Welcome to the ultra special Cinco Edition of the Wahl Network Tech Blast. Let’s just dive right in without my usual rambling.

Brain Food

• Having trouble writing documents that are easy to read, use simpler terms, and avoid the wrong type of voice? Give Hemingway a shot – it gives you a clear idea as to how “readable” your content is using a variety of techniques and color codes. You can paste in text and have it graded in real time. Once finished, copy the text back or save it to a word document.
• It’s been a lively couple of weeks on my work’s blog. Here are two posts I wanted to draw attention to for their technical merits! First up, my co-worker and all-around super smart CCIE networking dude, Scott Honey, has released a superb blog post on Cisco ASA Clustering. He’s also whipped up several topology diagrams that dig into various ways to deploy the devices into a data center. Additionally, Prashant Shah, one of my go-to guys for all things EMC, has published a post on VNX Pool Design. No registration walls or anything to deal with, promise. 🙂
• 15 core CPUs? That’s right, the Xeon E7 v2 is getting ready to hit the spotlight. This Ivy Bridge-ex based architecture fits into the LGA2011 socket and clocks in at 2.8 GHz natively. The price is going to be prohibitive for a while as the fab plants catch up and consumers snatch them up, but I’m excited to see a proc with 30 hyper-threads on it. AnandTech has the details.
• Networking guru Brent Salisbury releases another monster sized post that covers OpenDaylight OpenStack Integration with DevStack on Fedora 20. I especially liked the deep dive diagrams and configuration dumps. New to OVSDB? Read the post and look up all the terms you’re unfamiliar with as a starting point to help brush up on OpenDaylight.
• Since we’re on the topic if networking, I’ll transition into news that the Packet Pushers Podcast is now offering a community podcast to help use their platform to promote other content. Per Greg Ferro: “You get a bunch of shows together and keep it going for a period of time with regular content, good format and positive feedback then  we will set you up as another channel on Packet Pushers with your own show” – Neat?

• As pointed out by the Scoop Master, also known as Eric Sloof, a new VMware Press book entitled Essential VSAN: Administrator’s Guide to VMware Virtual SAN has hit the rough cut stage on Safari Books. It contains 7 chapters ranging from requirements, installation, management, and troubleshooting. The book is estimated to release in September of 2014.
• VMware’s vCloud Connector is now free? According to the VMware vCloud Blog – yes! They’ve also baked in some new features around copy operations and guest customization.
• Continuing my healthy amount of networking focused brain food items, the Network Virtualization Blog has released a design guide for deploying VMware NSX with Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus 7000 series switches. I will admit that I immediately snatched up and digested the content with extreme vigor. It’s really good. 🙂
• Remember how awesome the vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) idea was? Although lackluster in its delivery model, I really enjoyed the concept around mobile access to a vSphere environment. Luckily, the idea has taken shape in a new version called the vSphere Mobile Watchlist. This app is available for iOS and Android devices, and you can view the community page for an overview and discussion.
• You have about 3 weeks left to get your application in for the vExpert program, which features a new fast track for current vExperts to renew. The idea is that since they already have your information, the only information needed is the delta between the last vExpert announcement. Nifty!
• William Lam has compiled a snazzy list of plugins for the vSphere Web Client for both VMware and 3rd party vendors. He also provides links to the SDK for those looking to build their own plugin. I’m personally looking forward to seeing Update Manager and Site Recovery Manager join the list.

Chris’ Thinking Cap

I did not make it to VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) this year – but I would imagine that many others did that read this blog. It seemed like there was little breaking news to come out of the event, and I was seriously expecting a big GA announcement for VSAN. It does appear, however, that VSAN is scheduled for a release later in Q1 this year. Perhaps PEX is shifting focus back towards the partner ecosystem and boot camp training? Also – congrats to all the new VCDXs (spreadsheet courtesy of Brian Suhr)!

[symple_highlight color=”blue”]Did you attend PEX? Any takeaways or exciting product and solution announcements that you are jazzed up about?[/symple_highlight]