My first double digit issue, woo hoo! It’s been a wild couple of weeks with tons of conferences (TechEd, EMC World, Cisco Live!, OpenStack Summit, and more). Let’s dig right in.

Brain Food

VideoStream for Google Chromecast Streams Any Video to the Big Screen – I really like my Chromecast, but have had very little luck getting MKV (Matroska format) videos to play with audio. If you’re a bit of a road warrior and want to snag a few MKV/AVI/MOV files on the go, and then stream them in a hotel or conference room, take a look at the VideoStream app. I’ve also seen some folks combine this with the HTML blast of VMware View desktop.

Virtual Processor Scheduling – How VMware and Microsoft Hypervisors Work at the CPU Level – This post seemed to spark a fair amount of controversy and cries of FUD from both the VMware and Microsoft communities. I like reading these sorts of comparisons and thoughts from folks out in the blog-o-sphere. Any good response links to share?

New Virtualization User Podcast as a Service Episodes – The VUPaaS engine has once again roared to life, this time with two new discussions. Check out Episode 10 with Bob Plankers on Greenfields and Episode 11 with Larry Smith on a large variety of topics.

The vCloud Hybrid Service AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit – The vCHS team recently held a lively AMA with over 100 comments in the thread. I’m a bit of a lurker when it comes to AMAs but enjoyed the back and forth. I think my favorite one so far was with Bill Murray. 🙂

2014 #vBrownBag OpenStack Summit Atlanta videos – Those kick-ass folks over at vBrownBag have done it again, sending a team armed with A/V equipment to the Icehouse/Juno-focused OpenStack summit in Atlanta. If, like me, you were unable to attend, there’s a pile of 49 videos (wow!) that you can watch on YouTube for free. Amazing job, fellas.

VMunderground Opening Acts with #vBrownBag – Speaking of the vBrownBag, an announcement was made that their team is going to join forces with the VMunderground folks for an Opening Acts gig. This will be “a series of group/panel discussions over the course of a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Whiteboards will be present, but no slides or PowerPoint.” Sounds neat to me!

VMworld 2014 Justification Email – Itching to attend the annual mecca of virtualization conferences? Jason Boche has prepared a VMworld justification email that you can leverage to schmooze your powers that be into letting you swing into San Fran for a week.

Windows Server 2012 R2 preparation before vCenter Server 5.5 installation – I’ve started using Windows Server 2012 (and R2) for most net-new workloads, so this post from Magnus Andersson was quite timely. It’s time to start mothballing 2008, folks!

Sell, Execute, Grow, Iterate – Nick Weaver is a bearded genius. As such, I tend to read what he writes. His latest post offers an M&M sized morsel of zen.

On Leaving VMware and Creating a New IT Community – Troyer and VMware were two words that had similar meaning to me. He embodied what I liked most about the company – a drive to create an ecosystem that was open, inviting, and encouraging to technical professionals. In fact, the VMTN and greater VMware community is hands-down one of the most positive ones I’ve been involved with. I wish John luck with his new company, Tech Reckoning, and have already enjoyed his pair of emails.

Chris’ Thinking Cap

With VMworld 2014 US coming up in San Francisco in three short months, I’m curious what everyone is looking forward to. Perhaps a new version or build of vSphere? A new or updated product within the vSphere ecosystem of solutions (vCAC, vCO, VIN, etc.)? Perhaps a more public version of NSX for you to tinker with? Or is it you’re itching to meet and listen to members of the community at informal presentations like the vBrownBag or formal sessions and panels at the conference?

[symple_highlight color=”blue”]Let me know! :)[/symple_highlight]