A couple weeks ago EMC’s CIO, Sanjay Mirchandani, visited Singapore and presented EMC’s journey to the private cloud. I sat in on one of his presentations and was absolutely amazed by his cogent argument for VMware. There may be no better evangelist for VMware and its role in the journey to the private cloud. Sanjay white-boarded one thought–a parenthetical discussion–that reformed my understanding of the value of virtualization and the private cloud.
Private Clouds, People Consolidation, and Chargeback
June 24th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 24 2010
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VMware Proficiency Ladder, Version 2
June 18th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 18 2010
I have updated my VMware Proficiency Ladder (VPL) with more detail. I also received great comments on the previous article and several emails with more recommendations. I think the ladder framework is complete. My next step will be to provide tests against entries in the ladder and recommendations for climbing to higher levels.
Storage IO Control Video
June 18th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 18 2010
The good folks at VMware have given another preview of a feature they are testing in their labs. The Youtube video sets to music one of the coolest performance features being talked about right now, Storage IO Control. I think it is perhaps the second hippest video ever made on an enterprise product from VMware. But, hey, I am biased!
VMware Proficiency Ladder
June 14th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 14 2010
There is an updated version of this document available on vPivot. Please refer to that document for the newest version of the ladder.
My new responsibilities in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region have put me in front of a great deal of customers recently. With the exception of Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), APJ is newer to virtualization yet just as eager to virtualize fast. Customers, partners, and colleagues have asked me how they can measure their team members’ VMware proficiency and what can be done to increase skills. Today I am going to present my first pass at the measurement part of this problem and I ask for your comments on my system.
VMDirectPath
June 9th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 09 2010
Chad Sakac was recently touring APJ and delivering his high energy VMware+EMC message with demos, demos, and more demos. His encyclopedia-sized deck of technical gems included a short discussion on VMDirectPath that merits comment. I will offer my thoughts here.
From West to East
June 4th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Jun, 04 2010
I have received several gentle nudges about the lack of content on Pivot Point of late. And a few of you have asked me what is going on with my professional life. For a while I hoped to quietly drift across continents and through companies. But I now feel an explanation is due. This description is mostly professional, somewhat personal, and a touch philosophical. But if you are interested in what moves me and what will come next for vPivot, please read on.
Performance Troubleshooting Made Simple
May 10th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
May, 10 2010
I have struggled for years to give VMware’s customers a framework for diagnosing performance problems. People want a simple system to troubleshoot the unknown sources of poorly performing applications. The best attempt at documenting such a flow is Hal Rosenberg’s document on vSphere performance troubleshooting. Elegant as it may be, Hal’s document remains complex for the novice VI administrator. And it is because that document is so complex that performance people maintain their job security. 
But in an effort to further obviate my own job, I will try and generalize the troubleshooting flow to add more clarity to the process.
Storage IO Control
May 4th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
May, 04 2010
Last year at VMworld 2009, Irfan Ahmad and Ajay Gulati presented a preview of an unreleased technology VMware is calling Storage IO Control (SIOC). SIOC is a feature aimed squarely at the number one cause of VMware performance problems: underperforming storage. Year after year I see misconfigured storage slowing virtualized applications with VMware blame for the problem. Now VMware hopes to add a new tool to our administrators’ toolboxes to help them identify and mitigate underperforming storage.
How Many Virtual CPUs Per VM?
April 30th, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Apr, 30 2010
Virtual machine sizing is a tricky issue for many VMware administrators. It is important to find the right number of virtual CPUs to maximize application performance and minimize wasted CPU cycles. The optimal number of vCPUs can never be easily identified. But I can offer a few suggestions to help get this number right.
New Look, New Host
April 23rd, 2010 Posted in Uncategorized
Apr, 23 2010
I just moved Pivot Point off of wordpress.com and onto my own hosting provider. I would not be surprised to learn that I screwed something up and half the site is non-functioning. Please let me know via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or email if you see a problem. I am not tough to find using any of these channels.
Thanks for bearing with me while I go through this important upgrade!
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