Recently I had the joy of reconnecting with some of my old VMware colleagues to learn that their new startup was coming out of stealth. Today Platform 9 announced their SaaS platform.
In short, Platform 9 allows IT organisations to transform their local IT infrastructure into a self-service private cloud. The beauty of this product is that it can be implemented on existing infrastructures. No need to create a new infrastructure to introduce the private cloud within your organisation. Just install the agent on your hypervisor layer, connect with the Platform 9 cloud management platform and you are off into the world of private clouds. The ease of integration is amazing and I believe that Platform 9 will be the accelerator of private cloud adoption. No need to go to AWS, no migration to Azure. You manage your own resources while allowing the customer to provision their own virtual machines or containers. Today Platform 9 supports KVM, but they will support both VMware and docker environments soon.
I can dive into the details of Platform 9 but Eric Wright has done a tremendous job of publishing an extensive write-up and I recommend reading his article to learn more about Platform 9 private cloud offering. If you want to meet the team of Platform 9 and hear their vision, visit booth #324 at the solution exchange of VMworld 2014.

I’m excited to announce the first ever “collective novel”, in which members of the virtualization community collaborated to create a book with intrigue, mystery, romance, and a whole lot of geeky data center references.

The concept of the project is that one person writes a section and then passes it along. The writers don’t know their fellow contributors. They get an unfinished story in their mailbox and are allowed to take the story in whatever direction it needs to go. The only limitation is the author imagination.
For me it was a fun and interesting project. Writing a chapter for a novel is a whole different ballgame than writing technical focused content. As I rarely read novels it’s a challenge how to properly describe the situation the protagonist is getting himself into. On top of that I needed to figure out how to extend and expand the story line set by the previous authors but also get the story into a direction I prefer. And to make it more challenging, you do not know what the next author will be writing, therefor your intention for the direction of the storyline may be ignored. All in all a great experience and I hope we can do a second collective novel. I’m already collecting ideas ☺
I would like to thank Jeff Aaron. He came up with the idea and guided the project perfectly. Once again Jon Atterbury did a tremendous job on the formatting and artwork of the book. And of course I would like to thank the authors of taking time out of their busy schedules to contribute to the book. The authors:

To make it more interesting for the readers, we deliberately hid which author wrote which chapter you can have some fun guessing via a short quiz. Prizes will be given to those people with the best scores.
I’m not entirely sure that this book will be nominated for a Pulitzer, but it is worth a read to see what is in the authors’ crazy heads – and to witness how well they work together when collaborating on a project like this.
Go download the book and take the quiz

This week Eric Siebert opened up the 2014 edition of top virtualization blog contest. For the industry this is one of the highlights and applaud the effort Eric and his team of volunteers put in to make this work. I cannot wait to the watch the show in which they unveil this years top 25 winners. A big thank you to Eric and the team!
Most of the time you will see blog articles that highlight this years effort and I think they are great. As there are so many great bloggers writing and sharing their thoughts and ideas, it’s very easy to miss out on some brilliant post. A quick scan of these posts helps to (re)discover the wealth of information that is out there.
Last year I was voted number 2, however this year the frequency (hopefully not the quality) of my blog articles went down. This was due to my career change and the new responsibilities my job role encompasses. Plus creating the vSphere design book took a lot of time and effort. For this years VMworld we have planned something even better, so please stay tuned for this years VMworld book!
But this post is not about me as a blogger and my material, but to highlight some of the bloggers that help the community understand the product better, comprehend the behavior of the complex systems we work with every day and the insights they provide by spending a lot of their (spare) time writing and creating these great articles. Voting for them you will help them understand that their time and effort is well spend!
First of all, guys like Duncan Epping, Cormac Hogan, William Lam and Eric Sloof relentlessly churn out great collateral, whether it is a written article, podcast or video. It keeps the community well fed when it comes to quality information. Writing a great article is a challenge, doing this on a continuous basis is even more impressive!
But I would like to highlight some of the guys that are considered “new” guys. They are all industry veterans, but they decided to pick up blogging recently. I would like to highlight these guys, but there are many more of course.
Pete Koehler – vmpete.com
Pete writes a lot about PernixData, but that’s not the reason I want to highlight him. His articles are quite in-depth and I love reading those articles as I learn from them every time Pete decides to post his most recent insights. For example in the article “Observations of PernixData in a Production environment” he covers the IOPS, Throughput & Latency relationship in great detail. In this exercise he discovers that applications do not use a static block size, something you don’t read that often. He correlates specific output and explains how each metric interacts which each other, educating you along the way and helping you to do a better and more effective job in your own environment.
Josh Odgers – joshodgers.com
Josh is listed both on the general blogging list as well as a newcomer and I think he deserves to be “rookie of the year” Josh’s insight are very valuable and its always a joy to read his articles. His VCDX articles are top notch and are a must read for every aspiring VCDX candidate. Just too bad he decided to join Nutanix ;).
Luca Dell’Oca – virtualtothecore.com
Dropping knowledge both in English and Italian, Luca is covering new technologies as well as insight full tips and tricks on a frequent basis. Ranging from reclaiming space on a Windows 2012 installation to a complete write up on how to create a valuable I/O test virtual machine. A blog that should be visited regularly.
Willem ter Harmsel – willemterharmsel.nl
Not your average virtualization blog, Willem covers the startup world by interviewing CEO’s and CTOs of the hottest and newest startups this world currently has to offer. Willem provides insights of upcoming technology and allows its readers to place and compare different technologies. A welcome change of pace after spending a day knee-deep into the bits and bytes
Consuming those stories and articles on a daily basis, are they helpful in your daily work? Please show your appreciation and vote today on your favorite blogs! Thanks!
Please vote now!

Sometimes something comes along that makes you feel you need to get involved with. Something that makes you want to leave the comfortable position you have now and take up the challenge of starting all over again. Help turn that something into something big. Well that something is in my case PernixData and its Flash Virtualization Platform.
Joining PernixData means I’m leaving the great company of VMware and an awful lot of great colleague behind. Some of them I consider to be good friends. During my years at VMware I learned a lot and words cannot describe how awesome those years were. Designing the vCloud environment for the European launching partner, consulting a lot of the Fortune 500 firms, participating in VCDX panels around the world and co-authoring three books are some of the highlights during my time at VMware but I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of other great moments. Being a part of the technical marketing team was amazing! Besides working alongside the best bloggers in the world I had the privilege to work with the engineers on a daily basis.  Having a job that allows you to think, talk and write about technology you absolutely love is great and difficult to let go.
But opportunities do come along and as I mentioned in the beginning some of these opportunities spark the desire to become a part of that story. When I attended a technical preview of the Flash Virtualization Platform at PernixData I got excited. I think just as excited as when I saw my first vMotion. Meeting the founders and the team made me realize that this company and product was more than just a single product, this platform is a game changer in the world of virtual infrastructure and datacenter design. Which drove me to the decision to accept a position with PernixData as Technology Evangelist.
As the Technology Evangelist I’m responsible for helping the virtualization community understand PernixData’s Flash Virtualization Platform (FVP). And as the first international employee I also will be focusing on expanding the European organization.
I will be starting at PernixData soon, can’t wait to start