I let the previous post date slip due to work / life balance slips, as I feel it’s important to avoid burning out. Here’s a collection of interesting links that I gained value from recently in a new, easier to read format. It’s time to feed your brain!
Brain Food
The IT Field Bag – A good friend of the community, Josh Atwell, put together a “what’s in your bag” type of post that covers what he feels is a solid list of gear to use in the field. I rarely see details like this on the web and felt this was a good discussion to have for fellow practitioners of IT in today’s ecosystem.
The Value of DevOps in the Enterprise – I began embracing DevOps back in the later half of the 2000’s to bridge internally written code to the infrastructure in a call center, giving me a pretty clear background at the wins involved with mixing automation, infrastructure, and developers. Mike Kavis at The Virtualization Practice steps in to further clarify this process, and the fact that DevOps is not a role or person, with a well written post with his thoughts and processes.
The Power of a Tweet – Twitter is an interesting beast. It can quickly change from a casual conversation into a corporate mouthpiece based on who is mentioning you. Nick Marshall discusses his journeys with Twitter and how they ultimately lead him to discussions that have changed his career.
PVSCSI and Large IO’s – The infamous performance guru, Mark Achtemichuk, walks through a great post that details a behavior found with paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) and IO size. I learned a few things and definitely recommend following Mark’s posts for some deep dive performance knowledge.
Cisco UCS Director REST APIs: Step By Step Tutorial – Formerly known as Cloupia, the new-ish Cisco UCS Director product grants the ability to treat a stack of infrastructure in a more automated and workflow-based manner. Steve Jin has published a few great posts that walk through using UCS-D, including this API discussion that I found both useful and intriguing.
vSphere 5.5 Upgrade and old NICs not working as expected – I love posts that walk through a technical snag and discuss the troubleshooting process. Process is critical, and understanding how a person reaches an answer is sometimes more important than the answer itself. Manfred Hofer takes us on a journey revolving around his vSphere 5.5 upgrade and how he identified and resolved a NIC issue. Great stuff!
Notes From the Field – vSphere 5.5 with Virtual Distributed Switch – I struck gold this week. Here’s another great troubleshooting post, this one from Jason Langer, walking through a vSphere 5.5 upgrade in a “from the field” format with an Intel X520 card. And it includes a Twitter thread. 🙂
Test DirectSAN backups without a physical Veeam server – Luca Dell’Oca, newly minted Veeam employee, takes the time to go deep on how a DirectSAN backup works with Veeam B&R. I thought that his explanation was spot-on and walks through the technical bits without being salesy. I would expect nothing less from Luca.
My Journey to CCIE Data Center – One of Varrow’s finest, Jeremy Waldrop, walks through his recent success at passing the CCIE Data Center lab exam and becoming a CCIE. It’s great when folks in the community share their success (and failure) stories / tips to help guide the way for the next folks. Another huge congrats, Jeremy!
Chris’ Thinking Cap
For many folks, this is a great time to take a deep breath and relax a bit. Why? It’s end of quarter, sort of a reset button for the partner and manufacturer ecosystems. A chance to regroup, refocus, and prepare for another 90 days of working furiously towards a goal. I must say that Q1 of 2014 has brought an onslaught of new and interesting ways to twist technology into bizarre yet promising forms. As you journey through the remainder of 2014, remember to keep an open mind, a warm heart, and a clear focus on what tasks, projects, movements, etc. will progress you along the path to your goals without sacrificing integrity, ethics, and your sense of values.
