Everything-Virtual

Author: Simon

  • Various VMware Posters

    I have been downloading and printing a lot of documentation recently in preperation for my VCP, three different downloads were of various posters, these included the vreference card for vSphere 4.1 from Forbes Guthrie’s site, another one was the PowerCLI reference from the VMware Communities PowerCLI site and finally there was the Dudley Smith‘s Connections and Ports poster .

    Having tried to print these out on A3 sized paper and not liking the results I decided to get them printed professionally, I am now the proud owner of three A1 sized glossy posters which will be put up on the wall of my office this weekend 😀

  • Iomega Service and Support Rocks

    Well after receiving my DOA IX4 the other week I dreaded how to long it was going to take to get the matter resolved. Initially I had tried replacing the power supply (again courtesy of Iomega) but that proved not to be the problem, the next step was the RMA process. Iomega off Advance RMA’s which means that they will ship out a replacement unit before receiving my unit back. What’s even nicer is that they are also picking up the shipping cost for the return of my device to them.

    Overall I am impressed with the level of support I have received from Iomega, far better than from the seller of the unit.

    Update tonight if\when I receive it.

  • Lenovo TS200 Server Memory

    I was reading Simon ‘TechHead’ Seagraves blog a few months back, he was reviewing the Lenovo TS200, because of that review I decided to purchase 4 of them for my own virtualisation lab, at the time I also purchased 24gb of Lenovo ram for the servers, the idea being that I would put 24gb in each box. Not wanting to spend the huge sums of money for Lenovo memory I thought it would be a good idea to buy similar ram (after all, DDR3 ECC ram should be the same.. shouldn’t it?).

    Having scoured ebay for several months I found some DDR3 ECC ram that I purchased (expensive but a damn site cheaper than the Lenovo options which are approx £200 per 4gb stick :(), procrastinating a bit I didn’t build up any of my servers for months and it was only after talking with Mike Laverick that I discovered there was potentially an issue with the TS200’s not accepting all kinds of 4gb DIMMS. So during last week I started unboxing my servers and putting my new ram into them, unfortunately I discovered that what Mike said was true and I now have to sell my old useless (to me) Micron 4gb DDR3 dimms and try to save up some money for the very expensive Lenovo branded dimms (16gb per machine now instead of 24 due to the huge expense :().

    That will teach me to not properly research my servers correctly 🙁

  • Hard work – does it pay off?? It appears not.

    Oh well, it looks like hard work doesn’t actually pay off, I am no further forward where virtualising my company is concerned, at the top I have my CIO who has two very strong willed people giving her two very distinct views, me very heavily in favour of virtualisation and the Infrastructure manager who is VERY heavily against it.

    I now need to provide very good justifications as to why they should spend out a lot of money to virtualise the environment when the Infrastructure manager says it simply doesn’t fit our support\work model.

    With potentially a month left on my contract do I push further and risk no renewal or just sit back and accept that for whatever reason they simply won’t virtualise and leave it at that?

    Sometimes I feel like I should be banging my head against a brick wall 🙁

  • Iomega IX4-200d – DOA 🙁

    So I received my new 2tb IX4 the other day and it wouldn’t stay powered on, I opened a call with Iomega support who sent out a new powersupply brick, before that arrived I purchased a new 8tb unit and used that power brick and low an behold.. a still (semi) dead IX4, it now powers up.. for all of 45 seconds at which point it flickers and powers down again.

    As I purchased it online (ebay) I have sent a message to the seller letting him know I am not happy that I have a dead unit and want my money back (I can get a new unit for about £80 more than he sold this one for, even though it was described as new it wasn’t).

    At the moment I am wondering if I made the right choice in buying the IX4, I can’t fault the customer services guys but it has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth where reliability comes in.

  • Hardwork – Does it pay off??

    Hopefully I will be finding out more today.

    I am trying to persuade work that virtualisation is definitely the route to go, senior management are buying in but unfortunately junior management aren’t. That means a convincing business case is needed.

    I sure hope that my working with various resellers is going to pay off otherwise chances are my contract won’t be renewed at the end of the year, if that’s the case however it means my VCP will be closer because I will take that time out to study for it.

    More on this later 🙂

  • A quick update

    I am in the process of putting a couple of articles together. This includes setting up Hyper-V in a lab environment and an article describing and putting my lab environment together.

  • iPad and other new toys

    I recently went on a bit of a spending spree, I am now the proud owner of a 64gb wifi iPad, a new HP Microserver and 4 Lenovo TS200 servers (virtualisation product testing, probably 3 Hyper-Visors and one SAN\NAS box). All I need to do now is actually get to work and start building them up.

    Over all I am really impressed with the iPad although at the moment I am unsure whether I should have gotten the 3G version or just keep to the Three WiMo device I have.

  • Hey everyone…

    Welcome to my first blog. I am going to cover everything I am doing with regards to virtualisation (Microsoft and VMware based).