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Thank YOU for your readership, comments, dialog. Frankly, I never expected as much goodness to come from the blog as I’ve experienced. I’m very humbled, and very thankful.
Here’s a silly (but still kinda funny) holiday message from the vSpecialist technical team leaders from around the globe (from top left) – Wade O’Harrow (Global), Keith Coughlin (Americas), Bertrand Lalanne (EMEA), Scott Drummonds (APJ), and myself. Gang – I depend on you tremendously – thank you for your efforts!
Posted at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I’m going to stay silent until the Isilon deal closes – as people have seen/learnt over the last year, these things aren’t done until they are done, so this will be my only post on it for a while.
So… note – I wrote this on Nov 15th, right after the deal was public, but before it closed.
So…
Long and short - expect to continue to see more and more EMC innovation, growth, development (both organic and M&A if that’s the right thing to do) down both categories from EMC:
Now – a little more detail on two areas that need more detail (VMware and scale-out NAS, Unified vs. scale-out)… Read on if interested…
Posted at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
It’s so ridiculous, it’s cringe-worthy :-)
Click on the below to see the pilot episode of “Chad’s World” with my friend and colleague (and head vSpecialist) Wade O’Harrow.
If you’re interested in the high-bitrate, and full-length MP3 theme song (recorded with my vSpecialist family), you can download it here.
What a crazy gig I have… I work like mad, but it’s an absolute blast!
Posted at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Wrapping up all the blog posts in one place, and including a webcast and powerpoint on the topic.
Phew – that was a lot of work, right in the middle of the 2011 planning cycle :-)
The blog series is: “Understanding vSphere Disaster Avoidance/Recovery” – discussing a broad topic: state of the union of vSphere non-disruptive disaster avoidance and disaster recovery solutions, and how they interact (because it ain’t easy to do both together when you dive in deep).
You can watch a recorded 1hr webcast on the topic:
The presentation I used in the webcast, as always, available in raw PPT format. I find this helps people get more reuse from the content and all the links – yes, I’m sure our competition uses it. I tend to worry a lot less about “the other guy” than I do about making sure we’re doing the right thing for our customers and partners.
Thanks – and I sincerely hope this blog post helps folks digest a topic that in a sales campaign is made to sound really, really simple, but in practice has many layers to it. It can work, and work great – but I want people to understand exactly HOW and what to expect.
As always – THANK YOU, and courteous comments welcome!
Posted at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This is part 3 of a 3 part blog post. The first one categorized various “disaster avoidance + disaster recovery” solutions. The second examined more closely one of the solutions (stretched vSphere clusters) and also the implications on the storage (and touched on the network) layers. That second post also discussed the gory details of EMC VPLEX in those use cases.
The 3rd post will talk about where the R&D and product development is taking us in the world of Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Recovery.
BTW – thank you to many on the EMC and VMware teams who have given great input on post I and II.
I’d strongly suggest starting with “Post I” – which you can read here, and “Post II’ – which you can read here.
OK – are you back?
So – what are we (without divulging any material details :-) thinking and spending a lot of time?
Posted at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This is part 2 of a 3 part blog post. The first one categorized various “disaster avoidance + disaster recovery” solutions. The 3rd post will talk about where the R&D and product development is taking us in the world of Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Recovery.
BTW – thank you to many on the EMC and VMware teams who have given great input on post I and II.
I’d strongly suggest starting with “Post I” – which you can read here.
OK – are you back?
While my personal favorites from Post I lead you to either decide you want either:
OR
REMEMBER – CHOOSE WISELY HERE. Yes, SRM by definition means that it’s disruptive, but many, many customers use SRM for a highly automated, highly testable (though disruptive) mass workload mobility tool – migrating many many VMs between datacenters.
If you have given up on SRM because it’s got to be nondisruptive - that in turn demands that you are willing and able to sign up for the extra complexity of scripting and solution maintenance. If you’re in this category anyway, I would personally recommend “solution 2” – the “multiple separate VMware clusters” approach. That’s covered in this KB article.
… But, I can’t deny the interest people have in “solution 1” – the “single stretched VMware cluster” in spite of all the downsides I pointed out in Post I (strongly suggesting I’m wrong :-).
Let’s EXAMINE why people dig “solution 1 – Stretched HA clusters” (remember – all these have pros and cons):
So – this post dives into the topic of Solution 1 – Stretched VM HA clusters more specifically. The topic, including tested and supported behavior in all sorts of failure modes (in this case with EMC VPLEX) is covered in this KB article.
The post will cover not only the VM HA topics, but will also deal specifically on the topic of EMC VPLEX, the partition state, and what it means to vSphere VM HA behavior. These are inextricably linked, and if you are not using EMC VPLEX, I would strongly suggest reaching out to your storage vendor and looking for similar info.
The cue that you’re looking at the right docs as opposed to marketing is that the discussion includes the “not so nice” parts, and is filled with technical stuff :-)
Then let’s dive into it – read on.
Posted at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
We have the first ten winners of the IX2 from last week’s “Best Practices for Deploying Desktop Virtualization” webcast.
If you won from the drawing, you should have gotten an email notification – and enjoy the iomega IX2 – a nice little home NAS unit, super simple, super feature rich.
Remember – EMC/VMware webcasts are every Thursday starting at 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 GMT.
We’ll be giving away another 10 IX2s – a great holiday gift – at this weeks, which will be a “Chad’s Choice” episode, discussing Disaster Recovery and Disaster Avoidance, and how they intersect/overlap/differ – in agonizing, long-winded, demo-tastic Chad style – wee!
Register here!
Posted at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Last week, a Cisco Validated Design doc was posted covering how to deploy VMware View 4.5 on EMC Unified storage (part of the Cisco VXI initiative). You can read it here:
This is a great doc, and if you’re interested in just technology, are a Cisco and EMC customer looking to virtualize clients, and have no interest in business topics, you can stop reading here :-)
In view of the constant debates about stack models, this is a little instructive as an example. If you want to know more about what I mean, read on.
Continue reading "View 4.5 on Cisco UCS, EMC Unified Storage - CVD" »
Posted at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Remember folks – every week (with rare exceptions), every Thursday, for 1 hour starting at 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 GMT, it’s EMC/Virtualization webcast time. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.
How to Accelerate Desktop Virtualization in the Enterprise
Thursday, December 2, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 GMT
Find out how you can gain control over existing chaotic and complex client computing infrastructures, while improving desktop security. Sadly, I failed to get this post up in time, so you missed this one live, but like all the webcasts – they are recorded for replay…
Best Practices for Deploying Desktop Virtualization
Thursday, December 9, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 GMT
Learn how organizations have successfully implemented desktop virtualization to create a more efficient environment and discover the benefits they have experienced.
Stark and his mad team are really incredible when it comes to VDI and client skillz. Amazingly, EMC Consulting is one of the largest Microsoft partners on Win 7 deployments. Attend, hear experiences from customer deployments, and try to stump the chump (he ain’t no chump!)
I’ll make this interesting… I’ll give away 10 Iomega IX2s randomly to folks that register and attend this session.
Chad’s Choice - Virtually Any Virtualization Topic!
Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 8 am PT / 11 am ET / 16:00 GMT
Learn about the latest virtualization topics from Chad Sakac, VP VMware Technology Alliance, EMC. Get key updates on new technologies, hear honest answers to your most demanding questions, and see intriguing technical demos.
I freak out the webcast team by whipping up the content for my webcast at the last minute based on whatever the topic burning up the airwaves is at the moment, and winging it, often to disastrous results :-)
But – this time, I’m thinking it should be on the topic of Disaster Avoidance and Disaster recovery – an open dialog on the topic based on the blog series (have posted part 1 of 3, parts 2 and 3 are still furiously being constructed). What are other topics you’re interested in?
I’ll make this interesting… I’ll give away 10 Iomega IX2s randomly to folks that register and attend this session.
Register for the December VMware series now
Posted at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Well – here’s something that WILL achieve the goal of making me look like an idiot – which is of course part of the fun :-)
We thought the idea of an episodic “Chad’s World” would be a fun way to talk about new tech, and I’ll never pass up an opportunity to do something ridiculous… Yes, I know how patently silly the idea is, and believe me, I’m not letting it go to my head. When you see it, you’ll understand why…like I said…I’m an idiot :-)
Here’s the teaser…
That last frame is a reminder… “Never challenge the film crew to find and emphasize the frame that makes one look the most goofy – they WILL do it” :-)
It is really fun to do to:
It’s all in good fun. We’ve recorded a couple episodes themed around big news, and will keep on trucking as long as it’s funny, entertaining and educational – which I hope is a long time.
You’ll see the first episode very soon on December 19th, and the second one early in the new year. We’ll be constantly inviting customers on the show – so if you’re interested, ping me, comment here, or watch “Chad’s World”!
See you there!
P.S….
orthogonal adj
1. (Mathematics) relating to, consisting of, or involving right angles; perpendicular
2. (Mathematics) Maths
a. (of a pair of vectors) having a defined scalar product equal to zero
b. (of a pair of functions) having a defined product equal to zero
3. (Chadism) Something Chad Sakac says when he’s trying - in his longwinded, pedantically verbose way – to describe multiple things that are related topics, but independent in every way, like storage efficiency technologies (see example halfway through this post here)
Posted at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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