Lawyer Bait

The views expressed herein solely represent the author’s personal views and opinions and not of anyone else - person or organization.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Good things to Happen in 2009

Well 2008 marks this blog being up for just over a year. In this time the blog has had more traffic than I imagined, and I have met some great people along the way. 2009 promises to be an even better year, as my employer has asked me to blog more often and share some thought leadership with our customer base and the industry at large. That is a huge crdibility boost as was being named to one of the top bloggers to watch in 2008 by VMWare.

I only hope that I will live up to expectations.

Topics I will be very focused on are the container based computing offerings out there - Verari, HP, Sun, and Rackable to name a few.

Areas of interest are - how do we compute in a more energy efficient way within the data center/power/cooling footprint that we have, and what should we consider if we are making a move - being green or saving some green.

There are some fantastic things happening out there that will help us all compute more effectively, more efficiently, and spend our dollars more wisely. I will share what I know, what I hear, and what I believe and why. Wherever possible I will provide justifications, incluing how I came to the conclusion I did, and share that with the community. I firmly believe the tide raises all boats, and I'll do what I can to keep us floating higher in the water.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Billion Explained

This has little if anything to do with virtualization, however this email really blew my mind and I felt compelled to post it. Enjoy...

How many zeros in a billion? This is too true to be funny.

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D)is asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans Interesting number... what does it mean?

A.
Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.

B.
Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

C.
Or... if you are a family of four...
your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D. C - HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges ( tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax< br> Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemploy ment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal
Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt....
We had the largest middle class in the world...
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'
And I still have to
press '1'
for English.

What happened?????

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Tech Target and Burton Group in Dallas

I am at the Advanced Virtualization seminar in Dallas being hosted by TechTarget and the Burton Group. The first half hour worth of presentation has been covering the decision points for what you use from the hardware up. The bottom line is performance and the filters that you will run your performance requirements through are hardware configs – memory, disk speeds, I/O.

Pick a platform, understand why and make sure it dovetails to current hardware strategy. If it’s a CPU intensive app - Limit number of virtual CPUs to <= physical cores. Benchmarks are 4:1 overcommit.

Chargeback

Akorri and Vkernel were mentioned and highlighted in the presentation. I asked the interesting question:

How much information is captured and reported in a chargeback report? In other words does the report capture chargeback information that includes power costs to support the virtual environment or is it just focused on the plug into the app and hardware?

Crickets.

No one has factored this into chargeback. This is VERY interesting to me, and here is why:

IT can tell Finance (and CIOs are reporting to CFOs more and more) what the computing costs are for application and virtual resource usage, yet the lowest common denominator (power) is left out of the equation, yet is a significant and crucial piece of the equation. So there may be an incredibly inefficient computing environment running that YOU or your department is paying for. If it’s YOUR money, don’t you want to make sure it’s being spent wisely and that your efficiency is being rewarded in what you are charged?

More later…