Most-Read GeekFluent Posts in 2017

Posted on 1 January 2018 by GeekFluent

Hello, and welcome to 2018.

It’s a new year which means it’s time for a new check-in on how content on this site did during the previous year. Let’s start with the ten most-read posts in 2017. (All statistics used in this post are gathered from the WordPress app.)

Most-Read Posts in 2017:

What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5 (2016) – 6,958 views
Use Your Windows Laptop as an Isilon Console Terminal (2013) – 1,973 views
What’s New in Isilon OneFS 8.0 (2016) – 1,963 views
Magic Balloon: A Whiteboarding Creativity Game/Exercise (2013) – 1,728 views
Cisco Enters Hyperconverged Market with HyperFlex (2016) – 1,344 views
Job Search Mode: Engaged! (2017) – 1,168 views
Summary of Monday’s Announcements at Dell EMC World 2017 (2017) – 917 views
Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model (2017) – 881 views
Pure Storage FlashBlade is Now GA (2017) – 838 views
EMC Announces Next-Generation VMAX Storage Array (2014) – 813 views

The first thing I noticed was that only four of the ten most-read posts in 2017 were actually written in 2017. The second thing I noticed was the huge gap between the #1 and #2 spots. The most-viewed post, on vSphere 6.5, actually received 19% of the total views the entire site got during 2017.

Most-Read Posts Written in 2017

I know this list is less “fair” to the more recent posts, but that’s just the way things go.

Job Search Mode: Engaged! – 1,168 views
Summary of Monday’s Announcements at Dell EMC World 2017 – 917 views
Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model – 881 views
Pure Storage FlashBlade is Now GA – 838 views
Job Search Successful – I’m Headed to the Cloud – 562 views
Things Marketers Need to Just STOP Doing – 354 views
Cisco Announces Champions for 2017 – 338 views
Premise vs. Premises: A Modest Proposal – 307 views
HPE Acquiring SimpliVity for a Bargain Basement Price – 229 views
An Open Letter to Influence Marketers – 222 views

I’ll admit I’m happy that “Job Search” post got top readership. It and the various social media work around it were instrumental in helping me find my current job.

I do wish my “Modest Proposal” had gotten more reads — and that the proposal itself had a far higher adoption rate.

I’m a little sad that the “Open Letter” made it into the top ten. I think the Addendum I wrote to it is actually a far better piece.

The Power of Search

60.7% of all pageviews on this site in 2017, came from search engines. Most folks aren’t necessarily looking for me, but they’re looking for me info on things I’m writing about. They’re doing what I do — running a search and then reading what they’re referred to. Makes me think I might want to look into some SEO at some point.

Conclusions?

I seem to be branching out with what I write — both top ten lists this year cover a wider variety of vendors and topics than the lists have in past years.

I wrote more about myself recently. Two of the top posts I wrote this year were about what I was up to.

I pretty much always feel that I’m not creating new content or posting as often as I “should” be. I’m not sure if that will actually ever change, but a good first step might be convincing myself that short posts really are OK.

Zadara Storage Offers Hurricane Relief to Business Hit by Harvey, Irma, or Maria

Posted on 23 October 2017 by GeekFluent

Zadara Storage, a Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) start-up company, is offering disaster relief to businesses affected by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, or Maria. The relief Zadara is offering comes in the form of up to 1PB of free data storage for six months. This storage can be installed on-site, in the Cloud, or as a hybrid model.

(I’m so pleased to be writing about some good news related to the hurricanes that have caused so much destruction in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.)

How do businesses qualify for their six months of free storage?

Be a business that operates in the hurricane-affected areas and lost storage
Be a business that operates elsewhere, but lost storage in a data center or at a colocation site in the hurricane affected areas

If your business meets either of these two conditions, you can apply for your free storage here.

I know what you’re thinking — What’s the catch? There is none. If your company qualifies, Zadara will either ship storage — to your site or to your colocation data center — or provide you with access to cloud-based storage in Zadara’s data centers. When the six months is up, you can choose to sign up for Zadara’s Storage-as-a-Service, or you can return the storage to them, no questions asked.

I spoke with Zadara’s CEO and co-founder, Nelson Nahum, last week. He told me that as he was watching news coverage of the hurricane disasters, he and other members of the company’s management team found themselves inspired by things people were doing to help each other: sharing food and resources, working together to rescue people who were trapped, opening their homes to shelter strangers who lost their homes to the storm. Seeing this caused the management team to ask themselves and each other what they could do to help. The answer was: up to 1PB of Storage-as-a-Service for six months, either on-site or in the Cloud, for free, no strings attached.

Zadara’s Storage-as-a-Service supports multiple data types (block, file, and object), providing access via multiple storage protocols (FC, iSCSI, iSER, NFS, SMB, S3, and Swift). (I’ll do a follow-up blog post later to take a closer look at how they accomplish this.)

So, if you’re with a business that could use a hand getting back on its feet following the triple-whammy of hurricanes — or know someone in that situation — go here to have the business apply.

My Schedule at VMworld US 2017

Posted on 24 August 2017 by GeekFluent

After having had to miss out on VMworld last year, I’m pleased to announce my triumphant return to the event. Or at least my return.

VMworld has always been, in my opinion, one of the best yearly events, not just in terms of the technical content and knowledge to be gained, but also because of the size and strength of the community that attends.

So, in that spirit, in the hopes of being able to reconnect with old friends, have in-person meetings with people I’ve only none online, and in making new friends and community connections, here are the places where you’ll most likely be able to find me during the event. Continue reading →

Cisco Announces Intention to Acquire Springpath

Posted on 23 August 2017 by GeekFluent

On Monday, Cisco ended over a year of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) speculation and announced their intent to acquire Springpath.

In this case, instead of Cisco the networking company, we’re looking at Cisco the manufacturer of the Unified Computing System (UCS) compute platform. Springpath makes hyperconvergence software. Cisco has been running that software — rebranded as the Cisco HX Data Platform — on their UCS servers and offering that bundle as their HyperFlex HCI solution. You may remember that I wrote about HyperFlex when it first launched back in March of 2016.

I’ve been a fan of the UCS platform since its launch, and I’ve been a fan of Springpath since they came out of stealth. HyperFlex has always looked like a great HCI solution to me, and I’ve been surprised it hasn’t taken off more than it has.

Cisco’s been making an overall change to put more emphasis on software and its value-add, and the Springpath acquisition obviously fits well with that shift. The Springpath team will be joining Cisco’s Computing Systems Product Group.

At the price — $320Million in cash — it’s a bargain for Cisco even if they’re only acquiring Springpath to ensure exclusive access to the intellectual property, or ongoing support for HyperFlex. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 of 2018, pending regulatory review.

Cisco Press Release

Panel Discussion of Abandonware (in an IoT Context)

Posted on 2 August 2017 by GeekFluent

During the past couple years, the good folks over at Gestalt IT have been working to find more ways to make sure that the Tech Field Day delegates feel that their time has been valued and put to good use. One of the ways they’ve been doing that is to use some of the down time to record podcasts.

At one of the Storage Field Days I attended, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to sit on a podcast panel to discuss “abandonware” — especially in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).

What’s abandonware? It’s what happens when you have a networked device that still works, but is no longer supported by its manufacturer — or worse, whose manufacturer has gone out of business. Lack of support for the device means no more software updates, which means no security patches. Unpatched devices on your network leave your network vulnerable. Continue reading →

Turbonomic Announces Version 5.9, Adds Support for Hybrid Cloud

Posted on 6 June 2017 by GeekFluent

Today Turbonomic announced a new release of their autonomic management suite, version 5.9. The new version adds new capabilities, expanding their automated management into hybrid cloud environments, as well as a number of performance enhancements.

With this release, Turbonomic is furthering their mission: to enable their customers to automate and control any workload, on any infrastructure, any time, and any place.

What’s New in 5.9

I’ll summarize what I see as the key new things Turbonomic has added in version 5.9. Continue reading →

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