Category Archives: VMware

data recovery after the earthquake

I stumbled across a blog post today from Christopher Well’s vSamurai blog titled Real Life DR & BC, with VMware SRM.  The title isn’t nearly descriptive enough: he gives details about how he used VMware Site Recovery Manager after the 9.0 earthquake in Japan to move their data centre operations from one site to another.  Their data recovery efforts in their virtual infrastructure were successful.

Now that I’m thinking about disaster recovery, I should go check on my own earthquake-preparedness kit at home …

VMworld call for papers deadline is looming

VMworld 2011 is coming: August 29 – September 1 in Las Vegas, and October 18-20 in Copenhagen.  If you’re interested in presenting, the submission deadline is April 5.  You’ve got a little less than a week to get your submission ready!

Looking at the list of the top sessions from last year, it looks like there’s a lot of interest in real-world examples of architecture and best practices.  Don’t let that limit you, there’s plenty of other types of sessions that will be popular and beneficial too.

See you in Vegas!

this is why I tweet

I was asked recently why I’m on Twitter.  It’s all about serendipity.

The metaphor that I use to describe Twitter is that it’s a neverending cocktail party that’s full of people I like.  Just like a large cocktail party, there’s lots of different conversations going on at once.  You can participate in them, or not, as the mood strikes.  And, just like a cocktail party, the topics of the conversations vary widely.  There’s always someone talking politics, there’s always someone sharing something banal about their life, and there’s always someone talking shop.

Likewise, as at a cocktail party, it’s okay to leave to go get some fresh air.  I don’t think that anyone expects that you’ll read every single tweet.  I certainly don’t expect it, nor do I read everything.  I ignore Twitter with aplomb and have no guilt whatsoever.  After I’ve gotten my fresh air, I can come back into the cocktail party, and it will have continued on just fine without me.

Twitter is great for serendipity.  I’ve randomly learned that a friend is nearby, so we’ve taken advantage of the proximity to grab a coffee and catch up.  I’ve helped answer questions that I’ve noticed, helping someone else out.  I’ve had someone find me at a conference to thank me for my assistance.  It’s all good.

I had another example of that kind of serendipity late last week.  One of my VMware colleagues, who I haven’t yet met, tweeted that he was out in the field helping out with a vCloud Director installation.  This is perfect timing: I’m in the midst of some longitudinal research, and wanted to add a vCloud Director customer to that effort.  I sent off an email, and received a lightning-fast response from him.  He’s happy that someone in the company saw his tweet and reached out to him, I’m happy that it looks like I’m going to fill a need (and improve my research too!).

And this, this is why I tweet.  Yes, I admit, I’ve tweeted about cats, cocktails, and the coast.  I’ve also tweeted about projects I’m working on, like Horizon.  It all comes together in one big tweetstream that represents who I am, and hopefully will continue to create serendipity.

VMware vSphere Client for iPad available now!

Did I mention that we’ve got more coming for the iPad? Oh, yes, I did!

We’ve now released the VMware vSphere Client for iPad. It joins our VMware View for iPad release earlier this month. Both apps are free.1 The vSphere Client for iPad allows you to monitor your vSphere hosts and VMs, as well as do some management tasks. Srinivas Krishnamurti, our Senior Director for Mobile Solutions, has written a blog post for its release: VMware vSphere Client for iPad has left the building. Also, as with our previous iPad app release, boche.net has a detailed write-up of it.

As ever, a demo is worth a thousand words, so check out part one:

And part two:

It’s available in the App Store today.  Go forth and download!  After you’ve downloaded it, check out our community for VMware vSphere Client for iPad if you’d like to discuss this app or let us know what you think about it.

  1. And, as of this writing, both are doing very well in the list of most-downloaded business apps.

VMware View for iPad available now!

Today’s a great day for VMware.  We’ve launched View Client for iPad today, and it’s available in iTunes right now.  This app allows you to connect to your View desktop quickly over either wifi or 3G.  Engadget has a nice write-up which mentions my favourite feature: the virtual trackpad.  Boche.net has a great discussion of it too, which goes into a fair number of features (as well as some roadmap questions, such as Android versions).

But don’t just read about it, check out the demo:

And while you’re checking things out, you can see how the Children’s Hospital of Central California has been using it:

If you want to let us know what you think and discuss this cool new app, check out our community for VMware View for iPad.

Stay tuned, because there’s more iOS goodness coming soon …

another reason to love VMware

Here’s another reason that I’m happy working at VMware: today’s a holiday.

I’m used to the list of holidays being: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (+ day after), Christmas.  That gave me nearly six months between paid holidays.  But VMware is nicer than that, and so we get Presidents Day off.

Yay unexpected three-day weekend!