Back in 2013 I did a post comparing number of days between major vSphere releases that highlighted VMware’s fast pace of delivering new vSphere versions. That fast pace has now slowed down considerably with vSphere 6.0 as VMware wasn’t able to keep up with the zippy one year cycle they had fallen into. Now with the release of vSphere 6.0 we’re back to around the same numbers of days that it was at years ago with VI3. One of the reasons for the delay was most likely due to the engineering of the new Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) storage architecture which took considerable time and effort to complete. Whether that will continue or not as yet to be seen, the next release of vSphere may not be as big as this one was. VMware now has many of their new architectural changes in place so they may speed up again based on the development efforts required for the next vSphere release.

VMware has added a new category to their Hardware Compatibility Guide specifically to show vendor support for Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) called vSphere APIs for Virtual Volumes (VVols). On Day 1 of the vSphere 6 launch just 4 partners showed up as supporting VVOLs on their storage arrays, those partners & supported models are shown below:

Below is a detailed listing if you click on one:

A summary of the the full list of what storage array models are currently supported by those partners is shown in the below table:

I few things to note about the above:

• Of the 3 original VVOLs design partners (HP-Fiber Channel, Dell-iSCSI, NetApp-NFS) only HP delivered day 1 support for VVOLs. This doesn’t mean the other arrays don’t support VVOLs yet, their array firmware may very well support it but they haven’t completed the certification process yet. Expect to see more show up as vendors complete their certification process.
• The Features field in the VVOLs listing is a bit mis-leading as it doesn’t indicate which storage array features each vendors supports with VVOLs such as snapshots, QoS, thin provisioning, etc. No vendor specific features are part of the certification process, the tests may use specific features but it doesn’t know what those features are. Instead this column lists features related to the implementation such as if multiple vCenter Servers (Multi-VC) are supported with the VASA Provider and if the VASA Provider has High Availability (VPHA) features built-in. Note vendors can choose to implement their VASA Provider embedded within the array or externally as a VM or physical server. Of the ones listed I know that 3PAR implements their VASA Provider in the array and IBM’s is external as part of their Storage Integration Server.
• Certification is protocol specific, right now all 4 vendors support Fiber Channel and only NEC & SANBlaze supports iSCSI. Expect to see NetApp show up as supporting NFS and Dell EqualLogic as supporting iSCSI.
• In the listing their is Profile section which lists Virtual Metro Storage Cluster, all arrays listed say No for this as vMSC is currently not supported with VVOLs.
• The VASA provider version is based on VMware’s current VASA Provider specification. Version 2.0 was the new VASA Provider spec in vSphere 6 that was specifically developed to support VVOLs replacing the version 1.0 in vSphere 5.x. I’d have to check the latest specification document but I’m assuming 2.1 was an incremental upgrade to this. I have no idea why SANBlaze lists their as 7.3.

UPDATE:

On the VASA Provider version I checked with our engineering team and that is the version specific to each vendors VASA Provider. So this is not related to VMware’s  VASA 2.0 specification and is really up to the vendor on how they want to version their specific VASA provider.

I was reviewing the Configuration Maximums document for vSphere 6.0 which was released today and comparing it to vSphere 5.5 to see what has changed and noticed that the maximum Virtual CPU support (vCPU) was reduced by half from 4,096 in vSphere 5.5 to 2,048 in vSphere 6.0. Not sure if this is a typo or if this is actually the case, it seems odd though as the support for the number of physical CPUs in a host has increased from 320 in vSphere 5.5 to 480 in vSphere 6.0. Also note the number of VM’s per host has doubled from 512 in vSphere 5.5 to 1,024 in vSphere 6.0 so the reduction in the max vCPUs seems strange.

vSphere 5.5 Configuration Maximums:

vSphere 6.0 Configuration Maximums:

UPDATE: VMware must of read my post and fixed their error in the vSphere 6.0 documentation, the supported vCPUs in vSphere 6.0 remains the same as vSphere 5.5 at 4,096.

You can download it here.

Also check out the documentation here, the first doc that I always go to is the Configuration Maximums to see how things have grown.

And be sure to read through my Summary of What’s New in vSphere 6.0 post and check out my huge vSphere 6.0 Link-O-Rama.

I recently wrote a white paper for SolarWinds on the impact of management in hyper-converged environments and will also be presenting a webinar along with fellow vExpert Kong Yang from SolarWinds on that topic next week. If you’re interested give it a read and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Webinar:

Hyper-convergence: Is it the be-all end-all?

White paper:

The Hyper-convergence Effect: Do Virtualization Management Requirements Change?

This years top blog voting is already in progress and while we wait to see the results I thought I’d refresh a post I did that provides a retrospect on how the top blog voting started and also comparing the voting results over the years.

2008 – The beginning

Many years ago I used to do a lot of top 10 lists on specific topics such as “The Top 10 things you must read about Storage for vSphere” that would list the best documents and blog posts to read on the internet that are related to that topic. One day I decided to do one on some of the best VMware related blogs on the internet, back then blogging was nowhere near as popular as it is today and the number of blogs devoted to VMware & virtualization was in the dozens instead of in the hundreds as it is today. I put together my first top 10 list on VMware blogs back in 2008, here’s what the original one looked like on my old vmware-land.com website:

2009 – The first public voting

In 2009 I decided to open it up to have others decide who the top VMware bloggers were by having a public voting form where they could choose their favorite bloggers. Again back then their were nowhere near the blogs that there are today so I only published the top 10 results. We had a total of around 350 people voting for the first year.

2010 – Blogging starts to get popular

In 2010 the voting became a lot bigger as blogging was starting to become more popular. On the ballot that year were 66 blogs so I expanded the top 10 to the top 25 so more blogs could be recognized. The number of people voting for the blogs doubled with over 700 votes cast. Instead of just publishing the results of the voting I put together a presentation to announce the winners.

2011 – The top 25 blogger countdown with Casey Kasem

In 2011 more and more blogs showed up to raise the total on the ballot to 115. This time we had almost 900 votes cast and to do something different and a bit more fun than just posting the results we announced them on a video podcast (vChat episode) with Simon and David and also John Troyer as a special guest. I also wanted to be able to give something back to the blogger community so as an added bonus I was able to get Stephen Herrod to record a special video to recognize the blogger community and their contributions to VMware.

2012 – Putting bloggers into categories

In 2012 the blogs continued to pile up with jumping to 187 and the number of people voting climbed as well with almost 1200 votes. As the top 25 doesn’t change all that much from year to year I wanted to do more to help recognize some of the bloggers that might get lost in the numbers. For the first time I started having specific voting categories for areas like storage bloggers, independent bloggers, podcasts and more. This helped refine the results beyond the simple voting positions to highlight bloggers in different areas. Also due to the sheer number of bloggers I also started publishing the top 50 blogs on the vLaunchpad instead of the top 25. Once again we recorded a vChat episode with John Troyer to announce the results.

2013 – Holy crap there are a lot of blogs

In 2013 the number of blogs increased to 243, that’s an amazing number, where else have you ever seen that amount of blogs dedicated to a specific technology or product. It really validates both the passion for the technology and the community that VMware has built around themselves thanks to people like John Troyer. This year the number of people voting continued to climb to around 1300. Once again I included categories in the voting results and we also announced the results on a vChat episode.

2014 – You’re going to need a bigger boat

For the 2014 voting we once again had a lot more blogs, I added a lot of new blogs to the vLaunchpad which push the number of blogs to vote for up to 320. With the big increase in blogs I finally had to increase my top blogger list on the vLaunchpad from the top 50 to the top 100 so more great blogs could be recognized. Once again I included categories in the voting results and this time did something different as we announced the results via a live Google Hangout with John Troyer, David Davis and Rick Vanover.

2015 – It’s not just a blog, it’s an adventure

So for 2015 the number of blogs reaches epidemic status as we have an even greater jump in the number of blogs at over 400 blogs dedicated to VMware & virtualization. To add some perspective to this number take into account that this number includes mostly active blogs. I regularly maintain the vLaunchpad and remove dead blogs from it, last year instead of just removing them I started a new Archive section as some of the blogs still have good information on then. With this many blogs it truly becomes difficult to choose only your top 10 favorites during the annual voting process. Because of this next year I will increase that so you can choose an even dozen blogs to get more blogs the recognition they deserve.

Top 25 Results through the Years

• 2014 Top Blogger results – 320 blogs, 1400 votes
• 2013 Top Blogger results – 243 blogs, 1300 votes
• 2012 Top Blogger results – 187 blogs, 1200 votes
• 2011 Top Blogger results – 115 blogs, 860 votes
• 2010 Top Blogger results (full results) – 66 blogs, 700 votes
• 2009 Top Blogger results – 350 votes
• 2008 Top 10 Blogs that VMware administrators must read

The number of blogs devoted to VMware and virtualization continues to grow, this year there are more than 400 of them on the ballot. Here’s your chance to show your appreciation to the bloggers for all their hard work by picking your favorites which will determine the top blogs for 2015. Last year over 1,400 people voted from all over the world and when the votes were tallied the top 50 bloggers were revealed. Not it’s time to do it all over again as new blogs are born and old blogs fade away and bloggers move up and down the rankings. 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, the current top 50 blogs are highlighted with their current ranking in parentheses and are also bolded so they stand out. So please go through the whole list when making your choices (Duncan ended up on the bottom).
• Again 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 3/16, afterwards the results will be determined and announced on a special live podcast with myself, Simon Seagrave, David Davis, John Troyer and Infinio.
• Duplicate vote protection 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 click on it in the survey to view it or 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 50 that deserve to be there.
• Also please keep it classy and don’t try and work the voting system to get your blog ranked as high as possible.

This year I thought I would do something different and designed a custom commemorative coin that each of the top 50 bloggers will receive. I had wanted to do separate coins for Top 10, Top 25 and Top 50 but that would of required paying for a separate die mold for each which gets costly. So instead I put Top 50 on the coin and am using different metal finishes to signify this. The Top 10 will get a Shiny Gold coin, 11-25 will get a Antique Silver coin and 26-50 will get a Antique Copper coin.

Of course all this is made possible by Infinio who is the official sponsor for Top vBlog 2015, stay tuned for more info as things will be starting up soon.

So what are you waiting for, head on over and take the survey to cast your ballot and reward the best bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them.

The vLaunchpad is all up to date with additions and changes so if you are not listed on there right now you won’t be part of the voting so make sure you go look. Note I did add a few late additions to the bottom of the Virtualization Blogs column that are out of order alphabetically, I’ll put them in the right spot later on. Use this form for any changes or additions.

The Top vBlog voting will open late Friday (hopefully – it might slip to Saturday) so this is your very last chance to be a part of it if you are not already there. Also if you haven’t nominated for one of the categories yet go do so quickly if your blog fits in one of them.