Category Archives: VMware

Random Short Take #13

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Here are a few links to some random news items and other content that I found interesting. You might find them interesting too. Let’s dive in to lucky number 13.

VMware – VMUG UserCon Sydney 2019 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure

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This is a really quick post to disclose everything I received as part of my attendance at the recent VMUG UserCon in Sydney. My flights and accommodation were paid for by VMUG. I paid for my own transfers in the main, although Tim Carman kindly covered my taxi to the airport after the event. Alastair Cooke bought me a coffee on Tuesday morning. We both agreed that perhaps the Melbourne UserCon would have better coffee, as they’re into that kind of thing down there. Lunch at the event was really good. I had some caesar salad, a small wrap, some pork belly thing and a chocolate slice.

I didn’t pick up anything from the event sponsors, although my youngest daughter (who happened to be in the area) picked up a couple of Sydney VMUG stickers and one of those shopping / carry bag things. She was also really happy she could attend the session on Getting Started with Python by Grant Orchard and Cody De Arkland. She found it most entertaining.

If you’re interested, here’s the deck I presented on building a brand by starting (and maintaining) a blog.

Thanks again to VMUG for having me, and big thanks to Ryan, and Claire, and the rest of the Sydney VMUG team for putting on such a great event. Thanks also to the presenters for some really educational and engaging sessions, particularly those who travelled a long way to be there. I think it was a big success, with over 300 people turning up on the day.

Random Short Take #12

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Here are a few links to some random news items and other content that I found interesting. You might find it interesting too. Maybe.

  • I’ve been a fan of Backblaze for some time now, and I find their blog posts useful. This one, entitled “A Workflow Playbook for Migrating Your Media Assets to a MAM“, was of particular interest to me.
  • Speaking of Backblaze, this article on SSDs and reliability should prove useful, particularly if you’re new to the technology. And the salty comments from various readers are great too.
  • Zerto just announced the myZerto Labs Program as a way for “IT professionals to test, understand and experiment with the IT Resilience Platform using virtual infrastructure”. You can sign up here.
  • If you’re in the area, I’m speaking at the Sydney VMUG UserCon on Tuesday 19th March. I’ll be covering how to “Build Your Personal Brand by Starting and Maintaining a Blog”. It’s more about blogging than branding, but I’m hoping there’s enough to keep the punters engaged. Details here. If you can’t get along to the event, I’ll likely publish the deck on this site in the near future.
  • The nice people at Axellio had some success at the US Air Force Pitch Day recently. You can read more about that here.
  • UltraViolet is going away. This kind of thing is disheartening (and a big reason why I persist in buying physical copies of things still).
  • I’m heading to Dell Technologies World this year. Michael was on the TV recently, talking about the journey and looking ahead. You can see more here.

VMware – vExpert 2019

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I’m very happy to have been listed as a vExpert for 2019. This is the seventh time that they’ve forgotten to delete my name from the list (if you think I’ll ever give up on that joke you are sadly mistaken). Read about it here, and more news about this year’s programme is coming shortly. Thanks again to Corey Romero and the rest of the VMware Social Media & Community Team for making this kind of thing happen. And thanks also to the vExpert community for being such a great community to be part of.

Brisbane VMUG – March 2019

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The March 2019 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Tuesday 26th March at Fishburners from 4pm – 6pm. It’s sponsored by Dell and promises to be a great afternoon.

Here’s the agenda:

  • VMUG Intro (by me)
  • VMware / Dell Presentation: Dell Factory Provisioning for Windows 10 with Workspace ONE (Pete Lindley)
  • VMware Presentation: VMware Education update and roadmap discussion (Shamus Hayes)
  • Q&A
  • Refreshments and drinks.

Dell have gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session and I’m really looking forward to hearing about some of the cool stuff you can do with Workspace ONE. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.

VMUG UserCon Sydney 2019 – See You There?

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I’ll be presenting at VMUG UserCon in Sydney this year. If you’re unfamiliar with UserCon, it’s a free event run by the larger VMUG groups and brings together a mix of different folk, all of whom are focused on VMware technologies in one way or another. There are plenty of technical discussions to be had, as well as community talks on “soft” skills from people like me. I’ll be doing a presentation called “Build A Personal Brand: How to Start and Maintain a Blog!”. The alternative title is “Become an overnight sensation in just 11 years”. The first title is probably better though (and more accurate). It covers a lot of the basics of getting started with a blog, using it to maintain a voice in the community, and a bunch of lessons learnt over the last few years.

In any case, even if you don’t want to hear me talk, there’s sure to be something there that will spark your interest. The keynote speakers are Chris Wolf and Brian Madden – both very interesting people. The event’s being held at the Sydney International Convention Centre on Tuesday March 19th. And it’s free to boot. So get along if you can. And there’s also an event happening in Melbourne on Thursday 21st. I won’t be there, but I’m sure it will be very good. I know the VMUG teams are working on the schedule, and I’ll post that here as soon as I know it.

VMware vSphere and NFS – Some Links

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Most of my experience with vSphere storage has revolved around various block storage technologies, such as DAS, FC and iSCSI. I recently began an evaluation of one of those fresh new storage startups running an NVMe-based system. We didn’t have the infrastructure to support NVMe-oF in our lab, so we’ve used NFS to connect the datastores to our vSphere environment. Obviously, at this point, it is less about maximum performance and more about basic functionality. In any case, I thought it might be useful to include a series of links regarding NFS and vSphere that I’ve been using to both get up and running, and troubleshoot some minor issues we had getting everything running. Note that most of these links cover vSphere 6.5, as our lab is currently running that version.

Basics

Create an NFS Datastore

How to add NFS export to VMware ESXi 6.5

NFS Protocols and ESXi

Best Practice

Best Practices for running VMware vSphere on Network Attached Storage

Troubleshooting

Maximum supported volumes reached (1020652)

Increasing the default value that defines the maximum number of NFS mounts on an ESXi/ESX host (2239)

Troubleshooting connectivity issues to an NFS datastore on ESX and ESXi hosts (1003967)

Random Short Take #11

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Here are a few links to some random news items and other content that I found interesting. You might find it interesting too. Maybe. Happy New Year too. I hope everyone’s feeling fresh and ready to tackle 2019.

  • I’m catching up with the good folks from Scale Computing in the next little while, but in the meantime, here’s what they got up to last year.
  • I’m a fan of the fruit company nowadays, but if I had to build a PC, this would be it (hat tip to Stephen Foskett for the link).
  • QNAP announced the TR-004 over the weekend and I had one delivered on Tuesday. It’s unusual that I have cutting edge consumer hardware in my house, so I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
  • It’s not too late to register for Cohesity’s upcoming Helios webinar. I’m looking forward to running through some demos with Jon Hildebrand and talking about how Helios helps me manage my Cohesity environment on a daily basis.
  • Chris Evans has published NVMe in the Data Centre 2.0 and I recommend checking it out.
  • I went through a basketball card phase in my teens. This article sums up my somewhat confused feelings about the card market (or lack thereof).
  • Elastifile Cloud File System is now available on the AWS Marketplace – you can read more about that here.
  • WekaIO have posted some impressive numbers over at spec.org if you’re into that kind of thing.
  • Applications are still open for vExpert 2019. If you haven’t already applied, I recommend it. The program is invaluable in terms of vendor and community engagement.

 

 

Random Short Take #10

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Here are a few links to some random news items and other content that I found interesting. You might find it interesting too. Maybe. This will be the last one for this year. I hope you and yours have a safe and merry Christmas / holiday break.

  • Scale Computing have finally entered the Aussie market in partnership with Amnesium. You can read more about that here. 
  • Alastair is back in the classroom, teaching folks about AWS. He published a bunch of very useful notes from a recent class here.
  • The folks at Backblaze are running a “Refer-A-Friend” promotion. If you’re looking to become a new Backblaze customer and sign up with my referral code, you’ll get some free time on your account. And I will too! Hooray! I’ve waxed lyrical about Backblaze before, and I recommend it. The offer runs out on January 6th 2019, so get a move on.
  • Howard did a nice article on VVols that I recommend checking out.
  • GDPR has been a challenge (within and outside the EU), but I enjoyed Mark Browne‘s take on Cohesity’s GDPR compliance.
  • I’m quite a fan of the Netflix Tech Blog, and this article on the Netflix Media Database was a ripper.
  • From time to time I like to poke fun at my friends in the US for what seems like an excessive amount of shenanigans happening in that country, but there’s plenty of boneheaded stuff happening in Australia too. Read Preston’s article on the recently passed anti-encryption laws to get a feel for the heady heights of stupidity that we’ve been able to reach recently.

 

Brisbane VMUG – November 2018

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The November 2018 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting (and last one of the year) will be held on Tuesday 20th November at Toobirds at 127 Creek Street from 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm. It’s sponsored by Cisco and promises to be a great afternoon.

Here’s the agenda:

  • VMUG Intro
  • VMware Presentation:Workspace ONE UEM Modern Management for Windows 10
  • Cisco Presentation:Cloud First in a Multi-cloud world
  • Q&A
  • Refreshments and drinks.

Cisco have gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session and I’m really looking forward to hearing what they’ve been up to. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.