Random Short Take #80

Posted on 2022-11-14 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #80. Lots of press release news this week and some parochial book recommendations. Let’s get random.

My friend Al has been back in the lab, and has put together some really useful how-to articles on how to upgrade from ESXi 7 to 8 and deploying VMware vCenter 8.
In press release news, Pure Storage has expanded its as-a-Service model across the full suite of Portworx offerings.
The nice folks at StorPool Storage have announced the company is a Diamond sponsor at CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2022 this week.
Verge.io has announced the appointment of Mike Wall to Chairman of the Board.
Tachyum has unveiled details of its architecture and prodigy design in an overview white paper.
Have you heard of World Digital Preservation Day? I hadn’t, but it sounds pretty cool.
Hammerspace has announced that it’s shattering expectations for high-performance file data architectures. I like what Hammerspace is doing, and I’m keen to dig in some more when I have a moment.
I’m a little bit younger than JB, and spent my youth in a town west of BrisVegas, but I’m always interested to read about what my adopted hometown was like in the Eighties. This article – Sweaty moustache dandruff, super-goth girl and $750 for a beer. Brisbane in the Before Times – was fantastic. And if you’re curious about Brisbane, I heartily recommend reading anything by Nick Earls, Andrew McGahan, and John Birmingham. And while I’m recommending books, it’s hard to go past Andrew Stafford’s “Pig City”.

Random Short Take #78

Posted on 2022-10-12 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #78. We’re hurtling towards the silly season. Let’s get random.

I mentioned verge.io in one of my recent short takes. Chris M. Evans has done the heavy lifting for me and written about test driving the verge.io Software-Defined Data Centre. Worth checking out.
Speaking of SDDCs, this article on automating VM Migration AND their Firewall rules to VMC was super useful.
I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time, and as disk-slinger in a former life, I really enjoy reading the company’s tech blog. This post on cloud storage abstraction with Object Store was great.
Data breaches – everyone’s having them. Are you missing out? It’s probably just a matter of time. While you’re waiting, check out this article from Preston – John Proctor and Data Breaches.
It’s always sad when a startup stops. Mellor writes that Pavilion Data – last NVMe over Fabrics flash array startup – has died. I had the opportunity to take the kit for a spin in a previous role, and spent some time with some of their people. Smart folks doing interesting things. I hope those impacted land on their feet.
In press release news, Imply has announced a major Open Source Contribution for Apache Druid; as well as a new financial guarantee for Apache Druid users.
I always enjoy talking to Chris about his Plex setup, because he’s taken it to the next level. Here’s a great article he put together on how to automate lighting with Plex playback.
Finally, our old friend VMware vCenter Converter is back. You can download it from here.

Posted on 2022-08-31 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #76. Summer’s almost here. Let’s get random.

The nice folks at StorPool have announced StorPool Storage v20. I was lucky enough to catch up with Boyan and the team recently, and they told me about their work on supporting NVMe/TCP, StorPool on Amazon AWS, and NFS File Storage. It’s great stuff and worth checking out.
Long term retention – all the kids are doing it, but there are some things you need to think about. Preston has posted a great article on it here.
That Geerling fellow is at it again, this time reviewing 6 Raspberry Pis, 6 SSDs on a Mini ITX Motherboard. Hat tip to my mate Tony for the link.
Speaking of Tony, he’s finally back blogging, with this succinct piece on DHCP with NSX VLAN segments.
Lots going on at VMware Explore 2022 in San Francisco this week. Danny Alvarez has put together a series of links covering the major announcements. I hope to get time to cover the major VMware Cloud on AWS news in the next few weeks.
In press release news, Komprise has achieved a 2022 INC. 5000 Ranking.
I had a chance to catch up with Verge.io, recently and the company has some interesting news to share about shared, virtualized GPU computing.
Zerto recently announced it has joined the AWS ISV Workload Migration Partner Program.
And, finally, Leaseweb has appointed Richard Copeland As CEO of Its U.S. Business.