I just noticed I am listed as one of the top 50 “Must-Read IT Blogs” by BizTech. It is a great honor to be part of a list which features some of the most brilliant people in IT and some of the largest corporate blogs out there. Make sure to read the Top 50 and add these blogs to your RSS reader as there are some real gems in there! Thanks BizTech!
Blogging
Have a Question? Ask the Expert vBloggers! (VSP1425)
This year at VMworld I have the honor to part of a panel discussion moderated by Rick Scherer. Of course I am not the only person on the panel. Next to me the panel will feature my fellow bloggers and virtualization experts: Frank Denneman, Scott Lowe and Chad Sakac. For those of you attending VMworld be sure to register for VSP1425 – Ask the Expert vBloggers today!
So now here is your chance to be part of this great session! Do you have a question that you’d like the experts to answer? Simply fill out the form below and your question will be added to the queue! We expect you will have great questions during the session but just in case the room goes silent we would like to have a couple of questions to get us started… although I don’t doubt for a second that during the introduction Chad aka “Chat” Sakac will get started right away 🙂
See you in Vegas, make sure to attend this session as panel sessions like these don’t happen often!
What have you’ve been up to?
I got a couple of questions around what I have been up to lately as some noticed there was a slight decrease in volume from a blogging perspective on yellow-bricks. (from 4 articles per week to 2-3 article per week) Well I have been reading up on my new role but on top of that also started blogging for the ESXi Chronicles blog (add it to your RSS reader) and created a VMware Storage centric twitter account. (Follow me if you want to keep up to date on VMware storage initiatives!) The things that I’ve worked on the last couple of weeks:
- VMware ESXi: Planning, implementation and security
The week before VMware Partner Exchange I decided that it was time to start brushing up my ESXi knowledge. I usually dig up all the manuals and presentations I can find and start from there. This time I took a different approach however, I bought a book. The book is titled “VMware ESXi: Planning, Implementation, and Security” and is authored by a true VMTN Community hero, Dave Mishchenko. - Scripted install with ESXi
Now you can kick off the automated install of your ESXi server. But wait, you probably want to see what script I used? That is what I figured, here is the script I wrote to automatically install and configure the ESXi host, it is just a simple script that I used and tested in my lab with the main purpose of showing what is possible with ESXi today. The configuration of the server will run after the first boot. I have added several “comment lines” to explain what I am doing and why. - Adopting ESXi, now is the time!
Within the virtualization community we have been seeing more and more people adopting ESXi. Not only adopting it but also actively evangelizing the use of ESXi over ESX classic. The main argument being of course the reduction in operational effort involved with maintaining the platform. Last week two excellent articles were published. The first article was by Bob Plankers of LoneSysAdmin.net fame. Bob wrote an excellent article countering all often heard complaints about ESXi.
I also wrote my first KB article which discusses the impact of CPU/Memory limits with help from someone from the the GSS team. You would expect that a KB article describing the impact already existed but surprisingly enough it did not. Hence the reason I felt an official statement could prevent some of the issues we see in the field on a daily basis.
Of course that’s not it, I am working on multiple other projects which I cannot discuss yet unfortunately and participated in the VCDX Defenses at PEX. One of the things I can reveal though is that Frank and I are make plans for a volume 2 of the HA/DRS Tech Deepdive and that the sales is still going strong, thanks everyone for your help/support! (No, there will not be an e-book unfortunately, the amount of time/reformatting required did not fit our current schedule.) Keep those reviews and pictures coming though.
Changes
It is that time of the year again… Roughly 1 year ago I blogged about the fact that I joined the VMware Cloud Practice, today I want to let you guys know that I have accepted a new job role within VMware as a Principal Architect working for the Technical Marketing team.
While I have enjoyed working within the PSO/TS organization, I have always been tempted to be part of an R&D organization to get as close to the source as possible, and of course to be able to influence the products, features and the direction of those. I never expected it to happen this soon though but the opportunity presented itself and as you can imagine I grabbed it with both hands. Joining Technical Marketing means that I will be able to focus more on educating people through white-papers, books, documentation and yellow-bricks.com. On top of that the promotion to Principal is a huge recognition; to be amongst the ranks of Pang Chen, Lee Dilworth, John Arrasjid, Dan Anderson and others is a true honor.
I want to thank everyone who made this possible, you know who you are! I cannot wait to get started,
Duncan
New Year, New Theme
I just activated my new Theme. There are still some minor quirks, and I still need to add the Yellow-Bricks logo (Thanks Sander for creating this cool new logo!), but I enabled it as I wanted to get started with a fresh look’n’feel.
Hope you like it, and of course a Happy New Year!