VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘news’ Category

This is just a quick note that the previous issue with vSphere customers using NFS storage and CBT has been resolved with a recent patch. More on the previuous problem and the new patch in this KB article:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1031106

The KB was updated 7.26.11

I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of  various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will  Read the rest of this entry »

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “Nothing endures but change.” Isaac Asimov, commonly considered the greatest science fiction mind ever, said “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.” As a host of the podcast Virtumania, I nonchalantly signify a change in conversation with “Here Goes Nothin’” at the start of every new episode.

Now I’m about to start a new episode in my technical career and life, and although the opportunity is a result of the “Virtumania” I am (we are all) a part of, it is definitely not an lackadaisical new start.

I am excited to say “Here Goes Somethin’ !” to a great new opportunity with Veeam Software.

Veeam Senior Systems Engineer Southeast

On Monday April 26, 2010 I start as a Senior Systems Engineer for Veeam in the Southeast U.S. Region. I’ll be joining

David Sile’s team of world wide engineers responsible for partner training, customer proof of concepts, product pre sales and support, and spreading overall Veeam evangelism.

I’ve been fortunate to get to know David, Doug, and many of the Veeam team at conferences and events over the past few years, and I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about getting to work for and with such a great company, such great engineers, and a great group of people.

I believe there is big things in the future ahead at Veeam Software, and I’m appreciative to get the chance to become a part of their success.

Thanks for everything

It was not an easy choice to decide to leave my team and friends at Softchoice Optimus Solutions. I have laughed with and learned from a great group there. We all know we spend more time with our co workers than any one else during the day, and this is sincerely a bittersweet change for me. Knowing that I am leaving a Veeam Gold Partner that I will now get to support in my territory made the decision a little easier, believe it or not. I will stay in touch.

Hello Veeam Partners and customers in the Southeast!

I can’t wait to get to know all of the great partners and customers (both current and future) in the territory. Let me know who and where you are!

How does this impact VM /ETC and Virtumania?

It doesn’t from my perspective! Veeam is encouraging me to keep my personal activities independent and I’m thankful for that. Although it has not been officially discussed, maybe I’ll contribute posts to VeeamMeUp.com from time to time when inspired. – frankly I’m not sure if that’s an option or not. Maybe I’ll start my own separate Veeam centric blog. The point is that this blog and my podcast will remain as independent as possible.

Like my co host Marc Farley (3PAR), on the Virtumania Podcast I’ll continue to talk about virtualization from the operational perspective. I expect to still be in data centers helping with different virtual infrastructure solutions on a regular basis. I’ll have plenty of inspiration!

Here Goes Something’

So, like so many others already in 2010, I’m announcing a change. If you ask me it’s hardly nothin’.

VMware announced this week that nominations for 2010 vExpert are being accepted until April 30, 2010. Be sure to vote for your favorite “bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, event organizers, speakers, tool builders, forum leaders, and others who share their virtualization expertise” by filling out the official application found at the new vExpert 2010 Landing site.

For those who do not know, the vExpert Award was introduced by VMware in 2009. Best described as an award similar to Microsoft’s MVP, I was lucky enough to be named one of the 300 vExperts awarded last year. Check out my acceptance speech post from last February. All joking aside, the award distinguishes those “who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year.”

The application process is not a contest or an election campaign, so if you have a candidate that may not be as well known in the vEcosphere already but has significantly contributed to the VMware and virtualization community be sure to fill out an application for him/her. All it takes is one application to recognize someone for their efforts in 2009!

I’ve given VM /ETC’s hosting provider, BLUEHOST.com, a hard time in the past. So, it’s only fair that I applaud them for improving their service. I was notified in an email of of several exciting improvements tonight. The following is a slightly edited list of changes:

FREE FEATURES ADDED IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS:

• CPU Protection – No longer will a single site on a server impact the performance of other websites on the same server.
• Memory Protection – No longer can a single user or program consume disproportionate memory that would cause slowdowns for our customers.
• Bandwidth Compression – This allows our customers to see a 10-25% decrease in site load times. This is especially noticeable for customers with slower internet connections.
• Process Protection – No longer will a single user be able to spawn runaway processes that cause the processors/cores to slow down trying to handle all the requests. This is especially useful when it comes to MySQL usage where sometimes hundreds of thousands of queries happen in short period of time (5 minutes).
• Many other changes Too many to list in this email.

I’ve been with BLUEHOST.com for 2 years now. I’ve almost moved this blog more than once because of several of the shared hosting plan challenges mentioned in the list above, but the convenience of CPanel management and the ease of site monitoring and reporting have kept me around. For the price, it’s a hosting plan really hard to beat.

Now I firmly recommend BLUEHOST for any blogger that just wants to focus on managing the site and creating content. Don’t get it twisted though – you can get dirty with .cfg, .ini, .php and any other files via the CPanel interface or ssh access if you wish.

Thanks for the free improvements BLUEHOST! I’m glad I stayed put!

Previously, all we knew about Veeam’s Surebackup was there was a public countdown in process. That countdown reached 0:00 early March 22, 2010 (this morning). Veeam sent emails to those who preregistered and then provided a press release shortly after. The countdown was for the introduction of a unique feature for verifying VM restores that will soon be introduced in the next version of Veeam Backup and Replication.

Here’s the information from my email for those that did not sign up to be notified:

Breakthrough Technology: Test and Verify the Recoverability of EVERY Backup

Veeam is enhancing the SureBackup™ capabilities in Veeam Backup & Replication™ with a breakthrough technology that overcomes the final obstacle of image-level backups. IT professionals will have the ability to verify the RECOVERABILITY of EVERY backup of EVERY virtual machine EVERY time. It’s never been possible before.

SureBackup introduces a new patent-pending technology that allows IT professionals to run a virtual machine directly from a compressed backup file.

By publishing the content of backup files directly to ESX hosts, you can:

• Eliminate the need to extract backup files
• Test and verify EVERY backup in a matter of minutes, without affecting backup windows
• Perform recoverability testing without additional hardware or staff

The same technology also allows for item-level restore for any virtualized application, on any OS (patent-pending).

This exciting new technology will be made available in version 5.0 of Veeam Backup & Replication, scheduled for release this summer.

Sound too good to be true? Join us for a free webinar on Wednesday, March 24 at 2:00pm EDT to find out more. Live Webinar – Register Now!

Can’t wait? Go to www.veeam.com/surebackup NOW!

I was actually invited to Veeam’s pre release blogger briefing over the weekend, and the rest of this post is my notes and thoughts about what I learned during briefing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another 6 months have come and gone and Eric Siebert has just updated his vsphere-land.com Top 25 VMware/Virtualization Blogs. I’m proud to say that VM /ETC remains in the top 10. As of the latest voting, this blog holds the number 7 spot. In my opinion, the number of VMware and virtualization blogs seems to have sky rocketed in 2009, and every blog is an incredible, quality virtualization resource. Considering I was lazy and missed the opportunity to publish a campaign post during the recent voting period, I am truly honored to remain in the top 10. Thanks to everyone who voted for vmetc.com! I am once again inspired to “keep up the good work”.

Siebert has published a couple posts explaining the total voting results and his process of determining the ranking order. It is a lot more complex than one might think. Check out these links for more info:

• The top blog full voting results

• And the winners of the top VMware/virtualization blog are…

If you did not already know, Siebert also maintains the vLaunchpad – a web page of links to all virtualization blogs, news, and resources. Look for the vLaunchpad to be updated soon with the latest rankings as well.