Category Archives: Education

Altaro Webinar with Ben Armstrong: Ask me anything on containers

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Altaro is organizing a “Ask me Anything” webinar with Ben Armstrong. Our fellow MVP and always in learning mode  Andy Syrewicze @asyrewicze) from Altaro is our host

So if you’d like or need to find out what containers are al about and if they are something for you or not you’ll want to attend this webinar.

Ben Armstrong (@vBenArmstrong) has been the driving force behind Hyper-V, a great hypervisor, that also happens to power Azure and yes containers (nested virtualization anyone?). Andy Syrewicze from Altaro will be moderating this Ask Me Anything (AMA) webinar with Ben to answer all your burning questions about containers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Topics that will be addressed are:

  • Industry adoption of containers
  • Container and micro-services examples
  • Best practices for deployment
  • The future of containers

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Talking to Ben,listening to Ben is always an educational process. He makes you think about the subject and the ecosystem it exists in. So do yourself a favor. Grab a slot this webinar. If you have any question you can send them via the hastag #AskBenArmstrong on any social media platform and get it answered.

Register for the webinar via this link Ben Armstrong – AMA on Containers

Veeam Vanguard nominations are now open for 2018!

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Just a quick blog post on the Veeam Vanguard program. The nominations for 2018 are open! That means that if you know people who would make a Veeam Vanguard you can nominate them. You can even nominate yourself, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not frowned upon, but it also doesn’t change anything in terms of evaluation for the program.

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Rick blogged on this yesterday on the Veeam blog in “Veeam Vanguard nominations are now open for 2018!” and gave some more insight of what the program is, tries to achieve and does. He also discusses the selection. The key take-away is that you cannot study for this and that it is not some kind of certification or such. Some of the current Vanguards were quoted on how they look at the program and one thing is constant in that. The fact that the people in these programs are contributors to the global tech community and it’s about sharing and helping others getting the best out of their environment and their investment in Veeam. It also helps Veeam as they get a very communicative group of people to give them feedback on their offerings, both products and services. It’s just one more tool that helps them get things right of fix thing when they got it wrong. Likewise understanding Veeam and their products better for us helps us make better decisions on design, implementation and operation of them.

You can have a look at the current lineup of Veeam Vanguards over here.

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You’ll find a short video on the program on that page as well. So go meet the Vanguards and find their blog, their communities and follow @VeeamVanguard and the hash tag #VeeamVanguard to see what’s going on.

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So, people, this is the moment if you want to nominate someone or yourself to join the Veeam Vanguards in 2018. You have time until December 29th 2017 to do so. I have always felt honored to be selected and have found memories of the events I was able to go to and I to this day I’m happy to be active in the Veeam Vanguard ecosystem. It’s a fine group of professionals in a program of a great company.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials

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The last few months I spent some of my down time and commute time reading a book. A paper one actually. It’s Greg Schulz’s “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials”. It is as the sub title states about cloud, converged and virtual fundamental server storage I/O tradecraft.

It is not a book you’ll read to learn about a particular technology, product or vendor. It is a more holistic approach to educating people in todays IT landscape. That vast area of expertise in which all the considerations around storage in a modern IT environment come together. Where old and new, established and emerging ways of handling storage IO for a variety of  use cases meet and mix.

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Reading the book helps to become more well versed in the subject and takes us out of our product or problem specific cocoons. That the main reason I’d recommend anyone to read it. I’m impressed by how well Greg managed to write a book on such a diverse subject that is accessible to all levels of expertise.The depth and the breadth of this subject make this quite a feat. On top of that this book is usable and valuable to both novice and experienced  professionals. I have said it before (on Twitter), but if I was teaching IT classes and needed to bring the student up to date in regards to the software defined cloud data center data considerations this would be the text book. It acknowledges the diversity of solutions and architectures in the real world and doesn’t make bold marketing statements. Instead it focuses on what you need to know and consider when discussing and designing solutions. I wish many IT manager, consultant and analyst would attend my fictional class but I’d settle for them reading this book and learning about a big part of what they need to manage, It would serve them well and help understand concerns other involved parties might want to see addressed.

For me an extra benefit was that I enjoy talking shop with Greg but I only get those opportunities on rare occasions during conferences.  As such, this book gave me some more time to read his views and insights. That’s the best next thing.

Webinar: 3 Emerging Technologies that will change the way you use Hyper-V

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I have the pleasure of doing a webinar on October 24th 2017 with two fellow MVPs. They are Andy Syrewicze  from Altaro who organize the webinar and Thomas Mauer who’s well know expert in the tech community and beyond on Cloud and Data Center technologies.

The subject of the webinar is 3 Emerging Technologies that will change the way you use Hyper-V. It’s a panel style discussion amongst the 3 of us technology and trends that effect everyone in this business.

  • Public cloud computing platforms such as Azure and AWS
  • Azure Stack and the complete abstraction of Hyper-V
  • Containers and microservices: why they are game changers

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There will be time for questions and discussions as we expect the subject to be of great interest to all. For my part I’ll try to look at the bigger picture of the technologies both from a product a service perspective as well as from a strategic point of view and a part of a doctrine to achieve an organizations goals.