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Its About the Apps – The Need for Application Modernization Webcast

Jon Owings — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:33:44 +0000

As we migrate to Cloud models for Enterprise IT one big need that gets overlooked is how the applications are architected. Modernizing existing apps can be a very scary but a necessary step to taking advantage of what the cloud can offer.

Just look at this crazy puzzle. As a VMware/Network/Storage geek I spend so much time focusing on the bottom of this picture the “infrastructure” part. I have to admit though without the Applications no one cares about all my infrastructure.

So what can we do with that middle layer? The legacy apps, Analytics and Cloud applications. Expect more to come from me on this. Don’t worry they won’t be “coding” posts but rather enablement of applications in the world of Private Cloud.

So where to start?
I want to create some awareness for this upcoming webcast. Details are here:

http://www.emc.com/events/2012/q1/01-25-12-application-modernization.htm

Jan 25, 2012

Time:
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST (Set Time Zone)

Event Type:
EMC Live Webcast

Location:
Online

Details: In this session, EMC Consulting will discuss Application Modernization on the road to Platform as a Service.

Our expertise and experience will help you understand Cloud Application Platform technologies, architectural patterns and practical approaches to a modernization strategy that maximizes long-term benefits.

Attend this webcast and learn:

About next generation Application Architectures
How other organizations have successfully tackled an Application Modernization initiative
How to develop a strategy for Application Modernization

CCNA Exam Experience and Happy New Year

Jon Owings — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:08:57 +0000

IF you have been paying attention to me on twitter the last few days I was whining about studying for the CCNA. Even though I work with switching on a regular basis for the past 5 years there is still lots of little details you forget about when it comes to the intricacies of how a network works. That being said, I don’t normally work on border routers ever anymore. It has probably been 3 years since I configured a router to route, I mostly play with Layer 3 switches for Inter-VLAN activity. I was surprised by how much has changed since I last passed the CCNA in 2006. Some quick non-test question disclosing thoughts.

No Subnetting or Binary math conversions! What? You Say. Yes I was disappointed too.
Normal questions on VTP, VLANs, routing, IP.
Know ACL and EIGRP, no OSPF this time around and almost zero about RIP
Upset by there still being Frame relay questions, I mean come on really? DLCI and Inverse ARP?
Extra IPv6 questions and wireless LAN too. I did not really like prepare for WIFI and IPv6 so I am very glad that didn’t cost me.

I used some online practice tests to fine tune what will be tested. I can’t just memorize answers I need to actually practice the SIMs and Labs. So practice tests for me are perfect for this.

Best of all I can relax over the New Year holiday and not worry about VLANS and network masks and all of that… Have a great 2012 everyone.

A Year Later

A Year Later

Jon Owings — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:16:53 +0000

Around this time last year I blogged that I was joining EMC as a Sr. vSpecialist. Well that is just what happened and at the beginning of the year I started at EMC. I have been between Georgia and Florida quite a few times sharing with customers about VMware and EMC. It has been great fun and lots of hard work.

Some Highlights:

vSphere 5 was released, always fun to meet with customers and share what is new and how it can help them out.
Demos, showing customers actually what is available to simplify their environments. The Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is a big one, also View 5, the VNXe VMware provisioning wizard, the Cisco UCS (I even help out my Cisco brothers). This in addition to showing off EMC storage.
Chances to share the wonders and pros and cons of vMSC with VPLEX.
Even more out there for me being the former VMware installation guy, introducing people to Greenplum, Isilon, how “big data” relates to their business, hadoop, vFabric, Springsource, Cloudfoundry
I even wrote a Ruby on Rails app that shows me my twitter status updates(slightly better than Hello World) that runs on Micro CloudFoundry (but not CloudFounry public if you can help I will take it).
Went to EMCworld and VMworld in Las Vegas. Was so busy did not get to see as many people from the community that I wanted. Something that needs to be fixed next year by me.
The Lab
Passed VCP 5
Work with an amazing team of people that get me because they are a lot like me.
Personally we had our third child in August so it has been especially chaotic around this house (probably resulting any many blog ideas getting forgotten long before they reach the web).
Just like her Daddy

All together I am stoked that it seems like there is something to learn everyday and that keeps me very excited. Really looking forward to next year.

Review the Year – 2008

My First Big Data

Jon Owings — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:55:54 +0000

Ok while I was on vacation away from all things virtual last week. Some reason I had some deep thoughts about Big Data. At least deep for me. So this is mostly incoherent rambling, but I want it written down in case it happens.

What I kept coming to is how will data be used in a way that is NOT trying to sell me some XYZ product?

Mostly I think about big data as pulling public (or private) data about me in order to gain some edge to get me to buy the next tablet or phone.

I don’t know much about the entire big data industry, but I thought there must be more, and isn’t just about finding what I think about a brand on the twiiter.

Researchers – create a bunch of data about X. Give us cool graphs on the internet about how X and Y intersect. I feel this is extremely important. The next cures will be created outside a lab and 50 test subjects. Obvious Jon, I bet someone has already said that.

My linked in network

Innovation – can the next big thing be the output of some insane amount of data? How do I create a solution to a problem everyone has but they don’t know about yet? How can it be beyond the Social media craze. Big data is bigger than social networks. The next idea needs crush Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook. I know there are armies of geniuses at those companies but the next thing will be created by someone we don’t know. Maybe I can use big data to find that person before anyone else?

Cisco Data Center Networks Blog

vSphere Metro Stretched Clusters – Some Info/Links

Jon Owings — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:09:16 +0000

A lot of questions lately about vSphere Clusters across distance. I really need to learn for myself so I collected some good links.

Make sure you understand what “Only Non-uniform host access configuration is supported” means. Someone correct me if I have this wrong but your device that enables the distributed virtual storage needs to be sure that hosts in site A are writing to their preferred volumes in site A and vice versa in Site B. Probably way over simplifying it.

LINKS

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007545

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/10/new-vmware-hcl-category-vsphere-metro-stretched-cluster.html

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/10/07/vsphere-metro-storage-cluster-solutions-what-is-supported-and-what-not/

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/10/05/vsphere-5-0-ha-and-metro-stretched-cluster-solutions/

Big thanks to Scott Lowe for clearing the details on this topic.

VMware View and VNXe

Jon Owings — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 12:49:39 +0000

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at a the TechX conference in Baton Rouge. I wanted to share what I presented with regards to running VMware View 5 with a VNXe. The solution is meant for those shops where the IT team is one. That one person must do everything.

Using some of the VMware wizards included in the VNXe along with pools optimized for VMware View replicas and linked clones. I was able to show a demo adding storage and 50 desktops and all be finished and ready to use before the presentation time was up. Pretty easy. With the VNXe now supporting EFD, I would expect even better performance.

If you have trouble displaying the embedded Sliderocket Presentation look here.
VMware View and VNXe

Credit to the original authors of the View on VNXe 3300 Reference Architecture. I drew my inspiration for running the tests and Demos on View 5 and vSphere 5 from this paper.

Upcoming Your Cloud VMware and EMC Events and Tech X 2011

Jon Owings — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:53:48 +0000

I am sitting listening to the smooth jazz of a pre-conference call waiting room.

Thought I would take some time to promote a few events coming in the next month I am lucky enough to be involved with. I wake up every day stoked to do things like this. I love to work with this technology and I get to tell other people what it can do! Wow.

Tech X 2011 Baton Rouge, LA – October 5-8 – River Center

This conference held in Baton Rouge, will feature a keynote by the vSpecialists very own Wade O’Harrow. I will be supporting the breakout sessions with a session on using VMware View with the VNXe. If you are anywhere around from Texas to Florida, get over to Baton Rouge the 3 day event is free of charge! I hear the EMC vLabs will make an appearance.

VMware/EMC Accelerate to Your Cloud – Tampa Bay September 20 – Marriott Tampa Westshore

More information

VMware/EMC Accelerate to Your Cloud – Miami September 22 – JW Marriott Marquis

More Information

What is up at VMworld 2011

Jon Owings — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:23:08 +0000

First of all I would like to thank my wonderful wife for letting me go to VMworld one week after our new daughter was born. Don’t worry, we have family in town so she is being take care of. This is a post that I wanted to write a week ago but I have been unplugged for a week to enjoy the before mentioned new child.

So what is going on at VMworld this year?

v0dgeball

First up is v0dgeball. This is a great idea to let some of the vendors battle it out on the Dodgeball court and all the proceeds go to Charity. This year the Wounded Warrior project will receive the proceeds from the event. Please check out the details here. It is Sunday night so hopefully you are reading this in time.

In-n-Out Burger Run #v-in-n-out

As I have already mentioned a few times come we will be meeting up for some Double Double fun Monday night after the welcome reception and have you back in time to go to a party or two.
Details are here.

Do you have Leakage? Stop Leaks with Your Cloud

As someone that is back in the business of diapers I couldn’t help myself. One of the biggest obstacles to Public Cloud adoption is the loss of security and control. Is the public cloud is actually less secure? The answer really depends, but there are some of us still want to have that control and monitoring. Even though you think your company is not in the public cloud you may be surprised to find that certain projects that should be inside your walls have been using public cloud offerings to provide the on demand elastic resources that they could not get from internal IT. This is what we call leakage. Unauthorized movement of your data to a public cloud offering. Now this may be against policy, but how do you know this is not happening. One knee jerk reaction is to block everything and fire anyone that looks at an outside resource. Instead of playing defense I would rather advocate going on the offensive. Start to use your existing infrastructure to provide private cloud services. Use automation, monitoring, and management tools to make it a reality without killing the infrastructure teams. By providing on-demand service you provide a controlled alternative to the public cloud. Transitioning then to a Hybrid Cloud in order to provide the burstability with service providers infrastructure using the same VMware and EMC technology that you are used to using in your Enterprise.

Am I saying Hybrid Cloud is a diaper? Not sure. I will be in the EMC booth this week discussing how to use VMware and EMC technology to enable Your Cloud.

I look forward to making some updates to what is new as the show goes on.

In-n-Out VMworld 2011 Update

Jon Owings — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:42:04 +0000

Just quick update and reminder about In-n-Out. Even though @jtroyer is a traitor going over to Five Guys we are still having the meetup. (five guys is good grease, don’t get me wrong.)

After the Monday welcome reception at VMworld (8:30 ish) meet near the Taxi stand at the Venetian.
If you are wondering which In-n-out here it is.

In-n-Out (also called Awesome-ville)

4888 DEAN MARTIN DR
LAS VEGAS, NV 89103
1-800-786-1000

vCloud Director Hard coded MAC

Jon Owings — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:48:34 +0000

If you are like me and build and destroy things constantly or just like doing things in ways you probably are not supposed to here is a quick tip.

I was destroying a vCD environment the other day but I wanted to save some templates I created with vCD. Instead of exporting and re-importing or using some intelligent method. I used vCenter to clone the VM to another place. While I was using this machine I cloned it off a few times for some tests.

Then I noticed some network wackiness. A ping would work for a a little while then go away and come back. First thought was I messed something up in the networking on these new hosts. After searching and searching and checking for switching loops. I finally found the machine had a manually coded MAC address. So I had 5 VM’s on the network with the same MAC address. This obviously caused some issues.

To fix it I migrated the machines to VMXNET3, and removed the old NIC because I needed to do that anyway. You could also change the MAC back to automatic. I would guess you would need to powerdown for this, but I didn’t test this out yet.