Server Workloads to Hit 70% by 2014

Well it would seem that Virtualisation within the server workloads is really starting to become pervasive, to be honest I'm surprised that it will take until 2014 before this is the case.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/20/idc_server_virtualization_forecast/

Home Lab

The idea of a Home Lab is something that I have been after for a long time, after years of trying to get VMware cluster running of VMware Workstation (and yes I know it can be done but it is very messy), I now have a Server at home (an ML350 G4 Quad Core with 8GB of ram and 1TB or Raid Storage) thanks to a very generous Customer.

So I now have a 3 Node nested ESXi cluster running on ESXi as a base OS, the VC is set to auto start and then the ESX Nodes can be brought up as required, for shared storage I use a  QNAP NAS that supports both iSCSI and NFS with 1TB of Mirrored disk. to get nested ESXi to work correctly there only needed to be one or two hacks and that is a change to the advanced setting on the VM's to add the following option and a network setting change, these can be found on the site below.

http://www.vcritical.com/2009/05/vmware-esx-4-can-even-virtualize-itself/

Regards Spence..

    

Leeds VMUG

So after years of wondering if as a consultant I would be welcome at a VMUG, and to be honest the thought of going all the way down to London, I finally made my way up to the VMUG in Leeds (my Head Office is just outside Leeds) and I have to say I was imprest, the organisation of the event was very smooth and the presentations were also. It was nice to see some old friends from both the customer and reseller markets there, Ricky was his old self and Mike as always does like the should of his own voice (but I did have an interesting debate with him about Citrix and VMware), it was also great to see my old friends from VirtualDCS I'm glade to see that they are starting to get far more traction in the market.