January 2013 archive

It’s time to do the annual top blog voting, last year we had over 1,200 votes that shaped the top 50 list that is published on my vLaunchPad. Just like last year in addition to the traditional top 50 voting I’m opening it up to allow voting in specific categories as well to help distinguish certain types of blogs. To do this I have created a survey to allow you to nominate your blog or website for one of the categories that I have defined if your blog fits one or more of the categories, if it does not then don’t nominate it as all blogs on the vLaunchpad will automatically be included in the general top blog voting.

This survey is not the general voting poll for the top VMware/virtualization blogs, this survey is only to nominate your blog for certain categories if it fits. Once the nominations are collected I will open the polls for voting for the top blogs where voters will be able to rate their top 10 blogs and also vote in each of the categories.

You should only nominate your own blog/website, these nominations will be used to populate the category choices when voting opens. If your blog doesn’t fit one of these categories then do not nominate it, all blogs on the vLaunchpad will automatically be included in the general top blog voting. If your blog is not currently listed on the vLaunchPad use this form to let me know. The categories that can be voted on are:

• Best Storage Blog (Must have good percentage of posts be Storage related)
• Best Networking Blog (Must have good percentage of  be Networking related)
• Best Cloud Blog (Must have good percentage of  posts be Cloud related)
• Best VDI/End-user Computing Blog (Must have good percentage of  posts be VDI/EUC related)
• Best Scripting Blogger (Must have good percentage of  posts be Scripting related)
• Best News & Information Website (No blogs)
• Best podcast (Audio or video podcasts)
• Best official VMware Blog (Blogs part of VMware’s website)
  
• Best Videos used in a Blog (Must have produced a good percentage of videos)
  
• Best New Blog (Blog started in 2012)
  
• Best Independent Blogger (Can’t work for VMware or a hardware/software vendor)
  

So head on over to the survey and nominate your blog or website, the survey will be open until 2/4. Once it closes I will use the nominations to build the survey for the top blog voting which will begin shortly afterwards.

Tis the season for home labs and Veeam will fill your vStocking with a brand new dream home lab. The lab features the bigger HP ML310e G8 servers that are expandable up to 32GB of memory, have 4 PCI slots, up to 8 SFF drives or 4 LFF drives, 2 built-in gigabit NICs and built-in HP iLO.  They are also on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List. So if Santa didn’t bring you a home lab this year here’s your chance to win one. All you have to do is head on over to their site before  Jan. 14th and fill out a form to register to win.

If you’re looking for help and ideas for your own home lab be sure and checkout my massive collection of home lab links. Also Chad Sakac just did a nice post on his own home lab that he recently built. I’ll also be doing a series of upcoming posts detailing my experiences with home lab equipment.

We’ve recently posted vChat #33 with myself, David Davis & Simon Seagrave. This holiday edition episode was recorded on 12/21, the day of the Mayan Apocalypse, we discuss the latest in virtualization, cloud computing, home labs, iPads, storage, our predictions for 2013. and much much more. Enjoy!