Recent Cloud Posts of Interest

Here are some articles that have caught my attention for various reasons over the last few weeks.  They are in no particular order but the content is very Cloud Connect heavy since that was last week.  Enjoy!

• The highlight of the last week was the "hoopla" to come out of Cloudscaling over their Open Cloud Infrastructure announcement and Hoff's response and then Randy Bias' counter-response.  Great reading and Randy provides some good background in the last article!
• Want to give OpenStack a spin?  Check out this announcement on trystack.org.  I plan to give this a spin in the very near future.
• In an interesting turn of events, SunGard is now offering disaster recovery capabilities at their locations from Amazon EC2 instances.  Very cool to see SunGard and Amazon team up to do something a little diffferent.
• I found this analysis & summary of Cloud Connect very helpful by Alistair.
• I'm not sure when it was published but this white paper from Enstratus came to my attention on Understanding Enterprise Cloud Management.
• The customers I tend to speak too are just getting started in cloud computing and this article over on HP's website hit home with many of the introductory discussions I've had with customers.
• This article over at the CA blog does a very good job of using the menu/restaurant analogy to explain the concept of a service catalog and the abstraction of complexity.
• Why do we need to abstract the complexity from the users?  Ben Kepes has an article on that.

That's it for now.  I have some more reading to do later today so you I might pass along some more articles in the future.  Thanks for coming by!

Let's Get This Party Started - P90X Day 1

This should be interesting.  Today I begin a journey that will involve a lot of pain but hopefully some great results.  With the assistance of VMware's Chris Colotti I'm committed to a P90X 90 Day Challenge. Today was Day One.  I just completed my first workout and the pain hasn't settled in yet, but I know it will.  I'm not going to turn the blog into a fitness blog but I will be posting my progress from time to time as well as the tools I'm using.

I'm also going to try to continue to run.  I've signed up for a ten mile race in April and a half marathon in May.  Right now I'm running 5-8 miles 3x a week.  I'll probably reduce that to start but I will do my best to continue my running in addition to the program.

Below is a breakdown of the tools, there are links to most everything from Chris' website.

• Standard P90X videos (they're hard enough!) - Right now I'm recording my workouts on the paper sheets instead of in the iPhone P90X app. I like to take a lot of notes and I use the bands instead of the pull up bar for now and the iPhone app doesn't seem as flexible for recording this information.
• Shakeology meal replacement once a day
• P90X pre-workout drink and post workout drink
• P90X protein bars for snacks (I bought a box but mainly to test them out and see the nutrition content. I really want to just buy something similar at the grocery store, time will tell if I can make this happen)
• P90X diet and website.  I signed up, took the pictures and measurements (that was embarrassing!) and I will be tracking my workouts there.
• I'm going to track my diet at Fat Secret per Chris' recommendation.  Seems like a great and easy to use website and has an iPhone app for food tracking

Wish me luck!

Vote for The Cloudcast (.NET) - Best Computing Blog/Podcast

We're excited to have been nominated in several categories of the VSPHERE-LAND annual "best of" survey:

• Best Virtualization Blog
• Best Cloud Computing Blog
• Best New Blog in 2011
• Best Podcast

We love being able to do the podcast each week - meeting new people, learning from the experts and being able to share that knowledge with the virtualization and cloud computing communities. We hope you find it valuable. If you like what we do and have a few minutes, we'd appreciate your support.

2012: It's Time To Say Something Different

I brought up this idea on our most recent episode of the Cloudcast (.net). Lately, I keep getting the feeling that we're stuck in a bit of a Cloud Time Warp.  It could be January 2011, not 2012 the way many conversations in the industry have gone recently. 

Here are some questions to think about in 2012:

• Where are the new reference customers? (No, Netflix, is NOT a valid Enterprise reference) 
• Where is the new content?
• Where are the new things to talk about? 

It's time for the industry to bring something different to the table. Let's move beyond defining "the cloud" and providing a list of the same AWS reference customers that have already been used over and over again.

This is where my blog and our podcast will hopefully provide benefits in 2012. We have some great things coming! Happy New Year and I look forward to 2012!

2011 By The Numbers and a Change for 2012

A Quick Look Back on 2011

Wow - What an awesome year!  I can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to come by the site!!  I'm still amazed that anyone reads my articles.  Thank you again for all your time and I have some big plans for 2012.  Here are some stats for 2011:

• The total page views for my site as of today for the year will be: 209,139!!!
• I currently average around 20,000 page views per month
• Here's a screenshot from my stats page:

• I also hover somewhere between 700-900 RSS subscribers.
• Feedburner won't let me pull stats for the last year but lifetime I'm at 120,264 views and 20,566 clicks on links in my articles.
• Here's a screenshot from my RSS stats page:

If you combine the total page counts along with the 100,000 I had from my previousWord Press setup for 2007-2009 I'm sitting at somewhere around 425,000 views on my sites since starting blogging in January 2007.  If you would have told me almost half a million people will look at my site, I would have never believed you!

Lastly, Brian Gracely and I started a podcast (the Cloudcast) in February of this year and we have seen explosive growth over the last 9 months.  When I looked at the stats the other day over 20% of our total downloads were in the last 30 days!  We look forward to expanding the content and hopefully providing quality information to everyone!

What's in Store for 2012?

I recently changed roles within VCE.  I'll be leading a team that will specialize in management, orchestration, and automation products from our partners and parents.  The truth is I really don't do much with the underlying components anymore.  I plan to shift the focus of the blog going forward around these products and I also plan to go dabble in "cloud" products (AWS, OpenStack, CloudStack, etc.).  I'm really excited for 2012 and I hope you join me for the ride.

Thank You! Thank you! & Thank you again to everyone for coming by!!

Installing Android on HP TouchPad from a Mac

Yesterday I finally took the time to install Android on my HP Touchpad.  So far, this is very cool and I highly recommend it!  The documentation that is out there for this process is a little "fuzzy" so I wanted to document the links I used as well as what was different for me because I installed it from a Mac instead of a Windows platform.

Here are the links I used, go read/watch all of them before you get started to understand the process end to end.  I used pieces of each of them.

• Here is the link to the actual files you will need to download.  You will need the ACMEInstaller, moboot, the cm-update, and the tenderloin files
• Here is the link to the two files you will need to enable the Android Market to log in to a Google account and download apps.
• Watch this video for an idea of how to install it from a Mac.
• Watch this video for a much better tutorial of the process.
• Lastly, this link will explain step by step how to do the entire process end to end, but it is for a Windows PC.

Some notes on my install:

• I copied the ACMEInstaller to my Desktop to make it easy to find from the Mac Terminal program
• I copied the moboot, cm-update, and tenderloin zips to a folder called cminstall on the Touchpad
• I DIDN'T install the Palm SDK on my Mac. You don't need it for novacom. novacom is built into the Mac and you can kick off the novacom from terminal.
• Once Android was installed, I copied the google app zips to the root of the Touchpad to make them easy to find

So how is it?  So far so good. I've been playing with a few apps, the Touchstone works for charging, and the battery drain in standby seems to be less than WebOS.  I'll post an update as I play with it more.

Please Fill Out the Cloudcast (.net) Survey!

2011 was an AWESOME year for the Cloudcast (.net). We can't thank everyone enough for this last year.  In an effort to make 2012 better, we'd love it if you would take a couple of minutes to fill out a survey on how we can improve the Cloudcast (.net) experience in 2012.

If you can find a few minutes, please head on over to the site.  Thank you!!

Cloudcast (.net) Year in Review and Predictions

Happy Holidays Everyone!  Just a quick post to let you know that Brian and I released a new Cloudcast (.net) recently.  We talk about what was good (and bad) in Cloud Computing for 2011 and we make some predictions 2012.

Head on over to the site to have a listen and thank you for coming by!

Lots of New Cloudcast (.NET) Content!

Quick post to tell everyone that we have released a number of new podcasts over the last month over at The Cloudcast (.NET).  Great topics from great guests!  Links to each episode:

• Episode 23 - Going Mobile: Awesome discussion and debate on the state of mobile devices in our industry
• Episode 24 - CloudPassage & Security in the Cloud: Brian spends some time with Rand Wacker, VP of Products at CloudPassage
• Episode 25 - The Intersection of IPv6 and the Cloud: Ever wanted to know about IPv6 and how it affects the cloud, here's your answers
• Episode 26 - IT Women of the Cloud: Brian and I spend some time with some awesome and influential women in the cloud space

New Cloudcast: Live from CA World with Andi Mann

This morning we posted a new The Cloudcast (.net) podcast with Andi Mann, VP of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies.  Andi sat down with us last night at CA World and we had a great discussion around the state of public and private cloud in the enterprise and how that relates to virtualization trends in the market today.  Fascinating conversation (if I do say so myself) and worth a listen.

VMworld Europe "Fun" Run

As I mentioned earlier, Steve Bryant-Brown have been chatting recently about running while we'll be in Copenhagen for VMworld Europe.  We're both training for upcoming half marathons so we thought 6 miles would be a good training run.

I know this is a little long for most of the IT folks out there and it really puts it into the "Fun" Run category but if anybody out there is interested, please leave a comment with your name and a way to reach you (Twitter handle probably preferred) or get in touch with either of us on Twitter.

We're flexible on a course and time but right now we're thinking Wednesday evening after most of the session and before the party.  Neither of us have run in Copenhagen before but I found this route online that looks popular and takes you through some popular running spots.  We hope to see you there!

Here's a link to the proposed course: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5127481

My First Year at VCE

Last week was one year for me at VCE. In honor to Jay Cuthrell, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the last year of the rocket ship that has been VCE. Here are some random thoughts in no particular order:

• Building an organization from nothing is much harder than it sounds.  My first day at VCE consisted of reporting to the "Yoga Room" in an EMC exercise facility that had been converted into cubes for our temporary use.  Luckily we weren't there long.  Conducting job interviews in the hall is fun but gets old quickly.  Once you have a team, then what?  How do projects get on the Roadmap?  How do they get dropped?  What documentation standards will we all use?  We started with a clean slate.  We didn't make all the right choices the first time but we learned quickly how to make course corrections on the fly.  What a great learning experience!

• Management has been an interesting gig.  For those that didn't know, I accepted a role in Management when I signed on to VCE (hence the reason the technical content on this site over the last year has dwindled but that will be corrected shortly, details soon).  Learning all the management basics (one on one's, team meetings, coaching, etc.) has expanded my horizons greatly but doesn't make for entertaining blog posts.  Over the last year I've hired a team and "herding cats" in the right direction has been an exciting challenge but the rewards have been great.  I have an exceptionally talented team and they make all the difference in the world!

• The idea of a "job description" hasn't applied.  Our job roles change on a frequent basis and we all dig deep to get it done.  It seems at times my team has done everything except our mission (designing solutions).  Because we wear so many hats, we have become a very diverse team.  The "chaos" has given way to "controlled chaos" and "order" is starting to settle in.

• All the haters are gonna hate but VCE is doing just fine (better than fine actually).  I had the honor of attending VMworld this year and the crowds at the VCE booth were amazing!  The booth was constantly filled with great customers asking great questions.  The Vblock Infrastructure Platform message is resonating with customers and the momentum continues to increase.

• The "speeds and feeds" don't matter to me as much anymore. When I first started at VCE, I had a head full of speeds and speeds and lots of technical questions about what made the Vblock Infrastructure tick. Like many of our customers, I found my desire for this diminish over time. Does this mean the "speeds and feeds" aren't important? Of course not. What it means is that some of the brightest folks in the industry work very long hours to make all of that "go away" for you. The Vblock Platform has taken the industry one step closer to the concept of "Utility Computing".