: A blank check backed by limitless funds Unlimited time A well-organized team of geniuses Perfectly clear expectations that never change (up front & ...

This is a liveblog of a session on using Puppet to build a highly available (HA) installation of OpenStack. The presenter is Boris Renski of Mirantis. Boris believes that you need to know many things in order to successfully create the build architecture for an OpenStack deployment: Linux Networking Virtualization Python Ruby Puppet Cobbler (or Razor) mCollective/Salt Boris introduces Fuel, wh...

This is a live blog for the session titled “Considerations for Building a Private Cloud, Folsom Update,” led by Ryan Richard of Rackspace (@rackninja on Twitter). As with other sessions here at the 2013 OpenStack Summit, this session is totally full, with people standing in the back, sitting on the floor along the sides, and seated on the floor across the front. This session is about...

This is a “201 level” technical deep dive on Nicira Network Virtualization Platform (NVP). It was supposed to be led by Brad Hedlund, but due to unforeseen circumstances Brad was unable to make it to the Summit. Instead, Dan Wendlandt is leading the session. Dan, if you aren’t familiar, was the former Quantum PTL. I’m already familiar with all of this stuff (naturally), b...

This session is led by Rob Hirschfeld of Dell and—as the session title implies—focuses on orchestrating OpenStack upgrades. Rob, in case you were not aware, has been extensively involved in OpenStack and is a founder (co-founder?) of the Crowbar project. Rob recommends reviewing Greg’s talk on this same topic from the last Summit because, unfortunately, things haven’t cha...

You might have seen that the second edition of VMware vSphere Design was recently released. How would you like to win a free copy? Starting today (no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke) and running through April 15, you can enter to win a signed print copy of VMware vSphere Design, 2nd Edition! I’m giving away a free, signed copy of the book to five lucky individuals who enter an...

Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert) from vSphere-Land has just published results for the 2013 Best VMware and Virtualization Blog Election. My blog finished in 14th place, coming down from the 17th position last year and 39th place the year before. Thanks to all my readers for the votes! The announcement was made during a special vChat  recorded with special guests John Troyer, David Davis and Simo...

Welcome to Technology Short Take #30. This Technology Short Take is a bit heavy on the networking side, but I suppose that’s understandable given my recent job change. Enjoy! Networking Ben Cherian, Chief Strategy Officer for Midokura, helps make a case for network virtualization. (Note: Midokura makes a network virtualization solution.) If you’re wondering about network virtualizat...

I recently had the chance to catch up with Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja) at VMware Partner Exchange.  Amy heads up a video based initiative called ‘Engineers Unplugged’ which focuses on having informal conversations with people within the IT industry and covering a broad range of IT topics, everything from troubleshooting labs through to Cloud Computing, Virtualization and the Software Define...

Today marks my “two week anniversary” in my new role at VMware. So far, it’s been everything that I thought it would be—exciting, but also challenging. My entire first week was taken up by new hire onboarding and some training on Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform (NVP). I was pleased to find that the time and effort I’d spent familiarizing myself with O...

Today marks my “two week anniversary” in my new role at VMware. So far, it’s been everything that I thought it would be—exciting, but also challenging. My entire first week was taken up by new hire onboarding and some training on Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform (NVP). I was pleased to find that the time and effort I’d spent familiarizing myself with O...

  Well, the time has come again to vote for the Top VMware & Virtualization Blogs of 2013. I was lucky enough to be included last year, and this blog was fortunate enough to place in the Top 50 (#39, to be exact). I think that I was steadier with the delivery of content this year, versus last year, by blogging more frequently and with shorter articles that I hope were valuable to the re...

I’m not sure how long this has been available, though I have just noticed that TrainSignal, who are well known for their quality video based tutor led IT learning material, now offer a monthly based subscription model for accessing their catalogue of online course material.  For US$49 per month (you can cancel after a month) this is pretty good value, as I have used TrainSignal training v...