Virtualization – Page 17

VMworld 2009 San Francisco vPhotowalks

August 27, 2009 2 Comments

I know this is a bit last minute, but I finally found some time in my schedule to put together a few vPhotwalks for those photographers who are attending VMworld 2009 in San Francisco next week. The latoga photo walks San Francisco, are photowalks that start at Moscone Center and take you along routes with plenty of San Francisco landmarks to help you practice your photography.

Since my schedule won’t allow me to lead any photowalks prior to or during the show, I turned these into vPhotowalks by providing you a Google Maps file that will allow you to do the photowalk solo or with a small group of visitors.

Enjoy!

Virtualization Round Up 20090824

August 24, 2009 Leave a Comment

On the final march to VMworld 2009, this will be the last roundup until after Labor Day.

VMware Specific Links

First, some VMWorld 2009 Stuff
- VMworld 2009 Unofficial Party List
- Thanks to Chad Sakac, here’s an AWESOME peek behind the scenes of getting hardware ready for VMworld 2009
After more conversations last week with clients about their private cloud plans (including bursting out to external cloud providers), I wanted to share the list of VMware Ready vCloud Service Providers. I expect this list to grow post VMworld…
A recent patch was released for vCenter Server 4.0 which fixes an issue where HA Cluster failover might not work if the servers were configured with certain IPs. Full details are available in the Knowledge Base Article.
Some more SpringSource centric posts
- SpringSource announced Cloud Foundry, their Enterprise Java Cloud. The VMware price tag for SpringSource is looking a bit more reasonable all of a sudden.
- VMware’s SpringSource Acquisition: More Than Meets the Eye?
- With SpringSource Buy, VMware Constructs Cloud Platform
When a client asked me about running Documentum eRoom solution in a VM recently I found this great article about how EMC is doing that and Saved $1.5 Million in the process.
The Vroom blog has a great posting about VMware Fault Tolerance Performance including a link to a FT architecture and performance whitepaper.
Scott Drummonds recent community post Four Things You Should Know About ESX 4’s Scheduler helps to answer the common question of how man vCPUs to give a VM (as well as a few other questions…).

General Virtualization Links

With 1 In 3 Developers Working On Private Cloud Apps, almost 50% of developers expect to be working on cloud applications within a year and think that Java is the best language for developing in the cloud.
When talking about cloud applications, the business model of these applications can come into discussion (with the Free usually being mentioned at some point). That’s why I found this simple formula to gauge a freemium model’s success so interesting.
Security Showdown: Cloud Computing vs. On-Premise IT is an interesting podcast discussion actually discusses the private cloud between the lines.
EMC’s Chuck Hollis talks about how he’s seeing more enterprises wanting to get going now on private clouds by building A Starter Private Cloud For IT.
After seeing a few pallets of UCS systems being delivered to a client of mine last week, I found Steve Chamber’s post about The stars are aligning: VMware, Cisco and ESG rather timely and right on target with regards to the higher level value UCS delivers to the CIO’s office. “Make IT simple stupid” is a mantra that we should all live by.

Announcing the VMworld 2009 Portrait Project

August 17, 2009 29 Comments

Recently I have been wondering if there may be more ways to cross the streams between my day job and my photographic passion. This originally started with me photographing the vSphere launch event back in April. Recently I come upon a way to extend this to VMworld 2009 while also engaging more directly with my readers.

On Friday I was walking from the San Francisco VMware office to the the garage where I parked my car and ended up walking past the Moscone Center. As I walked by my mind was in a photography mode and I started noticing how many great locations there are at Moscone for taking portrait photos (something I have been working on lately with my photography, including location lighting techniques). And guess what, there will be thousands of people coming here for VMworld 2009. Perhaps there might be a few people who either need or would like to have a new portrait photo taken in this great location? Like some virtualization bloggers who haven’t put a photo up on their sites yet to better connect with their readers. Or some of the social media users who would like to update their online avatar. Maybe just some attendees who are just looking for a different kind of memorabilia from VMworld.

Bam! My VMworld 2009 Portrait Project was born.

The goal of the project: to provide 15 different VMworld attendees (can also include spouses/significant others) each with two on location portrait photos taken around Moscone Center.

There will be no charge for these portrait shoots, only cost will be your time. Each participant in the project will be granted fully rights usage to their photographs and will be able to download a high resolution copies of their portraits shortly after VMworld from my photography website. In exchange, I ask that you give me credit if you use it on a blog and that I retain the right to use these images for an portfolio of portraits (I would like to do a blog post after VMworld with all the portrait taken during this project.

Here is how it will work:

Working around the show schedule and my VMworld schedule, I have identified a window of availability each day for doing the portrait photo session (see schedule below, I will cross off slots as they are reserved.)
Each window will be 30 minutes and the actual portrait session shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes.
We can meet up at the designated spot each day at the start of your session and do the portrait session at one or two different locations of your choosing on the Moscone Center grounds.
Reserve you’re spot by posting a comment on this post stating your preferred time slot. Slots will get assigned in order of comments posted and I will followup with an email confirming you slot. If you’re a blogger or social media users, please include a link to you site for reference.

Portrait Session Scheduled Start Times

Meet at Front Entrance of Thirsty Bear, location of the Sunday Night Extravaganza.
- Sunday, August 30th, 5:30pm
- Sunday, August 30th, 6:00 pm
- Sunday, August 30th, 6:30 pm
- Sunday, August 30th, 7:00 pm
- Sunday, August 30th, 7:30 pm
(Update: Since the SNE is so popular and likely to be overbooked, anyone wanting more slots on Sunday let me know…)

Meet at the Moscone Center entrance near the Show Registration booths.
- Monday, August 31th, 3:00 pm
- Monday, August 31th, 3:30 pm
- Monday, August 31th, 4:00 pm
- Monday, August 31th, 4:30 pm
- Tuesday, September 1st, 5:30 pm
- Tuesday, September 1st, 6:00 pm
- Tuesday, September 1st, 6:30 pm
- Wednesday, September 2nd, 5:30 pm
- Wednesday, September 2nd, 6:00 pm
- Thursday, September 3rd, 2:00pm
- Thursday, September 3rd, 2:30pm
- Thursday, September 3rd, 3:00pm
- Thursday, September 3rd, 3:30pm

Yes, there are more than 15 slots listed above to provide some flexibility.

I’m excited about this stream crossing project and look forward to providing those who participate with a unique VMworld 2009 memento.

Please Note: After the photo shoot, time is required to process the photos to achieve maximum quality. Due to my VMworld Schedule and commuting needs during the show, I won’t be able to provide photos until after the show. Most likely this won’t be until after September 8th as Labor Day weekend is my anniversary (you’ll have to be patient or else my wife might prevent you from ever getting your photos! JK )

The reservation window is open….please help me meet my project goals by spreading the word about this project! Even if you don’t participate, I’ll see you around the show…I’ll be the one lugging the orange and tan backpack around with my camera out…