Virtualized Geek

A Leap into Learning Kubernetes

So, it’s been awhile, right? I opened my big mouth and put it out there that I’d do a video series installing Kubernetes (K8s) and OpenFaaS on 3-Node Intel NUC cluster. Of course, I’ve never installed K8s and other than knowing Alex Ellis,the leader of the open source project for OpenFaaS, I don’t know the first thing about running functions on containers. Oh, did I forget to mention, other than…

In this important career focused episode, Keith and Mark talk with Eric Lee about IT burn out. Eric wrote a timely and very important blog post on IT Burnout. Eric helps workers identify symptoms of burnout and how to get help and live a balanced life.

Quietly Judging with Amy Lewis – VirtualizedGeek Podcast

Welcome back to podcasting on the VirtualizedGeek. We’ve rebooted the channel to a career-focused podcast. In this first return episode, Amy Lewis of the Geek Whisperers joins the podcast to talk about her transformation from working in publishing to a director at a large enterprise IT software company.

Show Notes

04:00 – Yes and? Amy’s first transformation

05:00 – Posterchild for women in tech (

Introduction to Serverless & Webinar

First off, there are servers in serverless computing. However, the construct of servers is a throwback to a time when the only way to develop distributed applications was to focus on the server as the base component of the infrastructure. In the server-centric model of distributed systems, developers needed to understand their CPU, Memory and OS requirements. An argument could be made that…

AWS S3 Encryption Options

I’ve been playing around with AWS security and as an output, I’ve gotten up to speed with their S3 encryption options. I thought I’d do a quick hit to share what I learned. AWS offers two high-level options for encryption – Server Side Encryption (SSE) and Client Side Encryption. SSE is encryption handled by AWS. As it hints in the name client side encryption is dealt with by the consumer of S3…

CTO Advisor 027 – VSAN 6.2 What you need to know

Wikibon has predicted that Server SAN will overtake traditional storage arrays. The latest version of VSAN 6.2 moves a step closer to displacing legacy storage arrays. I’m joined by VMware Principle Architect Rawlinson Rivera (@punchinglcloud). We hit some critical questions about the latest version. Here’s a short list of topics we touched upon.

Value proposition of VSAN

What’s new

Mission…

My failed attempt at installing Azure Stack in vCloud Air

Failed labs are a cost of doing business in learning new stuff. Microsoft’s tech previewfor Azure Stack created a new opportunity for my lab efforts. It’s rare when I have a lab that’s too big to run in either my home VMware Workstation setup with 32GB of RAM or the 1000 vCPU hours I get monthly with Ravello Systems. The Azure Stack is a big lab. It requires 96GB of RAM and 16 CPU cores. It’s…

I’m headed to both Australia VMUGs

Image: Wikipedia

I commonly run into VMware community members from Australia during VMworld and TechField Dayevents. It’s a long flight, and I enjoy running into all of the community members with a different perspective at infrastructure. I’m grateful for the diversity. I get to experience first hand the marathon that’s traveling 17 hours into the future. Both the Melbourne and Sydney VMware User…

Cirba – Virtualization Field Day 6 Preview

Next up in my previews to Virtualization Field Day 6 (VFD6) is Cirba. There’s already a good amount of introduction content out from other VFD6 delegates for Cirba. Cirba is a veteran of Tech Field Day. They made an appearance at TFDx during VMworld 2015. Cirba is a proper virtualization optimization solution. They are in the class of a VMTurbo. We’ll get into the technology shortly.

Company…

ZeroStack – Virtualization Field Day 6 Preview

Next up in our preview to Virtualization Field Day 6 (VFD6) is ZeroStack. VFD6 is my first introduction to ZeroStack. ZeroStack has a bunch of buzz words going on in their solution. ZeroStack provides a hyper-converged infrastructure to build a private cloud consumed via OpenStack API’s and managed via a SaaS portal. There’s a lot to unpack in that offering. First let’s take a look at the company…

Spirent – VFD 6 Preview

Next up on my Virtualization Field Day 6 previews is Spirent. I’m familiar with Spirent from their load generating solutions. I wrote up my experience trying to troubleshoot an distributed IP multicast webcast system. One of the outstanding questions we needed to answer was if bandwidth contention was a factor in the performance of the system. Our Spirent appliance let up saturate strategic…

FalconStor – Virtualization Field Day 6 Preview

I’m going to Virtualization Field Day 6. And, I’ll continue my new tradition of previewing each presenting company before the event. Today, we’ll take a look at FalconStor.

Basic Company Info

FalconStor is a publically traded company (FALC) with a market cap of about $83M at the time of this writing. The company, founded in 1989 is headed by CA veteran Gary Quinn, 54.

The product

It’s interesting…

A 4:00 min look at Baremetalcloud.com and provisioning a machine to run ESXi 5.5. Interesting option for a home lab.