Successfully upgraded a couple of ESXi 4.1 servers to ESXi 5 today. It went like a breeze. The vCenter upgrade a couple of days ago was a bit more challenging because of 3rd party SSL certificates, but that worked out fine too in the end.

For a long time now I've been using Google Docs as the archive for my RAW-files. Google Docs is a great and affordable service for storing any kind of files, but only offers a webinterface for uploading. The web-based uploader has improved over time, but it's still very much a manual process to upload files and folders. This is where Insync comes in.

I've been using Insync for a couple of weeks and I like it a lot. It syncs your files and folders at Google Docs with your Mac or PC and basically turns Google Docs into a Dropbox kind of service. Now all I have to do is drag my RAW-files from Lightroom to my Insync folder where they automatically get uploaded to Google Docs. My archiving process became much smoother thanks to Insync.

Insync offers more than just syncing. It has some really nice sharing features too. Let me know if you want to try Insync for yourself and I'll send you an invite.

So I received my Pinterest invitation yesterday. I haven't pinned anything yet, but when I do you'll find it over here http://pinterest.com/rutgerblom/. I like the endless scrolling and how easy it is to interact with pins. All in all it does look rather addictive.

That's all I'm doing these days. Many terabytes. Running the process over and over again to take care of the diffs. Migration projects have their boring sides too.

I'm visiting NetApp at their brand new office in Munich this week to learn more about their new storage systems and their roadmap. Some exciting new features are ahead! Especially with the new OnTap software 8.1 NetApp is about to turn things upside down a bit again creating a tremendous amount of new possibilities for customers to design and scale their NetApp storage. Also with the new management software OnCommand 5.0, administration, monitoring and provisioning NetApp storage will become even more easy. We also looked at orchestration at the storage level. It can integrate very tight with vSphere orchestration if that's what you want. As a vSphere administrator I like the fact you can manage it all with VMware's orchestration. I haven't been able to play around with orchestration, but will definitely have a closer look at it when I'm back home again. To me it seems to be the only way to go.

Today I enabled support for jumbo frames in certain parts of our data center. The H3C switches are accepting jumbo frames by default and so do HP's Virtual Connect Flex-10 ethernet modules. I had to change the MTU on the NetApp filers which was easy. Enabling jumbo frame support in VMware vSphere is easy too, but takes a little more time as it involves reconfiguring virtual switches, removing and adding vmkernel interfaces and a reboot of each ESXi host.

It will be interesting to see the effects (if any) of enabling jumbo frame support. Time for some vMotion!

The first week after my vacation and I'm busy installing Nagios on a new HP DL380 G7 running SLES 11 SP1. Besides Nagios this server will be running Cacti and act as a syslog server for other servers and devices in the network.

I guess I won't be needing my second shot voucher for the VCP410 exam. Today, after a sweaty week of trying to combine studies with all kind of other obligations, I passed the exam on my first attempt. A bit unexpected.
It wasn't easy and my score was not glamorous, but in the end the result is all that matters.

Vacation next. :-)

Attending a three day HP blade management course the same week you're going to write the VCP410 exam is not something I can recommend. What was I thinking of?

Register for the webcast over here: http://rutblo.com/l9Eku7