Admittedly, metrics aren’t all that exciting in and of themselves — it’s the information and the trends behind them, driving the numbers that are interesting. This, in a single sentence, is the idea behind the Big Data phenomenon.
That said, the data I have to present here is very near and dear to me. It’s interesting to look back and see which of my posts from 2012 got a lot of attention and which didn’t. It offers some insight into what my readers are interested in.
That said, the most-read GeekFluent posts in 2012 are listed below with full transparency.
(In the interest of that transparency, I’ll note that I’m only counting views of actual posts written in 2012 in the chart below, not views of other things on the site. Visits to the top-level of the site would have come in at #3 with 1,224 views.)
- What Will VAAI v2 Do for You? Part 2 of 2: NFS (3,000 views)
- What Will VAAI v2 Do for You? Part 1 of 2: Block (1,339 views)
- EMC VFCache (Project Lightning) in a VMware Environment (896 views)
- Enhancement to VAAI-NAS in vSphere 5.1 (787 views)
- EMC Updates VFCache – Now Supports VMware vMotion (303 views)
- VMware Releases vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager (288 views)
- Social Media Experiment #1: TBaaS (285 views)
- Isilon Integration with VAAI-NAS and VASA (276 views)
- DIM Project: Smartphone Dashboard Mount (259 views)
- Gear Review: Cocoon GRID-IT Organizers (231 views)
So, What Does This Tell Me?
It’s pretty clear that the VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) were far and away the most popular topic I wrote about in 2012, with interest in the NFS features coming in more than twice as high as for block. My guesses to explain these two things are:
- Most write-ups of the VAAI features fall into two categories. They’re either fairly light and “marketing-y” or they’re an in-depth technical deep-dive. My write-ups work to span the gap in the middle between those two extremes.
- The popularity of the write-up of the NFS features over that of the one on the block features is most likely explained by the relative newness of those features. VAAI for block has been available since vSphere 4.1, so most folks have been hearing about it for a while. VAAI for NFS debuted in vSphere 5.0.
Things I write on VMware or VMware-related topics were clearly more popular than other things I wrote, accounting for seven of the top ten most-read posts. I’m not convinced that actually tells me anything worthwhile though, seeing as VMware and VMware-related topics accounted for the majority of my posts in 2012… (It’s worth noting that my post on the Android app Tasker from 2011 narrowly missed inclusion in the top posts with 211 views.)
How Will This Affect What I Write in 2013?
Well, I won’t be giving up on writing about VMware, that’s for sure…
I’ll be expanding, though, going back to my other technical roots and also writing more about storage and datacenter. In all of those areas, I’ll keep aiming for that “middle zone” between the market-speak and the deep-dive. I don’t just want to explain what things do, but why it matters that they do what they do.
I also plan on spending more time writing about technical certifications and preparing for them. I have multiple Certification Quests in my future, and I know many other folks out there have ones of their own. If I can offer anything there that might help others, I’d certainly like to.
What Would You Like to See?
If there are particular topics or areas you’d like to see me address in 2013, let me know in the comments.