Author

Philip Sellers

Phil is a Solutions Architect at XenTegra, based in Charlotte, NC, with over 20 years of industry experience. He loves solving complex, technology problems by breaking down the impossible into tangible achievements - and by thinking two or three steps ahead of where we are today. He has spent most of my career as an infrastructure technologist in hands-on roles, even while serving as a leader. His perspective is one of servant leadership, working with his team to build something greater collectively. Having been lucky to have many opportunities and doorways opened during his career - Phil has a diverse background as a programmer, a writer, an analyst all while staying grounded in infrastructure technology.

General

Busy, busy all the time

by Philip Sellers May 18, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

And now, a post about nothing…..

Its finally happened. I missed a day in Google Reader… I didn’t read any of my news today. I never got caught up enough at work to actually have time to take in the news. I also didn’t have time to read much of my personal email during the day. The day flew past and it was 4:22 (see my twitter feed) before I knew what happened, and I was no where near where I wanted to be as far as my task list was concerned. So, tomorrow is a day to play catch up.

I guess that’s the problem – is problem the right word? I guess that’s the delimma. By virtue of the iPhone, I’m pretty much connected except when I’m sleeping. I can get my news, I can get my email, I can get to the Internet from just about anywhere. And for me to have 600 things waiting to be read in Google Reader – that’s saying something.

I guess its also like the wireless commercials that were airing in the south (maybe nationwide) last year – all the things you can think about when you don’t have to think about minutes… I’m waiting for some mindless reboots after upgrading VMware Tools tonight and this is what I’m thinking about. I guess, I could be reading all those things in Google Reader instead of posting this, but oh well. I have one major reboot that needs to happen tonight – 2 am – <sarcasm> Yay! </sarcasm>.

May 18, 2009 0 comments

General

“Online life after death”

by Philip Sellers May 18, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

And I quote CNN today – “New services promise online life after death.” No, its not fountain of youth, but it is a real issue that some have already found — what happens to your virtual you when you die? How do you securely transfer domains and virtual “real estate” that could have real value?

Obviously, someone out there thinks there is a real business opportunity for services that will allow you to pass along access to your virtual properties… See the original article at cnn.com.

Thanks to Glen for this link…

May 18, 2009 0 comments

Home Tech

Mozy backup update

by Philip Sellers May 15, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

So, its been exactly a week since I started my Mozy backup. I have now progressed to completion of approximately 20GB of my data backed up. My iMac froze (yes, it does happen…) one day and I had to restart it when I got home from work, but the backup kicked off again. So, 20GB in a week isn’t that bad. But I’m impatient. I can’t help thinking how much fast this would be on Bluewave (my company’s fiber to the home product). I’d have a much faster upstream. That brings me back to my point in the last post – the biggest hurdle to online backup is upstream on home Internet connections. But, that’s where we are today. I’ll be following up later on this.

May 15, 2009 0 comments

General

Major news outlets transitioning online

by Philip Sellers May 15, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

This post is a little off topic. Some of you may know that I met my wife while working on our college newspaper together over 10 years ago. So, beyond the technology, one of my other niche passions is the news business, particularly magazines and newspapers. (I, also, hate the 24-hour news and how its declined the quality of news reported, but that’s another post for another day). My wife worked in every type of media possible from newspaper, magazine, radio to TV. So we’ve been surrounded by the biz (albeit small market) for our entire adult lives. So its interesting to watch what is happening to the industry at this critical time. Its also interesting to watch new ideas and new models emerge as the times are changing.

About a year ago (maybe less), I saw a CBS Sunday Morning report about a startup web magazine called The Daily Beast. It was the newest venture for editor extraordinare Tina Brown of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker fame. I was really impressed that she was venturing out on a limb and trying to embrace a web only format. If only some of her contemporaries in the newspaper business had been so forward thinking, but that’s besides the point. She was just launching an online magazine format – something that I’m not aware has been successfully done before.

May 15, 2009 0 comments

Home Tech

Trying out Mozy again…

by Philip Sellers May 9, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

Since posting about Backblaze, I got some very good comments about Mozy. They have also not been sitting idle and they’ve added a few features to the service. One of those new feature is the ability to get your restore on external media shipped to you, a key differentiator to Backblaze, I said earlier. The price of a similar service was Backblaze was a little costly, I thought, so Mozy’s options are a much better approach. More on that soon.

So, I setup my iMac at home to use my Mozy account. I had signed up for full service a long time ago, but I have to admit, I was too impatient to let the initial backup complete. So, this time, I made a consious effort to backup only the data that I knew I didn’t want to lose and leave away things like the system files and applications which I knew that I could replace easily. That brought my data total to about 60GB to backup on my intial.

May 9, 2009 1 comment

General

Milestone – 100 posts

by Philip Sellers May 9, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

Yeah, so its a small milestone, but a milestone none the less. There have been days where I wondered why I was posting anything or even had a blog, but the past month or two has been very rewarding – getting good feedback in the comments and finding that my posts are (hopefully) helpful to others and the comments have been really helpful back to me also. So thank you everyone. I should have something more special for my 100th episode post, but not so much.

May 9, 2009 1 comment

Apple

Test driving Backblaze online backup for Mac

by Philip Sellers May 1, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

I have been testing various online backup solutions for home. I really like the peer to peer backup solution , though I’ve yet to take up my buddy’s offer to host my backup drive at his house… Speaking of, I guess I need a larger backup drive. So, in the meantime, I’ve been looking at new options that come online. Backblaze is one of those solutions which has been around for the PC world for a while now, but they have a new Mac client. (Sorry PowerPC folks – Intel only). I downloaded and setup a trial account today.

The trial period is only 15 days, but you get the full experience of Backblaze for those 15 days. It is a true trial as opposed to a solution like Mozy which offers free accounts for up to 2G of data.

May 1, 2009 8 comments

Virtualization

Scott Lowe’s Mastering Virtual Infrastructure book coming soon

by Philip Sellers April 30, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

I had the priviledge of meeting Scott Lowe this past year at VMworld. Scott’s wife Crystal arranged trips and adventures around Las Vegas for the wives whose husbands were attending the conference. But that’s besides the point – Scott has a new book coming out soon – Mastering Virtual Infrastructure – that is all about the new vSphere software suite. Today, the book has been listed on Amazon.com. The book is still in progress and is hopefully going to be released before VMworld 2009. In the meantime, you can sign up for alerts when the book is available for purchase – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470481382. Congrats Scott! What an awesome accomplishment!

April 30, 2009 0 comments

General

Wildfire

by Philip Sellers April 24, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

No, its not a new software title… more of a current event. Many have probably seen it on the news, but there is a massive wildfire in my area – the Myrtle Beach, SC area – just a few miles away from where my family and I live and work.

April 24, 2009 0 comments

Virtualization

VMware chairman leaves HP in the cold

by Philip Sellers April 22, 2009

written by Philip Sellers

Let me preface everything below with this – my company is an HP shop. We have other systems (IBM, Sun, Dell, etc.) in our datacenter, but for the gross majority, we are an HP shop. We are also what I’d term as medium sized VMware shop. We have a lot of eggs in both baskets.

Yesterday’s introduction of VMware vSphere was just short of disrespectful to HP, one of VMware’s larger partners. Sure, It’d been a long shot to get the EMC CEO VMware Chairman of the Board to acknowledge his competitor from the stage. Sure, it’d been unexpected for him to give big props to a company he likely hopes withers away. But, if there is one thing that Joe Tucci should understand by now is that he must wear his two hats very carefully.

April 22, 2009 1 comment