I think we all know that answer to this question

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Gabriel

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RUN! Podcast #4, have a listen

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Gabriel

So I was invited to be a participant on the RUN! podcast a while back and it was just released today. I have been listening to a number of podcasts in the tech space for some time and find them to be entertaining and valuable. Some go pretty deep into the technology, where others are more lighthearted, fun, and entertaining.

Right now I would recommend the follow:

RUN!  Marc Farley,  Matthew Brender,   and Roger Strukhoff  are on their 4th episode of a new podcast where they discuss technology and how we use it and how it uses us.

Professional VMware’s Brownbag series – primarily focuses on VMware VCAP deep dives and lots of training for VCP/VCAP certfications. Damian Karlson and Cody Bunch plus a host of others all contribute to a highly valuable resource for those of you deep into the VMware realm.

Infosmack – Nigel Poulton and Rick Vanover are now running the show there, and its great deep dives into much of the enterprise storage space

Speaking In Tech – Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch, and Sara Vela have one of the more entertaining podcasts as the group has great chemistry, and great insights into the world of Enterprise tech, plus they get some really awesome guests

VMware Communities:  John Troyer and Alex Maierrun  over the who what when and where of VMware

vSoup:  provides the international flair for all things virtualization with your hosts  Chris Dearden ,  Christian Mohn , and Ed Czerwin 

Well thats going to do it for now, subscribe to each one of those shows and keep up with the trends in enterprise tech, storage, and virtualization.

Posted in Podcasts, Social Media, Storage, Storage & Virtualization, Tech Marketing, VMWare | Leave a comment

VeeamZip: Free VM Backup for VMware and Hyper-V

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Gabriel

Something very handy released today by the good folks over at Veeam: VeeamZip 

Very, very handy tool for those of you who need to simply rip a VM off a host and move it, or want to do some quick backups of a VM. I wish I had a tool like this a few years ago, and in fact I can see people using this extensively in migration scenarios or for moving VM’s around different clusters. Will be installing to play with hands on soon enough, but work has me slammed.

Still, free tools are always valuable. I also highly recommend RVTools, as its got a great set of virtual analytics and health checks for your vSphere environments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shameless plug: VMworld 2012 Session Voting starts now

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Gabriel

So as all 3 of the people who read my blog know, I submitted a session to VMworld this year, and voting has begun. So what better to do than to ho myself across the tubes to get votes. I can’t promise they will let me, but each attendee will receive 1 piece of bacon at each session.* So head on over and start voting!

On a serious note, there are so many awesome sessions going on this year. I am personally very much interested in all the storage stuff, but the VXLAN and anything “Big Data” will most certainly perk my interest.

 

 

* said bacon may or may not be edible or even real bacon for that matter. really people, if I could give you all bacon I would, after I ate some for myself of course.

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So I submitted a session for VMworld

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Gabriel

A first for me:

Session Title: Simulating Storage IO workloads within virtual environments

Session Type: Breakout Session

Session Abstract:

With Tier 1 applications becoming commonplace within virtual environments, the need to simulate the IO profiles of those workloads prior to deployment has become a concern for the teams that manage virtual infrastructures. As we have seen with each subsequent release of vSphere, more emphasis has been placed on increasing the efficiencies of storage operations, and offloading those operations from the ESXi hosts and onto the storage arrays themselves. CPU and Memory resource performance has continued to increase as their costs have decreased, yet the one area where we cannot easily or quickly make significant cost effective changes is the shared storage platform. Where these memory and CPU resources were once look upon as the chief culprits in resource contention, storage IO performance is taking over as the prime area of concern for many IT shops.

This breakout session will be a discussion about the IO profiles of a number of varying production workloads, and how we can use tools such as the VMware IO Analyzer to set a baseline for IO profiles and how they will perform on current or proposed storage platforms within our virtual infrastructure.

Submitting to Present at VMworld: US

Session Outline:

Session Outline: A. Overview of the history of storage related changes within the ESX/ESXi hypervisor platform throughout the years. B. A look at some of the common IO profiles for Tier 1 application workloads that are targets for virtualization from the SMB to Enterprise space ( Oracle DB, Exchange, Lotus Notes, SAP, SQL, Video Delivery, OLTP, etc) C. Discussion about the various tools available to simulate IO workloads within virtual environments with an emphasis on the VMware IO Analyzer tool and how it can provide benchmarks for storage and IO performance. D. A roundup of results from performance testing done on various storage arrays. E. Looking towards the future with improvements in vSphere 5.1 and beyond.

Key Takeaway 1: Identifying how a given IO profile or workload will perform on existing virtual infrastructure is paramount to determining if you should virtualize that workload.

Key Takeaway 2 :Storage performance is the key to higher consolidation ratios within virtual environments, and the ability to simulate various IO workloads within your virtual environment will provide IT teams with the means to make a best possible choice on storage system purchases

Key Takeaway 3: End users can utilize free tools such as the VMware IO Analyzer to perform IO workload analysis and benchmarking for their existing environments.

Technical Level: Technical

Tracks: Infrastructure

Topics: Storage

 

 

Posted in Storage, Storage & Virtualization | 1 Comment

Defending the indefensible

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Gabriel

And the hits just keep coming:

West Virginia will save money on training technicians because they’ll only have to learn how to fix one type of router, not multiple routers, said Strickling, Obama’s point man on broadband issues.

“West Virginia believes they have found the most economical solution by buying a single product and getting a substantial discount,” Strickling said.

We are in the very best of hands :rolleyes: I’m pretty sure that there are no additional support steps for Cisco IOS that vary greatly between the different router models. Sure there may be additional cards to support that would not be common across different platforms, but the operating system is uniform.

And as for the “discount”, uh there is no way in hell the cost of buying the appropriate router needed for each location vs buying one size fits all was cheaper. This guys just talking out of his ass.

As of last week, more than 300 routers remained boxed up in storage. The stored routers came with a five-year service warranty, so the state has already lost two years of free maintenance on the devices.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Strickling was asked why West Virginia purchased more routers than needed. State officials, he said, later learned that many sites already had suitable routers and fiber connections.

Of course they did, and I’d hazard a guess they were working fine and didn’t need to be upgraded at all.

Yeah, lets drop a router that can support 50,000 users into that library that has 6 computers in it.

Posted in Facepalm | 2 Comments

This is why we can’t have nice things, your tax dollars at waste.

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Gabriel

Caught the Speaking in Tech podcast this morning while I was out for a run and was just floored by this story about the State of West Virginia buying $24 million worth of Cisco 3945 routers at $22k each for use in schools, libraries, and rural double wide trailers.

“The WVDE asked if the size of the routers could vary based on the needs of a school,” said Liza Cordeiro, spokeswoman for the Department of Education. “At that time, it is our understanding that, for consistency and future expansion, the plan was to buy all the same size.”

Gianato said putting the same size router in every school was about “equal opportunity.”

“We wanted to make sure a student in McDowell County had the same opportunities as a student in Kanawha County or anywhere else,” he said. “A student in a school of 200 students should have the same opportunity as a student in a school with 2,000 students.”

Seriously, WTF? “Equal Opportunity” its a damn router idiot.

The routers alone cost the state $7,800 each, but “add-ons” — additional equipment that came with the devices — boosted the price tag by $14,800.

“It’s like buying a car,” Gianato said. “You get a lot of options with the car.”

An online Cisco retailer was selling new 3945 series routers for $5,800 last week. The routers have a list price of $13,000 each.

I can’t even begin to comprehend this level of stupidity and waste, and honestly the only thing I can think of is that a massive level of fraud was perpetrated onto the people of West Virginia. Everyone involved in this boondoggle needs to be fired. When you start looking into the details (like Cisco being mentioned by name in the spec request, and that there was no RFP) the level of malfeasance continues to grow.

“I’m not an expert on the technical side,” he said, “but these have all kinds of capabilities and applications.”

Understatement of the Century.

And the kicker,  the Cisco rep who sold the gear retired after that sale.

 

Posted in Enterprise Tech, Facepalm, Podcasts | 1 Comment

Drinking from the firehose

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Gabriel

 

A favorite movie from my high school years was Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF.  Seriously, if you have never seen it, there is a treasure trove of one liners and perfectly timed bit comedic performances. For the vast majority of the world, it was their first exposure to Michael Richards aka Kramer from Seinfeld. Now there is a scene in the film where Richards as “Stanley Spadowski” was given his own children’s TV Show, and as a reward for “finding the marble in the oatmeal” a young contestant won a drink from the fire hose. Seriously, for the last 3 weeks I’ve felt like that kid.

Making the transition from end user administration and computing to the world of RAM’s, Channels, partner exchanges, demos, briefings, weekly team calls, etc. has been an eye opener to say the least. Not to mention, you are trying to learn an entire companies product line is as little time as possible because the sales group  (inside, channel, direct, etc) all are chomping at the bit to get you out in front of customers as soon as possible. It’s a lot to take in. To say it’s overwhelming is an understatement, but it’s also exhilarating. So far no two days have been the same, and I’m getting to meet really smart people and I’m also getting to see an entire different side of IT. Working and implementing technology on a daily basis can tend to insulate you from the challenges that are faced from the side that actually has to pitch, sell, and support those systems.

Interoperability between vendors, support statements, target markets, and a whole host of new terminology and practices and procedures for daily operations are introduced. I think one of the most challenging things I’ve faced is how I craft an answer to a customer. You really have to choose your words wisely and take into account a plethora of information and apply it in a manner that reflects well on the company you represent, as well as yourself and your product line. It’s something that as a designer and administrator you may not necessarily have to give as much thought too.

So if blogging has been light, it’s because I’ve been pouring through slide decks, white papers, and tech manuals. All of this also while I try to craft my first session submittal for VMworld this year. Talk about biting off more than one can chew J

 

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It makes you want to cry

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Gabriel

From the everlong “what did you learn today” thread at ARS, comes this tale of woe. Remember to vet those shipping companies. Also, a single tie down for something like that will never cut it. Apparently there goes $180k of Netapp gear.

Posted in Facepalm, Storage | 1 Comment

One crazy month. A new job, and I’m now a vExpert for 2012

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Gabriel

Sunday rocked to say the least. I woke up to find out that I was selected as a VMware vExpert for 2012. I am very thankful to have been nominated and to have been given recognition by the VMware community for my contribution to the community at large. I really hope that over the next year I can contribute even further and make an even stronger impact.

Congratulations to the 400 or so VMware community members who also were awarded vExpert recognition for this year. It was very awesome to see 150 first time vExperts join me in this year’s freshmen class.

On top of that, I’m starting a new gig on the 23rd. After being with Toshiba for the last 6 ½ years primarily as their chief storage and virtualization engineer, I am moving on to take a position with Emulex as a Systems Engineer on their sales team. I will be covering the South West, including Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, and Southern California.

For some time I have wanted to transition into a Sales Engineering role. Over the last few months I had interviewed with several companies including Veeam, and HP as well as few local and national VAR’s. I am really looking forward to getting into a customer facing and a more evangelical role where I believe my background in the administration and design space will allow me to really help the customer focus on their needs.  Emulex is well positioned to allow me to interface with a large variety of companies including the major players like IMB, HP, Dell, EMC, etc. It also will allow me to stay involved in my two tech passions, Storage and Virtualization, as well as allow me to become more involved on the Converged infrastructure front.

So look for a lot of cool stuff to come from this space in the near future.

Posted in Emulex, vExpert, VMWare | Tagged | Leave a comment