One thing I noticed while attending this year’s VMworld in San Francisco was how many people attending the event had iPads. Actually, it was the hottest item being given away by almost all the vendors in attendance at the show. I was lucky enough to get one of the iPads that EMC was giving away. I recently heard that the iPad is the hottest selling tech item in history so far. During VMworld I got a chance to see the VMware iPad application to control your virtual environment and was really impressed. I really think the iPad might have a chance to become the tool of choice for the IT admins to monitor and administrate their environment. I am hoping that by VMworld 2011 we will be seeing a lot more client applications written and ported to the iPad and/or other mobile devices.
Stephen Beaver is the co-author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center and Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration as well as being contributing author of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 and How to Cheat at Configuring VMware ESX Server. Stephen is an IT Veteran with over 15 years experience in the industry. Stephen is a moderator on the VMware Communities Forum and was elected vExpert for 2009 and 2010. Stephen can also be seen regularly presenting on different topics at national and international virtualization conferences.
How Many VM’s Can I Run?
I saw a question get posted on twitter that kind of intrigues me a little. The question was pretty straight forward. “How many virtual machines should I be able to run on a host?” That is really a fair question in itself but what I find intriguing is that this is the first question he asks. Is this really the first thing administrators think to ask when designing their environment? After all there is no set formula on how many virtual machines you can run on a host. You can be a little more exact when working with VDI because for the most part all the virtual machines would be set up pretty much the same way and the numbers can be a little more predictable. That would not be the case when working with server virtualization. You are going to have servers all with different configurations and amount of resources provisioned to the virtual machines. This variation is what will change your slot count and the amount of virtual machines you can run on the host.
Acadia and Its Place in the World
I can remember, in what seems like a really long time ago, about the creation of a new company, Acadia, that will support the coalition of VMware, Cisco and EMC’s vBlock product. I had really long forgotten about the new company that was going to be formed when EMC really started their hiring blitz and campaign to get all the well known talent that EMC could get their hand on. That had been the news and buzz in the industry, as well as a nonstop twitter topic speculation about who was going to be the next person to enroll in Chad’s Army as a vSpecialist. It really appeared that the EMC crew was going to be in the best position to support and sell vBlock technology.
A Look at Stratus Technology
There used to be a FedEx commercial that had a saying “when it just has to be there overnight”. What if we did a play on words and changed the saying to work with Fault-Tolerance and or High Availability. The saying would be something like “when it just has to remain running overnight”.
VMworld 2010 in Review
What seemed like forever to get here was over in a blink of an eye. VMworld 2010 in San Francisco was once again an incredible event with over 17,000 people in attendance. Now that I have had a little time to reflect on the past week, I wanted to share my thoughts on the week and the event itself. The weather in San Francisco was unseasonable warm for San Francisco standards during the event but as a person from Florida who enjoys warmer weather the temperature for me was absolutely wonderful. I arrived in town on Sunday afternoon and enjoyed taking advantage of the power of twitter from the San Francisco Airport. Once I landed I sent a tweet out to see who else may have landed and who might want to share a cab to the hotel. Denis Guyadeen (@dguyadeen) responded right back and once we grabbed are luggage we were off and on our way.
VMworld 2010 First Impressions
The week that all of us virtualization junkies have been waiting for has finally arrived. In case you are not sure what I am talking about, it is VMworld 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco California. The weather for me is a little cool with the wind but then again I am from Florida so it does not take much for me to think it is cool. The sun is shining and the place is packed. All and all a great start for this event.