blog.scottlowe.org

I stumbled across this post by Duncan over at Yellow Bricks about his inclusion in a recent Top 10 list by Eric Siebert over at VMware-land. The new Top 10 list is “Top 10 blogs that VMware administrators must read.” This list is a regular “Who’s Who” list of well-known bloggers like Mike Laverick, Eric Sloof, Christofer Hoff, and others. Lo and behold, I find out that I’m on the list as well! And at #2, no less!

Thanks to all my readers and to everyone who has helped me along the way. It’s been a tremendous pleasure writing this blog and I’m looking forward to many more posts in the future!

I just wanted to provide a quick update on some articles I have in the works to be (hopefully) published soon.

• I’m working on an article discussing when to use various NIC teaming configurations with VMware ESX. There are some significant repercussions here for a variety of network configurations, but especially so for configurations involving IP-based storage (iSCSI or NFS).
• I’m finally wrapping up an article on the Xsigo I/O Director. I’ve been working a Xsigo VP780 in the lab for quite some time, and this article will provide a brief overview along with some tips and tricks.
• I received word from HP that I should be getting a ProCurve switch in my lab soon, so that means I can provide a ProCurve-oriented version of this NIC teaming and VLAN trunking article.
• I have some notes on using NetApp Open Systems SnapVault (OSSV) in conjunction with VMware ESX that I plan to post here as well.

New versions of the Linux and Solaris AD integration articles are on the way as well, starting with an update of the Solaris instructions to accommodate Solaris 10 Update 5 and Windows Server 2008.

If there’s anything else you’re interested in seeing, let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: The NIC utilization article is available here.

For those that are interested, I’ve started bookmarking all my own published articles. They’re viewable on del.icio.us with the tag “Articles”, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for that tag as well. I was having a hard time keeping track of all the URLs where my articles had been published, so I thought I’d just go ahead and bookmark them so I had them for future reference.

I hadn’t really considered that doing this would also help me judge the popularity and/or usefulness of the article, as measured by the number of other people who also have it bookmarked. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that this makes it easier for other people to find them as well. (Hey, you can’t blame me too much for wanting to promote my own work!)

I suppose it was bound to happen at some point.

I’ve been confused for the other Scott Lowe. Yes, that’s right; there’s more than one.

The other Scott Lowe writes for TechRepublic.com, and currently works for either Elmira College or Westminster College; I’m not sure which. (I’ve seen both; I think it’s Westminster.) He’s published a couple of books, including one on Exchange Server 2007 that was published by Microsoft Press, and owns the slowe.com domain.

Normally, being mistaken for the other Scott Lowe wouldn’t be a problem; he seems like a smart, well-respected, knowledgeable guy. In this case, though, it was some business contacts at NetApp that picked up this article in which Scott Lowe purchased an EMC storage array. Clearly you can see where that would cause some confusion.

So, just to set the record straight: I didn’t purchase an EMC storage array. Nor did I purchase a Dell M1000e blade chassis. I also don’t know anything about open source IP telephony. Sorry. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with any of these products; it just wasn’t me. I do have a copy of the aforementioned Exchange Server 2007 book; but it’s not my name on the front cover, unfortunately.

I hope this helps to clear things up. However, if you’ve accidentally mistaken me for him, and you’d rather read his stuff, this TechRepublic.com search should help you out.

Now, back to looking at my Toshiba CIX1200 phone system. Oh, wait—that wasn’t me, either…

It appears that some of my articles from a couple of years ago are being republished on another site without any attribution or link back to the original. That’s one of the bad things about the Internet as it stands today…it’s far too easy to “copy and paste” another person’s material onto your own site.

If you’re interested in republishing my content, just drop me a line. I’m sure we can work something out. Just don’t shamelessly steal my writing.

Here’s a quick list of a few of the articles that I currently have in progress:

• I’ve been looking at the recently-announced products from Altor Networks and have their VNSA (Virtual Network Security Analyzer) running in the lab right now. Look for a short post on the product and my initial thoughts. (One piece of advice I can offer to Altor right now: use the virtual appliance OVF format and save your customers a lot of trouble.)
• I’m going to have some hands-on time with a Xsigo I/O Director over the next few weeks, so look for an article on that product.
• Prodded to action by Nick’s comment in my article on thin provisioned VMDKs on NFS, I’ll have an article on using SnapRestore to clone VMs on NFS without losing the thin provisioned VMDKs.
• The Active Directory integration articles are getting a bit long in the tooth, so look for updates to both the Linux and Solaris integration instructions. (By the way, speaking of Solaris integration: I came across this article a short while ago.)

If anyone has any other topics they’d be interested in seeing me tackle, feel free to mention them in the comments below. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll certainly consider them!

UPDATE: The article on preserving thin provisioned VMDKs with SnapRestore is now available.

In case you hadn’t noticed, some of my virtualization-related content is now being aggregated by Doug Brown over at DABCC.com. I’m honored that Doug is including my content. So, if you haven’t visited DABCC.com recently, hop over there right now. I’m confident you’ll find it as useful a resource as I do.

RSS is handy, but not everyone likes RSS. Some people prefer to receive updates about this site via e-mail, and to help accommodate that I’ve enabled e-mail subscriptions to the site. To subscribe to receive updates about this weblog via e-mail, just follow these simple instructions:

1. From your web browser, open the feed URL for the site. I’ve hyperlinked it for your convenience.
2. An HTML interpretation of the RSS feed will be displayed. In the upper right hand corner, there will be a box titled “Subscribe Now!” In that box, there’s a hyperlink labeled “Get blog.scottlowe.org delivered by email”. Click that link.
3. The next screen will prompt you to enter your e-mail address and enter a verification code that is displayed on the screen. Provide that information and then click the button labeled “Complete Subscription Request.”
4. Soon thereafter, you’ll receive an e-mail in your Inbox. In that e-mail will be a link—which you should NOT click on, but should instead copy and paste into your browser—to complete and verify the subscription.

That’s it, you’re all set! Please note that the “Reply-To” address on the e-mails you receive from the site is not valid, so don’t be surprised if you reply to a message and get a non-delivery report back. If you need to contact me via e-mail, my information is available here on the site.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope that this new service will be helpful to some of you!

I discovered another ePlus blogger today.  Last week I mentioned that fellow ePlus engineer Aaron Delp has launched his site, The Blade Blog (now called BladeVault.info); today I discovered that Colin McNamara also runs his own blog as well.  Colin is a CCIE whose blog, quite naturally, focuses on networking and Cisco equipment.  Most of his technical stuff is, frankly, over my head; I only know enough to get myself into trouble.

Colin’s RSS feed is here.

UPDATE: I’ve updated Aaron’s URL above to reflect the site’s new location.

As part of transitioning into my new role at ePlus, I’ve been having to change some of the ways that I track my responsibilities and outstanding tasks.  For many, many years I’ve been driven by customer-facing projects, and I centered my organization—document filing strategies, keywords, e-mail folders, tasks, etc.—around these projects.  It was pretty easy to know what needed to be done when you’re implementing a farm of ESX Servers, or installing a new storage area network.

Now, however, my role is not customer-facing, and my responsibilities and deliverables are—at first glance—not quite so clear cut.  In addition, the sphere of individuals with whom I am working has broadened.  So I find that my old way of doing things just isn’t effective any longer.

So I began casting about for a “new way” of doing things, something that might help me be more efficient (doing things right) and effective (doing the right things).  Of course, the whole “Getting Things Done,” or GTD, mantra popped up as I began looking for applications designed to help track tasks and responsibilities.  Not being a GTD expert, I decided to give it a semi-whirl and experiment with some of the applications based upon the GTD principles.  So far, it hasn’t gone so well.

<aside>It will probably be stated by more than a few readers who are GTD experts that giving it a “semi-whirl” is the root of the problems that I go on to describe below.  Many of the instructional articles I’ve read so far indicate that you have to use a trusted system that you can trust to capture all the things you need to do, or else you’ll worry about what you might have missed.  That’s all well and good, but what if you can’t find the trusted system that you need?</aside>

I started with OmniFocus.  Actually, that’s not true; I actually experimented with iGTD a while back and just couldn’t stand the UI quirks.  OmniFocus (hereafter just OF) is a great application, but I was having a really hard time reshaping my mind around how I was supposed to get data into OF.  I liked the Clippings support, especially from Mail (and MailTags), as most of my tasks are generated from an e-mail.  Something still didn’t feel quite right, though, so after a few days I removed the trial copy and decided to try Things.

Things is still in beta, and while I like some of the features about Things there are parts that don’t make any sense.  For example, what’s the point behind the “People” section of Things if it doesn’t do anything?  Why should I add team mates?  Sure, I can create actions that are linked/assigned to a team mate, but for what purpose?  I’m trying to organize myself, not my co-workers!  The interface is a bit odd, too, and lacks contextual menus.  Things also lacks one feature that OF had, which was Quicksilver integration.  Believe it or not, the Quicksilver integration makes it so much easier to get actions into the application without disrupting what you’re currently doing, and isn’t that all part of GTD and contexts?

Anyway, I’m still using Things but haven’t yet decided whether I’ll stick with it or try something new.  What is everyone else out there using?  Are there others in similar roles and what applications, processes, procedures, etc., do you use to help keep track of your various responsibilities, actions, and deliverables?  I’d love to hear everyone’s feedback.