I’m at VMworld 2017 this week (obviously, based on my tweets and blog posts), and in the general sessions Monday and yesterday VMware made a big deal about how VMware is approaching cloud computing and cloud services. However, as I’ve been talking to other attendees, it’s become clear to me that many people don’t understand the three-pronged approach VMware is taking.
I should start out by saying that this post hasn’t been officially reviewed by VMware (none of my stuff is) and may not align with the “approved” marketing approach, so keep that in mind. This is just me speaking.
As I see it, the three cloud approaches are as follows:
The first option (private cloud) is, I think, pretty much self-explanatory. VMware is offering VMware Cloud Foundation to help streamline some of the infrastructure management in this space, and then the VMware SDDC stack (vSphere, vSAN, and NSX) are layered on top. Couple that with a cloud management platform/automation platform such as OpenStack (VIO would be a good option) or vRealize Automation, and you have a private cloud. (I’m glossing over a few details, but you Continue reading
This is a liveblog of the day 2 keynote at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. Unlike yesterday, I wasn’t accosted by the local facilities team trying to get a seat at a table in the bloggers/press/analyst area, so that’s an improvement over yesterday. While I’m aware of (most, if not all, of) the announcements that will be made today, I’m still looking forward to the keynote.
Promptly at 9am, Pat Gelsinger takes the stage to kick off the day 2 keynote. He quickly recaps yesterday’s announcements and activities, and then rapidly dives into day 2. First up is a “fireside chat” with Michael Dell.
Gelsinger brings Dell onto the stage and they dive into a number of questions submitted by folks.
This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. There was a bit of a kerfluffle regarding seating (the local facilities staff didn’t want to let me sit in the bloggers’ area because “you’re not a blogger”), but I managed to snag a seat anyway.
Prior to the keynote, a number of announcements were released; here’s a quick look at a few of them:
Pat Gelsinger takes the stage at about 9:05am, after a very cool AR/VR demo. Gelsinger welcomes the crowd, and takes a minute to reflect upon his time at CEO of VMware. Gelsinger also takes a moment to talk about the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, and urges attendees to help support the recovery of that effort.
Gelsinger talks how “science fiction” is becoming “science fact”: exoskeletons, teleportation, and genetically modified organisms via CRISPR. Continue reading
Welcome to Technology Short Take #86, the latest collection of links, articles, and posts from around the web, focused on major data center technology areas. Enjoy!
This post provides an extremely basic “quick reference” to some commonly-used AWS CLI commands. It’s not intended to be a deep dive, nor is it intended to serve as any sort of comprehensive reference (the AWS CLI docs nicely fill that need).
This post does make a couple of important assumptions:
This post assumes you already have a basic understanding of the key AWS concepts and terminology, and therefore doesn’t provide any definitions or explanations of these concepts.
This post assumes the AWS CLI is configured to output in JSON. (If you’re not familiar with JSON, see this introductory article.) If you’ve configured your AWS CLI installation to output in plain text, then you’ll need to adjust these commands accordingly.
I’ll update this post over time to add more “commonly-used” commands, since each reader’s definition of “commonly used” may be different based on the AWS services consumed.
To list SSH keypairs in your default region:
aws ec2 describe-key-pairs
To use jq to grab the name of the first SSH keypair returned:
aws ec2 describe-key-pairs | jq -r '.KeyPairs[0].KeyName'
To store the name of the first SSH keypair returned in a variable for use in later commands:
KEY_NAME=$(aws Continue readingA few months ago, I stumbled across a service called ODrive (“Oh” Drive) that allows you to combine multiple cloud storage services together. Since that time, I’ve been experimenting with ODrive, testing it to see how well it works, if at all, with my Fedora Linux environment. In spite of very limited documentation, I think I’ve finally come to a point where I can share what I’ve learned.
Before I proceed any further, I do feel it is necessary to provide a couple of disclaimers. First, while I’m using ODrive myself, I’m not using their paid (premium) service, even though it offers quite a bit more functionality. Why? Maybe this is a “chicken-and-egg” scenario, but I have a really hard time paying for a premium service where Linux client functionality is very limited and the documentation is extraordinarily sparse. (ODrive, if you’re reading this: put some effort into your Linux support and your docs, and you’ll probably get more paying customers.) Second, I’m providing this information “as is”; use it at your own risk.
OK, with those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get into the content. For Linux users, this page is about the extent of ODrive’s documentation. Continue reading
For various reasons that we don’t need to get into just yet, I’ve started exploring Microsoft Azure. Given that I’m a command-line interface (CLI) fan, and given that I use Fedora as my primary laptop operating system, this led me to installing the Azure CLI on my Fedora 25 system—and that, in turn, led to this blog post.
First, some background. Microsoft has instructions for installing Azure CLI on Linux, but there are two problems with these instructions:
Official packages that can be installed via a package manager are only provided for Ubuntu/Debian. Clearly, this leaves Fedora/CentOS/RHEL users out in the cold.
Users of other Linux distributions are advised to use curl to download a script and pipe that script directly into Bash. (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) Clearly, this is not a security best practice, although I am glad that they didn’t recommend the use of sudo in the mix.
Now, if you dig into #2 a bit, you’ll find that the InstallAzureCli script you’re advised to download via curl really does nothing more than download a Python script named install.py. The install.py Python script really just uses pip and virtualenv to install the Azure Continue reading
Welcome to Technology Short Take #85! This is my irregularly-published collection of links and articles from around the Internet related to the major data center technologies: networking, hardware, security, cloud computing, applications/OSes, storage, and virtualization. Plus, just for fun, I usually try to include a couple career-related links as well. Enjoy!
Earlier this week, I completed the migration of this site to an entirely new platform, marking the third or fourth platform migration for this site in its 12-year history. Prior to the migration, the site was generated using Jekyll and GitHub Pages following a previous migration in late 2014. Prior to that, I ran WordPress for about 9 years. So what is it running now?
The site is now generated using Hugo, an extraordinarily fast static site generator. I switched to Hugo because it offers a couple of key benefits over Jekyll:
Hugo also gives me more flexibility that I had with Jekyll, such as generating lists of articles by tag or lists of articles by category. Along with those additions—the ability to browse by tag or category—I’ve also removed the pagination (I mean, who’s really going to page through 188 pages of Continue reading
At VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, I’m organizing—as I have in previous years—a gathering of Christians for a brief time of prayer while at the conference. If you’re interested in joining us, here are the details.
What: A brief time of prayer
Where: Mandalay Bay Convention Center, level 1 (same level as the food court), at the bottom of the escalators heading upstairs (over near the business center)
When: Monday 8/28 through Thursday 8/31 at 7:45am (this should give everyone enough time to grab breakfast before the keynotes start at 9am)
Who: All courteous attendees are welcome, but please note that this will be a distinctly Christian-focused and Christ-centric activity (I encourage believers of other faiths/religions to organize equivalent activities)
Why: To spend a few minutes in prayer over the day, the conference, the attendees, and each other
You don’t need to RSVP or anything like that, although you’re welcome to if you’d like (just hit me up on Twitter). There’s also no need to bring anything other than an open heart, your faith, and your willingness to display that faith in front of others. This is quite casual—we’ll gather together, share a few prayer requests and needs, and Continue reading
At VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, I’m organizing—as I have in previous years—a gathering of Christians for a brief time of prayer while at the conference. If you’re interested in joining us, here are the details.
What: A brief time of prayer
Where: Mandalay Bay Convention Center, level 1 (same level as the food court), at the bottom of the escalators heading upstairs (over near the business center)
When: Monday 8/28 through Thursday 8/31 at 7:45am (this should give everyone enough time to grab breakfast before the keynotes start at 9am)
Who: All courteous attendees are welcome, but please note that this will be a distinctly Christian-focused and Christ-centric activity (I encourage believers of other faiths/religions to organize equivalent activities)
Why: To spend a few minutes in prayer over the day, the conference, the attendees, and each other
You don’t need to RSVP or anything like that, although you’re welcome to if you’d like (just hit me up on Twitter). There’s also no need to bring anything other than an open heart, your faith, and your willingness to display that faith in front of others. This is quite casual—we’ll gather together, share a few prayer requests and needs, and Continue reading
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.
Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.
Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.
Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:
I’m now roughly six months into using Linux as my primary laptop OS, and it’s been a few months since my last progress report. If you’re just now picking up this thread, I encourage you to go back and read my initial progress report, see which Linux distribution I selected, or check how I chose to handle corporate collaboration (see here, here, and here). In this post, I’ll share where things currently stand.
My configuration is unchanged from the last progress report. I’m still running Fedora 25, and may consider upgrading to Fedora 26 when it releases (due to be released tomorrow, I believe). I’m still using the Dell Latitude E7370, which continues—from a hardware perspective—to perform admirably. CPU power is a bit limited, but that’s to be expected from a mobile-focused chip. My line-up of applications also remains largely unchanged as well.
Some things are working really well:
I’m now roughly six months into using Linux as my primary laptop OS, and it’s been a few months since my last progress report. If you’re just now picking up this thread, I encourage you to go back and read my initial progress report, see which Linux distribution I selected, or check how I chose to handle corporate collaboration (see here, here, and here). In this post, I’ll share where things currently stand.
My configuration is unchanged from the last progress report. I’m still running Fedora 25, and may consider upgrading to Fedora 26 when it releases (due to be released tomorrow, I believe). I’m still using the Dell Latitude E7370, which continues—from a hardware perspective—to perform admirably. CPU power is a bit limited, but that’s to be expected from a mobile-focused chip. My line-up of applications also remains largely unchanged as well.
Some things are working really well:
I’m now roughly six months into using Linux as my primary laptop OS, and it’s been a few months since my last progress report. If you’re just now picking up this thread, I encourage you to go back and read my initial progress report, see which Linux distribution I selected, or check how I chose to handle corporate collaboration (see here, here, and here). In this post, I’ll share where things currently stand.
My configuration is unchanged from the last progress report. I’m still running Fedora 25, and may consider upgrading to Fedora 26 when it releases (due to be released tomorrow, I believe). I’m still using the Dell Latitude E7370, which continues—from a hardware perspective—to perform admirably. CPU power is a bit limited, but that’s to be expected from a mobile-focused chip. My line-up of applications also remains largely unchanged as well.
Some things are working really well:
Welcome to Technology Short Take #84! This episode is a bit late (sorry about that!), but I figured better late than never, right? OK, bring on the links!
Welcome to Technology Short Take #84! This episode is a bit late (sorry about that!), but I figured better late than never, right? OK, bring on the links!
Welcome to Technology Short Take #84! This episode is a bit late (sorry about that!), but I figured better late than never, right? OK, bring on the links!