Mike D’s Blog

Hey all of you smart people – where are you? We need you over at VMware. We have several job openings on the VMware cloud team still. We’re ever expanding and it’s a really great team to work on. We have part of us focused on service providers. Another group is focused on enterprise accounts. Yet another part is focused on the SI/SO community. There’s a place for everyone!

Here’s the current layout of accounts.

AMER Service Provider & SI/SO

AMER Enterprise

EMEA Service Provider & SI/SO

EMEA Enterprise

If you’re interested in any of the above or want to see more cloud jobs at VMware then visit http://www.vmware.com/company/jobs/ and submit your resume there. That will get you into the system and start the recruiting/interviewing process.

I’ve had a lot of people ping me lately asking where the heck I’ve been. My last post was back in July and wasn’t very cloudy then either. The truth of the matter is I’ve been working completely on cloud. The market has taken off and everyone wants to launch something ASAP and thankfully VMware has been the centerpiece for every single cloud out there (except Microsoft, Google, and Amazon).

I was recently just at an all day cloud track at TMForum where most of the major telcos, service providers, and enterprise cloud players from around the world had all gathered together. It was interesting to sit there and listen to every single one get up and talk about what they were doing with VMware to launch their cloud. So many exciting things that I really wish I could blog about but NDAs and a complete lack of time have prevented me from doing so.

So here we are at the end of the year and some people are going into change control freeze so I’m starting to get a little more time to catch up and sleep. 7 months with only 4-5 hours sleep each night can really drain you. So what do I do with this new found time? Well, for one I’m going to start blogging about all of the great stuff that’s happening in cloud from the eyes of someone that’s been out there launching customers. For another thing I’m working with our strategic partners out there to develop our joint cloud story so I’ll write about what we’re doing there. The main point is that I need to write and get all of these thoughts out of my head and onto paper.

My first set of topics is going to be all about the vCloud API – what it is, how to use it, etc. I’ve been the main guy behind a real-world implementation of the vCloud API so people can actually consume it. I’m also writing the self-paced lab for the vCloud API and the VI Java API at VMware Partner Exchange 2010. This will help me get some of those ideas out and talked about before they go into the lab.

Well, that’s it. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am around and kicking. A lot of hard work later and some 190,000 air miles and this market is really moving forward. So look for more posts from me very soon. Until then…

As many of you know I’m an aviation nut. I know I haven’t been blogging lately here and it’s not for lack of trying. It’s also not because I’ve just been busy flying (although I would love for that to be the case). Cloud has just really taken off more than I ever thought it would and I’ve been extremely busy with customers all over the world. That’s not why I’m writing today. I’m going off topic to honor a real hero and to blast the media nuts for not picking this up. Instead we’re stuck with 24×7 for 25 days of Michael Jackson’s death. I’d like to honor someone else instead. Someone I’m not related to but I wish I was – Ed Freeman. Here’s Ed’s story…

You’re a 19-year-old kid. You’re critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn’t seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He’s coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

Thanks to the media for not picking this up. Someday I wish you all would report on something other than gossip or whatever got you ratings.

It seems every time I’m in an account and finish talking about VMware’s cloud strategy and ecosystem Oracle comes up as a discussion point. Customers ask why Oracle seems to be going in the complete opposite direction of their strategic directions and cloud in general. I don’t have a good answer for that one other than to agree with them. Take the announcement from earlier last week that Oracle is killing off Virtual Iron shortly after the acquisition. It’s yet another virtualization technology they bought and have subsequently killed (SUN xVM being the other). This is just one of the many reasons customers are seeing SUN running against their strategic directions (virtualization is somewhat crucial to getting the cloud going). You add in Oracle’s licensing practices and disjointed vision and you can see the puzzle pieces falling into place. Meanwhile you have people like VMware, Intel, Cisco, and EMC (VICE) all aligning with customers’ strategic vision and taking them on the path to better days.

OK. So maybe you have to be in sales to really understand the humor in this one. Still, in this economy this is only getting worse. Enjoy the humor post and I promise to start blogging more about cloud soon. I just got back from 18 days in EMEA talking to a lot of our hosting partners that are now getting into the cloud game. Exciting times!

This is one of the more interesting videos I’ve seen lately. It’s a short 2 minute 30 second clip that shows the inside of the Facebook datacenter but more importantly talks about the tasks they’re up against like having to store 2,000 photos a second or 40 billion a month. All that with a handful of engineers. It’s pretty incredible actually. Enjoy the video.

Did you ever wonder what it took to build a datacenter? There’s an interesting company out there called Digital Reality Trust. They build and retrofit datacenter for a living. Their retrofit service is pretty interesting. They basically take an existing building and convert it into a datacenter. They took some pictures of the progression of one of their most recent projects and it’s interesting to see what happens when. They’ve got the retrofit down to a science. This one took just 26 weeks and came in under budget. Not bad for something that usually takes at least twice as long for most companies.

If you’re looking for a new datacenter I suggest checking these guys out. Go and see the entire progress here.

I’m sitting here putting the finishing touches on a presentation I’m giving at TAM Day at VMworld Europe. The topic is Green IT. Don’t ask me why I got distracted and found the video below but it’s a must watch for anyone that does presentations. Enjoy the video and see you all in Cannes!

I just updated my blog with Odiogo – a new service that transcodes all of my blog posts into audio feeds. So, if you don’t have time to read me on-line then you can subscribe to my audio feed in the right hand column and listen to me on the go. I’m sure I’ll entertain you on your way to work.

Disclaimer: Not responsible for being so boring and dry that you fall asleep at the wheel and drive off the road.

This one should wake you up.

Recently I wrote about the new vExpert program at VMware. As a follow-up I’ve learned that vinternals has launched the first ever vIdiot awards to recognize the other side of the coin so to speak. You can nominate someone for vIdiot straight on the vinternals site.

For those of you wondering what kings of things will get you a vIdiot award here’s just a few sample quotes.

Can anyone tell me how VMware keep saying that they are using Para metal Virtualization and overcommiting at the
same time?!!!
- Mohamed Fawzi

We know you don’t get it. That’s fine. Chin up, and do please keep writing.
- Simon Crosby (directed at me)

If you’re really interested in seeing a true idiot at work then you must read this Google finance forum thread. It’s long but worth the read. I just hope one day I get to meet kyungmo one day. What a fool!

So, if you know someone up for a vIdiot award make sure to stop by vinternals (unless of course you’re voting for me).

Recently Jason Boche posted about the requirement for a good script to start and stop your datacenter. I’m sure a lot of people read it and said, “I don’t need one for those since I don’t shut everything down.” Well, the truth is you might need one of these things sooner or later. We all plan for disasters (or should) no matter how big or small we are. During that planning we often come up with playbooks for how to start and stop certain services. We even might come up with a playbook on which services or application stacks to start and in which order. The question is do we ever really check that it’s all correct? That’s something that’s probably pretty tricky to do since we don’t want to shut everything down and restart it to go through the test. However, when the rubber meets the road and your datacenter does go down it’s good to know that you can get it back up and running and exactly how long that will take.

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Have you ever had a really bad day in the office? Has the pointy haired boss ever sent you over the edge and so you ran to the datacenter to let out your frustration? If you ever get completely frustrated work make sure not to shout at your storage – it takes it personally. Don’t believe me? Just watch this video.

Well, it’s the last day of the year. There’s still 12 hours (and 1 extra second) until the year ends on the East coast of the US. I thought I’d take the time to write down my predictions for 2009. The great thing about predictions is you can write just about anything you want and you’re never wrong when the year starts and yet you’re nearly always wrong when the year ends. So here we go in no particular order.

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Just catching up on reading some blogs. Duncan at Yellow Bricks pointed me to a really interesting site that documents all of the sounds different hard drives make and what they mean. Next time my drive makes a funny sound I’ll know where to go to figure out the bad news. This just goes to show that some people have way too much free time.