Archive for the ‘Misc.’ Category

Yes, I’m still alive!

It’s been like what, six months now without blogging?! Now that’s something not cool and I really need to do something about it. The thing is, I’ve been involved in a lot of cool stuff internally at VMware and a lot more projects that I’ve learned so much from. It will all come back and reflect on my future blog posts in a way or another, so I can’t really complain!

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’ve just came across something really cool and I wanted to share with you right away.

Out of the blue, and while I was doing some geeky stuff with WAMP, ColdFusion and the vCloud PHP APIs, I’ve received a ping back from another blog with a title called: “Drawing Network Diagrams like Hany Michael”

What!! Are you kidding me?!! Am I really that famous!!

Ok, jokes aside. The blog post is so insightful that I really liked it a lot. I don’t necessary call then “Rules” as the author described them, but I agree with the vast majority of them. For example, in rule number 3 I personally think that the “right-angle” lines are so ugly in 99% of the cases, but everything has a use case. I just haven’t came across that one yet.

Anyways, I highly recommend reading that article and don’t forget to grab the .VSS stencils file provided by the author. As a matter of fact, I’ve learned a new trick from the “Cloud” shape! I just enhanced it a bit to look like that:

P.S. thank you Jake, you just made my day

I was thrilled to know that my blog has been voted number 12 in the Top25 vBlogs voting! Jumping 8 positions from 20th to 12th is something I haven’t expected by any stretch of the imagination!

Thank you for voting, and for pushing me further to make this blog better! I have so many ideas (and surprises) coming on the way soon.

Stay tuned!

At the time of writing these lines, the Planet V12n feed is on FIRE! I will keep it simple then and save you some reading.

Eric Siebert @ http://vSphere-Land.com has opened the votes once again for the 25 Blogs in 2H10! Eric has a very fair criteria for voting based on: Longevity, Length, Frequency and Quality! I claim to have the second, and the forth, may be the first, but definitely not the third! I’m working on it, and you should read about this in details in my next newsletter.

With that said, I’d be thrilled if i stayed in the top 25! If not, then I will do my best to gain my seat back among this extremely talented and competent bloggers in the next cycle!

To refresh your memory about my past 6 months published contents, I’m listing here the top 5 article views based on WordPress stats plug-in:

• Diagram: ESX Memory Management and Monitoring v1.0
• VMware vSphere on IBM BladeCenter H – (Part 1 & Part2)
• Diagram: VMware vCloud Director Networking Architecture
• The VM Crowd – Episode 1: I’m On Twitter
• Video Guide: Taking VMware vCloud Director for a spin…and on the GO!

We are expanding in our Middle east and North Africa region (MENA) and hiring for multiple positions. At the time of writing these lines there are five openings:

• Senior Consultant – Professional Services – Saudi Arabia
• Enterprise Account Manager – Sales – Saudi Arabia
• Engagement Manager – Professional Services – Dubai
• Partner Business Manager – Sales – Dubai
• Senior Systems Engineer – Sales – Dubai

You can click on each link to get more information, and you can also apply from there. If you are looking for technical positions and you think you are good enough, don’t hesitate to contact me directly and I’d be happy to forward your CV along. Please note that I have no influence in the recruitment process, but I can put a good word for you if I felt that you are qualified and passionate about the position.

My email: hany [AT] vmware [DOT] com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hanymichael

My second newsletter in a row. Can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks already. Time seems to fly these days!

The VM Crowd in the wild

I was really happy with the feedback I received regarding this crazy idea. I didn’t expect that much of attention especially that the first episode is simply a bunch of inside jokes. You literally have to be on twitter day and night to get these jokes and know what on earth I’m talking about. As just an example, the “underwear saga” (as Massimo like to call it) actually happened to me and the latter in London. We were literally stranded in the UK due to this ash cloud, and we did go out together to shop for underwear. I can’t believe I’ve mentioned that twice on my blog! Okay, before I jump to the next point I’d like to thank you for the positive feedback. Stay tuned for more.

Two cool new courses from VMware Education

VMware Education Services lunched two new cool courses:
1 – Transitioning to ESXi: I really like this course, and from what i’ve seen in the course material it has a quite valuable content. I highly recommend this to any one starting fresh on ESXi or planning for the transition. Even if you are quite happy with your classic ESX and its service console, this course will make you change your mind.

2 – vSphere 4.1: Install, Configure and Manage: The course title is self explanatory. We all know about the cool new features of vSphere 4.1 and it’s all in there.

“Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds.”

Yes, VMworld 2010 is approaching and this is the official motto of the event. The sessions and labs catalog are now available online also for your to start exploring the great subjects covered in this event. Some vendors started to talk about their activity in the event, don’t miss the EMC and the IBM ones.

The first end-to-end FCoE solution certified by VMware

This is the industry’s first end-to-end solution by Cisco (datacenter switches) and NetApp (storage) that is certified and supported by VMware. Pretty exciting stuff to the all the FCoE enthusiasts out there. Vaughn Stewart has nice blog post talking about this with a big screenshots from the VMware HCL.

Free Book from NetApp

Still with NetApp and Vaughn, they are giving away free copies from the “vSphere on NetApp Best Practices”. Last word from twitter: the books are flying and only 150 copies are left. You have to have a shipping address in the US to get your copy. Thanks to Aramex.com, i will get my copy

TrainSignal’s vSphere Pro Series Volume 2!

Landed in Doha yesterday after a week of travel to see a very nice surprise in my mail. It’s the TrainSignal second volume of the vSphere Pro Series and It’s featuring some very cool products like SRM, Veeam (Monitor, Reporter and Backup) as well as VDR! I can’t wait to start watching these videos especially the SRM ones!

Cisco UCS Visio Stencils Hidden Secret

I’m working these days on a vSphere design on UCS and of course I had to use Visio in the architecture. I was surprised to see a very few stencils in the official Visio pack from Cisco, and that all of these shapes were just showing the front view of the devices. After “tweeting” out to the community and knowing that it’s not just me who’s frustrated about that, I received the simple answer from Cisco Dubai! you need to right click on the shapes (after placing them in your work area and then you will get the option whether to use the font view or rear one! Doh!

New VMware Releases:

A lot of new releases from VMware in the past few weeks among which: vCenter SRM 4.1, vCenter Orchestrator 4.1, vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3