[kwlug-disc] Private Cloud

Chris Irwin chris at chrisirwin.ca
Thu Feb 2 09:55:31 EST 2012


On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 09:55, Kiwi Ssennyonjo <kiwi at ssenn.com> wrote:
> Would the members of the KWLUG like a presentation from VMWare about cloud?

"Cloud" isn't really a thing, and a quick scroll through the thread
doesn't say what this presentation would be about?

    * vCloud Director?
    * A bunch of VMs running on the free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) for
home/smb use? (little-f free)
    * A small centrally-managed vSphere Essentials group of vCenter
plus ESXi hosts? (as far as paid products in this market go, this
probably falls within the reach of regular folks like me)

I'm not hostile to the idea of a VMWare presentation -- Hell, I just
finished the five-day course toward my VCP5 and any chance to ask more
questions is a bonus in my eyes. But a nebulous topic like "cloud" for
VMWare is like asking Dell to come and talk about "computers". It
would be nice to have a more detailed summary before. (somewhat
selfish here, and not trying to sound mean -- I come from London, so
I'd like to know whether the itinerary is "worth" the gas)

> We would like to come and present some options, and answer questions.

VMWare did a presentation at KWLug in the past. While it was very nice
of them to do so, I wasn't overly impressed with the content. There
was very little technical discussion, and no examples or exploration.
It was basically a high-level outline of products, and sales-pitches.
To me at least, I had the impression it was the same non-technical
sales pitch that would be shown to assistant-reads-my-email management
folks, rather than the computer savvy people who frequent the group.

I think it would be ideal if there was some technical discussion,
maybe some examples (you can virtualize an esxi host and run 32-bit
VMs within it. It should be possible to have a mini-lab set up). I
realize that our level of technical understanding varies quite a bit
amongst us, so deciding the topics is not an easy task. I don't wish
to speak for anybody else, but I think we're all above the sales-pitch
level (though do please speak up if I'm incorrect here).

-- 
Chris Irwin
<chris at chrisirwin.ca>




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