Random Short Take #41

Posted on 2020-08-08 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #41. A few players have worn 41 in the NBA, but it’s hard to go past Dirk Nowitzki for a quality big man with a sweet, sweet jumpshot. So let’s get random.

There have been a lot of articles written by folks about various home office setups since COVID-19 became a thing, but this one by Jason Benedicic deserves a special mention. I bought a new desk and decluttered a fair bit of my setup, but it wasn’t on this level.
Speaking of COVID-19, there’s a hunger for new TV content as people across the world find themselves confined to their homes. The Ringer published an interesting article on the challenges of diving in to the archives to dig up and broadcast some television gold.
Backblaze made the news a while ago when they announced S3 compatibility, and this blog post covers how you can move from AWS S3 to Backblaze. And check out the offer to cover your data transfer costs too.
Zerto has had a bigger cloud presence with 7.5 and 8.0, and Oracle Public Cloud is now a partner too.
Speaking of cloud, Leaseweb Global recently announced the launch of its Leaseweb Cloud Connect product offering. You can read the press release here.
One of my favourite bands is The Mark Of Cain. It’s the 25th anniversary of the Ill At Ease album (the ultimate gym or breakup album – you choose), and the band has started publishing articles detailing the background info on the recording process. It’s fascinating stuff, and you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
The nice folks over at Scale Computing have been doing some stuff with various healthcare organisations lately. You can read more about that here. I’m hoping to check in with Scale Computing in the near future when I’ve got a moment. I’m looking forward to hearing about what else they’ve been up to.
Ray recently attended Cloud Field Day 8, and the presentation from Igneous prompted this article.

Random Short Take #19

Posted on 2019-07-24 by dan

Here are some links to some random news items and other content that I recently found interesting. You might find them interesting too. Episode 19 – let’s get tropical! It’s all happening.

I seem to link to Alastair’s blog a lot. That’s mainly because he’s writing about things that interest me, like this article on data governance and data protection. Plus he’s a good bloke.
Speaking of data protection, Chris M. Evans has been writing some interesting articles lately on things like backup as a service. Having worked in the service provider space for a piece of my career, I wholeheartedly agree that it can be a “leap of faith” on the part of the customer to adopt these kinds of services.
This post by Raffaello Poltronieri on VMware’s vRealize Operations session at Tech Field Day 19 makes for good reading.
This podcast episode from W. Curtis Preston was well worth the listen. I’m constantly fascinated by the challenges presented to infrastructure in media and entertainment environments, particularly when it comes to data protection.
I always enjoy reading Preston’s perspective on data protection challenges, and this article is no exception.
This article from Tom Hollingsworth was honest and probably cut too close to the bone with a lot of readers. There are a lot of bad habits that we develop in our jobs, whether we’re coding, running infrastructure, or flipping burgers. The key is to identify those behaviours and work to address them where possible.
Over at SimplyGeek.co.uk, Gavin has been posting a number of Ansible-related articles, including this one on automating vSphere VM and ova deployments. A number of folks in the industry talk a tough game when it comes to automation, and it’s nice to see Gavin putting it on wax and setting a great example.
The Mark Of Cain have announced a national tour to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their Battlesick album. Unfortunately I may not be in the country when they’re playing in my part of the woods, but if you’re in Australia you can find out more information here.

Random Short Take #2

Posted on 2015-11-23 by dan

I did one of these 7 years ago – so I guess I never really got into the habit – but here’re a few things that I’ve noticed and thought you might be interested in:

David Ring did a very useful post on VPLEX – XtremIO connectivity considerations. I’ve been working on a design covering just such a thing and was about to do a similar post. So thanks Dave for covering it off for me;
Virtualization Field Day 6 just wrapped up. If you missed any of the sessions, head over to the landing page to get links to the streams and associated blog posts;
Dave Henry did a somewhat entertaining post on EMC’s recent Isilon announcements. It’s now been updated with a few answers to some of his very reasonable questions. I have a few customers who are very interested in CloudPools. And I’m interested in finding out what the reality of the product is as opposed to the slideware;
This is a great article on configuring iSCSI for the Dell Compellent;
VMware released its Photon Controller recently as well, and Eric had a really good write-up here. The topic of CNAs came up at our recent VMUG and it’ll be interesting to see how VMware applies their particular flavour to things;
Speaking of VMware, I was going to do a post covering some of SRM 6.1’s new features, but Vladan Seget has it all covered here;
It’s the last week of nominations for EMC Elect in 2016. Read more on that here. VMware vExpert 2016 nominations are also open;
The Mark of Cain play The Zoo in Brisbane on December 5th (+ Greig & BARGE with an antenna on it).
Tickets $35.00 + bf; and
This is unrelated, and somewhat dated, but I wanted to make a note somewhere on the internet about how to get my Yamaha receiver working in a 2.1 speaker / subwoofer combination. Here’s the link.