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Aug 19, 2011

Aug 22, 2011

rbrambley via twitter "@BorgCollective_: @rbrambley YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED" > beam me up #vmworld3word

rolltidega via twitter Viva Las VMworld! #vmworld3word

keithnorbie via twitter I’m gonna WuPaaS #vmworld3word

rodos via twitter #VMworld3word Airport VMworld bound

Aug 23, 2011

Aug 24, 2011

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Recently a disgruntled vSphere administrator was able to delete 88 of his former employer’s virtual machines (VMs) remotely from a McDonald’s WiFi connection. We all know virtualization makes things a lot easier, and unfortunately, this is a scary example of the dark side of just that. I’ll argue it’s also a wake up call for IT departments to realize how virtualization changes the dynamics of data center security,  risk management, and overall data vulnerability, but I’ll leave that for the experts in those fields. What made me go “hmmmm” was the thought “what if I was on the team that had to investigate and recover from this incident?” I also wondered “What if the attack was less obvious?” What if only slight configuration changes were made to the virtual machines instead of  obvious deletions? For example adding limits and reservations to the vCPU and vRAM of the virtual guests or their resource pools thus making them sluggish, unresponsive, and unable to conduct business as usual.

How Long Would It Take To Troubleshoot And Recover?

Put yourself on the team that suddenly realized 88 VMs were gone! Where would you start? The storage  jumps out at me as a logical place to begin, but after your storage area network  is online, healthy, and normal then what? It’s time to try to crack open the VMware Black Box and scour event logs, alarms, permissions, and actions. Put that aside for a minute and think about how would you start the rebuild process and get the business reconnected!?

I don’t have an easy answer. My goal is asking you to think about this for yourself.

Warning! The Veeam Pitch

Since I work with Veeam products every day I’ll briefly suggest how they could help in this scenario. Decide for yourself what tools are best for your company. I’ll point out that Read the rest of this entry »

What is this?

Learn to play.

Resistance is futile!

CiL Console after the page break

RSS Feed for all tweets here Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I was in New York, NY for the vPower Tour as a guest speaker. My Northeast teeamates (we spell it that way at Veeam) asked me to present as a blogger, so I put together “Seeding The Cloud. The Conversation.” The actual presentation is embedded later in this post, but I wanted to provide a few notes about some of the slides first.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Special Thanks to Yung Chou for not only helping me understand the Cloud Conversation better with his 5-3-2 Cloud Principle, but for also letting me use 3 of his slides. I also want to thank Mark Minasi for his recent speech at the Techstravaganza Event in Atlanta and his great article “Avoid Being Plowed By The Cloud”. Mark’s economist views of the Cloud were very inspirational and informative to me and for my presentation. I love his “numerological proctology” expression!

I used the Cloud

I used Google Docs to build the preso, and I streamed it live from the Cloud when I delivered it. I guess I owe thanks to Sprint for 3G being up that day too! Thanks to VMware and Intel for the YouTube video. That still cracks me up every time I watch it.

Did You Know

Real Cloud Seeding examples slides:

1. Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics – before both opening and closing ceremonies
2. Woodstock 1969 – several reports from witnesses
3. Project Stormfury – 1960s experiment to seed hurricanes in the Atlantic
4. Chernobyl – Russian pilots seeded radioactive clouds before they reached Moscow

The Points

• You (and your company) are already using the Cloud.
• Define YOUR Cloud Conversation.
• Understand your IT Department’s value and services before you try to determine if The Cloud is a good alternative.
• Be a Numerological Proctologist yourself!
• Consider DR as a “low hanging fruit” reason to use The Cloud.

The rest should be self explanatory.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll get to deliver it again sometime!

This coming Thursday (June 16, 2011) I will be in New York, NY for the “Feel the Power in vPower” Veeam Tour. Although I am a Veeam employee and this is a Veeam sponsored event, I am not there to deliver the Veeam Backup and Replication presentation. That will be handled by my Northeast U.S. peer, Gaylord Friend. (Worth your time all by itself and a you get a free meal!) Instead, I’ll be there to do a vendor neutral presentation called “Seed The Cloud’.  The presentation is my own and will not reflect the opinions or thoughts, or represent current or future products of my employer.

Register for the New York event and the other East Coast Veeam Tour events here:

http://go.veeam.com/tour-feel-power-vpower-east.html 

A Blog Post Delivered With Slides

With “Seed The Cloud” I am attempting to present a new VMETC.com blog post in slides. So, just like with my usual writing style, this presentation will offer a light-hearted, (hopefully) entertaining agenda of my thoughts and opinions on “The Cloud conversation”. As always, I will be referencing other bloggers and analysts who are Cloud experts, but adding my own “2 cents” to the mix. The (still subject to last minute changes) outline is currently:

• Real Cloud Seeding
• Virtual Cloud Seeding
• Virtual Cloud Confusion 
• Why Seed The Virtual Cloud
• Virtual Cloud Seeding Options
• Have a Seeding Plan
• Have a UnSeeding Plan

I will post the slides here on VMETC.com after the event.

Be sure to be at the Atlanta Event June 23 too!

In 2 weeks my Southeast team will host our Veeam Tour event. If you’ll be in the Atlanta area on June 23 and would like to attend register at the same links above!

Thursday is the final day of Microsoft TechEd NA 2011. I’ll be back at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA one more time with live session notes, comments pics, and other bits of audio and video along the way.

07.25.11 – moved the CoverItLive widget after the page break

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Wednesday’s CoveritLive widget from Microsoft Teched North America 2011 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. Tune in for a combination of live comments and session summaries.

05.19.11 – moved CiL Ticker after page break
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