Furoris News

This months monster edition of vNews is feature length presentation. So sit back relax as you hear our dulcet tones discuss the news. It’s bumper packed because it includes news of Dec and Jan compiled into one meaty edition.

As ever you welcome to download the vNews PPT file for use at your VMUG. Just give credit where credit is due – and name check the source & me & Stu. All the links mentioned in the vNews are in the PPT as well. I could cut them out and put them here to click – that would save you downloading a couple of MB for a link. But to be honest that would be too much work. I’m typing this on the free WiFi at Hong Kong airport after 12hr flight, waiting for connection to Brisbane – so extracting links doesn’t feel like a big priority right now…

This months vNews includes contributions from , Eric Sloof, Chad Sakac, Rick Sherer, and Scott Lowe. On the vendors side we have stuff from HP, Microsoft, Citrix and VMware.

Oh, If you don’t get the reference in the title of the post – you need to use google…

You can watch the video in number of formats. Youtube very kindly upgraded my account recently so I can now do longer videos on youtube.com. The quality gets pretty degraded on the Youtube version, so if you would prefer something a bit more native (but a perhaps a bit longer to buffer) you can use the video directly underneath here.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the vNews it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the chinwag/vendorwag podcast will be download when ever I do them – along with your monthly vNews. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags/Vendorwags/vNwws there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

Finally, If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

NOTE: The first couple of minutes of this weeks vendorwag suffers from a bit of Skype latency, where the odd word is lost here and there. However, the call quality does improve massively after the first 2 or 3 minutes. Stick with us!

This weeks vendorwag is with Gil Levonai of Zerto. In case you don’t know Zerto are company that provides replication of VMs for DR purposes – and they use a virtual appliance model to add a replication layer to virtualization – as well as automating the failover and failback for both test and real DR events. In case you haven’t figured it out yet the company name is a pun on the phrase “Zero RTO”…

Here’s Gil’s bio:
Gil Levonai is vice president of products for Zerto. He spearheads marketing and product management, supporting the corporate vision by leading the go-to-market strategy. With more than 20 years of experience in various technology management disciplines including marketing, product management, sales, business development and R&D, Gil most recently served as principal at Gil Levonai Strategic Marketing, a consulting firm specializing in high-tech marketing. He previously served as vice president of marketing and strategy at NextNine, a company providing service automation solutions to global enterprises.

Here’s my list of questions…

Q. I was quite struck by some “unique” features in Zerto that haven’t seen elsewhere. The one that really made me smile was the CDP/Journal rollback. Can you explain how this works and give us a quick demo???

Q. Replication in Zerto is “Async” but you also talk about it consistently replicating. I’m confused… I thought asynch meant every N minutes, so how can it be constantly replicating???

Q. There will be some who say that replication is now a commodity – given that many storage vendors now roll that into their products. How would react to such an assertion? Isn’t it really about automation, not replication???

Q. What controls are there if on bandwidth, latency – what happens if a link goes down or WAN link becomes unexpected saturated???

Q. I’m thinking of new future of storage – Cheap, commodity based storage for capacity with no fancy features – with a VA’s on top doing fancy things like backup, DR… Is that the future you see too???

Q. What improvements, enhancements are planned for Zerto? What are customers really asking to be improved or added?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

Was surprised to hear that the date for this years VMworld Europe event has changed. Back in San Francisco the boards were saying October 16-18th. The location remains the same – Barcelona – but the event is now due to happen the week before from the 9-11th October. So time to update your calender..

I first found this out from http://www.vmguru.nl – and I’m rather liking his photo!

OK. Its perhaps a bit early for the presidential elections – but it’s never too early to vote in Eric Siebert’s every popular popularity contest. If you vote for me, I promise to cry and thank my mom & dad…

Eric  has once again started a poll to ask people to vote for their favorite VMware & Virtualization blogs. On his vSphere-Land page you can see the results of the previous voting. This year Eric has added some extra categories for which you can vote.

This year the voting is sponsored by TrainSignal and you have chance to win copies of their vSphere5 and View training videos.

You can vote here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/786135/Top-VMware-virtualization-blogs-2012

Eric suggest you use this criteria in your voting:
Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.
Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.
Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.
Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.

At the moment I’m working through the typo corrections for the second pressing of the SRM 5.0 book. In the main these are little corrections in the text. But occasionally, I come across something a little bit more major. You would not believe how much work goes into the review process – but even the most rigorous process – its still possible for something to slip through the net. I guess its testament to how reading something on screen is never the same as reading in the printed hard-copy format.

There will be an official errata but in the interest in turning these around rapidly I wanted to blog about them here.

I intend to main this page as find errors or mistakes. If you spot any technical errors or mistakes like this – let me know and if I think they warrant it I will include them on this page…

iSCSI Chapters and Static Discovery
There’s a couple of chapters where I cover iSCSI in EMC Celerra, Dell Equallogic and HP P4000 – where I state that the iSCSI Software Initiator does not support “static discovery” of target. Actually, if you look into the static discovery tab after using a iSCSI SRA you will see entries populated there.

page 91 – At the Protected Site – (With thanks to Michael Armstrong)
This typo was found my Michael Armstrong. In it I refer to carrying at task out on a EMC Clarrion at the Protected Site. Step 1 however, erroneously says that “in my case, this called “New_Jersey_Cluster1″. That should, of course read “New_York_Cluster1″. As a consequence the graphic (Figure 4.22) is incorrect as it shows me selecting the “New Jersey” storage group in UniSphere, when it should have the “New York” storage group selected instead.

page 209 – vSphere Replication and IP Pools
In the beta programme the set-up of VR required the use of IP Pools. This was subsequently dropped in the release candidate and the GA. This reference slipped through the net. To be clear, VR does NOT require IP Pools.

page 218 – NFS and iSCSI
In the VR chapter I have a screen grab where a VM on local storage in the Protected Site being replicated to local storage in the Recovery Site. However in the text I say that one VM is on NFS storage, and the other is on iSCSI storage. That isn’t the case. It’s not a showstopper – if you remember VR does not care what the datastore type is…

page 228 – SRM Communication on port 80
My explanation of why the SRM installer uses Port 80 in the book isn’t a bad one. But after publication I found a better explanation which I blogged about recently. It’s largely of acedemic interest this one, but in the interests of being as technically accurate this better…

page 237 – Invalid Site name mentioned
This is a cosmetic error. Throughout the book I make reference to site of New York, New Jersey and later still Washington DC. For some bizarre reason I name check “Chicago” here. That should really read “New Jersey”.

One of my readers recently contacted me about how SRM communicates to vCenter both during an install, and then afterwards once the service is up and running. The odd thing is this… During the install the communication to vCenter appears to be non-secured on TCP port 80, but after the install is on the secured port of TCP 443… In the book I conjecture that some redirection takes place, its actually a little bit more sophisticated than that…

Here’s what the offical guide says: 

Port 80 is provided as the default to use for the initial connection to the remote site. After the initial HTTP connection is made, the two sites establish an SSL connection over port 80 to use for subsequent connections.

Duncan Epping on his Yellow Bricks site has this more revealing statement:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/11/srm-faq/

Why is Port 80 used in the install but port 443 later? During install of SRM port 80 is specified and you cannot type in 443, but after the install is complete than SRM talks to VC on 443, so why is 80 specified in the install? Even though SRM uses SSL when it communicates to VC, it does not use port 443. SRM establishes a TCP connection to port 80, than uses an HTTP CONNECT request to establish a tunnel to the VC servers, then does an SSL handshake with the VC over that tunneled connection. The SRM installation enforces these semantics.

Thanks to Bas Vinken for bring these two bits of information to my attention. Quite why the communcation is this done this way isn’t really explained. But I guess it is a reminder that port numbers are some what arbitary, and they follow a convention of being associated with certain services – I guess you would calll them the “well-known ports”. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing hard coded about these ports and how they are used..

If first meet Ed Czerwin in the flesh last year at the Boston TechField Day. We bumped into each other again in VMworld, and I’ve been planning to have him on my show for a while. Ed is prolific blogger and is co-host of virtualization podcast vSoup.

If you want to follow Ed on Twitter then you can locate him here

We chat around a number of topics including:

• Is a multi hypervisor datacenter a real future option
• What is virtualization adoption in Asia pacific like? Where are they on their journey?
• Is vSphere5 is proving as popular as vSphere4?
• What’s your opinion on the whole VMTN Subscription Movement?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

You might not know this but in VMware View 5.0 the screws have been tightened light bit more with regards to View Client and SSL certificates. Up until this point you could get away with using the bulti-in certificates generated by the installer. That’s no longer the case, because just as with web-browsers – the new clients all check to see if the certificate matches the name that your connecting with and whether or not the certificate is trusted.

Users can find these sort of pop-ups alarming, and you can guarantee a certain proportion of them will find up at the feet of the help desk people. In this article on techtarget’s site I take you though the process of requesting, importing and configuring SSL certificates for View 5.0.

Good news! The Toronto VMUG has its announced its date for its User Conferrence – it’s on the 7th Feb to be held at:

8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Hyatt Regency Toronto
370 King Street West,
Toronto, Ontario M5V 1J9

Map & Directions are here…

Agenda has yet to be set but I will be speaking – mostly a key note… Click at the big image above to register and keep an eye on the event as the agenda is worked on…

Today I received my first hard copy of the new SRM 5.0 book. Certainly nice to see it in the flesh, compared to having it on my IPAD on via the Kindle App. Along side the final book was stack of F&Gs… What’s F&Gs you ask? It standard for “Folded & Gathered Sheets”.

These are like little “pamplets” each one went put together as whole becomes a completed book during the binding process.

Publishers use F&Gs to allow the author to record any corrections wanted in the second printing of the book. The author (that’s me) marks his or her changes directly on the F&Gs and then sends them back to the publisher. I’ve got to return my F&Gs by the 14th Feb at the latest. [Yes, it seems odd to have chosen Valentine's Day as the cut off point] Of course this could be all done digitally but the publishers have found this hard-copy method is the most precise way of relaying corrections.

Anyway, if you spot any errors or typos in the book please feel free to send me them to me, and I will endeavor to include those in the F&Gs. You can send me your corrections by email to mikelaverickATrtfm-edDOTcoDOTuk or tweet them to me at @mike_laverick. Just give me a sample and page number and I will take a look.

One of my favourite musos is Jools Holland. He has a regular “New Years” show called the “Hootenanny” [Incidentally, its not live but recorded before New Year, and its become a thing a fun to spot continuity errors - such as people wishing each other happy new year... before 12 O'Clock has struck].

I was catching up on the show some days after the show. Everyone was great – he has the best guests. But this lady from the Netherlands really struck out. I think she has a very classy voice, and of course Jools Holland’s Big Band is a great accompaniment.

Sadly, the video won’t play embedded on my site – but it will take you to youtube to view it…

Another great track by her is “That Man” – which apparently is played a lot on Radio 2 – I should listen to that station more!

This song has kind 20s/30s retro feel about it which I really like… Makes a change from the X-Factor approach to music!

In this vendorwag I chat to Jay Judkowitz, Product Manager for Nimbula. Before Nimbula, Jay was at VMware for over eight years where he drove products like Site Recovery Manager and Storage VMotion.  Before that, he was at Scale 8, an early innovator in what would now be called cloud storage.  Jay started his career as a hands on IT practitioner at Intel for four years where he gained first hand experience with the real challenges of managing a dynamic large scale IT deployment.

As every I had a range of questions for Jay including:

Q.  Given your team is built on ex-VMware and ex-Amazon folks – how does that inform the vision of the company – who do you feel your competing against – Amazon?

Q. I notice your solution currently only supports KVM. Whilst I know that the cloud isn’t just about virtualization. Can you explain how that support decision came about – and will you be supporting Xen, ESX, HyperV in the future?

Q. I’ve been recently concerned about fault-tolerance and redundancy is being delivered to the “cloud layer”. How does Nimbula achieve that…

Q. Nimbula has its own method of how to segment the network without excessive use of VLANs – could you give us a quick demo of how to setup VMs within Nimbula, and get them communicating on the network

Q. Can you explain how “Collaborative Permissions” work – I think I need to another example – for the penny to drop

Q. Let’s talk about Federating different cloud vendors together – how do you see authentication working?

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

This week we have two flavours of the vendorwag. The first is the full version which includes an “elevator pitch” from Jay together with my Q&A with him. The second is Jay’s elevator pitch on its own. So depending on how much time you have it’s up to you which one you watch…

Today I got an email from Microsoft announcing the all-new TechNet Subscriber Portal Experience – initially I thought it was going to be reminder to renew my subscription. The new features include:

• Browse Product A–Z: all products listed alphabetically
• Browse Product categories: the familiar category view
• Top Products: quick access to the most common products
• New Downloads: RSS feed of the latest releases
• New Products: products that have new downloads available
• Search: fastest way to find a download when you know what you’re looking for
• Faster search results via autocomplete & acronym recognition
• Easier access and management of account information
• Simpler purchase and upgrade experience

That first one made me smile. If products weren’t listed alphabetically in the past, how were they listed? Randomly?

Joking apart it’s nice to see Microsoft make continued investment into their TechNet subscription system, even if it does mean knowing that the letter A comes before the letter B in the alphabet!

Today, one of my editors at TechTarget asked what was happening on the VMTN Subscription Movement. The original post I made on the community forums now boasts 8,995 views, and 237 replies. Last year there was a group concall of VMware vExperts where folks dialed into express their views, and I had one-to-one chat with a VMware representative who is gathering information about the concept to write a report & present to senior management. Interestingly, its movement has triggered a much broad reassessment of how VMware manages access to its software generally – something that surprised and delighted me. I’ve yet to hear back on this – but I did offer to look over the report and add my own thoughts and views.

At the time I did suggest that VMware look at other vendor programmes like TechNet to avoid any “wheel reinventing”. I pleased to hear that VMware with typical gusto would prefer to do something better than Microsoft. So at the moment there’s no firm news or announcement. All I do know is that VMware are listening (which is the main thing) and seriously considering their options…

If you were at either of the VMworld events last year, you might have been lucky enough to pick up an early “rough cut” edition of my book. At the same time you should have received a voucher that would allow you to access to digital copy of the completed book. Here’s how you redeem your voucher.

1.    Go to http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/vmwoffer

2.    Complete web form, including the unique code displayed there (sticker w/ code was affixed to the coupon)
3.    Submit the form

Pearson will be processing the form submission over the coming weeks – so you will receive an email in the next week or so with instructions on how to download the ebook…

I’m pleased to say that my new book on SRM 5.0 has been released on the VMware Press. It’s one of the first books on the press which VMware has founded with the logistical help of Pearson Publishing. I started working with the very early betas of the product towards the end of last 2010, so for me this work has been really years worth of work. I originally started out with self-publishing the SRM books, and its great to finally have big company like VMware and Pearson behind the work.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the very many people who helped me along the way. No author is an island, as anyone who has written anything of length will tell you. I’d like to thank Carmel (my long suffering girlfriend) who puts up with my ramblings about virtualization – and had a huge influence in the previous books on SRM. I’d like to thank Joan Murry of Pearson for making the process so smooth, especially in the early stages. I’d like to thank the many people at VMware who helped as well (you know who you are!), a special mention goes to Lee Dilworth here in the UK who has been my primary link every since the alpha edition of SRM 1.0 shipped many years ago. I’d like to thank Jacob Jensen who manages the BC/DR group at VMware – it was his backing in 2010 who helped kick start the process.  I’d like to thank the vendors too – especially Luke Reed of NetApp, Alex Tanner of EMC and Will Urban of Dell. A special thank you goes to Dell Equallogic – who was a new vendor to the book, and helped immensely in the process of getting their kit up and running, and getting me up to speed.

Finally, I’d like to thank my readers. Honestly, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it would be read. It means so much to me when folks email or stop me at events to say thanks. As an author you can spend many lonely hours at your desk, never really sure if you stuff is actually hitting the mark or helping. So it means so much when those emails or thanks yous come through.

You can buy the book either digitally or as hard-copy from many sources. The book actually started “shipping” from the printers to the retailers on schedule on the 28th Dec. It does however take time for the retailers to update their various websites to change the status from “In stock from…” or “Pre-order…”. With digital editions such as the version for the Kindle, it is available to purchase and download immediately.

Pearson.com

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Waterstones (UK)

WH Smiths (UK)

Blackwells (UK)

As for me – well I’m working on the completion of another book co-authored with Barry Coombs (UK vExpert), about View 5.0/ThinApp4.7. That will be a “community” based project that will be self-published, with all monies raised going to UNICEF. We’re currently in the early “reviewing” stage at the moment, but we hope to have it available by the end of March (if not sooner). After that? Well, I think I will be dividing my time equally between creating videos and writing book based on my “Hotel California” idea. That’s a biggy. I don’t expect it to be finished until the end of this year, beginning of next.

Well, its the New Year, and time for this old dog to learn a few new tricks. I’m speaking of getting ready for my VCP 5 test. The clock is already ticking because my current VCP expires at the end of Feb. How to prepare?

As former VMware Certified Instructor I really value the importance of training. But it might  come as surprise to hear that a man of immense my talents (and even great humility) needs training. But this time around I really think I will benefit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, for the last year or so I’ve been a “user” of vSphere5, but mainly from the position of it being a requirement to run SRM5 and View5. I’ve had my nose firmly in a book – not reading, but writing firstly my recently release SRM 5.0 book, but at the end of last year, I started work on a View5.0/ThinApp4.7 book with fellow vExpert, Barry Coombs. So for me at least vSphere5 has just sat there in the background – first as a beta, then a release candidate and then as GA.

That’s in marked contrast to nearly every other year that I’ve been involved with VMware Technologies. Previously, I would have been working with vSphere5 as part of the prep for actually teaching the new courses, or in the processes of writing (yet) another book on ESX5 and vCenter5. This time around I find my circumstances are very different. I haven’t spent days & days in front of the product that would normally have built-up my knowledge of ALL the changes, and ALL the new features to such a degree that I could just book the eggzam, and pass it on first go with virtually no prep before hand.

With that in mind I started to scope around for a place to do the course – that was both within commutable distance. I’m good twitter-friends with Scott Vessey who works for GlobalKnowledge.

He’s positioned himself very nicely as the go-to-guy for anything VMware Education or Certification related. For while I talked about doing the full “Install & Configure” course, but Scott rightly persuaded me that man of my experience would feel a bit bored by the content – and that I was better off attending the “What’s New” course. I’ve taught that course for Vi3/vSphere4 so I know what I will be getting. My plan is to use the course to get quickly up to speed on the new features. When I get back to my desk I will play around with these features in my lab(s). They’ll be a double-bonus there – firstly, if something goes pear-shapped on the eggzam front I will already have the course qualification I need for resit. Hopefully, it won’t come to that and I will pass first time. At least in this case I won’t need to pass the “instructor” score, now I’m mere student!

Anyway, I plan to blog about what I’ve learned on the course – and with luck it also might inspire me to write an article for TechTarget about those new features and what my take is on them. I will also keep you updated on the eggzam front itself – because I’m sure there are plenty of people like me who have left it to the last minute.

Last night VMware released a tech preview. Something that many of us have been waiting for sometime. It’s a PCoIP View Client for the MAC!

Features include:

-       Support for Intel-based Macs

-       PCoIP protocol optimized for VMware View 5

-       Full screen support for Mac OS X Lion users

-       Copy and Paste plain text between View 4.x virtual machines and Mac

-       Copy and Paste text, formatted text, and graphics between View 5.x virtual machines and Mac

-       Support optional RSA authentication

-       Enhanced certificate checking

-       Add up to 4 VMware View server shortcuts in VMware View Client

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/view/client_for_macosx

Remember this a tech preview so regard it like beta code, and not for production use… I found it a little slow to update & present the desktop on first use, but after that it was very quick. I think that probably says more about how little I used the lab environment where I currently have this sort of access. My HomeLab is PCoIP ready, but my ProLab isn’t yet – and I’ve been spending more time in the prolab recently

Last week I was in sunny Australia in the cities of Brisbane and Melbourne (pronounced Bris-bun and Mel-bun incidentally…) Fun was had by all – I was there with none other than virtualization luminary Scott Lowe. I managed to bump into Scott whilst at London Heathrow so we got a chance over the week to shoot the breeze about this ‘n’ that.

A couple of things came to me whilst I was away. Scott was presenting on the pros/cons of VMware HA “Stretched Clusters” and VMware Site Recovery Manager. I’ve seen him deliver on this topic throughout the year, and its been interesting to see how this presentation has developed and subtly changed throughout the year. It probably shows as much how Scott’s thinking has evolved of the year – about the advantages and disadvantages of both technologies – but also how if you do find yourself doing a similar presentation from one month to another you need to mix it up just for yourself – to keep it interesting. It was nice to see someone other than me, pimping VMware SRM for change!

As for me I’ve been hawking an SRM5 “Futures” deck for most of this year. That became a “What’s New” in SRM 5.0 on the day of the GA. The back end of the PowerPoint still has some futures stuff in the preso – about stuff coming down the pipe in 2012/2013.  Some of that became more “concrete” to me in a recent roadmap/NDA session I did with guys at VMware at Frimley, UK. Anyway, informally I suggested to Scott that we do a VMworld 2012 session together on Stretched Clusters Vs SRM. With me taking the pro-stance on Stretched Clusters, and him taking the pro-stance on SRM (again mixing it up to keep it interesting – because everyone would expect me to be the pro-SRM guy!) He seems interested, so lets hope that happens. Can’t see why the content team would turn down two “legends” on one stage…

As for the Oz VMUGs the personal highlight for me was the breakout session on ThinApp Factory at the Melbourne VMUG. There was surprisingly little information about the product (which is currently just in Alpha) at VMworld. So I had high expectations for the session, and I wasn’t disappointed. Plenty of information and screen grabs, and it was a proper VMware deck, so it looks like the collateral is already in place to position & explain the technology. It hit a note for me because for the last couple of months I’ve been working on a new View5.0/ThinApp4.7 book with Barry Combs of virtualisedreality.com fame. The back of the book has a “futures” section that covers stuff like VMware Horizon, ThinApp Factory, Octupus, SocialCast, AppBlast and SlideRocket. Of course, much of the information is a bit thin on the ground. Horizon isn’t available outside of US boards because of export restrictions – and things like ThinApp Factory or AppBlast aren’t even in beta yet. So it was really nice to see a presentation that put more meat & potatoes around the subject rather than emphasizing the all important business advantages/challenges or overly focusing on the end-consummer experience (pretty picture screen grabs).

The main idea I got from this session wasn’t so much technical. It was concept or analogy. I’ve got a couple of buddies who work in RF Comms area who have both been on the R&D side, and go-to-market process. One thing they have always stressed to me in their work is that no amount of technological innovation at the bench, is worth a cent unless it can be mass-produced with factory style economies of scale. So that started me thinking about if ThinApp has a “factory” what processes (both business and technical) must have take place FIRST, before you can undergo a “mass production” of ThinApps. There’s a couple of analogies around there too – where application packaging process becomes a “sausage machine” or “meat factory” or a “cookie-cutter” process. So what were trying to achieve with ThinApp Factory is move a way from a bespoke, craftsman like approach to producing each ThinApp. Where each ThinApp is lovingly carved and created by hand. But to a process where an install .EXE goes in one side, and ThinApps come out the other side.

Of course, that’s quite idealistic. Any “production” process will have a % of error – and people who develop the product and manage factories have to make sure that the product that’s been manufactured is so well designed that it lends itself to such a mass processes. That’s hardly the case with a generic .MSI file. SO going forward I’m beginning to see how ThinApp Factory will be used to create ThinApp for the vast bulk of applications that respond favourably to sausage machine approach, the trick will be quickly identifying applications that need to be pulled off the conveyer belt and handled in the Old Skool way. That’s where service providers and packaging teams will continue to add-value…

Click to Register…

Da When:
Thursday, 26 January 2012 Time: 10:00 – 17:15

Da Where:
London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
33 Queen Street
London, EC4R 1AP
Directions

Da Beers!
Time: 17:15
Pavilion End,
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It’s BACK. The first vNews in a very long time. To tell you the truth doing the vNews became a mega chore with it taking a day to collate all the information and put together the PowerPoints. As my workload went up with books and such like, it had to go. Anyway, one fine day at the London User Group I was cornered by Stu McHugh (who has been on my chinwag) – and was telling me how much he missed the vNews, and if I would bring back.

There’s nothing like the encouragement of others – and the input of others. So the vNews has a new co-presenter – none other than Stu McHugh who runs the blog stumchugh.wordpress.com/ and he’s also on Twitter on @stu_mchugh. The ideas is that two people will make it more interesting as we discuss the news…

The vNews is split between bloggers & vendors – I’ve chosen to watch the blogs, and Stu’s doing the vendors. So by splitting it 50:50 its helped make it more doable for me.

As ever you welcome to download the vNews PPT file for use at your VMUG. Just give credit where credit is due – and name check the source & me & Stu. All the links mentioned in the vNews are in the PPT as well. I could cut them out and put them here to click – that would save you downloading a couple of MB for a link. But to be honest that would be too much work. I’m typing this on the free WiFi at Hong Kong airport after 12hr flight, waiting for connection to Brisbane – so extracting links doesn’t feel like a big priority right now…

This months vNews includes contributions from Nick Weaver, Eric Sloof, Chad Sakac, Simon Long, Forbes Gutherie, Duncan Epping, Scott Lowe, and Mike Dipetrillo. On the vendors side we have MS Office 365, HyperV 3.0, Citrix winning awards, Citrix & Cisco telephony partnerships, VMware Fling: ESX System Analyser, and VMware & Telifonica Partnership

Oh, If you don’t get the reference in the title of the post – you need to use google…

You can watch the video in number of formats. Youtube very kindly upgraded my account recently so I can now do longer videos on youtube.com. The quality gets pretty degraded on the Youtube version, so if you would prefer something a bit more native (but a perhaps a bit longer to buffer) you can use the video directly underneath here.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the vNews  it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the chinwag/vendorwag podcast will be download when ever I do them – along with your monthly vNews. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags/Vendorwags/vNwws there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

Finally, If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.