You ever been like, “Man, I wish more organizations would help out non-profits” Well, guess what. Nutanix is. :)

So let’s break it down a bit! in the event that you find yourself too busy to actually click on their site and want the details!

Submission Period (October 15 – November 21, 2014)

• Anyone can nominate a non-profit to participate! To qualify, the organization must:
• Be a non-profit, non-partisan organization located in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom
• Have a currently working datacenter that could benefit from web-scale converged infrastructure
• Be able to complete and meet Environment Assessment criteria. Read the full terms & conditions

Judging Period (November 21 – December 10, 2014)

• A panel of community judges will select the top three finalists.

Voting Day (December 10, 2014)

• Watch the virtual event on December 10th to hear from the three finalists and cast your vote to determine the winner!
• Voting will be open to the public for 24 hours.

Winner Announced! (December 11, 2014)

• The Grand Prize winner will receive a Web-Scale Datacenter Makeover, implemented in 48 hours by a Nutanix team!

Prizes!

The Grand Prize Package

• NX-3350
• 3 Ultimate Software Licenses
• 3 Years of Support
• 2-Day Installation Services
• One organization will receive a 48-Hour Web-Scale Datacenter Makeover, implemented by a Nutanix team!

Two Finalist Packages

• NX-1350
• 3 Ultimate Software Licenses
• 3 Years of Support

Nominate & Get a T-Shirt!

• Exclusively for Web-Scale Wish participants

So get out there, with this last week left and sign up, nominate, win a shirt and help out a non-profit! <3

Well hey everybody! WTF IS THIS? A CONTEST?! WHERE WERE YOU DURING XMAS!  Yea, yea I know.. well, The gift giving season has extended into 2013!

The other day after a re-install of my MacBook due to a memory failure which resulted in a drive corruption (Don’t even get me started!) I had to find my  handy dandy License Key card for VMware Fusion… Well, let’s just say that took a bit of time and hours before I was able to find my key, I came across this little gem!

Whoa, whoa, whoa… Wait a minute, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!? Yea, I know, right?! But here’s the thing. I don’t like to hoard stuff when those of you in the community can benefit from it and rock out your life in an epic way, I mean … It’s certainly not THIS…. But it’ll do donkey, it’ll do…

But seriously… I said something about CONTEST didn’t I? Okay, well here in pretty large and bold lettering….

CONTEST!

So you want to win yourself a copy of VMware Workstation 9 and you’re all like “WTF DO i HAS TO DO?!?”  It’s actually pretty simple. I provide you two paths to contestdom!

Path #1

In the comments, write an example/story/whatever of something you are unable to virtualize and the reasons why.   Seems pretty straight forward.  

This is actually two-fold.  On the one hand, us in the community get a sense of what other challenges our peers are suffering through of things unable to virtualize and all of the pains associated.  But on the other hand, if we as the community have SOLUTIONS to your unvirtualizable scenario, then we ALL win.  Sounds excellent, right?   I particularly love finding solutions where there are apparently none, so I’m hoping you’ll all participate in this!

Path #2

In this path, I want you to tell me how you might go about actually using this license you will win.   Maybe it’ll change your life, maybe it will transform your career, maybe you’ve been too lazy to upgrade your previous version and this fills that niche, you know… Whatever.

Optional

Optionally, it’d be pretty awesome if you followed us on Twitter so as to stay up to date on whatever ridiculous banter we share, I suggest following a few twitter handles, which everyone prospers by this effort anyway, you can gain an extra ‘entry’ by doing it, but only do it if you really want to :)

• @cxi (me) – Christopher Kusek on Twitter!
• @nerdblurt – Luigi Danakos who you’ll find out a bit more about in a moment! Blogger at nerdblurt.com
• @sixfootdad – Damian Karlson, dear friend and virtualization rockstar, and #vBrownbagger
• @vDestination – Rockstar of a friend and blogger Greg Stuart, the movement behind vDestination.com
• @davemhenry – Dave Henry – He’s the kind of guy in the virtualization community you should just know, and madman behind geekfluent.com
• @that1guynick – Nick Howell, rockstar, Datacenter Dude, NetAppian, all that jazz! datacenterdude.com
• @h0bbel – Christian Mohn, Another rockstar who shows off his mad skills at vNinja.net 
• THIS JUST IN! The rockstar Christian Mohn just mentioned seconds ago… is tossing ANOTHER Workstation license into the pile! +1

HOW DO i WIN A COPY OF VMWARE FUSION?!?!

I know what you’re saying, “I don’t have a PC and don’t need Workstation! I have a MAC because I’m a MAC USER OMG MAC MAC MAC MAC MAC!. Yea I hear you, I’m writing this on LiveWriter (best blog writing tool in the world!) in my Win7 VM under Fusion… Hell, if I weren’t using the key for THIS instance, I’d be giving this away too.   But no. My dear friend Luigi, Nerdblurt mentioned above actually had his OWN CONTEST running, and when he saw I was going to give away a copy of Workstation, well, it was like a match made in heaven.  You know. But not in a creepy way. :)

So introducing the Blog post by Luigi:

VMware Fusion 5 Contest!

You need to check out his blog post for details on this, which I definitely encourage you to my fellow friendly fusionistas out there!  This is an amazing opportunity for a freeeeee license to kickstart your… well, whatever you’ll be kickstarting! I know my life changed when I got my first copy of VMware back in 97 or so, and what better way to take things to the next level today!

So good luck to all, I hope to see some awesome submissions, but most importantly… I wish you all good luck as I want all of you to walk away from this experience better for it.   Good Luck and stay virtual! (or some other lame tagline ;))

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!

My good friend(s) at vDestination.com have thrown down the Virtual Gauntlet so to speak and want YOU to WIN!!!

Thanks to Donors like Scott Lowe, David Davis and Eric Siebert – vDestination.com is enabling you to win THIS!

* A signed copy of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 from Scott Lowe
* A signed copy of VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference from Scott Lowe
* A signed copy of Maximum vSphere from Eric Siebert
* A copy of VMware vSphere Pro Series Training vol. 2: Site Recovery Manager (SRM), Veeam Management Suite, VMware Data Recovery,
Power CLI and vSphere Advanced Features from David Davis
* A vDestination.com t-shirt (XL only), bumper sticker and mouse pad
UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! 8/19
* Just added to the list of prizes, a generous donation from Mike Laverick*
**A signed copy of Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0
**A signed copy of VMware vSphere 4 Implementation

I’m fortunate to call most of those items inclusive in my own library – and if you enter the contest which ENDS this Thursday August 26th.. So can you! :)

Rules are pretty simple… be alive to start.. and then..

Contest Rules:
Beginning today August 8th, 2010 (coincidentally, my birthday!), registration is open. Here’s how:

1. You must log on to twitter and follow me. Easy enough.
2. You must post only one (1) comment/reply to this blog post below. The comment must include the following:

a. Your first and last name
b. A valid email address
c. A short bio about yourself and how you use VMware
d How you plan on putting these prizes to use
e. What you are looking forward to learning from these prizes

So what are you waiting for?!? Time is running out! Get out there and join this contest!!!

You could win what very well may fulfill your destination!

And you guys tell me.. if you want I can throw in a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate into the mix as well? That’s entirely up to you (Yea, it’s not virtual.. but whatever! ;))

Hey Mobile Developers! Want to make some money? Tired of developing successful apps for the iPhone or not getting any credit for creating anything for the Android? ;)

Seriously though, the number of users of the Windows Mobile devices out there is still pretty significant, so jump on this dev opportunity to get your apps deployed, released and win some pretty seriously cool things! (I touch a Surface table every now and then and they’re wild! I’d take one for home! ;))

All the major highlight links are – Register today and start uploading, Race to Market Challenge, Submit your Apps, http://developer.windowsmobile.com, and don’t forget to Learn more about this special offer :)

So check it out, I know a bunch of you are appdev folks, so get rolling! :)