July 2016 archive

Extend your backup infrastructure with Veeam Cloud Connect and ServerCentral

One of the biggest challenges of backing up your virtual infrastructure is long term data retention and storing data off-site for maximum protection. In the old days we used to send tapes offsite for storage, while that worked it was inefficient, costly with a lot of administrative overhead. Today your virtual environment is surrounded by the Internet of Things and as a result storing backups off-site has become much easier due to the rise of public cloud-based infrastructure. Further complementing this is the shift towards disk-based backup targets which provides greater flexibility, more recovery options and faster recovery, in addition disk-based replication provides a quick and easy mechanism to move backup data across data center or to public clouds.

Doing backup and replication to an off-premise public cloud has a lot of advantages including having your virtual environment and backup environment physically separated by distance, no ongoing capex or opex costs for a backup infrastructure and decreased administration. You also get the benefits of having disk-based backups and having them off-premise so you can easily recover if something happens at your primary site. This is especially beneficial to smaller companies that may not be able to afford the cost of implementing a backup infrastructure and may not have the expertise or time to manage it.

To make backing up data offsite even easier many modern backup applications such as Veeam Backup & Replication allow you to extend your backup repositories to cloud-based service providers. Veeam introduced a program called Veeam Cloud Connect that allows Service Providers to use Veeam Backup & Replication to offer cloud repository as a service and disaster recovery as a service to any Veeam customer. Veeam Cloud Connect empowers Service Providers to set up their cloud infrastructure so that tenants can send their VM data to the cloud and store it there in an easy and secure way.

Veeam Cloud Connect (VCC) has two deployment models, VCC Backup and VCC Replication which can be used based on a customers requirements. In the Backup deployment model a customer (tenant) deploys a Veeam client at their site which utilizes a cloud backup repository at the SP site to write backup data to. A Cloud repository is a storage locations in the SP cloud that store backups of tenants’ VMs. Cloud repositories can be used as primary storage locations and secondary storage locations to meet the 3-2-1 backup best practice. This model is depicted below:

cloud_connect_backup_infrastructureThe Replication deployment mode is setup a little different, since you are replicating you need to have dedicated computing, storage and network resources in the SP virtualization environment. To set up replication components, the SP configures hardware plans and subscribes tenants to one or several hardware plans. For tenants, hardware plans appear as cloud hosts. Tenants can create VM replicas on cloud hosts and fail over to VM replicas in the cloud in case of a disaster on the production site. This model is depicted below:

cloud_connect_replication_infrastructureOf course to make this all work you need a good SP that supports Veeam Cloud Connect. ServerCentral is a managed data center services provider that provides managed services as well as hosting, co-location, cloud, and network infrastructure products for any size customer. Founded in 1999 they have helped thousands of businesses simplify their IT operations through reliable data centers & onsite support. They have data centers located all over the world including IL, VA and CA in the United States as well as in the Netherlands and Japan. They provide a wide range of managed services including the following:

  • Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
  • Data Center Migration
  • Backup & Replication
  • Networking
  • Cloud Storage
  • DDoS Mitigation
  • and much more!

ServerCentral is a Veeam Cloud Connect Service Provider with pricing starting as low as $50/TB a month. To learn more about ServerCentral’s VCC service check out their VCC web page and signing up is as easy as filling out this simple form to get you started on the road to cloud-based backup and recovery. Besides VCC ServerCentral also provides additional DRaaS options for virtual environments.

You can check out the following links to learn more about how Veeam Cloud Connect works and the VCC offerings that ServerCentral provides:

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VMware VVols Reloaded – learn about VVols from last years VMworld sessions

VMware initially made 3 sessions on VVols publicly available right after VMworld last year on YouTube, my session was fortunate enough to have been one of those. All the non-attendees missed out on all the other great VVols sessions at VMworld 2015 until now. Since VMware recently made all VMworld 2015 sessions publicly available so anyone can watch them you can check out the ones you might have missed along with all the other great session content from VMworld last year.

Ben Meadowcroft over at VMware has been doing a series of posts on the Virtual Blocks blog called VVols Reloaded to highlight those sessions. I’ve also listed all of the VVol sessions below as well for you to view. For more info on VVols also be sure to check out my huge VVol link page and if you are going to VMworld this year read this to get a summary of all the VVol sessions that will be at the show.

STO4649 – Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive (Ken Werneburg, VMware – Patrick Dirks, VMware)
STO5888 – Top 10 Thing You MUST Know Before Implementing Virtual Volumes (Eric Siebert, HP)
STO5074 – Explaining Advanced Virtual Volumes Configurations (Ken Werneburg, VMware – Andy Banta, SolidFire)
STO4452 – Virtual Volumes (VVOLS) a game changer for running Tier 1 Business Critical Databases (Sudhir Balasubramanian, VMware)
STO5822 – Putting Virtual Volumes to Work — Storage Best Practices for vSphere 6 and Beyond (Howard Marks, DeepStorage)
STO6263-SPO – Veritas Technologies: How to use vSphere 6 and Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) the right way (George Winter, Symnatec)
STO6285-SPO – Beyond the Hype: The Customer Experience with Storage QoS (Ben Bolles, NexGen Storage)
STO4805 – How Virtual Volumes Will Solve Storage Challenges in the Datacenter (David Glynn, Dell Storage)
STO5522 – Virtual Volumes Technical Panel (US Version) (Ken Werneburg, VMware)
STO5522 – Virtual Volumes Technical Panel (EMEA Version) (Ken Werneburg, VMware)
STO5571 – What’s New in Virtual Volumes (Michael Haag, VMware – Juan Novella, VMware)
STO5721 – Virtual Volumes on NetApp – Ready For Prime Time! (Peter Learmonth, NetApp – Ken Werneburg, VMware)
STO6284-SPO – New Ideas for Simply Better VM Automation, Business Continuity and Data Protection with and without Virtual Volumes (Paul Morrissey, HDS)
STO6559-QT – Cloud-like Operational Efficiency with Virtual Volumes (Juan Novella, VMware)
STO6671-SPO – VMware & IBM: Optimized to Manage Oceans of Data in a Digitally-Driven World (Eric Herzog, IBM – Paul Braren, IBM – Carlos Fuente, IBM)

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My Top Session picks for VMworld 2016

The VMworld Schedule Builder (US) is now available so time to go build your schedules and try and cram as many sessions as possible into all too short a time frame. Before I give you my picks, just a reminder that all the VMworld 2015 sessions are now publicly available for viewing. So now onto this year, I did a post a few weeks back that detailed the session breakdown this year. The numbers have changed a bit since then as some additional sessions were added but the large majority of the sessions are still VMware only sessions with very few (10%) independent speaker sessions. Despite who is presenting at VMworld there are still loads of great sessions and I thought I would detail my top picks this year by category. First up sessions that cover VVols, I did a post already that detailed all the VVol sessions at VMworld this year but here are my top picks:

Disclaimer: I’m more biased towards storage sessions and not really that interested in VDI or Networking

VVols sessions:

Transitioning to VVols: Partner Panel [8619] (Panel of experts on VVols myself included)

  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • Several TBD technology partners

Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive [7645] (Learn from two very knowledgeable experts on VVols)

  • Patrick Dirks, Sr Manager, VMware, Inc.
  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

Snapshots Suck: How VSAN and VVol fix all your operational nightmares [8159] (Snapshots change for the better in VVols, learn why)

  • Pete Flecha, Sr Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • John Nicholson, Technical Marketing Manager, VMware

Achieving Agility, Flexibility , Scalability and Performance with VMware Software Defined Storage (SDS) and Virtual Volumes for Business critical databases [7549] (Tier 1 apps on VVols, interesting to hear the performance angle)

  • Sudhir Balasubramanian, Senior Solution Architect – Data Platforms, VMware
  • Mohan Potheri, Sr Solution Architect, VMware

VVol and Storage Policy-Based Management ? Is It Everything They Said It Would Be? [STO9054] (Customer perspective on VVols)

  • Ben Bolles, VP, Products, Pivot3
  • Jeremiah Francis, Director, Information technology, Financial Advocates
Other Storage sessions:

A Day in the Life of a VSAN I/O [STO7875] (I love geeky I/O deep dive sessions)

  • Duncan Epping, Chief Technologist, VMware
  • John Nicholson, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, VMware

An Industry Roadmap: From storage to data management [STO7903] (Good to hear insights from a VMware Fellow)

  • Christos Karamanolis, VMware Fellow – CTO of Storage and Availability, VMware

Storage for Virtual Environments – What’s new and What’s next for vSphere Storage [STO7755] (Sounds interesting)

  • Sudhanshu (Suds) Jain, Product Management, vSphere Network and Storage Interconnect and Virtual Platform, VMWare
  • SHASHANK RAJVANSHI, Product Line Manager, VMWare

Storage at Memory Speed and the Amazing Future of Virtual Non-Volatile Memory [INF9950] (Also sounds interesting)

  • Aaron Blasius, Group Product Manager, VMware Inc.
  • Rajesh Venkatasubramanian, Principal Engineer, VMware
Container Sessions:

(because I really need to learn more about containers, you do to)

vSphere Integrated Containers – Learn how you can run Docker Containers, in Production, Today! [CNA8717]

  • Karthik Narayan, Sr. Product Manager, VMware Inc.

From Zero to VMware Photon Platform [CNA7741]

  • Paul Gifford, Staff Systems Enginerer, National Specialist, VMware
  • Adam Osterholt, Staff Systems Engineer, SDE, VMware, Inc.

Containers for the vSphere Admin [CNA7522]

  • Ryan Kelly, Staff Systems Engineer, VMware

Introduction to Containers as a Service [CNA7454]

  • Gary Coburn, Staff Engineer – National Specialist, VMware
  • Paul Gifford, Staff Systems Enginerer, National Specialist, VMware
Other Sessions:

Evolving the vSphere API for the Modern Era [INF8255] (It’s William and Alan, nuff said)

  • William Lam, Senior SDDC Integration Architect, VMware
  • Alan Renouf, Product Line Manager, VMware

Tech Preview: Enhanced VM Availability Leveraging vCenter and Partner Hardware Integration [INF8020] (tech previews are always cool and this one sounds interesting)

  • Brian Graf, Senior Product Manager – DRS/HA, VMware
  • Maarten Wiggers, Staff-1 Engineer, VMware

vSphere Encryption Deep Dive: Technology Preview [INF8856] (Native encryption is finally coming to vSphere!)

  • Mike Foley, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
  • Salil Suri, Group Product Manager, VMware

Extreme Performance Series: Monster VM Database Performance [VIRT7598] (always interesting to here about large scale db performance on vSphere)

  • David Morse, Performance Engineer, VMware Inc.
  • Todd Muirhead, Performance Engineer, VMware

Hot Topics in VMware Research [CTO9406] (bunch of smart guys talking about research, a geeks dream session)

  • Chris Ramming, Senior Director, Research & Innovation, VMware
  • David Tennenhouse, Chief Research Officer, VMware
  • Michael Wei, Post Doc Researcher, VMware

Extreme Performance Series: vSphere Compute and Memory [INF8089] (deep dive on compute and memory resources)

  • Seong Beom Kim, Performance Engineer, vmware

vSphere High Availability Best Practices and Tech Preview [INF8045] (another tech preview, what’s coming soon)

  • Manoj Krishnan, vSphere HA Tech Lead, vmware
  • Matthew Meyer, Technical Marketing, VMware, Inc.

Debunking the Myths about Virtualizing High Performance Computing [CTO8120] (HPC on vSphere is challenging and interesting)

  • Josh Simons, Office of the CTO, VMware, Inc.
  • Na Zhang, Office of the CTO, VMware

vSphere Client Roadmap: Host Client, HTML5 Client, and Web Client [INF8172] (everyone’s favorite topic, sure it will turn into a gripe session)

  • Dennis Lu, Product Manager, VMware
  • Radostin Tsanev, Senior R&D Manager, VMware

Zero Downtime, 20K+ VMware vSphere 6 Upgrade [INF8374] (vSphere at large scale, interesting insights from the trenches)

  • Brad Calvert, Consulting Systems Engineer, HCA, Inc.
  • Lee Cooper, Consulting Platform Engineer, HCA
  • Jeff Guillote, Technical Account Manager, VMware, Inc.
  • Joshua Surre, AVP of Infrastructure and Operations, HCA, Inc.
Sponsors of vSphere-land sessions:

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Deep Dive [SDDC9461-SPO] (Anton & Doug, must-see tv)

  • Anton Gostev, VP, Product Management, Veeam Software
  • Doug Hazelman, VP Product Strategy, Veeam Software

1,000,000 IOPS, 0 headaches [STP9439] (learn about cool new VAIO technology)

  • Sheryl Koenigsberg, Senior Director of Marketing, Infinio

Evolve Your BC/DR Technology [STP9438] (cause BC/DR is always a challenge)

  • Zerto
Finally a shameless plug for my session:

Containers & VVols – a technical deep dive on new technologies that revolutionize storage for vSphere [STO9617-SPO]

  • Eric Siebert, Solutions Manager, HP
  • Charles Tierney, Manager, VMware Alliance, HPE
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Denver VMUG this week

There is a Denver VMUG meeting scheduled this week on Thursday July 14th from 11:30am – 4:30pm, if you are interested in going go register here. There are a couple changes happening with Denver VMUG’s that I want to point out.

The first is the location, free locations are always preferred to keep the cost of the events down. Many of the Denver events over the years have been held in Louisville at the CableLabs facility. While this location was a bit out of the way for people coming from areas like DTC, it was a free location and had good logistics to handle the meetings. The reason we kept using this location was because it was the work location of Kevin Divine, a long time VMUG leader in Denver. Kevin was looking for a change and recently moved away to a little town in Minnesota so this facility isn’t available to use anymore. Without too many other free facility options the meeting this week and I suspect many of them going forward is now at a rented space (DoubleTree Hotel in Thornton). If there are any VMUG members or companies in Denver that have a space available to accommodate up to 100 people and are willing to host a periodic meeting please let the Denver VMUG leaders now.

The next change is the Denver VMUG & Colorado Public Sector (SLED) VMUG groups have merged. There have always been two separate groups as far as I’ve known with separate leaders and meetings. I’ve attended and spoke at one of the SLED meetings years ago and it was pretty small group back then, bringing these together makes sense to get better sponsor ROI, more attendees and easier logistics. The combined VMUG leadership for Denver is now: Jason Glumac – State of Colorado, Scott Seifert – IBM and Michael Forner – RTD.

Finally you may notice from the agenda of this meeting that it is longer, has more than one sponsor and has a customer speaker which you don’t see happen to often at VMUG’s. This upcoming meeting has 2 sponsors (Veeam & Nimble), since they have to rent space this covers that as well as lunch for attendees. It also makes the meeting longer, prior meeting used to end around 2 or 3pm and this one goes to 4:30pm. The full meeting agenda is below, so if if you’re in the Denver area go register and hope to see you there.

Meeting Agenda

  • 11:30 a.m. Lunch
  • 12:00 p.m. Veeam Presentation
  • 1:00 p.m. VMware VTA Presentation
  • 1:30 p.m. Nimble Storage Presentation
  • 2:30 p.m. Customer Presentation
  • 3:00 p.m. VMware Presentation
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Infinio Accelerator 3.0 – now supercharged with VAIO

Infinio just released version 3.0 of their Accelerator product which uses server-side host caching to accelerate storage operations. This is a milestone release for Infinio as they are now leveraging the vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) which were introduced in vSphere 6. VAIO is to storage I/O much as the VMsafe APIs introduced years ago was to host networking traffic as it allows 3rd party products to reside directly inline with storage I/O via vmKernel interfaces instead of trying to intercept I/O through more bolt-on external interfaces. Infinio Accelerator 3.0 also has some other great new features but let’s first start with a deep dive on VAIO so you can better understand why this is a big deal.

The vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering were announced at VMworld in 2014 and later quietly introduced in vSphere 6 Update 1. I say quietly as you probably didn’t hear a lot of noise from VMware on this as it’s more an under the covers enabler for 3rd party vendors and not a flashy new vSphere feature. Don’t take that quiet introduction though as an indicator of how important this new feature is, it’s a big deal and a powerful enabler for any product that interacts with storage I/O in vSphere.

To give you a better understanding of what VAIO is all about I’m going to summarize a post that VMware did last year that does a good job of explaining it. As I mentioned VAIO is not really a feature, it’s an API framework built into vSphere similar to other storage APIs such as VAAI, VASA, VADP, etc. that allows 3rd party applications to interact with the storage I/O stream at the VM level in a certified and integrated manner. Prior to VAIO vendors had to get creative with how they tapped into storage I/O by doing things like sitting inline via a virtual appliance through storage I/O traffic. Because it is integrated into vSphere it can also be managed and applied via the vSphere Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) engine that is used with VSAN and VVols.

The benefits of this are it allows for much more efficient interaction with I/O, it also simplifies and standardizes how vendors interact with I/O and it is easier to manage overall. The real advantage of VAIO is for applications that interact with I/O close to the host and it’s VM’s which includes uses cases such as host based caching and replication applications that need to work as close as possible to the source of the I/O. With applications and hardware that operate near the end of the I/O stream their is less of an advantage and not many use cases, this would essentially include SAN and NAS devices as they are much more distant from where the filtering occurs.

Some additional use cases would be to any type of security application, such as malware scanners that need to scan I/O in real time. In addition an application that needs to encrypt data would be another good use case for VAIO. Essentially think of it like this, any application that needs to stop and look at each I/O as it leaves or enters a VM and then do something with that I/O (encrypt, replicate, scan, cache) is a good use case for VAIO. It’s important to note though that with the first release of VAIO (ESXi 6.0 U1) only caching and replication use cases are officially supported. VMware will probably certify other use cases in future vSphere releases.

So let’s now take a closer look at where the I/O filtering occurs with VAIO. So normally storage I/O initiates at the VM’s virtual SCSI device (User World) and then makes it way through the VMkernel before heading onto the physical I/O adapter and to the physical storage device. With VAIO the filtering is done close to the VM in the User World with the rest of the VAIO framework residing in the VMkernel as shown in the below figure, on the left is the normal I/O path without VAIO and on the right is with VAIO:

VAIOWhen an I/O goes through the filter there are several actions that an application can take on each I/O, such as fail, pass, complete or defer it. The action taken will depend on the application’s use case, a replication application may defer I/O to another device, a caching application may already have a read request cached so it would complete the request instead of sending it on to the storage device.

There are two classes of filters right now (caching, replication) and there can be more than one VAIO filter active simultaneously. Filters are executed in class order so an I/O may hit a replication filter first before it hits a cache filter, once an I/O has made it through all the filters it continues on to it’s destination be it to the VM or to a storage device. The below diagram from VMware illustrates the overall VAIO architecture and I/O path:

VAIO Overview ArchitectureVAIO is a perfect match for applications like Infinio Accelerator that are host based and need to see every I/O to perform caching to improve performance. The important role that Infinio Accelerator plays is to prevent I/O from having to travel to a destination storage device which takes time to complete especially if it’s a remote storage device such as a SAN or NAS. A single I/O can take 5-10ms to make that journey or even longer if the device is very busy so to be able to cancel that journey and have the I/O instead take a shortcut from local cache can greatly improve performance. With VAIO the job that Infinio Accelerator performs is much easier as everything is integrated into the hypervisor and I/O can be filtered faster as the filtering occurs even closer to the VM.

The difference that VAIO makes is dramatic, Infinio has performed testing and was able to achieve 1,000,000 IOPS with 20GB/sec throughput and 80 μs response time in their test environment with Infinio Accelerator using VAIO integration. Infinio Accelerator can improve overall storage performance and has some key use cases with I/O intensive workloads such as enterprise database applications and virtual desktops (VDI).

In addition to VAIO support, Infinio Accelerator 3.0 also introduces support for SSD & Flash devices which add an additional caching tier for colder cached data. Infinio Accelerator’s strength has always been the use of lightning fast host RAM as a caching tier, support for SSD & Flash devices allows them to extend that caching even further for even greater efficiency by moving colder data to persistent storage rather than expiring it. Infinio Accelerator supports the latest vSphere release (6.0 U2), is certified through the VMware Ready program and supports any storage that is supported by vSphere including SAN, NAS, DAS, VVols & vSAN. Here’s a screenshot of Infinio Accelerator in action:

infinioIf you haven’t seen what Infinio can do for you I encourage you to give them a try, they offer a free fully functional 30-day trial that installs quickly without any disruption to your current environment.  They also have a recorded product demo that you can see the product in action. Below are some links for more information on both VAIO and Infinio Accelerator.

Infinio Accelerator links

VAIO links

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Introducing the Top vBlog 2016 virtual coin

Once again this year I commissioned a graphic designer to create a counterpart to the physical coin that the Top 50 vBlogs will receive courtesy of VMTurbo. The graphic can be used by any blogger that made the Top 50 and wants to display that accomplishment on their website. Last year I wasn’t that happy with the design, I leverage Fiverr which is a huge community of freelance designers and the one I picked last year wasn’t very creative. I was trying to replicate the look of the physical coin in a design that has a metallic look to it and the designer last year didn’t seem to be able to pull that off. This year I spent more time hunting down a better designer and the one I picked got the design spot on the first try.

So below are the finished virtual coins:

All-coinsYou can download the hi-res images here and re-size them to whatever works for your blog:

Top 10 Gold Coin

Top 25 Silver Coin

Top 50 Copper Coin

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Top vBlog 2016 Full Results

vsphere-land-top-vblog2016-logoSo the voting has ended, the results have been tabulated and here they are. There were 83 new blogs on the ballot this year, 12 new blogs made the Top 50 and and 7 new blogs made it into the Top 25. One blog fell out of the top 10 this year and the competition for the #1 spot was fierce. This year there was over 1600 votes compared to around 2200 last year. You can read more stats about this years voting here. Voters were asked to pick their top 12 favorite blogs and them rank them from 1 to 12. The votes are weighted so a #1 vote is worth 12 points, a #2 vote is worth 11 points all the way down to a #12 vote being worth 1 point. The total points for each blog were added up to determine the results.

If you missed the live results show be sure and watch the replay of the special Google Hangout results show that we recorded with John Troyer and Eric Wright from Turbonomic as we count up the Top 25 results with lots of color commentary. The vLaunchpad and Planet vSphere-land will be updated soon to reflect the new voting results. Thank you everyone who voted and congratulations to the bloggers that made the Top 25. With so many bloggers out there its a tough scene but I seriously encourage you all to keep at it, the longer you stick with it, the more people notice and will reward you with their vote. You guys are all winners, I know how hard it can be to find the time to blog but do know that your efforts are appreciated and your unselfish dedication makes a difference to a great many of people.

This year any blogger that made the Top 50 will get a special 2″ commemorative coin courtesy of Turbonomic, I’ll have a form where you can enter your shipping details up in a few days, those of you that will be at the Indy VMUG or VMworld let me know and I will deliver it to you there. Bloggers who make the Top 10 will get a gold coin, 11-25 a silver coin and 26-50 a copper coin. I’ll also be coming up with a new graphic that you can display on your website if you made the Top 50.

Next year I’m looking to change this process dramatically and make the public voting be a part of an overall bigger method of determining the top bloggers, more on that later. I will also be starting a new vBlogger Spotlight series soon that is geared towards highlighting some of the lesser known bloggers outside of the top 25, if you are interested in being one of those bloggers let me know.

Special thanks to Turbonomic for sponsoring this year and making the giveaways possible. 

Here are the overall voting results…

BlogRankPreviousChangeTotal VotesTotal Points#1 Votes
Yellow Bricks (Duncan Epping)1105444846112
Virtually Ghetto (William Lam)2205314723108
Cormac Hogan330403305417
Frank Denneman blog440320228115
Wahl Network (Chris Wahl)561350227025
ESX Virtualization (Vladan Seget)6137298224433
Scott Lowe blog75-234922269
NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof)891300194725
Virtu-al (Alan Renouf)910132419344
Derek Seaman's Blog107-3255172517
Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac)118-329516527
vSphere-land (Eric Siebert)12120248158216
Long White Virtual Clouds (Webster)1311-2214153917
My Virtual Cloud (Andre Leibovici)14140230147215
VCDX56 (Magnus Andersson)15172236143112
Punching Clouds (Rawlinson)1618221813889
CloudXC (Josh Odgers)1715-2189134224
VMGuru (Various)18257200129628
VCDX133 (Rene Van Den Bedem)193718167128424
IT Blood Pressure (Dwayne Lessner)20266157109411
Brian Madden2128716610667
Professional VMware (Cody Bunch)2229717610249
The IT Hollow (Eric Shanks)23351215798219
Pure Storage Guy (Vaughn Stewart)2419-51358864
My Virtual Vision (Kees Baggerman)2553281177695
Virtualize Tips (Brian Suhr)2661351497653
vNinja (Christian Mohn)2746191457654
2 Ninjas 1 Blog (Manley/Colyer)28NEWNEW11075912
Mike Laverick2916-131347362
vMiss (Melissa Palmer)303001187223
vInfrastructure Blog (Andrew Mauro)3121-1012871510
Virtuwise (Angelo Luciani)3271391376963
Virtual Jad (Jad El-Zein)3352191146721
Viktorious.nl (Viktor van den Berg)343621166016
vXpress (Sunny Dua)353839358614
Around the Storage Block (Calvin Zito)36415855834
Craig Waters375821755794
Notes from MWhite (Michael White)385921915764
DiscoPosse (Eric Wright)39401965749
Virten.net (Florian Grehl)4010363905737
Virtual To The Core (Luca Dell'Oca)414321015654
Justin's IT Blog4220-228055318
CloudFix (Various)434967154913
Virtualization is Life! (Anthony Spiteri)44105617754414
mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston)4531-14905021
SFlanders.net (Steve Flanders)46102566548813
Virtualb (Benjamin Troch)47139926348814
By The Bell (Steve Kaplan)487325854844
Running-System (A. Lesslhumer)4991425648312
Wojcieh.net (Wojciech Marusiak)5086366346914
Glick's Gray Matter (Neil Glick)51137864546416
The Lone Sysadmin (Bob Plankers)5250-2914531
Rays Virtual Exchange (Ray Hassan)53NEWNEW814522
Cody Hosterman545734944817
Datacenter Dude (Nick Howell)5522-33754371
Virtualization Evangelist (J. Boche)5627-29914251
NoLabNoParty (Paolo Valsecchi)576474542214
VMware Virtualization Blogs (Tayfun Deger)586795241914
TinkerTry (Paul Braren)5911556574157
VM Blog (David Marshall)6074145841215
Ray Heffer618423664091
Virtual Langer (Jason Langer)6247-15804073
Kendrick Coleman6333-30683871
The Virtual Horizon (Sean Massey)6414379573832
Perfect Cloud (Rasmus Haslund)657510603754
3PAR Dude (Richard Arnold)668317613723
Tom Fojta's Blog678215593712
Paul Meehan6856-12683650
VMwareMine69690573631
Virtualized Geek (Keith Townsend)70237167763571
The Storage Architect (Chris Evans)719019543424
Mind The Virtualization (Jan Schwoebel)72NEWNEW3933812
Planet VM (Tom Howarth)7311845673371
Chris Colotti's Blog7444-30643291
vCOTeam (Various)7554-21513291
Hypervisor.fr7610024503282
Virtual Red-dot (Iwan Rahabok)77299222473231
Penguinpunk.net (Dan Frith)78229151523202
vBrain.info (Manfred Hofer)79187108533182
Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat8010626553132
Rob Beekmans81NEWNEW443063
Virtual 10 (Manny Sidhu)82246164413037
Mike Tabor839613403006
I wish I could be a VM (B. Ulsamer)84111273929911
Why Is the Internet Broken (Justin Parisi)85NEWNEW432983
The SLOG (Simon Long)86893552940
Rob Steele87209122492890
Plain Virtualization (Wee Kiong Tan)88283195432873
Storage Mojo (Robin Harris)8911425512870
VMware Minds (Anjani Kumar)90207117352859
Technodrone (Maish)9139-52482822
Andy Nash92NEWNEW472782
Proudest Monkey (Grant Orchard)93985452781
vLenzker (Fabian Lenz)94NEWNEW382788
doOdzZZ's Notes (Abdullah Abdullah)9519095362777
vClouds (Marco Broeken)9616670502762
VirtAdmin (James Green)9712831552741
Orchestration.io (Chris Green)98204106522731
The Saffa Geek (Gregg Robertson)991089422701
Tim's IT Blog (Tim Smith)100253153402694
Settlersoman (Mariusz Kaczorek)10115756432697
VirtXpert (Jonathan Frappier)10278-24562680
Let's Virtualize (Kanishk Sethi)103NEWNEW352679
40 Cent Coffee (Josh De Jong)1041040452661
StorageIO (Greg Schulz)10515550452642
Tekhead (Alex Galbraith)106211105442613
vHojan (Johan van Amersfoort)107NEWNEW432613
VMwaretv (Cahit Yolacan)10814739332597
Vcdx181 (Marc Huppert)109331222432562
Steven Kang11016757412551
Adventures in a Virtual World (P. Grevink)1111198382541
IT Diversified (Bryan Krausen)112382270352531
Myles Gray113NEWNEW342535
NutzandBolts (Mark Jones)114276162412502
Ravi IT Blog (Ravi Kumar)115110-5412500
Emad Younis Blog1161204432491
WoodITWork (Julian Wood)11780-37482490
CloudManiac (Romain Decker)11818264362484
vDrone (Laurens van Duijn)119NEWNEW422461
vZilla (Michael Cade)120NEWNEW352465
50 mu (Rob Koper)12193-28392443
The Virtualist (The Virtualist team)12262-60362409
Storage Soup (Tech Target)123256133412350
All About Virtualization (Akmal Waheed)12422399442340
SOS Tech (Josh Andrews)12577-48362330
vExpertise (F. Lenz/M. Ewald)12622599402300
All Things Cloud (Steven Cortez)127NEWNEW462280
Willem ter Harmsel128NEWNEW402280
vRealize.it (Tomas Baublys)129NEWNEW352271
Jason Gaudreau's Blog130148183022111
VMware Arena (Mohammed Raffic)13197-34342212
Notes of A Scripter (Stuart Yerdon)132NEWNEW402192
Ivo Beerens13322087392180
vTagion (Brian Graf)13420167372181
VMware Tips (Rick Scherer)13514510422170
DBigCloud (Daniel Romero Sanchez)136152162521610
vGeek (Kunal Udapi)137125-12352142
Piszki Lab (Piotr Pisz)138NEWNEW342130
Virtual Patel (Manish Patel)13917738392131
RNelson0 (Rob Nelson)14016323352120
VMware Front Experience (A. Peetz)14163-78262116
Ather Beg's Useful Thoughts (Ather Beg)142326184312101
The vCenterNerd (Nigel Hickey)14381-62312101
Blog VMware (Leandro Ariel Leonhardt)144124-20272091
ITQ Blog145NEWNEW322082
VMware Guruz (Sateesh Thupakula)146NEWNEW242078
David Hill14722780302062
NerdKnobs (Chris Nickl)148NEWNEW342040
Cloud Architect Musings (Kenneth Hui)149NEWNEW312023
VMware & Veeam Blog (Karel Novak)15024191282025
Default Reasoning (Marek Zdrojewski)151113-38232018
My Cloud Revolution (Markus Kraus)152NEWNEW272005
Pragmatic IO (Brett Sinclair)15322471301994
vMBaggum (Marco van Baggum)154NEWNEW321994
MyVirtuaLife.Net (Andrea Casini)15551-104311982
SnowVM Bog (Rene Bos)15685-71361980
BK's Data Centre (Ben King)157NEWNEW261961
vDestination (Greg Stuart)15825799301952
VMTechy (Nathan Byrne)159NEWNEW281920
vTesseract (Josh Atwell)1601655401901
The Virtual Unknown (Anthony Poh)161NEWNEW291851
VDICloudn.nl (Arjan Timmerman)16224987341852
vJenner Blog (Kyle Jenner)163NEWNEW281845
VCDXpert (Luke Youngblood)164NEWNEW301830
There Be Dragons (Dee Abson)165NEWNEW311820
vHersey (Hersey Cartwright)166150-16391792
Virtual Chris (Chris Chua)167NEWNEW371790
Demitasse (Alastair Cooke)168269101271751
Scott Bollinger169NEWNEW291750
David Stamen170380210301731
vCloudnine (Patrick Terlisten)171133-38361731
yoyoclouds (Yohan Wadia)172129-43361720
Everyday Virtualization (Rick Vanover)173281108271711
VMware Training & Certification (S. Vessey)174303129311711
vTricks (Patrick Schulz)17521439331700
Poshoholic (Kirk Munro)176375199261690
TechHead (Simon Seagrave)17755-122321690
Federico Cocinalli17819113221681
ukotic.net (Mark Ukotic)179NEWNEW211664
vHorizon (Dale Scriven)180116-64351660
Rimmergram (Jane Rimmer)181NEWNEW291630
Andi Mann Ubergeek18221028291620
Virtualised Reality (Barry Coombs)183169-14261621
Virtual Allan (Allan Kjaer)184NEWNEW331600
Come Lo Feci (Pietro Aiolfi)18592-93171597
Learning to Virtualize (Gorka Izquierdo)186NEWNEW231591
Virtual Elephant (Chris Mutchler)187NEWNEW321590
VM-Ice (Larus Hjartarson)188302114251590
VM Storage Guy (Stefan Renner)189NEWNEW281572
VMpros.nl (Sander Daems)190364174271570
Marius Sandbu IT blog191NEWNEW281563
Virtual Me (Joseph Griffiths)192NEWNEW231561
This is Hyper-Awesome (G. Chapman)193NEWNEW241551
vSential (James Bowling)19429096331540
vTimD (Tim Davis)195NEWNEW311541
Messaging-Virtualization (A. Pogosyan)196NEWNEW211532
Sysadmit (Xavier Genestos)1972058281531
vExperienced (Edward Grigson)19827072261521
Todd Mace199149-50261511
Daily Hypervisor (Sid Smith)200144-56271500
GeekFluent (Dave Henry)20123130241501
Uber Tech Geek (Marc Crawford)202328126241501
Virtually Boring (Daniel Boring)203NEWNEW251503
vWud.net (Steve Wood)204NEWNEW231501
Hans De Leenheer205141-64251490
The Bitstream (Alain Geenrits)206NEWNEW241470
Educational Center (Dean Lewis)207197-10211464
ITPath (Paolo Torresani)208171-37241430
The Eager Zero (Michael Stump)209203-6251432
Blog.igics.com (David Pasek)210337127191420
VMware & Powershell (Greg Kulikowski)21126857281420
Virtual Admin Notes (Anton Zhbankov)21225442291411
Jonathan Medd's Blog213135-78261400
Musings of Rodos (Rodney Haywood)214319105201400
Amit's Technology Blog (Amit Panchal)215334119271391
Virtual Hike (Michael Wilmsen)216NEWNEW231392
My VMworld (Noham Medyouni)217NEWNEW231381
vCrooky (James Cruickshank)218NEWNEW231370
Koolaid.info (Jim Jomes)219344125211362
Port115 (Carel Maritz)220NEWNEW251350
The Virtual Way (Francesco Bonetti)2212309271350
vZare (Preetam Zare)22229472231350
Matt That IT Guy (Matt Crape)223NEWNEW241340
VMware Virtualization Blog (Hernan Paggi)224NEWNEW221340
Unix Arena (Lingeswaran)22531388221331
GestaltIT (Various)226357131211320
JBcomp (James Brown)227372145221310
Blog.bertello.org (Giuliano Bertello)228NEWNEW231290
Ray On Storage (Ray Lucchesi)22928556241270
Stretch Cloud (Prasenjit Sarkar)230168-62251270
Talking Tech With SHD (Scott Davis)23125019181270
Teimouri.net (Davoud Teimouri)232NEWNEW171264
vAddicted (Raffaello Poltronieri)233NEWNEW201260
vCrumbs (Josh Sims)234348114191240
Great White Technologies (Dave Morera)235398163161211
VCDX Blog (Will Huber)23626630201211
Virtualize Planet (Ricky El-Qasem)237180-57251211
VMware Admins (Eric Sarakaitis)238361123231210
VMFocus (Craig Kilborn)23960-179231201
Stankowic development240NEWNEW191192
V-IT.PRO (Kev Johnson)241NEWNEW181190
Virtual Brakeman (Tim Hynes)242NEWNEW201190
VirtualementVotre (Cedric Megroz)243140-103231182
Virtualization Team (Eiad Al-Aqqad)244151-93241171
Double Cloud (Steve Jin)24531671191160
UP2V (Marcel van den Berg)246121-125251160
filipv.net (Filip Verloy)247215-32191152
Homelaber Brasil (Valdecir Carvalho)248NEWNEW151156
The Lower Case W (Matt Liebowitz)249248-1201150
Virtual Potholes (AJ Kuftic)250379129251140
Vipin V.K.251134-117201131
Build Virtual (Ian Walker)2522619211110
Mind Judo (Laurens van Gunst)25326310211100
vBlog.io (Cedric Quillevere)254NEWNEW191091
Virtualization Blog (Shabbir Ahmed)255178-77181091
vPentathlon (Mordi Shushan)256NEWNEW151091
Virtually An Admin (Jonathan Stewart)257NEWNEW201080
vPirate (Abhilash HB)258200-58171080
Virtual Ramblings (J.Nicholson)259NEWNEW231070
vmby (Sergey Gorlinsky)260NEWNEW131074
IT Should Just Work (Chris Bradshaw)261NEWNEW181052
Virtual Bits & Bytes (Niels Engelen)2622675201050
Virtualisatieadvies (Eelco de Boer)263NEWNEW201051
vTerkel (Terkel Olsen)26433369151052
vSamurai (Christopher Wells)26576-189211040
Blue Gears (Edward Haletky)266370104191000
Storage Gaga (Chin-Fah Heoh)267235-32231000
DCIG Blog (Various)268NEWNEW15990
Virtual Wiki (Christian Wickham)2693498020991
Juanma's Blog (Juan Manuel)270179-9118980
vDelboy's View (Dale Carter)271NEWNEW17981
vThoughts of IT (Rob Beekmans)272NEWNEW19980
I'm Tellin' Ya Now! (Mike Foley)2733235019960
Techazine (Philip Sellers)2743123815950
Vroom Blog (Fouad El Akkad/Alban Lecorps)275185-9018930
vBrainstorm (Roger Lund)276275-117920
vRevealed (Amit Rathod)277NEWNEW15921
DefinIT (Sam McGeown/Simon Eady)278228-5018901
vAficionado (Jon Schulman)279NEWNEW14901
VirtualXpress (Prashant Rangi)280NEWNEW17900
Just Another IT Blog (Eduardo Meirelles)281183-9816893
Storagebod (Martin Glassborow)282217-6517890
Virtual Management (Marco Giuricin)283278-514880
Virtual Sketchpad (Luis Ayuso)284NEWNEW19880
Got Dedupe? (Eric Hagstrom)285245-4013870
Virtual Pharaohs (Shady El-Malatawey)286226-6015870
The HyperAdvisor (Antone Heyward)2873364914860
vPourchet (Valentin Pourchet)288264-2414860
ITuda (Lieven D'hoore)28940611715840
Michael Ryom2903607018841
Cosonok's IT Blog (David Cookson)291243-4811830
Everything Should Be Virtual (L. Smith)2923101815830
Virtual Fabric (Chris Beckett)293218-7519820
Robert Jensen294NEWNEW13790
Just My 2 Cents Worth (Dan Raymond)295NEWNEW14780
Sysblog.dk (Jonas Groth)296NEWNEW12780
Virtually Everything (Phillip Jones)2973818418780
Virtual Notions (Derek Hennessy)298NEWNEW16770
Virt ES ()299194-10514751
Everything Virtual (Simon Davies)300172-12816740
Virtually Benevolent (Michael Stanclift)3013969514740
VMexplorer (Matt Mancini)30240710510720
Digital KungFu (Vuong Pham)303NEWNEW15700
VSpecialist (Michael Poore)304271-3313700
Northtech Consulting (Yendis Lambert)305159-14613690
Virtually Speaking (Dan Kusnetzky)306306016680
Hu's Blog (HDS - Hu Yoshida)307188-11910670
M80ARM - Virt. Warrior (M. Armstrong)3084009212670
Techbrainblog (Ganesh Sekarbabu)309NEWNEW10670
VM Spot (Matt Bradford)3103403014661
Linux Coding (Herwono Wijaya)311136-17513650
vSpace (Parthasarathi)312213-9914640
vCloud Info (Carlo Costanzo)313193-12013620
Inspired By Digital Tech (S. Kaushik)314NEWNEW12610
vSkilled (Karl Nyen)315NEWNEW15600
Sundar Cloud Architect (R.S.Sundar)316NEWNEW10580
Substructure Networks (Daemon Behr)317NEWNEW11570
vTechnology Notes (S. Grugel)318NEWNEW15560
Virtual VCP (Rynardt Spies)319258-6112550
Tecnologías Aplicadas (Patricio Cerda)320284-369500
Dervirtuellewirt (Daniel Baby)321410896330

And here are the Category voting results…

Favorite Storage BlogVotes
Cormac Hogan299
CloudXC (Josh Odgers)118
Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac)107
Punching Clouds (Rawlinson)84
3PAR Dude (Richard Arnold)72
My Virtual Cloud (Andre Leibovici)68
Cody Hosterman54
Around the Storage Block (Calvin Zito)47
The Storage Architect (Chris Evans)46
Pure Storage Guy45
StorageIO38
VM Storage Guy (Stefan Renner)35
Why Is the Internet Broken (Justin Parisi)34
Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat33
Paul Meehan26
vTricks (Patrick Schulz)26
Ruptured Monkey (Nigel Poulton)22
Vipin V.K.22
Penguinpunk.net21
GeekFluent (Dave Henry)20
Great White Technologies (Dave Morera)17
This is Hyper-Awesome (G. Chapman)16
Pragmatic IO (Brett Sinclair)15
Hus Blog6
Favorite Scripting BlogVotes
Virtually Ghetto (William Lam)395
Virtu-al (Alan Renouf)176
Wahl Network (Chris Wahl)158
vCO Team81
Jonathan Medds Blog53
That Could Be A Problem (Kyle Ruddy)53
DBigCloud (Daniel Romero Sanchez)52
Double Cloud (Steve Jin)49
My Cloud Revolution (Markus Kraus)43
Orchestration.io (Chris Green)42
Steven Kang42
Michael Ryom39
vLenzker (Fabian Lenz)36
Favorite PodcastVotes
vBrownBag (Cody Bunch)245
Geek Whispers (Troyer/Brender/Lewis)120
Datanauts Podcast (Ethan Banks & Chris Wahl)106
Nutanix .Next Community Podcast (Angelo Luciani)101
VMware Communities Roundtable (Various)71
In Tech We Trust Podcast (Farley/Poulton/Vanover/Chapman/Malhoit)62
StorageIO60
Veeam Community Podcast (R. Vanover)60
Virtually Speaking (J. Nicholson/P. Fletcher)58
Virtualization Security (Edward Haletky)49
GC On Demand (Eric Wright/VMTurbo)46
vChat (Siebert/Seagrave/Davis)43
vSoup (Dearden/Mohn)37
The CloudCast (A. Delp & B. Gracely)35
Tech On Tap (NetApp/Justin Parisi)31
Favorite New BlogVotes
Matt That IT Guy (Matt Crape)119
Rays Virtual Exchange (Ray Hassan)111
VM Storage Guy (Stefan Renner)111
vTimD (Tim Davis)103
VirtualXpress (Prashant Rangi)77
vMBaggum (Marco van Baggum)76
vLenzker (Fabian Lenz)75
Rob Beekmans72
Lets Virtualize (Kanishk Sethi)63
Learning to Virtualize (Gorka Izquierdo)56
VMware Guruz (Sateesh Thupakula)56
Homelaber Brasil (Valdecir Carvalho)50
vAddicted (Raffaello Poltronieri)47
vDelboys View (Dale Carter)47
Inspired By Digital Tech (S. Kaushik)36
vRevealed (Amit Rathod)31
Favorite Independent BloggerVotes
ESX Virtualization (Vladan Seget)115
VCDX133 (Rene Van Den Bedem)96
NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof)82
The IT Hollow (Eric Shanks)67
CloudFix (Various)44
vNinja (Christian Mohn)44
Virtualization is Life! (Anthony Spiteri)43
3PAR Dude (Richard Arnold)40
Come Lo Feci (Pietro Aiolfi)38
StorageIO37
VM Blog (David Marshall)28
NoLabNoParty (Paolo Valsecchi)25
ITQ Blog24
WoodITWork (Julian Wood)22
mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston)21
Mike Tabor20
Viktorious.nl (Viktor van den Berg)20
Virtual Patel (Manish Patel)20
VMware TV (Cahit YOLACAN)19
doOdzZZs Notes (Abdullah Abdullah)18
My VMworld (Noham Medyouni)18
Running-System (Andreas Lesslhumer)18
vLenzker (Fabian Lenz)18
VMware Front Experience (A. Peetz)18
DBigCloud (Daniel Romero Sanchez)17
Myles Gray17
Settlersoman (Mariusz Kaczorek)17
Matt That IT Guy (Matt Crape)16
Rob Beekmans16
VMware & Veeam Blog (Karel Novak)16
GeekFluent (Dave Henry)15
Pragmatic IO (Brett Sinclair)15
Tims IT Blog (Tim Smith)15
The vCenterNerd (Nigel Hickey)14
Marius Sandbu IT blog13
Great White Technologies (Dave Morera)12
Lets Virtualize (Kanishk Sethi)12
ITPath (Paolo Torresani)11
vAddicted (Raffaello Poltronieri)11
Michael Ryom10
The Virtual Horizon (Sean Massey)10
vBlog.io (Cedric Quillevere)10
Vipin V.K.10
Federico Cocinalli8
ukotic.net (Mark Ukotic)8
vCloudnine (Patrick Terlisten)8
Virtualization Blog (Shabbir Ahmed)8
Homelaber Brasil (Valdecir Carvalho)7
Virtually An Admin (Jonathan Stewart)7
VMFocus (Craig Kilborn)7
RNelson0 (Rob Nelson)6
Port115 (Carel Maritz)5
vMBaggum (Marco van Baggum)5
Inspired By Digital Tech (S. Kaushik)3
Learning to Virtualize (Gorka Izquierdo)1
Virtualisatieadvies (Eelco de Boer)1
Favorite VDI BlogVotes
Brian Madden316
The Virtual Horizon (Sean Massey)171
My Virtual Vision (Kees Baggerman)156
Virtualize Tips (Brian Suhr)156
vHojan (Johan van Amersfoort)87
Rob Beekmans84
Marius Sandbu IT blog81
Come Lo Feci (Pietro Aiolfi)72
vDelboys View (Dale Carter)45
Favorite News/Information WebsiteVotes
The Register (Various)249
vSphere-land (Eric Siebert)209
CRN (Various)106
Petri IT Knowledgebase (Various)96
VM Blog (David Marshall)78
Virtualization.Info (Various)60
InfoWorld (Various)57
Tech Target53
Virtualization Admin (Various)52
Cloud Cow (Various)51
Virtualization Software (Davis/Lowe)46
Silicon Angle (Various)45
Virtualization Review (Various)38
Network World (Various)32
The Virtualization Practice (Various)32
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