Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

bloggers

Support your fav. virtualization bloggers, vote for the top blogs!

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I just woke up in an extremely warm Vietnam and noticed it is that time of the year again. I am hoping to end up somewhere at the top of the list again, but I realize like no one else that this is not a given. The competition is huge and some really stood out this year. There are three in particular that stood out in my opinion which for sure made my Top list: Cormac Hogan, William Lam and Derek Seaman. All three did something different than most bloggers do. They bring unique content, a unique perspective and showed dedication / perseverance. I am expecting all three to be in the top of the list for sure.

2013 was a crazy year… I joined a new team and am working on an exciting new product at VMware, which I unfortunately cannot talk about yet. We saw the beta release of Virtual SAN and that resulted in many many articles. I was fortunate enough to be selected to present at both VMworld EMEA and US, and presented at various VMUGs but the two which particularly stood out were Italy and Denmark as I had not been there before. The busiest blogging day of the year was August 27th with over 13k views.

I guess something exciting to mention is that I started working on a new book, of course somehow Eric Sloof managed to notice if first and scooped the news. Will take a while before it is released but the title will be: Essential Virtual SAN. The rough cuts should be online soon as well. Happy to be working with Cormac Hogan on this, I couldn’t think of anyone else who would be better fitted to write a book on the topic of VSAN with.

Something worth noting as well, the top referring sites: twitter, VMware VMTN Community, facebook, Eric Siebert’s VLP and blogs.vmware.com. In that order, and it makes you realize how important social media is today. Whether it is twitter or a community forum… it can drive a lot of traffic when used in the right way!

Thanks again to Eric Siebert who spends a MASSIVE amount of time going through the voting, filtering out discrepancies and making sure it all is done in a fair manner! Make sure to bookmark his website, add it to your RSS reader and follow him on twitter. So what are you waiting for, head on over and take the survey!

Vote for the top virtualization Blogs / 2012 looking back!

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Yes, it is that time of the year again… vSphere-land.com’s voting for the top virtualization blogs has started again. Of course I am hoping to end up somewhere at the top of the list again, but I realize like no one else that this is not a given. The competition once again is huge, there are a couple of new-comers which has published some outstanding work. Personally I am a huge fan of Cormac Hogan’s work and I hope he will make it in to the top 10 this year, I sure as hell voted for him! Of course I expect my friends like Frank Denneman, Alan Renouf, Massimo Referre and William Lam to also hit the top 10.

I am hoping each of you will select the top-10 blogs again based on quality, relevancy, longevity and frequency. (I personally find length of the article irrelevant, content is King!) I always use the yearly voting to look back at what happened the last 12 months. What happened in 2012, what has kept me busy?

For me 2012 started with Partner Exchange. Presented a 2-hr workshop on how to design a Cloud Infrastructure, together with Dave Hill (he is on the list as well, so vote for him :-)) and guests Frank Denneman and Chris Colotti. On top of that Chris Colotti and I presented a DR solution for vCloud Director based environments. This is something that people had been waiting on for a long time. I came up with the process/concept for this and also published a whitepaper on this topic. The same concept can be used for VMware View environments by the way, white paper out soon! I published a whole bunch of other white papers (1, 2) this year as part of my Tech Marketing responsibilities, of which the vMSC Best Practices paper is probably the most read and best received. I managed to get a couple of sessions approved at VMworld and had a blast presenting with my buddy Lee Dilworth. Also being a VMworld “Expert” was once again an awesome experience, I especially enjoyed the group discussions. I also presented as a couple of VMUGs (belgium, ireland, uk) and last but not least, published the vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive… which happened to be the most sold book at VMworld San Francisco.

Along the way I managed to crank out an article or two hundred, and my blog went down during the vSphere 5.1 launch due to the massive amount of traffic. I can tell you that my hosting company was surprised as they thought it was a DDOS attack, but then they figured out it was just a massive amount of people hitting my site on the same day. I guess thanks for that 🙂

I did want to list my 10 top articles over the last 12 months in no particular order:

Thanks again to Eric Siebert who spends a MASSIVE amount of time going through the voting, filtering out discrepancies and making sure it all is done in a fair manner! Make sure to bookmark his website, add it to your RSS reader and follow him on twitter. So what are you waiting for, head on over and take the survey!

VMworld 2012 – INF-VSP1504 – Ask the Expert vBloggers

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It’s that time of year again, and for the 5th year we will be running the Ask the Expert vBloggers at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco!  This is really a great session with the top bloggers answering questions live from the audience. Yes this is your one chance to see Chad Sakac, Frank Denneman, Rick Scherer, Scott Lowe and myself up on the same stage. Last year was a blast, and we had one of the best rated sessions of VMworld, I am sure it will be a blast again this year!  If you haven’t registered already, I strongly suggest you lock in your ticket to VMworld by clicking here.

Once you register, be sure to add INF-VSP1504 – Ask the Expert vBloggers to your agenda!

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Number 1 virtualization/VMware Blog!

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Eric Siebert (vSphere-Land) just published the results of the best VMware/Virtualization blog election today. Just like last year Eric rounded up the gang and recorded a very special edition of vChat. This edition features Eric Siebert together with Simon Seagrave, David Davis and John Troyer. During the vChat Eric and crew announce the Top 25 and comment on each and every single blog out there, they also announced the winners in the new categories that Eric created!

I would like to thank everyone for voting for me again. I am honored to be part of the list and humbled to be voted number 1 amongst so many excellent blogs, especially when listed with old-timers like Mike “RTFM” Laverick and Eric “Scoop” Sloof.

Watch the webcast for the full list, or take a shortcut and check Eric’s vSphere-Land.com post which has all the results.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate a couple of “newcomers” who’s content I’ve highly enjoyed this year. Starting with Mr Chris “vCloud” Colotti… he entered the top 25 this year at spot 21. If you weren’t following his blog, make sure you do! Of course I cannot forget the newcomers category itself, great work by Barry Coombs, Josh Atwell and Andrea “the giant” Mauro.

Let me repeat what was mentioned at the end of top 25 list… all these bloggers are really approachable. If they present at a VMUG, if you see them walking around at VMworld / PEX / any other event don’t hesitate to step up and introduce yourself. Believe me, it is great to talk to readers and get feedback or just have a chat!

Once again thanks for voting! Make sure you watch that webcast. I loved every second of it.