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.

Virtualization

Returned from VMworld

by Philip Sellers September 20, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

I’m back now from VMworld in Las Vegas and just wanted to let you know that the lack of posts was a reflection of the poor Internet quality in the conference location. I don’t think the Ventitian had any idea of what to expect with a geek conference. The Internet only improved on Thursday after days of lag and very slow (think dial-up) connections from the rooms and conference areas in the Sands Conference Center.

So, I’ll be working on turning my notes into posts about the different things I’ve learned during the conference and hope to have these up very soon.

September 20, 2008 0 comments

General

Best Buy aquires Napster? What are they thinking?

by Philip Sellers September 16, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Chalk it up to things I don’t understand, but Engadget reports the Best Buy is aquiring Napster for $121 million. Read for yourself… I definitely don’t understand why Best Buy would want to get into this business. Partner with Rhapsody, yeah maybe, but buy Napster – what are you thinking?

September 16, 2008 0 comments

VMware Roadmap for 2009

by Philip Sellers September 16, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Just got out of the Partner’s session for VMware’s Roadmap for 2009 – the Next Generation Datacenter. The big announcement is that VMware plans to leverage its existing technologies into a new datacenter OS – VDC-OS. The majority of this is just product re-branding and giving a name to the overall strategy they have been pursuing for several years. I’ve compiled a highlight of the session with many of the new introductions for 2009 and how they fit in the virtual datacenter.

September 16, 2008 0 comments

Virtualization

Good (early) morning from VMworld – Day 1

by Philip Sellers September 15, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Its still early here in my hotel room at the Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas. I’m up early because I haven’t adjusted to Pacific time. I’m just going through my agenda for the day. Mostly today is a partner and technology showcase day, so not many sessions to attend, but a good time to go through the conference showroom and see what vendors are coming up with. There is one partner session about HP hardware and Site Recovery Manager, so I plan to definitely be there.

I sat with a nice gentleman for Greensboro, NC, on the plane here. He and his co-worker were on their way to the conference also and turns out his co-worker was born in my hometown. We’re probably even related to some of the same people. Just goes to show that maybe my mom was right and whole world DOES revolve around Cheraw… lol

September 15, 2008 0 comments

Virtualization

Vegas and VMworld, here I come!

by Philip Sellers September 13, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

My flight leaves tomorrow to VMworld in Las Vegas. I’m making my last minute plans about what to do and see in addition to attending the conference. For the few of you currently keeping tabs on my blog, I’ll be updating with information I get from the conference and posting some ideas on Twitter (username is pbsellers). Anyways, its my first VMworld, so I’m excited.

September 13, 2008 0 comments

Apple

Wired takes Jobs email analysis a little too far

by Philip Sellers September 7, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

In the past couple years, the internet has become ripe with Apple bloggers, watchers and analysis. Everyone hangs on Steve Jobs every word and watches closely for Apple’s next move. Sites like MacRumors and AppleInsider, but firstly Think Secret, have all become immensely popular as the pass-time has grown. But today I came across a piece of “analysis” on Wired that just seemed to push a little farther than the others.

The Wired piece actually employed linguistics experts along with their copy editing staff to analyze emails that purportedly were sent by The Steve Jobs… They compared the emails to those that had been corroborated to be “real” emails and analyzed the grammatical nuances of the emails to determine if they are real. (see for yourself: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/steve-jobs-e-ma.html)

Now, I’ll admit, I read it. I read it top to bottom, every word. But I was left with the strange sense that maybe the fanatical behavior has gone a little too far. I’m just like every other Apple fanboy, waiting for the next hat to drop, but this article just hit me wrong. Who is to say that the Apple PR staff didn’t draft the three corroborated emails and that the emails being analyzed aren’t Steve’s own habitual grammar errors. But more importantly, what does it matter? Ultimately, until a product announcement is made at an Apple event and until a product is launched or software update is issued, its meaningless. We won’t have it to hold and use and love and… you get the drift.

The company is readily able to innovate and create the next IT product and its hugely successful. So, I say let them do that, but quit analyzing Sir Steve’s emails…. please…. Only the writer and receiver will ever know whether they are real – and track record shows, he’s not talking (except maybe through email — sorry, I had to).

September 7, 2008 0 comments

Apple Home Tech

9/9/08 – two very different events, what will we get?

by Philip Sellers September 5, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Both Microsoft and Apple have press events scheduled for 9/9/08. Apple’s event, titled “Let’s Rock”, should usher in a new refresh of the iPod/iTunes franchise. For a few quarters now, the iPods sales numbers have been down as I think the market has reached maturity for portable music players. Fortunately, Apple released the iPhone at the exact right time to offset the lack of growth. So, what can we expect to see from Apple?

iPod Nano – Leaks seem to point to a new size for the Nano – back towards the original candy-bar style and away from the short, squatty version we know today. Of course, that is based on accessory vendor leaks which show the dimensions of the 4th-generation accessories.
iPod Touch – While the iPhone has gotten a nice 3G refresh, the iPod Touches have sat largely the same as when first introduced. I think we’ll see a slightly more beveled, maybe slimmer Touch with this next refresh. I think it’d be surprising to find any new hardware inside, though I think adding the GPS would be a great idea. Unfortunately, the GPS in the iPhone is only an assisted GPS, which I believe requires an internet connection, so, probably won’t happen.
iTunes 8 – Everyone is suggesting a new version of iTunes. Kevin Rose is reporting a grouping technology which will build playlists automatically by matching songs that go together. It be surprising if HD video didn’t make it into iTunes also, since its currently restricted only to the Apple TV
Apple TV – And speaking of Apple TV, let me go out on a limb and say that the lovely little TV box will see some sort of refresh too. I, personally, love the Apple TV. I really think its the litchpin to Apple’s video market from iTunes. No one else in the market seems to be focusing much energy or garnering much success from it, but Apple’s ecosystem works well for me. Still, a better compression algorithm could go big lengths to improving download times for TV shows and especially movies. Maybe we’ll even see a true Apple “TV” – with the technology integrated into a widescreen television. I think it would be a mis-step for Apple to enter the crowded TV set market, so lets hope they don’t go the way of Gateway, HP and Dell’s failed TV’s.
New MacBooks? – With an event called “Let’s Rock”, I think its unlikely we’ll see new Mac hardware from this event. I think we’ll be waiting to January’s MacWorld to see new hardware, but the last few year’s MacWorld hasn’t ushered in much new hardware either… so we’ll see….

Microsoft’s event is a bigger unknown. Some are saying new Zunes (whoopidy dooo). So we’ll just wait. Gates and company will need to dig deep (much deeper than the new ads) to really get a buzz going. So, we wait for 9/9/08.

September 5, 2008 1 comment

Home Tech

Shoe Circus: Microsoft’s new ad campaign

by Philip Sellers September 5, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

The first of Microsoft’s ads to help repair its tarnished image has made it to the light of day… The only reaction I have is… HUH? Is it supposed to be funny? Of the minute and a half head scratcher, only 10 seconds even mention’s any of Microsoft’s brands, let alone a computer. And then, I guess Microsoft is working on edible nano-computers? I, for one, don’t get it… What are your thoughts?

September 5, 2008 0 comments

News

Prepping for Tropical Storm Hanna and maybe Hurricane Ike

by Philip Sellers September 4, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

My week at HTC has been filled with hurricane contengency planning and preparation. For the most part, HTC is in a good state with two connected datacenters about 15 miles from each other and real-time replication for much of our data.

Most of our planning is revolving around protecting the things that aren’t stretched or don’t have good roll-over plans between data centers. In the past year, we’ve closed the gap on a lot of things that didn’t exist or couldn’t easily roll between datacenters. VMware has been a big portion of that change and it makes disaster recovery much better.

Today we’re running full backups and preparing and full set of backup tapes to be physically taken away with one of our managers and preparing to move a few redundant servers to the contengency site as a safety precaution.

I’m interested – what are your preparations and what things would you be doing in our situation?

September 4, 2008 0 comments

General

Google Chrome first impressions

by Philip Sellers September 4, 2008

written by Philip Sellers

Its been a couple days of using Google’s new browser Chrome here in the office. For the most part, I run my Gmail and Google Reader in it and it works great. For other sites, like Facebook, its not doing quite as well.

To start with the positive, the browser’s minimalist design is very nice. I like the fact that I have a lot of web real estate inside the browser, instead of a lot of buttons, toolbars and real estate devoted to controls. Overall, the design is functional – in line with Firefox, Safari and IE 7 – with tabs to separate your browsing/applications. The other design feature is the special about page which shows your most often visited sites. I think this is a nice, no-typing-necessary innovation to get you exactly where you go.

The browser’s speed is probably its biggest asset. For instance, my local daily’s website has awful load times in all other browsers and its noticeably faster loading in Chrome. I also see nice improvement rendering pages on other sites I visit often.

The browser is still in beta, but I’ve found it to be somewhat incompatible with Facebook and other non-Google, heavy Web 2.0 applications. Somewhat surpisingly, MobileMe’s public Gallery has problems in Chrome (mine never loads for some reason), but the me.com suite of applications work pretty well. I find it a little surprising since Chrome is based on WebKit, like Apple’s Safari. I’ve found Safari really stable with me.com.

One major feature is the isolation of each tab as a process. This allows a single tab to crash and close, without losing the rest of your session. Its understandable why Google would want this functionality as its pushes into web alternatives to desktop applications. I constantly have 4 of 5 tabs open in a browser and its a big inconvenience when your browser crashes and you have to relogin to every single site or application. This functionality will help to stablize their platform and push it more mainstream.

Other bloggers are pointing out many of the flaws, and it is just a beta software, so I expect a lot of streamlining and refinement, but overall I’m inpressed with the initial version released.

September 4, 2008 0 comments