Just a quick note because I see a lot of people are still looking at that post. I held off on my purchase. Waiting on moving apartments before I purchase one.

(Hoping against hope I can find a condo with an AC vent in the closet – And that the closet is just big enough for a full sized rack)

The joys of a home rack system. I can dream right?

Not sure how many of you have made the leap to vSphere but let me tell you this is my second biggest annoyance so far.

These should have better names and explanations but I will be diving into this as soon as I figure out the gameplan to resolve the issue.

#1 problem with vsphere? – Changing permissions between VC and vSphere. Didn’t see these ones coming in testing but man are they painful now.

More to follow once we get them resolved. Back into the trenches

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Device Information: 192.168.1.100, 1.1.17.34772, Iomega StorCenter ix2, 00D0B802A4C0

Sweet.

So I ended up getting my hands on an Ix2 for a pilot program with our field teams. Just doing the initial configuration now. Super simple – 5 minutes and it is available.

This week I will load some VMs on it and run it over the wire and configure it to hookup to my 360 (as well as the mundane backup duties it is meant for). Everyone should go buy one.

Ok so Chi.MP is finally letting people setup accounts.

I submitted my first support request to them yesterday. Turns out to be something simple so I can’t wait to have that discussion with them.
After a hectic day in the office (hectic but great – this new role is going to keep me on my toes) I have been fiddling with it and decided to add my .mp page to my starting tabs.

Check it out – chi.mp

Or mine – bergin.mp

So I am sure most of you have seen or looked at – or maybe played with – EMC Documentum CenterStage?

I have been spending a LOT of time with it. Hopefully I will be able to go live with some of the neat things we have made happen even with the beta. When this client gets released to the Documentum public I can’t wait to hear the reaction.

Beyond that I have added on another 4 servers to my ESX deployment and then started working with some fresh VM stuff to see how that is going to impact how we work.
Favorite new feature in VC 2.5u2 – Hot cloning – We implemented the update and our users found the feature before we even told them about it! Now that is reading the market correctly.

Beyond the normal craziness I officially start a new role within EMC on Monday. The up side – I still get to keep my virtual infrastructure. It should be lots of great new stuff and I will be working with a group that handles ALL of EMC software. This should give me the opportunity to talk with some really smart folks about how they would work on some of the niggling VMware issues I have found.

My plan for Monday is to get some time with our #1 networker engineer and see if he can enlighten me on all the things I have been missing in my very limited NW deployment. (1 VM out of 555+)

Vkernel has pushed out a number of great updates to their Capacity Analyzer 2 Beta – I am getting some real value add from having all my virtual centers on one screen.

On a side note I hope everyone read about VMworld and ESX4 – All I can say is I am excited by what I saw publicly discussed. Powerpath in ESX – Drool

See this post here and then here for details on how to sign up. This is definitely a good thing because I don’t see VMware spending the time to build a Sparc compliant VM platform anytime soon.
Having a number of Sparc boxes under my infrastructure I am dying to get my little hands on this and tweak with it to my hearts content. Will it ever rival VMware? I doubt it but for those of us who desperately need to leverage Sparc based hardware for platform testing this could be a god send.
Maybe someone in the blogosphere will take pity on me and let me in behind the velvet rope to put this through its paces. My contact info is there. Reach out and I will definitely run this stuff until it drops!

If you haven’t heard of the John J Harvey then I recommend you go visit this link

I took this while on a harbor trip this past saturday going under the Manhattan bridge.

OK – TSA has a new update on the fresh 1.1 firmware for the box here.

It looks like my biggest gripe (No NFS shares) has officially been removed. My only hang up in purchasing one of these bad boys is that I want to wait and see what Iomega does with the LifeLine software package. Now that it has the basic feature set I required of a home NAS (and the drive spin down finally works) what can a real home equipment make do for the form factor?
The box as it is now is serviceable but it is not sexy, cut, or good looking by any stretch of the imagination. It looks like the briefcase that portable nuclear weapons go in.

But who really cares about looks? Mine is going to go either under a desk, coach, or endtable and I care about it being reliable, quiet, and cheap (in that order). It looks like my purchase is imminent.

Kudos to the LifeLine team for addressing issues with the initial release and really turning this product around.
See the SS4200-E here

OK here is the link to the article.

My two cents – If you read the article I don’t see “FaceBook” like features anywhere in there. I think the guys who wrote the article and have seen the product are just blown out of the water by an entire suite of Documentum based offerings that are intuitive and look amazing.

I know – DCTM has always been a work horse but it hasn’t been the prettiest horse in the stable. With CenterStage and the other new applications I am blown away by how good they look and more importantly how responsive they are. Pretty and slow doesn’t work for me. D6.5 is wicked fast.

Take a look at the article but I think they were going more for hype than substance.