It became very clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I’ve made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat – it’s all been wrong. – George Costanza
Multibooting Veeam Endpoint USB
Veeam has a pretty nifty little product in their Endpoint Backup solution. Honestly just the other day I was wondering if it was still installed on my laptop as I haven’t even noticed it at all – sure enough there it was, quietly doing its’ thing. Anyways, Vladan Seget has a great article on his blog in regards to creating a multi-boot USB stick w/ the Veeam Endpoint Backup recovery ISO’s on it in order to support various different hardware and laptop flavors! Something to definitely check out if you manage multiple different hardware platforms and want to use VEB to protect them all!
2016 Vendor Community Awards
There are a ton of community award/recognition programs being run by vendors these days. It seems like almost everyone is trying to recognized the hard work that community leaders, bloggers, and evangalists alike are putting in to help spread the word about everything tech. That said, after seeing Andrea Mauro’s post about the programs upcoming for 2016 I realized I didn’t even know about all of them. If you are interested in applying for a program, or just want to know more about them head over to Andrea’s blog and check it out!
Automate the answering of questions!
There is nothing more enraging than writing a great big long automation script only to find the vSphere client sitting at a prompt waiting for you to answer some kind of stupid question! I’ve never been able to find a way to work around some of these issues but after seeing Luc Deken’s post in regards to answering the infamous CDROM unmount question I might have a push in the right direction! Anyone dealing with automation and PowerCLI should really be following Luc and certainly check out his blog!
Testing JSON Syntax!
When dealing with a lot of API calls, especially when trying to form your own body for one it can sometimes be a little monotenous trying to find an error or test certain JSON syntax that you may have created. Jonathan Medd has a great blog dealing with all that is PowerShell and his latest Quick Tip, Testing JSON Syntax walks us through a quick and easy way to make sure that none of our JSON is malformed – and if it is how to quickly find out where the problem lies!
While we are talking about automation!
Sometimes I wish I had more time to spend within the VMware Hands on Labs environment – there is a ton of cool technology up there available to play with absolutely free of charge! I’ve done a dozen or so labs in my time, mostly centering around newly released products or things that spark my interest. What I didn’t know of is that there are labs there centered around VMware’s development tools and their respective SDK’s. I really need to set aside a few hours to have a look at these as it’s something I struggle through everytime I attempt to utilize them!
PernixData and their new UI
I have always been a fan of products with a clean, crisp, usable UI. I like whitespace and I like intuition and when attending Tech Field Day presentations it’s always the first thing I see and really sets the stage for the whole presentation! I saw Pernix at VFD5 along with their newly redesigned UI and it did not dissapoint! Pete Koehler (@vmpete) has a great post on his blog covering almost everything there is to know about the new PernixData UI – why they went there, what it involves, and what are some of the goodies to really focus on! If you are a fan of Pernix, or simply a fan of creating beautiful interfaces check out Pete’s post!
Embedded to External, External to Embbeded – It’s all possible now!
For those that made the jump to vSphere 6 before Update 1 was released you may have noticed some odd and annoying limitations during the upgrade – the first being their was no “supported” way to upgrade directly from 5.5 embedded SSO to a 6.0 external PSC. You had to first break out your 5.5 SSO to another box and then proceed with the upgrade – it was just a big PIA to tell you the truth. Along with Update 1 came some tools that allow us to simply repoint and reconfigure our vCenter Servers to new PSC’s, which essentially allow us to perform the embedded upgrade and then repoint to a newly installed external PSC – a welcome addition! If you want to learn more there is a great post by Ryan Johnson on the vSphere blog outlining all of the scenarios and commands you need to run to repoint and reconfig!
Disclose all the things!
There are few things in this world that amuse me to the level that Justin Warren’s disclosure posts do and his latest in regards to VMworld 2015 does the trick just the same! Justin is a great writer and I follow his blog religiously – he has lots of excellent posts is a very smart man with an interesting take on everything – including disclosures! Justin spares no attention to detail in these types of posts with disclosures of food (” Some nice roast chicken and vegetables from somewhere local paired with Diet Coke. There was pie, but I had a cookie instead”) and schwag (“EVO:RAIL threw a cap at me, and I grabbed some stickers, one of which is on my laptop. The cap will go into the cap drawer because my wife says I’m not allowed to wear baseball caps.”) alike!!! Aside from these being incredibly amusing it does have an impact on you – just think of all the small, little things that you receive during a conference and how they may influence you!
