In this session, which was filled to overflowing, Sherry Stevens of NAIC and Jeffrey Olson of The College Board discussed their organizations journey to the AWS cloud. I found it interesting to hear their thoughts and appreciated that both organizations were in different stages of their cloud journey. NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) is … Continue reading 2018 AWS Public Summit Notes – Culture Shock: How a Legacy, Siloed Organization Can Move to the Cloud
2018 AWS Public Sector Summit – Day 1 Summary
Hello all! I'm writing to you from Washington D.C. I'm here attending the AWS Public Sector Summit and as you might imagine, a day full of sessions leaves one feeling as if they have been "drinking from a fire hose". Nonetheless, it's been great and you could also say its far from over as the … Continue reading 2018 AWS Public Sector Summit – Day 1 Summary
Veeam backup to AWS – Health Check $$
One of the unfortunate parts in dealing with data center technology is uncovering "gotchas." It is unfortunate in that no matter how much you know and how much experience you have, something will always sneak up every so often and bite you in the rear. Technology changes so fast, and there are so many moving … Continue reading Veeam backup to AWS – Health Check $$
Baselining Performance using Liquidware Stratusphere UX
This afternoon I was on an interesting and informative webinar hosted by Liquidware in which they discussed using SpotCheck Inspection of an environment as a means to provide visibility into the user experience. NOTE: Let me make this clear, in this post I'm focus on VDI in regards to a SpotCheck inspection, but Stratusphere's scope is … Continue reading Baselining Performance using Liquidware Stratusphere UX
VDI – Adding Notes to Horizon VMs to ID Citrix App Layering Image Templates
I had a Citrix App Layering (formerly Unidesk) customer ask me recently if there was an easy way to display or determine the OS layer version of a given virtual desktop from within vCenter. Prior versions of CAL/Unidesk 2.x “built” the virtual desktops itself, meaning it did not rely on Horizon tools like Composer to … Continue reading VDI – Adding Notes to Horizon VMs to ID Citrix App Layering Image Templates
Veeam backups fail due to login problems
Have you ever experienced the joy associated with overcoming a trying (or annoying) IT issue and the feeling of peace that comes with running a successful test before you leave for the night....knowing full well that this particular problem is behind you, that you can cross this one of the fix list. Later in the … Continue reading Veeam backups fail due to login problems
VMware PKS – Hands-On Lab
Ok, I know what you are thinking. A blog post on a hands-on lab...really? What actually sparked this was seeing a tweet that VMware is offering a raffle for a free trip to VMworld 2018. It has been a little while since I've done a hands-on lab, and a slight chance at winning a trip … Continue reading VMware PKS – Hands-On Lab
VMware Empower Recap
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the VMware Partner Exchange conference, now renamed Empower. It was my first VMware conference outside of VMworld, and it was a MUCH different experience. There are certainly pros and cons to a conference the size and scale of VMworld. Empower was on the opposite end of the … Continue reading VMware Empower Recap
Building AWS CloudFormation templates using CloudFormer
I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm somewhat of a newbie when it comes build AWS CloudFormation templates, but that hasn't stopped me from trying to learn how to harness the power they provide. Thus, last week I spent some time trying to build a CloudFormation template to deploy a Cisco ASAv. At this point, … Continue reading Building AWS CloudFormation templates using CloudFormer
Recovering from a failed AWS Tape Gateway
If you deploy an AWS tape gateway that encounters an unrecoverable failure, you can "potentially" recover any virtual tape data that has already been uploaded to AWS to another tape gateway. I say "potentially" because I have experienced the corruption of (1) virtual tape; this could happen if your tape gateway experiences its fatal failure … Continue reading Recovering from a failed AWS Tape Gateway