It is that time again!!! For the next two weeks you can vote for your top VMware & virtualization bloggers in a poll setup by my good friend Eric Siebert at vSphere-land.
Since I have moved my blogging to my own site I did not want to get lost in the transition. My new site was not listed with Eric’s list so please do not forget about vBeaver when you are casting you vote and enter my new site down under other http://www.beaverdam.net/blog
To vote you simply vote for your favorite blogs, ranking range from from 1 to 10 (with 1 being the highest vote) at http://vote.vsphere-land.com. Note: your votes must total 55 and only one vote per IP address will be accepted, so you may need to use your mobile device (on a carrier network), home connection, Starbuck’s, etc… in order to vote.
Once all the votes have been cast Eric will weight and tally the votes and announce the Top 25 Bloggers.
TrainSignal is sponsoring this year’s survey and as an added bonus they are giving away two copies of their awesome vSphere DVD training course to two randomly selected voters!
Best of luck to all nominated bloggers!
- Virtualization Blogggers
For my first post of 2010 I wanted to take a look and open the discussion on VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). First, let’s look at VMware’s definition of DRS. VMware DRS dynamically balances computing capacity across a collection of hardware resources aggregated into logical resource pools, continuously monitoring utilization across resource pools and intelligently allocating available resources among the virtual machines based on pre-defined rules that reflect business needs and changing priorities. When a virtual machine experiences an increased load, VMware DRS automatically allocates additional resources by redistributing virtual machines among the physical servers in the resource pool. VMware DRS allows IT organizations to:
• Prioritize resources to the highest value applications in order to align resources with business goals
• Optimize hardware utilization automatically and continuously to respond to changing conditions
• Provide dedicated resources to business units while still profiting from higher hardware utilization through resource pooling
• Conduct zero-downtime server maintenance
Sounds good right? I think so. DRS is a great technology to use to load balance your clusters and I recommend to all my clients, that they take advantage of this technology in their environment. VMware’s DRS will use algorithms based on CPU and memory to decide how to balance the hosts. Does DRS go far enough or should other things like networking be added into the algorithms? Is there something else you can think of that would enhance DRS’s capabilities?
What say you? Is DRS good enough as is or should other factors or variables be considered? My take is DRS is great technology but it might be better technology by expanding its reach from just CPU and memory.
Welcome to my humble hideaway and personal place to post and ramble. Since I currently work for Tripwire Enterprises and will be blogging for them a majority of my blog posts will be located at The Virtual Black Hole. This place gives me a little place to truly call my own.
So let me tell you about myself and what I have been up to professionally. I have been working in Information Technology for about 15 years now and have really been focused on virtualization since almost the turn of the century. I started out doing consultant work in the Washington D.C. area for all sorts of different clients from the Naval Air and Sea Command, Department of Energy to the The World Bank. I worked a contract at the State of Nebraska in Lincoln and then ended up back in Florida where I had the opportunity to work for Lockheed Martin, Amicus Financial, Greenburg Traurig law firm, IBM, Florida Hospital and now Tripwire.
I am currently co-author of two books on virtualization, “Essential VMware ESX Server” and “Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration” and contributing author on two other books, “How To Cheat At Configuring VMware ESX Server” and “Mastering VMware vSphere 4” In addition, I was a Technical Editor of “VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide“, “VMware VI3 Implementation and Administration” and “VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment.” I get the wonderful opportunity speak at venues such as VMworld, the VMware Virtualization Forum and the VMware Healthcare Forum. I am contributor in the VMTN weekly, “Community Round Table Podcast,” and an active participant and moderator on the VMware Community forum. I was recently named and honored to be a 2009 VMware vExpert, an award given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users and helped spread the word about virtualization over the past year.
That’s the quick look at me and I hope to be able to post and share some interesting about my journey. After all, virtualization is a journey and not a project.