The Synology DS1512 has been a popular choice for many home labs in recent years. I hoped that the company’s raft of recent product updates would reach this model eventually. Well my wish was granted as Synology have announced the DS1513+.
There are a few modifications to note. The one that stands out the most at first glance is the doubling of LAN capability. The DS1513+ boasts no fewer than 4 RJ45 ports. That does seem like quite a lot. It does open up some interesting possibilities though…
Today, VMTurbo have launched their Virtual Health Monitor tool and they are letting it loose on the world for the whopping figure of… wait for it…
$0 – That’s right, free.
The tool is an updated and evolved version of the Community Edition of VMTurbo’s Operations Manager product and comes without restrictions on where and how often you deploy it and what it monitors. Ok, that’s not so clear.
The tool is downloaded as an appliance from VMTurbo’s website in a format optimised for one of the following platforms:
The format of the appliance is the only difference that you should find between the versions though as it’s capable of monitoring all of them at the same time. You just download the format that matches the virtual infrastructure where you want to host the tool.
The features that VMTurbo offer with the tool include:
As I’m waiting for the 428Mb appliance to download over the wet bit of string that is my broadband tonight I can’t speak to the experience of deploying it and what it looks like yet but I hope to have the time to kick the tyres on it tomorrow.
I meant to sit the VCAP5-DCD exam last year after my US project finished and I’d had some time off. For one reason or another it never happened. I managed to book it just after VMworld Europe but then had to cancel again.
The other day, I finally got to sit it (I didn’t get as far as passing the VCAP4-DCD). Hooray, I passed!
Unfortunately I don’t live very near any exam centres that were offering slots for one of VMware’s 4-hour Advanced exams so I had to drive over to Milton Keynes to QA’s training facility there. If you choose to take an exam there and, like me, have to drive there make sure you leave yourself plenty of time as parking wasn’t straightforward. The facilities, the exam station itself was fairly decent. The screen size was bigger than I’ve seen in some other places and the workstation was pretty nippy. I’m tempted to go back there as and when I do my DCA exam.
The exam itself, as I’m sure you’ll read elsewhere, is 3 hours and 45 minutes long and is comprised of a mixture of multiple choice type questions, drag and drop questions and some Visio-like diagramming tasks. What made it quite a challenge was that, unlike with some other exams, you cannot return to a previously answered question, you can’t flag a question for later review. I found that this made me very conscious of time passing. I was torn between making it through all of the questions by submitting some hasty answers – some of which I know I will have got wrong through not ready the question through carefully – and taking my time thus risking leaving some questions unanswered. In the end, I finished with mere seconds to spare so I either judged it right or just got lucky!
I can understand some of the reasoning behind removing candidates’ ability to review answers but I found some of the questions were curiously worded and, with some questions, I wanted to go back and check it almost as soon as I’d moved on. In a way though, I’m glad I couldn’t because I almost certainly wouldn’t have finished. In the end, it doesn’t matter too much because I’ve passed now but I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the experience. I’m very happy about the result though!
People have been saying that “this is the year of VDI” for a number of years now. Could it be true this year? Windows XP will be 13 years old when Microsoft finally pull the plug on its support in 2014. That’s a decent innings for domestic pet dog let alone an operating system. Why has it lasted this long and will anybody miss it?
For me, the answer to that last question is “no”, but without a doubt there are users out there for whom it won’t be the case. Some of them will be home users, holding on to that creaking PC or laptop that they’ve had for years and that has always worked (except for BSODs, viruses, lost files and the lack of telepathic functionality that some of the less technically savvy wish was available). Others still may work in small businesses or enterprises that don’t have a very heavy reliance on IT. The remainder will be some of the bigger corporates, still using XP maybe because it’s too difficult to upgrade, too expensive or because XP just works. Or, perhaps more worryingly, there has been a woeful lack of strategic planning somewhere.
Unlike its successor, the much lamented Windows Vista, XP is fairly stable and was fairly easy to pick up and use. In an enterprise environment it could be configured and maintained fairly easily. I can understand why companies wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart by upgrading. Even after Windows 7 had been out for some time, I still received brand new corporate laptops with XP builds on them. And, the brief trend in netbooks in 2009 – 2011 kept sales of XP going strong too.
So, is the world going to end when support officially ends in April 2014? Not really. Having worked with and for software and hardware vendors for many years, their stock response when you buy, upgrade or raise a support ticket for their products is to recommend that you use the latest versions of everything. This will already have been going on for some time now. Some vendors have dropped support for XP already and any that still do will be killing it off over the next year. Companies that use XP won’t grind to a halt come next April.
That said though, despite its familiarity, using XP now represents an increasing risk. When the updates have stopped and the support is cut off, who are you going to turn to when things go wrong? When the office laser printers have run off their final pages and have to be replaced, where will the drivers come from to support XP with your new model? If you’re using XP, the time to think about migrating is now (actually, a couple of years ago might have been better).
The cost of migrating will start to take a back seat to the increased risk of inaction as this year passes. The problem that some may face though is what to do about their legacy applications. Cost, complexity and stability may not be keeping some on XP; it may be their applications that do not work on newer operating systems. What then? Some enterprises face very tough choices this year.
Virtual desktop infrastructure may very well be a sensible solution in many cases if enterprises are willing to invest in it. Careful planning is required but, if it’s done well, there are significant benefits that can be realised. So yes, it may well be the year of VDI after all.
Of course, there’s much more to End User Computing (EUC) than just virtual desktops. So much is going on in this space that I could rattle on for hours and it’d be out of date by the time I’m done. Rather than lament the inevitable end of the countdown, I look forward to the changes that its driving.
If you want to read around what’s going on in the EUC space, two of my favourite sites to follow are:
The clock is ticking on XP (and Office 2003)…
Whether you love or loathe VMware and their products, one area that you can’t fault is the community that’s built up around them. In that community blood, sweat, tears and a dash of brilliance have produced many amazing things. vOpenData looks like it could be one of them.
vOpenData is the brainchild of Ben Thomas and was built with William Lam and assistance from several other VMware community members. Essentially it is a public database of VMware Virtual Infrastructure statistics / configurations. Users download a script that collects some anonymous data about their infrastructure. Once uploaded and added to the database, the data contributes to a plethora of publicly available statistics.
At the time of writing there are over 50,000 VMs in the database. The average VMDK size is just over 70Gb. For me, as a techie / evangelist / consultant, this is useful information and there’s so much more there besides. Here’s a quick grab from the public dashboard:
As a community project, its value is huge and will get even better the more people contribute data to it. Head over to the vOpenData website and find out more.
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