As VMworld 2010 is right around the corner, I wanted to take a few minutes to make a plea to all attendees.
This year, IF you receive a bag or backpack that you just don’t want, please don’t throw it away, but instead take it home, go to the dollar store and fill the backpack with pencils, crayons, paper and erasers and donate it to your local school system. You would be AMAZED to find out the numbers of children who don’t get backpacks and whose familes can not afford the costly school supplies that are required each year. You will be making some family happy and you’ll get the name “VMware” marketed throughout the schools, getting the next generation of techno geeks ready to learn all about virtualization.
(Updated 7/27/2010 – 11 am EST – added info on power and tower options)
When you think about blade servers, you probably think, “they are too expensive.” When you think about doing a VMware project, you probably think, “my servers are too old” or “I can’t afford new servers.” For $8 per GB, you can have blade servers preloaded with VMware ESXi 4.1 AND 4TB of storage! Want to know how? Keep reading. Continue Reading »
Over the next two days, I will have the opportunity to participate in Gestalt IT’s 3rd Field Day. Over the next few days, I’ll be stepping outside of my “blades only” discussion and I’ll be blogging about this event. So that you will appreciate the posts, let me give you some background on this event. Continue Reading »
What’s the process to design an HP blade server? Find out on my interview with Gary Thome, Chief Blade Architect for HP. Thanks to the friends at SDR News, I was able to talk with Gary at the HP Tech Forum last month in Las Vegas. In the video below, Gary discusses the steps it takes for HP to design the next generation blade and he discusses the latest blade servers announced at the HP Technology Forum. Continue Reading »
One of the biggest things revealed at HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas last month was the introduction of the HP VirtualConnect FlexFabric Module. According to HP, this new module allows for “one module” to access “any data or storage network” and is a key piece of HP’s Converged Infrastructure. Thanks to my friends at SDR News, I had the opportunity to discuss HP’s converged infrastructure with the guy in charge of designing HP’s strategy, Doug Oathout,Vice President of Converged Infrastructure at HP. Continue Reading »
They make it look so complicated in the movies. Detailed covert operations with the intent to hack into a casino’s mainframe preceeded by weeks of staged planned rehearsals, but I’m here to tell you it’s much easier than that.
This is my story of how I had 20 seconds of complete access to The Venetian Casino’s data center, and lived to tell about it.
Along with the Intel blade server announcements, Tuesday HP also announced two new AMD based blades, the BL465c G7 and BL685G7. Although originally viewed as a refresh of their existing AMD blade servers, while at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, I found there were a few interesting facts. Let’s take a look. Continue Reading »
At the 2010 HP Tech Forum press release on Monday, June 21, 2010, new HP BladeSystem products were announced. In the following video, Mark Potter, Vice President of HP Industry Standard Servers, reveals the newest HP BladeSystem products.
(Updated 6/22/2010, 1:00 a.m. Pacific, with updated BL620 image and 2nd Switch pic)
As expected, HP announced today new blade servers to their BladeSystem lineup as well as a new converged switch for their chassis. Everyone expected updates to the BL460 and BL490, the BL2x220c and even the BL680 blade servers, but the BL620 G7 blade server was a surprise (at least to me.) Before I highlight the announcements, I have to preface this by saying I don’t have a lot of technical information yet. I attended the press conference at HP Tech Forum 2010 in Las Vegas, but I didn’t get the press kit in advance. I’ll update this post with links to the Spec Sheets as they become available. Continue Reading »
Last week, Blade.org invited me to their 3rd Annual Technology Symposium – an online event with speakers from APC, Blade Network Technologies, Emulex, IBM, NetApp, Qlogic and Virtensys. Blade.org is a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of open blade server platforms. This year’s Symposium focused on ”the dynamic data center of the future”. While there were many interesting topics (check out the replay here), the one that appealed to me most was “Shared I/O” by Alex Nicolson, VP and CTO of Emulex. Let me explain why. Continue Reading »
As VMworld 2010 is right around the corner, I wanted to take a few minutes to make a plea to all attendees. 
What’s the process to design an HP blade server? Find out on my interview with Gary Thome, Chief Blade Architect for HP. Thanks to the friends at 
One of the biggest things revealed at HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas last month was the introduction of the 
I've been working in server platform infrastructure since 1997. I'm certified in HP and IBM Blade Servers, working on Dell.
