The shear amount of blogs listed over on Eric Siebert’s vLaunchpad is simply amazing!  I don’t know how many there is listed there – but there is certainly a lot of scrolling that needs to happen in order to get to the bottom – it’s awesome to see just how much information is being shared with each other from the virtualization community!  Props to everyone for that!  And props to Eric – I sometimes struggle with setting up links within my blog posts, let alone tracking the RSS and twitter profiles of all of those blogs/bloggers.  Every year Eric keeps this list up to date – ensuring blogs are current, active, and categorized – all with the intentions of hosting the annual Top vBlog voting!

Well – that time is now.  It’s time to go and show your support for the blogs, news sites, and podcasts out there that help guide you through your daily job or spark your interests into new technologies.

This year we see some changes for the better to the contest – firstly, blogs with 10 posts or less during 2016 will not be listed on the ballot – ensuring that we are only voting for those who put forth the time and effort of releasing content.  Secondly, pubic voting will not be the sole measurement in the ranking of the blogs.  Sure, your opinion will still hold the majority of the ranking at 80%, however the remaining 20% will be split between the number of posts published on the blog, along with the Google PageSpeed score of the blog – forcing bloggers to sharpen up their web hosting skills and try and optimize their site.

So with that – if you have found a blog post particularly useful through out the year or enjoyed reading a particular community members blog – go and vote and support them!  In all honesty, it’s not as if there is a massive prize or anything at the end, but I can say, as a blogger, I enjoy looking at the results and seeing where people have ranked, as well as where I rank among them!  For me, it’s a humbling experience to even be listed!  So big thanks to Eric for tallying up all these votes and handling all of the category submissions and everything!  I know that it’s not for the faint of heart!  And also, huge thanks to Turbonomic for supporting the Top vBlog this year!  If you are looking to right size your environment, migrate to cloud, or simply get the most bang for your buck no matter where your workloads live I would recommend checking out what Turbonomic has to offer!  And, when you are done, go vote & Make Virtualization Great Again!