VMworld Advice For The Newbie

There are only 11 days till Vmworld 2011 starts. For the first time visitor it is very overwhelming. There is just so much to see and do. So I thought I would share with you some things I have learned. Feel free to drop me a note with anything you feel should be added to the list. Since we are a Database Administration as a Service® company, my focus will be on Mission Critical applications in a virtualized environment. Also I am very interested in partner events. So that will be my slant as I travel through this event in 11 days.

 The first Bit of advice I would give. Attend the VMworld session for new attendees. 

 

New-V Session

Is this your first VMworld, or are you looking for an overview of what to expect during the event? Then don’t miss the special New-V session taking place Monday, August 29 from 8:00am-9:00am. Simply add it to your schedule and meet with your peers while hearing from the VMworld team on what not to miss and how to navigate VMworld 2011. 

So on Monday, Get Up early and attend the event.

 

Hands-On Labs

 

There are lots of Hands-on Labs at the event. I counted over 40 different hands-on labs. Here are some of the hands-on labs available...

Monitor and Improve the Performance of Applications in Your Cloud Infrastructure

The Lab Participant engages in a scenario that uses VMware’s next generation Application Performance Management product vFabric AppInsight. The scenario positions the Participant as an Application owner deploying applications on hybrid clouds and dynamic virtual environments. Through the real-world example, the Participant will recognize the value add of vFabric AppInsight and learn how to improve the Application’s service levels (Availability, Performance), time to market and cost.

Reducing Unplanned Downtime in Your Virtual Environment

This Lab engages the participant in solving the problems of Business continuity for applications and management infrastructure. The participant uses vCenter and other vSphere offerings to bring protection to Tier 1 applications at various levels of recovery.

Improve Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning for Your Virtual Environment

This Lab provides Participants with a primer on troubleshooting and configuration using vCenter features; Performance Metric Dashboard Screens, Alarms, and Advance Chart Options. The Participant will be presented with scenarios that require the resolution of Memory, Storage, Networking and CPU issues; focusing on our latest basic feature sets.

Core Platform - Performance & Scalability: Storage Optimizations

The Participant is submerged in a real-world scenario where the use of new vSphere features to optimize the storage performance of VMs provides a tailored solution The Participant will use VMware Orchestrator, Storage I/O control, Storage DRS and Profile-Driven Storage to build solutions for the situations presented.

The Labs last one hour typically. They are very popular at the event.  They als offer certifiication Quickstarts. If you are planning on getting certified, there are a no-brainer. 

Certification Quickstarts

Here is a sample of certification quickstarts...

VMware Certification Quickstarts: VCP5

VMworld has several activities planned to help you prepare for the VMware Advanced Certifications as well as the newly released VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5 (VCP5). Along with free education, there will be special 50% off discounts available to VMworld attendees, free prep materials, give-aways and more. Attend one of the Certification Quickstarts or stop by the Certification Lounge (Room 305) or the VMware booth to learn everything you need to know about VMware Education and Certification and receive your special exam discounts.

Get The Mobile Application

 

This will give you real time access to your schedule. So if you see something you want to attend, you can add it to you schedule immediately. 

Use the VMworld mobile application to check and modify your personal schedule, browse session information, search exhibitors and speakers, complete session surveys, and receive the latest conference news. The application is synced to email stations throughout the venues and is compatible with iPhone, BlackBerry, and all other smartphones. Visit www.vmworld.com/mobile on your phone for the mobile application. 

Join the VMUG while you are at the Conference

Joining the VMUG is a no brainer. The VMUG stands for VMware Users Group. Attending local meetings will really help you fully realize your VMware investment. The VMware advantage program is one of the best kept secrets. Funny part its no secret. Through VMware Advantage you will gets access to lots of special discounts, etc.

Join VMUG in the Solution Exchange, Booth #865

It’s a great opportunity to: 

·     Network with your follow VMUG members
·     Meet the VMUG Board and local VMUG leaders
·     Learn more about member benefits 

Check out our countdown on Twitter, and see what member activities we have in store by following the hashtag #VMUG.

Purchase Your VMUG Advantage at a Discount 

VMUG Advantage is a member-only benefit that provides customers with discounts on VMware training, certification and Workstation and Fusion licensing. VMUG is offering a special pricing, savings up to 15%, for VMworld registrants. Sign up for VMUG Advantage today using one of the codes below: 

• Individual package: $170 USD – Code: VMworld1
• Corporate package with 2 users: $165 USD per user – Code: VMworld2
• Corporate package with 3+ users: $160 USD per user – Code: VMworld3

WAKE UP VERY IMPORTANT

Dont miss this....

Along with free education, there will be special 50% off discounts available to VMworld attendees, free prep materials, give-aways and more. Attend one of the Certification Quickstarts or stop by the Certification Lounge (Room 305) or the VMware booth to learn everything you need to know about VMware Education and Certification and receive your special exam discounts.

 

Very Important to Sign Up Early For Events

 

If you dont register for an event, you wont get in. So sign up as realy as possible. This is just the tip of the iceberg as you can see. Look forward to seeing you there in 11 days.

 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

 

 

VMWORLD or Bust

My excitement is building, in just 12 days I will be at VMworld in Las Vegas. As I tell the many DBA's at Ntirety, it does not matter if you work with Oracle, MySQL or SQL Server virtualization is a DBA game changer. Its wide adoption already should make that obvious to the world. The many advantages from improved business continuity to plain saving a lot of money make it a no brainer. There are so many advantages to placing your mission critical applications and databases in a Virtualized infrastructure. So my excitement build, Lost Vegas or Bust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I look at the conference, there is just so much happening. So many things to choose from. Its why we are sending quite a few people to the conference. 

Here is a copy of the VMworld tracks at the writing of this blog...

VMWORLD 2011 Tracks

Cloud Application Platform

This track focuses on the VMware vFabric cloud application platform, an integrated platform to build, run and scale modern applications for organizations looking for a platform that enables rapid delivery of modern, data-intensive applications both on-premise or in the public cloud, and provides unparalled efficiencies across the application lifecycle. This track covers solutions for Cloud Foundry, vFabric, GemFire, SQLFire, tc Server, RabbitMQ, Hyperic; Spring Insight, and Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J). (Sessions in the Cloud Application Platform Track will be held at The Venetian)

Cloud Infrastructure: Business Continuity

This track focuses on virtualization products and solutions for improving application service levels and overall availability of virtual infrastructure. Topics in this track include: Local Availability Solutions such as Fault Tolerance and High Availability, Disaster Recovery Solutions including Replication, Site Recovery
Manager, Metro Clustering and DR to the Cloud, as well as Data Protection Solutions. (Sessions in the Cloud Infrastructure: Business Continuity Track will be held at The Venetian)

Cloud Infrastructure: Management and Operation

This track focuses on infrastructure and operations of highly virtualized and enterprise cloud
environments for private, public and hybrid scenarios. Attendees will learn about building infrastructure as a service (IAAS) architectures, service catalog design considerations, metering and billing for IT services, ensuring performance SLAs, optimizing capacity, and automated workload management. Topics include best practices, technology deep-dives and customer success stories, spanning from hitech, healthcare and financial services to education and government entities around vCloud Director, vCenter Operations, and IT service management solutions. (Sessions in the Cloud Infrastructure: Management and Operations Track will be held at The Venetian)

Cloud Infrastructure: Security and Compliance

This track focuses on all things related to Virtualization and Security in the datacenter. Topics include hardening and protecting your virtual infrastructure, application and endpoint protection,
perimeter/edge protection & services, how to achieve compliance with virtualized deployments, and why virtualized datacenters can be seen as having ‘better than physical’ security. (Sessions in the Cloud Infrastructure: Security and Compliance Track will be held at The Venetian)

Cloud Infrastructure: Virtualizing Business Critical Application

This track focuses on performance and best practices for virtualizing Business Critical or Tier1
Applications. Topics include virtualizing Databases such as SQL and Oracle, Email & Collaboration suites such as Exchange and SharePoint, Java Middleware and Enterprise Applications such as SAP. (Sessions in the Cloud Infrastructure: Virtualizing Business Critical Applications Track will be held at The Venetian)

Cloud Infrastructure: vSphere

This track focuses on core components of the vSphere platform, such as networking, storage,
availability, etc. These sessions will typically focus on a single feature/technology/component and are not directly related to any of the broader solutions discussed in any of the other tracks. (Sessions in the Cloud Infrastructure: vSphere Track will be held at The Venetian)

 

End-User Computing

This track is designed to focus on solutions to go from PC centric to user centric computing. These sessions focus on business cases, technology deep dives, real world examples and best practices for both IT and business. Products covered in these sessions include View, ThinApp, Zimbra, Horizon, Fusion, Workstation and many others. (Sessions in the End-User Computing Track will be held at The Venetian)

Partner Track

This track, designed especially for VMware Partners with customized content is tailored to help partners grow their business, build expertise, and accelerate sales of VMware solutions. Sessions will focus on enabling partners to effectively identify requirements across their customer’s journey to IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS), and to successfully sell and deploy VMware solutions. VMware experts will deliver best practices to help partners acquire new customers, expand business by cross-selling VMware solutions and services, and walk-away with proven go-to-market selling strategies. (Sessions in the Partner Track will be held at The Wynn)

Technology Exchange for Alliance Partner

Technology Exchange for Alliance Partners track focuses on the needs of ALL developers building and delivering solutions on VMware platforms. This track will provide valuable information on the APIs, tools and resources available to develop and delivery on VMware platforms in public or private clouds; cloud or hybrid environment; best practices for application development and delivery on VMware products delivered in the enterprise; VMware updated APIs and tools to build and integrate with VMware products; VMware product roadmaps for vSphere, vFabric, vCloud, End User Computing products and solutions; and new program benefits for Technology Alliance Partners. (Sessions in the Technology Exchange for Alliance Partners will be held at The Wynn)

Technology Partner/Sponsor

This track will showcase the latest technology and solutions from VMware’s technology partners. (Sessions in the Technology Partner/Sponsor Track will be held at The Venetian)

 

With so much happening, I feel like a kid in the candy store.

 The more I look at what is here, the better it keeps getting. Did I mention the hand-on-labs. 

Well 12 days, I plan to be there. 

 Vegas or BUST

 

 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

 

Database Administration as a Service Provider Ntirety To Undergo MSPAlliance Unified Certification Standard Audit

Posted August 16th, 2011

Database Administration as a Service Provider Ntirety To Undergo MSPAlliance Unified Certification Standard Audit

If you read my Blog, I make no secret of the fact I am a fan of Database Trends and Applications Magazine and web site. They have put out a number of really high quality white papers from how databases are being used to DBA Salary Surveys. 

 

 

It was great that they carried the story of Ntirety's undergoing a UCS audit. This is real news. An independent audit that gives you a real indication of a cloud provider’s ability to provide quality services.  Database Trends and applications got the real significance of the audit. An independent organization “The MSP Alliance” creating an audit standard that gives you a gauge of a companies ability to provide quality services over the cloud. 

For those of you not familiar with the MSP Alliance. The MSPAlliance is the worlds largest professional organization and accrediting body for the Managed Service Industry.

 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

These are required reads IMHO.

Ntirety VMware Must Read List

 

Anyone who has been reading my Blog, can see greater and greater emphasis on VMware with each passing article. As they say I have "drank the VMware Koolaide".

VMware is the industry leading Virtualization software and for very good reason. There a reason Oracle Corporation is afraid of VMware. When Oracle is pushing Oracle Exadata, Oracle RAC or Oracle's flavor of Virtualization VMware is offering a viable alternative. In most instances in my opinion a more cost effective and comprehensive alternative. 

Before I go any farther, let me be clear. I have been working with Oracle since Version 3.0. They have built an awesome database. They have amassed the most comprehensive suite of applications to run against it in the world. As a technologist, I admire a lot about Oracle Corporation. That does not mean they are the right answer for every situation. Lets think about Oracle Exadata. It was initially built on HP hardware. Now that Oracle has acquired Sun Microsystems, HP is company non-gratis. 

Lets review the Oracle Exadata, you would use Oracle hardware, Oracle database manager and in the perfect Oracle world an application that Oracle owns. When you look at the spec of the entry-level Exadata box, it is one big hunkering piece of hardware. At its lowest entry point It would cost a lot of money. If you took any mission critical application and put it on a big expensive piece of hardware, it would run faster. What you have done is bought a NASAR racecar. If all you have to do is run a race that would be a great solution. Yet much of your IT departments time is consumed with the day to day realities of dealing with maintaining a Mission critical application so it can meet the demand of the business. 

The Alternative VMware solution would deal with the issues of manageability of the environment. Instead of having physical server, where the unused resource cannot be reclaimed, when a particular mission critical process needed additional horsepower you would be able allocate the additional resource to it.  By stream lining the manageability of the environment, your staff would have additional cycles left over to look at the root cause of a particular mission critical environments performance issues.  Couple that with the fact you will save dollars as you consolidated your environments onto a VMware virtualized platform.  As they say I have drank the VMware Kool-aid.

 

As I embark down the path of better understanding Virtualization. Here are a list of must read books….

VMware Must Read Books - The Basics

 

Mastering VMware vSphere 4  by Scott Lowe - good fundamentals book, vSphere 5 version will be out in Oct 2011

 

VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive (Volume 1)  - need to know fundamentals first but this is the bible on HA and DRS. (required once someone understands fundamentals)

VMware vSphere Design by Forbes Guthrie, Scott Lowe and Maish Saidel-Keesing  (a required read)

 

VMware Books - Advance Reading

VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive (Volume 2) by Frank Denneman and Duncan Epping

 

 Do You Know Any Good Books That Are Missing ?

If you know of additional books that you feel should be added to my list, please let me know. 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

Talkin' Cloud - Who Are They

Recently I was looking at the  Talkin Cloud website. It had been a while since I had taken the time to looked at the site. The more I looked at Talkin Cloud, the more I was drawn into the web site. It was loaded with lots of useful information on the Cloud.

The Talkin' Cloud Website  I found to be a wonderful resource on who's who in the cloud. The Talkin Cloud website was also a great compilation of the companies making cloud computing happen. Given how important cloud computing is to the future of how we transact business in the coming years, I thought I would take the time to blog on this. So let me tell you a little bit about Talkin Cloud. To quote the Talkin Cloud site....

"Talkin’ Cloud, produced by Nine Lives Media Inc., is the go-to guide for cloud computing in the IT channel. We’re a video blog, a forum, and a platform for informed opinions. We cover the cloud… but we don’t hype it. Our readers are value-added resellers (VARs), managed services providers (MSPs), solutions providers, cloud integrators and cloud services providers (CSPs). We help those readers to find reliable, timely information on cloud services, cloud partner programs and recurring revenue opportunities."

With this said, I would encourage you to take the time to review whats available in terms of resources on the site. 

Talkin Cloud 200 Chanel Partner Experts

Cloud Computing WHOs WHO

One of my favorite items was the Talkin Cloud Top 200 Cloud Chanel Partner Experts. This is the WHO's WHO Of The Cloud.

To View the List ....TOP 200 Cloud Channel Partner Experts 

 I was also quite pleased to see I was on the list. It also tells me they were doing their homework.  Ntirety was the pioneer of Database Administration as a Service®. We were delivering services over the cloud before it was commonly called the cloud. As the founder I am very pleased to be noticed as a industry leader.

 

Ntirety is very proud the be one of the first companies in the world to offer Oracle, Sql Server, MySQL databaes services over the cloud. Ntirety has always been an innovator in the realm of database administration. We want to change the way databases services are delivered. Its why we are an early adophtper of moving our own database operations center into the cloud. As they say we eat our own dog food. Enough on Ntirety. 

There is a lot of great information at the Talkin Cloud website. Its worth taking the time to review, if you are interested in learning more about the cloud. 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

Stay Tuned: Calling Apple Support 

Apple Lion 10.7 Meet Your Kissing Cousin Windows Vista

What to Do About It

As a Database Professional I know Better. In the back of my mind, I keep hearing the words.....

I told you so

I told you so

I told you so

I first hand how important it is not to be on the bleeding edge. Yet here I am. But it was Apple. The company that does it right in so many ways. I did not relaize I was dealing with the greedy Apple, the bad Apple. 

Well My desire to be on the latest and greatest Mac Lion OS made me do it. Instead of calling it Lion, I think FAT CAT comes to mind.

let me say that again. FAT CAT. 

Well I placed it on my Macbook Pro.

 

 

I use this picture with the FAT CAT, to remind me of all the money Apple is making.

My Macbook Pro has the following...

Processor 2.66 GHz intel core i7

Memory 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3

So to be clear my Macbook pro has plenty of memory and a fast CPU. Its not the machine I am running on.

 

 

When I went out to the online apple store today. I saw they are still selling MAC OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. At least they have pulled it off the shelf for a while. I was wrong, you can still buy both. What does that tell you ?

 

This is Apple's Vista. That is why I think of the two operating systems as kissing cousins. Just like Microsoft made the mistake of releasing Vista too soon, Apple put new LION OS  out before it was really ready. Yet I was the one who put myself on the bleeding edge. This is self inflicted pain. 

What To Do Now

Repair Disk/Permissions

Here are the two things I have done that seem to have helped a lot. The first is to make sure the drive has no error or permission problems. To do this you must run the Disk Utility Program. In the Pre-LION days, you would put the O/S install disk in the machine. That is not an option now. You must reboot the Machine, while holding down the "Option" Key.

When the apple comes back, you will have the option to choose the Recovery Drive or the Other Hard Drive. Mine is called Macintosh which I beleive is the default.

You want to choose the Recovery HD.  You will then be able to choose the Disk Utility Option.

From there then choose the correct hard drive partition. Then run "repair Disk". After that run "Repair Disk Permissions". 

 

 

Reset The System Caches

The next item I did to help fix the issue, was reset all the system caches. Reboot Yout Computer While Holding Down "Option", "Command", "P", "R" Keys. I let it beep at me twice before I let go. After I did this, my machines performance was substantailly improved. 

Lesson learned by a database guy the hard way again. Never Never Never be on the bleeding edge.

Stay Tuned Calling Apple Support - August 10

For the record, apple support is a class act. They are the Role Model of how a support organization should work. Polite easy to work with. Very Apologetic. We are working through the issue now... Stay Tuned

Well, its been quite the experience. Through it all Apple Support was awesome. I am not happy with the solution, but I was treated with respect and apple support is awesome. Everyone was great, they cared and we tried a bunch of things. 

The net result, I decided to rebuild my computer and reinstall everything. Once I did that it started to perform great. It was like tryng to find a needle in a hay stack what was causeing the problem. It just was not worth looking for any longer. 

 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.

 

Talkin’ Cloud 50: Ranked By 2010 Cloud Revenues

As the founder of Ntirety it was very exciting to see that Ntirety - Database Administration As A Service® was ranked #21 on the Talkin' Cloud 50 list based upon our 2010 revenues. When I compare the fact that Ntirety is a pure play and many of these companies are not, I get even more excited.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Ntirety we are 100% focused on providing world-class DatabaseAdministration As A Service® for your mission critical applications on you physical server environments or a VMware virtualized environment for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL databases. Over 99% or our revenue is from providing Services on the cloud.  

 

To see the entire list ....

 Talkin’ Cloud 50: Ranked By 2010 Cloud Revenues

 

 

Given the impact the Cloud Computing has already had on how we do business today, It will be very interesting to see who joins this list over the next few years. At Ntirety, we virtualized our entire Database Operations Center 5 years ago. We experiences cost savings out of the gate of well over 35%. The Ntirety database operations center became even more fault tolerant as a

 

sresult. The number of companies would be better served taking their Mission Critical Applications and placing them on VMware High Availability Virtualized Cluster is enormous. At Ntirety we are proud to be an early adopter of cloud computing. It’s nice to be recognized by the Talkin Cloud 50 list. 

 

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com 

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

 

Database Administration As A Service@ is a registered trademark of Ntirety, Inc.