Wednesday 6 August 2008
VM London User Group
It has been great to visit these and I make the effort to go to them to keep up to date and network with what are probably the best VM professionals in the country. (god knows why I go saying this)
This months event detail is available at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/156356?tstart=0 so sign up and come and enjoy the afternoon!
Bedtime reading
This is double the thickness and includes additional resource in the shape and form of "Advanced technical operations guide" so is well worth the 30 quid to purchase.
I cannot thank Mike and co enough for the original as it helped when the training program for ESX was not as mature as it is for ESX 3 and it helped scale my original ESX environment.
Do not worry about the detail being out of date with ESX 3.5 now being available as the fundamental roots of the product are still used mainsteam and relevant so do not be put off!
Also if you are rather clued up on Virtualisation then do not hesitate to buy as I always find with virtual resources this good you still learn stuff and also gain standardised knowledge!
Sorry Mike
When reading the original book (Mostly in the bath) in 2005 I didnt have a clue who the authors were, but now after being more aware of the Virtual commmunity, have spoke and been to some of Mike's presentations at VMUG I have found it increasing hard to read the start of the book without having a Nottinghamshire accent as the narrator so hopefully this will go after a few chapters :)
Go get it http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0971151083?tag=rted-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0971151083&adid=0V4QVR83TS906AED1TZC&
Saturday 2 August 2008
The Virtual Cloud
I have seen a massive uptake of talk about cloud computing and offerings from the likes of Amazon with its EC2 service. Anyone not familiar with Cloud computing for a simple description it basically is a service provider providing a metered usage of server instance within the hosting companies server environment. EC2 for example only charge for what you use, so you can turn off your machine overnight and not be charged etc.
I recently attended an event on Cloud computing in London which gave a great insight into how cloud 
is being used across various organisations and environments from small startups who cannot afford to host web farms through to given examples such as the New York times newspaper utilising the "Cloud" over a weekend to scan all of its archives http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun/.
The assumption
Those who are involved within the virtual space who have not been under a stone for the last month would know that VMware have recently appointed Paul Martiz as there new CEO. He apparently brings a massive wealth of experience on Cloud Computing and I can't but help think and assume that the recent announcement this week about a new Datacentre purchase http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/Jul/28/vmware_plans_major_data_center_in_wenatchee.html Is evidence to suggest they are planning some big changes in how they offer virtual services.
Remember the Hypervisor is now "free" as in you can download ESXi for nothing, regardless of the fact you need to purchase various components such as VMotion, DRS and HA the underlying Hypervisor is "free".
It will definately be interesting to see if any announcements come out of VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas in September on the future strategy of VMware and Cloud computing, it will definately be a area of business that VMware needs to adapt and start competing against, they have a huge amount of development teams that can provide the management components required to manage VM's remotely within a cloud so it will be interesting to see if my assumptions become correct and VMware does start to turn into a ASS (as a service) organisation :)
Labels: cloud, paul maritz, vmware
Welcome
Well I have had a Live Spaces blog for some time now and never ever got round to updating it. So I have decided to start again and hopefully keep up to date in the blogosphere.
The core content of my blog will comprise of news and views from across the full offerings of Virtualisation technology which are available today and for any developments and technologys on the horizon.
Kind Regards
Daniel
Labels: myself
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