VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘vmetc.com’

The average virtualization admin, engineer, manager, and general IT person probably goes to half a dozen events a year where they receive a name badge. I’m just guessing, but at least 2/3 of those event badges are now in the form of a necklace/lanyard. Just guessing again, but I’d be willing to bet that 99% of all the lanyards get thrown away shortly after. That same average IT person probably attends 1 or 2 big events or conferences a year where they are lucky enough to receive a backpack, computer bag, or other schwag with zippers. Unfortunately, the pull tabs on the zippers more than likely will break off leaving an awkward and often painful to pull open/closed zipper head. I’ve stopped using several otherwise very functional bags just for this reason. But, while planning for a recent vacation, an idea so simple struck me that I was amazed I hadn’t thought of it already.

I did not want to take my full computer bag on the vacation. It’s an oversized bag designed for an entire file cabinet and a night’s change of clothes. One of my old backpacks was perfect for my notebook, iPad, magazines, and the various accessories my wife and I would need on the plane and while sightseeing. When I went to grab a backpack in my basement I noticed the nail of badges hanging above them.

For some reason, I can not bring myself to throw away my event badges. I can’t tell you why. I just knew I would do something with them one day. But now I have a new purpose for them, and I am quickly reducing the bulk hanging on that nail. Besides, you never would have seen a headline like “North Georgia Man Saves Family From Burning House With A Linked Lanyard Ladder”, now would you?

So if you are like me you already have what you need to repair your luggage, backpacks, and various other pull zippers around the house. Here’s my quick how to and list of tools needed:

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You might have noticed that I haven’t been updating VM /ETC as often. In fact, my blogging has been non existent except for the occasional VIRTUMANIA posts, which I am also struggling to find time for anymore. I’m not making excuses, but the combination of the new position at Veeam, a flurry of new product releases, and my boys reaching the age where homework is no longer just coloring between the lines or cutting the dashed outline has made personal time a premium for me. It is what it is, but I recently heard a story that, in a stretched analogy kind of way, I think sums up my situation.

My channel rep for the Southeast territory used to be in the Navy. We had recently finished a day of meetings and presentations and were enjoying the MLB playoffs at a local bar near our hotel when he told me the following story. I am paraphrasing, but it went like this:

One of my rep’s shipmates had the night shift on the aircraft carrier’s flight deck. From what I understand, there are fork lift –like vehicles that are used to load and unload the weapons and cargo on the aircraft and jets. During some down time, this one seaman fell asleep sitting at the wheel of one of these vehicles. When he did, his body slumped forward on the controls causing the vehicle to roll overboard. Although the fork lift was caught in the safety net that apparently encircles the entire deck, the guy was catapulted over the net and into the water below. Since this happened mid ship, he was immediately sucked under the battleship towards the massive propellers.

Unbelievably, the guy survived unharmed! He later explained that before he knew what happened

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VIRTUMANIA Episode 26 features Patrick O’Rourke and Jeff Woolsey from Microsoft!. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 26 – Exploring What’s Next With Microsoft Virtualization Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com host special guests Patrick O’Rourke (@virtualization) and Jeff Woolsey. Both Patrick and Jeff contribute posts to the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog at blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization. This week’s episode focuses on Microsoft’s latest virtualization features with a lot of talk about the new 2010 products. Topics include managing multi-vendor hypervisor environments with System Center, the latest information about stateless applications with Server App-V, cloud computing with Azure and BPOS, tier 1 applications on Hyper-V, and finally backing up VMs, physical servers, applications and DR site fail-over with DPM. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

VIRTUMANIA Episode 25 … finally! We put the headsets back on and recorded another episode. Sorry for the delay! The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 25 – Better Late Than Never VMWorld 2010 Autopsy.  Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of  StorageRap.com with co host Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com are joined by special guests Jon Owings (@2vcps) of 2vcps.com and Kelly Culwell (@kculw) of VirtualInsanity.com. Unconfirmed reports describe chalk outlines on the Moscone Center floor from the bodies of exhausted vendors and attendees. Enjoy our autoposy of VMWorld 2010 from the experiences of this week’s Virtumaniacs. Get an inside perspective on the sessions, the announcements, the parties, the people, and everything else. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

Earlier this week VMETC.com fell victim to a WordPress hack that redirected readers to a malware infested site. Best estimate is that early Thursday morning (9/17) the site was compromised by an attacker that was able to add several lines of code to the beginning of every PHP file in my public_html directory. With several other WordPress sites hosted in the same directory, there were thousands of files that needed to be cleaned up. All site RSS feeds were rendered unavailable as a result.

The hacker left a “silence is golden” message in a few of the files. There are 18,900 hits on Google for this WordPress attack.

Lucky for me, the social community not only notified me of the issue (thanks Ken Fury, @kculw, @ericsiebert and @jasonboche), but came to the rescue as well.

@SirStan (Stan Brinkeroff), A Twitter follower (that I follow as well), offered some assistance if needed and I jumped at the chance.  Stan figured out the exploit, identified the rogue code, deciphered it’s evil, implemented a temporary work around for Friday night, and then found, tweaked,  and t-shooted the script to bulk remove the offending lines in each file. Stan is definitely a PHP master and a ‘nix wizard. For saving this site Stan is now an Ugly Green Hero as well!

Stan lost 3+ hrs of his weekend to help me. I hope the VMETC and VIRTUMANIA t-shirts I am sending him are an adequate payment (let me know if not, Stan).

VMETC.com and VIRTUMANIA.net are back in business. Please let me know if anything is still messed up.

Do me a huge favor, tweet @sirstan and tell him thanks and great job! I can’t say it enough by myself.

I finally got all the photos from VMWorld 2010 off of my camera and phone and uploaded to Google Picasa. Enjoy some pics from the various parties, the Keynotes, a Giant’s game, and a trolley ride to Pier 39! Follow the link to the Picasa web album if you want a larger image or want to leave a comment on a photo.

This week on VIRTUMANIA we focus on Xangati’s ability to record network activity between VMs and hosts on virtual infrastructure. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 24 – De-Funkified V.I. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com with guests and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com and Ed Haletky (@texiwill) of The Virtualization Practice Blog and The Virtualization Security Podcast. This week’s episode features special guest Nathaniel Iverson, Director of Product Marketing at Xangati. With Xangati’s announcement of the free Xangati appliance for ESX, virtualization administrators now have a cost effective tool to auto record activity inside their virtual infrastructure and more easily prescribe the proper remedy to alleviate the symptoms. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.