Continue reading »]]> It is that time of year again,forget the holidays if you are a virtualization nerd then you wait for VMware to open up it’s call for papers. The chance to present at one of the best IT conferences of the year.

VMworld is the grand daddy of virtualization conferences where over 20 thousands users attend.

Call for Papers

This is VMware’s chance for community members to submit topics which they will present during the conference.

Simply got o this Link read the rules and submit!!

The dates submissions are accepted are Thursday, April 19 – Friday, May 18

Nerd’s Blurt

I really enjoy VMworld, I submitted something last year with no success, but I am not discouraged and will be submitting a couple sessions this year and hoping for the best.  I hope that you all try and submit a session, you do not know unless you try!

Check out the Call for Papers!

Continue reading »]]> There are many vendors out there and they all offer various ways to learn about their products. HP is no exception, with Cloud being the biggest buzz word and everyone having “cloud” offerings of some sort. HP has came out with HP Pathways to Cloud event.

Pathways to Cloud
Is a two day event being hosted at various cities across the Continental US. You can find a list of cities and dates below.

HP Pathways to Cloud Venue Details

7:30 a.m. – 3:45 p.m. (local time)

 

*Dates & Locations (day 2 dates only)

Date	City	Location	Directions
March 7th	Houston	LoneStar Corp. College – University Park 20515 State Highway 249 Houston, TX 77070	Directions >
March 8th	Boston	Marriott Newton 2345 Commonwealth Avenue Newton, MA 02466	Directions >
March 14th	Orange County, CA	Hyatt Regency Irvine 17900 Jamboree Road Orange County, CA 92614	Directions >
March 15th	Seattle	Renaissance Seattle 515 Madison Street Seattle, WA 98104	Directions >
March 21st	Dallas	Hilton Anatole 2201 N. Stemmons Freeway Dallas, TX 75207	Directions >
March 22nd	Atlanta	Renaissance Atlanta Waverly 2450 Galleria Parkway Atlanta, GA 30339	Directions >
March 28th	Washington DC	Sheraton Premier at Tyson’s Corner 8661 Leesburg Pike Vienna,VA 22182	Directions >
March 29th	Chicago	Hilton Rosemont 5550 North River Road Rosemont, IL 60018	Directions >
April 3rd	New York	Marriott Marquis 1535 Broadway New York, NY 10036	Directions >
April 5th	Phoenix	JW Marriott Desert Ridge 5350 East Marriott Drive Phoenix, AZ 85054	Directions >
April 11th	Denver	Hyatt Denver Tech Center 7800 East Tufts Avenue Denver, CO 80237	Directions >
April 12th	Cincinnati	Sharonville Convention Center 11355 Chester Road Cincinnati, OH 45246-4002	Directions >
April 18th	Tampa	Tampa Convention Center 333 S Franklin St Tampa, FL 33602	Directions >
April 19th	San Francisco	Hotel Nikko 222 Mason Street San Francisco, CA 94102-2115	Directions >

During the event you will learn what it takes to get you business into the cloud and about HP’s Converged Infrastructure offerings.

You can Click Hereto Register.

Nerd’s Blurt

I really think events like these are beneficial to IT organizations, as they provide some great information. Also allowing you to network more with peers.

I have some posts that talk about some of HP’s Converged Infrastructure here

*was taken directly from HP’s website.

Continue reading »]]> This past weekend I was a member of the White Team for the NECCDC. I have never participated with this event before however my friend Matthew Brender from I Tech Therefore I am wrote a post looking for volunteers. NECCDC is a sponsored event by EMC, North Eastern University, Dell Secureworks, SPAWAR to name a few.

Blue Team
The Blue Team consisted of 12 Colleges and Universities. RIT, UNH, UM, ALFRED, NEU, SIT, UMASS, CHAMPLAIN, WPI, HARVARD, BUFFALO, PACE.

Red Team
Was mixed with Security specialists in all aspects of Technology specialties.

Competition
Teams were scored on different services running constantly while getting attacked by the Red Team. There was also Business challenges brought into the event. Causing a mock real world situation for the participants.

• DNS
• FTP
• SSH
• SMTP
• POP3
• HTTP
• HTTP2
• Data integrity
• Various Business tasks assigned randomly throughout

Winner

RIT took the top spot this weekend.

Nerd’s Blurt
This being my 1st year involved was so interesting. I was inspired a lot by the students who are one day going to be my peers in some form. I really have to share one of the experiences I went through and how inspiring it was to witness in 2012.

On Saturday I was assigned to be in RM7. I had a great partner Dan Woodruff in the room as well. Now on this day the competition started at 9am, Dan and I were in an empty room. We joked about us getting to sit in an empty room all day. Our team was Team 32 Harvard University. I know most just hear Harvard and there is a certain stigma related to that, “They go to Harvard”( I can hear it in my head and someone dragging out the Harvard and all ) It is now close to 15 past 9 when our team members come in. Dan and I quickly notice there is something astray in the room. On Friday evening there were 6 team members, Saturday only 3 members showed back up. So right off the bat Team 32 is down half of it’s team. This is huge undertaking as there are multiple systems being attacked at any point from the Red Team.

Team 32 was calm and went about their tasks with great composure! They worked great as a team, each owning a task and all cringing every time the door opened for a new inject. They kept plugging away un-phased that they were greatly under manned. This can be a pretty stressful event for the Blue teams and this small group held it together. I have a lot of respect for people with that work ethic. There was no complaining or making excuses for the team members that decided Spring Break was more important, nothing! The dedication that Team 32 showed and the great composure was an awesome thing to witness at an event that is already Awesome in it self. So Michele, Byron & Carl hats off to you three! My advice to you is keep that same dedication going forward and you will make it in which ever career you so choose. Did I mention that Michele of Team 32 isn’t even a computer major? Another thing that impressed me was that fact and the dedication to her friends to not give up on them!

Oh, Michele I know you guys will read this but look down as your shoes untied!!

Continue reading »]]> It is that time of year again. VMware has opened up it’s vExpert application form. I could not find a deadline date

This year they are doing something different, there are three tracks in which you can submit under. ( Below taken from http://communities.vmware.com/vexpert.jspa )

• Evangelist Path
  The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path.
• Customer Path
  The Customer Path is for internal evangelists and community leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have contributed to success stories, customer references, or public interviews and talks, or were active community contributors, such as VMUG leaders.
• VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
  The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements.

If you feel that you have went above and beyond the norm you should apply. I really wish they had the nominate a peer versus encourage a peer to apply.

I know the Damian Karlson and Cody Bunch should be tops on this list for the exceptional work they do with Professionalvmware.com and their #Brownbags.

Nerd’s Blurt

I enjoy the vExpert nomination time and think it is a great way to recognize individuals with-in the community. The twist this year with the three paths is different. I am not sure how it will play out or reasoning behind it. So get out there and submit! you never know if you will be designated vExpert unless you try!!

Continue reading »]]> So you have to add a bunch of printers to your Windows 7 machine? We installed a new print server and I was the lucky one that had to test all the printers connected to it. Not a big deal right, it is a simple task. Everything was going smooth until I got a printer could not be reached error.

What I learned
I learned today that after 12 consecutive printer adds that you indeed crash the Print Spooler. For those that do not know what the print spooler i, Print Spooler is what Windows uses to communicate with your printers from with-in applications. So if it is not running you can not print or add printers.

Solution
A simple restart of the Print Spooler service quickly fixed this. I verified this when I had to add 12 more printers and recieved the same thing. Under normal circumstances people are not going to be adding 12+ computers at once. However us IT support folks may end up needing to do so.

Nerd’s Blurt
While it was a simple task I fixed fast and easy. I wanted you all to share in the small limitation I came across in the event anyone has to add more then 12 printers.

Continue reading »]]> As many of you know Matthew Brender, Jim Peluso and myself run the social media activities for the New England VMware User Group (NEVMUG). I have been talking with the President Chris Harney about getting more user involvement in the group.  It was brought up that the NEVMUG would love to have end user presentations, not just the sponsor presentations. Think of it as a primer or ultra mini version of VMworld. I am excited that Chris is fully on board and supporting this idea! Matthew and Jim are also super excited about this. We have many ideas for the growth of the social front with-in the group and shall be ramping up efforts in the coming year.

Call for Papers

Starting today 30th November 2011 until21st December 2011 we will be accepting submissions to be a presenter at the 19th January 2012 Winter Warmer. The selection commitee will then go through the submissions and notify the selected presenters on the 28th December 2011. The presenters then Have until 01 January 2012 to accept. The presenter will have to provide a copy of their presentation to the NEVMUG by 15th January 2012.

Key Dates*

• Submissions open: November 30th 2011
• Submissions close: December 21st 2011
• Selected prestenters notified: December 28th 2011
• Presenters accept by: December 30th 2011
• Copy of presentation due: January 15th 2012

Submit your presentation (Click here if form not displayed below)

Terms and Conditions

Continue reading »]]> Final blog post for the BRC2k11 

With this being the last post from the contest, I would like to take the time to thank the judges who have provided some great incite, and really given me a lot to think about with how and what I choose to write. I really liked how HP the entire time hasn’t been pushing us to pimp their products. I am definelty going to be writing more on some of the topics we discussed during the last three weeks.

I have been taken way out of my comfort zone in this contest and I LOVE that! The exposure to new things is great and inspires me to learn and share that knowledge with you all. HP Virtual Connect, ICM, Flex 10, Converged Systems, Converged Storage, is the tip of the ice berg on the “converged” possibilities. I look forward to where this journey brings us all. Taking from this experience, friendships were forged and a great self accomplishment that we embarked on a new venture.

Reality Part

Nerd’s Blurt

In the video I discussed briefly about what we saw during the webinar. I have provided some links that cover those topics in greater detail. The whole part of doing video is new and I will iron out the kinks once I figure out the way I would like to take it, until then I’m just having a blast!

Throughout this whole experience I have had the pleasure to interact with individuals I may not have had the chance too. A few weeks ago I was sitting and reflecting this opportunity when I started to chuckle to myself. You all are probably thinking I’m crazy but the last couple years has been a wild ride for me, and it has only gotten more crazy but I’m having a blast. I still recall a conversation I had with Stephen Foskett about me being late to the game and he said to me ” Luigi, this is the best time to get into technology. There is so much happening right now that is making technology fun again.” Stephen was so right!

The Fun

ALL of you who are reading and watching the final video!

Related Links

blogger must read!

• Matthew Norwood discusses IMC
• Great write up from Brent Ozar on Virtual Connect from 2008!

• HP Virtual Connect
• HP Flex 10 module
• HP IMC

Continue reading »]]> Blogger Reality Contest Week #2 overview

This was the 2^nd week on the Blogger Reality Contest and HP delivered a webinar on their HP Converged Systems, the presenters were Kristy Ward & Jeff Kenyon from HP ESSN Alliances Solutions group.

The Difference

The major difference with HP’s offerings is that it supports multiple hypervisors. I can say from a virtualization stand point this is a huge selling point over the competition. In recent weeks it has been brought up multiple times with me about Citrix running on VMware, or a conversation about Hyper-V. Just Saturday, while attending a BBQ, vBlock was the topic of discussion. Now being fresh off the webinar presentation I threw out the information of HP’s Converged Systems with the ability to run any hypervisor. This solidified the major impact of that feature.

Being able to utilize any virtualization technology with-in your infrastructure is a great way to stay fluid. You are able to change as your business needs change. Today Hyper-V tomorrow VMware, utilizing HP’s offerings currently available; can make a CFO happy with the ROI.

HP Converged Systems

HP’s converged systems, offers a range of solutions to help business that are virtualizing and headed to the cloud.

• HP VirtualSystem- HP’s stepping stone to CloudSystem. Simple virtualization that is optimized for running in a virtual environment.
• HP CloudSystem- HP’s Cloud solution allowing you to put your apps & services at your fingertips.
• Hp AppSystems- HP’s business intelligence portfolio

HP VirtualSystem

HP engineers have developed a system which is optimized for virtual environments. With 2x the memory and optimized storage; security is also a factor offering vm-vm , vm-physical traffic inspection.  Find that one of the three available models is not enough?  Simply run the Cloud Start upgrade application and it will help make converting to a HP CloudSystem a breeze.

• VS1-
  • Proliant Rack mount
  • Up to 8 physical nodes
  • Storage: P4000 series
  • Scales up to 750 vm’s
• VS2
  • HP Blade system
  • Up to 26 server nodes
  • Storage: P4800 series
  • Scales up to 2500 vm’s
• VS3
  • HP Blade system
  • Up to 64 server nodes
  • Storage: 3Par utility storage
  • Scales up to 6,000 vm’s

Please be sure to read the link below from Tech Talk with Phillip Sellers who goes more into detail on some of these systems.

You can find more detailed information here

• HP- Official information
• Tech Talk w/Phillip Sellers

Nerd’s Blurt

In an ever growing world of “need it now with less” approach, has really pushed innovation.  IT Departments like business needs are ever changing. HP is trying to tip the scale by offering a solution that can work now, and have room to grow.

Related Links

Check the following links to find some great information pertaining to HP’s Virtual System and the use of them on other Hypervisors.

• HP VirtualSystem Resources
• Microsoft on HP
• HP AppSystem

Please Vote

[polldaddy poll=5420166]

Continue reading »]]> Let it begin

As many know we are attending various webinars being held by HP who is sponsoring this contest. I have to say it is definitely taking me outside the box in thinking and I LOVE IT!

HP like many are getting into the IT As A Service (IAAS) Solution game, or the “make your own cloud” game. With Virtualization booming in the data center, technology companies like HP need to stay fresh or get crumbled up and fed to the pigeons in the park.

Webinar 1- Converged Storage

Hp rockstars Lee Johns and Dale Degen did an astounding job hosting the stellar Blogger crew. I will definelty give HP credit for thinking outside the box with this great opportunity.

Q. What is HP’s converged storage?

• A) Converged Storage his a piece of  the HP Converged Infrastructure.
•  Current Infrastructure designs have all the components separate. This causes for more Data-center Real estate, which relates to more Cost for power and cooling all that equipment. Not to mention the cost in time spent physically working on the equipment.

• With HP’s Convereged infrastructure you can now cut down the amount of data center real estate you occupy thus lowering your power & cooling costs.
• By simplifying the infrastructure manamgemt you save valuable labor hours that could be utilized elsewhere as the admins don’t have to login to to multiple systems.
• The use of HP Converged Storage Software makes it easy to mange and deploy physical or virtual storage.

Instant-On Enterprise

This is HP’s IT As A Service Solution as I mentioned briefly above. What this does is takes the components Converged Storage,­ Servers, Networking and HPCSS (HP Converged Storage Software) and allows you to become a robust IT servicing machine. You have everything that you need to supply your end users with the best service possible.

Converged Storage

Converged storage helps bridge the gap between the boundaries of Servers, networks & storage.  These systems can scale-out with your business as it grows. That is accomplished by the use of HP Converged Storage Software.

The Reality Part

Well many know that this is part of a Bloggers Reality Contest. So be nice enjoy the video as I take you into the inner workings of a blogger writing a post. Please understand this is my very 1st time doing video! I am definitely out of my comfort zone here but find it very valuable for me to grow.

Nerd’s Blurt 

HP has made some significant strides in the Enterprise arena. Having converged infrastructure in their arsenal now keeps them in the game.  This also allows for customers to expand slowly as their needs shift and grow. Saving money will help top executives choose a product, having a product that saves money on not just power and cooling but is flexible & can scale out  is a great asset.

I like that HP is utilizing their acquisitions and not just shelving them. I do have some other questions and comments I’d like to explore in future posts. The upcoming webinars will allow for some of this but I am excited to be learning so much and that I can share it all with you bit by bit.

Please all this is a contest and I need your votes! Click the thumbs up so I can get some points!! Leave a comment about the video, critique me please!! the more comments the better, good, bad whatever!!
[polldaddy poll=5355679]

Continue reading »]]> I mentioned Thomas Jones from Niketown588.com was holding a contest in an earlier post of mine. You can read it here. I also mentioned that I had thrown myself into the mix. I can announce that I have been selected in the contest!!There are some great people involved and I can’t wait to read all the content from my peers and get some great feedback. Now HP is a big sponsor and honestly I like HP. I’m typing on my Compaq PC right now and have a few other HP products.

One thing I like about this contest is it allows to me get out of the Luigi is an EMC person, Honestly I like all technologies. Give me exposure and I’m sure at some point I may write about it. I am going to keep myself open and challenge myself. You all know who I am and I’m not just the guy who wins iPads.

The WHO

Bloggers

 Judges

How it works

How it will work is you the readers will vote if you like a post. All of your votes, Twitter RT’s will help the bloggers in the scoring and with the Judges scoring.

So please use the Comments section and click on the Thumbs up!! share it on Twitter & Facebook!! help me and spread the word!!!

Nerd’s Blurt

This is a great opportuinty for us to grow as bloggers and a community. I am looking forward to this and am Honored to be part of the 1st of it’s kind of event.