Category Archives: Cloud

Back from the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2017

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I just got back from a very successful Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany, 2017 edition. I took some vacation days to go educate myself with the help of my peers and the excellent speakers. The people have a wealth of expertise and experience in real world solutions that address the challenges we face today. All this without marketing or too ego. Just pure knowledge sharing about the facts and realties. Take a look here at the wealth of industry experts that were attending and presenting.

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The attendees were amongst the better educated customers & partners you encounter in the field. This is great as this gives everybody good feedback and insight in the challenges we all face. I’d say there are definitely very pragmatic patterns in how businesses deal with the evolving cloud & datacenter ecosystem successfully. Cyber security is also part of that. I’m happy to see the insights shared with us by an expert lite Tudor Damian reminding us to always keep security in mind and showing us and that Microsoft is indeed making serious efforts to protect us in an IT environment they approach with the assumption that Ii t is compromised.

I did my part for the conference with a session on Failover Clustering Evolved (in Windows Server 2016) as well as with a presentation called SMB Direct – The Secret Decoder Ring for the Hyper-V Community day event the day before the conference. That was also awesome and I had a great response to the session and interest in our experiences with RDMA. Oh yes, I also got some hands on training in filming to the delight of my fellow MVPs Winking smile.

If it’s up to me, I’ll be back in 2018!

May 2017 will be a travelling month

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Introduction

In ICT, you never stop learning. Changes come and go fast. Navigating through these turbulent times of rapid change, short value cycles in order to provide continuity in both services & value without falling behind or being held back is a challenge we all face every day. If you hire or employ technologists, please take a moment to consider what they pull off for you every day. It helps to be realistic on what to expect from and to achieve with them. For that a solid understanding of the technology ecosystem and good doctrine to achieve your goals are necessary. For that to really happen and for their efforts to pay off we need to make sure politics and bureaucracy are kept under control. Let your people shine and move ahead. Long term planning does not equate a strategy and you might find yourself out paced & maneuvered by the industry and your competitors. That’s a reason why you see technologist move up the ladder and take on the leadership role inside many companies. They tend to be better placed to see the opportunities and what these require. In that respect, it pays off to walk out of your office every now and then in order to prevent tunnel vision and echo chambers. That’s one of the reasons that for me May 2017 will be a travelling month.

May 2017 will be a travelling month

Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany

First, I’ll be in Munich, Germany, fort he Hyper-V community day and to both attend / speak at the Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2017. That’s a conference for and by the community and the speakers are all highly experienced people who talk the talk and walk the walk.

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I you can grab a ticket asap. From the very 1st edition the Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany has set the standard for what a conference should be like.  I’ll be talking about SMB Direct / RDMA on the Hyper-V community day and about Windows Server 2016 Failover Clustering & Hyper-V at the conference. Please feel free to come over an chat.

Dell EMC World 2017

After that I’m off to DELL EMC World 2017 where I’ll be diving into the offerings that exit today and in the near future. As you might have guessed I’m very interested in the DELL Storage Spaces solutions, there take on and use of ReFSv3 and Windows Server 2016. Next to that, I would not be nick named RoCE Balboa if I was not interested in networking. Hardware wise I have my eye on the S-Series S6100-ON as that is one versatile piece of equipment. Man, I imaging having a lab with a 6 of those to test and play around with. No to mention the S2D clusters & backup targets to hammer them with a nice workload. Throw in the Mellanox cards for good measure. I can dream right ? As I’m a realist I’m also very interested in their servers and still, the Compellent offerings, which as far as traditional SANs go is one easy to manage & leverage piece of gear. It goes without saying I’ll be taking a look at what the EMC addition to the portfolio can achieve for us as well as the DELL EMC 3rd party offerings

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VeeamOn 2017

After that I continue on to VeeamON 2017 which makes a great addition to the two above. The Windows Server 2016 core stack as the basis for Azure Stack, S2D running on that great DELLEMC hardware. Now have that protected and made continuous available by the Veeam Availability Suite 9.5. That’s how you get an amazing stack of technologies on which to build, support amazingly good services.

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At VeeamON 2017 I’ll be joining two big names in the industry Luca Dell’Oca and Carsten Rachfahl to talk about ReFSv3. We’ll be attending sessions and “hanging out” at the MSFT boot as well.

So, no rest for a Microsoft MVP, Microsoft Extended Experts team member, Azure Advisor, a DELL Community Rockstar and a Veeam Vanguard. We’re always reading up, learning, investigating, sharing experiences & insights with our peers and learning from them. Conferences done right are very valuable and a great networking / leaning opportunity. Make the most of them when you can.

My value is your value

These conferences together with our focus on some very innovative and promising public and hybrid cloud technologies in Azure will keep me busy contemplating designs, testing the concepts of solution I have in my mind and delivering very efficient and effective solutions both in functionality as well as in TCO and ROI. That (and caffeine) combined with working with great and smart people is what makes me run. So for that reason alone I do not mind that May 2017 will be a travelling month.

VeeamOn 2017 Call for Presentations

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Veeam will be holding its annual conference VeeamOn 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 16th – 18th. You can actually already pre-register for the conference today. Just follow this link. This qualifies you for a 200$ discount.

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But don’t stop there. When you work with Veeam products you might have some interesting solutions and experiences to share. Maybe you got creative and designed a smart solution to you needs. That’s something that can inspire people to think about how they use the products. So please, don’t be shy. Consider submitting your proposal for a presentation at VeeamOn 2017. Help your peers to achieve their needed availability in an always-on world. Go to https://www.veeam.com/veeamon/call-for-presentations and share your experience, knowledge and insights.

I hope to see you there to learn form and be inspired by you, my peers and colleagues from all over the world!

Heading Home after Ignite 2016

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While traveling back home here are some musings on Microsoft Ignite 2016. I’m not going to regurgitate all the news and announcements here.

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There were many and they were divers. Azure Identity, Security, storage, management, Windows Server 2016, Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, Storage Replica … are all offering a wide variety of new capabilities and options. It’s impressive now and it will be even more impressive in the future. When I connect the dots and look at the opportunities my take on what the future roadmap can and might be visualizes in front of my eyes. That’s the value I can add to an organization that’s committed to its future and realizes it needs to leverage IT to it’s fullest potential. That means you cannot treat IT as a facility because we build it on commodity products. Every success is build on creative and well directed use of the components and the capabilities. This requires a lot more than lip service or merely covering up bad choices and political ambitions with a thin layer of “big principles”. The key to success is speed, agility, insight in a world where mobile and cloud offer tremendous new opportunities. Large, long term, centralized projects have their place but sticking to them by default in the wrong place, the wrong way and manner will lead to failure in a 24/7/365 mobile world where federation, collaboration across boundaries are paramount. The small, cost effective and efficient projects delivering real value with a purpose will make giants, bot in government and the private sectors stumble and even fall.

We have so much opportunity here that many cannot see the trees through the forest anymore. This will lead to many failed projects, ambitions and organizations in combination with a waste of time and money. That’s were we can make the difference.

As an attendee and MVP I was very happy to be able to attend in order to calibrate my compass and correct course. In good tradition I signed the billboard for attending MVPs at Ignite 2016  I’m already looking forward to heading back to Redmond for the MVP Global Summit and continue the discussion at the Microsoft Head Quarters.

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To me, the Ignite 2016 edition was one of intensive networking with Microsoft experts and management. This extended to 3rd party vendors and partners of Microsoft. This, in combination with the discussions with my peers  to discover their views and insights have given me a very up to date view on where we are at and where things are going. That’s the value I’m taking back home to work with and help people reach their full potential. That’s not an easy task as many today are or feel at least a bit out of balance to completely lost. Technologists are the one to step up all the way to the board level and steer their organizations towards a successful future.  Many companies are not ready for this and some management feels threatened by this. There’s basically no need for that fear as we are technologists, not politicians. We solve problems, we don’t create them. We drive companies towards success, if you let us.