Sidney Smith

Virtualization at Cloud Expo I attended the second day of the HP Converged Infrastructure Roadshow in NYC last week. Most of the day was spent watching PowerPoints and demos for the HP Matrix stuff and Virtual Connect. Then came lunch. I finished my appetizer and realized that the buffet being set up was for someone else. My appetizer was actually lunch! Thanks God there was cheesecake on the way… There was a session on unified storage, which mostly covered the LeftHand line. At one point, I asked if the data de-dupe was source based or destination based. The “engineer” looked like a deer in the headlights and promptly answered “It’s hash based.” ‘Nuff said… The session covering the G6 servers was OK, but “been there done that.” Other than the cheesecake, the best pa... (more)

More on Cisco UCS, HP Matrix and ITaaS

I just finished reading Project California: a Data Center Virtualization Server - UCS (Unified Computing System) from Cisco. It gave an excellent take on Cisco’s view of how UCS benefits a datacenter. It also explains how new technologies from Intel, QLogic and Emulex all complement the Cisco gear. As a matter of fact, the first [...] ... (more)

ESX vs. ESXi Which is Better? Revisited.

For over a year now, I have started off telling customers in Plan and Design engagements that they would be using ESXi unless we uncovered a compelling reason to NOT use it. The “which do I use” argument is still going strong. Our blog post “ESX vs. ESXi which is better?“  was posted in April [...] ... (more)

Virtualization’s Myths

Published on Forbes.com The fastest growing trend in IT is virtualization, a software technology that allows you to run multiple servers on a single piece of hardware. Virtualization also lets you start up new servers quickly and move servers to new hardware without interrupting service in case of failure. In addition to saving enormous sums of [...] ... (more)

Discounted Exams Available at VMworld

VMware just set up some discounted certification exams at VMworld. It just gives you another reason to go! Hi all, VMware will be providing onsite exam services at this year’s VMworld. The exams available are the VCP on VI3, VCP on vSphere 4 and the VCDX Enteprise Administration and Design Exams. Both VCP exams can be taken [...] ... (more)