Author's posts
Apr 14 2012
Some great vSphere technical resources from VMware
Finding good technical information from VMware can be tough, VMware scatters it all across their websites & blogs and their is no one big technical library where you can view everything. I’m a junkie for great technical information on vSphere and have run across a number of great resources that I thought I would share with everyone:
1. You may be familiar with VMware Labs as they pump out a lot of those great Flings that are unofficial free tools that perform specific functions in a vSphere environment. They also have a publications section that has 50+ hardcore technical papers on topics like VisorFS, which explains the ESXI architecture in detail and vIC which explains Interrupt Control for VM storage device I/O. VMware has rolled a lot of these great publications up into a Technical Journal that they recently published.
2. You can find all of VMware’s patent listings at this website which helps explain exactly how a lot of their technology and features work. Here you can find out the technical details behind their DataMover component of the hypervisor which is responsible for moving and copying VM data for operations like Storage vMotion. You can also find out all the details on how their Fault Tolerance feature works as well.
3. In addition to problem solving articles, the VMware KB has a lot of great articles in it as well but finding them can be pretty challenging. To find them you can search on types of documents and select technical articles that are not specific to problems and issues such as Best Practices, How-To’s and Information documents. Their is also a KBTV video blog as well that gives you video instruction on many of the popular KB topics.
4. The VMworld website has all of the recordings and materials from previous years VMworld’s. You can only access the previous year if you attended or purchase a subscription to them. But the years before the previous year are always made free after each VMworld and still contain a lot of good content. For example you can see all of the 2010 sessions here.
5. VMware has a video library for their Technical Publications on YouTube so if you don’t like reading about something you can see it in a visual manner instead. Most of the videos are fairly short (under 5 min), it would be nice if they could make these longer and put more information in them but they are still good to watch.
6. VMware has first rate documentation, it’s now available in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats, download it all and put it on your Kindle, E-Reader or iPad so you always have it with you. It’s broken into specific guides now for areas such as storage, availability, networking, security, resource management, etc. This documentation is not just how to install and use the products, their is a lot of great information as well that is very educational.
7. Of course don’t forget the great technical papers that VMware frequently publishes, some great recent ones include Storage Protocol Comparison and another comparing Stretched Clusters to SRM.
8. Then there is the VMTN forums which is where a lot of topics get discussed, but there is also a Documents section in each of the forums that contains some great information that is more focused then the discussion threads. For example here is the Documents for the vSphere forum and for the vCenter forum.
9. Finally if there is one blog you must read besides Duncan’s, VMware’s vSphere Blog is it. The vSphere blog has become an aggregate for may other VMware technical blogs that focus on specific areas like storage, ESXi, DR/BC, Networking and Automation. Some of VMware’s great technical minds like Cormac Hogan, Frank Denneman, Duncan Epping, William Lam and Kyle Gleed.
If you have any other good VMware technical information sources let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
Mar 04 2012
HA/DRS/Storage DRS
Mixing ESX/ESXi Versions in an HA/DRS Cluster (VMware ESXi Chronicles)
Mar 04 2012
Virtualization 101
Virtualization in the trenches with VMware, Part 1: Basics and benefits (Ars Technica)
Virtualization in the trenches with VMware, Part 2: Storage, networking, and blades (Ars Technica)
Virtualization in the trenches with VMware, Part 3: Networking in the enterprise (Ars Technica)
Virtualization in the trenches with VMware, Part 4: Performance tuning your virtualized enterprise setup (Ars Technica)
Virtualization in the trenches with VMware, Part 5: Physical-to-virtual conversion in the enterprise (Ars Technica)
Back to basics (Part 1): Virtualization 101 (Virtualization Admin)
Back to basics (Part 2): Virtualization 101: A Storage Primer (Virtualization Admin)
Back to basics (Part 3): Virtualization 101: A Storage Primer (Cont.) (Virtualization Admin)
Feb 26 2012
Top Blog 2012 results
So the voting has ended, the results have been tabulated and here they are. There were around 80 new blogs on the ballot this year and 4 new blogs to make the top 25. This year there was almost 1200 votes compared to around 800 last year. Voters were asked to pick their top 10 favorite blogs and them rank them from 1 to 10. The votes are weighted so a #1 vote is worth 10 points, a #2 vote is worth 9 points all the way down to a #10 vote being worth 1 point. The total points for each blog were added up to determine the results. It’s a pretty time consuming process for me, some of it is automated but I still have to add up votes and drop them into a spreadsheet to determine the winners.
Be sure and watch the special vChat top blogger awards episode that we recorded with special guest John Troyer as we count up the top 25 winners 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 winners. 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 great, 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.
Special thanks to TrainSignal for sponsoring it again this year, be sure and check out their website for their great new vSphere 5 and View 5 training offerings.
Here are the overall voting results…
Blog Rank Previous Total Votes Total Points #1 Votes
Yellow Bricks (Duncan Epping) 1 1 697 5440 243
Scott Lowe 2 3 480 3034 25
NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof) 3 4 419 2592 45
Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac) 4 2 381 2298 46
Frank Denneman 5 6 373 2214 19
RTFM Education (Mike Laverick) 6 5 337 1775 6
Virtu-al (Alan Renouf) 7 9 294 1599 10
Virtually Ghetto (William Lam) 8 25 288 1522 21
Virtualization Evangelist (Jason Boche) 9 8 283 1392 15
vSphere-land (Eric Siebert) 10 7 264 1267 9
The SLOG (Simon Long) 11 11 225 1258 23
Virtual Storage Guy (Vaughn Stewart) 12 15 218 1245 48
vReference (Forbes Guthrie) 13 19 219 1123 14
LucD (Luc Dekens) 14 21 174 1055 20
Gabe's Virtual World (Gabriel Van Zanten) 15 10 204 995 19
Nickapedia (Nicholas Weaver) 16 24 171 948 14
My Virtual Cloud (Andre Leibovici) 17 39 150 914 25
TechHead (Simon Seagrave) 18 14 166 904 17
VMGuru.nl (Various) 19 13 179 815 21
ESX Virtualization (Vladan Seget) 20 23 138 804 19
Chris Colotti 21 - 119 733 28
VMware Tips (Rick Scherer) 22 18 155 718 5
Pivot Point (Scott Drummonds) 23 17 114 615 1
Brian Madden 24 - 96 581 6
Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat 25 - 116 562 1
vCritical (Eric Gray) 26 16 112 483 0
Hypervizor (Hany Michael) 27 12 97 467 4
J Metz (J Michael Metz - Cisco) 28 - 87 447 3
Wikibon Blog (S. Miniman/D. Vellante) 29 69 94 395 1
A vTexan (Tommy Trogden) 30 - 72 386 14
The Lone Sysadmin (Bob Plankers) 31 65 62 383 12
Professional VMware (Cody Bunch) 32 58 73 381 4
Around the Storage Block (Calvin Zito - HP) 33 - 62 378 4
GestaltIT (Various) 34 43 91 377 0
Mike D's Blog (Mike DiPetrillo) 35 22 84 373 3
Chris Wolf 36 41 83 364 1
Kendrick Coleman 37 30 79 355 2
VMware Videos (David Davis) 38 - 58 309 3
vSamurai (Christopher Wells) 39 - 45 308 6
The Storage Architect (Chris Evans) 40 - 56 306 1
Storage Nerve (Devang Panchigar) 41 - 53 304 1
VM/ETC (Rich Brambley) 42 20 74 298 0
VM Guru (Scott Herold) 43 - 71 292 1
2 VCP's (Jon Owings) 44 45 70 287 5
Technodrone (Maish Saidel-Keesing) 45 32 41 283 14
StorageIO (Greg Schulz) 46 - 52 276 7
Virtualize Tips (Brian Suhr) 47 - 51 276 4
IT 2.0 (Massimo Re Ferre) 48 38 50 272 1
Justin's IT Blog 49 - 45 268 9
The Virtualization Practice (Various) 50 49 41 265 7
Wahl Network (Chris Wahl) 51 - 36 252 12
Sudrsn's Blog (Sudharsan) 52 - 35 249 14
Ray On Storage (Ray Lucchesi) 53 - 46 243 1
vInfrastructure Blog (Andrew Mauro) 54 - 42 237 7
Ruptured Monkey (Nigel Poulton) 55 - 42 233 0
The Lower Case W (Matt Liebowitz) 56 85 37 228 6
vNinja (Christian Mohn) 57 - 53 225 1
Rickatron Blog (Rick Vanover) 58 83 44 222 0
Aaron Delp 59 48 49 221 1
WoodITWork (Julian Wood) 60 - 48 220 3
Arnim van Lieshout 61 27 42 215 1
The Cloudcast.net (Brian Gracely) 62 - 33 215 8
Hypervisor.fr 63 29 34 212 3
VMware Training & Certification (Scott Vessey) 64 42 46 210 2
Backup Central (W. Curtis Preston) 65 - 44 208 1
Hu's Blog (HDS - Hu Yoshida) 66 - 27 207 14
Double Cloud (Steve Jin) 67 44 35 203 3
Planet VM (Tom Howarth) 68 35 46 201 3
The VM Guy (Dave Lawrence) 69 26 33 196 1
A Crazy Penguin (Andy Wood) 70 110 34 195 2
Virtual Admin Notes (Anton Zhbankov) 71 37 26 191 12
Virtual Insanity (S. Sauer/A. Sweemer) 72 28 42 189 6
vTesseract (Josh Atwell) 73 - 32 188 5
What Would Dan Do (Dan Brinkmann) 74 - 36 186 3
vSpecialist (Michael Poore) 75 - 35 184 3
ICT-Freak.nl (Arne Fokkema) 76 - 43 181 0
Hands On Virtualization (Barry Coombs) 77 - 28 177 1
Virtualization Security (Tripwire) 78 66 33 176 0
Virtualization, Data Center & Networking 79 - 38 175 1
VMpros.nl (Sander Daems) 80 34 31 175 6
Juanma's Blog (Juan Manuel) 81 - 23 173 11
Storagebod (Martin Glassborow) 82 - 32 172 2
Ivo Beerens 83 61 28 171 2
Virtualization Pro (E. Siebert/Various) 84 - 37 169 0
Rational Survivability (Christofer Hoff) 85 52 30 165 1
SearchServerVirtualization Blog (Various) 86 68 35 165 2
Virtual VCP (Rynardt Spies) 87 63 39 163 0
Everything Virtual (Simon Davies) 88 - 29 161 5
VMworld.net (Andi Lesslhumer) 89 - 27 160 4
Everyday Virtualization (Rick Vanover) 90 40 35 157 2
Jonathan Medd 91 - 32 156 0
Andi Mann 92 97 34 154 0
Virtualised Reality (Barry Coombs) 93 64 34 154 4
Jase's Place (Jase McCarty) 94 47 34 153 1
That's My View (Christoph Hardin) 95 - 27 141 0
vmDK (Damian Karlson) 96 - 29 138 0
Virtual Planet (Ricky El-Qasem) 97 90 34 137 1
VMdamentals (Erik Zandboer) 98 - 29 136 2
A Day In The Life (Adam Baum) 99 114 28 135 0
The Data Center Overlords (Tony Bourke) 100 - 27 135 0
Virtualization Team (Various) 101 87 31 134 0
The HyperAdvisor (Antone Heyward) 102 101 23 132 1
The Saffa Geek (Gregg Robertson) 103 - 26 132 1
VirtualPro (Craig Stewart) 104 75 31 130 1
Run-virtual (Richard Garsthagen) 105 46 21 129 1
Virtualization Stuff (Mark Mac Auley) 106 108 29 127 0
Virtualization Spotlight (P. Redknap) 107 - 23 125 0
Vinf.net (Simon Gallagher) 108 96 24 124 1
Rickard Nobel 109 - 24 119 1
Virtualization Information (S. Snowden) 110 94 23 119 1
VMBulletin (Rick Schlander) 111 106 25 118 1
vDestination (Greg Stuart) 112 59 25 117 2
Virtual Geek (Cedric Megroz) 113 - 22 117 3
VM Admin (Andy Barnes) 114 84 28 115 0
Virtual SMB (Will Huber) 115 - 22 114 4
Poshoholic (Kirk Munro) 116 - 22 113 0
Virtual Noob (Chad King) 117 - 28 113 1
vExperienced (Edward Grigson) 118 - 26 111 2
By The Bell (Steve Kaplan) 119 31 17 109 2
The Storage Anarchist (Barry Burke) 120 - 18 109 1
vFrank (Frank Brix Pedersen) 121 81 20 108 2
VM Today (Joshua Townsend) 122 102 22 108 0
Virtualization for Service Providers 123 - 19 106 1
Infoworld Virtualization Report (D. Marshall) 124 74 17 101 1
mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston) 125 - 17 101 1
VMware Info (Carlo Costanzo) 126 54 17 101 4
TechProsaic (Hal Rottenberg) 127 71 19 100 0
Lewan Professional Services Team Blog 128 - 13 99 6
Going Virtual (Brian Norris) 129 80 22 96 1
vElemental (Clint Kitson) 130 - 23 96 1
Demitasse (Alastair Cooke) 131 - 14 93 2
VMware Admins (Eric Sarakaitis) 132 - 24 93 1
Cloud Buddy (Bilal Hashmi) 133 - 19 92 0
Virtualization Buster (Jonathan Franconi) 134 113 20 91 2
vMacken (David Owen) 135 - 20 91 0
Peacon Blog (James Pearce) 136 - 19 90 1
Virtual Lifestyle (Joep Piscaer) 137 70 16 90 1
Beaver's Virtual Dam (Steve Beaver) 138 104 18 87 1
Blue Gears (Edwad Haletky) 139 93 20 86 0
Knudt Blog (Brian Knudtson) 140 78 18 85 0
Virtual Jay (Jay Rogers) 141 111 20 85 0
VMexplorer (Matt Mancini) 142 - 17 83 0
Burdweiser (James Burd) 143 - 14 82 0
Lori MacVittie 144 100 13 82 1
Robert van den Nieuwendijk 145 - 19 82 2
View Yonder (Steve Chambers) 146 33 20 79 0
VMnerds (JéréÂmie BriÂson) 147 - 19 79 0
Blue Shift Blog (Kevin Kelling) 148 112 19 78 0
Virtual Clouds (Marco Broeken) 149 - 20 78 0
J.F.V.I. (Chris Dearden) 150 73 17 74 0
Virtual Troll (Heino Skov) 151 79 17 74 0
Ken's Virtual Reality (Ken Cline) 152 62 17 73 0
Virtual Future (Sven Huisman) 153 57 13 72 0
Jume (Bouke Groenescheij) 154 56 17 70 0
VirtuallyLG (Lorenzo Galelli) 155 - 19 69 0
IT Blood Pressure (Dwayne Lessner) 156 - 16 68 0
Virtually Speaking (Dan Kusnetzky) 157 103 16 68 1
vPerformance (Anders Hansen) 158 - 17 68 0
UP2V (Marcel van den Berg) 159 - 10 67 2
VMwise (Kanuj Behl) 160 86 15 67 0
Peeters Online (Hugo Peeters) 161 60 19 65 0
VMware Front Experience (Andreas Peetz) 162 - 11 65 2
vNoob (Conrad Ramos) 163 - 17 65 1
ThinkCloud.nl (Martijn Baecke) 164 - 15 64 0
Vinternals (Stuart Radnidge) 165 36 16 64 0
Malaysia VM 166 88 14 63 0
ValCo Labs (Josh Coen) 167 - 11 62 0
vSential (James Bowling) 168 - 11 62 0
Deshifrator 169 - 12 61 1
Roger Lund IT/VMware Blog (Roger Lund) 170 55 14 61 0
VMwarewolf (Richard Blythe) 171 67 15 61 0
Virtualizing the D.C. (Tony Wilburn) 172 115 15 59 0
Gerbens Blog (G. Kloosterman) 173 50 14 58 2
Elastic Vapor (Reuven Cohen) 174 95 11 57 1
It's Just Another Layer (Ian K.) 175 105 12 56 0
vNotion (Anton Gostev) 176 51 13 56 0
Virtual Hints (Matt Lorimer) 177 99 15 53 0
Tech-Tap (Dave Convery) 178 - 9 52 1
VMworldz (Scott March) 179 82 11 51 0
vKnowledge (Ted Steenvoorden) 180 92 13 48 0
DeinosCloud (Didier Pironet) 181 98 12 42 0
Mourad Boubchir 182 - 5 37 3
Enterprise Admins (Brian Wuchner) 183 - 9 33 0
GeekSilver's Blog 184 - 6 30 0
Musings of Rodos (Rodney Haywood) 185 77 7 29 0
Eprich (Paul Richards) 186 - 5 27 0
vReality (Tomi Hakala) 187 - 8 24 0
And here are the top blog category winners…
Favorite Storage Blog Votes
Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac - EMC) 354
Virtual Storage Guy (Vaughn Stewart - NetApp) 158
Around the Storage Block (Calvin Zito - HP) 61
StorageIO (Greg Schulz) 59
Nickapedia (Nicholas Weaver) 55
Hands On Virtualization (Barry Coombs) 52
Hu's Blog (Hu Yoshida - HDS) 42
Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat 40
The Storage Architect (Chris Evans) 37
vTexan (Tommy Trogden) 34
The Storage Anarchist (Barry Burke) 26
Ray On Storage (Ray Lucchesi) 22
J Metz (J Michael Metz - Cisco) 20
Storage Nerve (Devang Panchigar) 17
Storage Mojo (Robin Harris) 15
Ruptured Monkey (Nigel Poulton) 8
Wikibon Blog 8
Other not listed 106
Favorite Cloud Computing Blog Votes
Hypervizor (Hany Michael) 206
DoubleCloud (Steve Jin) 124
The Cloudcast.net (Brian Gracely) 121
IT 2.0 (Massimo Re Ferre') 119
Andi Mann - UberGeek 112
Rational Survivability (Christofer Hoff) 63
DevCentral (Lori MacVittie) 40
Other not listed 352
Favorite End User Computing (VDI) Blog Votes
Brian Madden 262
My Virtual Cloud (Andre Leibovici) 235
vTexan (Tommy Trogden) 87
Virtualize Planet (Ricky El-Qasem) 56
What Would Dan Do (Dan Brinkmann) 53
Wahl Network (Chris Wahl) 52
That's My View (Christoph Hardin) 51
Virtualize Tips (Brian Suhr) 47
IT Blood Pressure (Dwayne Lessner) 46
Demitasse (Alastair Cooke) 19
Other not listed 228
Favorite News/Information Website Votes
vSphere-land.com (Eric Siebert) 284
SearchServerVirtualization.com (Tech Target) 148
Virtualization.info 128
VMware Training & Certification (Scott Vessey) 90
SearchVMware.com (Tech Target) 88
VM Blog (David Marshall) 72
Virtualization.net 64
Virtualization Review 44
Virtual Strategy Magazine 37
Virtualization Admin 26
Other not listed 187
Favorite Scripting Blog Votes
Virtu-al (Alan Renouf) 247
Virtually Ghetto (William Lam) 223
LucD Notes (Luc Dekens) 154
DoubleCloud (Steve Jin) 56
vElemental (Clint Kitson) 52
ICT-Freak.nl (Arne Fokkema) 47
Technodrone (Maish Saidel-Keesing) 46
vTesseract (Josh Atwell) 38
Jonathan Medd's Blog 31
Robert van den Nieuwendijk 21
TechProsaic (Hal Rottenberg) 17
Other not listed 204
Favorite Podcast Votes
vChat (Simon Seagrave, David Davis, Eric Siebert) 182
Professional VMware BrownBags (Cody Bunch) 177
vSoup (Chris Dearden, Christian Mohn, Ed Czerwin) 108
The CloudCast (Aaron Delp, Brian Gracely) 76
Hands On Virtualization (Barry Coombs) 74
Nekkid Tech (Greg Knieriemen) 70
vKernel.tv 53
Virtualization Security (Edward Haletky) 50
APAC Virtualization Podcast (Alastair Cooke) 41
Other not listed 306
Favorite Official VMware blog Votes
VMTN Community (John Troyer) 198
VMware vSphere Blog 135
ESXi Chronicles 123
Vroom! (Performance) 114
VMware Storage Blog 84
Office of the CTO Blogs (S. Herrod/others) 67
VMware vCloud Blog 55
vSphere PowerCLI Blog (Scripting) 55
Virtual Reality (VMware perspective) 51
VMware End-User Computing Blog 45
Uptime (Business continuity & DR) 23
VMware Vision 21
VMware Networking Blog 20
The Console (VMware management) 16
VMware Security Blog 14
Other not listed 116
Best Videos used in a Blog Votes
NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof) 351
VMware Videos (David Davis) 253
RTFM Education (Mike Laverick) 146
Professional VMware (Cody Bunch) 107
The Cloudcast (.net) Video Channel (Brian Gracely) 74
Other not listed 206
Favorite New Blog Votes
Hands On Virtualization (Barry Coombs) 96
vTesseract (Josh Atwell) 92
vInfrastructure Blog (Andrew Mauro) 82
The Cloudcast (.NET) (Brian Gracely) 72
vElemental (Clint Kitson) 67
Cloud Buddy (Bilal Hashmi) 64
Virtual Noob (Chad King) 46
vNoob (Conrad Ramos) 45
Virtual Geek (Cedric Megroz) 43
Virtual SMB (Will Huber) 43
What Would Dan Do (Dan Brinkmann) 43
Robert van den Nieuwendijk 38
mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston) 28
VMware Front Experience (Andreas Peetz) 19
ValCo Labs (Josh Coen) 16
Mourad Boubchir 13
Deshifrator 12
Other not listed 318
Favorite Independent Blogger Votes
NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof) 180
RTFM Education (Mike Laverick) 110
ESX Virtualization (Vladan Seget) 62
Gabe's Virtual World (Gabe Van Zanten) 57
vReference (Forbes Guthrie) 54
The Storage Architect (Chris Evans) 40
Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat 35
Professional VMware (Cody Bunch) 32
VMware Videos (David Davis) 31
StorageIO (Greg Schulz) 29
Technodrone (Maish Saidel-Keesing) 29
Wahl Network (Chris Wahl) 28
Wikibon Blog (Stuart Miniman) 27
vNinja (Christian Mohn) 26
WoodITWork (Julian Wood) 24
Cloud Buddy (Bilal Hashmi) 23
VMware Training & Certification (Scott Vessey) 21
Virtual Noob (Chad King) 18
Jonathan Medd 16
Ray On Storage (Ray Lucchesi) 16
vInfrastructure Blog (Andrew Mauro) 16
Virtualised Reality (Barry Coombs) 16
VMnerds (JéréÂmie BriÂson) 13
VMpros.nl (Sander Daems) 13
VMware Front Experience (Andreas Peetz) 12
Demitasse (Alastair Cooke) 11
IT Blood Pressure (Dwayne Lessner) 11
Deshifrator 8
Virtual Clouds (Marco Broeken) 8
Mourad Boubchir 7
ValCo Labs (Josh Coen) 6
mwpreston dot net (Mike Preston) 4
Other not listed 153
Feb 20 2012
Upcoming webcast on VMware performance management
Join me and Jonathan Reeve from SolarWinds in a webcast on Wednesday, Feb. 22nd at 10:00am MST on managing performance in a virtual environment. This webcast is based on a white paper that I wrote for SolarWinds and covers why monitoring performance is critical, where to get started, key metrics to monitor, why vCenter Server isn’t that effective and how SolarWinds fills the gaps in monitoring performance. You can register for this webinar here. Hope to see you there!
Feb 07 2012
Going to VMware Partner Exchange, don’t miss the party!
HP is sponsoring the Unofficial, Official Community Tweet-up at VMware Partner Exchange. If you don’t know what a tweet-up is it’s basically a fancy name for a party that is geared towards people on Twitter who follow each other so they can meet in person and socialize. But don’t worry, if you’re not on Twitter you can still attend, Twitter is a great communication tool and you might find yourself signing up once you find out more about it.
The party is Monday, Feb 13th from 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm right after the Welcome Reception ends and is being held at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville which is a short walk south of the Venetian on the same side of the street. There will be free food and free drinks courtesy of Calvin Zito from HP and it should be a fun time. We will also be giving away a HP MicroServer to one lucky attendee which will make a great part of any VMware home lab (I have 2 of them in mine).
Attendance is limited to 150 people so you must RSVP to attend, so head on over to Twtvite and RSVP, you can do this even if you don’t have a Twitter account. See you at PEX!
Jan 23 2012
Voting now open for the top VMware & virtualization blogs
There are over 180 blogs dedicated to VMware virtualization, here’s your chance to pick your favorites and determine the top blogs. The last voting was over a year ago and new bloggers are springing up every month. When casting your votes please keep the following in mind about the blogs.
- Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.
- Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.
- Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.
- Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.
So please take all this into account when casting your votes, here are some more details on the voting:
- You can pick 10 of your favorite blogs and also rank them in your order of preference after you pick your 10. The results will be weighted with #1 ranking getting 10 points and #10 rankings getting 1 point. Point totals will be tabulated and from them the top 50 will be determined.
- Blogs are listed on the ballot in alphabetical order with the current top 25 blogs highlighted in bold & underlined text, so please go through the whole list when making your choices (Duncan ended up on the bottom).
- New this year we also having voting in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The choices of which blogs to include in the categories was the result of this survey and my best guessing. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.
- Voting will run until 2/7, afterwards the results will be determined and announced on a special podcast with myself, Simon Seagrave, David Davis and John Troyer live at VMware Partner Exchange.
- Several random voters will be picked to win a copy of the Train Signal’s new vSphere 5 and View 5 video training courses.
- Duplicate vote protect is enabled, we’ll be using geolocation, IP addresses & cookies to protect against duplicate votes. This isn’t Chicago, please be honest and fair when voting, any suspicious votes will be tossed.
- If you are not familiar with a blog you can use my vLaunchpad to see links to them all. Try not to pick blogs based just on names but also take content into account. There are a lot of good blogs currently not in the top 25 that deserve to be there.
So what are you waiting for, head on over to http://vote.vsphere-land.com to cast your ballot and reward the best bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them. In case you need it here’s the direct link to the survey as well.
Special thanks to Train Signal for sponsoring the voting!
Jan 08 2012
Nominations for Top Blog voting categories are now open!
It’s time to do the annual top blog voting, last year we had almost 1,000 votes that shaped the top 25 list that is published on my vLaunchPad. This year in addition to the traditional top 25 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.
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 more than 50% of posts storage related)
- Best Cloud Blog (Must have more than 50% posts cloud related)
- Best VDI/End-user Computing Blog (Must have more than 50% posts VDI/EUC related)
- Best News & Information Website (No blogs)
- Best Scripting Blogger (Must have more than 50% posts Scripting related)
- 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 must be less than a year old)
- 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 1/17. Once it closes I will use the nominations to build the survey for the top blog voting which will begin shortly afterwards.
