Archives 2011

Vista is an absolutely beautiful word. If you look at the first definition you get this precious definition to behold!

A pleasing view, esp. one seen through a long, narrow opening:

Isn’t that stunning… beautiful. If a word could describe something so sincere, so true, so… Elegant.   Unfortunately, THAT was not the definition that Mac OSX LION resembles.  Instead it describes the recently more appropriate and updated definition of Vista.

A software release leaving you to WTF how Performance and Operational considerations from your audience are thrown in the gutter.  One clearly defined and described by how much better performance you will get on the SAME hardware with a future bulkier version, restoring functionality you stripped from our cold dead hands.

Whoa! Why all the hatred?! THIS IS THE BEST RELEASE AND VERSION OF OSX EVER, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, IT MAKES MY MACBOOK JUST LIKE MY IPHONE. Yea. Thanks. Really wanted THAT functionality.    Do you know why I have an iPhone? It’s portable and I use it on the GO.  Do you know why I use my MacBook in Pre-LION terms? Because it lets me do things like THIS:

I had just come back from a reboot so I clearly didn’t have ALL 16 of my windows activated.  Oh and for you Forum Douches who say “WHY DO YOU NEED 16 WINDOWS”. It’s not my fault you can barely find a use for a single window.   I did find the adoption of 16 separate isolated instances a lot more efficient to having DEDICATED machines to do my work [What I would have to do previously]  So Apple first of all I want to thank you for taking this Primitive concept of 3D-ish worlds aligned to matrices and replacing it with this clearly ‘evolutionary’ serial mode.

I’m not even getting into how various members of us have.  Performance problems like cited in the fine Louis Gray’s article Lion’s Big Bite Took the Air Out of My Sails. Nor how when you scroll from side to side you get this weird visual redraw rendering problem which for some of us has been causing severe headaches.   Yea, really.  Thanks for that.   I do miss my FAN turning off when I’m doing a lot of things, vs right now where it’s on with LITTLE application running time… thanks for that too!   You know what’s great about Mission Control though? the clear ability to disseminate between what is going on in ONE window vs ANOTHER window.  Yea I’m glad we got rid of Spaces because the clarity it brought to my productivity made me work too well and get too much done.

I know there are a lot of Great Write-ups about how LION is Amazing and how Mission Control is great. Usually written up by people who clearly use ONE window at a time and at best will run 3 applications simultaneously.   For those of us with on average 12 of our 16 windows busy, and find that we’ll hit the memory wall WAY before the CPU wall, LION is a serious piece of crap.

Here’s to hoping we get numerous Patch Tuesdays to resolve this Vista-like experience. Thanks. WTF. SERIOUSLY. WTF.

Oh and feel free to hate. Or even encourage suggestive ways how I can resolve issues and experiences I have had here.  I’m game to resolve these things.  However I know I’m not alone. :(

My dear friend and fellow vExpert Greg Stuart is hosting a contest ending JUL 24 where you can win EVERYTHING you need to attend VMworld! OMFG!!!

Win a Free Pass to VMworld 2011 from vDestination!

To enter this contest, post one comment/reply on THIS BLOG POST at vDestination.com including the following information:

• * Your favorite thing about VMware
  * What you look forward to most at VMworld 2011
  * Who you hope meet at VMworld 2011
  In your comment, please include the following:
• * First and last name
  * Email address to contact you if you win
  * Twitter handle (if you have one)
  The Rules
  There aren’t too many rules, but there are a few, they are:
• 1. The contest is open to anyone in the world, however, the air fare is only covered up to $500 US dollars.
  2. You must be able to attend VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada (conference pass only valid for the US conference). I don’t want this pass to go to waste.
  3. Only one valid entry per person.
  4. Contest entry must be received by Sunday July 24th 11pm EST, no entries will be considered after 11pm EST.
  * The winner will be randomly drawn Sunday July 24th, notified via email and announced Monday morning July 25th on vDestination.com.

So, whoa, wait, what?! What is Greg doing? He’s giving you a chance to go to VMworld all expenses paid ?! OMG HOW DID HE DO THIS?!

I feel it appropriate to call out All of the Sponsors who helped make this a reality for Greg and for you (the impending winners!)

The Sponsors and The Details

Symantec stepped up to sponsor the full conference pass to include both breakfast and lunch, the Solutions Exchange floor, lots of great sessions and more. This will mean the world to the winner, we can’t thank them enough!

Veeam generously offered up one of their rooms for 5 nights, starting Sunday August 28th and checking out Friday September 2, incredible, thanks Veeam!

Xsigo contacted Greg immediately upon hearing about my idea of paying it forward, and offered to cover up to $500 for air fare to Las Vegas, thank you so much Xsigo, this is the cherry on top!

As one extra added point – Those of you who win/attend will get a guaranteed ticket/place at #CXIParty on Monday night, the most raucous self-hosted and randomly sponsored event at VMworld you’ll ever experience ;)   So go to THIS BLOG POST at vDestination.com and GET YOUR ENTRY IN, AND WIN!

I look forward to seeing you at VMworld in Vegas!

First of all, let this be your official invitation to come! If you haven’t been to an EMC Forum before they’re epic experiences rivaled only by the likes of your own dream wedding, or one of those lucid dreamlike experiences where you can fly!  Err… Maybe I’m over-selling it a bit, but no seriously. :)   It’s a great time, lots of learning to be had, networking to be experienced, and lots of prizes to be won (and demos to see?!)

Ooh.. and here I’ll put in quotes the … “Marketing Slick” type of things how they perceive it to be.. and of course I’ll give you my honest impression following that as well, just to keep it real! :)

EMC Forum 2011: Cloud Meets Big Data
Chicago – Hyatt Regency O’Hare
Tuesday, July 19, 2011; 8:00AM – 4:30PM

Learn more & register here

Join us at the EMC Forum where you’ll learn how cloud computing is transforming IT and discover new ways to accelerate the journey to your cloud for increased IT efficiency and greater business agility.  You’ll also learn how Big Data is transforming business and changing the world.

 

 

• Learn about the latest trends and developments in information infrastructure including cloud computing and big data.
• Understand the new roles and processes required to drive lasting change in your organization.
• Discover market-leading solutions that combine hardware, software, and services to meet the needs of any size business.
• Connect with leading cloud and big data experts and network with your peers.

Make your plans now to join EMC and our partners along with other IT and business leaders.  Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how you can transform your IT organization, transform your business, and accelerate your career.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Sujal Patel, Founder of Isilon® and President of EMC Isilon Storage Division

In 2001 Patel founded Isilon with the vision that big data would soon necessitate a shift away from traditional storage architectures and toward a new, scale-out paradigm. Today this vision has become a reality as scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) has emerged as the de facto storage platform for big data. Patel continues to lead Isilon’s business in enabling its customers to turn big data challenges into even bigger opportunities.

My Honest Take

I’ve been to these things in the past, and let me tell you they know how to hit it out of the park!  Whether through direct engagement (Conversations with peers, partners, vendors, friends) Attending sessions (expertise, the Q/A, others experiencing your same kind of problems) or just taking it all in; you will walk away from this event with a lot more than you came to it with!   Personally, I would find myself engaged in so many conversations on every topic under the sun (Or Cloud?! … Bad pun! :)) that it’d take me literally hours just to walk a few feet.    I honestly look forward to this level and type of engagement when it comes back around, fun times are had by all, and the raffle prizes? I cannot win them, but they’re pretty sweet! Definitely play the game ;)

I encourage you to attend, and at the very least you can say hi to me! (Whoa! Vanity ploy! giggle :))  I’m always happy to discuss…   frankly any topic :)

Learn more & register here

If you’re like me, all of a sudden you’re getting an “Internal Error” and you’re like WTF?! IT WAS WORKING A MINUTE AGO! AHHHHHHHH!!!    And you go through the normal course of action of googling for answers only to find each and every scenario doesn’t apply to you [Heck, you even DO what they suggest and it still doesn’t work!]   Well, hopefully this finds you in good tidings and will solve your problem fast and furious!

Disclaimer: I try to quantify the scenario which leads up to this particular version of the error and a quick and hearty resolution.  If your situation does not meet this particular criteria.. you may want to go back to searching and trying the other options! Unfortunately, this has hit me too many times for me to let it go unpublished! :)

As with most things, I try to be as SPECIFIC as possible so you can get to the point and solve (even with this verbose dialogue ;))

Standard Operation

There you are, just sitting along using VMware Fusion with whatever your VM type happens to be, and then either you close the lid on your mac, or your VM starts to suspend itself [Or you manually suspend it, doesn’t matter]   But wait.   The VM gets to 99% or so, but never officially ends/closes/suspends.   You cannot “resume” a VM which thinks it is still suspending, so you’re forced to do the following:

Killing VMware Fusion

Well, that seemed straightforward enough! Wham BAM! Process Killed, am I right?! [No. I’m not right ;)]

Internal Error

   You re-launch VMware Fusion, go to open up your VM and OMG IM GETTING INTERNAL ERROR WTF IS GOING ON HERE!

Some of you, first action you’ll take is to go into the VMware Fusion Package and start to remove .LCK files and everything under the sun because you’re panicked! AHHH PANIC!   Well, panic no longer!   There is hope!

What causes Internal Error

If you open up Terminal and take a look at your /var/log/system.log you’ll find the following is happening {cat /var/log/system.log}

Jun 24 12:15:29 CXI [0x0-0x86e86e].com.vmware.fusion[47446]: VMware Fusion Error:
Jun 24 12:15:29 CXI [0x0-0x86e86e].com.vmware.fusion[47446]: Failed to get exclusive lock on the configuration file. Another VMware process might be running using this configuration file.

Recovering from Internal Error

There are two quick ways to get out of this.   One is a reboot [lame!] And the other is to kill the running instance using kill

Use PS to find the process in question [ps –axwww | grep vmware]

Then use Kill to kill the process in question! [kill –9 ProcessID]

Post-Mortem

Hopefully you found this useful and if not… I’m sure I’ll run into this situation AGAIN and forget how I solved it, and come back to this blog post of my own in order to correctify the situation! :)  If you find this useful at all, let me know so I can gauge just how many of us experience this kind of pain :)

Take care and Good Luck! :)

I actually wanted to start this blog post (and an entirely different one) off with a completely separate subject.  Yea… I did.   And then I went looking for citing data on what I was going to talk about only to find OMG DID WE NOT ANNOUNCE THAT?! Talk about a major faux paux if I announced something we didn’t even show-case or isn’t even public yet.  #Awkward! That and I’m sure PR/Marketing/OtherScaryFigures would be like WTF CXI and other 3 letter acronyms. ;)

Okay, on to the show! OMG THERE WAS A LOT ANNOUNCED! I know some of you were like ‘How do you follow up that whole Record Breaking thing earlier in the year with 40 some odd announcements. (I forget the exact number… it wasn’t 42, which would have made sense ;))”   Yea, and I’m not looking to basically do a repeat of what was already done and said elsewhere; often quite well in delivery.  No.  This is going to be a very unique perspective on a few things which happened at the show.   For the sake of vanity (Because I’m clearly so vain ;)) I’ll do a little coverage of the most rockingest party #cxiparty, absolute rockstar!   But also, a little message which may have gotten lost in the gist of things, and what I see as an internal AND external direction going forward, citing me to refer to 2011 as OMG YEAR OF THE VCE!

OMFG #CXIPARTY OMFG

Did you attend?   If you did, I’m sure you’re left saying OMFG THE VIEW. or ZOMG THERE WERE SO MANY COOL PEOPLE THERE. or WHY IS CXI TALKING ABOUT SHOES.     Yea baby.  That’s what this was about! Networking, and primarily shoes… :)

So for you naysayers out there who say “Whoa, how can a vegan who doesn’t drink throw quite possibly the BEST PARTY ON THE PLANET”  That’s damn straight! For those of who you could not make it (I received your apologies, due to sickness, other conflicts, etc) and the rest of you; truly missed out on an EPIC and LEGENDARY event.  Relationships were formed which will last forever!   Everyone had a great time and I made some great friends with the exception of the AVNET guy who was BLITZ I think even before he got there! Hey what can you do!    (I guess I could throw a follow-up party at #VMworld ;))

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my sponsors who helped make this possible though!  Nexus IS, Oxygen Cloud, and Storage Staffing!

Between Keith Norbie @keithnorbie from Nexus, Julia Mak @juliamak from Oxygen Cloud and Shelton and Joe from @storagestaffing I was able to provide you with refreshments which made the party that much more enjoyable!  Be sure to check them out, especially if you attended the party!   Oh, as a side note, I’d also like to call out some good friends of mine who helped bring some added cred to the party!

• Rockstar SQL GOD Denny Cherry @mrdenny
• OMG Super Star Chuck Hollis @chuckhollis
• PHD God of FCoE J Metz @jmichelmetz
• NerdHerd Crew – Sean Thulin @sthulin, Luigi Danakos @nerdblurt and Matthew Brender @mjbrender
• The one the only Brian Deloria @storagewtf
• Big Data king Koset Surakomol @koset
• Truth in IT madman W. Curtis Preston @wcpreston

If you are not included in this list, it doesn’t mean you don’t matter; it simply means I finished the list and you still do matter very much! That’s what the ‘who attended’ list looks like in regard!  If you attended and enjoyed it, please provide feedback! I’ve considered doing a surveymonkey on ‘what worked well, what didn’t work well’ etc sort of details.  You let me know either way, as I have complete and total plans of doing the EXACT same thing at VMworld in a few months; so just consider that ;)

OMG VCE!!??!

Okay, at this point if you’re a customer you probably don’t want to read what I’m about to say.  This content is really written to be positioned towards internal sales people, field sales and partners.   I’m not going to STOP you from reading it, but bear in mind you are not my audience! ;)

Hey guys! I think we’re alone.   WOW OMG DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID? In the event that you missed it. Just wow.   The kind of traction, currency, what is available today and what is coming tomorrow (incremental in existing investments) in what VCE is offering.  Wow, just an unequivocal WOW!

I’ve ALWAYS had intimate knowledge of what has been going on; (Past, Present and Future) but what is already public domain knowledge and how things stack up against what I’ll refer to as “competitive converged infrastructure solutions” so as not to call any one out in particular.  Our stack from end to end, from engineering on the floor (I wish I could get you some videos of the actual building process, Sigma whatever all that stuff and the serious hardening and baking it goes through)  and to the point of delivery on your customers floor.  If you are NOT positioning or being able to find a use-case for the VCE – Vblock with it’s magical EMC, Cisco and VMware combo ; you’re doing something fundamentally wrong!   I encourage you then to reach out to me directly (I do NOT work for VCE mind you, or a team which is focused exclusively on Vblocks, but the message is so simple, we can knock it out!)

So the lessons to walk away from this is; 2011 is NOT the year of Converged Infrastructure.   It IS the Year of VCE.    No question, no doubt about it.   You will see things shift, shape, mold and beyond in the coming months; no that doesn’t mean there are more things coming that you need to wait for, quite the opposite.  It’s there.  Start working with the tools available to you today.  I don’t see a reason you shouldn’t be able to grasp that!  Get out there and do whatever it is you do! ;)

Sales, Partners, whoever you can stop reading now! And the rest of my audience feel free to come back!

While that was a little vague, to tell you the truth… I want to get this published, and I should just do a video/audio recording of the whole messaging around this because I don’t want to type it up right now, the OMG passion really comes out when spoken (At least when I speak it ;))  Time to finish this up as I’m in a rocking VPLEX session with a VP! Later guys, and see you at VMworld ;)