Disaster Recovery on Demand?

July 2, 2020
Over the past year, I've had a lot of conversations about disaster recovery solutions. There is a common theme about replicating on-premise workloads to the public cloud for the sole purpose of disaster recovery. Many enterprise solutions provide this capability, including VMware Cloud on AWS, Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, Microsoft Azure Stack, and Nutanix Clusters. We could go into each product in detail, but let's table that discussion for now. But let's also agree that the premise is the same for each, to allow customers to migrate workloads to and from private and public infrastructure seamlessly. As perfect…

What’s in your playbook?

June 28, 2020
If you read Paralyz[ed], I discussed how Nutanix eliminates multiple management tools and delivers a simplified consumer-grade management experience.  Simplified management is excellent, but what about analytics, machine learning, and task automation? I know what you're thinking, "I have other tools for analytics and task automation." I understand that line of questioning. As a customer, I also had that response. But, in further evaluation of Nutanix, I realized the real value of Prism and the capabilities to consolidate management while simplifying management tasks simultaneously. I thought about how my life in the data center would have been better not only to…

Paralyz[ed]

June 2, 2020
I am about to introduce a topic that I am sure you've heard or read about many times over. I will do my best to give you real-life experience from my years in the data center, and hopefully, I'll stir your thinking a little. Let's take a quick look at two definitions of the word paralyze. Render (someone) unable to think or act normally, especially through panic or fear. Bring (a system, place, or organization) to a standstill by causing disruption or chaos. The words panic, fear, standstill, disruption, and chaos got me thinking. While working in the data center,…

Unlock[ed]

May 31, 2020
Nutanix[ed] is a blog sharing my experiences. I am hopeful it differentiates from the information overload that seems to be shared as there is so much information online; it can be all-consuming and often brings you no additional value. The goal is to share my experience, successes, and failures to help you navigate your journey, inspire you, and, most importantly, provide takeaways that will be useful in your career.  My last blog was all about the hypervisor. I chose to save the discussion on how to free yourself from a hypervisor, its inherent costs, and lock-in. So, now I will…

What’s in a hypervisor?

May 12, 2020
I came across a technical whitepaper comparing Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, the two leading server virtualization platforms back in 2009. At a glance, XenServer offered many enterprise features of VMware vSphere for free. Whereas with VMware vSphere, there was a license purchase required.  Why is this important? Well, in the modern datacenter and especially in the public cloud, the hypervisor is a feature, not a product. So, this discussion is still just as relevant today. Why are we still paying for the hypervisor? I remember my first experience with virtualization. I was evaluating both Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere.…

Micro-seg-men-ta-tion

April 28, 2020
I remember back in 2016 when I started on my AWS journey. There was something about how security groups and network access control lists intrigued me. At first, I was somewhat perplexed. As I began to do more in AWS, I was able to wrap my head around the process of securing virtual machines, as well as applications. It started to make sense, conceptually. It only took a glance at "Authorizing inbound traffic for your Windows instances" for me to figure out the basics. I then had Linux instances to figure out. That also was straight forward. I had not…

Recovery, what?

April 14, 2020
As I work from home more than ever now, it is becoming blatantly evident that there are some processes that I need to get in order. Am I the only one suddenly realizing that my daily activities are scattered all over the place? I mean, my notes are being taken by hand, Apple Notes, GoodNotes, Evernote, and elsewhere. My files are stored locally, in OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other various locations.  My unorganized workflow got me to thinking. I have to get this cleaned up, and quickly! What happens if my computer crashes? If I need to recover a…

We don’t do cloud!

April 7, 2020
I have been in front of many companies that quickly sideline a Nutanix conversation simply because they are uninterested in the cloud. Or, they are not ready to move to the cloud. Now, there are a few approaches to a response that I could take.  Nutanix is not a public cloud; it is a private cloud.What do you mean, you aren't interested in the cloud? Everybody is going to the cloud. I understand your concerns with the public cloud. Let's talk about Nutanix as a cloud alternative.  Ok. Those are approaches but, in my opinion, not the correct approach. What I…

Did you say maintenance?

April 4, 2020
Have you ever struggled with keeping your infrastructure patched? Have you succumbed to the mindset, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it? Are your software and hardware versions so out of date you are nervous about upgrading it? Or, are you simply tired of working after hours patching systems, waiting, and sipping on coffee while everyone else is sleeping? For me, I answered yes to all of the above just a short time ago. It wasn’t always that way. As time passed, scale-out occurred, downtime became unacceptable, and upgrading became near impossible. The only time I could be confident a…

Social Distance = WFH

April 1, 2020
My first blog comes to mind in the middle of an end-user computing meeting. Where was this meeting being held? You guessed it! From my home office. But what's the topic? Well, it focused on remote solutions for customers during this pandemic. Obviously, right? Within the past month, everyone is now suddenly assigned to their remote office. (me on zoom) As you may or may not be aware, Nutanix pioneered HCI or hyper-converged infrastructure (which I will cover in a later blog). What was the primary workload that Nutanix focused on? Nothing other than virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). So, here we…