Strategy

Build your own, high quality VMware diagrams and presentations

schambers — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:39:33 GMT

VMware's branding machine has kindly donated their latest batch of goodness to the VMware ecosystem. Check out:

Library VMware Icons and Diagrams
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Use the graphics in the first presentation to build your own presentation as it includes object icons for virtual machines and others, plus diagrams for solutions like VDC-OS.

The second document is for you architects out there: Maish Saidel-Keesing transferred the icons and diagrams into Visio stencils, so now you can build your own architecture diagrams using VMware's expensive looking graphics!

With thousands of downloads already, I think the feedback so far has been "AWESOME!"

Initiating the deployment

schambers — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:39:57 GMT

The first five docs of the sixty-point blueprint are nearly done and will be ready for review this week. They are:

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We need authors and reviewers to help complete these documents - contact Steve Chambers if you can help.

Consolidation 60-point Blueprint

schambers — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:18:35 GMT

Over the next two months this community will be producing a VI3 Server Consolidation 60-point Deployment Blueprint, which is a collection of documents representing the activities that, over approximately 180 days, will build a complete server consolidation solution from the "P2V Pipeline" to the backend VMware Infrastructure.

Why pick the topic of server consolidation and not, say, Developer environments, or Desktop? Well we had to pick one to start with and the primary driver and focus for virtualization right now in this economic climate is cost savings, and that's what consolidation does and there's a good mix of those who've already succeeded and those who are still trying it. There are other ways to save money through operational efficiencies, and deploying desktop, but we had to start somewhere and server consolidation is by far the common case. If you have or want other kinds of blueprints, start a discussion thread in this forum and tell us what's on your mind.

You can get news from this blog via RSS and we'll be updating this blog at least once a week, but we'd really like you to get more involved as explained in this thread Roll up, roll up! 60-point deployment blueprint.

References: In answer to survey

stephens — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:44:24 GMT

One thing that was clear from our recent survey is that you want to see more than just proven practices. We have a lot of valuable information and tools available at VMware. Problem is, they can sometimes be hard to find. What I'll try to do here is add some references to things that I think are important to the strategic planning required for a successful VMware installation. First up is the "Roadmap to Virtualization". This paper is based on the experience of our Professional Services Organization in helping our clients become Operationally Ready for implementing virtualization across their data center. These Operational Readiness engagements have been very successful in helping people overcome the people and process issues that arise during a migration to virtualization. Although most of our customers have been large enterprises. The concepts here apply to all but the smallest of organizations. I hope you find these links useful and if not, let us know.

Thanks, and have a Happy New Year in 2009.

Bob

VIOPS is not just about technology... what about the people?

schambers — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:35:23 GMT

The charter for VIOPS is to widen the virtualization discussion beyond pure technology, and start to open the door to people and process. What is the impact of virtualization on the staff that use it, the application folks that rely on it? What about all those service management processes, how do they change?

This change is all positive as far as my four years have shown. In terms of people, I've tried to capture those changes that we've worked with customers on, and the result is Proven Practice: Five successful people practices to succeed with virtualization.

This is a big subject but I've tried to capture all the things that we work with customers on... skills, building a team, training, getting temporary resources to help you out... they are all listed in what I hope is a helpful manner.

Have a read and tell me if it's helpful. I think our Education team have more training courses now, but I'll ask them to make THOSE updates

A strategy for migrating from physical to virtual

schambers — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:38:13 GMT

Darren Woollard from the Nationwide Building Society in the UK recently wrote up his considerable experience in Preparing for a Physical to Virtual migration (P2V) - a guide from real world experience.

Although people have been P2V'ing for years, and for some it seems straight-forward, of course the challenge is not just the tools - it's the old adage of "people and process" that can really slow you down. Hearing people say "With this tool I can migrate 100 servers a week" makes me shudder when I start to ask them about their change process, or about their application owners' desire to be virtualized.

Darren has covered these issues and has taken a lot of time to write down his guidance in an easy to understand format. I think his document is full of waypoints to help you through the equivalent of Bodmin Moor in the virtualization world.

Great work, Darren, but don't rest on your laurels - get writing some more!

Please check out Darren's document, perhaps you have a different way of doing things, or some comments - that's what this community is all about: joining in, sharing war stories, finding a faster, better way by learning from each others' experience.

Steve

Strategy Leader

stephens — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:54:13 GMT

Hi, my name is Bob Stephens and I'm going to lead the strategy section of VI OPS. I'm the Director of Enterprise Marketing at VMware and my job is to develop strategies for helping customers be successful with operationalizing VMware. Before coming to VMware I worked for 23 years at IBM on x86 PC's and Servers. I started working with VMware in 2001 so I've been around the business for a while. While I hope you will all provide us with your own VMware Operations strategy success stories, I'll be gleaning our case study files for success stories that I think you will want to know about. I also hope to encourage the key players in these stories to bring us the latest status of their strategy and how they worked in the long term. I'll be looking for people, process, and technical strategies that have led to successful VI implementations. Looking forward to it.