Attention!!! New Challenges Ahead!

Well folks…all good things must end…and for this Friday that means my career with Terremark.

I do wish that somehow things had worked out differently at Terremark, as I sincerely enjoyed my time and the relationships I developed with the great many superb individuals that I met while working there. However, things were not to be. Some people are satiated by their current status, some only strive for purely monetary gains and increases, but others like myself strive for something more. Something less tangible, but just as important… I strive for influence, respect, and recognition. I want to leave my mark. I want to influence direction. I want to shape the future. I want to aid and assist individuals and businesses in their growth. I might have been able to do those things at Terremark…but then again…I might not have. Terremark, like many businesses after a major merger/acquisition is in a mammoth state of flux. The business direction appears to be in flux, the management is in flux, the teams are in flux, and just about nothing seems clear or decided. If anything has been decided, it certainly hasn’t been communicated to the rank and file. Ultimately, between what I’ve failed to see during my time and combined with the fears for what I feel is coming…I was led to submit my resignation to Terremark due to receiving an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.

That opportunity was presented to me by NetApp. I will be reporting to work bright early Monday morning as a Professional Services Consultant. I’ve always enjoyed working with NetApp products. The integration between their products and my first love of VMware is something that most other companies only dream of. Add their excellent reputation for easy extensibility with their well-supported APIs and to me…it’s a dream platform. I’ll make no bone about my preference for file based storage either…but I’ll try to avoid the holy war here on my blog. Needless to say, I’m just tickled pink to have the chance to work for NetApp, and I’m going to work my tail off to make a name for myself there.

I’ll miss Terremark/Verizon…but I know great things are ahead at NetApp for me and my career!!!

Easy installations for vCenter and VMware Update Manager

Easy installations for vCenter and VMware Update Manager.

(*WARNING* – Requires free registration in order to view)

The link above points to an awesome post by Mike Laverick about automating the installation of vCenter Server and its various accompaniments. I’ve been considering doing so myself for a great amount of time, but prior to coming to my current employer, installing a fresh copy of vCenter Server was a sufficiently rare event to not be worth the effort in automating. Well…working at a cloud provider means that you stand up new environments on a regular basis. So long story short…this might just be what the doctor ordered. Although I’d be doing the whole kit and caboodle via PowerShell myself

Commodity Sux

Everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock recently knows about HP’s impending exit from the consumer PC and tablet market. HP has come to the shocking conclusion that playing in a purely commodity market just isn’t much fun. In fact in a recent Wall Street Journal article, they were quoted as saying, “facing low margins and low growth in the PC businesses.”

HP’s Consumer Quandary

Many might say that it’s a natural progression of a mature market, this march toward pure commoditization. Some might also argue that such scenarios reward companies for doing things leaner, meaner, and more efficiently. Look, Wal-Mart has clearly been successful doing just that right? Well, that might be true, but I think that even Wal-Mart would admit if backed in the corner that it sees the storm clouds on the horizon. They are rapidly searching for profit expansion, new markets, and higher margins throughout their business. The reason for this dire search is fairly simple, and it’s what caused HP to want to exit the consumer market… The reason is, “once you finish the price/efficiency/speed race to the bottom and you look around and see others still alive…what then?” Well, you get stagnabusiness – (a state of business with faltering stock performance, uninteresting and uninspiring business growth, and a brain drain from the departure of more radical thinkers from the company)

Why would I write an article about this, with me being a virtualization geek? Well, it’s because I see VMware pushing hosting and service providers down this road at a rapid pace. Here at VMworld 2011, I’m hearing and seeing a lot written, spoke, and demoed about how end-users and stand-alone companies can freely move their resources in and out and between and with both Public and Private cloud infrastructures. This is a tremendous win for these consumers, but I also hear a great deal of troubling things about the technologies that will be forced upon service providers to allow for this ease of migration for these end users/companies. I can’t help but feel that this will be forcing an unprecedented level of commoditization among providers. I’m extremely concerned that the only differentiator between most providers will eventually become solely based upon pricing. I don’t want to participate or compete in such a market. There are no “real” winners in such a market…only various levels of starving survivors. I sort of feel that what VMware is doing is something akin to the following scenario:

“A fictitious state doesn’t want to build its own highway system so it sells a bond to a private company that allows the company to construct a highway and allow that company to then have the right to levy tolls against the users of the highway. Later after the road becomes increasingly popular and the company becomes profitable, the state decides that they want to encourage more users and grow the areas around the highway, so they force the company to construct on and off ramps that allow drivers to avoid the company’s tolled exits.”

This is close to my opinion about the direction that VMware is moving…and I don’t like it.

Hoping these things can keep up!

One of the most frustrating aspects o nerd congregations is the absolute and complete decimation of all wireless communications. Here after receiving my VMworld 2011 conference materials I noticed the portable access point sitting outside the ballroom. Hopefully they can handle the throng. So fat it’s rocking pretty good speeds.

Ready for VMworld 2011!

Well,

I’m officially checked into VMworld 2011! Looking forward to the conference again this year. Here are a few pics of the registration area (very smooth registration process by the way).

Everyone’s still setting up, but things look like they are coming together! Good luck to everyone and I look forward to seeing and hearing about the new cool products and technologies.

First Come…First Serve

I don’t know if this is an improvement over the old session system or not!!!

So far…the sessions have been a bit too marketing heavy for my taste. I’m an engineer…”where’s the beef!!!” In any case…here’s my thoughts on the sessions I’ve attended thus far:

SP9649 – Imagine Virtually Anything w/ NetApp, Cisco, and VMware: This was unfortunately not much more than hot air. Nothing of real substance here…only some drivel about how much one could save by utilizing such a system. Also…it was our first glance at what’s looking to be the main theme here…”IT as a service!!!” They completely glazed over some real deployment problems and security issues inherent with deploying vFilers in a cloud service provider environment.

SS1055 – Partner Track Super Session: A little more marketing here…but there were some tidbits to take from this session. One, and I’ve felt this way for a while, it’s clear to me that VMware is hot and heavy in their move toward acquiring the mindshare, resources, and capabilities to directly sell cloud computing to end users. Even if they might say this is not the case…I can’t shake the feeling that this is the case.

ALT3003 – VMware vSphere Performance and Tuning: This is the first non-marketing session that I’ve attended this year. Notes as follows: This session is based on Lab #24 in the Self-Paced labs area. Session begins by talking about Storage I/O control. Statement made that storage is best when <30ms of latency. Unfortunately… (lack of sleep is catching up to me in this session ) SIOC control normalized latency. In vSphere 4.1 we can also set IOPs limits. Value is per disk. 2ms kernel latency should be the max you should see… "A little bit of a glitch"…can't display real-time stats for a VM…Yeah…little glitch…too bad I see it all of the time. Turn on Mem Compression Mem.MemZipEnable (Enabled by default on vSphere) They say to be mindful of NUMA…but they don't really elaborate… Swap in rate should be watched… Should force hardware assist on AMD 32-bit guests… They talk about dropping off in increasing vCPUs in VMs…but leave off the drop from 8 vCPUs. Nothing magical in the vCPU performance management… 2000ms is a problem according to this session.

VMworld Check In

Well, things didn’t start off so well today. First of all, although it’s great that this year VMware is running regular shuttles between the Moscone and the approved hotels in the area…we struggled trying to actually get on one. No less than three buses passed by the stop outside our hotel, even with the VMware guy trying to flag them down. Well…all of the members of my team were anxious to get registered, so we all decided to begin walking down to the Moscone on foot. Not a terrible walk from the hotel to the conference center…so not the end of the world.

Upon arriving at the Moscone, the line for registration was already quite long, but luckily it got moving pretty fast once the registration opened up. Once we received our badges we made our way down to the materials room to pick up our inevitable schwag bags. Welcome to line #2:

After waiting a few minutes to get in…I got to pick up my bag, but these yahoos didn’t have me down as being a VMUG member…which I most certainly am. Darn it!!! Oh well…hopefully the rest of the week turns out better!

VMWorld 2010!

I’m getting psyched up about heading to VMWorld again this year. Looking forward to seeing folks that I’ve met over the years and also to get a chance to take a peak at some of the offerings from the many vendors and demonstrators. My focus areas this year… IP Based storage(NFS, iSCSI, etc.), virtualization security and monitoring, and PCI compliancy tools.

NC522SFP and ESX 3.5 U4… Something like oil and water…

These have been some of the most trying days of my VMware support career thus far… I have been supporting an install of some HP Proliant DL585 G6′s that contain a NC522SFP Dual Port 10Gb Ethernet adapter in them for connection to a NetApp FAS6040 through a Cisco 4900M switch. We had an experience last week where several of these hosts just completely lost communication to the storage through these cards and caused the outage of many customer machines.

Turns out that there is a known issue with the firmware on these cards. I would stay away from them at all costs. I am going to try an alternate Intel model and hope for the best.

A Higher Standard – Or…The Peter Parker Realization…

Now fair warning… I was a hell-raiser when I was younger. I was one of those folks that many would have loved to have seen locked away permanently for the “good of society” (thank god it didn’t happen…). I did some bad things, and I didn’t particularly care well for myself or anyone else for that matter which certainly didn’t help. But I was not really a “bad” person. In any case…I did love sports, and it was one of the few things I participated in that made me feel like I could affect the outcome of something in a positive way.

I remember one time when I had gotten into trouble for being tardy to a few classes my head coach called me into his office during athletics one day. He told me, “son, you’re not going to start the game this week.” I was shocked and devastated. “Why? I have worked my tail off in practice coach. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to and more.” He then proceeded to tell me how my excessive tardies were unacceptable. I said, “I’ve done everything else right that you’ve asked me to. I’ve been a model athlete in every other way. No other students get treated in this manner and it’s not fair.” That’s when he took a deep breath and told me, “son, you are a member of a special group of students. This group you belong to receives special benefits that other students don’t receive such as early releases, special activities, and much more. Furthermore, you are role model to all of the younger students in the school. They look up to the members of this team and aim to join this team someday. Because of all of this, I expect you and the other members of this team to be held to a higher standard. It might not be fair or equitable, but mistakes that go unpunished in other students must be dealt with for those on this team. If you make it to class without being late this next week, I’ll restore your starting position. Until then though…you’re not starting and that’s it. You can leave now.”

I was livid. I couldn’t believe how I was being singled out for something that so many other people got away with every day. I had done so much that was so good…didn’t that make up for it?

The answer is no. It doesn’t make up for it. Coach was absolutely right…and you know what officers…the same goes for you. It might not be fair or fun…but when you are sworn in and given your badge and gun…along with the constant danger you face comes substantial privileges and power over ordinary citizens that provides you and yours with benefits and freedoms not otherwise obtainable by common citizens. It is for this, that an officer’s behavior must be above reproach. His or her honesty, integrity, and yes, moral compass must be always in tune and perfect. And if you say that this is not something that is possible…perhaps it’s time to hit the books and find another line of work because it certainly is possible…just maybe not for you. You might also ask why it is that a good officer could have their entire career ruined by one careless or mistaken act…and I’d rebut with the fact most people live with the possibility of losing their careers for things far less harmful than the mistakes that can be made by erroneous, ignorant, or egotistical officer. That’s just the way it is. Ask the nurse who accidentally kills someone’s little baby if it’s fair that her 25-year career in Nursing is over with after one incident…sorry folks…some jobs have responsibilities that rise to a level beyond that of others and being a peace officer is one of them. Nobody forced anyone into pursuing a career in law enforcement anyway. It is choice made by one’s own direct intention. It’s a tough career that is fraught with many emotional and physical challenges, but that’s no excuse for making mistakes or errors that lead to the deprivation of individuals’ basic liberties, rights, and freedoms and then failing to do everything to atone or repair such actions. Once again…I don’t actually condemn officers and agents for being human and making mistakes. I do condemn them for seeking to cover up, obfuscate, and otherwise hide such errors when they commit them…and sorry folks…you’re not going to shake my contention that most of the time when an officer makes such errors that they usually do their damned best to do just that. Furthermore…if you want to make the contention that they do receive reprimand or punishment but beyond the view of the public… Well…I contend that such a thing is no justice at all. An essential part of the relationship between officers and the public that they are supposedly serving is trust, openness, and honesty. If one hides something from another party…I propose that such an action is direct proof of no trust at all.

If you can’t handle the great responsibility that comes with the great power vested in you… Perhaps it’s time to take off the spidey suit…