Dec
25
2011

Where in the World Have I Been?: VMware …& Happy Holidays!!

December 25th, 2011 Posted in General, Virtualization, VMware - General
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Where should I start? Where the in the world have I been since my last blog post??!! If you have been following me on twitter you will notice that I made quite a change in my job profession and with this slight adjustment has brought with it some changes, which are all for the best of my career and future. Before I go further into this awesome change I wanted to make a quick post to close up the year, 2011. What a year it has been, I personally was faced with tons of challenges, both personally and professionally. Those included some harrowing moments during the crazy weather that we had in late summer-early fall which I wrote about in a blog post a few postings back (which you will find duplicated on many websites around the world..). To say the least, it has been an incredible year, I traveled more than I ever have and have seen the back of too many airline headrests, stuffed overhead bulk-heads and late departing flights. However, something in me just loves the traveling (but I do miss my wife and family) and thankfully I have a super understanding and amazing wife that knows that I love it. I learned a wealth of information and met some incredibly smart and brutally genious people during my travels, from the amazing TechField Day event from Steven Foskett, to VMworld, Dell World, EqualLogic User Conference and to everything else in between, it has been an amazing year of networking with new people and new technologies, something I just CAN’T get enough of.

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Oct
12
2011

#DellWorld Kick-Off – Press/Analyst Event Synopsis

October 12th, 2011 Posted in Dell World 2011, General
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I was lucky enough to be invited to the Dell World Press event held at The Long Center in Austin today. There were roughly 80-100 members of the Press attending this event, which was put together to kick off the Dell World conference here in Austin. The panel consisted of Michael Dell, Stephen Schuckenbrock, Brad Anderson, Stephen Felice, Karen H. Quintos and David Johnson.

Karen Quintos started the event introductions by welcoming the group and explaining a little about Dell World, including the type of people that were invited. The invitation base is comprised of approx. 1900 select Dell customers plus channel partners, media, press and analysts. No exact number of attendees was mentioned though.

Next up was Michael Dell, who spoke the most at the event, gave an overview of what we can expect at the first Dell World event along with opening remarks about the company vision for the future. Michael mentioned how the company itself has been listening to the REAL needs of its customers and that Dell is a radically different company than it was 27 years ago. He also mentioned how social media is affecting the kinds of products and services it has today and how this new form of customer engagement is affecting their new ventures.

The conversation continued to talk a lot about what the Dell vision was a few years ago, which was more of a product company then a solution company. Customers wanted more abilities and understandings of these products that they were selling, they were looking for an end-to-end solutions provider. The Dell World Event, along with future events, has one main goal, and that is to explain to its customers the new Dell vision of an end-to-end solutions provider. Michael also mentioned that Dell has been the most active acquirer in the technology industry. Dell stated that their acquisition teams look at what the key pain points are for its customers and makes the best acquisition based on their needs in the market place today.

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Oct
09
2011

Dell World 2011: Unlocking Innovation – I’ll Be There!

October 9th, 2011 Posted in Dell, Dell World 2011
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Dell World 2011 is next week, which sure came around the corner quickly! This is the first “world” conference for Dell so I am excited to see how this shapes up. I am going to be covering the event via my blog here and will try to cover as many keynotes as I can. The good thing about this event is that the entire list of keynotes and sessions will be broadcasted live online, for free!

You can watch the entire event online here: http://dellworld.social27.com/ . You must register for the event prior to it starting to be able to watch all of the sessions live. Below is a list of the Event Keynotes that will be taking place. I am most excited about hearing Michael Dell (Dell), Steve Ballmer(Microsoft), Paul Maritz(VMware) and Paul Otellini(Intel).

Along with these top executives, Dell will be having a few of their select engineers presenting at smaller sessions after the larger the keynotes. So far the event keynotes sound impressive although probably not super technical like the Dell Storage Forum/User Conferences of the past. This event seems to be targeting the C-Level executives of medium to larger customers, but that is just my perception prior to attending, I will see if I am correct.
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Oct
08
2011

Tech Field Day 8 Synopsis + My Top 3 Up & Coming Companies

October 8th, 2011 Posted in General, TechFieldDay
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Tech Field Day – My First Time!

I was attending VMworld last month and while attending the vExpert Welcome Dinner I met Stephen Foskett from Gestalt IT. I heard of Tech Field Day events from other previous attendees including my good friend Matt Vogt (@mvogt), who was a delegate at Tech Field Day 7. You can read his review of the event here: “http://mattvogt.posterous.com“.

So what is Tech Field Day? At first I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Was this a conference, a mini conference, mini sessions, or round table type discussions? I watched a few of the videos from past events online so I had somewhat of an idea of what to expect, but each Tech Field Day is different. Tech Field Day 8 was centered around start up companies in the Silicon Valley which a seasoned company or two thrown in to spice things up.  I was extremely happy to be able to attend TFD8 for many reasons, with the biggest being that I was thrilled about the line-up of companies presenting at this event.  It isn’t every day you can walk into a company and be given the red carpet treatment!  In my opinion, Stephen did a great job choosing companies for all the delegates to visit in the past and this TFD was no exception.

The format for Tech Field Events is a mix between round-table discussions and mini-session style presentations. One thing to understand is that the group of people selected to attend the events are not your average technologists, they are all very smart, highly educated and highly regarded IT related people. Also, everyone is involved to some degree in either social media, blogging or run technology related websites. The group of delegates can be from many different disciplines of IT, for example, this TFD had a mix of administrators, service providers and bloggers from various fields like Networking, VOiP/IP Telephone, Virtualization, Storage, Servers and System Administration. This was a truly a small, but dynamic group of people that was assembled to review 8 companies and the technology that they bring to the table.  I have to say, I was humbled and honored to be a part of the Tech Field Day 8 group.

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Oct
01
2011

Disaster: Hurricane Irene & Tropical Storm Lee – My 1st Hand DR Story

October 1st, 2011 Posted in General, Virtualization
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I never thought I would have to write a story like this on my site, but after experiencing first-hand the incredible power of Mother Nature there was no question it would be a perfect blog post. Before going into the details of what happened and why I am writing this I have to say, it’s been a tiring, stressful, long and grueling past 4 days. Most companies “SAY” they have a DR plan, they say they “TEST” it but you will never know how the plan is going to work until the disaster actually strikes. I hope this blog post makes it clear to everyone, make sure your DR plan is strong and tested, and most importantly, make sure you have a way to control the potential loss of your entire operation. Please excuse the brevity of certain parts of my success story; I don’t want to bore people with non-important details.

Extreme Weather…2011 Edition

First let’s talk briefly about the recent “extreme weather” patterns in the northeast United States. We had the wettest summer on record and have had everything from extreme rain, hurricanes, tropical storms, torrential downpours that produce 4 inches of rain in 20 minutes to a brief earthquake a few weeks ago. It’s definitely been quite the challenging set of environmental conditions that have all been unexpected.

Every company, no matter where they are located has to have some sort of “threat” to their building or location. Seriously, think about it, you can be located in the best possible location with your datacenter and there are still threats for disasters. A simple gasoline tanker truck accident or even a small chlorine truck flipping over and if you think that can’t happen, everyone in the world takes their electricity power grids for granted. Let’s also not forget about internet connections and high speed, high bandwidth backbones, which we still haven’t seen our first “crash” yet, but as many network engineers will tell you, it’s bound to happen.

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Sep
06
2011

Site Update: Small Change, more IMPACT!

September 6th, 2011 Posted in Breaking News, General
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If you haven’t noticed the title of my site has changed slightly. Yes, I got a new domain and yes the old domain still works. Welcome to the internet VirtualizationImpact!

I always liked the previous name but I wanted a URL/Name that flowed off the tongue a little better during speaking conferences/sessions. Bookmarks, RSS feeds, Favorites and others will continue to work as normal. I simply have a redirect setup to this domain and this new one is secondary domain so all content can be reached at either URL address, however going forward all posts will be made here, on virtualzationimpact.com. I hope everyone likes the new name, I thought of it on my back from VMworld!

As always, thanks everyone for reading!

Jonathan

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Sep
06
2011

TechField Day 8: Silicon Valley – I’ll Be There!!

September 6th, 2011 Posted in General, TechFieldDay
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I just got back from VMworld and I am already preparing for the next HUGE event! The next Gestalt IT Tech Field Day 8 is right around the corner, September 15th and 16th, which is next week. It feels like I just left for VMworld and here I go again, off to another awesome event. I am super pumped for this as it’s my first time to a Tech Field Day. My good friend Matt Vogt participated in Tech Field Day 7 a few weeks ago and wrote a review of the event here (http://goo.gl/wTzcq).

Event number 8 on the list is going to be back to the roots in San Jose, California near Silicon Valley. This time around we have another awesome list of attendees which are listed below. I am super excited to meet them all as I am very familiar with their twitter handles, but not their names. I won’t be surprised if I start calling people by their Twitter handles in conversation!

Here is the list of attendees at TF8 I recommend following them on Twitter and if you are not following @TechFieldDay do it now. In addition, you can also follow the #TechFieldDay hash tag for up to the minute updates. I will of course be writing some blogs while attending the event and will try to provide as much information as possible.

 

Look for more information to come from the event, from what I have been told so far this is one is going to have a lot of Tech Startups attending which I think is really awesome. I am a huge fan of tech startups and I am sure they are going to present some awesome information and create an awesome roundtable discussion. I will update this post once I receive the final list of companies that are attending as the list is still being finalized.

Jonathan

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Sep
05
2011

VMworld 2011 Review – The Short Version!

September 5th, 2011 Posted in Breaking News, Dell, Virtualization, VMware - General, VMworld 2011
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I am finally back from VMworld 2011, somewhat rested from a long week of virtualization infused sessions and meetings. This year VMware decided to take VMworld BACK to Vegas and even though the majority of the people more than likely didn’t mind it in Vegas I didn’t care for it as much. I am personally not a fan of the Vegas-Sphere or its parties, nightclubs you can’t talk in or the insanely expensive cab rides from the airport to the hotel. Vegas isn’t for everyone, its cool for about 3 days then you would just rather be doing something else. Of course, some people love Vegas so this is nothing for them!

I have always been a big fan of VMworld being in San Francisco, mostly because I love the Moscone complex and arrangement of the session rooms. Last year there were a lot of comments that the venue wasn’t big enough for VMworld, but what people forgot was that VMware didn’t have the entire Moscone booked. Apple had the East campus booked for “something special” so there is a lot more room available if they used everything in the complex. One of the reasons I dislike Vegas type locations is that you can’t walk outside to get fresh air. It was an average of 105 degrees during the day, you don’t go outside, instead you stay inside. This for me isn’t much fun as I like to take a break, go for a walk outside, grab a coffee and let my brain soak in all of the awesome information it just gathered from sessions!


VMworld 2011 – How was it? – One world….GREAT. This was definitely the best VMworld I have been to, even with the above comments regarding the choice of venue. There were a few major announcements that made my radar and I will list them below. I am also not going to retype what is already out there on all of the blogs so I will link to a few articles that I thought are worthy reading material.
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Sep
04
2011

EqualLogic Whitepaper Release: APLB & Firmware 5.1.1-H2

September 4th, 2011 Posted in Breaking News, Dell, Equallogic, General
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There has been a great deal of conversation over the new EqualLogic APLB feature set since the last Dell Storage Forum. The new firmware was released a few weeks ago and has seen a few release updates and patches to the 5.1 code base.

With that being said, the current 5.1.1- H2 release is solid firmware build which I am running in my environment with no issues. I never experienced any of the problems that were discussed in the firmware fix list notes and I personally don’t know anyone that was having any issues on 5.1.


The EqualLogic engineering teams make patches for all different types of issues and are usually rolled up in a main version release, however, more recently, if there is even a small chance of the issue affecting any other customer, then a H(rev) patch is released. Personally, I would prefer patches to be released for small issues then the major rev releases primarily because I KNOW what type of problem is being fixed and why, per the release notes.

With this being said, the latest major firmware version, 5.1 has added some awesome new capabilities, specifically in regards to performance load balancing in storage pools. The new engine or algorithm that was developed is called the APLB, or Automatic Performance Load Balancer. This new load balancer engine works inside a storage pool to move hot blocks of data between arrays of different spindle speeds, RAID type and controller type. The biggest benefit is the ability to no longer need to worry about where you place your arrays in your pools. I don’t want to continue to write more about the details of designing your storage pools or groups in depth here because there is ONE KEY about the APLB: Design of your environment.

The EqualLogic whitepaper technical writing team have released a new document that covers this awesome new technology. You can grab the whitepaper directly from here: (http://goo.gl/jTvwy).

I strongly recommend all administrators read about this new feature, it is probably one of the MOST amazing features of the EqualLogic platform since the release of CLB (capacity load balancing). The whitepaper is a little heavy on details and should not be taken as a light read, I read it five times. Tons of a great information and key information that all SA’s need to take seriously, especially when designing a new environment or planning to add more performance to an existing deployment.

If you have any questions about the release doc don’t hesitate to post here on the site, I can forward your questions to the EqualLogic engineering team.

Jonathan

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Aug
22
2011

Breaking: EqualLogic Hardware Refresh – PS4100 & PS6100 Series Arrays Released!

August 22nd, 2011 Posted in Breaking News, Dell, Equallogic
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Finally I can talk about the new EqualLogic Storage arrays! Today was a huge press day Dell/EqualLogic and I am happy to say the new storage arrays that I have personally been waiting for from Dell/EqualLogic have seen the light of day, for the public that is. There are some major hardware changes on this storage platform from Dell, a lot of the new changes will become more apparent over the new few weeks once the arrays have hit the market. In typical fashion, most major IT news blogs have already covered the press release and have pushed out the same usual change list and notes that were mentioned in the Dell press release, so in proper blog writing fashion here is the link to the official press release from Dell/EqualLogic. “http://goo.gl/SHzJT“

One of the major items to note that no other blog/media sites have mentioned (that I have seen at least!) is that this is the FIRST major hardware redesign of the EqualLogic product line since the acquisition of EqualLogic back in 2007. Yes, there have been other “refreshes” of the product line, such as the addition of PS6000XVS hybrid storage array and the addition of some awesome new software management tools (SAN HQ, VMware integration, etc) but there hasn’t been a complete PLATFORM overhaul since the purchase. All arrays launched in the last few years have shared the same hardware engineering and technical design so this is a HUGE step forward for the EqualLogic product.
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