All posts by Shawn Cannon

I have been in IT since 1996. I am our Executive Senior Blogger with experience in VMware, Microsoft, EMC storage, Veeam and Dell servers. I love technology and love to blog about it!
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VMworld 2015 – Day 0 (Shawn’s Perspective)

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Sunday is what I always call Day 0 as the actual conference starts on Monday.  Here is my perspective on Sunday. I used Sunday as a networking day, a day to meet up with friends and peers in the industry.  One of the most fun ways to catch up is an event called V0dgeball!  This is a fun dodgeball tournament that raises money for the Wounded Warrior Project.  I played on the vExpert team this year and our team made it to the semifinals.  It is an amazingly fun time killing your peers with dodgeballs and they will still be your friend later. 

After V0dgeball I headed over to the Solutions Exchange to catch the first view of all the vendors at VMworld this year.  I visited all the booths where I have developed friendships so I could catch up.  Of course there were some vExpert gifts to go grab so I made sure I did that.

I left the Solutions Exchange to head to a special dinner held by Commvault, of our our sponsors for VMworld this year.  I spent about an hour there meeting and chatting with Commvault executives and Commvault customers.  I do my best to spend time discussing non-IT or non-technical things on purpose to get to know people outside of their companies.  It was a great time! Thanks for thee invite Leo!

Finally, Day 0 would not be complete without atttending #VMunderground.  This event was made possible by many sponsors, EMC Elect and Infinio to name just a few.  This is the biggest networking event of the evening in my personal opinion.  I got to see all my friends and colleagues again to catch up.  This is by far one of my favorite events of VMworld.

Day 0 was amazing and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the week holds!

Virtualization, VMworld

VMworld 2015 Sponsors – Zerto and Opvizor

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The final 2 sponsors for vBrainstorm at VMworld 2015 are Zerto and Opvizor!

First up is Zerto!  Zerto says it best with this excerpt from their web site:

Zerto provides enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions for virtualized IT infrastructure & cloud.

They not only provide your typical backup of VMs but also virtual replication of VMs to a remote location.  vSphere, Hyper-V and even Amazon Web Services (AWS) is supported by Zerto.  Visit their web site for videos and customer testimonials.

So what is Zerto doing at VMworld?  Zerto is famous at VMworld for “Red Wednesday”!  This is the day that you wear your Zerto Red T-Shirt that you get at their booth to win some great prizes!  I was fortunate enough one year to win some Beats headphones from Zerto.  It is as simple as their prize team spotting you around VMworld and choosing you for a prize!  It really is that simple.  Zerto is also throwing a party and I am super excited about this one.  The are going to have an all female Queen cover band called “Killer Queens”!  I cannot wait to hear some of that!

You can find Zerto at booth #623.  You can also read more about what Zerto has in store at VMworld at http://www.zerto.com/zerto-at-vmworld-2015/.

Finally our final sponsor is Opvizor!  Opvizor provides solutions to monitor the health of your VMware environment as well as monitoring VM snapshots in your environment.  Opvizor says this statement about their solution on their web site:

With Opvizor you control everything you love about VMware, and Opvizor automates all the rest

Opvizor’s Health Analyzer solution analyzes your VMware infrastructure, offer resolutions, provide reporting and help you optimize virtual applications!  Opvizor’s Snapwatcher solution monitors VMware snapshots across vCenter systems, tracks the snapshots, finds invalid snapshots and helps free wasted disk space by fixing broken, old and invalid snapshots.

Opvizor is not going to be at VMworld this year so I highly encourage you to visit the web site for more information: https://www.opvizor.com/

Look for myself (rolltidega), Roger (rogerlund) and Aaron (virtualroads) wearing the shirt below around VMworld!  We can help you find Zerto’s booth on the show floor!  Hope to see you there!

ZertoOp

VMware, VMworld

Early peak at the #vBrownBag TechTalks Schedule at VMworld US 2015

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The professionalvmware.com site, the home of the #vBrownBag goodness, has posted an early look at the schedule for the #vBrownBag TechTalks in the hang space at VMworld US 2015.  I wanted to re-post the schedule here to increase awareness of these talks.  If you are going to hang out in the hang space, please come and support this individuals!
(Note:  Info shared from http://professionalvmware.com/2015/08/vbrownbag-techtalks-schedule-vmworld-usa-2015/)

Time   Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
10:30 vExpert Daily vExpert Daily vExpert Daily vExpert Daily
11:00 Edward Haletky @Texiwill 6-Step Program for Hybrid Cloud Edward Haletky @Texiwill Let’s Throw in Some Security: A hybrid
Cloud Security Model		 Virtualization Practise Panel Chris Wahl -Scripting and Versioning with PowerShell ISE and Git Shell
11:15 Irfan Ahmad – CloudPhysics – The Unofficial VCDX Toolchest Irfan Ahmad – CloudPhysics – Help! My Dashboards Suck! continued Vaughn Stewart – Run 20% – 40% more VMs per host with Flash Storage
11:30 Michael White – Spotlight on Your Data Kenneth Hui -The Easy Button For Turning Your vSphere Environment Into A Private Cloud Gabriel Chapman – Solidfire – Infrastructure Agility in the Software Defined Data Center Josh Atwell – DevOps with PowerCLI and PowerShell DSC
11:45 Andy Warfield – Coho Data Andy Warfield – Coho Data continued Cody Hosterman – Space Reclamation in vSphere 6
12:00 VMUG LATAM Panel (Spanish) Anthony Spiteri – NSX – An Unexpected Journey VMware Communities Podcast Eric Wright – Getting to the Core with CoreOS
12:15 continued Ken Thomas -One Solution for All: Deploy to VMs and Physical using MDT continued James Brown -Virtual Design Master
12:30 Dave LeClair – Unitrends – Recover Simplicity! Dave LeClair – Unitrends – Is your data protection and DR solution built for a cloud-driven world? continued continued
12:45 Joseph Griffiths – Reference Architecture for Automation Luis Concistre – Horizon View & VMware NSX continued Tim Carr – Versioning deployments with Puppet, R10K, and Git
13:00  Kevin Moats – GPU virtualization in the home lab HP Blogger Briefing Dave Frederick – The Advantages of a Tiered Approach to VM Storage Steve Flanders – The importance of customer experience
13:15 Gina Rosenthal (Minks) – Why you need to #BackThatSaaSUp continued Gabriel Maciel – VMware NSX Architecture and Components Interaction
13:30 Scott Davis – Infinio – Disruptive Storage Innovations and the Impact on Virtual Desktop Solutions continued vBrownBag LATAM Panel (Spanish)
13:45 Scott Davis – cont continued continued
14:00 Jaison Bailley and the vBrisket community continued Paul Braren – Home Virtualization Lab Productivity Tips Hang Space Closed
14:15 Luke Brown – Dinosaurs Didn’t Do DR continued Anthony Chow – Micro-Segmentation – a perfect fit for microservices security
14:30 Craig Waters – Anatomy of an SSD Craig Waters  – How to start a user group (BYOUG) Shruti Bhat – Liuve demo – Running your ESXi workloads in AWS
14:45 Jonathan Frappier and Tim Jabaut – Stop being an “Admin” and learn to embrace “DevOps” Edward Haletky @Texiwill – Proper Use of RBAC to Secure your Virtual Environment John Arrasjid – IT Architect: Foundation in the Art of IT Infrastructure Design
15:00 In Tech We Trust Podcast Speaking in Tech Podcast Geek Whisperers Podcast
15:15 continued continued continued
15:30 continued continued continued
15:45 continued continued continued
16:00 Dennis Bray and Chip Copper – Brocade – NSX based Advanced Network Architecture in SDDC to deploy highly automated IT Service Delivery Elver Sena Sosa and Anuj Dewangan – Brocade -Scaling your cloud network: Building a massively scalable cloud infrastructure with VMware NSX & advanced physical network architectures Tony Foster – Sizing for GPU Workloads
16:15 David Siles – Proactive Data-Awareness Inside Your VMs David Klebanov – SDDC Gone Global with Software Defined WAN Brian Trainor – Automatic” remediation with vRealize Operations
16:30 Michaell Rice – Rackspace – Stop testing scripts in production; Meet vCenter Simulator Luke Huckaba – Rackspace – A distilled version of the SRM talk David Klee – SQL Server Virtualization Gotchya’s
16:45 Michael Rice – Introduction to pyVmomi Michael Rice – YAVIJAVA an alternative Java SDK for vSphere Michael Rice – vCenter Simulator For Functional Testing
17:00 Hersey Cartwright – Using PowerCLI to manage SSH on ESXi Hersey Cartwright – Managing vCenter Roles and Permissions with PowerCLI Hang Space closed
17:15 Eric Wright – Abstract all the things! Simplifying the whole stack James Green, Emad Younis – ”Batman” is Not A Career Strategy
17:30 Cisco Panel Nigel Hickey – The #vExpertSpotlight
17:45  continued Steve Flanders – Quality log messages and how to write them  
Uncategorized

VMworld 2015 Sponsor – Xangati

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Our next vBrainstorm sponsor for VMworld 2015 is Xangati!  Xangati provides solutions for Hybrid-Cloud and Virtualized Infrastructure Performance.  This can be vSphere, Hyper-V or XenServer.  We have reviewed and posted videos about Xangati over the years and one of our bloggers uses Xangati on a regular basis.  Needless to say, if we are using it then we like the product!

You can find Xangati at VMworld in booth 2446.  Go by their booth to “Keep The Peace” and win some cool prizes while you are there. The coolest part to me about this theme is that they are supporting a local San Francisco charity called Bay Area Peacekeepers.  Make sure to ask them how you can help this charity out!  You can get more information about Xangati at VMworld by visiting http://www3.xangati.com/vmworld2015.

Be on the lookout for myself (rolltidega), Roger (rogerlund) and Aaron (virtualroads) around VMworld wearing the shirt show below.  We can direct you to the Xangati booth if you are not sure where to go.  Thanks Xangati for sponsoring us!

xangati

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VMworld 2015 Sponsor – Commvault

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Another totally awesome vBrainstorm sponsor for VMworld 2015 is Commvault! Commvault provides VM backup, recovery and cloud management solutions.  Here is a snippet of what these solutions bring to you:

  • VM recovery with live recovery options
  • Backup TO and IN the cloud
  • Custom-fit data protection for every SLA
  • The broadest hardware snapshot management
  • Workload portability across physical, virtual and cloud platforms

And if you did not know it, Gartner has said that Commvault is a leader in the Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances space.. Five Times In-A-Row!

You can find Commvault at VMworld booth 1605.  You can win an Xbox One, earning up to 7 chances to win!  Those are great odds!  Go to their booth and see their software in action!  You can speak to their experts and executives at their booth.  Do a whiteboard session or check out a demo!  Don’t forget about their sessions as well (an Xbox One will be given away at each session!).  Get more information at http://www.commvault.com/vmworld

Look for myself (rolltidega), Roger (rogerlund) and Aaron (virtualroads) around VMworld wearing shirts like shown below.  We can direct you to the Commvault booth if you are not sure where to go. Thank you Commvault for sponsoring us!

Commvault

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VMworld 2015 Sponsor – NexGen Storage

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A huge shout-out to another vBrainstorm sponsor for VMworld 2015…. NexGen Storage!  Some of you may be asking, who is NexGen Storage?  Well they have been around for some time.  NexGen was acquired by Fusion-io in 2013.  Fusion-io was then acquired by SanDisk in 2014.  The future of NexGen was in question.  Then SanDisk decided to let NexGen go solo and here we are!  I agree with Stephen Foskett in his blog post where he states that having NexGen in the mix is great for competition!  So here is a bit about NexGen from their web site:

NexGen offers the only hybrid flash array with PCIe flash performance and policy-based storage QoS, allowing customers to prioritize application workloads. NexGen ensures the right data is in the right place at the right time, aligning the costs of storing, accessing, and managing data with its business value.

You can find NexGen at VMworld in booth 941.  At the booth you will be able to talk to NexGen customers to see how PCIe and QoS has helped them.  You can also take a turn at the Escape Velocity virtual reality stations.  I don’t know exactly what that is but it sounds pretty awesome!

Look for myself (rolltidega), Roger (rogerlund) and Aaron (virtualroads) around VMworld wearing shirts like you see below.  We can direct you to the NexGen booth if you need help finding it.  Thanks again for sponsoring us NexGen Storage!

nexgenshirt

Solidfire, SSD, ssd array, VMworld

VMworld 2015 Sponsor – SolidFire

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This is the first post to call out some sponsors of vBrainstorm for VMworld 2015 in San Francisco! Say hello to SolidFire!  If you do not know who SolidFire is… where have you been??  SolidFire is the All-Flash Array for the Next-Generation Data Center!  Their solution delivers the five core elements needed for storage agility in today’s data centers:  Scale-Out, Guaranteed Performance, Automated Management, Data Assurance and Global Efficiencies.  I suggest you make time to visit the SolidFire booth at VMworld, which is booth 929.  What does SolidFire have in store for you at VMworld?  Well I have to mention their main giveaway!  SolidFire is giving away a SolidFire bike!  This thing is a very cool retro looking bike in SolidFire red!  There are many sessions that SolidFire will be in and don’t forget about the SolidFire party at the ThirstyBear!  Check out all the details at http://www.solidfire.com/vmworld.

Thank you SolidFire for sponsoring us!  Look for myself (rolltidega), Roger (rogerlund) and Aaron (virtualroads) in these cool shirts shown below around VMworld.  If you need help finding SolidFire on the show floor we will be happy to help you find them!

solidfire

vExpert, vExperts, VMworld

How to connect with us at VMworld!

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VMworld is only a little over 2 weeks away as of this post!  vBrainstorm will have 3 of our bloggers there and we want to make sure you know how to connect up with us.  All of us are active on Twitter so I will list our Twitter accounts below.  I will be doing some live broadcasts on Periscope so follow me there (rolltidega) to make sure you don’t miss out on anything.  Finally look for us in our customized VMworld 2015 polos that are being provided by some sponsors (blog posts forthcoming).  Our Twitter handles and web site will be on the back of each shirt so if you have never met us do not hesitate to come up and say hello!  We want to meet you!  Thanks and we hope to see you there!

Twitter
Shawn Cannon – @rolltidega
Roger Lund – @rogerlund
Aaron Gruber – @virtualroads

Veeam, VMworld

Win a full pass to VMworld 2015 – Sponsored by Veeam

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Have you always wanted to attend VMworld but could not afford the conference fee?  I have good news for you!  Veeam is sponsoring a blogger contest for a chance to win a full VMworld conference pass as well as a FastPass to Veeam’s epic party at VMworld!  If you have never attended a Veeam party you have been missing out!  Here is what you have to do for a chance to win.  Leave a comment below telling your best story of why you should win the full conference pass!  It’s that easy!  The winner will be selected and announced by Veeam on July 30.  So what are you waiting for?  Comment away!!

Extra chance:  Also, Veeam will be giving away one more full conference pass to a random user who’ll answer three questions correctly at http://go.veeam.com/play-veeam-trivia.html

SAN, ssd solidstate, storage

Tegile Systems Named Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays

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Here at vBrainstorm we enjoy reporting news about the vendors in the IT space.  Tegile Systems is one of the Solid State storage vendors that we follow.  A press release was published today naming Tegile as a visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays.  Kudos to you Tegile!  The press release is below.

Tegile Systems Positioned Among the ‘Visionaries’ of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays Acknowledgement from Gartner makes Tegile the only upstart storage company to be in all-flash and general-purpose Magic Quadrants

 

Newark, Calif., June 23, 2015 – Tegile Systems, the leading provider of flash-driven storage arrays for databases, virtualized server and virtual desktop environments, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays”* report (http://pages.tegile.com/Q3_2015_Report_Gartner_Quadrant_Gartner_Magic_Quadrant_Tegile.html).  Tegile is the only upstart storage company to be named among the Visionaries in this and Gartner’s 2014 “Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays” reports.

 

The Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays represents vendors that sell into the enterprise end-user market with specific branded SSAs.  Each vendor in the Magic Quadrant is evaluated based on its ability to execute (product/service, overall visibility, sales executive/pricing, market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience and operations) and its completeness of vision (market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering (product) strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation and geographic strategy).

 

Gartner recognized Tegile as a Visionary for the following reasons:

  • A comprehensive portfolio of Intelligent Flash Arrays, which leverages the same hardware, software and management GUIs for all its storage arrays
  • Broad block and file protocol, which makes Tegile one of the few unified SSA offerings
  • Selectable data reduction, and detailed instrumentation and data reduction reporting on a storage pool and LUN level

 

“We are pleased to once again be recognized by Gartner analysts among the ‘Visionaries’ in their well-respected Magic Quadrant reports,” said Rob Commins, vice president of marketing at Tegile.  “Whether it is an all-flash array for Tier-1 workloads or a hybrid array that provides the performance of flash at the price of disk, Tegile has shown time and time again its ability to deliver innovative products that address operationally or financially important end-user problems at a broad scale to warrant our inclusion on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.”

 

Tegile All-Flash Arrays make it easy and affordable to transition to a flash-centric data center. By delivering maximum performance, high density and compelling economics, the T-Series is ideal for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads such as online transaction processing, real-time analytics, decision support and data warehousing. The T-Series portfolio enables users to start small and scale in capacity as their business grows. Organizations can start with the T3600 or T3700 to deliver a turbo-boost to legacy storage while deferring equipment replacement before moving up to the T3800 when density and capacity requirements grow.

 

About Tegile Systems

Tegile Systems is pioneering a new generation of intelligent flash arrays that balance performance, capacity, features and price for virtual desktop and database applications. With Tegile’s line of all-flash and hybrid storage arrays, the company is redefining the traditional approach to storage by providing a family of arrays that accelerate business critical enterprise applications and allow customers to significantly consolidate mixed workloads in virtualized environments.

Tegile’s patented IntelliFlash™ technology accelerates performance and enables inline deduplication and compression of data so each array has a usable capacity far greater than its raw capacity. Tegile’s award-winning solutions enable customers to better address the requirements of virtualization, virtual desktop integration and database integration than any other offerings. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, Tegile arrays are easy-to-use, fully redundant and highly scalable. They come complete with built-in snapshot, remote-replication, near-instant recovery, onsite or offsite failover, and VM-aware features. Additional information is available at www.tegile.com. Follow Tegile on Twitter @tegile.

 

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