So VMworld Europe has come to an end, sadly this kind of events are always shorter than expected, but I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of interesting people and fellow tweeps.
I enjoyed many sessions, my favorite surely was BC7803: Planning and Designing an HA Cluster that Maximizes VM Uptime, presented by Duncan Epping and Marc Sevigny, this session covered many advanced aspects considered when designing HA clusters in simple and even complicated scenarios, like stretched campus clusters, very interesting.
Another session that I enjoyed was TA7805 Tech Preview: Storage DRS by Irfan Ahmad which is a cool guy and a great presenter (I didn’t fall asleep even if I was in a post-lunch coma ) showed a really cool new feature that can literally disrupt what we do today to ensure storage fairness.
But the killer feature of VMworld this year were the hands-on labs, as I mentioned in a previous post, all the labs were hosted on the “Cloud” which was physically located across the Atlantic in Florida and Virginia (more information about the labs can be found here). All the labs were delivered via Wise Thin Clients using the PCoIP protocol, I completed several labs and never experienced a delay, the end user experience was awesome. Also it’s worth mentioning that every Lab was provisioned using virtualized ESX servers which is just plain cool! (and make me proud of my discoveries on how to run a virtualized ESX 3 back in 2007).
I also hung around the Blogger Lounge and had a quick chat with @plankers (which incidentally runs one of my favorite blogs: The Lone Sysadmin) and the one and only @BasRaayman (who is now part of the vSpecialist army), met the vNinja@h0bbel who took A LOT of pictures during the event (including the one featured in this post). I shook hands with @DuncanYB and @FrankDenneman (if you lived under a rock until today, they’re two of the most respected Virtualization Gurus around) and met a huge amount of Italian people interested in Virtualization, this meeting has sparked the creation of an Italian chapter of the VMware User Group, we created a LinkedIn Group and more than 70 people already subscribed to it.
We’re facing interesting times, let’s see what happens next
I’m sitting at the blogger lounge right now with a couple of fellow tweeps: @h0bbel, @BasRaayman, @vladan, @maishsk and @VMDoug, with special thanks to Bas from which I borrowed the Macbook charger
First day at the VMworld Europe has been exciting so far, the networking options are really incredible, and I had the possibility to meet many fellow tweeps in person.
This morning at the keynote we saw some interesting demos, I really appreciated the Project Horizon demo, coupled with the iPad View client interaction which looks really stunning, also in a “eat your own dogfood” fashion the VMworld labs are running on a real hybrid cloud with farms located in Miami, FL (provided by Terremark) in Ashburn, VA (provided by Verizon) and locally here in Copenhagen (provided by Colt / VMware).
Back to Project Horizon (its name is now vCloud Request Manager), interestingly it seems that all the new products coming from VMware are converging to a more service-oriented architecture, also they’re moving from the old client/server model for their management products, we saw a quick demo of “Alive” which is a software made by Integrien which was acquired recently by VMware and it’s probably going to be the foundation for the next generation VMware management platform (think of it as a next generation vCenter).
So it’s everything for now, I’ll try to update this post this evening as I got back to my loculus*..Ahem..*Hotel Room
Browsing through Twitter I noticed that many IT professionals (and more evidently many Virtualization professionals) use Macs for their day-to-day computing duties (especially Macbooks).
I’m a (very) long time Apple user and sometimes people ask me what kind of software I use to do daily tasks, I tried to compile a comprehensive list in this post with a few comments for each software.
Let’s start with the list:
LittleSnapper – A fantastic screenshots manager, you can annotate and create callbacks, organize and export the screenshots using a familiar iPhoto-like interface.
CoRD – Great RDP tool, it manages multiple connections and profiles, it’s based on the open-source rdesktop so it’s self contained (it doesn’t call the Microsoft Remote desktop Connection client).
AppZapper – Like they say on their website it is “the uninstaller Apple forgot”, it cleans your Mac from leftovers when you need to uninstall a software or a plugin.
Dropbox – A free / paid (subscription) tool to keep a synchronized folder on a cloud-based storage, it gives you 2GB free with paid plans up to 100GB. It perfectly integrates with the Finder and its network de-duplication capabilities are wonderful.
Echofon – Ad-ware Twitter client, if you have an iPad or iPhone this is the definitive twitter client, supports unread syncing between all the platforms supported.
Evernote – A great notebook that syncs over the air with its iOS counterparts (iPhone and iPad) with free and paid subscription plans.
1Password – THE password manager, I simply can’t imagine my computing life without it. It syncs natively with its iOS counterparts and can use Dropbox to do the same as well.
MarsEdit – Blog editor, the best in its class for the Mac, written in native Cocoa it’s very stable and feature rich, provides WYSIWYG editing and more. Supports all the major blog platforms available, is it also extendible using Applescripts.
NetNewsWire – I used to use Google Reader as my RSS aggregator of choice but I found that it didn’t fit my needs, also, not having a working 64-bit Google Gears plugin for Snow Leopard’s Safari I was unable to read my feeds when offline (something that happen quite often when you’re on a train). I was using NetNewsWire Lite a long time ago and I decided to give it a try to see if it was improved over time, In my opinion it is the definitive RSS aggregator for Mac Os X: it’s integrated with Google Reader (so I can still see my feeds synchronized when I’m without my laptop), It’s integrated with Delicious (which is my bookmark platform of choice) and, of course, it’s extensible using Applescript. Also it’s now an ad-ware (there’s no Lite version anymore).
VMware Fusion – Obviously this is a no-brainer. I deal with VMware on a daily basis, and if you’re a regular reader you will already know that I’m currently pursuing the VCDX certification. On the Mac you can find an interesting challenger which is Parallels Desktop. I used Parallels in the past and it’s surely more integrated, and sometimes, more Mac-Like, but if you need stability and rock-solid support for USB peripherals you absolutely need Fusion.
TextMate – This text editor saved my life a couple of times, when I was a developer I used to praise the Ultraedit functionalities, one of my favorite features was the vertical editing, well Textmate provides it, and it’s also extensible behind imagination, it’s a bit pricey (If I recall correctly it’s in the €39 price range) but it’s worth every penny.
Microsoft Office – The Office suite is a must for everybody working in a professional environment, I didn’t mention OpenOffice (even if I use it rarely) because it’s not a real alternative. Right now I prefer to create presentations with Keynote rather than using the ol’ Powerpoint, but as far as word processing and spreadsheets are concerned, Word and Excel are still the best out there.
iWork – As I mentioned previously, Keynote is a killer application for me. It still miss a couple of features from Powerpoint, but it’s still the king of presentation software in my opinion. The transitions, the build up effects on tables and the ability to create stunning charts without leaving the applications are the top functionalities in my list. Numbers and Pages are worth a mention, especially if you need to create some nice looking short documents, I use Numbers to create checklists and similar, it’s pretty quick and painless.
Delibar – This small utility sits on the top menubar, and it’s the perfect companion for Delicious (which I use extensively), it gives you network updates from your peers, and let you browse your bookmark collection without having to resort to open the website.
Shimo – Shimo is a multiclient VPN manager, It supports OpenVPN, PPTP, IPSEC, Cisco (either natively using vpnc or making a frontend to the official Cisco Client, works with AnyConnect too), Hamachi and even SSH tunnels (as someone said: the duct-tape of the Internet ). I use it almost exclusively for OpenVPN which in my opinion is still a mess.
iStat Menus – This utility used to be free until the last version, I decided to pay the $10 fee to upgrade to the version three because it’s worth it, the network monitor menubar item is fundamental, I also keep the disk activity, the CPU and the Memory monitor for a quick overview of my system.
DaisyDisk – Another small but very useful utility. DaisyDisk scan your hard drive and provides a quick visual overview of where your data is stored, it helps you get rid of those big files forgotten in a nested directories that you created as a backup-of-a-backup (happens all the time to me). Definitely it’s worth a try.
Money – Money is a personal finance program that helps you track your expenses and even investments, it also has a very interesting features for people like me that do consultancy for a living, it allows you to create personalized invoices and keeps track of them in your cash and banking flow. A bit pricey but a trial is available, so if you’re a freelance consultant you should definitely give it a try.
SSHKeychain – Starting from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a system-wide SSH keychain was made available in the Darwin portion of the OS (for beginners, Darwin is the underlying open source foundation of Mac OS X) but I was so accustomed using SSHKeychain that I didn’t bother changing. Also SSHKeychain is free of charge, provides has automatic keys loading capabilities and a nice GUI.
Growl – You simply cannot have a Mac without having Growl installed. Growl is a system-wide alerting and notify system that almost every app on Mac use, many of them carry Growl already bundled so check in your System Preferences if it’s not already installed .
Perian – If you’re switching from Windows to Mac you will immediately miss the many video and audio codecs available on that platform, yes VLC is a possibility (VLC has every of its codecs built-in) but Perian, in my opinion, is a better suited alternative. It gives you a Quicktime component that can decode almost everything available on the internet, and it’s functionalities are immediately available to every Applications that use Quicktime components.
Omnigraffle – And Last but not Least, the Visio replacement for Mac: Omnigraffle. Well, reality is that Omnigraffle is not a *REAL* substitute for Visio, if you’re a heavy user of Visio you simply cannot switch seamlessly to Omnigraffle, but it’s getting there. Right now Omnigraffle can handle Visio files and sometimes even Visio stencils (watch out for EMF which is not supported), many of the features of Visio are available and sometimes is even quicker and easier to use, definitely worth a try, which is available for 30 days.
I hope this list would benefit people that switched to Mac recently, maybe the next time I’ll try to post my Mac OS X tips which I collected in the last 10 years .
So VMworld Europe is finally starting tomorrow, I’m finishing my schedule right now (still too many interesting sessions and so little time ) and I’m really excited to meet many fellow tweeps in person.
As is said in a previous post, it’s been a long time since my last VMworld (it was 2008) but of many vendor events that I attended VMworld is surely the best by far, the labs are going to be awesome (thanks to Duncan Epping which is the mastermind behind them) and I’m sure I will find some new interesting technologies on the showfloor too (In 2008 we chose to become a Compellent partner after we saw a demo at their booth).
Also the VMworld parties are legendary, this year I will attend the VMUG party on Monday, an Italian #vBeers gathering on Tuesday, and of course the official VMworld Party on Wednesday, no Veeam party for me this year but it’s surely one of the best around.
If you didn’t made it to Copenhagen this year be sure to check out twitter for updates on new announcements and products, I’ll try to tweet as much as possible during the keynotes and general sessions, it’s going to be really fun!
DISCLAIMER: I work for a Company which is a Compellent Business Partner, we sell and provide consultancy services on Compellent products.
Given my job, I deal every day with VMware customers, and, at least in Italy, the most misunderstood and mishandled aspect of a virtual infrastructure is the storage part.
VMware introduces another powerful layer on top of the already complex SAN scenario and this often confuse the customers even more, in order to mitigate this several big storage names (NetApp and EMC in primis) created plugins to seamlessly manage storage directly from the familiar vSphere client, hiding many of the repetitive and sometimes complex tasks.
Compellent may not be the first at the game but they surely took an interesting approach, they provide integration at both ends of the storage stack.
In fact you can provision and manage the storage from a vSphere plugin (expected to be GA during Q4) or you can do the same from Enterprise Manager, which is the management interface for your Compellent storage infrastructure (provides a single pane-of-glass on all your Compellent systems).
This approach in my opinion gives you a great degree of flexibility, if you’re a storage guy and you’re in charge to provide storage to your company’s VMware infrastructure you can use your familiar storage GUI to provision storage at the Datastore level and if you’re a multiple-caps IT guy, you can use the vSphere client to do the same with a simple wizard, without getting your hands dirty inside the storage interface.
Below you can find a couple of videos showing the integration at both ends:
) showed a really cool new feature that can literally disrupt what we do today to ensure storage fairness.
