An Announcement About An Announcement

Today there is an announcement that you can sign up to hear an announcement from VMware that will happen on July 12.  While this does seem silly, this is what everybody does these days with kinda vague invitations to hear about the next great product or thing or concept.  There really are lots of announcements about announcements. I guess that me blogging about adds even one more level.

It really reminds me of when I first realized how important it is to have small meetings before a big meeting to make sure that nobody was surprised and the big meeting went as expected.

Even though I'm having a little bit of fun about the state of affairs around these announcements, I must admit that I fall for it just about every time.  I like the anticipation of hearing about an announcement a few weeks or days before and then looking forward to what will be announced.  And that is true in this case as well, I'm looking forward to July 12th to see and hear the VMware announcement.


Todd

Be Cool and Know Geeky Facts - ESX 4.1 Maximums

It always fun when you work on projects and configurations that push the limits of what is possible.  This isn't actually true, as sometimes when you are on the bleeding edge you do actually bleed.  Hopefully you don't bleed for very long and then you are back to having fun.

Anyway,  I recently had to consult the vSphere 4.1 Maximums doc again to check the max number of virtual SCSI devices per VM and maximum number of LUNs per ESX host.  These are big numbers and most configurations do not come close to these limits.  It is an interesting document to look through to see what the actual limits are for all the various VM and ESX categories.  Besides, you could be the cool at the party and know what that you can have up to 10 virtual NICs per VM on ESX 4.1 (among other great things!)

While not all maximum values increase with each new release of vSphere, many do so be sure to get a fresh copy of this doc after a new release of vSphere / ESX.

An interesting side note, is that the published maximums are all tested values.  They are not theoretical numbers based on the way the code is written, but actual tested configurations.

Todd

Big VMs Aren't What They Used To Be

I've had the privilege to work on some of the current generation Intel Westmere and Nehalem EX servers over the past few months.  This testing has focused on Oracle RAC (which has been pretty cool in lots of ways) and has involved what I would have considered to be very large VMs not so long ago.  My typical RAC node for testing is usually 4 or 8 vCPUs with 32 GB of RAM, and it turns out these are moderate or small in size.

When the server has 32 cores and 256 GB of RAM, a VM with only 8 vCPU and 32 GB is relatively small.  In fact I'm often running four of them at the same time and still find that performance is great.  Additionally, I'm using vMotion to move these VMs in a matter of minutes from one server to another.

I'm using these 8 vCPU VMs with 32GB of RAM the same way that I used 2 vCPU VMs with 8GB a few years ago.  They are no longer big VMs.  Can't wait to see what we are doing in a few more years.

Benchmarking Private and Public Clouds

Earlier today I ran across a test that compared the performance of a private cloud against several public clouds.  The tests were done by CloudHarmony who appears to mostly focus on running tests against public clouds.  They have a variety of tests that seem to be pretty practical and reasonable measuring CPU, disk, memory, encryption, and something referred to as programming language performance (I thought this is what I was given grades for in CS class...).

According to their blog, CloudHarmony agreed to work with KT, a large Korean telecom and do some testing against their private cloud they had recently finished building.  CloudHarmony then compared the results against the many public clouds that they have tested.  In their conclusion they found that the KT private cloud performed very well in comparison to the public clouds.

I find this interesting as it a key aspect of what everybody is going to have to consider as they begin to adopt public clouds.  When does it make sense to use public vs private?  Performance is actually fairly easy to characterize if you can get meaningful tests.  More difficult will be understanding the costs and risks with doing either private or public clouds. I think that for many organizations, it will make sense to use both.  The organizations that get the mix of public and private right will have a competitive advantage, enabling their business to run more efficiently while maintaining agility.

Everybody is Talking About Oracle RAC on vSphere

The momentum and credibility of running Oracle RAC virtualized on VMware vSphere is building and more is being published.  The most recent example is a great whitepaper by EMC that focuses on using their FAST VP Automated Tiering with a virtualized Oracle RAC on vSphere 4.1.

Because the paper is an EMC paper it naturally emphasizes their storage technology.  It's interesting that they decided to use Oracle RAC on vSphere as the stack to highlight their FAST VP.  They could have picked just about anything, but I'm guessing that they used Oracle RAC on vSphere because that's what customers are asking about right now.  This gives two reasons to check it out.  And even if you are a NetApp, EqualLogic or 3Par guy, you might still want to recommend this paper just for the Oracle RAC aspect - or maybe not - but the EMC guys will definitely like it!

I'm not going to get into the details of the paper, but it does include a physcial vs virtual comparison with a very small delta in performance.  Very interesting stuff.

Favorite Five From Texas

After reading Scott's blog a few weeks ago about his favorite albums, I've been thinking about my own list.  I decided I couldn't do a list of albums and instead of have just decided to list my five favorite Texas musicians.  This list is not in any order.

The Eagles - The Hotel California album is great.  Don Henley is from Texas and I went to the University of North Texas which is the same university that I attended.

Norah Jones - Her distinctive voice and smooth music make it easy to listen to her songs over and over.  We have all of her albums and have them playing in the house often.  Norah Jones also is from Texas and attended UNT.

Jerry Jeff Walker - I have seen Jerry Jeff play all over Texas and I can't wait to see him again this year.  He is most known for Mr. Bojangles, which has been covered by a ton of other artists, but is really at his best on songs like Sangria Wine, London Home Sick Blues, LA Freeway, and Contrary to Ordinary.  Jerry isn't from Texas, but has lived in Austin for over 30 years and much of his music is about Texas.

Stevie Ray Vaughn - The best blues guitarist of all time is from Austin where there is a statue of him near downtown on Lake Ladybird.  His song Texas Flood is a great example of what his music is all about.

Willie Nelson - Willie is one of the greatest song writers and performers over the past 50 years.  I got to meet Willie at a radio station here in Austin about 8 years ago and saw him perform Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground in a very small room.  Willie is simply incredible and has more great songs than I can link to.

You might be able to argue that there are others that deserve to be on the list, there are several more that I wanted to include, but you would have to agree that all of these are pretty good.

Summer Internships at VMware

I attended the career fair at the University of Texas near downtown Austin yesterday.  I was there as part an engineer in the VMware booth to talk to students about opportunities to work at VMware.  We were primarily looking for interns for this coming summer where there are over 100 positions available but also looking for new college graduates as well.  So if you are a student and looking for an internship this summer (or you know a great student candidate), check out our website and submit your resume.

I haven't had the opportunity to attend a career fair in a long time, and I found it really interesting.  It was great to get to talk to so many bright and talented students and think that many of them could end up working at VMware this summer.  After talking with thirty students over the course of a few hours it becomes clear what makes one stand out in comparison to another.

Students that have done significant projects outside of their normal course work or have completed internships that allowed them to gain skills and experience have a big advantage.  Generally these students tend to be seniors or post graduate students, but in a couple of cases I talked to first and second year students that had done some really cool personal projects.

The other aspect that makes somebody stand out is confidence and the ability to speak with certainty about the details of the things that they have done or experienced.  This seems obvious to me after having been in the work force for some time, but looking back on when I was looking for my first internship and job I probably didn't understand how important this is.  Go ahead and speak with confidence about what you do know (without going to far and claiming you know things that you don't - as this will get you in real trouble!).

Todd