Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

@DuncanYB’s recommended reads part 5

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What a crazy week, VMworld. Many announcements by many different vendors and of course a kazillion blog posts. I picked a few which stood out to me and which are worth reading.

  • VMworld VMare Code hackathon to hit Barcelona 2016 by Alan Renouf
    The US version of the hackathon was a big success, and I expect nothing less in EMEA to be honest. Read Alan’s article to get a feeling / idea around what it was like and make sure to sign up if you have a good idea, or want to join an existing team!
  • VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 All NVMe Flash Array with Intel® SSD P3520 Sets New Record
    I just like reading these types of posts, what can a config like this lead to. Sometimes people say ‘well how realistic is the config?’ I actually have a customer deploying this exact configuration today.
  • Dell Technologies = Facemeltingly Awesome, but shall we talk frankly? by Chad Sakac
    A lengthy post on the Dell/EMC merger by Chad. He is in the middle of it and I always enjoy reading his thoughts.
  • VMware PowerCLI for Mac OS X, Linux & More? Yes, please! by William Lam
    Quick post on something very interesting, availability of PowerCLI on other operating systems then Microsoft. Leave a comment on his post if you are interested…
  • VMware ESXi Claimrules Unleashed by Guido Hagemann
    Want to know what a claimrule is all about? Guido broke it down in a nice way. Some good stuff in there.
  • Have got a couple of spare hours and want to watch some VMworld sessions, William Lam dumped everything in a long list, makes your life easier!
  • Julian Wood’s VMworld Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 series.
    One of the best “personal takes” on VMworld US if you ask me. I know how much work it is to keep articles like these up to date. Some interesting thoughts, and I like how Julian included the parties, receptions but also a chat he had with PernixData’s Satyam Vaghani.
  • VSAN Availability series part 1, part 2 and part 3 by Jeff Hunter
    If you want to know more about VSAN and the availability aspects, this is a great series to read…

Going to VMworld and want to #GiveBack? Buy a shirt!

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Joe Baguley pointed me to something cool this week. An intern team in the UK has joined the Million Makers entrepreneurial fundraising challenge and will be selling cool shirts at VMworld of which proceeds will go to the Prince’s Trust.

The Prince’s Trust is a charity in the United Kingdom founded in 1976 by Charles, Prince of Wales to help young people aged 13 to 30 get into jobs, education and training. Many of the young people they help are in, or leaving, care, facing issues such as homelessness or mental health problems, or have been in trouble with the law. Their free programmes give young people the practical and financial support they need to stabilise their lives.

About the challenge, the Million Makers is an entrepreneurial fundraising challenge set by the trust which sees teams of employees from companies across the UK competing to raise at least £10,000 or more over a period of six months. The competition is a learning and development tool proven to build essential business skills and motivate your employees. Teams are invited to pitch their business plan in a Dragons’ Den-style panel of senior business leaders. Presentation skills are put to the test in order to secure £1,500 seed funding from The Prince’s Trust (this has already been secured).

How can you help? Below is the design of the shirt that will be sold through the VMworld store. The cost is going to be 20 Euro and there will only be 120 available at VMworld, so make sure you get one on day 1 as I suspect these will sell out fast, this is how you can GiveBack! I’ve been told that they will also be made available somehow online soon, so for those who are not going to VMworld there will be an option soon to buy one, I will let you folks know where I hear how/where/what. For now, make a mental note and pick one up!

vSpeaking Podcast: VMworld Debrief

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Pete and John asked me if I wanted to join the podcast again, this week we did a VMworld US debrief. I figured I would share it with you folks as well. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

VMworld Europe, sign up now and register for sessions!

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VMworld US is over, I’ve watched various sessions and now am starting to prep for VMworld EMEA, which will be in a month. (17-20 Oct) If you haven’t registered yet then now is the time to do so, the longer you will wait, the more expensive flights will become. If you have registered and are starting to look at the agenda then here are my 2 sessions I have scheduled this year:

  • 18/10/16 (Tuesday) 15:30 – Software-Defined Storage at VMware Primer – STO7650 – Lee Dilworth / Duncan Epping
  • 19/10/16 (Wednesday) 15:30 – A day in the life of a VSAN I/O – STO7875 – John Nicholson / Duncan Epping

And based on the sessions I have seen so far, I would also like to recommend to add the following to your schedule:

  • VMware Chief Technology Officer Panel – Trends and Futures [CTO9943] Joe Baguley, Paul Strong, Shawn Bass, Ray O’Farrell
  • vSphere 6.x Host Resource Deep Dive [INF8430] Frank Denneman / Niels Hagoort
  • Extreme Performance Series: vCenter Performance Deep Dive [INF8108] Ravi Soundararajan, Sameh Zakhary
  • Tech Preview: Enhanced VM Availability Leveraging vCenter and Partner Hardware Integration [INF8020] Maarten Wiggers
  • vSphere DRS Deep Dive: Understanding the Best Practices, Advanced Concepts, and Future Direction of DRS [INF7827] Naveen Nagaraj
  • An Industry Roadmap: From storage to data management [STO7903] Christos Karamanolis
  • The Power Hour: Deep Dive, DevOps, and New Features of PowerCLI [INF8092] Alan Renouf
  • Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive [STO7645] Pete Flecha / Patrick Dirks
  • Virtual SAN: Introducing the Best HCI Platform for Containers and Cloud-Native Applications [STO8256] Christian Dickmann / Rawlinson Rivera
  • Cloud Native Buzzwords (Demystified) for Dummies [CTO7964] Massimo Re Ferre’

SPBM integration with vRealize Automation

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Last week a new vRealize Automation plugin was released. The plugin enables the use of storage policies within vRealize Automation, or as the Solutions Exchange page says:

Integrating storage policy consumption model into vRealize Automation. This integration enables VM-granular control based on the Storage policy based management framework. This solution exposes vSphere VM Storage policies to vRealize Automation service catalog allows the ability to dynamically assign individual VM storage polcies to virtual disks based on their storage requirements characteristics (performance, availability, security, etc).

Pretty neat solution which was shown also during the VMworld keynote. More extensive demos around the capabilities can be viewed below, and more details around the plugin and how to install / use it can be found here.