Diary of a Bad Golfer

Grab it here

Just stumbled across this product today, looks pretty slick. It’s a backup/copy tool inspired by robocopy but can utilize VSS to snapshot live files, and then copy the snapshots.

What is HoboCopy?

HoboCopy is a backup/copy tool. It is inspired by robocopy in both name and in functionality. It differs greatly from robocopy, however, in two respects:

1. It is not as full-featured as robocopy.
2. It uses the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to “snapshot” the disk before copying. It then copies from the snapshot rather than the “live” disk.

Check it out

Steve Ballmer sells Windows 1.0

Don’t Copy that Floppy

Ellen Feis Apple Switch Ad

Commodore 64 Commercial

MS-DOS 5 Promo Video

Movie Piracy is a Crime

Parody of Movie Piracy is a Crime

Atari Pole Position

BT Slimtel

Kevin Costner Apple Ad

Amstrad Ad

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/0,39029477,49292857,00.htm

Overall I had hoped the event would be more technical.  It was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.  This picture is looking outside from Moscone West.

The sessions were good but didn’t really go as in depth as I would have liked.

On Tuesday I sat in on the following presentations:

1. VMware Infrastructure 3 Design - Technology and Architechture Choices (Customer Panel)
2. VMware Infrastructure 3 Deployment - Best Practices and Overcoming Obstacles (Customer Panel)
3. Best Practices - Architecting Disaster Recovery Solutions for Geographically Disparate Sites
4. ESX Server Architectural Directions
5. Virtualization Assessment Considerations - The Second Step in a Successful Virtualization Project
6. Design, Build and Manage your SAN Environment with Fault-Tolerant, Disaster Recovery and Performance Criteria using VMware Infrastructure 3
7. Virtualized Recovery for Real Disasters

This was followed by a cruise around the San Francisco Bay sponsored by EqualLogic.  It was a pretty nice boat and a REALLY nice night out, unfortunately I could barely keep my eyes open and didn’t even make it to the top of the ship to take in the view.  Pics didn’t turn out good (again, BlackBerry) but here were a few.

At Pier 40 waiting for the ship.

Walking towards the ship.

Looking out the back of the ship.

The crappy picture does not do this justice, this was the Giants stadium, and from the bay you can see right into the stadium, I think this is where all the boats usually are on game day for home run balls.    

Wednesday started with the following:

1. Simply Addressing the Disaster Recovery Needs of Virtual Infrastructures
2. Optimizing Storage for Virtual Desktops
3. Scaling iSCSI SANs for Large Scale VMware Deployments
4. Scaling your Virtual Infrastructure - Getting Started
5. Scaling your Virtual Infrastructure for Larger Workloads
6. Tips and Tricks - Disaster Recovery in a Box

Wednesday night was the VMworld Party at Treasure Island which is an artificial island in the San Fran Bay.  There was a local band opening and the headliner was Smash Mouth.  There was a LOT of people there, everything was free, all sorts of carnival games, different types of food, live jazz, comedians etc.  One of the buildings was setup like a street town with different "businesses" along it, there was a comedy club, a sports bar, an arcade, a mexican restaurant among others.  I managed to grab a picture of just how packed this building was:

Thursday morning was a speech by John Chambers, possibly related to the free alcohol I did not make it to this speech in time.   The sessions I did make it to were:

1. Successful Disaster Recovery Testing for Virtualized Disaster Recovery
2. Building Scalability and Redundancy into a Multi-Site VMware Implementation
3. NFS & iSCSI - Performance Characterization and Best Practices
4. Exchange and SQL on ESX Server - Best Practices on Virtualization of Transcational Application Workloads
5. Best Practices for Multi-Site Data Center Relocation and Consolidation

I spent a fair amount of time in the Solutions Exchange, unfortunately there weren’t as many technical people at the booths as most people there would have liked, but it was still interesting to see some of the new products.  A number of virtual appliances that looked promising.  All in all it was a great trip, and next time I take a trip I will make sure to check that my camera works before I leave!

What a trip, really good event - I think I heard there ended up being about 12,000 attendees.  Unfortunately I missed the opening speeches where ESX Server 3i was unveiled - although this had been a rumor for awhile now.

Speaking of 3i that was one of the items in our gift bags, a USB stick with a beta version of 3i, the service console has been removed and it runs in a 32mb footprint.  Unfortunately I left mine at the hotel.

When I got out there I found that my camera no longer works so the only pictures I have of the event were taken with my BlackBerry, which didn’t exactly do a great job.

Example:

When I first got my Mac (Before VMware Fusion was out) I swore by Parallels - Coherence was such an awesome feature that allowed Mac and Windows programs to run side by side. Once VMware came out with Fusion I wanted to see what the difference was - the main difference was that Fusion doesn’t have a start bar in Unity mode, it only has a program launch menu. Hated this at first but now I really like that feature.

I still haven’t fully made up my mind on the two products, Parallels seems to handle switching between laptop and external monitor resolution a lot better, but Fusion is MUCH faster for me.

I found a performance test that compared Boot Camp, Parallels, CrossOver, and Fusion. The result was that VMware Fusion was pretty far ahead in terms of performance - a few things that suprised me was Fusion can utilize 2 CPU cores, while Parallels can use one. Fusion can use 128mb video memory while Parallels can use 64mb.

Virtualization Performance

I’ve been using Google Calendar for awhile now as my “main” calendar but only recently found out a cool feature of it.  I currently have a one-way synchronization setup so my work calendar uploads to my Google calendar using SyncMyCal (syncs automatically for me).  Then I also have all my personal calendar details on it.

What I recently started using was being able to add new events phone my phone via SMS.  To do this you first need to setup mobile access in your Google calendar (under Settings).  Then you can send new events to GVENT (48368) and have them show on your calendar.  I.E. text “Lunch at Jeff’s Saturday at 11am”

You can also retrieve calendar info this way by sending “day” you will get a notification of all your scheduled events for the day.  Or you can set it up to send you a list of the day’s events emailed to you at a certain time every morning.

Now if I could just find something free to do a 2 way sync to my iCal I would be set.

I’m pretty excited to get to attend VMworld this year in San Francisco (just over a month away). One thing I found out that should be interesting is that VMware has announced it will allow 3rd party vendors to develop virtual switches for ESX and Cisco is expected to be the first company with a product for this (John Chambers is a keynote speaker this year) - not to mention they are expected to buy into VMware’s IPO for about $150 million.

Looks like the SanDisk SerialATA 5000 2.5in solid state drive will be available as an option for IBM HS21 XM Blades by the end of July.

The benefits of a solid state drive is reduced power, heat and improved performance/seek times.  According to reports the SanDisk flash drive uses up to 87 percent less power then 2 typical hard drives which would equate to a savings of about 18 watts per blade, 252 watts per chassis, or 1,512 watts per server rack.

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