As my friend Stu Miniman pointed out, a recent VMware video suggests the company is about to jump into networking in a big way. This new offering would be a generic hypervisor for virtual network devices, from load balancers to security appliances, and would presumably be integrated with the existing vNetwork Distributed Switch functionality. This appears to be more than just a generic version of what Cisco already uses for their Nexus 1000V!
Gestalt IT
Donate Your Swag to School Kids In Need
Trade shows are a veritable swag-fest, some with great loot and some with junk. I’ve been critical of the booth babe and chotchkie phenomenon, but my friend Kevin Houston has a better suggestion: Donate your (useful) swag like backpacks and pens to school kids in need.
The Lure of Layer 2
Unless you’re “in the know”, terms like “layer 2” can seem mysterious, making it all the more plausible when someone touts the benefits. It seems logical: “Bare-metal” communication must be better, faster, and cheaper than higher-level “everything over IP” approaches, right? But it’s not quite that simple.
Nothing Beats Meeting In Person
The Internet is responsible for the demise of many “meatspace” industries, from magazine publishing to CD sales, but there are some things it’ll never do: No matter how much time you spend interacting online, meeting in person is something else entirely. I’m not trying to advocate a return to the old world of tech conferences and user groups. Rather, I envision a new breed of connected events that reinforce online communities with real face-to-face communication.
Amazon Redefines Durability with Reduced Reliability Storage (RRS)
Before Google could even take to the stage to announce their new “Google Storage for Developers” cloud storage offering in their I/O conference keynote, Amazon hit back with a new low-cost “Reduced Redundancy Storage” option for S3. The titans are at war, and cloud storage is the new battle ground. But what was really announced? And should you care?
