Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

I’m a bit late to the Internets with this post but happy new year to all my readers – and judging by my WordPress stats there are a lot of you! over 400k visitors this year!

So – what happened in 2010? for me, it was a strange year, I knew from the start of the year that I had chosen to leave the relative comfort of the position that I had held at ioko for the previous 10 years to do “something new” – and that it was that stark, a long notice period and nothing definite lined up so I took a bit of a leap of faith and it worked out as I joined VMware the day after I left.

However, there were plenty of projects to complete before I left ioko and I also cracked on with my blog in my limited spare time whilst also juggling a new-born baby and assortment of home DIY projects

• Presented several times at the London VMware User Group (VMUG) ok – I presented at *all* of the London VMUG’s in 2010
• Took the VMware Enterprise Administrator (VI3) Exam
• Took the VMware Design (VI3 Exam)
• Submitted my VCDX application package (fingers crossed)
• undertook lots of late-night development work on the vTARDIS
• The vTARDIS won the best of show award at VMworld Europe
• The vTARDIS travelled to BriForum and a bit of a US-tour
• I bemoaned the end of SpinVox and started using voxsci – which is almost exactly the same and slightly more accurate.
• I worked on a reasonably big vSphere 4 design for a customer project using HP’s new Flex10 technology – mostly went ok in the end and I posted the resources here
• I mused about the usefulness of vApps and some management problems they could pose if you take the traditional approach to guest management and don’t adapt your processes.
• I used an iPad to solve all my domestic scheduling problems
• I really wanted emulators for everything (come on vendors, get with the programme!)
• I complained about VMware’s licensing if you want to do “cloud”, some of these complaints still stand today (watch this space!)
• I wrote about how the computing super-powers were plotting to take over the world
• I did some interesting experiments with some solid-state storage for VMs
• I swapped from a Windows laptop to a Mac with OS X and quickly uninstalled Office  2011 and am using Office 2010 in a Fusion VM; heretic? meh.

So, what’s next…?

This year I would like to focus on the following;

• New layout and look for vinf.net – the default WP theme is getting a bit tired.
• Spend more time bridging development and infrastructure; these are two traditionally separate camps, and particularly with “cloud” there needs to be a much better integration across the two, devops is particularly of interest to me.
• Working with an “upcoming product” to unify the two camps for the cloud (see what I did there? ).
• Learn to program again, it’s been a long time since I did any real hands-on development and its going to be very helpful in enabling this inf/dev bridge.
• Keep developing the vTARDIS and do not talk about fight-club
• Keep up with the presenting at user groups, conferences etc.
• Learn to play bass guitar properly at least a little bit
• Complete my VCDX on VI3 or VI4.
• Blog at least once a week, I’ve found twitter has replaced some of my “look at this, this is cool” type blog posts that I used to enjoy writing – but it’s hard to get any kind of objective opinion into 140 chars – so I’m going back to blog basics.
• Manage twitter distractions better, i.e close TweetDeck.
• London – Brighton bike ride with a better time than the heavily jet-lagged one I put in this year, and not to walk the beacon.
• London – Paris bike ride (either the 24hr race or 3 day ride)
• At least 1,500 miles cycled (oh and upgrade my road-bike, again..)
• Spend less of my own money on my home lab (donations accepted )…

Have a good one!