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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…

Virtualization Round Up 20090914

August 14, 2009 Leave a Comment

It’s amazing how quickly the vacation effect can wear off you. It’s been a few week since the last roundup and even thought I was on vacation for one of those weeks, there are a number of items that I had collected and wanted to share. The usual mix of something for everyone…

VMware Specific Links

VMworld 2009 is almost upon us. I hope you have registered and booked your hotels by now! If you haven’t registered, remember that you can use VMware Consulting and Training Credits to purchase your show access. Hotels you’re on your own as the VMworld reserved blocks have now expired.If you’re attending VMworld and are a reader, let me know! I’ll be there most days and would love to meetup at Moscone.
A joint white paper was released recently about running View on UCS with V-Max. Internal tests showed 160 desktops running on a single half-width UCS blade (that’s 20 desktops per core!). And these tests were for heavy use knowledge worker desktops!
A while back, EMC’s Chuck Hollis had a great post on Why Oracle Doesn’t Like VMware. Regardless of Oracle’s feelings, VMware customers are running Oracle in VMs on VMware (I have clients doing it today). Even the most stubborn vendor will listen to what their customers want…even if it is only behind closed doors and with lawyers waving NDAs.)
Chris Wolf’s article about SpringSource: VMware’s well-timed Acquisition is a great summary of the longer term strategy behind this acquisition. (make sure to follow those links in this article)
VMware – The Next Great Platform Company? is an interesting view of VMware from someone who experienced Paul Maritz and Todd Nielson working together in the past.
Duncan Epping had a great post about one of the nuisances of HA where VM could be down and HA not restarting them. Since every client of mine turns on HA by default, every VMW admin should read and understand this.
- Speaking of HA, have you seen this KB Article regarding ESX host settings for environments with up to 80 virtual machines per host in a VMware HA cluster?
In a similar thread, Fault Tolerance is still raising questions form my clients, especially the hardware requirements. There is a great KB article that talks about processors and guest operating systems that support VMware Fault Tolerance.
- And here is a great white paper talking about VMware vSphere 4 Fault Tolerance: Architecture and Performance
Techhead has started a list of VMware Tools that will be handy to keep in your vToolbox.
vSphere Quick Start Guide, the book you’ll want on your gift list this VMworld! (not available yet, but stay tuned)

General Virtualization Links

If you need an alternative way to jack the CPU load in your test environment, check out Bouke Groenescheij’s CPUBusier and CPUBusiest (multi-threaded) tools.
Having lived in the SOA world for a while, I appreciated this article about Private cloud formations rising, but remember SOA lessons.
The cloud, brought to you by flash storage brings up great points on how we’ll be seeing new storage models appearing thanks to the cloud.
The economics of 100% data center virtualization does a great job breaking down the numbers of thinking completely virtual. As my recent poll somewhat confirmed, I think Garnet’s estimates are considerably low.

Cisco Live Attendance Bodes Well for VMworld

July 7, 2009 Leave a Comment

Anyone who puts on a conference has been been concerned over attendance numbers this year. With a global recession, travel restrictions, and spending cut backs the concern is always “will people show up”. This was the concern for Cisco Live 2009 and has also been the concern around VMworld. I have heard that Cisco Live had a better than expected attendance. With just over 6,000 people registering they ended up with over 10,000 people attending in person. With VMworld happening in a little under two months at the same location I’m hoping that it too will have record attendance. After all what better way to save IT Capital than through virtualization? And success virtualization projects need teams with education and the invaluable networking contacts.

So, who’s planning on attending VMworld 2009 in San Francisco? I’ll be there. And I’m looking forward to meeting not only my clients but also some of my readers. I’m thinking a tweetup or two will be in order!